Weekly notes 33/2023

Week 33 summary - on-call wrap up, re-watching old sitcoms and gaming update.

Thumbnail image: Wartime Mural on Wyndham Club: A 14-storey black-and-white mural based on inspiration from 1940s World War II newsreels and Hollywood movies.

What’s been happening #

• After a few warm days, Syndey’s cold again. Thought I could pack up my hoodies into the storage, but not yet.

• I’m wrapping up my second week of on-call in three weeks. The shifts are usually for a week once every 5-6 weeks, but since I was in the US during my previous shift, I swapped my shift around. Both the shifts were quite silent, but happy to be done with them.

• My Diablo IV season has been coming along pretty nice. I’m close to level 75 and might wrap up my rogue and start a new Druid. I’m less inclined to take it to level 100, there’s a lot of grinding and I think getting the character from 75 to 100 is more or less like going from Diablo 3’s Greater Rift 100 to 130+ - it’s a lot of grinding for not a lot of benefit. Either way with Diablo 3 season starting soon, I might consider not creating a new character at all and focus on Baldur’s Gate 3 and some Diablo IV on the side till Diablo 3’s next season starting soon.

• While playing Diablo IV, I usually have something light that I’m watching on the other screen. In the past few weeks I’d been (re)watching Silicon Valley and finally completed the finale. I had dropped watching Silicon Valley multiple timees because I got tired of the gets-it-right-and-then-massive-fail approach to every season, that continued till the end except for, well, the finale. I somehow didn’t expect the finale to be done that way, and I guess I kinda liked it.

  • I’m also rewatching Seinfeld now and understanding why it’s such a classic. Back when it was being broadcasted on TV (maybe when I was in 8th standard?), I didn’t get the series at all and thought it was crap. How wrong i was. Actually even watching it when playing Diablo feels wrong, because I’m focusing on the game, while missing out on the fantastic acting, especially by Julia Louis-Dreyfus' expressions and Micahel Richards' entrance to Seinfeld’s apartment.

Music of the Week #

Long back, I used to write a weekly series called Monday Tunes. Monday Tunes featured some songs I liked/enjoyed/found interesting during my commute. I don’t have a commute anymore, at least not at the moment and Jo suggested I revisit my Monday tunes segment. So, instead of Monday Tunes, I figure I’ll add a music of the week in addition to the Link of the week section. Music of the week might not be a regular thing but I will add when I can.

Californication is one of Red Hot Chili Peppers listened songs (per last.fm stats) but when I was listening to Chad Smith’s video on Drumeo, I found that RHCP almost skipped out on Californication, since they weren’t able to get the proper vibe for the song and made many different versions of the song, including a Reggae version. indeed I found a version of that song. Give it a listen.

Link of the week #

John Graham-Cunning talks about retrieving data from a faulty Seagate Firecuda 530 drive with the help of woodworking tools. Using the G-clamp to apply pressure to make contact and using a part from carpentry square to act as a heatsink is ingenious. Give it a read.

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