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alChandler's Halls
Spreading joy since 1999
This Is Still My Favorite Nerd Thing Ever
April 22, 2025
Andor: Revolution Is not a Dinner Party
That's a quote from Mao Zedong and it sums up my reasons for not watching Andor. Andor is probably the best Star Wars show ever made and I concede that by not watching it I'm missing something special. Last night I tried picking up on episode 7 and only got half an hour in before I turned it off and went back to reading Tamsin on my Kindle.
The rebels do terrible things in their fight against the Empire, perhaps not as bad as what the Empire does to hold power but it's not a question of the rebellion's ethics, they just don't have the Empire's reach. And I concede that the goals of the rebels are laudable; the Empire is run sort of like the Trump administration, only they're competent. But I simply can't watch it and I know it's my loss.
This isn't the first time this happened, In season 2 of Star Trek Voyager a transporter accident merged Lieutenant Tuvok and Neelix into one being who called himself Tuvix. After a lot of angst, Captain Janeway decided to kill Tuvix by having the transporter sperate him back into Tuvok and Nelix again. After that episode I stopped watching the show, although I did watch the series finale.
Anyway, Andor is well worth your time.
April 22, 2025
To Reign in Hell
Paradise Lost starts out with Satan and his angels already in Hell. But later on in the poem, Milton tells us how they got there. To Reign in Hell is Steven Brust's riff on Milton's war in Heaven, and a very good riff it is. I was on the fence about this book but I finished it in a day, something that almost never happens to me.
Milton's portrayal of Satan was so good some folks felt that he was the most noble character in the poem. I'm not a Milton scholar but I'm pretty certain that wasn't his intention. But in Brust's book, Satan is the hero. And Beelzebub and Lilith are pretty heroic too. Yahweh, not so much I'm afraid. But Yahweh doesn't come off too great in Paradise Lost either. That wasn't Milton's intention either.
And on that note I'm shutting up, there's always a chance that someone might want to read the book you know.
April 14, 2025
AI Stuff
The other day Ken posted some AI pictures of the Pulp Fiction characters as babies, I rather liked Honey Bunny. It started me thinking about my own mixed feelings about AI.
I used to have an AI program called dream. I nearly wrote an AI art program but I feel that if you're not sentient then you're not creating art of any kind. Anyway, I typed in the prompt, a cat as captain of a ship and told it to use this picture of Newton as a starting point.
I expected something like Newton on the bridge of a British man o' war, what I got surprised me.
I wasn't expecting that but I liked it and I occasionally use it as my phone's wallpaper. I suppose I could have paid somebody to make me wallpaper but Dream's wallpaper was free (not exactly, I paid a small monthly fee to Wombo, the folks that made Dream). And there's the rub, AI is taking jobs away from people, and that means I'm a participant in that.
Open AI recently released a Studio Ghibli art generator.
Hayao Miyazaki is livid and I expect they'll be lawsuits. Until the question is resolved one way or another, have fun with it. But if you're calling it art I think you're wrong. It's a lot like Musk claiming to be a great Path of Exile 2 player while paying people to level his character. As for me, I expect Studio Ghibli to take OpenAI to court. I don't know if you can prevent somebody from copying an art style but I guess we'll find out.
I don't think we'll have a self aware AI in my lifetime but it will probably happen in this century, barring societal collapse. When that day comes then we can talk about AI art.
April 12, 2025
Happy Anniversary Buddy
The little bugger moved in on April 9, 2014. He was, and still would be if I gave him half a chance, a destructive bastard but I wouldn't have him any other way. In other words, he's a good cat.
April 9, 2025
Superman
Ken told me about the film clip and I'm glad he did, I'm also very happy that Krypto is presented as a dog and not an animal with a super brain. Like all dogs, he does his best but sometimes he gets it wrong.
I never really enjoyed the movie experience but I made exceptions for some of the Star Trek movies, the LotR movies and some of the Marvel movies. I don't know if I'll make an exception for Superman: Legacy but I'm not ruling it out.
April 4, 2025
Fallout
Unintended consequences are a bitch, ain't they? I'm not talking about Trump here, I'm certain he's way beyond caring, or even understanding the stock market's reaction to his tariffs. I'm talking about the folks who voted for him, assuming their portfolios would increase in value. I'm talking about upper middle class folks and people in the 1 to 10 million range. Richer then me but they still have to plan for retirement.
They voted for Trump assuming that they'd be making a lot of money during the next four years and instead it's a bloodbath for their investments.
And hell, I don't have a lot of investments and I'm not happy about things either. And while there are some people who think that Trump's tariffs are part of some convoluted master plan, my own personal theory is he's just a stupid egocentric asshole who shoots from the hip and fuck the consequences. Elon Musk may suffer some of those consequences, the EU is going to fine Musk because X ignored the EU's regulations on disinformation and illicit content. They were a little nervous about dropping heavy penalties on Musk but after yesterday they're in full fuck it mode and there's talk that the fine will be a billion +.
Republicans in the House may also be part of those consequences. Even if Trump does a 180° by the end of the month, the economy will probably be bad for the 2026 election cycle and that means Democrats have a good chance at retaking the House next year. My own representative, Jeff Van Drew, changed party from Democrat to Republican during Trump's first term and I'm sure he's switch back if he thought it would get him reelected.
Right now Republicans are sticking by their guy and commentators are comparing the meltdown to the one in 2020. But who knows what will happen if the sell off reaches Great Recession numbers?
April 4, 2025
Yasuke
That's Yasuke in his new armor. He got it by raiding a castle and raiding a castle is kind of strange. The castle was owned by one of the guys on my assassination list, so it was cool for Yasuke to just go in there and start lopping heads. But if someone rings the alarm bell then you're the bad guy. So, as in other games in the series, if you come across and alarm bell you need to disable it.
When I finished Act One I was level 12 and the next plot area was level 18, so I've been grinding a bit. I was level 15 before I entered Nijo Place, after Yasuke's blood bath I turned level 16 so it might be time to get back to the plotline. I'm 40 hours into the game and I still haven't begun Act Two; it looks like I'll be in Japan for some time.
April 1, 2025
A Take Charge Kind of Guy
There's stuff that I do twice a year, get my car's oil changed, clean the coffee maker, those kind of things; but the one I really hate is changing the filter in the furnace. The furnace is located in the laundry closet and at the best of times it's a squeeze to get in there. And unfortunately one of my knees is reminding me that it's still bad (the knees do that at rare intervals).
Never the fucking less, instead of waiting a week or two I dragged my aging body into the laundry closet and replaced the damned filter. Then I gave Newt a tube of Churu as a reward for putting up with me. After that, the rest of April's tasks are a breeze.
April 1, 2025
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby was Diane McCaughan's favorite book. She got me to read it and while it's not my favorite book, it is pretty damned good and I reread it from time to time. This exchange at Gatsby's funeral between Nick Carraway and Owl-eyes, who was drunk at one of Gatsby's parties, always gets to me:
We straggled down quickly through the rain to the cars. Owl-eyes spoke to me by the gate.
"I couldn't get to the house," he remarked.
"Neither could anybody else."
"Go on!" He started. "Why, my God! they used to go there by the hundreds."
He took off his glasses and wiped them again outside and in.
"The poor son-of-a-bitch," he said.
Nick, Owl-eyes and Gatsby's father were the only people who showed up.
March 28, 2025
Raining Cats and Dogs
Assassins Creed Shadows has very good rain, the best I've seen in awhile. But they don't have very good cats and dogs, here's a video of Yasuke interacting with a friendly cat. It looks likke a 10th gneration Aibo.
It is possible to make a game with a natural looking cat, Stray comes to mind. I had issues with that game but the cat was very well done.
I know that pets weren't high on the dev's list of priorities, they're just window dressing. But if you're not going to do it well, why bother? Having gotten that kvetch out of the way, may I say that Assassins Creed Shadows is very, very good. By the way, I wonder if people are into horses like the horses in the game?
Update: According to this Reddit thread the horses aren't that great either.
March 27, 2025
Assassins Creed Shadows
Say what you want about the Assassins Creed series, their photo mode is nice.
March 27, 2025
The Dragon of Brodda's Hill
I used to have a thing on this page called Writing of Mine That doesn't Suck. The stuff there did suck, most of it, but I had an affection for The Dragon of Brodda's Hill and I was sad when I thought Carnifax and Sir Sardok were gone for good. So I'm glad I was able to pull the story from the Internet Archive and post it here again. And with that the reconstruction of alChandler's Hall is at an end, at least for the near future. I may repost one or two things later but for the moment I'm done.
March 20, 2025
Problem Solving
I'm not good at solving puzzles, never have been, keep that in mind. When I moved this page to Bluehost, Chrome had no problem but Firefox kept flagging it as insecure. It's taken me a month but I think I solved the problem. Of course, most people didn't notice a thing. Chrome's has a 66.3% market share, followed by Safari at 17.99%, Edge at 5.33%, Firefox at 2.62%, Samsung Internet at 2.3%, and Opera at 2.09%. I suspect I'm the only one using Firefox as my web browser in my small circle of friends (I switch between Chrome and Firefox every so often).
Still, figuring out the problem (I fucking hope it's figured out) made me very happy.
March 19, 2025
Peggy Moon
The Legend of Peggy Moon is back up. I was going to use a picture from one of the Fallout games to show Peggy in her power armor, but after search I found a picture of Neocron's power armor that wasn't too bad. Neocron had a very small team, it did its best and we did have fun in that world back in the day.
March 19, 2025
I'm an Idiot
Earlier this year I had a massive panic attack and ended up losing a lot of stuff from this page. It took me until today to hit the Internet Archive and do a search for alChandler's Halls. So then, some older stuff will be showing up here from time to time. I should have hit the Archive earlier but to be honest I didn't think of it until today.
I got back from my trip to New York yesterday and that means that this week will be a lump week, so don't expect to see anything new in the contents until next week at the earliest.
March 18, 2025
Careless People
Careless People is a book written by Sarah Wynn-Williams. She used to be Facebook's global public policy director and her book about her time in the company has just been released. The book's publisher didn't do the usual pre-publication publicity shtick probably because the expected that Meta would try to prevent the book from ever being released. But it is out and Meta can't do anything about that. However they got an arbiter to ban Wynn-Williams from promoting the book on the grounds that the book violates the severance agreement she signed when Facebook shitcanned her.
But the book has been released into the wild and there's nothing Meta can do about that. And I might not have heard about it except for an article in the Times about Meta's attempt to suppress it; that's normally how these things go. And that's why Careless People is next on my reading list.
March 18, 2025
Doom (2016)
Nine years ago I bought the Doom remake. I managed to make it to Hell and there I was foiled by a boss. He had an attack that required me to hit the control key to crouch and then hit the space bar to jump and I just couldn't get the timing right. Since then I'd occasionally put the game back on my system but I never made it to Hell again. But this year, I made it to Hell once more and I'm going to try to make it to that boss again and see if I can get past him. I'm not sure that I'll make it but I'm going to give it my best shot. And unlike 2016, I'll have edibles by my side to calm me down.
By the way, The original Doom came out in 1993 and if you're interested, here's a link to a pdf of the July, 1993 issue of Computer Gaming World. That issue had a preview of Doom. It really was a remarkable game for its time.
March 13, 2025
This has been a Whenpigsfly production.
Any questions or comments can be directed to kaliban13@comcast.net.
Logo courtesy of Mrs. Silverman.