I've been watching Ross Scott, aka Accursed Farms' Freeman's Mind and Ross's Game Dungeon videos on youtube for years so I knew he was concerned about game publishers destroying video games for years. When Ubisoft decided to kill their online servers for The Crew, he kicked things into high gear.  Basically, if you own a copy of The Crew, you're about to lose access to the game you paid for, forever. The move to online only games means there are more and more games each year dependent on publishers to maintain services that allow you to play. Once they stop, poof, the game - and the ..read more

Recently I’ve been working on reducing my anxiety so I requested this on NetGalley. The book has 2 parts (Understanding Anxiety & How to Manage Your Anxiety) and 9 chapters (Anxiety & Women; Navigating Life with Anxiety; Calm Your Body & Mind; Observe Your Anxiety & Identify Your Triggers; Release Yourself from the Cycle of Worry & Rumination; Replace Your Anxious Behaviors with Healthy Ones; Navigate Relationships and Manage Social Anxiety; Acknowledge & Address Specific Phobias; and Reclaim Your Life & Reach Your Goals). The book ends with a short list of resour ..read more

Pros: fun and interesting characters, tight plot, some thought provoking moments, good fight scenes Cons: Here’s the back cover blurb, which is simply perfect. There are only three real powers in the Spiral: the corporate power of the Trust versus the Union's labor's leverage. Between them the Guild tries to keep everyone's hands above the table. It ain't easy. Branded a Guild deserter, Jal "accidentally" lands a ride on a Guild ship. Helmed by an AI, with a ship's engineer/medic who doesn't see much of a difference between the two jobs, and a "don't make me shoot you" XO, the Guild crew ..read more

I was speaking with a friend recently and we started trading journalling ideas and I realized I'd learned a bunch of things these past few months that she didn't know about, so I thought I'd share them with a larger audience. For my past few trips I wanted to come back with pretty journals. For France I had this lovely idea of sitting in front of a cathedral sketching pieces of architecture. Well that never happened. These are research trips and they're packed FULL of sites, so there's little downtime. And my priority is photographs - hundreds of them per site, that all need to be double backe ..read more

 Many thanks as always to the publishers who approved my requests for Netgalley advance reader copies. Cascade Failure by L. M. Sagas - This book was so much fun to read. Fast paced with a hopeful ending. Look for my review on its release date of March 19. There are only three real powers in the Spiral: the corporate power of the Trust versus the Union's labor's leverage. Between them the Guild tries to keep everyone's hands above the table. It ain't easy. Branded a Guild deserter, Jal "accidentally" lands a ride on a Guild ship. Helmed by an AI, with a ship's engineer/medic who d ..read more

The book is split into 4 sections, with 12 chapters, an introduction, and a short conclusion. There are end notes at the back. The 4 sections are: Becoming Christian, What the First Christians Believed, How the First Christians Worshipped, and How the First Christians Lived. I reviewed an advance reader copy, meaning it wasn’t in its final form. My copy had no illustrations, just captions where the illustrations should go. So I cannot comment on their quality, though there were a good number of them and they’re placed to illustrate interesting aspects of the text. The author used a decent n ..read more

Directed by Edson Oda, 2020 IMDb listing Set in a realm that monitors people on earth and chooses souls to be sent there, one of the interviewers who had a bad experience on earth sorts through new candidates. But as he deals with the death of his favourite subject and a candidate with ideas different from the others’, he starts to question the criteria upon which he makes his judgement. This is a strange but thoughtful movie about life and death and what we got out of those experiences. It’s a reminder to be in the moment, to appreciate what you have. The interviewer, Will, played by Wins ..read more

I know from posts I’ve seen online that a lot of people came out of the pandemic with a reduced attention span. I used to read for hours at a time, lost in the story. Now it sees like anytime I open a book it’s a real struggle to finish a chapter, a page, a paragraph. No matter how interesting the characters or plot, I have a hard time keeping my mind focused on what I’m doing. So many other things try to intrude. I’m reading more history books, which means I often pause to look up new information or other books being referenced to check out later. I’ve started forcing myself to sit still and ..read more

When a flying creature sets fire to their home, the people of Seabrook scramble. But for Amber, a twelve-year old daydreamer, it’s just the beginning. At the urging of mischievous pixies, she sets out in search for answers, only to find there’s far more going on than her sleepy village can handle. Evil wizards and their sinister plot begin to unfold before her the further she travels. What started out as a seemingly simple task quickly reveals a far greater challenge facing the entire kingdom. And time is running short. If she can’t figure it out soon enough, the entire coast will burn. An ep ..read more

Directed by Peter Hyams, 1981 IMDb listing After being transferred to be the new head of security on a mining colony on Io, Marshal William O’Niel must decide if he wants to toe the line or bust the drug ring he uncovers. The special effects are really good. The station looks dirty and lived in, with a claustrophobic mix of large spaces broken down into small cubicles and living quarters. It’s very much a realistic - and rather horrifying - guess at what a company town would look like. Little private space, little regard for the workers, lots of emphasis on productivity and profit for the c ..read more