SamLR.com

WR Plateful o Behemoths

Posted: 12th April 2020

I've apparently not been reading much this last week[1] certainly not absorbing much. To be honest I'm pretty crispy and frankly this long weekend's been a life-saver. Work's been hectic as we try to 180 our plans from the growth predicted in January, to coping with the shrinkage predicted in March.

SO, I've spent the last two days in the shed. Finally finishing my plant pot stand (pictures on twitter if you're curious). Today and tomorrow look like more of the same (apart from writing this and putting in some home wifi gear). Hopefully all this'll mean I make it to my "holiday" in a weeks time[2]. Anyway, I assume you don't come here to listen to me ramble, here're some more interesting things to read and/or watch:

The whole plate: film studies through a lens of Transformers by Lindsay Ellis. Unlike Ellis' previous appearance here (talking about online abuse) this is her talking about what she actually enjoys: film theory. A 9 part series (the link is to the playlist) interpreting the Transformers franchise through various film theories. For example is Michael Bay an auteur or a dead author? Each episode is about 15 minutes long and can be watched (I think) in pretty much any order. Ellis is sarcastic and fun whilst also giving pretty detailed explanation of the various ideas, their origins, strengths and weaknesses. You don't need to remember (or even really have seen) the Transformers films to get what's going on and they provide a good example of how these theories can be used anywhere.

Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths by Wizards of the Coast, I guess[3]? I've been playing Magic the Gathering: Arena, Magic's free to play online version for about a year and a bit now (not to be confused with MtG:Online which is much older and all paid all the time). It's good fun, Magic remains a hugely deep game and Ikoria is full of giant monsters, hopefully it'll be good. There's no official mac client yet (apparently one is in the works) but, if you've not upgraded to Catalina yet, you can do what I do and follow this guide to running it via wine, otherwise NVIDIA GeForce Now runs it (and sounds like a 90's Saturday morning cartoon).