After weeks and weeks of waiting, we finally got an official "Switch 2" video from Nintendo-- and it's very low-energy and rushed feeling, probably their hands were forced by the fact that the entire console and joy-cons were already leaked and shown off very publicly at CES. Here is what we know about Switch 2 as of now:

• What It Looks Like: The units on the CES showroom floor were not fake-- they were identical to what is shown in this video. Weirdly, Nintendo "blanked out" the C button in this official video, for reasons which aren't clear yet. Maybe they just aren't ready to discuss "Campus" yet?


• Campus: The Switch 2 will have some kind of Discord-like voice chat feature, with screen sharing, called "Campus". Probably, that's what the C button triggers. I think this could be really cool: Nintendo could integrate it directly with games in creative ways, plus put their own personality into it-- just like how Miiverse was on Wii U.


• Mouse Support: The new joy-cons have very visible mouse-style optical sensors-- then in the official video, the joy-cons are shown sliding around on those sensors. This could be used for all sorts of things, even beyond the obvious RTS or FPS use cases.


• The Clock Speeds: We've known the chipset for ages, but the clocks were a mystery. However, these were discovered just a handful of days ago-- ~560 MHz in handheld mode, and ~1010 in docked mode. This comes out to 1.72 and 3.09 teraflops respectively, in terms of raw GPU math processing power. Meanwhile, the CPU will be clocked at ~1000 MHz and 1100 MHz, respectively.


• Full Backwards Compatibility: Sure, there will be a handful of games which won't work correctly, just like was with the case for the PlayStation 5. But almost everything will probably run. We know that the new game card slot is wider, so it'll probably have some internal spring or guide mechanism for when a Switch 2 game card is plugged in.


• The Price: Persistent rumors suggest a $450 MSRP. There was a rumor of two SKUs, but I haven't heard that one in a long time. Also, at CES one of the units shown was white, so perhaps there is something to the "two SKUs" notion, like how the Wii U had the cheaper white model (which was the one I owned, incidentally)?

To be honest I'm a little worried about Switch 2-- it has something of "Wii U" or, in the best case scenario, "3DS" written all over it. Will the average consumer want to pop $450 for a Switch with a slightly larger screen? For a tech enthusiast like me who understands what the specs mean, what DLSS is, and so forth, it's a no-brainer upgrade. Heck, I even bought the OLED model right when those came out!

But as we saw with the Wii U and pre-price-drop 3DS, even hardcore Nintendo fans will not automatically buy new hardware if the value proposition isn't perceived. After this lackluster initial video, I think Nintendo had better knock it out of the park in April, and in these "hands-on" events, from which we'll undoubtedly get all sorts of primary-source information.

I'm also not sure showing that Mario Kart footage was such a great idea, since it graphically looks virtually identical to Mario Kart 8, which is a zillion years old, and reinforces the notion that the Switch 2 isn't much different. But what do I know! I do wonder if Nintendo is not very confident in this whole thing, which is why they've been dragging their heels for so long.

There is very much a phenomenon of media figures getting too close to the very subjects they are supposed to be critically covering, to the point where their objectivity becomes corrupted by the special dispensations and privileges of being connected.

Take the first half-odd hour of this Digital Foundry CES coverage as a case-in-point: Alex Battaglia brags about his personal connections to all of these Nvidia figures, then-- by his own admission, unashamedly-- walks up, salivating, tongue wagging out of his mouth, hat in hand, to Nvidia's tech demos... an actual journalist would keep a neutral expression, cast a healthily suspicious gaze on proceedings, and ask the tough questions: but not Digital Foundry! Totally unadulterated fanboys and industry insiders.

Back in 2018, I too thought Nvidia's RTX technologies were cool. But then I've watched over the subsequent six years... where has this technology gotten us exactly? Same thing with Unreal Engine 5 since its release. Games-at-large have horrible performance, such as "Wukong's" 29 fps on the $2000 RTX 5090, are blurry plus full of ghosting, and are plain-and-simply using features such as DLSS as a crutch just to make their titles playable. Meanwhile, they flip on Unreal Engine 5's slow, half-baked features such as "Lumen" and "Nanite" without the foggiest clue how to optimize their actual game.

You can even see Digital Foundry's coverage proving my point, accidentally: the game they covered as being the most high-tech-- "it runs at a gazillion fps!"-- doesn't even use UE5's features; the developers rolled their own tech! Also, the Nvidia tech demo Alex goes on and on about-- a tech demo-- apparently uses 80 gigabytes of disk space. And don't even get me going on what's happened to game financial budgets during this Nvidia-Unreal Engine period.

The philosophy is to make the games skinny, and the GPU-plus-engine fat: the game developers will just tick a few boxes, and outsource the expertise to Nvidia and Epic. I think this "skinny game" approach has demonstrably turned out to be the wrong path. We should be having the expertise with the people writing the game software, and where the GPUs and-- if they are used at all-- off-the-shelf engines are simply basic building blocks with which the game programmers can go nuts. It should be "fat game, skinny GPU", or something along those lines, versus the other way around.

I'm tempted to pre-order this, which sounds like "Phantasy Star meets Dungeons and Dragons" to me. I've already got buy-in from both of my kids plus my sister-in-law to play it with me.

In other news, the Switch 2 has been unveiled-- by third-party accessory makers! The entire system, the joy-cons, and the dock are just sitting out on full display on the CES trade floor, if you know where to look. Pictures are everywhere. While it's true that conjecture-based renders of video game systems have always shown up in magazines and the like before those platforms' releases, I can't think of a time in forty years in the hobby where a company's new console "in the flesh" has been unveiled by third-parties, with total mums from the manufacturer.

As per my 2024 retrospective post, I did indeed emphasize PSVR2 by buying "Metro Awakening"-- and it's fantastically memorable so far! My daughter was watching me play via the TV, and we had tons of really funny situations occur in the game. Our favorites involved the stealth melee: because it hardly ever registers the first time I clobber someone, I swing my arm back and forth across the NPC's head-- this causes the ragdoll physics for their bodies to behave oddly.

On a totally unrelated note, I was talking to a family member recently, and he said "how cool would it be if advancements in medical technology via AI would allow for people to live two hundred years?" My question: why in the world would anyone want to live two hundred years? We're just pilgrims in this world-- just passing through. I want to go be with my Heavenly Father! I think if I live to be seventy five or eighty, it's really going to start to feel like "what's the holdup-- time to move on." I think this is the difference between a Christ-centric view of existence, versus more of an atheistic orientation.

There is a specific person in my life who is mean and cruel to everyone, who is self-indulgent and narcissistic, yet never faces any obvious consequences. "But they won't go to heaven" came to mind-- however on further reflection, is it not true that someone could be a horrible human being their entire lives, and still go to heaven if they repent and accept Jesus at the last instant?

This raised a spiritual question for me: why bother following God's commandments if one can live however they'd like and wind up with the exact same outcome as a virtuous ascetic monk, or something along those lines?

I found a great answer to that question here. The crux of it is the notion of "leaving things too late": only the Lord knows when your life on Earth will end; you could get scrubbed in a car accident in an instant. Further, only God knows when Jesus will return-- it could be tomorrow even, who is to say? Better accept Jesus now.

The other aspect of it is muscle memory: even our aforementioned ascetic monk sins, and he's devoted his whole life to following God's will. How will someone who has spent an entire life flagrantly sinning and not caring, one hundred percent diametrically have the capacity to reverse course just as the paramedics are arriving and the person has five minutes left to live?

It's not impossible, but it's difficult to put it mildly: if they didn't have the capacity to do it at any other point in their life, what makes them think they will have the capacity later?

And of course, this is side-stepping the "virtue is its own reward"-line of thinking. It's like St. Theresa of Calcutta's "Simple Path": "The fruit of silence is prayer; the fruit of prayer is faith; the fruit of faith is love; the fruit of love is service; the fruit of service is peace." The individual I opened this post mentioning is perhaps the most wretchedly miserable person I've ever known, which is a negative consequence in-and-of itself.

All of the hedonism and sinning-- doing the opposite of the "Simple Path"-- is intended to achieve peace. But in fact it's a fool's errand; it's going about the goal via the totally wrong means.

Lots of web sites put together "game of the year"-style listings for 2024, and it got me wondering what I'd done within the hobby in that time. So I sorted the 'Wharf database descending plus perused some blog posts to craft a summary:

• Nintendo 64: Looking back on 2024, the real highlight for me were some old games I picked up for the first time. I bought an "Everdrive 64 x5" flash cart for my Nintendo 64, hooked the system up to my dad's 1989-vintage 27" Sony Trinitron CRT television, and enjoyed titles like "Turok", "Doom 64", "Diddy Kong Racing", and especially "International Superstar Soccer 64" which is probably the best arcade-style football game ever made.


• PSVR2: 2024 was the year of PSVR2 for me, and I played a number of maybe not great, but at least memorable games for it such as "Kayak VR: Mirage", "C-Smash VRS", "Arcade Paradise VR", and "Ancient Dungeon VR". The best thing I played on it was "Horizon Call of the Mountain", in spite of its woke character designs. I really should emphasize buying more games for this thing: they tend to stick out a lot more to me-- har, har-- than "flat screen" modern-day releases.


• Collector's Items: I had never played the original "Phantasy Star" before-- so I bought the incredible Switch version, and made a new friend during the process of buying an equally-incredible hint guide from him. I also went in on a modded GBA, which is something I've always wanted to add to my collection.


• Game Development: I taught myself game development in HaxeFlixel, and started working on my very first release in it. There will be a lot more to come in that area, but over December of 2024 I got the whole title screen and menu systems fully-implemented, on top of the full CI/CD pipeline I'd created the prior December.


• Modern Games: It's surprising how few conventional, modern titles I actually played in 2024! These days I'm more compelled to spend my time within the hobby in other areas. Some I did play included "Palworld" and "Flight Simulator 2024", both on PC, along with "Madden NFL 25" on the PlayStation 5, and "Super Mario Bros. Wonder" on Switch. Probably the most interesting "modern" games I played were remakes of old titles, such as "Quake 2", "Killing Time: Resurrected", and the remastered original "Baldur's Gate".

Outside of gaming, 2024 was the year when my daughter landed her first-ever job; it was the year when I was elected to my Area Catholic Community's Pastoral Council; it was the year my wife became Catholic; it was the year where I had big breakthroughs in terms of my nervousness to participate in the liturgy as lector and sacristan. Unfortunately, my living situation remains just as nerve-wracking to me as ever-- hopefully 2025 will provide some kind of resolution on that front.

In terms of 2025, it will be the year of the much-belated "Switch 2", so I expect that platform to mostly dominate things for me. And as for life itself, who knows! Hopefully it will be a prosperous year where I can be consistently close to the Lord, something I struggle with at times.

Wifey, each of my kids, and I each maintain our own gaming PCs. Here is what all of the specs will be as of hopefully just a few weeks from now, if RTX 5000 is out by then:


Sniper's PC

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9700X
Motherboard: Gigabyte B650 Aorus Elite AX
RAM: 32 gig. DDR5 6000
Video Card: RTX 5070 Ti
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 1 TB
Power Supply: Corsair RM850x
Case: Corsair 3000D White
Operating System: Windows 11 Pro
Display: LG C3 OLED, 4K HDR 120Hz


Angel's PC

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7700X
Motherboard: Gigabyte B650 Aorus Elite AX V2
RAM: 32 gig. DDR5 6000
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Eagle OC 12 GB
Storage: Samsung 990 Pro 1 TB
Power Supply: Corsair RM850x
Case: Corsair 4000D White
Operating System: Windows 11 Pro
Display: Vizio P50-C1, 4K HDR 60Hz


Spacemario's PC

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5800X3D
Motherboard: MSI B450 Gaming Plus
RAM: 32 gig. DDR4 3400
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2080 WINDFORCE OC 8GB
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 1 TB
Power Supply: Corsair TX750M
Case: DIYPC D480-W-RGB White
Operating System: Windows 11 Pro
Display: AOC Q27G3XMN, 1440p HDR 144Hz


Hennapon's PC

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5700X
Motherboard: ASRock B350 Pro
RAM: 32 gig. DDR4 3400
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 6GB
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 1 TB
Power Supply: Corsair TX750M
Case: DIYPC D480-W-RGB White
Operating System: Windows 11 Pro
Display: AOC Q27G3XMN, 1440p HDR 144Hz


I think the next upgrades will be GPU-related: Spacemario would like something with a little more performance, maybe a 5060 or something is on the cards at some point in the next twelve months? As for Hennapon, I'm seriously looking at Intel's Arc as a possibility given the low pricepoints and her specific game use cases-- seems like a good fit.

To open up 2025 and while I'm on a list kick, why not refresh my favorite metal albums of all time ranking?

1. Rising Force - Yngwie Malmsteen (1984)
2. Resurrection - Galneryus (2010)
3. Invictus - Virgin Steele (1998)
4. Angel of Salvation - Galneryus (2012)
5. Rust in Peace - Megadeth (1990)
6. Dust to Dust - Heavenly (2004)
7. V: The New Mythology Suite - Symphony X (2000)
8. Phoenix Rising - Galneryus (2011)
9. Trilogy - Yngwie Malmsteen (1988)
10. Images and Words - Dream Theater (1991)
11. Epica - Kamelot (2003)
12. Hall of the Mountain King - Savatage (1987)
13. Power Plant - Gamma Ray (1998)
14. Land of the Free - Gamma Ray (1995)
15. Crystal Logic - Manilla Road (1983)
16. No Smoke Without Fire - Anthem (1990)
17. Destiny - Stratovarius (1998)
18. Ecliptica - Sonata Arctica (1999)
19. Sign of the Winner - Heavenly (2001)
20. Dawn of Victory - Rhapsody (2000)
21. Defying the Rules - Hibria (2004)
22. The Black Halo - Kamelot (2005)
23. Chapters from a Vale Forlorn - Falconer (2002)
24. Reign in Blood - Slayer (1986)
25. Temple of Shadows - Angra (2004)

As an added bonus, here are some metal-related YouTube videos I return to over and over again, in no particular order:

• Yngwie Malmsteen - Far Beyond the Sun live.
• Galneryus - Tear Off Your Chain live.
• Galneryus - Departure Cover, (the "Hunter x Hunter" opening song) live.
• Heavenly - Virus live.
• Rainbow - Kill the King live.
• Slayer - Raining Blood & Angel of Death live.
• Gamma Ray - Razorblade Sigh live.

This video is "Sega Lord X's" equivalent to my favorite games of all time list, it seems-- he just uses different language to describe the idea: "These aren't the best games I've ever played, but they are my 'comfort games'." We even have some overlap, which is fun!

I don't update my list very often-- which makes sense, since forty years into the hobby my taste is pretty-well refined by now-- but his video gave me inspiration to do the first new revision in quite some time. Head over there to take a peek!

The big change involves me replacing the original Sonic with the "Sonic Origins" collection-- I quite literally don't even play the original ROM or cartridge anymore, plus the collection has rejuvenated my love for all of the Genesis Sonic titles, including "Sonic CD" which I adore now. The collection is the definitive way to experience them all, even with the missing Michael Jackson-associated music.

Nintendo also pops into the list for the first time ever, with several entries-- all made possible because I blew the list all the way up from thirty-five to a massive fifty. I could have kept going, and maybe I will some day. I could probably double the size, but by that point it would start to defeat the purpose, which is "what games do repeatedly play over and over?"

This is super cool: it's an emulator of the very first web browser, on a subset of the very first world wide web. Totally awesome!

While my dad and I did have a CompuServe membership in the very early 90s, we didn't jump onto the actual internet until 1994 when we got one of those "Internet in a Box" packages, which came with Mozaic-- so that was my first exposure to the web. I soon taught myself HTML and within months was making my own web pages. Good memories.

On a totally unrelated note, I'm going to memorize this-- the Aaronic Blessing-- and bless my kids with it whenever appropriate:



On yet another unrelated note, I've made substantial progress with my game: the intro and title screen sequence plus menu are complete; the options menu is done, with saving to and loading from disk; and I have the resolution plus overscan correction working on my CRT TV, along with the game looking fantastic on a modern display in 16:9.

The next step are the save and new game screens, with name entry. The latter will be an interesting challenge to implement.

I've seen a lot of commentary online about Nintendo having "learned their lesson with the Wii U", and thus going conservative with the Switch 2 to guarantee success. But I think it's a lot more nuanced than that:

• NES: Risky, success.
• Super NES: Conservative, success.
• Nintendo 64: Conservative, didn't really pan out.
• Gamecube: Conservative, didn't really pan out.
• Wii: Risky, success.
• Wii U: Risky, didn't really pan out.
• Switch: Risky, success.

For the risky designs, that's 3 successes and 1 failure. For the conservative designs, it's 1 success and 2 failures. It's less clear on the handheld side for Nintendo, since they've always been dominant no matter what they've put out, setting aside the early period for the 3DS.

What I see is that playing it safe or taking a risk can either be winning strategies, and actually Nintendo tends to win it the biggest when they do take risks. I think people are reading too much into the Wii U's failure, then extrapolating to infinity overall generalizations which don't hold.

Will the average person on the street really want just-another Switch but with marginally-- to the ordinary person, that is-- better graphics, at a premium price point which could be as high as $499? I don't see that idea catching "lightning in a bottle" like the original NES, the Wii, or the Switch-- but maybe I'll be proven wrong.

I know that I'll buy one-- I've been on the Nintendo train since fall of 2012 via the Wii U, and I've already got the money earmarked in my March budget. But I'm also an enthusiast who builds gaming PCs and owns a top-of-the-line OLED Steam Deck, a PlayStation 5 Pro, and innumerable other things. The potential mainstream success of the Switch 2 is what I'm curious about.

I'm not traditionally a huge movie guy, but I'm starting to come around.

Over the past few days, my daughter and I watched the first two "Sonic the Hedgehog" films, then we went as a larger family to see the third one in theaters last night. The first movie was a dud I thought, but the second one was very entertaining-- and the third one was excellent: I was smiling throughout the whole thing. Without giving any spoilers, the end credits of the third film will have you super pumped to see the fourth one.

Before watching the movies though, my daughter watched me play through Sonic 1, 2, CD, and part of 3 & Knuckles via the "Sonic Origins" collection on PS5. That wound up being a smart decision, because she picked up on tons of references in the films, to the games.

In other news, I've been working on my HaxeFlixel game a bit over the past two days. I'm pretty nervous for all of the lectoring I need to do for upcoming Masses, so this has been a nice distraction. So far I've just been implementing a dynamic menu system, which I will be able to use in the game proper for both character dialog, and for the settings menu I'm creating. The people on the Haxe Discord server have been super helpful when I've had questions.

In any event, Lazio play Lecce soon. After that huge "back down to Earth" Inter loss, I'm curious to see how the team responds.

One thing which has helped me from having a "wandering eye" when it comes to women is the realization that God has a model, which he wants for all of us: a husband, a wife, and children-- what one might call a family. He wants everyone to be a mother or a father or a brother or a sister, a son or a daughter-- to be a part of a family. Then, all of the families interconnect to form the larger body; imagine a honeycomb, with all of the different compartments joined together.

If I were to sin with another woman, not only am I corrupting my honeycomb cell, but I'm corrupting hers as well. I'm robbing both of us of our ability to have God's model. But it's worse than that: the dropped pebble has ripple effects outward, as the sin sets a bad example for others, causes children to be deprived of their proper parenting which will cause them issues, and myriad other problems.

I think this honeycomb metaphor can be applied to sin more broadly too. The Lord has a moral code He wants us to follow. Any time we deviate from that code-- i.e., we sin-- we are introducing corruption into the larger honeycomb lattice, weakening its walls and structural integrity.

So when I see a pretty lady these days, rather than experience desire I think to myself, "I hope she finds a wonderful man with which to raise children and create a family, if she doesn't have one already."

I can't get over how silly Naughty Dog's latest game looks. It features a black lesbian shaving her already shaved head, because why not belabor the message, along with other "girl boss" characters with as much charm as bags of rocks. To be clear, Naughty Dog haven't released a game I've been interested in since "Crash Team Racing" on the PSX-- but even by that low bar, what lessons have they and Sony learned from "Concord"? Apparently nothing.

On top of that you've got the latest example of a virtual sex swap with "The Witcher 4". As was the case above, I tried all three of the titles and couldn't get into any of them-- but for fans of the series, isn't playing with Geralt, or some equally-cool protagonist, the whole point? I mean, they are character action games, correct? How many white males, which probably make up ninety-plus percent of the game's audience, are going to want to play with this ugly boss woman character?

On the positive side, the 3DO is in the process of receiving an arcade perfect port of "Mortal Kombat II", out of nowhere! I was always more of a "Street Fighter" guy, but have been wanting to give Midway's famous series a shot over the past few years-- this port will be where I jump in I think. Or, maybe I'll start with the original on the Mega Drive? Haven't decided yet.

I've been playing quite a bit of the "Flight Simulator 2024" career mode. Unfortunately, I hit a point where I seemingly can't progress: I spent all of my money buying a helicopter, since I'm seriously interested in getting good at flying those-- only for the game to not have even a single mission I can perform with my new company. I even ground out some employee missions to get cash to relocate to one of the noted "hot spots" for winter, and still the map is empty. I think it's simply a bug.

Speaking of helicopters, I always wanted to go on a ride in one-- but not anymore now that I understand how they work. Airplanes are intrinsically stable-- in tune with the laws of physics. You set your aileron plus elevator trims, and away you go, plane practically flies itself. But helicopters need constant fussing: anti-torque pedal pushing to prevent the thing from spinning in circles, there is a huge delay between cyclic activity and the chopper gaining and losing altitude, the aircraft wants to constantly drift all over the place... they are extraordinarily dangerous!

Finally, I'm planning to write my "Killing Time: Resurrected" review today. I also ordered one of those "better-than-the-original" long box repros for Saturn, this time of "Saturn Bomberman", should be a blast once it comes in. And on a non-gaming note, Lotito made his long-awaited "Stadio Flaminio" presentation, it looks like it's going to move full steam ahead from here. I'm thrilled beyond belief at the extraordinary season Lazio is having, this is one of my favorite squads in the whole twenty years I've been following the club-- what a team!

One of my all-time most memorable 3DO games-- Video Game Esoterica's favorite game of all time in fact-- is Studio 3DO's Metroidvania-FPS hybrid, "Killing Time". Along with "The Need for Speed", I think it has the best graphics on the system-- I mean, just take a look at this picture I snapped several years ago:



I finally got around to buying the Nightdive Studios remaster on PlayStation 5. This new version of the game runs at native 4K, 120 fps, with HDR, and has completely re-worked visuals. In fact, they even went frame-by-frame through the FMV and touched all of that up!

In preparation though, I fired up the RetroArch Opera core on the Steam Deck OLED, and played through the game's opening few areas, capturing some screenshots as I did so. Let's start with the intro FMV-- here is the original game's:





And here is the remastered version:





Original title and name entry screens:





New title and name entry screens:





The original's opening forest area:





One thing I wasn't expecting is that the game uses the PC port levels, which are totally different than the 3DO's. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, since I like the 3DO rendition's areas. But here is the closest apples-to-apples shot from an opening area of the remastered edition:





The mansion foyer, original version:





The mansion foyer, new version:





And finally, screenshots of some of the enemies, original game:





And some screenshots of enemies, remastered game:





The Bob Vieira soundtrack and all of the sound effects made it over to the remastered version, which is fantastic! There are also improvements to the minimap, the player can now jump and crouch, which is kind of weird, and there is gyro aiming to boot. It's a typical A+ job from Nightdive Studios, expect a full review in the coming weeks.

This is very much a "well, yes and no" situation: if you had a genius-level programmer like a John Carmack sitting down, hammering out assembler and having all of the Saturn's various chips working simultaneously, there's no doubt the system can do some crazy things. By contrast, the PlayStation has a full-on triangle-based rasterizer built right into the SoC-- and it's fast! Take a look at even launch titles like "Warhawk" to see what it's capable of.

But while game developers were undoubtedly very talented back then-- much, much moreso than today-- not every development team had someone at a Carmack-like level. Further, games aren't developed in a bubble: they are created under strict budget and timeline constraints. So in real-world terms, the PlayStation's setup is significantly faster than the quad-based myriad chip design of the Saturn-- that's how things manifested in real-life when both platforms were under active commercial development.

While we're on the topic of modern-day game programmers, check out this video. Heck, while we're at it what about this one? I've said many times before, the PlayStation 5 GPU can solve ten trillion floating point math problems per second-- there is no reason why games should be having any kind of even remote performance problems, or have any sort of lack of ambition. Hand this hardware to developers from the 80s and 90s, and they'd made the Holodeck somehow!

I don't think the kids today are dumber, I've met a lot of extremely sharp people in their teens and twenties. But I don't think they are being taught the right things in university: everything today is higher-level languages, middleware, and off-the-shelf engines to the point where a lot of the "art of the hardcore" has faded from the industry. Outside of rare exceptions such as "Penny's Big Breakaway", I can't think of any developers doing "down to the metal"-style programming anymore.

Speaking of video games, I've been on a real resurgence with PC gaming lately. My latest kicks have been "World of Warcraft: Dragonflight", which looks like an up-res'd Dreamcast game and with ray-traced shadows bolted on, plus "Flight Simulator 2024". Specifically in the latter, I've been teaching myself how to fly helicopters. Here I am cruising around my old Twin Cities area, hovering over my old house, near my old city's water tower, checking out the Twins stadium, and weaving around the buildings in downtown Minneapolis.

Click on any of them to see the full-resolution versions:









The only struggle I'm having right now is, it seems like the cyclic-- at least in this particular model of helicopter, which is the only one I've tried so far-- is on a razor's edge: either the machine will hover, or it will drop like a rock; so when I try to land, I can't establish a nice clean two-foot hover, I instead slam down on the ground. I think I just need to continue to practice, it feels very fussy.

Wifey and I are taking this Christmas to do some PC updating a across-the-board.

My daughter is getting bumped from an ancient Ryzen 1600 to a 5700x, and is getting a mini-LED 1440p 180Hz panel, with HDR and VRR. The CPU upgrade will let me get that machine off of Windows 10, plus give her a major performance boost. She's only on an RTX 2060, so maybe next year a GPU upgrade will be in order too. Meanwhile, my son is getting the same monitor. He's already on a Ryzen 5800x3d and Windows 11, along with my old RTX 2080-- pretty decent shape. As for the wife, I just ordered a brand new B550 setup for her: she will get my 7700x, and I will take a brand new 9700x. In January I will order a myself an RTX 5000 series card, and she will get my mighty, 40 teraflops 4070 Ti.

Finally and changing topics, here is a complete list of all of the refereeing mistakes made against Lazio this season. The list is astonishing when you see them all lined up in one spot!

I have an aunt who lives North of San Francisco, and a first cousin-- her son-- who works at Activision Blizzard down in Santa Monica. He drove up to stay with her over Thanksgiving. I was thinking, "Oh, must be a short drive, I mean they both live in California after all." So I fired up Flight Simulator 2024, and... wow, what a trip-- and that was through the air! I talked to him on the phone, and it was an eight hour drive via car!

Here is Santa Monica in the air, followed by the Activision Blizzard headquarters, haha:





From there I flew up over and along the mountains, headed North. They become quite arid after a bit:



After what felt like forever I arrived in the San Francisco area. The airport is like half the size of the city, absolutely astonishing:





Continuing North I saw this weird antenna tower, followed by the actual downtown area:





I passed by the Bay Bridge and some weird landmass called "Treasure Island":





Finally, I came to her city, landed at the airport, and parked. California is a cool looking place from the air.

This is an excellent article about what resentment does to the body, and how to move past it. Every morning when I wake up, I point to Heaven with both hands and just say, "Thank you Lord for another day." It's amazing what a simple gesture of gratitude can do.

In other news, Trump isn't even in office yet, yet he got Mexico's president to agree to stop all caravans and other migrants from going to the US's Southern border-- he had a phone call with her and got the whole thing cleared up. And to be clear, this is the over two months before his inauguration. He's not even in the White House yet, and he's already running the country!

In totally unrelated news, this notion of determining men and women based on hormone levels is completely the wrong approach. For example, there is apparently a woman-- a legitimate, actual woman-- named Barbra Banda, who has extreme levels of Testosterone compared to the average female. This lady actually failed a what they are calling "gender eligibility test", deeming if someone is allowed to participate in a given sport.

I solved this whole John Money gender-bending question back in 2018. Sex and gender are identified in exactly the way I lay things out in that post: there is no "let's measure hormone levels" aspect of it, because hormones can fluctuate for people depending on which stage of life they are in, or even from moment-to-moment during a given day. If Barbra Banda has female genitalia, XX chromosomes, and a body which serves the function of female reproductivity, then Banda is a woman and should be allowed to participate in women's sports. If those factors are in the converse, then Banda is a man and should be competing with the men.

It's not really that complicated. A simple drop of the shorts during the next annual physical might be enough to clear up the question immediately.

Finally, I bought this but on the PlayStation 5 so I could get one hundred and twenty frames per second support. If I can ever finish "Infinite Wealth"-- save counter at almost one hundred and thirty hours, and counting-- I'll be happy to move on to "Killing Time" plus a couple of PSVR2 titles in my review backlog.

A little bit ago I installed "Super Mario 64 PC Builder 2" and used it to compile the path-traced version of the game, plus to install a high resolution texture pack. Within the game's settings, I set the motion blur to fifty, and capped the game at one hundred and twenty frames per second-- a frame rate which my PC can maintain in the game flawlessly, at native 4K.

Along with a fully maxed-out "Cyberpunk 2077", "Minecraft RTX", "Quake 2 RTX", and the path-traced versions of "Doom" and "Doom II", this is in that top-tier of video game graphics that I've ever seen. Click on any of the below screenshots to see the full-sized versions. Look at the bounce lighting, the reflections, and the shadows in particular.

And screenshots don't even do it justice; seeing it in motion on my OLED TV is astonishing!

Haven't really had much to write about lately! Just working as usual, picking up my daughter from her job, participating in church stuff. On a really weird whim I started craving an MMORPG of all things, so I installed World of Warcraft and have been having a lot of fun with it-- it's like an up-res'd Dreamcast title or something, kind of cool at native 2160p with Auto HDR, 120 fps, and ray-traced shadows. I also bought Super Mario Bros. Wonder, but haven't been feeling compelled to play it much. Finally, I installed Flight Simulator 2024, but it has some major issues-- more to come on that one later.

A fellow named Daniel DiSilva, the founder of what's called the "Divine Mercy Institute", gave a sensational talk at my church last week, going into extreme depth regarding the origins and history of the original painting, as well as background on where all of the cheap-- to my eyes, frankly-- clones came from.

For those who haven't ever seen the painting, here it is. My church bought a beautifully framed, 1:1 scale, full-size print of this, at 8000 dpi!



This was painted originally by a guy who was taking instructions straight from a sister, who was herself taking instruction straight from Jesus. She had this artist re-do just the right arm something like seventeen times-- every little detail had to be perfect. She had the artist spend immense time on the face in particular, as restorers had later discovered while doing repairs.

Many years ago I wrote about the "Shroud of Turin". I'm struggling to find the post now, but the gist of it is that I spent hours and hours researching it, categorizing all of the various pieces of evidence on all sides of the question. In the end, I concluded that the shroud is actually real-- the only way scientists were able to reproduce the image was by using many millions of dollars of high-tech equipment to bombard a fabric with insane amounts of ultraviolet radiation.

Here is the face in the shroud, corrected for contrast:



It stands to reason then that if the shroud really does show us Jesus's face, and the sister was taking direction straight from Jesus, the two faces should be pretty similar, right? Let's compare:



I zoomed way the heck in within The Gimp, and started drawing some measurement lines, counting pixels:



The gist of it is that the two faces are extremely similar: notice the shape of the eyebrows, the shape and proportions of the nose especially the thin bridge and the bulb, the way the nostrils flare upwards diagonally, the shape and composition of the facial hair, the shape and width of the mouth, and even the relative ratios of all the constituent parts.

The picture in the painting is slightly wider ratio-wise, and the nose is just a smidgen shorter, along with some other minute differences. But overall, it's not a stretch to say that it's the same face. The face on the shroud might simply appear thinner because of gauntness from the ordeal Jesus went through-- whereas perhaps he had the sister and painter convey His physical form from healthier days?

Lazio and Vikings almost always run in parallel, right down to alternating good-and-bad seasons-- but this year has been especially uncanny. The most recent example came today: Lazio went on the road to a lousy Monza side, played an almost unwatchably bad game, yet squeaked out with a win anyway; meanwhile, Vikings went on the road to a lousy Jacksonville side, played an almost unwatchably bad game, yet squeezed out with a win as well.

In other news my PlayStation 5 Pro is due to arrive tomorrow, I'll have fun playing with that. It'll be a nice upgrade which will bring things closer to what my PC can deliver. At the same time, it'll undoubtedly make me miss the old days when getting a new video game system meant moving from the Atari 2600 to a Sega Genesis, or having a shiny new Sega Saturn under the TV, or something similarly Earth-shattering.

I think that's part of why I like old consoles so much: I sit in front of my Japanese PC Engine Duo-R, and imagine the excitement the person who bought it originally must have felt, sitting there playing games like "Gate of Thunder" and "Castlevania: Rondo of Blood" when they were brand new.

Absolutely thrilled at Trump's victory, what a relief! Time to clean up the mess of the past four years, and get things back on track. Here is a nice summary of many aspects of his platform; all great stuff:

• Deport illegal aliens starting with criminals; continue building on prior four hundred miles of border wall; use tariffs to pressure Mexico to stop sending "asylum seekers" to the US border, which is a violation of international law as these people are supposed to go to the nearest country first-- not travel from Venezuela, or take a ship from freaking Africa.


• Greatly cut Federal regulations and red tape; extend his 2017 tax cuts; lower corporate rate to fifteen percent for domestically-made goods, which is very competitive by OECD standards.


• Attempt to eliminate the trade deficit by introducing tariffs of at least ten percent, to increase domestic manufacturing.


• Greatly increase drilling for oil and natural gas, try to get back towards the energy independence he established during his first term.


• Prohibit Federally-funded colleges and universities from teaching Cultural Marxism, plus prohibit public schools from their current anti-white racial discrimination; let parents use tax dollars for private or religious schools!

He also has recently floated getting rid of the income tax and replacing it with consumption taxes, which would be mind-bogglingly cool.

Even better, he now "gets it" and won't be surrounding himself with cabinet members actively trying to destroy him. Considering how amazing his accomplishments were in his first term when that was the reality, I can't even imagine what he can get done this time around.

I have a couple of montages all ready to go!

• Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (Here)
• Madden NFL 25 (Here)

Regarding Madden specifically, I did my usual sports game franchise mode deal of taking one of the worst teams in the game, wheeling and dealing with the CPU teams to increase player quality, hoard draft picks, and simultaneously improve finances, then play through a season or three, continuing to build as I go.

So far I've played a single season, here were the stats of some of my star players. Expect my full review of the game soon.

I pray for their sakes that people on the Left will be able to calm down if Trump does win the election. During my final years in Murderapolis, I was barred by them from going to the doctor, going to the dentist, being able to buy groceries or going inside of any building if I wouldn't demean myself by ridiculously taping a paper towel to my mouth.

For months I felt unsafe walking out of my house due to George Floyd rioters throwing bricks through windows and setting fire to buildings near me, among the generally skyrocketing crime. People on the Left told me repeatedly that they wanted me to lose my career, have my kids taken away from me, throw me into an internment camp, or even force a morality pill on me, because I refused to let them inject me and my children with the clot shots.

They routinely brag about how they want to stack the Supreme Court, which is in essence getting rid of it. They want to get rid of the electoral college. They brag about how they want to replace one racial group, white people, with other racial groups so that the Left can perpetually have a one-party state. They want the legal system to have racial bias in it, so that outcomes such as sentences depend on the color of your skin.

I bring all of this up to remind my Leftist friends: it's their side which are the Fascists. The evidence indicates that they are in a lot more danger if the Left gets and obtains power-- they should be rooting for a Donald Trump victory, not dreading it.

I have a resting pulse of about 60. In fact during sleep, my pulse can drop as low as 28 or 29. The below is what often happens when I lector at Mass. One of these actually happened when I was only sacristan, I think because I was nervous about having prepared enough hosts:



There is an awesome guy at my church who is recruiting me to become a deacon in the Catholic church. I'm interested in learning more, but I don't know if my body would hold up under the stress of having constant Mass involvement!

Yesterday before Mass, I had one of my friends approach me in the Sacristy, and express her disappointment at how I had handled the setting up of a recent Liturgy Committee meeting: "How did I get invited, and why? I had no idea what we were supposed to be talking about; I kept waiting, 'are more people going to show up?' I'm sad and disappointed that I wasn't given more of a heads-up."

The reality was that I also had no idea what the agenda should have been, and also went into it blind! All the same, it was my fault for not explaining in greater detail what I had known. I explained all of this to her, and told her I was very sorry she was uncomfortable. "So am I", she replied with a smile.

And that was the end of the conversation-- we shifted to other, more happy subjects, and that was that. As I was driving home, it dawned on me: "So this is how healthy people express their feelings!"

Even though she was uncomfortable, sad, and disappointed, there was zero hint of anger, or malice, or a desire for retribution. Practically every single time in my life I encounter what she was feeling, it has carried along with it chains, where the person shouts and yells, expecting some kind of emotional or monetary restitution-- sometimes they even have ulterior motives, taking advantage of their emotional position to gain an edge over me and others.

But in the conversation with my friend, there were no strings attached. She wasn't looking for sympathy; she wasn't trying to make herself the center of attention. She wasn't trying to gain an upper hand, she wasn't trying to manipulate me. She felt a certain way, and simply wanted to share how she felt! It was constructive and positive and brought us closer together, versus shoving us further apart.

It was also a good lesson for me in practical terms: I've spent the past twenty-six years in my career in agenda-less meetings, leaning into uncertainty, thrown right into the fire-- it was a lack of empathy on my part that not everyone is cut out for or wants that kind of situation! From now on when I set up these church meetings, I will do a mental assessment of each person individually, and check in where it's warranted to make sure they feel good going in.

I spent six months as part of a planning sub-committee, having a famous Catholic YouTuber do an event at one of the churches in my Area Catholic Community-- and we finally had the event this past Sunday! We had around a thousand people packed into the church. I wish I could say the guy's name or show pictures, but I don't want to "dox" my location. As a volunteer I got front-row seats, and he was literally leaning over me at one point.

I've been watching his YouTube content for a long time now, so it was very strange shaking his hand and talking to him in person. I asked him how much preparation work he does before an interview, and he said he'll literally read every book they've ever written.

In other religious life news, this article about "near death experiences", or "NDEs" was super interesting. The descriptions from these people exactly matches the Christian explanations for God and Heaven, exactly what Jesus Himself told us. Heck, I was just reading the petitions for a Mass recently, and the words for the "recently departed" were "may they rest in God's perpetual light", which is straight from these "NDEs".

In football news, I've been super critical of VAR since day one, writing stuff like this since 2017 and 2018. As is often the case, it took the mainstream many years but they've finally caught up with what I was saying from the very beginning. From the article, translated:



Like I've been saying since 2017, VAR doesn't lead to better outcomes: in the end decisions still come down to the discretion of the same individuals. The only thing VAR does is delay the game, and turn the bad decisions into three-ring circuses. As the article says, all VAR does is change the means, not the interpretations.

It especially hurts because the current body of refereeing in Italy hates Lazio as a team. Almost every major controversial decision goes against us, and it's all well documented, to the point where the referees will do reviews and routinely "apologize" to us after the fact and admit the mistakes-- but then go on to have another horrible game the next time too.

I think we're the best team in Serie A this year. I saw statistics recently where we run the second-least, and have the second-best ball distribution. That's a clear formula for dominance-- and we are dominating. So why are we in fifth? Well, we've lost three games, and all three were wildly influenced by blindingly major refereeing mistakes.

And by the way, Lazio and Vikings always follow the same cadence. This season it's been especially pronounced. For example, two games ago both teams won on last-minute plays by wily old veterans Pedro and Stephon Gilmore, respectively. Then this past game they both lost super tight matches to powerhouse members of their respective leagues in Juventus and Detroit, albeit the Lazio result was highly controversial due to the aforementioned refereeing mistakes.

In video game news, I'm playing "Super Mario Bros. Wonder" on Switch, "Arcade Paradise VR" on PSVR2, and "Madden NFL 25" on PS5. I'm not sure when I'll get time to play them enough to do reviews, but you can expect them at some point.

I was just telling my mom the other day, that I suspect we're going to continue to see this weird descent in the country into a third-world nation. Here I'm reading that American corporations, the Federal government, and human traffickers are all cooperating to provide cheap labor for factories. With the untold millions of illegal aliens who have poured over the border, how long until entire sections of towns have been taken over by violent gang wars, with gun-platform helicopters flying overhead raining bullets, like I've seen in videos from Mexico?

I'm in the Twin Cities visiting family, and I wound up having a three hour conversation with a couple of guys at GameStop. It's fun discussing the hobby with other passionate people. I exchanged contact info with one of them. I'd been assuming that GameStop was about four hours away from shuttering completely-- but the store manager was telling us that they actually turned a small profit this past quarter, that they are basically a debt-free company, and that the current CEO seems like he's trying to help the company survive long-term, and that he's not just using it as a quick cash grab.

I've always rooted for them, back to the Funcoland era. I really like having a brick and mortar option for the hobby. The one in the town near me closed a few years ago, so it's now an over hour-long drive to the closest GameStop-- but when I visit the Twin Cities I like to stop in.

It's been tough to break away, even for a couple of days. Yesterday I got a call asking if I could sub in as Sacristan on Sunday-- then got another call asking if I could cover a funeral today at 13:00. I would have said "yes" to both things if I were even in the area! I like the fact that I'm getting so intertwined in things there, it's been such a blessing to be involved in something other than my career, from which I've never felt any sense of fulfillment. My absolute dream would be if they hired for a "Director of IT"-style position at my "ACC"-- I would be willing to have a significant pay cut even, to accept a job like that.

In any event, today is a "down" day for me to work on my game music a little. I've also gotten back into Smash Bros. on Switch a bit, and I had a copy of "Super Mario Bros. Wonder" show up, so I'll probably start that today as well.

Once in awhile I'll read "The Video Game Critic" reviews such as this one. He's one of the only other people I know on the entire web who runs a review site like mine. His forum is often pretty cringey-- they are Gen X'ers like myself, but are deeply out of touch with both gaming news and the broader culture-at-large: "Did you hear they made dis here new video game?", like four years after it came out.

The good news is that the Critic himself is finally-- seven or eight years later, but better late than never-- caught up to Cultural Marxism, and in fact he calls it out in the aforelinked review. Several members of his forum were butthurt about it, but I say good for him! Of course, those butthurt forum members can only come back with: "Hurr, Critic doesn't like black people in games!"

As a refresher:

• "There are two groups of people who generalize son: those who do, and those who don't." Like the joke, Karl Marx broke all of humanity down into the "proletariat" and the "bourgeoisie". You're one or the other. The latter oppresses the former.


• He predicted that the "capitalist"-- as he called them-- countries would collapse, and the Communist ones would thrive. Why? Because in the former, the downtrodden workers would overthrow the hideous property owners.


• Instead, the complete opposite happened: the Communist countries were such destitute shitholes that they had to put walls around them to keep people in-- whereas the average worker in the "capitalist" countries became wildly rich by almost any historical standard.


• Some Jewish eggheads at the Frankfurt School researched this in the 1920s. Their conclusion wasn't that Marx's over-generalized model was too simple to be useful: rather, they doubled down! You see, men oppress; Christians oppress; heteroxexuals oppress; white people oppress; and so forth. Hence the birth of "intersectionality".


• Hitler caught on to what these nefarious eggheads were up to, and wisely ejected them from Germany in the 30's. They wound up in America, in New York City-- lucky us.


• According to their model, your worth as a human being is calculated by how many "victimhood" points you have. Forget your specific life experiences, that doesn't matter: what matters is how many boxes you tick. Just like with Marx, an entire human being can be distilled down into a tiny handful superficial attributes, which then drive the legal code, hiring practices, access to health care, and so forth.


• If you're a black Muslim lesbian in a wheelchair, you should have more "representation", more legal rights, have more financial freebies given to you, have access to the better schools, get first dibs on the best jobs and promotions, at the literal expense of a, let's say, straight white dude. Meritocracy is thus replaced, as is the hard-fought "Martin Luther King Jr." Civil Rights progress which is tossed out the window-- they were actively trying to repeal all of that in California.


• This is why black people dominate commercials, video games, and so forth despite being less than thirteen percent of the population. Watching TV in America is like watching TV in Zimbabwe at this point. It's why the "independent boss womyn" characters dominate gaming now.


• The reason the female characters are being uglified is because Cultural Marxists want to subvert what they call the "male gaze": "heteronormativity", as they call normal pro-creative human sexuality, is "oppressive" therefore anything which a straight man might like should be removed, including attractive female characters.


• If you object to this hateful and utterly illiberal ideology and its racism and sexism, you are told "you just don't like black people", or "you just don't like women". "Gee, too many black people for you, eh Critic?!?! It's dat right-wing garbage, eh Critic?!"


• The people who say "you don't like black people": actively support this bizarre cult-like dogma; OR, are clueless zombies who literally don't "get it"; OR are weak-knee'd and pretend to support it so they can fit in with their social groups.

Lazio just steam rolled yet another team, this time in the form of a very good Nice squad, worth over two hundred million Euro, and who clearly had come to play football. Lazio are playing at such an elite level right now, a good team playing an "A" game isn't enough to get a result against them. It's been so much fun to watch, I'm a huge fan of our new players and coach!

As is often the case, Vikings are on the same cadence and are also an elite force right now. So every time I tune in to, I'm getting to watch my side dismantle opponents. These moments don't happen too often overall, so I enjoy them when they do.