Post #600 was on 8/4/17

I don’t know how it skipped my mind, but somehow I surpassed 600 published posts over a week ago and forgot to commemorate it. Post #600 was published on 8/4/17 and I should have at minimum given all of you a gif to celebrate. Well, today I’m rectifying that error. Enjoy this gif from The Blues Brothers.

Replaying the Classics - Journey

As a gaming enthusiast I’m always interested in new gaming experiences, but every once in awhile I feel compelled to go back and put in some serious time replaying some of my favorite games from the preceding years. In that spirit, I have created a new series of writing pieces titled Replaying the Classics, wherein I discuss the games that I have replayed recently. Unlike my Late to the Party series, my goal with these writing pieces is not so much to give a strong analysis of a particular game, but rather to give an informal recounting of a game and to try to convey to the reader why it’s one of my favorites. I do not come to you this time as a game reviewer, but merely as a friend wanting to have a casual chat about what he’s been playing. Today, let’s take a seat in our comfy chairs and talk about Journey.

Flying easier

I remember reading some time back about how when a World War 2 bomber like the B-17 would drop its bombs there was a tendency for the aircraft to lurch higher into the air due to the sudden change in the plane’s mass. A pilot could compensate for this by angling the nose of the bomber slightly downwards, but after releasing the payload and closing the bomb bay doors there would soon be a noticeable difference in how the plane behaved as opposed to before the bombs were dropped. Now significantly lighter, the bomber required less power from the engines to stay aloft and was generally easier to handle. A similar thing has happened to me now that I’ve informed my employer of my intention to quit. I’m no longer walking around pretending like nothing is going on and I don’t have to hold on to the secret I’ve been carrying around for the past few months. My bomb bay is empty, and with my plane now lighter I can fly a lot easier than before.

The bomb has been dropped

Today I let my current employer know my intention to resign. I sent my boss a short and polite email, and now my intention to leave the company is no longer a secret. My last day of work at this company hasn’t been decided yet, but my guess is that it will be either September 5 or 6, or perhaps September 1 if the transition goes well. The countdown clock is now officially ticking.

Trump and Twitter

If there’s anything we’ve learned from Trump’s time as president, it is that he desperately needs his Twitter access revoked, or at the bare minimum he needs a lawyer to review all his tweets prior to publishing and stop the most damaging ones from getting out. Trump has shown himself to be possibly the most thin-skinned president America has ever seen, and he shows no hesitation to lash out at anyone or anything drawing his ire.

The tweets coming out of Trump these days are nothing short of a national embarrassment. When it comes to Trump and tweeting, I think Republican Senator Ben Sasse put it best with his own tweet, which you can see below.

Reaffirming my choices

Over the past two or three months I’ve been slowly replaying Uncharted 4 with a friend of mine. Uncharted 4, as you might remember, I chose as my Game of the Year for 2017 and it currently sits at the top of the list of my Top 10 Games of the PS4/Xbox One console generation. Last Friday my friend and I finally finished Uncharted 4. As the credits began to roll, any second thoughts or doubts I’d been having about giving Uncharted 4 both of those distinctions were put to rest. It truly is a game on a level that few others can match. Uncharted 4 is nothing short of a 10/10 masterpiece.

Joining the mirrorless revolution

I am proud to announce the newest addition to my camera collection—the Sony Alpha 6000, or a6000 for short. Being a three year-old model, it’s not the latest and greatest camera around, but it’s what I could afford and it’s reviewed really well amongst camera critics. Among the things notable about this camera is that it’s mirrorless, and this will be my first time using a mirrorless camera. Part of the reason I bought a mirrorless camera instead of a traditional DSLR camera is that mirrorless cameras like the a6000 are more compact, and on my upcoming trip to Asia I want a nice camera but I need to conserve space in my backpack. In the coming days I’ll be doing some field tests to get some practice with my new machine, and hopefully by the time I leave for Asia I’ll be well-versed in how to maximize its potential.

A new era of cameras has begun. I intend to make this era as grand as those of its predecessors.

Four eras of cameras

In the above photo are four cameras. Each signifies a different era in my photographic career from the past fifteen or so years, and there are a few stories that I could share about each camera, but I’ll save those for another day. For now, I’ll just tell you the time period each camera represents. The Olympus camera on the left comes from my high school days and possibly even earlier. The Sony and Nikon cameras in the center represent my time in college and the first few years afterwards. The Canon became mine in December 2011 when I got it for Christmas, and its era has continued since then, up until now.

In August, 2017, a new camera era began. Tomorrow I’ll reveal the camera that has ushered in the next generation of my photographic journey.

Donald Trump and Russia: Do we have the smoking gun yet?

Certain media outlets, such as CNN, seem to have dedicated themselves to making sure that not an hour goes by without them talking about allegations of nefarious connections between the Trump administration and Russia, and if I didn’t know any better I’d swear that we had conclusive evidence of Trump committing acts worthy of impeachment. The problem is, we apparently don’t. There are plenty of possible Russian connections and potential misdeeds by people surrounding Trump, but as far as I can tell we still don’t have anything on Trump himself. With no actual indictments, (at least, not at the moment) all this screaming about shady dealings tied to the Russians makes me wonder if the Russia conspiracy is being somewhat overhyped by the mainstream media. As someone who doesn’t like Trump, I’m biased against him and thus more inclined to believe stories like the ones being peddled to us by the mainstream media, but I can’t come down hard on Trump about this matter without solid proof. I need a smoking gun, and at the moment we just don’t have it. Should that smoking gun ever be found, however, I’ll be sure to publish a follow-up writing piece to this post.

The man Hillary couldn’t beat

Back in January I made the decision to take some time off from writing about politics in order to see how the Trump presidency turned out. It’s been over six months since then, and I’m thinking now might be the right time to allow myself to write a few political posts. Currently I have no writing pieces in mind that are longer than one or two paragraphs, so don’t expect any longer political posts any time soon. Today, I commence my return to political writings with a simple reflection.

It seems that the Trump administration can’t go a single week without a new controversy arising. Trump appears to be bumbling his way through the presidency and no one knows which target this loose cannon is going to shoot next. As I watch events unfold at the Trump White House, a single thought keeps coming back to my mind: this is the man that Hillary Clinton couldn’t beat.