As a long running series, there wasn’t much I could say about gameplay aspect in Lord of Hatred in the previous piece. And now that we have discussed the parts that are on the surface without going into spoiler territory, I thought to touch on the areas that it is plot critical. Much of the heavy lifting the expansion does for the franchise, I believe it has to do with the plot element.
The Case of the ‘Indulgent’ Subscription
Bit of context before I get into the whole fiasco. The choke point of physical ownership is real estate. Everyone who has ever tried owning every contents would know this. At some point, medium takes up more space than the media: books, movies, musics, video games, just about all of them. Movies, especially, would hit close at home for most of us. VHS, Betamax, DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-ray, the list of mediums are keep growing for the same movie. And some of the mediums haven’t even survived its own era. Streaming has solved this, albeit at a price.
Raspberry Pi, RAM, and Home Labs
Most of my Raspberry Pis have been decommissioned. I had used Docker and Docker only on Pis, so much of the effort was on focused compatibility and reliability of single machine (Synology NAS) doing all the work. For the record, Synology couldn’t do everything off the shelves. I had to upgrade the RAM from default 4 GB to 20 GB. And I am running most of the DBs on m.2 drives to ensure faster read and write. The question I have now is simple. What will I do with Pi boards?
Closed Captioning is a Must
For the life of me, I do not know why YouTube still doesn’t officially support closed captioning on PiP. As much as I appreciate overall better audio qualities even from a beginner YouTuber, the problem stands. Unless I am watching a podcast video uploaded onto YouTube, a video of people talking in perfectly sterilized studio, there is bound to be some background noises, some other audios mixing in. It’s only natural, even big time Hollywood movies and TV shows suffer from it. The difference I am pointing out is how these platforms handle the problem. Of which, YouTube is slowly…
App to Automatically Sync Subtitles to Videos
As I was going through my media library, there was one thing I noticed consistently — I am more or less after the fan-made subs than the rips themselves. The official subtitles tend to miss out on the clever wordplays, crude jokes, pretty much anything that is not broadcast-friendly in both literal and financial sense. But at the same time, I also consistently notice fan-made subtitles are out of sync by 1/4 seconds or so.
Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred Spiel
Vessel of Hatred, the previous expansion, left quite a lot to be desired. It only introduced a new class to the game; it added a new region; it unfolded some of Mephisto’s plans. But ultimately, aside from some powerful cinematic in and out of the game, it was a filler between the stories. Lord of Hatred is the conflict Diablo IV needed, all the way to the resolution.
Olympus Air, Caira, and Photography
Before some may assume I must be talking of photography in commercial or professional sense, I am not. Just recently, I was searching for a better way to scan my old books, only to find the “real” solution used in archiving was DSLR or Mirrorless cameras on tripods with professional softwares. It is a solution, but it is not the solution for home or for the hobbyists. Though it is far from photography, my interest in telescopes almost always comes back to bite in a same way — the most pro models and pro conventions are not always the answer.
How to Auto-Switch Proxies on iOS using PAC
This one is mostly for documentation and proof of concept. I was able to get it to work, but it was never reliable enough. The iOS feature itself does work. But even at the basic home lab level, it doesn’t have any interface to speak of. For instance, I want to know if traffic is actually going through the designated proxy, but there is no notification of any kind. For day-to-day operation, I don’t think it fits the bill.
How to Load Lazy-Load Images in Background
I have an assumption about average internet speed — it’s fast enough for most parts of the world to have streaming services. But somehow, some websites still do use lazy loaders on their images and assets. Mad Tea Party is one of them, due to server’s resource issues. But for websites that have larger traffic, for the life of me, I don’t understand why they would want to have users wait for each image to load in-between the reading session.
Resurrecting Abandoned Projects with Vibe Coding
Open source projects always had a huge caveat in its system. If it’s too rigid and far too common, it is less likely to be given enough attention for maintenance until it breaks. If it’s too early in the development and quite niche, it is also less likely to be given enough attention. The projects I usually encounter and enjoy reading are usually in the later category. Coming from that very same niche, — that’s how I ended up googling for it — I understand the desire to come up with an algorithm. These abandoned projects never come to fruition,…
How to Pass Brackets in URL Query for Komga
One of the reasons why I am still in the process of writing a piece on Komga is its weird quirks like this. As a comics and graphic novels manager, Komga has what I would consider Calibre has for graphical publications: lots of metadata managements, different lists that handle series and books, and more. But Komga has its own limits. One such limit, I have seen so many times, is that the web UI uses brackets in the URL for query. It often confuses browsers beyond limit.
Are LLMs Terrible at Gauging Efficiency?
A theory that I had for sometime, originally not for LLMs, but for those who believe LLMs can write perfect codes. LLMs care little about the environment on which the codes will run on. I know the statement alone makes no sense — how can it be considered coding, if it doesn’t work on the environment? It’s not that it won’t run, it’s just that it will run extremely poorly.
App to Manage Streaming Contents and Self-Hosted Media Discoveries
I know the title can be mouthful. So let me start by describing the problem first. There are different services available on the internet showing what streaming services in your region carry the contents you are after. The problem I had with these services were: one. it often fails to parse the localized titles used outside of North America, two. these services are not always up to date with licensing. What it means, in the real world, is you might be buying or adding a new subscription to watch a movie or a TV show that either you already own…
LLM, Subscriptions, and Tokens
As I have previously said, I don’t see Claude replacing a proper programmer’s job anytime soon. I am subscribing to meager Pro tier, and that’s nowhere near enough to replace my hobbyist’s job. Granted, there is the joy of not needing to fiddle with technicalities. Being able to implement new algorithm and upgrade existing core algorithm to a new one like blocks falling into places feels like a vindication. But this is from a hobbyist’s perspective.
Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen) Spiel
I had to rewrite this piece several times over as I wasn’t sure what to add more on the subject. Headphones of any kind are already being reviewed extensively with audio equipments one can only see in the lab. And these reviews aren’t being published on academic journals; these are for average consumers and hobbyists, laying out what are their, audio-wise, strength and weaknesses are. Headphones generally make an interesting case for having a professional reviewers, as different manufacturers have different priorities on what to focus on a good speaker; after all, with only so much room, it can’t have…