Tag: nerd

This was almost a politics post

On By Luther M. SilerIn BlogwankingLeave a comment

…which I have refrained from, because typing “Fuck Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin” three thousand times, while accurate and fair, is not exactly compelling reading.

Speaking of not compelling, let’s blogwank:

Seriously, what’s going on here? October 31 was the highest traffic day since 2015 until November 1, which was the highest traffic day since 2015 until yesterday, which was the highest traffic day since 2015 until– goes and looks— oh, basically right now, since I’m 7 views short of yesterday’s numbers. Engagement doesn’t really seem to be going anywhere and I’m not seeing anything weird in what limited data I’m getting from referrals, and while the immediate impulse is to suspect bots, if they are bots, has WordPress suddenly lost the ability to keep them from showing up in our statistics? Or turned it off? A lot of this traffic is from China but the last couple of days it’s been mostly American. Here’s the geography numbers:

The 7200 from the US would nearly be the best month of the year all by itself. October 2025 was the best month in years, and November should pass it tomorrow. It looks like my traditionally big posts are getting the lion’s share of this traffic, but the numbers aren’t adding up, which is weird, and I feel like this also pushes back on the bot theory– would thousands and thousands of bots be indexing the same post over and over again?

Somebody who knows more than me explain what the deal is.

The dumbest possible reason to be stressed out

On By Luther M. SilerIn video gamesLeave a comment

I am working on getting every ending on Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, and doing so either involves 1) playing through the entire game four complete times or 2) doing some fuckery with backing up your saves and, on an Xbox, preventing your game from automatically backing itself up to the cloud while you’re on a backed-up save that you don’t want to be permanent. There’s one ending that actually ends the entire game prematurely, and I wanted to snag that one tonight, but it involves being good enough with a particular boss that you can crush her more or less at will (on it) and making sure you understand exactly how the Xbox Series X’s cloud backup works and when it chooses to back up saves to the cloud. Because if you do it right, you let it back up, beat the game the way you don’t want to keep so you get the achievement, then back out of the game and delete your local save, forcing the game to go back to your previously cloud-backed-up save.

Do this wrong, and you’ve either locked yourself into finishing the game prematurely, meaning you need to play through again to get the other endings (bad) or in a worst case scenario you screw up badly enough to delete your save entirely, meaning that not only do you have to start over again but you have to do it from scratch.

Anyway, I successfully pulled it off, to wit:

Check that completion percentage out, yo.

Anyway, there’s still more game before those last two endings, where I have to do this over again, so I can still screw this up. But at least the most annoying one is out of the way.

Okay, look, Marvel …

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, moviesLeave a comment

You’ve got me, you bastards. I’m in. The last of your fucking movies I saw in a theater was I don’t even remember but it might have been Endgame, weeks after it came out. I also don’t remember which of your movies was the last I saw at all. Maybe Black Widow.

I am going to see Fantastic Four: First Steps in a theater. I am not back and I have no plans to see any other forthcoming Marvel movies. I’m gonna see Superman, but that’s not you. That’s two superhero movies in a month which will be more than I’ve seen in the last several years.

Please don’t fuck this up.

Anybody know anything about flies? We have a mystery infestation in about a room and a half in the house. Our dining room has a big glass sliding door leading to a screened-in back porch. I have killed, and I swear I’m not shitting you, well over a hundred house flies crawling around on that screen door in the last two days. Well over a hundred of them. I have absolutely no idea where they’re coming from. There is no obvious source of flies in my dining room. There is a vent right in front of the sliding door; I have pulled the grille out of it and vacuumed inside it extensively, and it’s not big enough to be hiding a dead animal or something, plus if there was something in there we’d be able to smell it. Plus, if they were coming from the vents, they’d be in every room in the house, not concentrated by the back porch.

They are not on the outside of the sliding doors. Plus, again, there’s no source of flies out there and it’s screened in. They have to be coming from inside the house and they also have to be coming from somewhere very close to that sliding door, and there just isn’t anything. Flies don’t just spontaneously generate! That would mean that there’s something in my dining room that is rotting and was covered in maggots and zero of the four humans and three cats in the house noticed it?

I’ve sat and watched and waited to see if I could spot them crawling from somewhere, and of course, because they’re flies and flies have turning invisible as a class ability, I’ve had no luck on that. If I leave the room for half an hour there will be between five and seventeen (the current record) on the sliding door when I come back. I’ve been using the vacuum cleaner to kill them because it’s faster and more effective than a Goddamn flyswatter.

Somebody help me out, this is gross and I’m tired of it.

(Oh, and I made a flytrap with a Sprite bottle, some apple cider vinegar and a few drops of dish soap because the Internet told me it was an effective cheap flytrap. Pff. It has not caught a single fucking fly. There’s an indoor zapper coming Friday.)

Math humans!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching2 Comments

Look at this flowchart:

I am not a digital artist, as you can probably tell, and I put this together in Sheets, which is certainly really far from the best way to do it, but it gets the job done. Here’s the question: how do I best include the existence of fractions? Fractions are always rational, but depending on what the fraction is, it can be any of the rational number sub-categories as well. I could just include an instruction after the first question to convert fractions to decimals, but 1) that feels inelegant, and 2) it sort of introduces another source of error, but that source is there anyway, I suppose– a kid that doesn’t recognize 1/3 as a repeating decimal is probably also not going to realize that 12/4 is a natural number.

Can you figure out a way to work fractions into this without adding a ton of qualifiers and disclaimers or extra questions? One or two is fine but I don’t want this to get much messier than it already is.

Hmm.

In which I am unbelievably petty (WARNING: Superman opinions)

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy, movies6 Comments

Let me begin with some Statements which are Generally Known to be True:

  • That I am insanely, irrationally protective of Superman, and do not believe the character has been done right in live action since the Reeve era, with the possible exception of Tyler Hoechlin in Superman & Lois, which I really enjoyed for about five episodes and then mysteriously stopped watching;
  • That I am fully aware that a set picture is not the best way to evaluate a superhero costume;
  • That I have been loud and wrong about iconic superhero costumes before;
  • That I absolutely hate it when nerds do exactly what I am about to do, although I will attempt to mix in some positives;
  • That I am probably not going to see this movie, not because I am boycotting it but because I don’t see movies any longer, and I feel like maybe that’s could give me an out about having an opinion, an out that I am currently not taking; and
  • That David Corenswet’s performance is going to be infinitely more important than his costume, as will other minor details like the fucking script, and I know literally nothing about how he’s going to move and act as the character. I do know I’m not terribly interested in Ultraman or Mr. Terrific, one of whom was also in the leaks but one of whom is still technically a rumor.

That said!

Wait. No. Let’s do this first:

Two things are Correct about this costume.

  • The colors, for the first time in years, are correct, and this says good things about the direction the film is going to take;
  • Putting the S-shield on the back of the cape in yellow is also Correct.

I hate every single other fucking thing about the fucking costume.

  1. The collar. They’ve clearly drawn inspiration from the New 52 costume, which I hated, and part of the reason I hated it was the fucking collar. Every other and I mean every other live action iteration of Superman’s suit has done the cape/shoulders/neck area better, including Tyler Hoechlin’s, which dropped the cape into prominent gold grommets and still looked better. I hate the collared look. It is, in fact, the thing about the costume that I hate the most.
  2. The S-Shield. This is a version of the Kingdom Come shield, which was fine in Kingdom Come, which was set in the future and involved a Superman who had gone through intense personal loss, and is not fine here. Just use the fucking regular S-shield, Goddammit. This is not a place where we fucking need to innovate. Also it could stand to be a little bigger– if it was right, at least– but that’s not that big of a deal.
  3. The texture. This may not survive the transition into the actual film, but I hate all the little lines and shapes everywhere. The cape looks like it’s made from microfiber, which also sucks.
  4. The belt. Yes, the costume needs the belt, and I’m happy it has a belt, but that belt looks like Batman’s belt. It looks chunky and rubbery for no clear reason.
  5. It’s fucking baggy. Superman wears his costume under his clothes and it needs to be tighter. This also may not survive the transition onto the actual silver screen. In fact, I really doubt it’ll be noticeable on the screen. I hate it anyway.
  6. The wrists. Also borrowing from New 52, and perhaps more obvious in other pictures than in these, they’re pointy, and they look fucking stupid. You also can’t conceal pointy wrist cuffs under a dress shirt.
  7. The briefs. Shut up, Goddammit, the word “petty” is right in the title. Yes, I’m happy they’re there, and I’d rather have them than not have them, but those are fucking boyshorts, not Superman briefs. It’s wrong and it’s wrong for no reason.
  8. The boots. Actually, the boots are fine. I have no beef with the boots.

Do not get me started on Clark’s hair:

(Actually, the hair is whatever; I think Clark would have a more conservative haircut than that ramen-looking GenZ mop bullshit but it definitely makes him look less like Superman, so I’ll deal.)

Okay. I’ve got that out of my system now, I hope. I have seen a couple of images today that I can’t find now where someone took the Corenswet suit and basically Photoshopped in the edits that I suggested above, and it looks perfect, and I’ll update if I find one again. And I will get over it, especially now that I’ve written this. It’s not the most important thing about the fucking movie. All the same: blech.

What I did today

On By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

This little bastard isn’t much to Puzzle People, I imagine, and it’s not a ton of pieces or anything, but it occupied a couple of hours of my afternoon and then immediately got photographed, torn apart, and given to my wife. If you look carefully there are a bunch of nautical-themed pieces in there which was a cool little touch. Also, a lot of those pieces don’t really lock together all that well so I kept accidentally shoving them out of place and having to put everything back together.

Other than that? It’s Wednesday. Comic shop. Tomorrow, I get to go to the dump. I’m super excited.

For your interest and edification

On By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

I don’t have much to say today, but allow me to present you with these two pieces of information, nonetheless:

  1. That it is John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s 132nd birthday; and
  2. That I have been filling my hours with Far Cry 5 when I haven’t been reading lately, and I have just acquired a pet, to wit, an enormous grizzly bear named Cheeseburger. The game lets you pet him when you aren’t siccing him on cultists. I am content.

In which the seal has been broken

On By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

I’m in trouble.

I am moving inevitably into my Elder Nerddom, and while there have been perhaps more statues in my house for several years now than one might expect from a random sample of homes, I have, until now, managed to avoid purchasing anything from Hot Toys. There are a billion reasons for this, but perhaps one of the biggest is that the damn things can run anywhere from $250-500 if not more than that and I knew good and fucking well that there was no way I was ever going to stop with one. My recent disenchantment with the MCU has helped; a lot of the appeal of Hot Toys to their fans is their unearthly skill with facial capture, and as I’ve grown tired of the movies, I’ve grown less interested in the idea of having Chris Evans or Robert Downey, Jr. on my shelf as opposed to a more Platonic, comic-based Iron Man or Captain America.  

And today that beautiful bastard up there showed up under the Christmas tree, and I’m fucked now.  My wife actually stopped me after I unwrapped the box but before I opened it, telling me that she and the two owners of my local comic shop had gone through a process in trying to decide which one to get me, and that they’d warned her that if I actually opened the box, collectors being who they are, they’d be unable to take it back. She asked me if I wanted her to tell me who was in it (the outside box of a Hot Toys figure has all the brand information but does not actually name the figure inside for some reason) and I told her that if the three of them had managed to guess wrong— my wife has been married to me for nearly sixteen years and I have spent money at the comic shop on a weekly basis for slightly longer than that– I was going to get so much mileage out of making fun of them for it that it would be worth it. Truth be told, I was fully expecting one of the many Iron Mans available.

Moon Knight? Fuck yes, and made even better by the fact that even though that’s Moon Knight’s MCU/Disney+ costume, that costume isn’t really much of a departure from his traditional comic book look and, even better, it’s not Oscar Isaac, since there’s no headsculpt featuring his face. So, yeah, this is perfect and I love you but this is going to cost me so much money, because he’s gonna need a friend, and then they’re gonna need a third, because who are they gonna talk to if they get tired of each other, and by this time next year I expect to have a full glass-front cabinet in the house somewhere with $6000 of these things in it(*) and I plan on regularly reminding my wife that it’s her fault.

(*) I may or may not have just inquired about pre-ordering an Iron Man that didn’t actually ever appear in the films but looks like the Silver Centurion, my favorite Iron Man suit ever.