It’s easy to make fun of the premise of this movie (“The main character is the fictional real life person that the Buzz Lightyear toy is based off of??”) but I’ve got a really good feeling about this one. Expectations are high.
Chicory: A Colorful Tale
Chicory: A Colorful Tale is not a normal game.
You play as a character named after your favorite food; in our case: “pizza”. The world is called Picnic, and it has multiple food-related locations like “Dinners”, “Potluck”, and “Dessert Mountain”. The world is also populated with citizens who are all named after foods such as “Lemon”, “Clementine”, and “Pickle”.
If all that sounds a bit too cutesy for its own good, that’s exactly how I felt when I started playing. But over the course of the 10 or so hours it took me and my 7 year old to complete the main story, I couldn’t believe how invested we got in all their little lives. Every character you encounter has a unique personality, with their own set of problems, doubts, dreams, and faults that really bring the world to life.
Speaking of bringing the world to life, in Chicory, you have a magic paint brush. As you explore the world of Picnic, literally everything that you first encounter starts off in black and white, and you can use your brush to color every building, tree, bridge, and side character that you see, being as detailed as you would like. It’s more fun than I would have expected, and also helps you keep track of where you’ve been when you’re just starting out.
There’s no combat in Chicory, and you can’t die. There’s lots of metroidvania-style exploration, where new areas open up for you once you gain new abilities. There are “boss battles” where you have to attack another character wile avoiding their attacks, but as far as I tell you can’t lose these battles. If you’re ever stuck you can use a phone booth and call your mom and she will gave you a vague hint on what to do next… but if you want, you can have your dad tell you exactly what to do in painstaking detail.
When I first heard about Chicory I was honestly a little on the fence, even after reading some rave reviews. But the thing that really sold me was when I learned that the music was by Lena Raine, and boy did she knock it out of the park with this soundtrack. Lena’s music from Celeste and Minecraft has been in constant rotation in our house over the past few months, and Chicory’s music definitely lived up to our high expectations.
I could go on and on, but wow what a game. Completely unique and enjoyable. It was such a special experience, and I’m glad that my son and I were able to share it together.
Knotwords →
Wordle is still the first thing that I do when I wake up every morning, but I think this game is going to nicely fill any word game cravings I might develop between the time I get out of bed and when I go back to sleep. Exceptionally well done.
Backwards Storytelling
Season 6 episode 3 of Better Call Saul begins with a shot looking out at the New Mexico desert. You can hear crickets in the distance and a rattlesnake nearby. Over the next 2 minutes, the camera slowly pans down around the area, pausing briefly to look at a pretty blue flower. Rain starts to fall. The camera continues its slow, meandering journey before coming to rest, finally, on… nothing at all? No. Wait… the rain hits an object in the foreground and the sound it makes tells you that it is glass.
This piece of glass is important.
You don’t know why - not yet. But by the end of the episode you will be very familiar with this small piece of glass and the role that it plays in the larger story.
There may be an “official” name for this technique, but I’ve been thinking of it as “Backwards Storytelling”. Show the viewer something they don’t understand, then them more information over time until they have the complete picture. Better Call Saul implements this device multiple times in every single episode and it is incredible.
Why is Mike measuring that safe? Why are we watching this truck being unloaded? By the end of the scene or episode we will know.
What’s even more incredible is that there are often multiple “backwards” stories being told. Season 6 begins with a character’s belongings being repossessed - by the end of the scene we know that it’s Saul’s stuff, but we likely won’t know the reason why until the end of the season.
Hell, the entire series begins with Saul wearing a mustache and working in a Cinnabon for reasons that the show has yet to explain. But by the end we will understand. Arcs within arcs within arcs. The pieces will fall satisfyingly into place.
The Batman
I’m fully aware of recency bias and all that, but there’s a good chance that this ends up being my favorite Batman movie of all time. Pattinson is a great (the best?) Batman, Jeffrey Wright is a great Commissioner Gordon, Zoë Kravitz is a great (the best?) Catwoman, Paul Dano is a great Riddler… the list goes on and on. Batman kind of sucks at being Batman in this movie, which is awesome. It’s also nice to have a Batman who is more interesting than the Villains he’s fighting for once.
Elon Musk Buys Twitter →
It’s definitely possible that this will end up being a good thing for Twitter. It could lead to more + better features, better 3rd party API support, and better bot + harassment prevention. But based on the way that Musk uses Twitter (to say nothing of the way he runs other companies and his overall public persona), I don’t feel very confident.
Mic Check
…this thing still on?
11 Things that have surprised me about my 2017 Audi S3
The Audi S3 has been my daily driver for about 4 months now, and over that time I've learned a lot about the car, including a lot that has surprised me. My model is the 2017 Daytona Gray with the black optics and technology packages. I'm also not really much of a "car guy" (though I'm getting there) so maybe some of these things I've noticed would be obvious to more knowledgable people.
1 - Exterior upgrades were well worth the price. I was originally told that the black optics package I wanted would add an additional 6 months to my car’s construction time. It didn’t take that long, but even if it had it would have been worth it. I think the black trim looks so much better to the chrome. And the red brake calipers? $400 well spent.
2 - The digital dashboard isn’t very exciting. I’ve basically just figured out the configuration that works for me and stuck with it. I found the live map to be a distraction, and most configuration settings reset at the beginning of each drive so it's not worth messing with most of the time. If I could do it again, I would probably opt not to get the technology package.
3 - Car Play is amazing. I mean, I knew Car Play would be amazing. But I’m a bit surprised about just how amazing it is. Being able to access Siri from the steering wheel, getting directions through the Maps app, controlling music or podcasts through Spotify and Overcast, and having text messages dictated to me. It’s all wonderful. The only downside is that wireless Car Play isn’t supported, so I need to plug my phone in every time I want to use it. For most short trips I usually just keep my phone unplugged and play music through bluetooth.
4 - MMI is Terrible. Every time you need to interact with Audi’s MMI system (which thankfully isn’t very often) it feels like such a chore. It’s fast enough, but the layout is inscrutable. Menu options are often hidden and require you to highlight an item and hit left/right buttons to see what additional options are available. When playing a song, MMI will usually display generic genre artwork instead of actual album artwork. And god help you if you want to use text input.
5 - The head rests can be adjusted forward and backward. I’ve never seen this before. Most American cars will let you move your head rest up or down which I guess can be nice if you have a particularly tall torso? But moving the head rest forward is nice because you can actually move it into a much more supportive and natural position.
6 - You can temporarily drop into manual mode. If you use the paddle shifters while in automatic mode, the S3 will obey your wishes and properly upshift/downshift and display which gear you’ve gone into. After about 10 seconds of not shifting, the car will return to full automatic mode for you. This can be really nice if, say, you want to downshift to pass someone on the highway.
7 - Each driving mode has an “S” option. Pull back on the gearshift and you get an S (Sport?) mode for your current configuration. When in S mode, the car revs a little bit higher and can give you power a little bit faster. Also when in this mode, the car “blips” when it downshifts, which can actually be a little annoying.
8 - The cruise control stalk is wonderful. I’ve never driven a car with a separate stalk for cruise control before and it’s really nice. Hit the button on the end of the stalk to turn it on, move the stalk up to increase speed, down to decrease speed, or pull it towards you reengage.
9 - There are sidelights. When your headlights are on, if you turn the steering wheel past a certain point, extra lights turn on to illuminate the area that you’re turning towards. Once you put the wheel straight again the lights turn off again. It’s a subtle effect, and is much nicer than other cars I’ve been in where the headlights pivot every time you turn the steering wheel.
10 - Keyless entry only works on the front doors. If you have the key in your pocket, you can unlock your S3 by walking up to the front doors and putting your hand on the handle. Or you can lock the doors by touching the little finger notch. This functionality doesn't work on the back doors, even though they have the same finger notches as the front handles. According to my dealer this is not a manufacturing defect - it's actually by design. It's just annoying if you spend a good amount of time opening and closing the rear doors like I do for my two year old. Speaking of which...
11 - My two year old loves this car. Maybe he’s picking up on how much I like it, or maybe it’s just fun being a passenger in the back while I zip around and rev the engine. But whatever the reason, he’s always pointing the S3 out to me and my wife (“Dad’s car!”), and even pointing out other Audis on the street. His vocabulary isn't huge, but "Audi" is definitely a word that he knows.
2017 Audi S3 Hand Wash Timelapse →
I washed my car.
Binge v1.5
This update has been a long time coming.
According to my git commits, I started working on the meat of this update in back on October 3rd 2016. That means I've been working on this update in my free time for almost 6 months. Needless to say, I'm really excited to get it out the door.
Let's take a look at what's new, shall we?
UI Updates
I've subtly update a lot of the UI in Binge with this update. TV and Movie sections no longer have titles at the top, font sizes are slightly smaller, table rows are slightly shorter, and poster art is now pushed up to the upper left corner of the screen. Space is now used a lot more efficiently, which makes things cleaner and allows more to be shown on the screen at once.
I've also updated the alphabet list down the side of the screen to indicate which section the user currently has focused.
New App Icon
Binge was originally released under the name "Prime" - a name that lasted only a single point release, but the app icon (inspired by the mathematical symbol for prime) never got updated. Even though it didn't make sense anymore, I still though it looked cool so wasn't in too much of a hurry to update it.
Maybe if I knew that I would be taking 6 months between releases, I would have updated it earlier.
Caching
This is the definitely the change that made this update take so long to develop.
With previous version of Binge, all data was fetched as needed, then discarded almost immediately. So if the user switched back and forth between focusing two movies over and over, their background and poster art would get re-fetched each time the focus changed. Or ever time the app started up, the full list of movies and tv shows would need to be fetched from the server, causing
This non-caching structure was fairly easy to implement, but was not only inefficient and slow, but it would also lead to several situations where focus would jump around in the app when the user didn't expect it to.
Version 1.5 uses Realm.io for data storage, and I think the results are quite impressive. Everything is much more responsive and fluid. Focus doesn't jump around. Images load immediately when possible. And on every app launch after the first one, the user's movies are TV shows lists are able to be displayed immediately.
Even though this change basically involved me rewriting every single feature of the app, I definitely think it was worth it.