Just saw Star Wars

Let me start by saying that I am not going to spoil anything. 

I just got out of seeing Star Wars Episode VII The Force Awakens and made myself the celebratory dinner you see before you (Sarnac Caramel Porter not pictures). It is going to take me a while and many subsequent viewing to fully digest it (the movie not the food). In the true since of this blog, I am going to say two to three things that I liked and two to three things that I didn't like. 

The cinematics are great for the long shots, there are a number of callbacks and fan-service and lots and a very strong female protagonist. There are lots of sweeping long shots of exotic places that Star Wars may not be particularly renown for but were certainly impactful. Scattered about are little things that will make fans of the original three films happy. They are all pretty obvious but made me laugh. The heroin don't need no man to save her and kicks all the butt while the boys are looking for their glasses on the ground. Finally, holy crap holy OMG WTF! Why are you reading this and not watching it?!?!?!?

Final Fallout 4 Countdown

I am doing some of the final work on my computer getting it ready for Fallout 4. Part of that is checking how my rig fairs against the recommended system requirements. I wanted to build a computer with the expressed goal of playing Fallout 4 and bought the best computer that Dell could build with few exceptions. The system requirements were not out until very recently.

I did some checking and my system stacks up pretty well. I should be able run Fallout at 1920x1810 pretty easily. That is good because that is about the highest resolution that my poor old eyes can take.

The main bottleneck is my GPU which is sad because I have a pretty sweet GForce GTX 960. There is a gaming version with twice the memory. In retrospect, I wish I could have bought the stock GPU and then upgraded to the Geforce 960 4GB later. I think that this upgrade will have to happen eventually to play upcoming games.

My painting station and computer station is in the basement and the light down here is not good. There are several fluorescent bulbs handing that provide harsh light. When I turn them off, I can't see my keyboard or what is on my desk. To solve this, I bought a $10 USB light with a dimmer and used an old USB extension cord. I positioned the light in such a way that it casts light on my keyboard. Pretty cheep solution. It balances pretty well with half of the keyboard on the USB extention and the other half on my painting station.

Fallout Enbargo

The only thing that I want for x-mas

Up until now, my habit is to look for Fallout news and videos every day. I have been reading Reddit habitually as well as the boring official stuff from Bethesda. Until earlier this week, I would have said that there were few people that better informed than I in Fallout news.

There were some leaked photos from a Spanish gamer this week and that was the first unofficial leak. Most of the pics were hi-res and of things like Dogmeat or buildings. I didn't think that anything could be spoiled this soon but I was wrong.

Soon after that leak came many more. I watched a few videos an immediately ran into quest spoilers. In an effort to play Fallout 4 unspoiled, I have sworn off any Fallout news until after the game drops.

Played a game, short update, rant

Have done zero painting since the cultists. Sorry, Greg. I am not painting my stuff either.

What I have been doing is playing lots of X-wing. Mostly with my buddy Charles who I got into the game but also once with a very good player Dan. For the most part, I have been having a great time. The games are fast (about an hour per 100 points) and brutal. 

Pipboy? Schmipboy!

I did not find out about the Pipboy Edition of Fallout 4 until long after it was sold out and on eBay for 3 times the price. I love the idea that I'll be able to use my mobile device as a second screen but am not going to go out and drop $500 on a giant plastic Pipboy. Instead, they are a myriad of iPhone holders out there and a few just for forearms. 

I picked this up for $9 shipped from China and love it. It fits my giant iPhone 6 Plus perfectly. What I like most about it is that the phone attaches to the arm thing with Velcro so I can position it at an angle that is easy for me to read on the fly and type on. 

This month is killing me. I think we are 26 days out now and each one is grinding by. The worst are my days off. At least at work things fly by but when I am at home I have all the time in the world to think about Fallout 4 and obsess over every SPECIAL video and perk analysis. 

Einem Nukacola, bitte.

I DLed Wolfenstein: Old Blood to use as a shake down for Fallout 4 on the new computer. I am glad that I did. There is a flickering screen problem that people with Nvidia cards have when running some games on Windows 10 and I am one of those people. The current fix is to run the game in a window, but there are more detailed fixed that I am not quite brave enough to try.

Other than that, the games works amazing. I will try to use it and Adventure Capitalist to distract me over the next 27+ days until my game drops. I feel like am I in a perpetual X-mas Eve. This state of arousal is exhausting. It has eroded my interest in anything else.

I feel like even when Fallout 4 drops, I'll still be sucked into a world without 40k or painting. I'll do my best to make posts about what I am doing in Fallout, but those are less interesting and kind of off topic for this blog. On the other hand, off-topic content is better than no content at all.

On a cute side note, I did find a little Easter Egg from the detail-oriented folks at Bethesda. It seems that they could not help but to cross the streams between Wolfenstein and Fallout. Unfortunately, this is just for fun an in no way means that the worlds could be the same as Nukacola was invented in 2044. That's about a century too late to be in the Wolfenstein world.

Finished - Khorne Cultists 4/30

Three more finished and three more on the table.