I’ve been working as usual through the whole quarantine, and currently I’m in the process of wrapping up work on a new PDF rendering flow for Boords, which I’ve been working on since mid-April. It’s quite complex and was one of the more frustrating things I’ve worked on in my time at Boords, but I’m happy with how it went. It should fix some of the issues that some users were experiencing, and make the whole experience a bit better than the previous version.
Outside of work, life goes by slowly. I’m not really up to something interesting, and that bothers me. I usually have some side-projects or hobbies that I spend some free time on, but right now that well seems to be dry. That kind of sucks.
That means that we’re mostly watching TV, reading, and gaming in our free time.
TV
One of the things we’ve watched in the last month is the TV show Pushing Daisies. It’s fun, delightful, and has a bit of a Wes Anderson vibe in terms of design. Highly recommended.
We were hesitant to start What We Do In The Shadows, because we were big fans of the movie and thought a TV show might weaken the idea, but it’s great. The characters are great, and the original creators are involved, and it’s just a lot of fun. There are some cameos in there that made us very happy.
After finishing Star Trek: Voyager recently, we’re now watching Enterprise. I know there’s a lot of hate/disappointment for this show out there, but it’s still Star Trek, and so far it’s actually quite good.
Then there’s Queer Eye. Reality tv can feel quite trashy, which is why we don’t tend to watch it, but Queer Eye is special. It doesn’t have a lot of the basic tropes that come with reality shows, and instead gives you a heartfelt and human 40 minutes of tv that can actually teach you things. Not to mention that it’s an important show for representation of the LGBTQ+ community.
Music
I’m still listening to a lot of The Strokes’ music after the release of their latest album, The New Abnormal. Usually, after a few weeks, I’d get tired of listening to a great album a lot, but so far I still seem to be listening to them a lot.
I’m also becoming a big fan of the band Covet. I’m fascinated by the skill involved in this music, and recently I’ve just needed this type of music in my life.
I’ve put my adventures in ancient Greece (in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey) on hold for a bit, and I’m now exploring the lands of Tamriel together with my wife in The Elder Scrolls Online.
So here’s the thing: I don’t tend to like MMORPGs. I’ve played a few over the last few years, and a lot of them just feel clunky and repetitive compared to “proper” role-playing games.
As a big fan of the Elder Scrolls franchise, and with a few disappointing MMO experiences behind me (like World Of Warcraft), I was very hesitant to give this game any attention, because I was afraid it would kind of ruin the franchise for me.
Still, COVID-19 hit, and it felt time to play an MMO together, and we’ve always wanted to explore these worlds together, so we gave it a chance, and we ended up very pleasantly surprised.
Compared to its MMO competition, The Elder Scrolls Online does a great job at keeping world state where it can, having immersive and diverse quests, while not looking too bad either. It actually manages to feel less grindy than Skyrim, occasionally — that’s new. Of course, it lacks some of the polish of the big adventure games du jour, but so far it’s fun and we’re playing it together, which is cool.
Reading
I’m still making my way through Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series of books, which I love. I’m currently reading The Fifth Elephant.
Simultaneously, we’re also listening to the audiobook of Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold, by Stephen Fry.
