Week in review: Week to 22 November
Nov. 23rd, 2025 04:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedanther. One of the problems creeping up on the community theatre I'm a member of is that we have a shortage of people who know how to design, rig, and plot theatrical lighting. (I used to have a fairly good knowledge of the full process until a few years ago, when the theatre's lighting desk was replaced with a fancy new computerised control system that nobody really knows how to use except the committee member who arranged for it to be installed.) To help alleviate the problem, a professional lighting designer came in this week and ran a workshop on lighting design for interested members. We now have several more people who know about design and rigging (and I got a useful refresher), but it turned out he's never worked with this kind of fancy new control system either, so we still have a choke point at the plotting stage until the one person who knows how to use the thing can find time to teach more people.
. In one of the online groups I'm a member of, there was a conversation about Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astro Boy, Black Jack, and Princess Knight, which gave me an opening to introduce more people to the existence of one of my favourite episodes of the 1980s Astro Boy anime, which uses time travel to set up a three-way crossover between the main characters of those three shows, with some bonus cameos from other Tezuka series thrown in.
. I completed my play-through of XCOM 2 without needing any more do-overs, and felt sufficiently confident to start another play-through with the commitment that this time I would push on and not take any do-overs no matter what setbacks might befall. Consequently, I have achieved something in XCOM 2 that has never happened before: I've seen what happens when you lose the game.
My commitment was given a serious test in the second mission of the run, which was an almost complete failure (only one surviving squad member, and we missed out on achieving the mission objective by the narrowest possible margin). The third mission went better (I achieved the objective and only lost half the squad doing it), and after that I got into the swing of things and it went pretty well -- until it didn't, and a squad got completely wiped out, and my progress went into a spiral where I had no soldiers fit for active duty and no resources to hire or train new soldiers and no soldiers to go out and secure resources. In the end, the world timer ran out and I had only one soldier left (he'd been in the infirmary when everyone else got killed in the second squad wipe of the run). I could theoretically have stretched things a bit further: there was a supply drop just before the world timer ran out, so I could have hired some rookies -- but then the only way to put more time on the clock would have been to throw them straight at the heavily-guarded Black Site with no training or equipment, and I can't imagine that that would have ended any other way that with a third and definitive squad wipe.
I found myself wondering if I'd made a mistake starting again immediately after finishing a run; going from having fully-levelled soldiers with the really good weapons and armour back to rookies in flak jackets with peashooters may have meant that I played less cautiously than I should have. But I don't think that was it, exactly (if anything, the reason I missed the objective in the second mission was that I was playing a bit too cautiously because I knew how squishy the squad was). If there was one thing I didn't account for that kept throwing my plans off, it was that I'd forgotten how bad the rookies' aim is, and kept making decisions based on the assumption that they were going to hit what they shot at.
. I had my annual dental check-up. No serious issues, though the dentist did note that there are signs I'm brushing too hard on the side of my mouth where the brush is at a comfortable angle, so that's something I need to be conscious of.
. I didn't make it to board game club this week, because I had to go to a meeting instead.
. The supermarket nearest my house has been closed for months, because the space was bought out by a different operator and it's been going through a full refit. The official opening of the new supermarket was this week, and I walked over at lunch time to see what it was like. A lot of other people had had the same idea; the parking lot, which I've rarely seen with more than a few cars in, was full to overflowing, and the supermarket itself was packed to the point that the greeter at the entrance asked if I wouldn't like to come back later (with a reminder that one of the new place's selling points is its generous opening hours). I decided to go in and have a look around anyway, and had plenty of time to think about what I'd seen on the way out; the queue for the cash registers stretched a quarter way around the inner wall, even with all the registers open (and I don't remember the last time I saw that at a supermarket either). Along with the various stalls and such set up as part of the official opening, an unofficial bit of live entertainment for the people stuck in the queue consisted of watching some workmen set up an area where hot food will be temptingly placed within arm's reach of the queuers, which apparently hadn't been quite finished in time for the opening date. I don't think I'm going to be making the new supermarket my main food source -- it was missing several things that I consider to be staples, and some others were noticeably more expensive than I've seen them elsewhere -- but it'll be a useful place to pop over and get basics like if I run out of fresh fruit and veg. Especially with the generous opening hours.
. My November pick for the random reading challenge was Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye, which I've been vaguely meaning to get around to for ages. (I've had this copy on my shelf for over a decade; some of you may be interested to know that it's a discard from the UniSFA library.) It carried me along well enough while I was reading it, and the aliens were interesting, but I didn't care that much for most of the humans. Having forgotten the existence of the sequel, I was expecting a more definite conclusion than what it has, and having read it (and bearing in mind past experience with sequels that took decades to finish) I don't think I trust the sequel to be worth my time.
. At Parkrun this week, there was a group of visitors who are travelling around the country doing as many different Parkrun courses as they can. Some of them have done 250 or more different Parkruns.
. On Saturday evening, I went to a concert by a touring group who performed sea shanties and related works (including a rendition of Stan Rogers' "Northwest Passage"). The music was nice (they harmonised beautifully), but it was also a valuable experience in that it got me out of the house and socialising with the other audience members, many of whom I knew well enough to be comfortable chatting with, and some of whom I haven't had a chance to talk with in ages.
I'd been feeling rather grim all week, and I think part of it was a lack of opportunities to interact with people in a non-goal-oriented way. Anyway, whether it was the music or the social interaction (or just that the weather had finally broken), I felt much better when I got up this morning.
. In one of the online groups I'm a member of, there was a conversation about Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astro Boy, Black Jack, and Princess Knight, which gave me an opening to introduce more people to the existence of one of my favourite episodes of the 1980s Astro Boy anime, which uses time travel to set up a three-way crossover between the main characters of those three shows, with some bonus cameos from other Tezuka series thrown in.
. I completed my play-through of XCOM 2 without needing any more do-overs, and felt sufficiently confident to start another play-through with the commitment that this time I would push on and not take any do-overs no matter what setbacks might befall. Consequently, I have achieved something in XCOM 2 that has never happened before: I've seen what happens when you lose the game.
My commitment was given a serious test in the second mission of the run, which was an almost complete failure (only one surviving squad member, and we missed out on achieving the mission objective by the narrowest possible margin). The third mission went better (I achieved the objective and only lost half the squad doing it), and after that I got into the swing of things and it went pretty well -- until it didn't, and a squad got completely wiped out, and my progress went into a spiral where I had no soldiers fit for active duty and no resources to hire or train new soldiers and no soldiers to go out and secure resources. In the end, the world timer ran out and I had only one soldier left (he'd been in the infirmary when everyone else got killed in the second squad wipe of the run). I could theoretically have stretched things a bit further: there was a supply drop just before the world timer ran out, so I could have hired some rookies -- but then the only way to put more time on the clock would have been to throw them straight at the heavily-guarded Black Site with no training or equipment, and I can't imagine that that would have ended any other way that with a third and definitive squad wipe.
I found myself wondering if I'd made a mistake starting again immediately after finishing a run; going from having fully-levelled soldiers with the really good weapons and armour back to rookies in flak jackets with peashooters may have meant that I played less cautiously than I should have. But I don't think that was it, exactly (if anything, the reason I missed the objective in the second mission was that I was playing a bit too cautiously because I knew how squishy the squad was). If there was one thing I didn't account for that kept throwing my plans off, it was that I'd forgotten how bad the rookies' aim is, and kept making decisions based on the assumption that they were going to hit what they shot at.
. I had my annual dental check-up. No serious issues, though the dentist did note that there are signs I'm brushing too hard on the side of my mouth where the brush is at a comfortable angle, so that's something I need to be conscious of.
. I didn't make it to board game club this week, because I had to go to a meeting instead.
. The supermarket nearest my house has been closed for months, because the space was bought out by a different operator and it's been going through a full refit. The official opening of the new supermarket was this week, and I walked over at lunch time to see what it was like. A lot of other people had had the same idea; the parking lot, which I've rarely seen with more than a few cars in, was full to overflowing, and the supermarket itself was packed to the point that the greeter at the entrance asked if I wouldn't like to come back later (with a reminder that one of the new place's selling points is its generous opening hours). I decided to go in and have a look around anyway, and had plenty of time to think about what I'd seen on the way out; the queue for the cash registers stretched a quarter way around the inner wall, even with all the registers open (and I don't remember the last time I saw that at a supermarket either). Along with the various stalls and such set up as part of the official opening, an unofficial bit of live entertainment for the people stuck in the queue consisted of watching some workmen set up an area where hot food will be temptingly placed within arm's reach of the queuers, which apparently hadn't been quite finished in time for the opening date. I don't think I'm going to be making the new supermarket my main food source -- it was missing several things that I consider to be staples, and some others were noticeably more expensive than I've seen them elsewhere -- but it'll be a useful place to pop over and get basics like if I run out of fresh fruit and veg. Especially with the generous opening hours.
. My November pick for the random reading challenge was Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye, which I've been vaguely meaning to get around to for ages. (I've had this copy on my shelf for over a decade; some of you may be interested to know that it's a discard from the UniSFA library.) It carried me along well enough while I was reading it, and the aliens were interesting, but I didn't care that much for most of the humans. Having forgotten the existence of the sequel, I was expecting a more definite conclusion than what it has, and having read it (and bearing in mind past experience with sequels that took decades to finish) I don't think I trust the sequel to be worth my time.
. At Parkrun this week, there was a group of visitors who are travelling around the country doing as many different Parkrun courses as they can. Some of them have done 250 or more different Parkruns.
. On Saturday evening, I went to a concert by a touring group who performed sea shanties and related works (including a rendition of Stan Rogers' "Northwest Passage"). The music was nice (they harmonised beautifully), but it was also a valuable experience in that it got me out of the house and socialising with the other audience members, many of whom I knew well enough to be comfortable chatting with, and some of whom I haven't had a chance to talk with in ages.
I'd been feeling rather grim all week, and I think part of it was a lack of opportunities to interact with people in a non-goal-oriented way. Anyway, whether it was the music or the social interaction (or just that the weather had finally broken), I felt much better when I got up this morning.
