I am an independent director and producer who likes to ride his motorcycle in dusty places.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 14th, 2023

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  • When looking for my last vehicle, I still needed a midsize very-light-duty truck for my business (film production), I drove the Chevy midsize truck (Colorado?) first on my checklist of trucks to drive. It was a piece of garbage (and this made me sad because I was [trying to be] open to finding an excellent US-made midsize truck). The sales guy was super-enthusiastic, of course, to the point of pushy obnoxiousness. When he asked me “HOW GREAT IS THIS TRUCK???!!!??” I was like “I wouldn’t complain if someone gave one to me, but I have other trucks to test.”

    After test driving four other competitors, I ended up with Honda Ridgeline (which beat out my second favorite from Toyota), that I have now had for 4+ years and absolutely love it - it is a great midsize+ truck. It’s kind of a unicorn in Texas (so many Fords and Dodges), but I saw a ton of them in Arizona and other Western states. Great vehicle, and it has CarPlay. Sadly, it’s in the shop at the moment (I, uh, backed into a bollard, cough) and my rental is a brand-new Dodge Charger which drives like a lead brick on wheels compared to the Ridgeline. Interior finish isn’t bad though…and the UI, while not CarPlay, is polished).


  • I have been, up until very recently, a “Thanksgiving Traditionalist”, in that I loudly proclaimed that one should muck around with the traditional basics.

    But last year, I changed my tune. We had a dinner based around Stanley Tucci’s timpano instead of turkey (yes, the famous timpano from the movie BIG NIGHT). That was a big success.

    This year, because I have some very dear friends who are vegetarians and who kind of slink away when anyone discusses Thanksgiving traditional dishes, I wanted to make dinner with their needs/desires squarely in mind, so I am doing a completely vegetarian menu. I generally despise “meat analogues”, so no, we’re not having tofurkey. So, here’s the menu:

    • velouté de châitagnes (chestnut soup)
    • Spanish tortilla (the potato dish, not the Mexican flatbread)
    • my grandmother’s green bean casserole (very unique, not-what-you-expect, nod to tradition)
    • roasted root vegetables (catch-all, probably rutabagas, turnips, parsnips, etc…)
    • Jacque Pepin’s “easy” corn soufflé
    • a massive onion-mushroom tarte tatin as the centerpiece (onions, mushrooms, gorgonzola, walnuts, butter, pastry crust)
    • fresh homemade pickles (various)
    • fresh homemade bread (baguettes, sourdough boules, etc)
    • risalamande (Scandinavian rice pudding)

    I am probably forgetting something. Guests are bring desserts and wine (one is a L3 sommelier, never disappoints).




  • Just finished CP myself yesterday, with a 9 hour push through the “final day”. I had previously in my run rejected the (possible) helpful offer at the end of Phantom Liberty to find my own solution to my problem and, after spending far too much time debating over a single dialog choice, I settled on one that lead to a satisfactory, if bitter-sweet, conclusion.

    The sense of finality was quite profound and pleasing. I have no wish to play my V anymore, as I think their story is done. While this means I may never revisit NC again (which makes me a little sad), I can live with that. I guess I can look forward to CP: Boston in 10 years :-).


  • Same, my friend and I gave up on Baldur’s Gate and will let the developer “finish” tweaking it. I like what Larian tries to do in its games, but I really, really despise the need to mash the quick save button after anything representing even minor progress because you might stumble into TPK combat while exploring. This happened to us in Divinity and when we got a whiff of the same in BG3, we wrinkled our noses and left the game.

    I subsequently went on to play CP2077 v2.0 and really enjoyed myself, which I just “finished” yesterday with a satisfactory, bitter-sweet ending.



  • Yes. We just had a scoop of homemade coconut sorbet tonight, super simple to make:

    • 1 cup of water
    • 1 cup of sugar
    • 1 can of unsweetened coconut cream
    • 1 can of unsweetened coconut milk
    • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
    • 1/4 teaspoon almond extract

    Bring the water and sugar to a boil, lower the heat to medium, and let it simmer for 10 minutes to make a simple syrup. Let the syrup cool to room temperature, then mix all the ingredients together in a blender briefly, then pour into your ice cream maker and freeze. Set the sorbet into the freezer for at least 2 hours to finish the freezing.

    If you can’t find coconut cream, you can just use 2 cans of full fat coconut milk, but it will be icier.





  • While there is cross-pollination between macOS and iOS Macs are general purpose computers. And while it is true you cannot, like most PCs, crack open and customize a Mac and that to date most games are developed for PCs and not Macs as a side-effect of this (game development and hardware/graphics card development are incestuous), Macs are extremely capable computers that can meet demanding needs.

    I have used Macs and PCs all my life. At this very moment I am playing Assassin’s Creed Odyssey in full pretty mode on a PC while my Mac in the other room renders a film and I type this message in an iPhone. I prefer using my Mac over the PC for most things - and certainly the Mac is where my bread is buttered - my PC is a fancy launcher for Steam.

    Without being impolite, it sounds like you looked at the Mac, but didn’t bother to actually use it for anything practical, tasks at which it excels.




  • People read their phones on the toilet - probably every single modern phone user has done it at least once. It is not inconceivable that a small, but significant, number of them have fumbled the phone and it has fallen into the bowl.

    Likewise, pools, beaches, and boats are places people are very likely to go with their phones in tow and in use. It is not unlikely some of those - one can assume - millions of instances have produced some contacts between phone and water.

    I ride a motorcycle and mount my phone on the handlebars for guidance. I spend a lot of effort keeping it dry and have actually lost a couple of USB cables (but not the phone, thankfully) to damp.




  • I have made several sites (and maintain one) with RWC. However, I found that using Hugo (installed with Homebrew) for static sites was worth the effort learning Hugo. It’s just more fun to me to actually write HTML (et al) and watch Hugo compile everything into a site that sit so high and remote in RWC (plus, if I can pass the site off easily to anyone).