Contents
Reading
Playing
alChandler's Halls
Mouse PI
I probably wouldn't have bought Mouse PI if I had known how much jumping and parkour was involved along with the shooting. I generally get my game reviews from PC Gamer and they didn't mention it. Neither did the other reviews I looked at. I'm guessing that for most people that's not a problem. It is for me but having purchased the game I got about half way through, took a break, and came back to it a week or two ago. Some of the platform sequences took me over an hour to get through but I did it.
Now I'm in the endgame. I'm hoping I can finish it but if I can't I did my best.
September 11, 2026
Mouse PI Puzzle
I haven't played Mose PI in months so I had forgotten the mechanics of charging wires and had to figure it out anew. It took me a long time because I'm not good with puzzles, even simple ones, so having gotten it without going to YouTube made me happy.
September 4, 2026
Miscellaneous
I finished the Sprawl Trilogy by William Gibson. Mona Lisa Overdrive's plot is incredibly convoluted. But one of Gibson's influences was Raymond Chandler and his plots were convoluted too. In the meantime, the trilogy is worth reading for its writing. Just don't expect a lot of insights into technology
***
And now I'm reading Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It's a Dying Earth book, the genre, not the series by Jack Vance. For some reason I enjoy the books about the end times of Earth. I've read the Jack Vance books, Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun, Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars and the ancestor of them all The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson. Of them all, only Tchaikovsky's book is set in a period when the Sun is beginning its expansion to a red giant. Vance ignores it, Wolfe's Sun is red but that's due to a small black hole in its center, Clarke's book is set in the far future but the Sun is still middle aged and Hodgson's book was set in a time where the Sun was a cinder (the Sun was rather poorly understood in 1912). At least Cage of Souls has a plot I can follow.
***
And I decided I won't be buying Control's sequel. But I did decide to put Mouse P.I. for Hire back on Kosh after a five month break. I'm about half way through the game but that's not a guarantee that I'll finish.
September 3, 2026
Google Maps
This summer I started weaning myself from Google. I ditched Chrome for Firefox and replaced Google with DuckDuckGo (No AI). I've used AI myself from time to time but I don't want its insights in my searches or showing up in my browser. Today I pulled the plug on Google Maps.
Trump signed an executive order last week changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America. Google Maps dutifully changed the name of the lake on their app, explaining that they get their data from the U.S. Geographic Names Information System and that that. I gave them a pass on the Gulf of America shit, assuming it was a one off thing. But this was too much. Mike Elgan has a good write up on this.
The reason GNIS was such a great resource is that it was both open (the public could make suggestions, for example), and also curated by members of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN) and its Domestic Names Committee (DNC), a committee of knowledgable professionals who base their decisions on clear, non-partisan criteria. Committee members are career federal employees appointed by their respective federal agencies (Departments of Interior, Commerce, Agriculture, Defense, Homeland Security, the U.S. Postal Service, Government Publishing Office, and Library of Congress) to serve as that agency's representative, with appointments approved by the Secretary of the Interior for two-year terms.
In short, Google is pulling its data from a compromised source. So I replaced Google Maps with Mapquest. And now I'll be wrapping myself in the armor of self-righteousness for a day or so.
August 30, 2026
More Quake
Well then, I finished Quake and beat the game. I didn't remember much of it but I'm fairly certain I beat the final boss back in 1996. I don't remember the game being this hard, back in the 90s I would play games on Normal as a point of pride. This time it was a struggle getting through it playing on Easy.
But finish it I did. I'm moving on to a replay of Control. There's a sequel coming out and I want to see if I have any kind of chance at being able to play the thing. Here's a tip, my money is on fuck no, but you never know.
August 29, 2026
Newton
I spent some time in New York and once again Donna lobbied for Newton to be able to sleep with me at night. Being a light sleeper, none of my cats got that privilege, but Newton is the only one who'd come to the door howling. So when I got back I thought it over, Newton is 12 and will probably be my last cat. And so for the last three days the bedroom door has been left open and Newton now sleeps with me. He seems to love it and (so far) I can tolerate it. And how does Newton spend his time after I get up and shower?
August 23, 2026
Quake
August 6 was Quake's 30th anniversary. I tend to think of Quake as one of the games of my youth but I was 40 when it came out. I bought it on Steam several years ago and I started playing it a few days ago. I just finished the fight with Chthon, the first boss of the game but I didn't record it. So here's a video of someone else fighting him.
It took me far to long to figure out (or perhaps remember) that lobbing rockets at him wouldn't work. I'm certain that Zdenda1990 was a lot quicker then I was. But I can tell you that 70 year old Kevin is going through the levels (at least the first set) faster then 40 year old Kevin, for whatever that's worth.
I will be bitterly ashamed of myself if I can't finish this one.
August 10, 2026
There Will Come Soft Rains
That's from Ray Bradbury's book The Martian Chronicles, published in 1950. The book wasn't really a novel, it was a collection of Bradbury's Martian stories that were passed off as a novel. At a certain point a nuclear war breaks out on Earth. The story, There Come Soft Rains takes place on Earth in an automated house, the only building standing in a devastated city. The family is dead but the house keeps on truckin'.
On Bluesky, the author Diane Duane reposted that today's date was the date of Bradbury's story and that floored me. So I went to my phone and used the kindle app to download The Martian Chronicles but the date in the ebook was August 4, 2057. At some point some idiot over at Avon Books updated the book's timeline. Fortunately, I have a copy from 1972 and yes, according to Bradbury's original story, today is the date of the story.
For what it's worth, I recommend the book, but don't expect hard science fiction if you seek it out. I reread it a few years ago and it still holds up. And by the way, the title of the story is the title of a poem by Sara Teasdale. She wrote it in 1918 when the Germans were making a last ditch offensive and the
1918–1920 flu pandemic was on its way to killing 50 million people. And here's the poem.
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
August 4, 2026
Television!
Neuromancer premieres 1/22/27, but that's a ways away and there are other shows I'm psyched about while I'm waiting. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds started its fourth season last week. On August 16, 2026 Lanterns comes out on HBO Max. The last DCU production, Supergirl, bombed and I'm sure that James Gunn is hoping that Lanterns turns things around (or at least doesn't crash and burn). If the word Lanterns doesn't mean much to you Hal Jordan, The Green Lantern of sector 2184, is training John Stewart to be a Lantern and to learn how to use his power ring. Way back in 2011 Ryan Reynolds played Jordan in a movie. It wasn't great but it wasn't terrible either. It's nothing I'll seek out but if I come across it I'll watch it. And if you're unfamiliar with the character you'll get an idea of what that ring actually does
Rings of Power returns on 11/11/26 on Amazon Prime. I didn't really like the first two seasons but age has mellowed me and I'm looking forward to season three.
Blade Runner 2099 arrives on 11/25/26 on Prime and I'm guessing that Blade Runner's future will make Neuromancer's future look like an Andy Hardy movie (boy have I dated myself with that reference).
So my streaming drought has come to an end.
July 25, 2026
Neuromancer
I loved the Sprawl Trilogy, although I came to William Gibson relatively late. I'm looking forward to the show's take on the book, although at this point it's almost a period piece, 1984's vision of the future of computers. Gibson himself is quite satisfied with the production, the rest of us will have to wait until January.
July 25, 2026
Mentor
I'm waiting for somebody to bitch about how bad Emily Wilson's novelization of The Odyssey is.
July 19, 2026
Mick Jagger on Growing Old
What’s good about getting older, physically or metaphysically?
There’s nothing good about it.
Nothing? Wisdom?
I forgot all my wisdom. I might have had a couple of pearls drop, but I’ve already forgotten what they are. [Laughs] So no, it’s not particularly pleasant. You can’t do things as quickly as you want to. Physically you’ve got to be more careful. You know, when you’re playing football, they put you in goal a lot. I’m not very good at it!
I'm right there with Mick. I'm 12 years younger then he is and the only good thing about being 70 is that I didn't die at 69. The full interview is here (gift link). There's also Conan O'Brien's interview with him.
July 19, 2026
Fallout New Vegas
Yesterday Bethesda announced that they were working on a remaster of Fallout New Vegas, that makes me happy.
FNV came out in October 2010. My character was looking for the people who shot him and left him for dead. At a certain point I needed information and the guy who had the information wanted me to assassinate someone in Caesar's Legion before he'd gtell me what I needed to know. At that point I walked away from the game because I'd never kill someone who never did me any harm.
After many years I realized that FNV was a role playing came and while I had no beef against Caesar's Legion, my vengeful character didn't give a shit about killing themeither. That's why they're called role playing games. So I reinstalled it but never got too far in it, the game didn't work very well on a modern computer with Window 11 as its operating system. And that's why I'm looking forward to replaying a 16 year old rpg. Now, if someone started remaking the Ultima games I would recite the Nunc dimittis and call it a day.
July 18, 2026
This has been a Whenpigsfly production.
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Logo courtesy of Mrs. Silverman.