What I Watched#
✨ Spy Family Season 2#
A very heartwarming, cute, and funny show. I finally found the time to finish the second season. Many shows' second seasons leave me feeling bored and lacking in excitement, but this one did not at all. The pacing is still great, and it remains very engaging. I look forward to the third season.
😅 Dune Part 2 & Hell's Paradise#
Mild Spoilers
I mention these two works together because, in my view, they both have fragmented plots but stunning visuals (art style). As a musical anime, the shortcomings in the plot of Hell's Paradise can be compensated by the animation and music. However, Dune Part 2 really disappointed me. As a film, telling a good story is the top priority. The memes about Lisan al-Gaib, Chen's "Didi Bug," and the ease with which the Mother figure brainwashes the southern regions left me, a non-original fan, feeling confused. The plot in the Colosseum also felt a bit silly, and the close-quarters knife fight at the end resembled a child's play. The Emperor's legions being suddenly weakened was also not clearly explained.
With these questions in mind, I read the original work and found some answers. In the setting, the people of Dune are equivalent to the indigenous, and with the Sisterhood's brainwashing over centuries, they are fervently devoted to the Messiah and the Mother figure. The Emperor's legions were not weakened; the Fremen simply have stronger combat capabilities.
Unfortunately, this book is quite old, and many sci-fi works that lock away technology make it hard for me to enjoy. The discussions about religion and fate that many people praise seem very forced to me, merely deepening the sense of destiny through the Princess Diaries. This is as perplexing to me as the "indescribable horror" of craftsmanship. Horror and a sense of fate should not be expressed through the author's repetitive self-assertion in the book but should come through the plot and scene descriptions. However, their works completely fail to evoke a sense of horror or so-called fatalism for me; perhaps I lack imagination. I give up on it.
🎊 A Design Book for Everyone#
A very good introductory design book that finally helped me, as a novice, understand knowledge about layout, color, and fonts.
Others#
🎰 Joker Cards#
As a poker enthusiast, I naturally had to give it a try. After playing, I found that it doesn't relate much to the overall rules of Texas Hold'em. Gambling has nothing to do with it; it's just a card roguelike game that borrows the blind bets and hand types from Texas Hold'em.
It's relatively quick to pick up and quite engaging. The game's music and interaction system are excellent, but there are also quite a few drawbacks, such as long settlement times (note: the settings page can adjust the speed), the music being so catchy that it can easily put you to sleep (perhaps it's good for helping with sleep), the frustration from insufficient upgrades, and some unclear descriptions of Joker card effects.
Overall, the game is quite good, but it's not very replayable. I hope there will be continuous updates and maintenance to bring players more freshness.
🪅 Software Eagle#
After falling in love with video editing and wanting to learn design, the first problem that arose was managing materials. Although Mac's file management has tags and search functions, it's simply not enough. Previously, it took me a whole week to edit a seven-minute video, most of which was spent organizing materials, which was a huge waste of time.
Until I encountered Eagle, a material management software available on both Windows and Mac, which can manage almost all file formats, fonts, web bookmarks, and audio/video files. The tagging system is very powerful, supporting quite a few dimensions of search, and there's a browser plugin to add materials. This is simply the perfect file management software in my mind. I couldn't wait to purchase it before the trial period ended.
Eagle uniformly places materials in the root directory of the resource library under the /images folder. Editing and moving files within the software does not change the file path on the computer, so there's no issue of losing materials during editing, which is very convenient.
Although it doesn't natively support cloud synchronization, considering that my main work machine is only one Mac, I can use shared folders when lightly using Windows, while also enabling automatic synchronization with Alibaba Cloud Drive for simple backups, which basically solves the cloud sync issue.
Eagle has also opened up some interfaces, and I even wrote a CLI tool for daily use. With a quarter of 2024 gone, this software has already made it onto my annual software list.
🎮 PUBG#
After playing PUBG for more than half a year, I still couldn't get the hang of it. This issue was resolved after I changed my mouse pad. It turns out that the mouse pad, which was all frayed from being scratched by my cat, really affected my performance. Now I can happily enjoy parachuting every day.