Syberia 3

Ever wonder where those jets are coming from or going to, the ones you see pass overhead?  We are often on the arrival and departure path of many flights out of Detroit airport.  Well, now it's easy to find out using a website called flightradar24.  The free version is okay, but the silver version (cost $10 per year) is so much better.  Flights to Amsterdam (3x daily), London (2x daily), Paris (2x daily), and Frankfurt (1-2x daily) all seem to fly right over our house on departure.  The flights to Asia head the opposite direction, so we don't see those.  And of course any amount of flights to Mexico, the Caribbean, Canada, and all points US often fly over, too.  I just watched the plane to Amsterdam fly over, and as I type I am awaiting the giant Lufthansa plane on its way to Frankfurt.  From the moment when it begins to taxi (yup, you can watch that, too) till it arrives over our house is around 4 minutes time.  A fun hobby.  Typically, around 13-14 thousand planes are in the air at any given time, world wide.  That is a lot of jet fuel being burned at any one time.

Syberia 3 is finally complete.  Deb gave up on it about halfway through, but I managed to finish it.  The worst part of the game, well, there are several big problems, has to be the limited view the player has of his surroundings.  It's impossible to look all around without moving the character, and often that is a clumsy process, for example when in a room.  And sometimes Kate Walker will get stuck in a loop, and keep marching on the spot.  In outdoor environments it is hard to figure out one's surroundings because of the limited viewpoint.  If you do make a wrong turn, the game could begin one of its many very long loads for the new environment.  then you have to reload the old environment just to get back where you were.  And there are serious bugs, and the only solution offered is to download a saved game and jump to that spot.  It is a really long game, much of it due to the loading time for adjacent environments.  Add to that that the story is simplistic and not at all engaging, and the ending is terrible, and there is very little reason not to replay Syberia 1 instead of this game.  The final puzzle (image, below) is also quite silly, and once solved you have to sit through a long concluding movie.  And did I mention that you cannot save a game, but must wait for the engine itself to save at its appointed time?  This makes the final complex puzzle nearly impossible to solve without putting aside an entire evening.  If you stop anywhere, you have to restart the entire thing.  There are some lovely environments, but also too many dark, dreary, and dingy ones.

 The final puzzle, shown part way through.

Anyway, the game is complete, and I have moved on to a game called Nibiru.  Hoping this one has some good qualities to it. 

Deb has had her 2nd laser surgery today, and is resting comfortably in her big chair.  A few days to recover, and one more session in February, and hopefully her pain and discomfort will be fully alleviated.  She also had her RA infusion earlier in the week.  Luckily our weather has been calm.  No snow is in the forecast, thus it will be a brown Solstice and Christmas.  We are both fine with that.  Makes driving much less stressful.  And we are in for a mild spell.  Mid 40s predicted for Solstice on Sunday, making it one of the warmest ones ever.  We will likely turn down the furnace that day, as we will have our all-day fire.  We've seen a lot of sunsets lately, too, more than usual for this time of year.  The Sun is basically at its most southerly right now, and by Monday or Tuesday will slowly begin its journey northwards.  I might even enjoy a clear night tomorrow!

Finally, in movie news, my choice of films this week was the 2nd part of Chungking Express, which the director wanted to be part of one long movie.  Instead, he was persuaded to make a 2nd film, which also has two weird stories.  Whereas the first movie showed Hong Kong in daytime, and sunny, Fallen Angels shows the city at night, and during the rainy season.  The 2nd film is darker in many ways, and much more violent.  Both films have a kind of unfinished feel to them, with endings that can hardly be called satisfying.  Still, the movies are easy to watch, and the characters so bizarre that trying to figure out what is really going on is nearly pointless.  Sit back and watch, and hopefully enjoy.

Here is a quote from the director about the two films, which I borrowed from Wikipedia:

...To me, Chungking Express and Fallen Angels are one film that should be three hours long. I always think these two films should be seen together as a double bill. In fact, people asked me during an interview for Chungking Express: "You've made these two stories which have no relationship at all to each other, how can you connect them?" And I said, 'The main characters of Chungking Express are not Faye Wong or Takeshi Kaneshiro, but the city itself, the night and day of Hong Kong. Chungking Express and Fallen Angels together are the bright and dark of Hong Kong." I see the films as inter-reversible, the character of Faye Wong could be the character of Takeshi in Fallen Angels; Brigitte Lin in Chungking could be Leon Lai in Fallen Angels. All of their characters are inter-reversible. Also, in Chungking we were shooting from a very long distance with long lenses, but the characters seem close to us.  

 Now showing on Criterion Channel, along with Chungking Express. 

Happy Solstice to one and all!  Enjoy the dark days as much as possible, and have no fear, despite Trump and Brexit, the light will return, eventually.....

Mapman Mike

Syberia 3, Teotihuacan, and Fred and Ginger

First, the rain.  Since Thursday afternoon, we had 4" of rain through Sunday night.  That's a lot of rain, especially for an area already suffering from record high water levels in the surrounding lakes and rivers.  More is expected tomorrow, and possibly Wednesday.  What to do with it all.

For the past several weeks I have been playing Syberia 3, a game for PC, off and on in the evenings.  It's a rather tedious game, and not very special.  I am playing it only out of loyalty to the first two games in the series.  Anyway, as per usual, when I turned on the game to play, Steam downloaded an update.  Then, when the game finally loaded, all my progress was erased.  No saved games, no nothing.  Weeks and weeks of work down the tube, with no desire to start all over again.  I downloaded some saved games from the web, but so far they refuse to load.  Harrumph (and under my breath, many more worse words).

We finally sat down and played a mostly full round of our newest board game, called Teotihuacan.  It is certainly one of the better board games we now own.  It is an evening's commitment to set up the board and play, but it is a lot of fun, and as the game board changes with each new game, no sure fire strategy will help you win the next game.  And you get to build a pyramid, and decorate it.  How cool is that?  I think Tokaido Road and this game are our two favourites.  Now that the basement had been reassembled, I have room to store and display all of our board games.  Some have never been played yet.

Deb's weekend movie pick was Swing Time, starring Fred and Ginger.  From 1936, and directed by George Stevens, this b & w classic has some superb dancing and some memorable songs, including "The Way You Look Tonight," and "A Fine Romance," written by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields.  Great dance numbers (and music) include "Never Gonna Dance," and Fred's black face tribute to Bill "Bojangle" Robinson.  Some great hoofin'.  The plot, of course, is virtually non-existent. 

 Showing on the Criterion Channel until the end of August. 

And now we return to our regular programming, featuring another fine landscape painting from the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Bernardo Bellotto

View of the Tiber in Rome with the Castel Sant'Angelo, 1743 or 1744

oil on canvas, 34" x 48", unframed. 

The museum did a complete reorganization several years ago, something which I think destroyed the overall layout and made finding any specific painting much more difficult.  One of the newer spaces is called The Grand Tour," and purports to show how Italy was on everyone's grand tour in the 18th Century, and the artists who did souvenir type works of art.  Canaletto, Guardi, Panini, robert, and Bellotto are some of these artists, and thanks to them we have some rather good impressions of Rome, Venice, and other cities because of their painstaking renditions for rich tourists to carry home.  This particular painting has always been a favourite of mine, and it is large enough to get in close and observe all of the wonderful details of the time.

Detail of the bridge.

 Detail of far left side.

Detail of St. Peter's dome.

Detail of the Castel, which once served as Hadrian's tomb.

Castel, further detail.

Paintings like this hang in every great museum of the world, and are always worth stopping to look at more closely.  This one has an evening twilight colour that cannot be captured in a photo, but is magical and difficult to describe in person.

I had my first piano lesson this afternoon with Philip Adamson, bringing him my newest program.  We got to work on the Bach Prelude and Fugue, and the Schubert Impromptu in C Minor.  Very helpful.  I will return in a few weeks for help with the Haydn Sonata and the Bartok Allegro Barbaro.  I will not likely make my August memorization goals.  For every three notes I stick into my head, two of them pop out the other side.  I'll get there, but it will take more time.

Mapman Mike