Coconut Monkey Cornerclub

[Frindis]

@Zloth I will follow JayzTwoCents/Linus with eagle eyes and see how the new cards play out, especially since the one I was looking at only have 8GB, which could potentially be a problem, which @Sarafan pointed out.

@Pifanjr I can relate to that problem and also recommend something like the Pocketbook Lux 4 for easy reading. It got a lot of room for books and it is easy to use when you are traveling. I find myself using it much more than picking up a book as it is just much more convenient, especially when you consider you can adjust the backlight, font, and size of the text.

 

[Pifanjr]

@Pifanjr I can relate to that problem and also recommend something like the Pocketbook Lux 4 for easy reading. It got a lot of room for books and it is easy to use when you are traveling. I find myself using it much more than picking up a book as it is just much more convenient, especially when you consider you can adjust the backlight, font, and size of the text.

I've tried e-readers before, but it just isn't the same as holding an actual book for some reason.

 

[Johnway]

I

I've tried e-readers before, but it just isn't the same as holding an actual book for some reason.

Same here. i use my smartphone to read books partly to save space, partly for the convenience of having my entire book library with me so that i can study or read something on my trips to work or away from home. They aren't 100% perfect, but i feel the benefits outweigh the disadvantages like getting the right page sizes, swiping the phone to move across a page sometimes turns the page instead, that sort of thing.

 

[Zloth]

I've tried e-readers before, but it just isn't the same as holding an actual book for some reason.

Seems close enough to me. What I didn't like was paying a lot of cash for something that would just read a book! What broke me was actually sorting. I finally took the time to organize my books and realized that, if I decide to read a new book series with an author at the start of the alphabet, it's going to be a real bother. (And, for some reason, a lot of authors are at the start of the alphabet! Adams, Allen, Anderson, Anderson again, Asimov, Asprin... come on, seriously!?)

 

[Frindis]

@Zloth Yeah, the sorting can be a major hassle, but thankfully with some of the E-readers, you can make your own personalized folders. At least it will help to narrow it down a bit.

 

[Brian Boru]

if the cards will ship that date?

they should be available on that date in theory. If they don't sell out.

I'm familiar with retail. Kaamos is correct re the almost universal meaning of 'available', which is available in stores for customers to buy.

 

[Brian Boru]

These days i just get ebooks and read them at night to wind down. Part of the problem is that they aren't cheap

Strange that's your experience, ebooks are generally cheaper than paper. Have you tried Apple, Kobo, B&N or Amazon?
You can get freebies via library or Project Gutenberg.
[Disclosure: I'm in book biz]

Would do boardgames if i had the time, space, money or friends to play them. Theres TV but i don't watch that much these days.
…
But its all in the past now, my PC is back.

Same here, got a small closet full of board games gathering dust. Live TV, what's that?

I can feel your relief. Couple of times I've been without my PC have made me channel Robinson Crusoe—where am I, what is this, what do I do?

I used to read a ton of books as a kid, mostly fantasy and some science fiction, but I seem to not be able to find the time for it any more.

Same here, sport & reading were my mainstays as a kid. Reading removed the blinders of insularity and opened up the world to me, I've been grateful ever since.
It's been decades since I read a random fiction book—these days I only find time for work-related reading.

However, I have the best excuse—PC gaming!

 

[Brian Boru]

What broke me was actually sorting … for some reason, a lot of authors are at the start of the alphabet … come on, seriously!?

They're mostly pen names, so are deliberately chosen. If you ever suspect me of being an author, search for Aaron Aardvark

@Zloth some of the E-readers, you can make your own personalized folders

Yep, that's the ticket for the sorting office.

Sorting Games

In that vein, how do y'all sort your game libraries at Steam, GOG, BigFish, etc?

I haven't delved into the niceties of GOG Galaxy or Playnite yet, any tips? But even if they have solutions, they only cover a subset of gaming—nothing for casual or mobile. There's definitely an opening there for some evil genius to help us all.

 

[Volley]

Happily awaiting the long delayed release of Coconut Monkey's 'Gravy Trader' PC game.

I wonder if the system requirements are still Pentium 90MHz with 16MB RAM, SVGA, Windows 95 and a SoundBlaster AWE32?

 

[Zloth]

Gravy Trader! That was back from The Vede era, wasn't it?

@Brian Boru - I think we might have had a topic on that some months back. Anyway:

• Favorites - what I'm playing right now or intend to play soon. (X3: Terran Conflict has an honorary permanent spot on that list.)
• Done - games I finished.
• Uncategorized - games I'm not playing anymore but might someday.
• Trash - Stuff I didn't want that came with a bundle or from Steam (like Dota 2)

 

[Frindis]

We did have a thread like that, but that one is a wee bit old now to breathe new life into, if not the OP feels like opening it up again.
--------------

Had a griefer trying to kill me in GTA V yesterday. I was doing special cargo missions (you sell crates basically) and this shmuck comes along just before I was about to deliver the cargo and decides he wants to try to sticky bomb my car and blow me up. If he succeeds this basically means I lose all my money and it is something that is frowned upon in the community. This guy was a long time player, so he should have known better.

He fails miserably and ends up throwing 5 sticky bombs after me while I just slowly back up my car each time he throws out one. I ended up getting a final good shot at him and he goes down. In chat, I ask him why he tried to kill me and he just goes toxic. So I ask him to try another work of profession as clearly sucks at griefing. Then he leaves. Mission accomplished and the chat blows up in laughter.

Ever experienced one of those griefers that were just too bad at it?

 

[Johnway]

Strange that's your experience, ebooks are generally cheaper than paper. Have you tried Apple, Kobo, B&N or Amazon?
You can get freebies via library or Project Gutenberg.
[Disclosure: I'm in book biz]

Depends on your perspective tbh. Whilst they are significantly cheaper, something that's 7.99/4.99 is still too expensive for me. Especially when i do go to the library and can get a loan copy for free to read it. I believe my library service does do Ebooks but annoyingly it doesn't have the books i want and/or i'm still restricted by access limitations (like someone else has reserved it).

But good call on Project Gutenberg, i need to read up on some of the classics just to say that i did. I still need to read up on a tale of 2 cities. But Sci fi war stories are more appealing atm. Horus heresy series, i'm blaming you for this.

I can feel your relief. Couple of times I've been without my PC have made me channel Robinson Crusoe—where am I, what is this, what do I do?

The worst part is not knowing what the problem is. i danced around the fact that my graphics card or worse my motherboard had gone which meant i needed to splash cash to repair it. its especially annoying when:

a) you built the pc and getting struck down with bad luck is horrific. Like your own child/pet you spend your evenings tending to it instead of relaxing/studying

b) You work in Service desk/desktop support role at work and you can't work it out, your pride takes a hit.

c) you're not entirely sure what the exact problem is. You search online, it says it could be your GPU, CPU or motherboard but you don't have the resources to eliminate each suspect and following what the pc is saying (GPU in this case). So its a crapshoot and you're clutching at straws. Thank god it wasn't something major.

 

[Pifanjr]

Sorting Games

In that vein, how do y'all sort your game libraries at Steam, GOG, BigFish, etc?

I haven't delved into the niceties of GOG Galaxy or Playnite yet, any tips? But even if they have solutions, they only cover a subset of gaming—nothing for casual or mobile. There's definitely an opening there for some evil genius to help us all.

I only recently put a bunch of good games into a "favourite" folder, inspired by the thread made about it on here, but it's incomplete and unused.

I normally just decide what game I want to play without needing to look at my library.

 

[Zloth]

A vet that can't grief at least vaguely well!? Yeah, there's more to that story, I bet. Maybe something really set him off and now he's thrashing around in some sort of rage? Or maybe the account got hacked by somebody looking to get the owner banned?

 

[Rensje]

Bit of an off-topic post even for the Cornerclub, but I felt like sharing an exciting personal achievement. The year 2020 has been fairly rotten so far in all kinds of ways, but I've also experienced some personal growth in between all the turmoil. I actually recently acquired my first college degree at the age of 32, which I'm very proud of. I wasn't that keen on studying in my teens, but I've started to make up for lost time and it's paid dividends.

Another milestone this year was getting appointed to a full-time manager's position in the company that I work for. Better hours and better pay are the highlights, but there's some additional benefits such as paid-for training courses, paid overtime etc.

It's because of this and the fact that I had a very emotional start to 2020 that I felt like rewarding myself with something nice for me, so I did what any responsible adult would probably not have done this year and bought myself a car! Well, I ordered one, it'll be a few months before it's actually here.

Here in the Netherlands the speed limit is a 100 km/h and the roads are generally very narrow and busy, so there would be little point in getting something big, brash and ridiculous. Instead I wanted something small that looks smart, is fun to drive and will be economical and somewhat environmentally-friendly. I'm not quite ready to buy into electric cars, but I do like the idea of electric motors, so what I settled on is this:

It's the 2020 Renault Clio E-Tech Hybrid. I test drove it twice last month and let me tell you, this car is a laugh. It's quick off the line, very smooth to drive and feels great around corners. It's well equipped, too: 9.3-inch infotainment screen with Android Auto support, heated leather seats and wheel, parking cameras and sensors all around, adaptive cruise control, emergency brake systems, LED lights front and back, the works. The colour in the picture is the colour I'm getting and I love it.

You can probably imagine I won't be upgrading to the RTX 3000 series anytime soon.

 

[Alm]

Congrats @Rensje !

 

[Pifanjr]

I will also get a car soon. However, the only trait it shares with Rensje's new car is that it's small. It's a third hand car with about 100,000 kilometers on it. It doesn't even have a radio or air conditioning, but I'm getting it for free, so I can't and won't complain.

 

[Zloth]

Congrats!

Well, I ordered one, it'll be a few months before it's actually here.

Phew!!! I was about to point out that you're showing your license plate number. If it's just an advert, though, no problem.

I'm not quite ready to buy into electric cars...

I did. I had my last car for about 12 years and only put 70,000 miles on it in all that time, so it's working out great for me.

Hybrids and electrics can be stealthy. When you're under electric power, be DOUBLY sure to watch for pedestrians! You'll probably get stuck behind somebody walking in the street/parking lot that has no idea you're there. Only honk if you know the person and you're sure they have a strong cardiovascular system.

 

[Frindis]

Congratulations @Rensje with new car and position! That is awesome!

Now, I have to be the "bad" moderator and give a friendly reminder to you all that while it is ok once in a full moon to slip a little context-wise to the thread's original form, we have to be certain it does not turn into random general chat, but rather general chat about games.

 

[Zloth]

Let's bend that right around, then.

Seems game makers are having a little issue dealing with non-explosive fuel sources!

 

[Brian Boru]

good call on Project Gutenberg

Here are a couple of articles about freebies—MUO's info is usually fairly good, so you should find some candidates:
Art 1
Art 2

• Favorites
• Done
• Uncategorized
• Trash

Thanks to you & others who replied re sorting my games
My bad, I was looking for techniques rather than folder name suggestions—sorry for being unclear. Y'all mentioned folders—are these on your hard drive, or in the individual retailers interfaces?

I have ~1,700 games in the non-casual outlets—Steam, GOG, Epic, Origin & Uplay. Many of those are 'looks great, must def play that', but of course months pass…

I had a further look thru GOG Galaxy & Playnite. I don't see anything useful in GG, but Playnite has a lot of labels like Category, Tag, Sort Name which could probably be set and definitely filtered by. Thing is, GG finds ~50 more games than Playnite—grr.

I might setup a database or spreadsheet instead. I don't fancy going thru GG or Playnite updating 1,700 games individually, especially when they may not pick up all the games. A DB or SS would be fully in my control, and always guaranteed to work—or at least, work as well as my update motivation works!

I should prob start a new thread.

 

[Zloth]

Yeah, you've vastly more games than I do. My cycle is probably different, too. I typically buy a bunch of games at the summer or winter sale (putting them in my favorites) then play each one in turn. I might take a break in a long time to go back and play a 4X or shooter, but it's mostly one game at a time. When the game is done, I mark it done and take it off the favorites. Or if I just don't want to play it anymore, I simply take it off favorites and fall into uncategorized. By the time I get to the next sale, I'm about out of games.

 

[Brian Boru]

play each one in turn

I'm same as you—buying in sales—but above is the part I miss out on. Sadly I don't find that much time for gaming, so my 'Done' pile's been flying the white flag for years as TBP stomps around like a boss

When I do get a gaming spell, I've forgotten what I've added to the Forgotten list, so I usually pick up an old fav for another run-thru.

Discipline & a spreadsheet, I guess. If I can find the discipline to get disciplined…

 

[Zloth]

Ohhhhh! Well then, I'm sure we could help with that. Ahhh yes, a public profile. Handy, that. Now all we need to do is run a few little advertisements for games you've already got but haven't played!

Sword of the Stars! Getting mighty long in the tooth but that's a heck of a game. Similar to Civilization but:

• 3D map. Boxing people in is harder when you have to cube them in!
• Vastly more interesting tech trees.
• Really different factions, not just the same factions with a little plus here and a little minus there.
• The tech tree changes, too! You need to get pretty much every tech in Civ. You'll need to decide what techs to chase in SotS - and you can't count on all of the ones you got last time being there this time!
• Really fun customization of ships. In exchange, though, there's almost no customization of planets. (The Gal Civ series has tons of that, if you want it.)

 

[Frindis]

What are you guys and gals going to be gaming this weekend? I'm going to do some GTA V online as there is double money on the bunker (basically means you earn a shitton of money) and also see if I can find a new place in Norway to visit in Flight Simulator 2020.