Will

Really unbelievable, feel for his family and friends. Bray Wyatt wrote a really nice thing for him, sounds like he was very well liked and will be missed. Crazy to be so young and in shape and have something like this just take it all away.

This is what we* wanted** though, less access for more control. *We being the slim majority that pushed us into this. **Wanted being a loose catch-all because nobody had a clue what they were voting for. Jokes aside I do think that was generally what people were going for, trading our access to the market for control over our country. We don’t need Europe because we are so great and all they do is come and steal our jobs and our fish. This deal? To me it seems like we have to follow the same rules as before, have less access to the market, and have our free movement curtailed massively. In return we get control of fishing rights in UK waters... in five years time. I haven’t read the whole thing, just the summaries from various sources but it seems they’ve done the worst deal possible. My preference was always to stay in, but if we’re coming out then we have to be out and make something new work. Going with this middle ground option of we follow the rules but don’t have a seat at the table where they’re made is total madness. I hope at some point soon we get a real shake-up of the political system in the UK, at the moment it really doesn’t seem to be helping anyone apart from the rich to take more advantage of everyone and screw the terrible outcomes from it all.

Been playing with my train today, great model: Also got Black Country Monopoly from my sister so looking forward to playing that at some point too.

Merry Christmas! Hope everyone has a great day.

Been thinking of doing the same but I only have about $900 worth. Quite like just holding on to it but would be a nice little bonus to buy something nice.

Our work Christmas gift was a $100 Play Asia voucher so decided to get the latest Densha de Go! Really looking forward to driving round Tokyo in VR.

That was exactly what I thought at first, reminded me of Ring Raiders... The ones I got allow you to do exactly that. However you set them up they just re-sync in the position and you send whatever pattern you want to them. Given how good they’ve been so far I think I’ll buy more next year and have them on the tree and wall all in sync.

It looks really awesome actually, watched some videos on YouTube and it really got me wanting one. One thing I didn’t quite get was the use of the red light on the left hand side? Is that to help get the speed accurate or something? We decided to buy a baby monitor, mostly so we can see what crazy things the baby is doing at night without disturbing him: Can direct the camera wherever you want to look and it has it’s own tablet we can put on the coffee table. Also has an app to view through the phones which was something I really wanted. Quite looking forward to using it.

Got the family presents sorted: For my wife, an Apple Watch: For my son, this Jumperoo: And for me, a new model train: For my parents my sister and I went halves on an iPad, their’s is pretty old and we thought they should have a better one given how much we FaceTime now. I also picked up these interesting glasses that flip your left and right eye for my dad. They make stuff far away seem to be close and stuff close seem to be far away, quite excited to see how they turn out.

I really can’t quite believe what a mess the UK government have made of this. Add in the disastrous Brexit we seem to be heading for and it really doesn’t paint a rosy picture for the coming year. I hope we can get rid of the tories as soon as possible. The restrictions here are being relaxed further on the 28th. Not much of a change but we’ll now be able to mix in groups of 8 up from the current max of 5. I was out on Friday and everything seems to be basically back to normal anyway. Hoping we’ll be able to travel within Asia pretty early next year and with a bit of luck back to the UK before the middle of the year. Have you tried some different masks? We’ve got some reusable ones that are made out of some sort of foam and you can barely tell you have it on in terms of breathing restrictions. Worth checking them out if the usual ones cause you issues.

Top music choices there, going to have to give those a listen too. I’ve always loved the idea of vinyl but it’s just so space consuming. I have been considering getting a HomePod or something recently to enhance the listening experience, maybe something for the new year.

They don’t really have too much to worry about even with this current setback, they currently have very strong financials and the GOG side of the business prints money. Generally they’d want a higher stock price if they were going to issue more shares, but doing that is very unlikely at this point. The dip will make them a more interesting acquisition target, especially given this is likely a temporary issue they can overcome. I’ve had them on my watchlist for quite a while, going to keep an eye on them and think I’ll buy if they drop to somewhere around 200 PLN, they’ll still make a ton of money with this game so should be a nice quick win.

Great introduction to the park there, looks better each time I see it. We’ve decided we’ll definitely add this to our next trip to Japan, hopefully that’s not too far into the new year. The smartphone and wrist tag stuff looks pretty cool. Nice when you can have a private Miyamoto tour but I imagine will be pretty impossible to collect everything when the park is full. Good to see they’re still planning on the one in Singapore too. Looks like it’s been delayed so probably not going to open until after 2025 which is a while to wait.

I agree with this, and I say that as someone that absolutely loves Galaxy. Mario Odyssey is one of the best games ever made, you should absolutely pick it up.

The two I’d say are essential additions are Mario Kart and Zelda.

Seems the guy is not only a total asshole but also a danger on the track. I imagine the money will keep him in that seat for quite a while though,

Young driver test completed, this new kid Alonso seems pretty fast in the Renault. Wonder if he’ll ever amount to anything? Think I’ll support him next year and follow his career with great interest. In other news Tsunoda confirmed for Alpha Tauri next season, wonder how long before he gets a badly timed promotion to Red Bull?

Yeah it’s kind of fine at the moment as it’s totally ignorable. I started getting notifications for podium pass season 3 last time I played and it seems fairly decent if you’re into that sort of thing. Given that F1 is by far my most played game I’ll continue to buy them so long as they keep up the quality. I feel like EA have learnt a lot since their couple of big misses and seem to be offering people what they want without going so far as to cause any uproar. At least I can’t recall seeing any lately, I don’t really play any of their games or study them enough to know to be honest. Hopefully the additional money available to them will push the F1 games to be even better. Codemasters have done a great job with them and hopefully EA will be seeing the acquisition as a solid pillar to build around rather than milk all of the value from it.

510

Your very welcome! Enjoyed doing it and definitely happy to do something similar next year too. Will have to think whether it’s better for us to do one of the fantasy leagues or predictions game like this. Think for sure you would have won had you been playing longer. My victory is definitely one of just being there every round where nobody else was.

F1 2020 Predictions Game Round 17 Results Another season comes to a close. Maximum points for this race were: Pole - Verstappen (10) Fastest Lap - Ricciardo (10) 1st - Verstappen (25 + 5) 2nd - Bottas (18 + 5) 3rd - Hamilton (15 + 5) 4th - Albon (12 + 5) 5th - Norris (10 + 5) The results for this round: @Will - 43 @BowserBasher - 33 And the final overall standings (previous total in brackets): @Will - 797 (754) @BowserBasher - 694 (661) @Mandalore - 241 (241) @Nicktendo - 196 (196) @bob - 155 (155) @Goron_3 - 113 (113) @Pestneb - 50 (50) Well done to me!

Heard nothing but good things about this one, and seems the same here. Once I’ve made my way through some of my launch backlog I think this will be on my list of games to pick up.

Oh, the other annoying thing about Netflix translations is that the subtitles and dubs are generally done by totally different teams and don’t align at all. Can be incredibly annoying to get a slightly different flow and feel to shows dependent on which option you’re using.

Netflix does this A LOT, it’s a real pain for us. We watch most things in English and have Japanese subtitles on and constantly have to deal with the subtitles just disappearing when they feel like it. Usually find the quickest way to deal with it is rewind, change to another language, change back and they usually get back to it from there. This is also incredibly frustrating. We’ve just finished watching The Man in the High Castle on Amazon prime and the languages were absolutely infuriating. Bits in German, bits in Japanese, mostly in English. Whenever the characters spoke Japanese the subtitles would disappear and the terrible accents combined with my fading language skills meant we’d have to rewind, change the language, watch again, then try to get it back onto Japanese subtitles at the random point in a conversation where they’d convert over to speaking English. I have no idea why they directed the characters to flip languages half way through conversations, totally weird when it would happen multiple times per episode with seemingly no pattern to it. Also, why do the subtitles disappear when characters speak the original language? If you’re watching the show with subtitles because you actually can’t hear you’re screwed. Total madness all round.

F1 2020 Predictions Game Round 16 Results Epic Mercedes mistakes and another totally unexpected result. Maximum points for this race were: Pole - Bottas (10) Fastest Lap - Russell (10) 1st - Perez (25 + 5) 2nd - Ocon (18 + 5) 3rd - Stroll (15 + 5) 4th - Sainz (12 + 5) 5th - Ricciardo (10 + 5) The results for this round: @BowserBasher - 15 @Pestneb - 15 @Nicktendo - 5 @Will - 5 @bob - 0 And the overall standings (previous total in brackets): @Will - 754 (749) @BowserBasher - 661 (646) @Mandalore - 241 (241) @Nicktendo - 196 (191) @bob - 155 (155) @Goron_3 - 113 (113) @Pestneb - 50 (35) Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Predictions: Pole - Russell FL - Bottas 1st - Russell 2nd - Bottas 3rd - Verstappen 4th - Ricciardo 5th - Norris