Category: Summer 2026 (Page 3 of 3)

#9 – Delay

07/04/2026 / Evan / 0 Comments

Hello again! This blog post is an apology that I need more time to think on The Sopranos. To really write a good review, I think I have to sit on it another day or two.

In terms of what I did today, I finally got the drum set for Rock Band. This will be important to my presumable Rock Band 4 and Riffmaster reviews. Not really the Riffmaster one, but considering the RB4 review is stemming from the Riffmaster, it makes sense, or at least I think it does? I need sleep.

So that’s all I have to say today. These are really short posts the past few days, so much so I’ve stopped naming these posts after songs and started to come up with titles for them! I kid; the actual reason is that I’d like to change up the naming every week to differentiate the blogs as they go on. So week 1 was music, week 2 is actual titles, and so on. But regardless, I hope you enjoyed this (really short) post. Have a fantastic rest of your day.

#8 – Technically A Post

07/03/2026 / Evan / 0 Comments

Sopranos review tomorrow

#7 – “Turn It On Again”

07/02/2026 / Evan / 0 Comments

Hello again! It is officially the end of one week of “daily” blogs. Today I saw two movies in theaters, so this post will be a review of them. This is an interesting double feature, for sure, but I didn’t want to dripfeed blog content I write for myself. My thoughts on it are more “just get out what you have to say!,” so I have.

Supergirl

The first movie I saw was Supergirl, the next film in the James Gunn-led DC Universe. I have been a huge fan of Gunn’s work since Guardians of the Galaxy, and I have been excited to see his transition to more of a production role, building a saga instead of films. This film is particularly important to this transition as last year’s Superman was was written and directed by Gunn, so this would be the first film solely with him having a production role.

Technicially, the film is done very well. The CGI that tends to dominate a modern superhero film, and often looks very ugly looks quite nice here. That may be due to the length of time between releases in this new DC Universe as compared to the previous DCEU and Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it is a strength of the film nonetheless. The cinematography is another technical strong point of the film: I found a lot of the shots very creative, and also felt that they complimented the personality of Supergirl and Milly Alcock’s performance very well. One technical aspect I will criticize, however, is the music choice. I felt the licensed music clashed, rather than complimented the film, and didn’t really mesh with Kara’s (Supergirl’s) character either.

Alcock’s performance is easily the highlight in this film. She manages wonderfully both the more comedic scenes of Kara, making up a plan as she goes along, with the more dramatic flashbacks showing the destruction of Krypton and Argo. Jason Momoa also gives a very strong performance as Lobo in this film, although I do think that while I enjoyed his presence, he really didn’t feel necessary to this film, but this is more of a problem with the film’s script, which I think is the weakest link here.

There are parts of this script, like the aforementioned scenes on Argo, that reach the brilliance of Superman. But these great moments, and the performances with them, are contrasted by the main plot of the film, which I found at times dull. While I think Ruthye’s quest for revenge and her collaboration with Kara’s quest to save Krypto is a good hook, the way in which it is written makes for the least interesting part of the film. The script just doesn’t expand enough on the relationship between Ruthye and Kara to really make you care. I saw this film with my friends, and that is a sentiment that they both shared, with one of them even going as far to say “I don’t remember the name of the sword girl.” Lobo, while being done by an incredibly fun performance by Momoa, is moreso a character that repeatedly pops up in the story, rather than a significant element, which I think is another huge letdown of the script. It really is a shame, as I think the first and second acts of this film are genuinely great, and that there are even moments of greatness in the film’s third act, but that said third act is too inconsistent, due to the aforementioned lack of expansion on the film’s characters.

While I was largely critical in this last paragraph, I do not want to confuse you. This is still a very enjoyable film! My critiques come from a place of enjoyment whereas in my opinion if that extra bit were to be added, this film would be great, to the extent where I would call it as good as Superman, a film which I adored. Milly Alcock’s performance alone is so much fun that I’d say this one is worth a trip to the theater to see.

Overall: Would Recommend

Jackass: Best and Last

With this film, there is a huge strength and weakness to it: it is partially older content from the Jackass TV show and films of the past. This is a strength, as it’s hard to argue bits like the “Poo Cocktail Supreme” aren’t funny, even if you’ve seen them before. But, it is also a weakness, because you’ve seen it before. I would argue that a lot of the comedic value of the film comes from shock value, so knowing what will happen does partially spoil it.

Yet, even with that said, this is still a hilarious film. The older bits are not exactly the same, with extensions and changes to camera angles that I think do create for somewhat of a new experience. The best example of this is the “Magic Trick” bit, where you get to see both takes of Johnny Knoxville against a bull. To see him get demolished, and decide it just isn’t enough and do it again with a bigger bull, is funny, even if you may have already seen the bigger bull in Jackass Forever. The highlight of the extended old bits is Forever’s “Silence of the Lambs,” now featuring Bam Margera. Obviously, the bit was first designed for him, before later being used with other members of the crew, but Margera’s run-through of it was, in my opinion, the funniest of them all.

The new bits were also a very fun part of this film as well. Many of them play off of the fact that the guys are older now, and I think this led to some decent comedic potential. I will especially highlight the “Human Pretzel” stunt, which I thought was absolutely hilarious. I do think that the new cast members introduced in Forever really didn’t get much to do, and what they did get was rather one-note. There’s only so many times the joke can be about how fat Zackass’s ass is, and I think the film went one or two over that limit.

Regardless, when getting to the big ending of this film, I came to a realization. My chest had started to hurt from what had pretty much been 90 consecutive minutes of laughter. Bringing it all together with a callback to the first film’s opening, along with the credits montage, was, I think, a great ending to the film. It’s hard to say they could’ve had a much better ending, as even with the sidelining of the newer members, it is admittedly fun to see these idiots hurt themselves one last time.

Overall: Would Recommend

Thank you for reading today’s post. I hope you’re enjoying them as much as I like to write them! As an aside, I’ve used the same ending for these posts all week. Maybe I should, but I don’t think I’ll come up with a different ending for these posts. I like this. To me it just feels like a nice little peaceful end to my yapping. Regardless, have a fantastic rest of your day.

#6 – “Hold On”

07/01/2026 / Evan / 0 Comments

Hello again! I’m sort of noticing a pattern starting to form with these posts: long–short. One day will be long, the next short. And the ones in-between are kinda a mystery. So I guess it’s more apt to say long-short-who knows. I don’t have any major updates on stuff I’ve watched or read today. I expect those will have big days, meaning I’ll write a huge amount about something, but only after a few day gap. So today will be more a scattering of thoughts of unknown length as I haven’t written it yet! Let’s see what I think of.

Explanation for the Naming of My Blog Posts

with bonus yap on Call Me Maybe

First off, I’m going to explain how I name my blog posts, because it’s a short story I can use an excuse to explain how great of a song Call Me Maybe is. I just pick a song title from my summer playlist that I think fits well enough with what I’m yapping about.

Now onto yapping about how great Call Me Maybe is, have you even heard the part where she sings “Before you came into my life, I missed you so bad” because that bridge might be the best part of any pop song released in the 2010s. It’s either that, or the guitar outro of Daft Punk’s track Get Lucky. That bridge is just way too much fun, and I would say it’s really that simple, but there’s a tiny bit more to the track than that. That bridge has a subtle guitar in the background, and that along with the strings in the chorus really help the song build a little as it progresses. It all comes together for what is still one of my favorite pop songs 14 years on, the rare song I can like just as much at age 4 and age 104.

Thoughts on “modern” Call of Duty

Now for something completely different. Likely due to the impending re-release of 2010’s Black Ops and its 2012 sequel, I’ve been thinking on the Call of Duty franchise. When I was younger, I was big into it, playing mostly the Black Ops sub-series but also dabbling into the latest entries into the franchise, which at the time would’ve been Vanguard and Modern Warfare 2 (2022). It’s a bit of an argument in the Call of Duty fanbase on the franchise’s “golden age,” and of course everyone has their own answer. Was it the run of games from 2007 to 2012? Perhaps the “Advanced Movement” trilogy of Advanced Warfare, Black Ops III, and Infinite Warfare is the answer.

But there is also the modern era of Call of Duty, and its vague starting point. Some say this era is a “Warzone era” defined by the creation of the free-to-play battle royale mode of the same name, along with the integration of the games into it. This era is usually defined as starting with 2019’s Modern Warfare. My outlook of the eras is that the “Warzone era” is two eras in itself: one from 2019-2022 based on “Warzone 1,” and 2022-the present on “Warzone 2.” The difference is the game to which Warzone was based on, being Modern Warfare or its sequel, Modern Warfare 2. A huge difference of these two eras was a small creative limitation created with Warzone 2: the developers must use a unified game engine.

A game engine shouldn’t be significant to game development, but in this case it is, as in the past each developer would have their own fork of the same engine, with tweaks to create a different “feel” to each game. This helped differ Black Ops 4 from Infinite Warfare or World War II. This “feel” was both mechanical and graphical, and I think both are a huge reason why I just don’t click with modern Call of Duty. Whereas even in the “post-golden age” of 2013-2022, I still found the series very enjoyable, and in my opinion to the point I’d say those games aren’t much, if at all, worse than the era preceding, these new games just don’t work. Maybe it is my personal distaste for Modern Warfare 2 (2022), but every game since has just felt like a skin over that one. While there are iterations, like the expansion to movement in Black Ops 6 and 7, it still has that same feel, which feels much more weighted and less fluid, which I think to some extent ruin the games.

There’s also an argument for the “Warzone-ification” of the Call of Duty games. This argument, which I was against for Black Ops Cold War and Vanguard, I tend to agree with for the newer games. I understand one reason for the unification of engines was that when including content from the games in Warzone, things are now much less likely to break, as seen especially with the “Verdansk ’84” era of Warzone in 2021 from the differences between Modern Warfare (2019) and Black Ops Cold War. With the unified engine, the developers do not face this issue, but at the same time, it creates some new limitations. Things have to be done a way able to be easily ported to a battle royale, which is fundamentally very different from 6v6 multiplayer or the zombies horde-defense mode. And I think this change causes that same “feel” for every game, and as mentioned, it’s a “feel” I just don’t vibe with.

Not to mention, the unification of Call of Duty came with the unification of multiple games under one “Call of Duty” launcher, for the most recent few games and Warzone. That’s something I despise: it removes a difference from the game at a surface level for years. How is Black Ops 6 any different from Black Ops 7 when they’re on the same app on your Xbox? They’re different games! Why should they be together? Let each game have its own app and menu! You shouldn’t have to go through a centralized “Call of Duty” launcher to launch into a game. You should just be able to play it.

Unfortunately, I don’t see Activision going back on the “unified” Call of Duty. The death of that hope for me was 2023’s Black Ops 6. Seeing all of the uniqueness of the Treyarch games gone, it just felt like a certain fun to the series was gone, replaced by a focus on a battle royale I have no interest in powered by a game I didn’t like, which now will poison the games that I’d have a chance of liking.

That’s all I have for today. That’s a lie, actually. I always have more, but I don’t really want to create a 3000 word behemoth of a blog post. I usually write a bit and think “I should save some more for tomorrow.” Writing that made me think of the policy to not overdeliver by Bungie during Destiny 2, which was one of the many mistakes that game made. Maybe that’ll be blog post #12. I hope you enjoyed this one, even if it was very Call of Duty focused and you hate the series. Have a fantastic rest of your day.

#5 – “In the Meantime”

06/30/2026 / Evan / 0 Comments

Hello again! My last post I talked of projects that I’d like to experiment with and follow up on in a few days or weeks. I’m still doing that! Give me some time! So, what do I cover now? Whatever I feel like, just like before. Here’s my thoughts on some stuff I’ve been spending my time on as of late.

Project Hail Mary (Currently on Chapter 13)

I’ve been reading Andy Weir’s novel Project Hail Mary, and it’s an incredible novel, so I’d like to comment a little on what I think so far. To start, Weir’s writing style is amazing. He manages to focus upon scientific accuracy, allowing the reader to “see” a character’s worldview, and doses of comedy and drama all at once into what I found so far to be an addicting read. In all of my sessions so far, I sat down to read one or two chapters before bed, and kept reading. It’s hard to put the book down, and that is a great thing.

Helping this addictive nature is the plot of the book. Grace having to save the Earth from Astrophage while slowly gaining back his memories is such a fun hook, and the novel takes it in such creative ways, especially as he finds Eridian life with Rocky. This is pretty much where I am in the novel.

I would end this segment with predictions of what I think will happen next, but I really don’t know. That’s another strength of the novel: it keeps you guessing, but what does end up occurring makes sense. I highly recommend reading this one! After finishing, I’ll probably take a look at the film adaptation, though I’ve heard that one is great too.

Destiny 2

Destiny has always been a franchise I’ve had an interest in. Hearing of the “next masterpiece” that was an experience with friends from Bungie, the guys who made Halo, sounded fantastic when I was younger. Despite this, it took a good few years for me to really try the game out for more than an hour or two. I tried it a little at the launch of free-to-play during the Shadowkeep expansion as well as when the DLC was free on Xbox Game Pass during Beyond Light, but it just didn’t click.

In 2023, right before the launch of the Lightfall expansion, I bought The Witch Queen, mostly for its legendary campaign, which I hoped would be like Halo. Once I started to play, I realized I liked this game. Then, a few months later (I can’t remember what detracted me), I got more into the game. From this point, which was Lightfall’s Season of the Witch, until the launch of The Final Shape, Destiny was my “ol’ reliable” game; in other words, I’d come back to it when I just didn’t know what to play.

At the launch of The Final Shape, I played through and beat the legendary campaign. And maybe it was because it was the conclusion to the decade-long saga to that point, but that was when I entered a “retirement” from the game. Don’t get me wrong, I still liked it and occasionally played a dungeon or raid with some friends, but I was out of the loop of the new content to which I was in just months before.

What broke this retirement was The Edge of Fate. That expansion did to the game exactly what I didn’t want. It turned the space adventure into what felt like and partially was an utter grindfest just to get your basic power level up. I just didn’t want to play a game where I’d go through that much just to get to the “fun part,” when during Lightfall and The Final Shape, the opposite was true, that meaning everything felt significant rather than slowly chipping away to get to things being interesting, and I loved the game for it.

That was a common opinion among the Destiny community to my knowledge, which makes what comes next both shocking and expected. Sony and Bungie announced the end of new content for Destiny 2. This was expected. The player base was decreasing, and nothing was helping. How much of this was a self-inflicted wound, with the disliked expansion and subsequent content drought, I’m not 100% sure, although knowing Bungie, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was pretty much the sole reason. What was shocking was how Bungie handled the end: Monument of Triumph, the final update, seemed good.

A partial rollback to the more controversial aspects of “new” D2 as I’ll call it, along with a fair balance of gameplay and stuff to grind for in such a way that every piece of content felt meaningful. This is what I loved the game for, and while it was maybe only true from my perspective in the past, it is almost a definite fact now.

Part of me still had my doubts, but I reinstalled the game to try Destiny 2 one last time. I really wanted to like it! I didn’t want one of my old favorite games to die a painful death as nothing I recognized. And luckily, I got my wish! The game is in a fantastic state. It’s almost a shame, because the game is in such a good state but there’s no updates for it to expand even further. This is not to say that current D2 lacks depth at all! It has plenty! I’ll just always be curious where the game could’ve gone from here, that’s all.

But to wrap up, I’m very happy that Destiny 2 is in a good state again. It’s just nice to see. It’s also nice to see a rise in playerbase with this update, even if it is something of a pyrrhic victory. But with the game as is, it’s a state where I can play casually and still have fun for years to come, and to me, this is all that matters.

That’s what I have for today. I hope you enjoyed reading this post, and I also hope you enjoy it as much as enjoy writing. Have a fantastic rest of your day.

#4 – “Follow You Follow Me”

06/29/2026 / Evan / 0 Comments

Hello again! Today’s post is the blog post equivalent of the setup of a film, where the elements are introduced to be followed up upon later. I have two things to introduce today, and they’re something of fun little experiments for me to mess with over the next few weeks.

Exhibit A – Google Pixel

I mentioned this in Post #2, but I have gained a new interest in older Android devices. This interest was sparked by installing LineageOS on my dad’s tablet from 2016. Part of me regrets not taking it for myself and seeing what I think of it, but I have a new guinea pig device anyway; this device is my dad’s Google Pixel from 2016.

I haven’t done much with it yet, as I’ve just wiped the phone and recalibrated the battery. Before I bother with Lineage, I might as well know if it works decently as-is. But it does remind me of something I like about phones: they were small once! Being able to use the thing one handed is a luxury that my phone (iPhone 15) just can’t offer.

I’ll try to spend a few days using the phone, mostly as an Apple Music player as to not kill my phone battery, and then get a sense of what I should do with it, if anything. If I find it particularly interesting, I’ll follow up on it in a later post.

Exhibit B – Riffmaster

I’ve been getting back into Rock Band 4. It’s a game I’ve always liked quite a bit, especially because of the sheer amount of DLC that the game has. That’s not to say I only like RB4, by the way. I love the whole series! I could go on for a while about Rock Band (and in a few days, I probably will). But Rock Band 4 is important to this one.

I play RB4 on guitar/bass with the Roll Limitless Mini adapter. I cannot recommend the thing enough, it made it possible for me to play the game without having to shell out $200 for a Rock Band 4 guitar or $300 on the Legacy Adapter. At the time I got into RB4, and the series at a whole, new guitars seemed an impossibility and RB4 was the last breath either Guitar Hero or Rock Band got, still getting DLC 7 years on.

Rock Band 4, once I got the adapter and hooked it up to my 360 guitar to play, was an absolute joy. As a more casual player, I have almost no complaints. It felt like the best of the series all in one package, even if I had joined late enough that I missed the ability to export my copies of RB2 and 3. But one concession I had to make was that I only had one adapter and microphone. I was limited to two players on the game, whereas on the 360 I had another guitar for 3 player (on Guitar Hero 5 in particular, I had enough guitars for 4 players with us all using guitar).

But since then, Fortnite Festival released and put a new interest into these kinds of games. This led to the creation of the Riffmaster and CRKD guitar controllers. So, it may be 2 years after release, but I’ve finally decided to try out the Riffmaster. Why the RIffmaster, and why now? I’ve always preferred the frets on a Rock Band controller, and while I like the strum bar less, my 360 Xplorer is in the best shape of any of my 360 guitars, meaning I have a GH controller as my most reliable fallback. Giving the Rock Band-style an upgrade felt right. In addition, there are some reliability concerns with the CRKD guitars and dropping inputs. A little ironic if you ask me, seeing as both the CRKD Les Paul and GH3 Les Paul have had that same issue, it’s almost as if the Les Paul is cursed. In terms of why now, it was partially just because with summer I expect I’ll have friends over, and being able to play the game with the largest amount of my DLC with more people is a good benefit. Once I’ve gotten a good feel for the controller, I’ll probably follow up with a mini-review. That may be fun to write about.

Those two devices are interesting prospects for something to mess with over the summer. I really do hope they work out, and I find good use with them! Optimism is great. But, with that, I’m wrapping up tonight’s post. Thank you for reading, I hope you’ve enjoyed. Have a great rest of your day.

#3 – “Da Funk”

06/28/2026 / Evan / 0 Comments

Hello again! My previous post was a very brief test on how it was to write blog posts on my phone. While I did make a post, I’m back on my computer for this one, so it couldn’t have been that great. This post will be a story on how Windows pissed me off, and that’s it.

Now, Windows is terrible, as almost anybody interested in tech will tell you. But unfortunately, because Windows is 40 or so years of technology mashed together into a big glob of an always breaking operating system, software is designed for it, and nothing else, because it shouldn’t break between versions. It usually does! That’s not my point, though. Software is also only designed for Windows because sometimes developers fear the penguin! I’m not quite sure what it is with Linux, but developers clearly must have something. One such developer is Bungie. Because I dare to like Destiny 2, I have to keep a Windows partition around on my PC because they instaban you if you even think about loading the game up on Linux.

So I was using Windows for Destiny, and it made me think: I had a few other games stuck in Windows jail. For example, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Battlefield 1, and Fortnite. As an aside, Battlefield 1 once even worked on Linux; EA is just evil, so they added a garbage anticheat which just eliminated the Linux players. Anticheat is kinda like DRM in that way. It doesn’t make cheaters or pirates go away, but instead it just kinda screws over your average consumer, for no reason. But because of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse, as we’ll call them, I said, “OK let’s give solely Windows a shot. It can’t be that bad, can it?”

Yeah, if it wasn’t obvious by me stating it two or three times so far, Windows was that bad. In fact, it was bad twice over: I first tried Microsoft’s latest “gift” to the PC world in Windows 11, before going back to Windows 10 and having more problems. Now I’m back on Debian, with Windows just a thing taking up 300GB for Destiny 2 (where I started).

For a little context on why I was trying Windows 11, I hadn’t tried it in sometimes. I used it on a PC in 2021 when it came out, it was a miserable experience (partially the computer, partially Windows 11), and went back to Windows 10 by 2022. I had used 10 since then, and later switched to Linux as my main OS in 2025, so outside of school computers, I haven’t given the OS a new look in four, going-on five, years. Maybe they fixed what I didn’t like about it? Microsoft is really good at giving me opportunities to turn my thoughts into It’s Always Sunny titlecard jokes.

So, what was so bad at 11 then and now? Here’s a little list:

The UI – Every Windows version comes with some fun UI upgrades. Windows Vista’s Aero theme is a great example. 11 comes with a nice UI with a focus on rounded corners, and making everything big as hell for no reason! Not only that, it messes with your workflow!
- The Taskbar: When Windows 7? (I don’t know, I think it was 7) added icon buttons with no label, they gave you the option to keep the labels, as it was in Windows 95. 11, on the other hand removed this! On top of removing features, setting the taskbar to the left, right, or top? Gone! I will credit Microsoft here, labels got added back in 25H2, so I could have them again; taskbar placement is coming in 26H2, along with a way to decrease the size of the taskbar finally, so it’s reign of it being bigger than it ever was can end. Not bad. Then again, they created this problem in the first place.
- The Start Menu: Jesus. Where do I start? Not only is it bigger for no reason, you yet again removed features. Plus, this introduces my other “favorite” aspect of Windows 11: messing with your workflow by making what there is even slower. To get to the list of your apps (yet again, Windows 95), it now takes an extra click.
- The Right Click Menu: bigger, and again Microsoft doesn’t realize something is less functional when I have to take extra clicks to get stuff done. Who was this for?
Performance: Turns out, this “beautiful” new UI comes at a performance cost. So did Aero, to be fair. But you know what came at performance gains? Windows 7, 8, and 10. The last three major versions of Windows gave gains, so not gaining one here kinda sucks. But I could even forgive that, if the new features were good, or the performance tax wasn’t that significant. Unfortunately, the performance tax is that significant. On my PC with a Ryzen 5 5600 and RX 6600, I consistently get around 10% slower performance on 11 compared to 10, which is already down vs. Linux. For what?
The New Features: The big features of Windows 11 are UI improvements and integration of Microsoft services, especially Copilot. The UI improvements I mostly spoke on, but I would also like to add how the UI improvements have made Windows settings a further confusing experience, as while the app has improved, the legacy Control Panel is still here. Could they not just go all in? But the integration of Microsoft services
The Removal of Features: I will credit Microsoft on this. They’ve fixed it. The little annoyances of “why is this gone” like right-clicking the taskbar for task manager, or the aforementioned window labels, are back. But my question is as follows: Windows has always been focused on legacy support. Why, and how, did these get the axe in the first place?
The Bugs: Oh lord the bugs. Let’s just say there’s a reason I ran off to a stable Linux distribution. It does give me a laugh every week when I read tech news and see a new Windows 11 issue, though.
Adding Insult to Injury: Sometimes, Microsoft will manage to do multiple of these at once. The best example is the “Widgets” screen, a new feature, replacing the “News and Interest” feature from Windows 10 and the Live Tiles from 8-10. Not only can you do less than the live tiles, for years, because it also replaced “News,” you had to deal with it, whether you wanted it or not. I will credit yet again that they removed it, but why was it an idea to combine these features?

So, 11 wasn’t gonna work out. So later that day, I went back to Windows 10. I didn’t consider 11, or my experience with it, much the fault of Microsoft, as it was really my curiosity that took over. But now that I was back on 10, nothing could happen to ruin it and I could just play my games, right?

I was on Windows 10 for a few more days, but it is the shorter part of this story. I set up Windows how I liked it, and installed my games. However, a few more things went wrong, which is why I went back to Linux. First, I dared to play a game. Oddly enough, when I opened Black Ops Cold War, my screen started to flicker, and the taskbar kept popping up. Annoying, certainly, and I tried to fix it, but found nothing. Maybe because I can play that game on Xbox easily, but I didn’t mind too hard, and just uninstalled. A day or two later, I joined a Discord call with my friends, and the same thing happened. That one, that’s a dealbreaking bug. I troubleshooted everything, and eventually realized that it was a Windows issue, after going as far as to reinstall my GPU drivers after 9000 steps relating to the app to make it work.

So, I had to reinstall. But seeing as I still found 11 unusable and 10 managed to break on me in a day, why bother? I went back to Linux, and that’s where the story ends. Rather anticlimactic, I know, but that’s how life is.

I hope you enjoyed that rather pointless story, at least much more than I “enjoyed” Windows. Thank you for reading today’s post, I hope you enjoy them as much as I like writing them. Have a good rest of your day.

#2 – “Nightvision”

06/26/2026 / Evan / 0 Comments

This is the first post I’ve written on my phone, so it’ll likely be about 3 sentences long. I’ve proved I can do that!

Anyways on what I did today: I installed LineageOS on an old (2016) Samsung tablet. I think that Lineage is quite an interesting project, breathing new life into older devices. I’ll comment more on usability in the near future, as I may try it on a phone or use said tablet to learn about its quirks vs Android.

I know it was three paragraphs, but that’s all for this one. Give me a break, because I wrote it on a phone! Have a good rest of your day, and thank you for reading.

#1 – “Eternal Summer”

06/25/2026 / Evan / 0 Comments

Hello again! In my previous post, I said I’d like to keep these blog posts as a daily thing. That was three weeks ago. So, I failed. But in between then and now, some things have changed that make this a lot easier of a task. First off, the Knicks won the finals; this means that my last post aged well. Second, and much more important to why daily blog posts are easier to do, is that my summer vacation has begun, meaning I should have the time for 69 or 70 daily posts. That’s why I’ve numbered them, so I can keep track.

The goal is to post these “daily,” with daily in quotes because my sleep schedule will be all kinds of messed up. I’m counting this post for Wednesday, June 24th, but as I’m writing this it’s really 1:50 the following Thursday. In other words, daily with days quantified as the span I am awake, rather than a specific 24 hour period. That could mean a day can have one or possibly two posts, or perhaps if my sleep schedule gets extra screwed, some “days” will have two posts while being in different days (this assumes I pull an all-nighter and know I’ll be lazy enough to write a post the next morning).

Anyways, enough about the technicalities of my blog posts made so I can yap to a guy without a guy to yap to, on to the contents. I’d like my posts over the summer really to be something of a time capsule of it. So I may just yap on what I did that day, or current thoughts on a show I’m watching, or review of an album I’ve listened to or movie I watched. For example…

Stuff I’ve Done

or: doing exactly what I said a sentence ago

Note: These sections are collapsible. If you just so happen to be interested in anything here and want to remain unspoiled, don’t read it!

The Sopranos (Last Watched: S6E7)

I like this one. Not a thing I have to justify in the slightest, as I think most people will easily tell you this is one of the greatest shows of all time. What I’ll focus on today is the show up to this point, which is the vast majority of it, but I think that’s OK.

The dynamic of Tony balancing his life as the mob boss and life with his family, especially in the early seasons with his mother, is fantastic. It’s all brought together with what I think is the pivotal aspect to the show, the therapy scenes. The therapy scenes are, in some way, the most difficult scenes for the show to balance.

I think one of the biggest strengths of any show is a great first season. This show has a phenomenal one. So far through the show, it is my personal favorite, although season five is very close. Maybe it’s because they didn’t know where the series would go, but that season is the only one with a complete arc. And I think the dynamic of Tony and his mom, and his reaction to it through therapy while having to hide it from the mob to keep up his “tough guy” image is fantastic.

Another great aspect of the show is how it balances dark comedy with the dramatic elements. The show can manage having some of the most dramatic moments on television, with the line “He was gay, Gary Cooper?”

I also like how the show is not afraid to show its characters in terrible light. This may seem like a point where it’s like “OK, so what?” now that we have shows like Breaking Bad, but I think The Sopranos is better at it too. For every moment where you side with Tony, there’s at least two to remind you that the characters in this show are almost all horrible people.

To wrap this section up as opposed to yapping worse than six barbers, I’ll talk more on where I think the show is going. Predictions are fun. First of, I think Vito is going to die. The show always gives you those moments of hope that maybe something will work out, especially with Tony B trying to be legitimate and Adrianna’s whole character arc, before ripping it all away. I just don’t think Tony can get over Vito’s homosexuality. Second, I think something will happen that will get Tony at war with New York. I don’t know exactly why I think that one, or how it can happen, but I think it will.

That’s really all I have to say this post. I really wanted this to be a shorter post to get back into writing as a fun little hobby. I expect these will get longer as I go on. Have a good rest of your day, and thanks for reading.