Bits and Pieces

• PH/Covid: It looks like our downtrend is at an end, especially in NCR. Hopefully this mini-surge stays manageable.

• The World: Queen Elizabeth's funeral is tomorrow. The British have been waiting in a miles-long queue to view her remains (or at least the coffin I guess). The Queue has been called "a triumph of Britishness".

• I scanned this piece of scratch paper that had been on top of my desk for the past week or so:

  (Click photos to view full-size)

  

  

  Weeknotes 2022-09-18 - doodles.jpg

  doodles.jpg Sept. 18, 2022, 10:55 p.m. Close

  The left half is a Superman/Batman doodle I did over the week. Sometime this past week, someone gave me some old art stuff - oil pastels, watercolor paints, colored pencils, that kind of thing. I decided to try using the oil pastels to color in the Superman part, and it dawned on me that I have no idea how to use these to create anything nice. Basically treated them like crayons. A friend told me that I needed to be smudging/smearing them or such for better colors. I guess I need to look up some tutorials before trying to use them again. Also, I added the Batman yesterday, which seems appropriate as apparently it was Batman Day.

  The right half is a record of my Street Fighter V matches for the week. Been trying to play a bit more since the Street Fighter VI announcements came out, since I'm still two achievements short of completion for this game. One of the missing achievements requires me to get to Gold rank, which is the most challenging as I'm not the best at actual execution. For the past few months I've been waffling around in Silver rank, occasionally making it up to Super Silver before crashing back down. This week had good days and bad days, and the total record was 25-19, which isn't that great. I'm still hopeful I manage completion before SF6 comes out, but it feels like it will require a streak of matching and winning against easy opponents and quite a bit of luck.

• I had a Baconator last night. A Wendy's has opened up within walking distance of the house. (Which means for me around a 20 min leisurely stroll.) I understand this doesn't seem like a big deal, but since the pandemic I haven't gotten around much, so new eating options within walking distance is always good for the variety.

• Dominaria United Drafting on Magic Arena has been going decently well, with some ups and downs. However, yesterday I impulsively joined a phantom Sealed play-in event without realizing it was BO3 and single-elim, and while my pool was decent, the mana fixing was poor and my three-color deck promptly lost the first match to mana issues, so I just wasted 3500 gems for no reason. Sigh, I really should know better.

• Speaking of streaming, some friends convinced me to try streaming Words on Stream on Twitch. It was fun, but we couldn't get too far, probably because I don't have that many viewers!

• Media Diet: Nothing much this past week. Still reading a lot of comics and a Sanderson book. Still keeping up with She-Hulk and also still watching a lot of Countdown.

Some Links of Interest

• ‘You can’t say that!’: how to argue, better | Friendship | The Guardian
• Take Care of Your Blog

Visit the Links page for more links of interest.

And some interesting stuff from Twitter:

• videogames have very little effect on well-being/happiness
• the exocentric verb-noun compound agent noun

This coming week:

• The first 3 eps of Andor drop this coming week! The D23 trailer looked interesting..
• I believe there's also an Expedition Open on Eternal next week, but I'll probably skip since my gold count is a bit low and I don't have a deck available anyway.