It feels like every week of 2020 so far has brought some sort of herald of doom. First week was potential War with Iran breaking out. Then there was the Taal Volcano erupting. And this past week we had the Corona virus outbreak originating in China. At least the Volcano eruption doesn't map directly to a horseman of the apocalypse, so that's something. What are we in for this week??
Roy Tang is a:
- programmer, engineer, scientist, critic, gamer, dreamer, and kid-at-heart
- Frustrated writer and sketch artist
- Magic player on weekends
- Sometimes I stream video games.
- Software developer since 2003. If you'd like to work with me, take a look at my resume.
roytang.net is a personal site, an E/N site, and kind of a commonplace book; I post about a random assortment of topics that interest me including software development, Magic the Gathering, pop culture, gaming, and tech life. This site is perpetually under renovation.
Recent Activity
26 Jan 2020
25 Jan 2020
shared via pocket:
Today, the Trident Era Ends
Streaming some casual Theros Sealed: https://www.twitch.tv/twitchyroy #twitch #gaming #mtg Stream lasted 2+ hours, but I finally managed to 7-2 a sealed, even with a crappy pool!
Youtube mirror: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU4a553Jo2o&feature=youtu.be Highlight: NIGHTMARE HORSE!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU4a553Jo2o&feature=youtu.be
24 Jan 2020
Wow, Duelyst is shutting down: https://duelyst.com/news/farewell-duelyst. I played a few hundred hours of this (Review: https://roytang.net/2017/02/review-duelyst/). Pretty good game, but there's a big learning curve and each game can take some time. Hope it can come back in some form in the future.
@Westraid happy lunar new year!
Trying out some SC2 Coop Brutation https://www.twitch.tv/twitchyroy
Youtube mirror:
Repost from amadcartoonist:
Casually streaming Magic Arena with Standard Bogles https://www.twitch.tv/twitchyroy
It's hard to be so responsible
In a bid to reduce the number of webapps actually running on my server (for resource consumption reasons), I decided to migrate a small Flask app I had and merge into this larger Django app where I have a lot of my personal data tracking stuff. The Flask app was small enough, mostly containing backend support for this blog (like search and comment submissions) and some Twitter things. The migration was straightforward, taking around half a day, most of that was wrangling with Twitter API rate limits.
23 Jan 2020
Reply to mlq3's tweet:
@mlq3 @enjoyGLOBE ah also, there are plans that are unli data, but are more expensive for the same speed (I opted to get the cheaper one and live with the cap.)
Reply to mlq3's tweet:
@mlq3 @enjoyGLOBE no, there's a mobile app, I bought the data boost through there when I realized I had ran out. When I hit the limit I initially thought it was a network problem, only realized I had hit the limit by checking the app @mlq3 @enjoyGLOBE
Reply to mlq3's tweet:
@mlq3 @enjoyGLOBE There is a bandwidth cap depending on your plan (mine is 600gb at P999 i think), speeds get throttled if you go past. There's also options to buy small data boosts, I used one the one time I exceeded the limit
22 Jan 2020
WikiHow's bizaare illustrations are mostly made by freelancers in the Philippines: https://onezero.medium.com/we-finally-figured-out-who-makes-wikihows-bizarre-art-6c5d69b71347?gi=6aeaef0ba2e6
I just went ahead and voted for @PVDDR that seems like a safe bet. Quoted MagicEsports's tweet:
Introducing Find Your Champion! Get to know our 16 Worlds competitors, #FindYourChampion, watch them win #MTGWorlds, and get some FREE rewards on MTG Arena.
Sign up now at: https://magic.gg/events/magic-world-championship-xxvi
21 Jan 2020
In the Philippines we have both people complaining that scientists didnt warn early enough about the volcano erupting and also people saying we shouldn't listen to scientists’ “opinion” because they're “not god”. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
19 Jan 2020
2020 Movie no. 15: Parasite - “Really good, but IDK how to begin to describe it. Worth overcoming the 1 inch subtitle barrier for.” https://roytang.net/lists/2020/movies/
Repost from JimMFelton:
Would watch a heist movie where it’s just three hours of planning followed by this
The big news here in the country over the past week was of course the big Taal Volcano eruption south of Metro Manila. Our house is far north enough of Metro Manila that we didn't really get any ashfall over here, although when I went out on a walk the day after the big eruption, the air felt thick, like on morning New Year's Day after all the fireworks. We do have friends and family who are affected and closer to the volcano though, so here's hoping things get better for them and everyone else, especially those that had to be evacuated.
18 Jan 2020
Streaming Theros Sealed on MTG Arena again: https://www.twitch.tv/twitchyroy
Repost from alicetragedy:
RT if you’ve been making web things so long you remember the days that Firefox didn’t exist 😁😂🙈 Quoted bphogan's tweet:
RT if you’ve been making web things so long you remember the days when you had to download Firebug so you could have a web console.
Wow. What a game changer that was.
I live one jeepney ride away from the university. Going there to take a walk is a privilege I should be partaking of more often.
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Good morning!
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Repost from mjseidlinger:
I wrote about how as a kid I hid behind McDonald's instead of embracing my Filipino heritage for @GENmag.
S/o to @NifMuhammad for letting me write about something that I have been afraid of talking about for a LONG time.
17 Jan 2020
Gonna stream some Theros Sealed, come watch me be terrible, if you like https://www.twitch.tv/twitchyroy
Youtube mirror:
So the back half of the CW Arrowverse's epic Crisis on Infinite Earth's crossover finally aired this week, and I promised more words about the Arrowverse and the crossover last month, so here we are. Spoilers abound!
On 15 Jan 2020 at 5:05am I wrote: #CrisisOnInfiniteEarths spoiler free review: low budget, pacing and writing issues, but idc because all the dc comics fan service kept making me smile
First the bad: as noted above, writing and pacing and budget issues plague the crossover, but this is typical of the Arrowverse as a whole.
16 Jan 2020
I found this app that generates haikus based on your location: https://satellitestud.io/osm-haiku/app/
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@Westraid happy birthday! enjoy your spicy noodles!
Only managed a 5-3 for my first Theros Sealed =/. Maybe I'll stream one tomorrow!
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@rovietoosin malapit ka na ba maging CEO
i set up my pc for streaming and recorded did a test stream with a Slay the Spire run with the new Watcher class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvuTGE1lYLo
Like if you don't mind if I correct your grammar here on twitter
15 Jan 2020
Repost from leesteffen:
There are only 10 types of movies. (A short thread)
- Orange and blue action
#CrisisOnInfiniteEarths spoiler free review: low budget, pacing and writing issues, but idc because all the dc comics fan service kept making me smile
I still dont understand why they needed Ryan Choi for #CrisisOnInfiniteEarths lol
13 Jan 2020
I am generally receptive to receiving emails from strangers, so I don't mind having a contact email publicly accessible on this site. But I don't know if it's a consequence of having a reasonably active blog or what, but in the past few years, I've sometimes gotten what I like to call “weird blog spam.”
Typically it starts out with an introductory email that often includes a compliment about a specific article on your blog, accompanied by an offer to increase your blog's visibility if you would just link to one of their articles:
12 Jan 2020
Obviously it's all scary and everyone should take care etc, and not to belittle the danger, but people have token some really good pictures of this eruption
Quoted ABSCBNNews's tweet:
Streaks of lightning blazed through columns of ashes amid #TaalVolcano eruption as seen from Nasugbu, Batangas on Sunday evening. Photo from Domcar Lagto, ABS-CBN News
more pics of the eruption
Quoted itskyylliieee's tweet:
This is the original picture tho guys: please don’t be frightened I just edited the pics at VSCO
Also the pics aren’t taken by me btw (credits to whoever person taken it) I just edited the pics and put an additional prayer.
I've been thinking for a while about doing regular weeknotes. This is a type of post I've seen in some blogs where they recap the things that've happened to them during the past week. I've actually been doing these privately for a while, and now I'm going to try making them public. I think the advantages are obvious in terms of (a) having notes to recall what you were doing over a certain time period; and (b) guaranteeing regular writing output on the blog.
11 Jan 2020
I did my regular backup of my Google data, it was 38GB split into 2GB chunks and one of the chunks was just this 15-min video I shared from the PS4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf1JUqYd0ZA Maybe I should be glad I haven't used the feature too much.
Repost from comedylopez:
Witnessed the most amazing thing on the train to Edinburgh yesterday. A guy boarded in Wigan & sat opposite me. He went to sleep for an hour.
When he woke up he bought a sandwich, ate it & went back to sleep. (This isn’t a maths test, you don’t need to know the distance/speed).
@art_abon generally trying to reduce my global surveillance capitalism footprint
Apparently I'm not done looking back at the 2010s yet. I had some “top tens of 2010s” discussions with some friends recently, here are my personal lists, each in no particular order:
My Top Ten Movies of the 2010s Avengers Endgame (2019).. I'm keeping only one slot per franchise, so I had to choose an MCU movies for this. Runner-ups for this slot were Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America Winter Soldier, and individually either one of those movies might be around the same or better than Endgame, but Endgame is the culmination of a decade's worth of movies and gave me the most enjoyment as a comic book fan.
10 Jan 2020
I've been migrating most of my services away from my gmail account and it's kinda scary how many services don't have email confirmation
Repost from mikesbloggity:
I tuned in to Canada's new version of Family Feud and may have witnessed one of the most iconic game show moments I've ever seen.
9 Jan 2020
shared via pocket:
Cory Doctorow: Inaction is a Form of Action
Reply to Woerlan's tweet:
@Woerlan maybe green needs the help, not like it’s been really overpowered lately!
8 Jan 2020
DAE stare at the showerhead as you turn it on, hoping to catch a glimpse of that moment when the water bursts through those tiny holes
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Roy Tang is a:
- programmer, engineer, scientist, critic, gamer, dreamer, and kid-at-heart
- Frustrated writer and sketch artist
- Magic player on weekends
- Sometimes I stream video games.
- Software developer since 2003. If you'd like to work with me, take a look at my resume.
roytang.net is a personal site, an E/N site, and kind of a commonplace book; I post about a random assortment of topics that interest me including software development, Magic the Gathering, pop culture, gaming, and tech life. This site is perpetually under renovation.