No spoiler thoughts on Season 1 of The Witcher on Netflix. It is a pretty good show. The story was interesting, though the way it was told was confusing (more on this further below). The fight scenes were great. The dialogue was funny. Geralt's one liners were hilarious. The bard Jaskier was great as comic relief. The soundtrack was pretty good too. I'm assuming the songs composed for the show were original ones? If so, they were pretty good. For awhile after watching the finale, I kept singing, “Toss a coin to your Witcher, oh valley of plenty.” Damn that song is so catchy! There is some nudity, but not enough to make me feel uncomfortable watching it around kids. Certainly not as much nudity as in Game of Thrones.
Okay, so the way they told the story was weird and confusing. The scenes that focused on Ciri represented the current/present time in the story. The scenes focused on Geralt were flashbacks. The show never tells you this though. I only figured it out 4 episodes into the show. The scenes that focused on Geralt, start as flashbacks and progress forward until you get to the last episode of the season. That is where the story of Geralt finally catches up to the present time in the story. It sounds cool now that I think about it, but it ended up confusing me. They could have handled it better I suppose. Still a really good show. I'm looking forward to Season 2.
This post is Day 3 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. Visit https://100daystooffload.com to get more info, or to get involved.
It has been a stressful week for reasons I don't want to elaborate on. But there was good news yesterday and that's all that matters right now. What a coincidence it is, that yet again, these are the kind of songs I have lined up for today. Anyway, it's time for another music log Friday.
The first track today is perhaps my best discovery last year. It is the song “Shine” by Mondo Cozmo. I do not remember where I heard it from. It was probably from the Top 50 Rock Songs of 2019 countdown. Honestly, not the song I expected to hear from an artist who does folk rock/indie rock music. But either way, this is a great song. It is about trusting in Jesus and living life the best you can, without telling others how to live their lives. It reminds me of something I read in the Word on Fire Bible — that each one of us is responsible for our own salvation. Stop looking at what other people are doing and focus instead on what you should be doing.
This song has some really good lyrics too. It starts out with this:
Stick with me Jesus through the comin' storm
I've come to you in search of something I have lost
Shine down a light on me and show a path
I promise you I will return if you take me back
Then on the bridge there's the lyrics below. It nearly brought tears to my eyes when I first heard them. This is such a good song.
Come with me Mary through these modern lines
Stick with me Jesus til' the end of time
Shine down a light on me and let me know
And take me in your arms and never let me go
Finished reading the book An Echo of Things to Come by James Islington a few weeks ago, here are my thoughts on it.
Why did I pick up this book?
This is the second book in the Licanius Trilogy. The first book ended in such a crazy cliffhanger that I couldn't not pick up this second book.
What did I like about this book?
It continues the story of Caeden, Davian and the rest of the crew. A good part of the second book is Caeden uncovering his memories of the past. At first it starts out slow, but once it picked up, I couldn't wait to read more of his flashbacks.
Another Friday, another music log. I have two songs today from The Piano Guys. Let's get started.
First one is this beautiful, beautiful piano cover of Ed Sheeran's “Perfect”. It's so good I can listen to it all day. Just like the song title, it is perfect.
The most beautiful thing about a blog is that most of us don’t write blogs to become famous or make money. We write blogs simply because we are enthusiasts and nerds and hobbyists, and our little home in this vague corner of the internet is where we go to be, in a sense, fully ourselves, a safe place where we can go full nerd with a community of fellow nerds in tow.
I wholeheartedly agree!
People living halfway across the world from us, in Belgium and Iceland and the very far ends of Vladivostock, were making things they wanted to make just for the heck of it — websites and blogs were born out of hobbies, not ambitions. We were all amateurs making crude, ugly but heartfelt internet objects out of our laughable HTML skills. It was FUN because we were all amateurs together and there were no rules and no expectations and, of course, very little aesthetic sense. It was a pretty level playing ground.
Interesting enough, I feel that I am at this stage with this online journal. Except I'm not living in the past, but in the present.
Another great, informative and fun read from Mark Manson. I always learn something new from his writings. It is well researched too. He adds references in the footnotes section of his post as proof.
Our aversion to pain and struggle in any capacity has become so ingrained in everything we do that it’s compromising our ability to learn, grow, and function as healthy and stable adults. It shocks and appalls me that companies and products that are supposed to help this issue are only making it worse.
You don’t build psychological resilience by feeling good all the time. You build psychological resilience by getting better at feeling bad.
There he goes again with his counter-intuitive logic. Except, it does make sense to me.
On my dev blog, I shared some tips for working with Production databases. Especially helpful if you haven't had your morning coffee yet. You don't want to accidentally delete Production data that early in the morning.
It's been awhile since I wrote a music log entry. I had a number of excuses ready to type up, but I'll skip those. Let's just get one up shall we?
The first song for today is a rather unpopular song by My Chemical Romance. Unpopular in the sense that, I don't think it is one of their hits. I just happened to come across it as a song recommendation. Whether it was from Pandora or Spotify, I don't remember anymore. But the important bit, is that this song rocks! So here is “Ambulance” by My Chemical Romance.
A great read on why reputation matters so much now. Especially in light of how much information is available to the public nowadays. Plus some light history lesson on where the “Moon Landing” conspiracy theory came from.
In the average-case scenario, you trust newspapers, magazines or TV channels that endorse a political view which supports scientific research to summarise its findings for you. In this latter case, you are twice-removed from the sources: you trust other people’s trust in reputable science.
Huh, I actually didn't think of it that way, but that's true though.
So, do we now have to fact check everything we read or see online? No, that would take absurd amounts of our time. Not to mention, we probably won't come up with the correct answers doing our own research. Instead, we should ask the questions the author presented in the article, that I quoted below. It can act as sort of a checklist or framework for quickly verifying the accuracy of new information.
Whenever we are at the point of accepting or rejecting new information, we should ask ourselves: Where does it come from? Does the source have a good reputation? Who are the authorities who believe it? What are my reasons for deferring to these authorities? Such questions will help us to get a better grip on reality than trying to check directly the reliability of the information at issue.
