With the release of Five Fingers: Port of Deceipt, Privateer Press paints an interesting picture of an “evil city” for their campaign setting, the Iron Kingdoms. From other sourcebooks, we fans of the setting knew Five Fingers as a pirate haven on the border of Ord and Cygnar, a city with a dark and lawless reputation. Port of Deceit simultaneously confirms and dispels these notions.
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The first of the “answer” arcs is supposedly retelling the Watanagashi story from a significantly-different perspective. We originally saw this story from the perspective of Keiichi in episodes 5-8. This time, it is from the perspective of Shion Sonozaki, who is in a far better position to know what’s going on. The story again resets to before Keiichi arrives in Hinamizawa, this time approximately one year before.
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Every adventuring Wizard and Sorcerer worth his salt has a Fireball or Lightning Bolt and a couple Magic Missiles spell up his sleeve in case a fight breaks out, and spells like Bull’s Strength and Cure Serious Wounds have an obvious appeal when out dungeoncrawling or dragon-slaying. This post isn’t about those no-brainers, but rather the more subtle, multi-use spells you may have been forgetting.
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Episodes 14 and 15 comprise a short “time wasting” arc that takes the focus away from Keiichi and his classmates, starting this time before the construction site murder in Hinamizawa and focusing on a young investigator from the PSIA investigating the abduction of a young boy. The change of pace here is palpable. From the previous 13 episodes, we have no reason to think that this protagonist is about to be slaughtered by a vengeful mountain spirit or murderous townsfolk, which provides a big shift in the tone of the story. This shift itself is a bit unsettling in the context of what came before it, but the “time wasting chapter” is more of a police drama than a creepy thriller.
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The Efficient Networks Speedstream 5681 is a modem/router combo from the folks at Siemens. There are a fair number of tricks that can be done with one, and there are several interesting firmware revisions in circulation.
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The 2wire Home Portal 1000 HW and 2wire Home Portal 1000 SW are ADSL modems with integrated NAT routing and WiFi, and perform as a PPPoE client for their local area networks. For connections that do not use the PPPoE protocol, some configuration is required.
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Basic premise here is that Samashirou Kamiyama is a regular high school boy who just happens to be the son of God. He isn’t sent to Earth to save everybody’s souls, but rather to simply learn about normal life so he can grow up to be a great God himself.
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I saw some excited previews, rave reviews, and some detractors of this title, so I gave it a shot. I think I can see why folks liked it: good production quality, sci-fi premise, lots of smart characters, lots of gunplay and explosions, and so forth.
Alas, it also has twelve assassin androids wearing maid costumes parachuting into a prison and shooting up the place. Assassin androids in maid costumes? You’re kidding, right? By the time they showed up on the screen I was already a bit leery of the premise (crack government agent tracking down arch-criminal), but come on! What is this semi-retarded fetish doing in my sci-fi action crime drama? No, it’s not like getting chocolate in my peanut butter.
Add in the lack of a likable main character, and this looks like a high-budget recipe for disaster. I’ll be keeping an eye on some other folks’ reviews of future episodes in case it takes a turn for the better, but right now I think I’m stopping at episode 1.
Today saw the end of Windows 98, Window 98SE, and Windows ME support from Microsoft (link). There will be no more security updates for these products, and paid support will no longer be available for them. I personally have fond memories of Windows 98 and 98SE, as these were the last times that a major Microsoft OS revision has left the majority of network-related user interactions alone. From the perspective of an ISP technical support worker, the transitions from Windows 95 to 98 to 98SE were nearly pain-free, requiring very little retraining; if you could walk somebody through their dial-up connectoid in one, you could handle any of the others with minimal variation. A little part of me will miss these old warships.
As for the Millenium Edition? Well, the less said, the better.
Two years ago I picked up a fan-translated comic called NHK ni Youkoso. I liked it enough that I ended up volunteering my skills, poor as they are, at editing it for the translator. Since then, that person has stopped translating comics, and the title has been sporadically released in English to the tune of some 24 issues. Now it has been transformed into a made-for-television animation by Studio Gonzo, and is being met with some rather positive reviews.
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