The Glade 4.0

How are you having fun/entertaining yourself? How are you getting enjoyment in life? Spending time with someone? TV series? Games? Developing the perfect plan to punch Lenas in the penis? Whachoo been doin? Give it to us in list form

In no particular order:

1. Watching 1980's Transformers cartoons with my boy
2. Just finished The Shannara Chronicles - looking for a new show. Maybe watch most recent season of Longmire?
3. Play a match of Overwatch or Mass Effect 3 on a study break
4. Play a little No Man's Sky on an extended break when I just need to chill
5. Hold my baby boy and see what things can get laughs out of him
6. Have sex with my wife

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The Dude abides.

-I have kids. Time gets used up.
-I've been reading, a lot of non-fiction.
-Pitch may be the best TV show ever.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Pretty much spending all of my spare time on my bike (to the detriment of my guitar playing and building).

I'm a heckuva lot healthier than I've been in years though, so it's all good.

Read my Strava enhanced year-to-date report http://www.marcellobrivio.com/projects/ ... te=5779138

I'm hoping to get to 9k miles by the end of the year. Weather has been pretty good in November, but it's tough to average 100+ miles a week this time of year without doing a lot of riding in the rain and in the dark (neither of which is much fun).

Well, this month is NaNoWriMo, so that's what I'm supposed to be doing, but I have trouble getting inspired. I'm basically trying to finish what I started last year, and then worked on only fitfully since then.

But, instead, I started playing World of Tanks on the XBox, and I'm completely addited. Much worse than EQ, to be honest. If my love of EQ stemmed from playing D&D as a kid, I have to remember that before there was D&D, there were miniature armor battles. I'm really diggin' tank destroyers right now.

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This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

Fighting with my editor about the new book while waiting for the **** copyright office... Eight months to get a copyright. I paid someone in the government money to read my book, you would think they could do it faster than eight months!

Getting caught up on the Lee Child books that I didn't read while writing my own ****.

Skyrim and Destiny on Xbox

**** on netflix...like everything. I have been rewatching the first season of Supergirl. I love Black Mirror. Just finished season two of Gotham, still not happy with it.

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Raell Kromwell

I'm going for my commercial drone operators license soon. I started playing with them a couple of years ago, bought several quadcopters, going from small toys up to what you see here - a home-brew drone I put together with semi-randomly selected parts. I'm going to retire soon and pursue starting a business as a drone consultant

I've mastered the electronic design part by working with arduino boards and mastered my flight skills by walking miles through my neighborhood flying my toys. Interesting thing, my knees are shot and walking distances was a pain and I resisted doing that till I started walking my quad.. and because of the attention I needed to devote to maintaining altitude and attitude, I totally never felt pain. sweet!



Indoor play with my smallest toy:

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In time, this too shall pass.

Walt Disney World is doing some neat stuff with drones right now, Taskiss. Might want to keep an eye on them up for upcoming jobs or consulting opportunities.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Lots of PSVR, watching MMA and EverQuest.

Wow, Penny Dreadful, Westworld, podcasts.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Roller derby. This weekend will be my 10th weekend tournament worked this year. I might have a problem.

Occasional video games. Civ VI, Titanfall 2, and Overwatch are the current most likelies, though I'd like to go back and finish the most recent Tomb Raider: Some Generic Subtitle and ReCore for the stories.

Television-wise, I'm probably stubbornly trying to keep up with a few too many series. New stuff I've been impressed with includes Frequency, The Good Place, and Son of Zorn.

My movie-watching has fallen off some; I tend to miss stuff in the theater since I'm busy these days and then forget to look it up after it hits video/streaming. Getting a bit frustrated at the narrowing window to pick stuff up on video since the Redbox revolution means that the most available rental options have a really narrow stocking capacity, and streaming services like Netflix aren't zealously pursuing new movie releases (and are letting their back catalog wither via attrition) since they're expensive to land.

Board games. As much as I can convince other folks to carve time out to play with me. Happy to give out recommendations, too many excellent ones to list here.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I am looking forward to my Dark Souls board game shipping next year.

So the remake/update of the Dennis Quaid film is actually good? I remembered thinking "It seemed like they pretty much covered the concept in the movie..."

Of course, the 12 monkeys series (first season is all I've seen) was also pretty great, who knew?

I kind of liked the oddball concept of the movie, so I decided to give the series a shot despite being skeptical. After all, how do you stretch the concept into an ongoing series?

Turns out the answer boils down to making Frank also a cop instead of a firefighter, and turning it into a police procedural with a bunch more cases that they collaborate on across time. Raimy (the gender-swapped John character) remains self-conscious of the ripples each timeline change they make, so while she tends to default to her original memories, when she thinks about it, she can remember differing events both ways, which is an interesting take on the time travel genre in its own right and something they start capitalizing on in the procedural format mid-season.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Ok, that sounds interesting, I'll have to check it out.

This is apparently one of their first light shows using drones. I expect them to get more impressive, but even this is really cool.




http://thedisneyblog.com/2016/11/16/dis ... ng-drones/

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Yeah, the tech rocks! Imagine tasking those drones to find a lost child... perform agricultural activities... disaster information gathering.

There's a good chance that each of those drones in the Disney experiment can be airborne for up to 30 min (easily 15 min) at a hardware cost of about $200 each. A decent laptop can control the entire swarm - GPU's today are controlling the pixels of a games 3D scene on a 4k display, a thousand or so drones in a swarm won't tax it a bit. It's just a vector algorithm applied to a locus x 1000.

The commercial drone industry is going to be huge. The infrastructure to support them will be similar to the IT infrastructure in requirements. It's an emerging opportunity and I see it really taking off (yeah, pun intended)

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In time, this too shall pass.

Here's info on the Disney experiment -

https://kikecalvoblog.com/2016/11/17/st ... ng-drones/



Intel hasn't put a price on the drone that I've been able to find, but here's a pic of 500 of them in formation



more info:
https://www.engadget.com/2016/11/06/int ... tar-drone/
https://newsroom.intel.com/newsroom/wp- ... -Sheet.pdf

And the whole "second pilot on hand as backup" claim? That's ... a mischaracterization. These drones are controlled by the pilot hitting a "start" and "stop" button, there's no manual activity other than that. What, 1 guy controlling 500 discrete AUS's? yeah, right.

http://newscentral.exsees.com/item/cb0f ... b217f5b278

Those displays literally burn through the $, the drones are capable of being back in the air in about an hour. The 4th is a one shot deal, but you're going to see these over auto sales lots, mall promotions, etc. A person could start a part time business just doing light shows. Startup costs can be recouped in less than a year.

I'll be happy to help them get up to speed, maintain their fleet, train their operators, etc.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Sounds like anybody else looking to replicate Disney's shows will be on the hook for royalties. Disney filed patents 2 years ago...

https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/27/disne ... ark-shows/

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

They're going to have a "prior art" from Aug 30, 2012 problem...

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In time, this too shall pass.

1. Taking care of my ailing spouse
2. The Good Place
3. Timeless
4. Big Bang Theory (last season! really??)
5. Conviction (apparently didnt even get to round out their 1st season)
6. Supergirl/Flash/Arrow/Legends -- honestly I'm about done with these. Flash in particular is painfully bad, Arrow is just boring. Only Supergirl and (though its bad, its at least midly entertaining, Legends) are holding any interest for me. I WILL say their 4 episode crossover week, while bad generally did have some great moments.

7. Agents of SHIELD
8. Finally playing Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag

And yet, they're all still better than recent DC movies.
/boggle

These shows have their moments, but the pointless angst started off old, and isn't getting any better.

Might I suggest Westworld?

I have a very long list of shows that still air which I'm currently watching (although some are on summer schedules - and few of them do I watch every week. I tend to collect a few and binge watch later.)

Elementary
Westworld
Supergirl
Flash
Marvel's Agents of SHIELD
Arrow
Designated Survivor
Blindspot
Frequency
Legends of Tomorrow
Pitch
The Big Bang Theory
The Blacklist
Grimm (final season premieres in January)
Star Wars Rebels
Orphan Black (summer schedule)
Dark Matter (summer schedule)
Killjoys (Summer schedule)
Outlander (Summer schedule)
Colony (not sure on schedule)
Daredevil (Netflix)
Jessica Jones (Netflix)
Luke Cage (Netflix)
Longmire (Netflix)
The Crown (Netflix)
Sherlock (BBC wacky weirdness)

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

The only things we watch anymore that are still going concerns are Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Supergirl, Bob's Burgers, Last Week Tonight, and Doctor Who and Sherlock (when they actually make 'em). Eager to see Class, though...heard good things.

We tried watching Arrow and The Flash when they had their big four-show crossover, but neither did anything for us.

Dropped out of Agents of SHIELD at the beginning of the second season and can't be bothered to care. Daredevil's first season was amazing and we still haven't made it through season 2, because it feels like so much of a slog. Jessica Jones was excellent, but it's not back yet, and I dunno how much the center's gonna hold minus Tennant's amazing Purple Man. Never got up the energy to start Luke Cage. I am excited for Iron Fist and The Defenders, so hopefully that'll pan out.

Pokémon Sun and Moon have eaten up most of our available free time, and I'm fiddling around with Dishonored again. I've got the most recent wave of Lego Dimensions packs, but haven't built anything but the 2016 Ghostbusters yet. Gotta get around to Fantastic Beasts and Gremlins at least.

Installing Alexa into every facet of our lives! I <3 Amazon's virtual assistant. I've currently got her (via an Echo and three strategically-placed Dots) able to control our thermostat and lighting, plus her normal, internal tasks (timers and information). Just installed a smart bulb hub to let her control dimming too.

Werk.

Wife and I are working on Game of Thrones. Into season 3.

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Holy shitsnacks!

ProTip for enjoying Westworld to its possible fullest extent: Avoid anyone talking or writing about Westworld, including and especially "fan theories." Hell, just "go dark" to anything Westworld other than the show.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

We love our Echo. We pick up a Dot for my daughter for Christmas and one for the kitchen. I only dislike that you can only link each to a single Prime account at a time. (For Reasons, my bf and I have separate Prime accounts.) The main Echo is therefore linked to his account, and the Dots will be linked to mine, most likely, so my daughter and I can access my larger music collection without just using Bluetooth.

And, since our thermostat died last weekend and our furnace tried to cook us as a result, we got a Nest thermostat. So far, it's kind of cool, although I'm still not sure if it's worth the premium over a normal smart thermostat. (But it is purty.) It learned our schedule pretty damn fast and is so far working out, though.

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When he's underwater does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead?