Finished the first season of the new Perry Mason show. Went into it only knowing that there had been an earlier series (the 1957 one), but nothing else. Really enjoyed the early 1930s setting, and the social turmoil of the first world war, great depression, prohibition and, sadly ever present, bigotry, racism and sexism. Happy to know that there is an in-progress second season, which is how i discovered the first, that i can just roll on to. John Lithgow was an unexpected delight. Also shout out to Canadian Tatiana Maslany as Sister Alice. I give it a 4/5.
A couple weeks ago, i was reading a post (i can't remember where...) that linked to this video "Earth Horns with Electronic Drone (1968)". It is an audio experiment by Yoshi Wada. Perhaps the best drone audioscape i have ever heard. Until my coworker Adam pointed me to longplayer.org. This is a music piece that plays out over 1000 years. And it has an audio stream that you can listen to. I actually like Earth Horns more, but i can listen to the Longplayer piece forever, which is its own kind of nice. If you dig the drone genera, i would highly recommend both of these.
Just wired up an Automator quick action to convert video files to .mp3. I used the following shell script to do the actual conversion (mostly copied from this answer by Lukas Knuth).
My gaming group had its second play of Oath, although it was really our first "real" game, as the previous one was the tutorial. I had done more reading on board game geek forums and also watched some lets-plays which included the legacy stuff, and was feeling comfortable with the rules and general game play this time. A thing that really clicked for me was using the terminology as written in the rules. Not trying to translate "favour" into coins, or "supply" into action points. I loved giving the Longbows some favour in order to muster warbands, that kind of thing. This embedding of terms into game play created, for me, the kind of narrative i had read about when deciding if i was going to purchase the game. We got the game done in under 3 hours, and some of that was setup and getting tea and then the chronicling at the end. I do think we could get it down to ~2 hours with some more experience. Although we are only playing with 3, so we should really be able to get that time down! Next game will be exciting as it will be the first where we have the legacy element coming into play. The Chancellor won, by a lucky die roll at the start of the 8th turn. One of the exiles had had a Vision of Rebellion, and was holding The Peoples Favor. I would not have been able to wrestle it back on my turn, and so, the game was won on a roll. I know that this kind of randomness is not for everyone. That is cool. But I am coming to love this game. The look, the feel while playing, just awesome. Excited for more.