Penny Arcade

I always hoped my mid-life crisis would be relatively mild.

It's been eight years since I changed anything serious about my computer situation, outside of swapping in a 1080 a few years ago, and… I guess the CPU fan, when the "liquid cooler" somehow became a substantially less effective "solid cooler." Now the CPU looks as though it has fruited, cooling fins splayed in some avian strut, just at the moment I haul it out of here and decommission it. There's something sad about that, but that motherboard saw it's best days almost a decade ago. It's going now to the equivalent of a farm upstate where it can just run and run. Typically that's a euphemism for annihilation, but in this case I'm giving it to Brenna, who might not ever call upon this beast for anything but a subset of a subset of its power. This must be considered a blessed and eternal vacation for such a device, especially a one named NOCTILITH.

This is the wicked, wizened cybernetic admiral who takes up checkers late in life and, perhaps, finds greater pleasure there than in dominion.

I typically pace and fret about components, but this time I just tried to get the absolute best I could without feeling like a mark; I tried to fill each slot with Danger Potential like I was equipping an RPG character. Did I forget a monitor? Yes. Are monitors important? It depends on who you ask. But they're only truly necessary if you want to see what's happening on the computer. If all you want to do is venerate a device which has moved beyond the weakness of flesh, you're still good.

(CW)TB out.

Since Tycho is still out of town, I’ll be handling the Friday afternoon stream solo. I’ll be checking out the new “My Team” mode in F1 2020 from 2-4pt over on Twitch. I have not investigated this mode yet but from what I understand it’s a mode that allows you to create a brand new F1 team and race alongside the real teams like Mercedes and Ferrari. Just like Motorsport Manager, we will be designing a team, handling staff, upgrading our facilities and managing the cash flow. Unlike Motorsport Manager, when it’s time to hit the track I’ll be the one driving the car. We will be learning this mode together so come hang out and help me figure it out this afternoon. 

This new F1 2020 game has landed at the perfect time. This is my first real season as a fan of the sport and it’s been a bizarre one. This plague business has thrown a wrench into the season but it did manage to get started last weekend. I’m actually sitting here typing this news post as I watch the practice laps for this weekend's race. If you’re new to F1 like I am, I will tell you that the F1TV app has been a solid investment. It collects all the content from the entire weekend into one place and makes it easy to watch. The coolest feature of the app IMO is the ability during a live race to switch between drivers. You can watch the televised experience with commentators or you can click on any racer’s name and get a live video feed from their car as well as access to the radio chatter! It’s really cool functionality and I ended up going back and watching various sections of the race over and over again from different points of view. 

We’ll see if I’m able to absorb any of this F1 knowledge and put it into practice on the virtual track this afternoon. Come join me at 2pm PST and find out!

-Gabe out

In my ongoing efforts to understand what in the fuck streamers are talking about, I occasionally disappear down this or that rabbit hole regarding auto aim or crossplay or bots or some other thing in Fortnite. I tend to emerge from these rhetorical thickets dumber than I was when I climbed in. So I don't know exactly what Gabriel is experiencing in the Switch fork of Fortnite, and it might not matter very much, but there's a case to be made that purely as a user experience BR games should throw you a bone every now and then.

During the LAN parties I used to attend, our crew was so malevolent, so given to the worship of Ares, so thirsting for rich blood that our foes would occasionally become demoralized by our feasting. They would look down at the catoblepi slurping their steaming intestines and wonder to themselves if this state of affairs truly constituted a "leisure activity."

Thus did the Cat/String Complex (CSC) come into play. Cats get bored when they never get the string. We would throw the occasional game - or maybe we'd tell ourselves we did - to maintain the fraught rapport competitors dwell in. But for a BR, as a design principle, it's kind of powerful. I know that I have a pretty hard time getting into a new Battle Royale game, because it's pretty Darwinian as far as, like, "play" goes. I think about how freemium games hijack our cognitive processes, and it seems like if I had a couple experiences like that - ones that gave me a sense that Maybe I Had What It Took - I might come back once or twice. As it stands, I think I'll just get back into Astroneer.

My best friend Mike Krahulik will be taking over the 2pm PDT slot for his racing shenanigans today, while I drive and drive without stopping in the Real World until we get home. His weapon of choice is typically iRacing, but he's been talking up Assetto Corsa Competizione and Formula 1 Game too, so who knows where we'll end up. What you can expect is for us to continuously embroider our potent Gabir Motors Racing IP on every axis imaginable. Say hi on stream at 2!

(CW)TB out.

Fallout might be the perfect setting to grab if you wanted to make something that could truly cross over into the world where normal people lurk and throb.  The overarching framework - a war of annihilation with China, an attenuated cultural inheritance everyone understands at cross purposes, and a tangle of subterranean nests running cultural experiments - has real fucking meat.  I understand some of the scorpions are also quite large, so there’s really something for everybody here.  Plus, somebody already made one, and it was good.  So we know it’s possible.

I’ve seen a couple media announcements recently where it’s been, like… when are you gonna film that?  Or did you film it already, and we’re just finding out?  The people we know who operate in these contexts are in the mode now of just stacking ammunition for some future media war, a vibrating cadre of stymied Media Preppers laying up IP for some future age.  Frankly, Fallout works as a governing metaphor for this also.

I have a hard time picturing what it looks like, this new time.  I have gone out fully garbed and bemasked to pick up takeout, which I then wash in a river like a raccoon before eating it.  I try to excise horror beyond that which is genuinely required, sand it down, but there’s a lot of pretty normal stuff I consider completely beyond comprehension now and I think there’s going to be a lag between when things are Okay Actually and when I Feel Like Things Are Okay.  Personal fitness isn’t a priority or even an interest for me anymore generally, I’ve had a lot of weird intellectual lifts the last few years, but I think I need to emphasize health right now just so I can see the science fiction this generation creates.

(CW)TB out.

I’ll be doing a rare afternoon racing stream today. My friend Jerry (Tycho Brahe) is still out of town but I will not be spotterless. My son Gabe has agreed to join me on the stream today and I am hoping he has internalized the lessons from last night. 

If you’d like to join us, the Pit Crew will open over on Twitch at 4pm PST. 

-Gabe out