Notes from October 2025
2025-10-01
(in Katie Melua voice) There are 46 ALE-HOPS stores in Andalusia.
Cutthroat Island
Not seeing it viable to watch "Cutthroat Island" in any foreseeable future, I turned towards the game. I haven't played an isometric game in so long that I don't even wanna count. Once a popular format, I suppose it was cannibalised by actually 3D games. Funnily enough, the colours and the fights remind me mostly of "Blasphemous," which has a rather different gameplay. I got to level 3 (or 2?) and I like entering streets and houses; TMNT didn't have it, only scrolling right.
Per Wikipedia (actually, per a Next Generation critic, only I took it from Wiki), the game "suffers from a lack of anything that sets it apart from an action game three years ago."* But hey, 30 years later this is sort of irrelevant because I didn't play any of those last-three-years games, so if it's half-decent, then it should bring me some pirate-themed pleasure.
*"Cutthroat Island". Next Generation. No. 15. Imagine Media. March 1996. p. 96.
Also, once again I am grateful for the Save State functionality in Retroarch. Literally a lifesaver.
John Maus
John Maus released a new album, "Later Than You Think," and I listened to it and I liked it. And then I went and listened all of his albums. It was fun and I noticed two things.
One, he has a surprisingly constant style. I discovered him with "Screen Memories" which reminded me of The Sisters of Mercy's "Floodland," which is a rare similarity, so I always pay attention to those albums. Other album don't sound like it much but sound like "Screen Memories."
Two, I used to sing fragments of his songs, but I turned the lyrics on (Tidal has this option, they even synchronise) to watch them with one eye as the music played in the background. And it turned out that those lyrics are like that: rather simple and with a lot of repetition. On paper, it sounds bad or like dance music lyrics, but the way he sings them make them sound poetic, as if he was rotating phrases and showing us at different angles. They're also funny (e.g., "I hate Antichrist").
But I can't listen to all of his albums at once. They're too similar.
During the weekend I finally had time to listen to the whole "The Fragile" from Nine Inch Nails. While it's possible I listened to it on a streaming platform in the meantime, it felt like ages since a proper listening. The album was heavier than I remembered and at the same time had more guitar noodling, which was a pure gold to me, as I am recently more into these sounds. I listened to some NIN today and "The Fragile" might be their best release. Well, his release. Or at least my favourite.
Charlie Jade
Someone remastered "Charlie Jade" (with AI but it seems decent from the bits I checked) and published it on YouTube:
I watched this show when I was into South Africa as a movie setting. I must have found it on TVTropes. There are unorthodox plot solutions (from what I remember) because it's not a Usonian production and follows different rules. The story revolves around travelling between dimensions (mainly "our" Earth and Blade-Runner-like world, though).
AI remaster is not my preferred way, by no means, but this might be the most available way to see it at the moment. I might rewatch it at some point, and to that end I downloaded the whole thing just in case, but I think I can recommend it if you're somehow following my movie/series writings. It doesn't get up to speed up to 11 episode, though, which I remember because I remember telling it someone at work back then. But I don't remember who.
2025-10-02
Oikophobia sounds like an excellent name for a Doom map.
Ministry's "With Sympathy" is a funny release from the perspective of later albums.
A post from Hedder
X is where you find the people who think they run the Internet.
Bluesky is where you find the people who think they ought to run the Internet.
Mastodon is where you find the people who actually do run the Internet, and kind of wish they didn't.
(WIth apologies to Yes, Minister)
Note: The link inside the post was added by me.
2025-10-03
I love Ministry up to 1999. Later maybe dub albums only. But especially the 1980s are gold. The 1990s is the most classic definition of industrial I can think of.
Shadow Man soundtrack
As was said (and using the opportunity of Bandcamp Friday), I bought "Shadow Man Remastered" soundtrack. There are two versions: one with less tracks and more composed and the other one are tracks as used in a game, sometimes short. I decided to go with the first one.
Shadow Man Remastered (Official Soundtrack), by Tim Haywood
One day later...
I had a chance to start listening to in only now and to my surprise, there's over 3 hours of music. Wow. By the number of tracks, I gathered it would be something closer to CD length.
This makes price-to-amount-of-music ratio better.
Not by my choice, but we have an OpenAI subscription. I don't use it but I am involved with billing and invoicing. I was asked to provide the invoice and after spending 30 minutes trying to get one from Atlassian earlier (I failed but found it on email in the meantime), I decided to just ask ChatGPT. It's their product, after all. "Give me the link to your invoices." And it gave me a link. But the list was empty. :D Turns out there are two places and my invoice was on another one.
2025-10-04
"Wild Is the Wind" from 2022 is a South African movie about catching a serial killer. Or so I thought, based on the description on Netflix, but it's more nuanced. While there is the killer and there is the investigation, it's incompetent and focused on just pinning someone, and more than the first half is dedicated to showing the systemic issues in South Africa. And it's very good. Why have another dull procedural when you can tell a compelling story instead? Plus South African scenarios.
This is the reason why I watch more and more non-American movies: the creators there pay attention to different details and explore different narrative paths.
I think Australia and South Africa are my new favourite settings for a movie action. There's space there and you can get lost in wilderness. Don't I love desert.
2025-10-05
I just bought the only book from Edgar Allan Poe, "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket." It costed less than 4 euros. It was on my mind ever since I've watched "The Fall of House of Usher." Now, when I'm gonna read it, is another question. One day for sure.
2025-10-08
I wonder how this game plays out of R36S.
2025-10-09
To Live and Die in L.A.
"To Live And Die In L.A." is 1985 movie from William Friedkin. It follows a story of a U.S. Secret Service agent going fiercely after a criminal who killed his partner and friend. William L. Petersen ("Manhunter") plays the agent and it was interesting to see him playing a different type of character than Will Graham. Plus the youngest Willem Defoe ever who looks more like Mick Jagger. Plus Wang Chung's soundtrack. It's like 200% Eighties all over the place.
I found out about the movie because someone asked for movies where the main character dies. So, that part was not a surprise. Or that's what I thought. It comes so suddenly that it still surprised me. It's so unceremonial that wow, kind of "Fargo" levels here. But also kind of realistic because what the agent in question was doing was pushing his luck far too far.
The soundtrack reminds me of "Manhunter," but not because it's that similar but because it's deeply Eightish yet not overplayed. It captures the essence of the decade without big hits, something which was my main praise towards Michael Mann's movie's soundtrack. It's very coincidental that William L. Petersen played in both movies. One time could be luck, but twice? Did he has some sort of sixth sense?
But his character in "To Live And Die In L.A." was so unsympathetic: egoistic, recklessly obsessed, and an asshole on top of that (just how he treats his C.I.). They went so hard that even his rationale (avenging friend's death) is not really redeeming here.
2025-10-10
I guess I like Ministry a lot (up to 1999 and then dub remix albums) because it's been a couple of times that I did listen-to-all sessions. I'm less fond of their later, thrash metal phase, but the industrial stuff is based.
"Adolescence" (2025) is 4-episode mini series co-written by Stephen Graham, who also plays one of the roles. It's a story of a teenager suddenly arrested at dawn and brought to the station. Starts very brutal, then it gets complicated. It reminded me of "Wild Is The Wind" because the case itself seems to be more of a portal to showing a wider situation. And it's good. Plus each episode is shot from a single shot. Simply amazing even if distracting sometimes. Reminded me of theatre.
The libertarian experiment in Argentina ended up with the U.S. bailing them out. Just as expected. We get strong by working together, not by being completely detached from others (also known as strong individual freedom). Too bad that lesson will fly above the heads of people who really should pay their attention to it.
I've been extensively using personal notes on accounts here and I think it's one of the best things that Mastodon has that other platforms don't. I write there the date of following and the reason. Years later it's very useful. And sometimes funny because I write them the way to make myself laugh in the future. Treat yourself.
I will never verify my age on the Internet, unless it's a button that says, "Yes, I am an adult."
2025-10-12
Another road trip. This time only three days, but it feels as if we were continuing the August one.
2025-10-13
2025-10-13
"Aladdin" is 1993 platformer based on a Disney's animated movie released year earlier. The game's premiere coincided with VHS release. It was made for Sega Mega Drive but was later released for other platforms, e.g., PC. It is also a game that I played heavily in 1995 but never finished. Then I moved on to other titles. But now it's time for reckoning. Armed with a R36S clone, I took another swing at the game.
2025-10-14
I was in a planetarium and they asked us to set our phones silent, which I did, and I liked the idea, so I'm keeping it like that around the house at least. Generally, nobody calls me anyway. A little experiment.
I have found out about a number of movies by accidentally stumbling into their soundtracks on streaming platforms. A number of decent movies.
"PowerSlave Exhumed" the thread.
2025-10-15
The floors became too cold to walk on them barefoot in the evening. And barely walkable during the day.
2025-10-16
One of the things I learned from "Adolescence" was that the colour of the emoji heart is important. I generally use only the red one, so I didn't even think there could be meaning on top of the aesthetics.
I still refuse to learn which one's which. I only remembered that red is love and purple is horny and I don't need others.
2025-10-17
I think that big corporations were overhiring for years and now they're letting a lot of people go "because of AI doing their job," but in reality those people could have been let go regardless. As cruel as it sounds, the clou is this: AI gave a pretext to review their human resources, not really helped to replace anyone. But the illusion holds. And cutting salaries looks good in the Excel sheet.
And even if those layoffs are gonna hit the companies, which happened to many of them already (like for instance Klarna, out of the top of my head), it will not be immediate, so the next fiscal quarter is on green and in our current news cycle that's gonna look lit.
Running sudo sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288 for the first time feels like a new milestone in my Linux experience.
2025-10-18
Yesterday was the 10th anniversary when we left my country of origin and I completely missed that. I saw the date a couple of times, but it didn't hit me at all, only my wife wrote to me a Signal message some time later. So, in any case, it's been 10 years in the Warm Countries and I liked every second of it.
2025-10-19
I have so much notes to catch up with.
Peacemaker (Season 2)
Season 2 of "Peacemaker" came as a surprise to me because I thought it was a one-off that James Gunn wrote during covid lockdowns to give justice to the character of Peacemaker, who came up a bit one-dimensional in "The Suicide Squad." But no, we got more. I am generally moving away from superhero stuff, but Gunn's good at making it work. There's a lot of humanity and no simple "kill the villain to make the world peaceful again" solutions.
Right off the bat, we learn that the Quantum Unfolding Chamber is not only a giant wardrobe but can actually lead to other places, one of which turns out to be a parallel universe where not only his father is still alive, but also his brother Keith whom Peacemaker accidentally killed as a kid.
To me, it was the strength here because a lot of multiverse stories are too focused on the mechanics of multiverse (like in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness") and that defeats a pretty interesting starting point. No, in "Peacemaker" it was more about getting back a life that Chris Smith never had. There are some twists down the line of course, because nothing is too beautiful, but that pushes it even further from the gimmicky gimmick zone.
In the episode 6 we learn that the other Earth, The Best Dimension Ever, has the U.S., in fact, run by the literal Nazis, who won World War II there.
At first I thought it could be a bit not thought through because it says that if you lock all the non-white minorities, you're gonna have a better world, but then I thought that maybe they're used for some types of work that makes it possible. This aspect goes unexplored.
As always, Vigilante, being so over the top, brings a lot of humour. I couldn't stop thinking that his civilian look and demeanour was heavily inspired by Jeffrey Dahmer; whom I know only from the "Monster" series, but still.
There is also an alien, credited as Kyphotic Alien (but kyphotic basically means "hunched," so it's not own name), who pops up every now and then, and I was hoping that he'll play a larger role at some point, but no, he's an extra. Funny but an extra. Maybe in season 3.
Alien: Earth
After many decades, we finally have a show based on the Alien franchise and done by none the other than Noah Hawley, of "Legion's" and "Fargo's" fame. This alone made me wait for "Alien: Earth" with high hopes because Noah Hawley = quality. On top of a well-written plot and solid characters, there is also a visual side that flawlessly restores the 1980s look. The light, the grain, it's just all there.
Anyway, the show is based on "Alien" and maybe, big maybe on "Aliens." The rest is ignored, so gone is David bioengineering the Xenomorphs. But that's fine. I mean I had so much fun with multiple timelines of "Halloween," so what is one fork (though, I think "Alien vs Predator" was not related to the Alien timeline, so that's two forks).
Season 1 has underplayed Xenomorphs themselves and a lot of time is dedicated to a form of capitalism where everything belongs to big corporations and androids (synths here). This actually seems to be aligned with what Ridley Scott himself had planned for the third movie in a never-materialised trilogy started by "Prometheus" and "Alien: Covenant." Truth to be told, how many time you can have the xeno(s) chasing people and killing them. You either evolve or deteriorate into this slasher formula.
Timothy Olyphant plays an android who heavily resembles Roy Batty. There is also Alex Lawther, whom I haven't seen since "The End of the F**king World." It's good to see him back and playing a different character, I was a little afraid he'd be a one-trick pony or something. We can also briefly see Tayme Thapthimthong from "White Lotus 3" (briefly = he dies quickly). However, what would be a show without a strong lead. Kudos to Sydney Chandler for a 12-year-old in an adult body.
There might be less xenomorphs, but we have some new specimens. My favourite is highly-intelligent eye with 7 pupils and octopus-like tentacles that wires into a living being through their eye socket (after disposing of the original eye). The scenes with a sheep are the best. I can't wait what it will do in season 2.
It's funny that in "Aliens," they came up with a name Xenomorph, which w as meant to simply mean an alien, but due to misunderstanding it became the official name of that alien.
"Dos Tumbas" is a 3-episode limited series that we chose to watch because it's in Spanish and the action is set in Frigiliana where we dined once in a Polish restaurant. I was very afraid it would be a Harlan-Coben-like action-driven plot, but it feels closer to Tom Ripley, just more realistic. The ending actually brought "To Live and Die in L.A." to my mind. The main character was irritating as hell, but this could be a desired effect. I would give it 5-6/10.
I decided to see "In the Heart of the Sea" (2015) because it was about whalers and I'm reading "Moby Dick" and I thought that it would give me more context. And oh boy, wasn't I on the track. The framing device is Herman Melville coming to Nantucket to hear a story of Essex, a ship that was drawn by a giant whale, to get more inspiration for a book he's just writing... "Moby Dick." So I got more than I asked for. :D
"Sirāt," 2025, is a story of father and son travelling through Morocco in search of their daughter/sister. They team up with a group of people driving from one rave party to another in their trucks-turned-campers. Some unexpected plot developments ensue. Tidal suggested me the OST, which intrigued me because how this electronic music is supposed to fit driving in the desert? The ravers, some of them missing limbs, as well as the scenery reminded me of Werner Herzog. Also, "The Sorcerer."
The father is played by Sergi López from "Map of the Sounds of Tokyo," but the both movies are 16 years apart, so I recognised him primarily by his voice.
2025-10-20
O-Bi, O-ba
"O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization" is Piotr Szulkin's sci-fi movie from 1985. Facebook post sent to me by my wife (as a screenshot) advertised it as a Polish "Blade Runner," but I wouldn't say so. It's closer to that later stages of 1984's "Threads." The story is bleak and depressing: the remnants of the mankind try to survive in a bunker in post-apocalyptic world. The scenarios are amazing, they must have shot it in real bunkers, and due to that, it aged very well. Highly recommended.
And one more word about the scenarios: this couldn't be the intention, and it's yet another example of how the movie aged well, but those empty and a bit dilapidated rooms resemble liminal spaces a lot. Almost as if it was its own hyperreality. So, if you're into these aesthetics, then this movie might deliver hard. Piotr Szulkin was a way bigger visionary than I thought.
2025-10-21
I've been going through Metallica's discography in the car recently, when driving to work, and as a kid I knew a lot of their singles and some songs that you were supposed to know, but I only listened to a handful of their albums in full. And now it seems a bit too late, and most of them are underwhelming; I'm looking for a spark and it's not there. But today I listened to "Ride the Lightning" and that thing is fire. I'm adding it to my wishlist. BTW, the vocal is so young.
2025-10-22
So, it looks like @SaraSoueidan created an account here merely a day after me, but I found it out almost 3 years later.
I have just successfully used xargs for the first time in my life. Working with command line is so satisfying for such a word-centred person such as myself. I am planning to ditch Postman in favour of cURL with commands organised in files.
2025-10-23
There is not much I can say about season 2 of "Rick and Morty" because it simply continues as it went, actually literally: the show starts in the circumstances we left our characters. The writing is flawless and the ideas are crazy and once more I can see that the animation is like a free form where you can tell the weirdest story ever with much bigger plausibility. I'm glad I started watching so late, so I can have so much to watch in a short time (and there is also anime version and others).
Why it's worth to surf through Wikipedia's links like there's no tomorrow:
Video game composer Frank Klepacki cited "Psalm 69" album as a primary influence in creating the soundtrack for the 1995 video game "Command & Conquer."
I would never think of listening to "Command & Conquer's" soundtrack.
From the combination of a shape rotator and a wordcel, a word rotator was conceived, a person that can imagine a word "SHAPE" or "CUBE," or any other word for that matter, and then rotate many of them in their head.
Having collections on Tidal (Spotify earlier) is messy because I end up with a big bag of everything. If I could only label each item and the use them for filtering, but no. It's probably because most users just create playlists for everything. So, I learned to create playlists for artists I like in bigger amounts and I order selected album by their release time. Works like charm. I also have sets for smaller selections (like trilogies, specific collaborations between two artists, etc.).
I had a large list with everything for Ministry on Spoti and on Tidal I decided to split it into main (studio albums) and remixes. It's better that way. I also skip the trash-metal albums. Not my cup of coffee. But their industrial works are exquisite and superb. I did not expect to be so devoured by them.
A post from Thomas
By the by Ada Lovelace was the first to say AI is bullshit
However, the possibility of actually constructing a conscious machine was probably first discussed by Ada Lovelace, in a set of notes written in 1842 about the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage, a precursor (never built) to modern electronic computers. Lovelace was essentially dismissive of the idea that a machine such as the Analytical Engine could think in a humanlike way. She wrote:
It is desirable to guard against the possibility of exaggerated ideas that might arise as to the powers of the Analytical Engine. ... The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths. Its province is to assist us in making available what we are already acquainted with.
2025-10-24
In 2018 Gorillaz released album "The Now Now" and I found it on Spotify, but the third track, "Hollywood (feat. Snoop Dogg & Jamie Principle)," was not available; due to licencing, would be me guess. And I said to myself that I would never listen to it until I can listen to the whole thing. I just found out that it's complete on Tidal. And I am listening to it now. I have waited 7 years for that moment.
I like instrumental hip-hop.
I like this improving smoothness and easiness around the word as I write more and more. When you get better and you can notice you're getting better, so you can get better even more. It probably applies to all the things we make and do.
2025-10-25
That my pendrive's name is SOHN DISTRICT tells me when I got it: it was the first half of 2021, when I was playing "Hellpoint," of which one of the levels was named Sohn District. The game was my first Souls-like and I didn't know how to play it and as a part of my growing pains, I got stuck in the aforementioned district. Bodies laying everywhere, general disarray, I must have been there for a month [sic!]. Then I moved on and was more skilled in other areas. But Sohn District stayed with me.
"Night Train to Lisbon" (2013) was sold to me as not an ambitious movie, but it soon turned out to be not true. A bit slow and layered, it turned out to be an interesting exploration of the history of Portugal in the 1970s. I couldn't get over everyone talking English, which seemed to be mainly the convention towards the viewers. Jeremy Irons' depiction of absent-minded professor is 10/10, to the smallest detail. A story of obsession but not destructive.
I liked the plot structure which reminded me of "Sarah & Duck": the main character saves a woman from suicide and she disappears soon after but leaves her coat where he find a book, which he starts reading and gets obsessed with, and in the book there is a train ticket to Lisbon where meets the sister of the book author, and that starts the main plot.
Posting about video games and movies and shows and music and books helps me maintain calm and composure in the absolute madness that the modern world is.
2025-10-26
I updated Doom Retro and blood splatters look different from what I remembered. Better. But that might be my memory only. However, after a couple of sessions with "PowerSlave Exhumed," the controls don't feel that smooth. But then again, gyroaiming.
A Cure for Wellness
I had a taste for "A Cure For Wellness" for a while now, though when I finally got to it, I couldn't remember why. I didn't even remember the genre. Which usually gives a movie the edge. It starts like "The Talented Mr. Ripley," with the main character being sent to Europe to bring someone back to NY, and the beginning as well as the middle part are nice, but the end turns out to be a quite typical and predictable horror. C'mon, we can do better. But visually it's really good.
One notable thing is when the main character is looking for the man he came to bring beack, and he goes to steam bath rooms which heavily resemble Poolrooms. At one point he enters a room and turns around to notice that the door he came through is gone. And the whole section of the spa is mazy. I doubt that this was the intent, but I appreciate it regardless.
One day later...
The more I think of it, the more disappointed I am. There was potential here: they had budget, the photography was spot on (all those frame in various mirrors, including an eye of a stuffed deer's head), there were some neat plot solutions (like giving the main character a broken leg, which slows him down and makes him less capable), there was gallery of characters, and the location was interesting. And then it just fell flat on its face.
I recorded 29 minutes of playing Doom and I realised only afterwards that I had the filter set to nearest_linear instead of nearest, which is my usual setting, but I installed the latest Doom Retro and Brad insists on nearest_linear to be more faithful to the 1990s. I persuaded him once, but he changed his mind in the meantime. So I always set it back do the nearets, but forgot today. Oh well.
I've been rusty with recording and I think I need to do this more, but for what it's worth:
After a year, I'm back with playing through 1994's "Cringe!" All the weirdness of the era is there.
Maybe I'll record the remaining 2 levels sooner.
2025-10-28
Yesterday our CEO gave us a challenge of finding a name for something. Three names, actually. For three things, I mean. And it was going quite well when one of our colleagues came with ChatGPT-generated stuff. And suddenly, I lost my interest in any further participation. I think the colleague meant well, but still, I went silent at once.
I caught up with GZDoom drama a bit and I have to say I had no idea there was so much drama over the years in the first place. That being said, it seems like a good riddance. I am now waiting for UZDoom's first executable and we'll see. The very first decision was to ditch texture filtering by default and that acts as a secret test of character and shows us that the project runners are serious people.
My favourite Doom port, though, is Doom Retro.
If you haven't tried it out yet, I can only recommend it. It's curated (and opinionated) experience with a tonne of quality-of-life small touches, mostly visual (pixelisation, the liquids, shadows, randomly mirrored items), but the haptics handling is also superb. Tech-wise, it's Boom-compatible, so most of the levels just work. Only specific ZDoom stuff falls off. Config can be tricky as it's text-based.
2025-10-29
It's raining dogs and cats and I forgot to take the hammock down.
2025-10-30
Let's go with Ubuntu 25.10.
NARRATOR: Will he be crying soon?
So,
- I lost wifi during the installation, but luckily after all the packages were downloaded.
- Then the machine didn't want to restart, so after a while I killed it off with the power button and restarted with a cold dread, but it restarted just fine.
This means that I'm successfully on 25.10. 🙌
I went through the main path of Gorillaz's discography (without remix compilations) and I ended this trip with the conclusion that it will be one of those bands where I like certain albums because I listened to them as a young man and when they were released. The remix albums is a bit different story because at least with "Laika Come Home" it's like revisiting something known yet different. I might look into buying "Demon Days," though.
2025-10-31
Easy does it. Hard doesn't do it.
I never played slots for money. One time, when we were at a gas station, we tried to play with my father with spare money we had, on a physical machine, but it only took our money (not much) and refused to work. And that was that.
I played a lot of slots for free, though. I like those Egyptian-themed. I was even considering making a ranking, vibe-wise. But that's a rather low-priority project.
My, oh my, "Command & Conquer's" soundtracks are fire and pure gold at the same time. It's like all the best of the instrumental 1990s electronics.
I did not realise the true horror, as well as hilarity, of 42 being the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything until the generative AI gibberish, also known as hallucinations, didn't kick in with full vengeance.
I will never be radicalised. Never! DID YOU HEAR? I WILL NEVER EVER BE RADICALISED !!!