#After 400 or so hours of play it's. Very nice. To have the upgrades.

[thepatchycat]

I'm having a lot of fun with the Elden Ring DLC! Everything is fine!!

[brynandchristopher]

The 3 Musketeers

Hello again! It is a bittersweet thing to say this will be our last post from New Zealand. We have had an absolutely wonderful time here and in part don’t want it to be over, but we are also ready to move on to our next adventure in Australia. We are looking forward to a little bit of routine and stability, as well as a new landscape to explore in a new van!!

The last time we checked in we had just finished the Kepler Track and were waiting to meet up with some friends of mine. We left Lake Dunstan and headed through a deep river/reservoir gorge between Cromwell and Alexandra to go see my college best friend, Camille, and her boyfriend, Aaron. They had been picking cherries and training young trees for about 7 weeks and when we arrived they had just finished their stint on the orchard. A lot of people here get a working holiday visa which allows them to stay for up to a year, and up to 2 years if 3 months of farm work is completed. Camille and Aaron were pretty sick of Alexandra so we headed out into the hills of Otago to camp for a few nights at a cool secluded freedom camp they knew of called St. Bathan’s place.

We spent 3 nights in St. Bathan’s and had a blast. It was situated around a bunch of cattle grazing pastures nearby to an old abandoned gold mine. The gold mining operation had left a large pit in the ground which over the decades filled up with rainwater and is now a lovely lake! We spent our first night there hanging out with Camille and Aaron and catching up on all of their adventures. We stayed up late into the night, having a few drinks, and freezing our toes off. It got really cold but we persisted in staying up and enjoying the amazing array of stars. We got full views of the milky way and it was definitely the best stargazing we’ve done during the trip. The next day we walked over to the lake and spent the day basking in the sun, listening to music, and climbing the fragile cliffs and jumping back down into the lake! We made dinner together and had another night of hanging out and listening to hilarious stories about Ireland, where Aaron is from. 

The next day was very gloomy and we spent most of the day watching The Mandalorian in our van, great show, highly recommend. It cleared up in the evening and Camille and I were treated to a few impromptu duets from Bryn and Aaron once he had enough whisky to bust out his guitar. 

The next day we left St. Bathan’s and went back to Alexandra to hang out at a lake nearby to the orchard Camille and Aaron worked on. It was an awesome lake with cool waterbirds and big cliffs all around. We hung out on the beach for a while and attempted our highest cliff jumping of the trip (~40 feet). It was a beautiful day and after taking care of some final logistical things in town, we all set out to a freedom camp in that river/reservoir gorge we came into town through called Champagne Gully. We enjoyed a last dinner together before going our separate ways the next morning. It was so much fun to see an old friend and spend a few days socializing, Bryn and I aren’t sick of each other but having other people around is nice sometimes :). 

The next morning was my birthday! Woohoo. We spent the beginning of the day at a cafe so I could watch my favorite soccer team, Manchester United, play my least favorite soccer team, Chelsea. Since it was my birthday they made sure to win for me :). We had some lovely drinks and treats at the cafe to celebrate and then headed to Queenstown to shower at the free service station. Bryn had planned a special dinner/activity for my birthday but wouldn’t tell me what it was, just that we had to be in Queenstown that evening. After hanging at the service station and talking to my fam, we drove into downtown. We parked the car and walked along the docks until we reached a famous old steamship, the TSS Earnslaw and Bryn finally let me in on the secret - we were taking a steamboat cruise across Lake Wakatipu to a traditional farm for a gourmet all-you-can-eat bbq dinner. The cruise was beautiful and we stood out on the front deck while we braved the wind and enjoyed the view. The farm was immaculate and definitely used for private functions and weddings from time to time. There were tons of flower gardens and a cool old Victorian style house where dinner was served. We got a lovely table overlooking the water and treated ourselves to a little bit of everything they had to offer. I think I went back to the buffet 4 or 5 times and was very, very full by the end of it. After dinner they did a demonstration in this cool outdoor amphitheater of how they shear sheep as well as a live demonstration of their herding dogs herding a flock of sheep down a hill. The control of the dogs was incredible, using different pitched whistles to signal them to stalk, bark, run, stop etc. There were two dogs were highly adept in working together and it was an awesome learning experience. After that we got back on the boat and headed back across the lake. There was a piano singalong of old folk songs in the back of the boat and Bryn and I sat right up by the piano in the heart of the diehard geriatric singers and sang our voices hoarse - there were some people that were suuuuper into it and it was really fun and hilarious to be a part of. Bryn even requested happy birthday at the end and I got a nice birthday serenade from a bunch of strangers :). 

The next day I got a wonderful belated birthday present :). My sister Madeline flew across the world to come visit us for 9 days. She arrived in the late afternoon and our first day we shopped for a few things, made a nice dinner in our Airbnb, and rested up so she could get over the jet lag quickly. The next morning we got up early and headed into town to kick off the festivities. We found a really good deal on a 3 person parasailing over Lake Wakatipu. It was such an amazing view as we were towed up behind a boat over the lake and a really fun way to kick things off. After our morning parasailing ride we walked around Queenstown and did a little bit of shopping before heading into the public flower gardens along the lake. After a lot of walking and minorly sore feet we decided to stop for lunch at a famous local restaurant called Fergberger. We got ourselves a meat pie, a burger, and the NZ version of a Boston creme donut. All of them were fantastic and a special treat, as we normally don’t eat meat or dairy. 

We had planned to do a cruise on Milford sound the next day but the landslides had destroyed the roads and still were not open to personal vehicles. We didn’t want to spend ~250 dollars for a commercial coach and cruise upgrade option so we made a change of plans and headed back to Wanaka where Bryn and I spent a few days a couple of weeks back. We went back to some cool cliff jumping and lazy river spots we found and stayed at a huge open campground in the woods and made friends with a bike packer named Karl. He serenaded a family of ducks with his flute and he and Madeline were fast friends! 

The next day we headed north up to Mt. Cook. We planned to go all the way up into Mt. Cook National Park but when we arrived the weather was very clouded and drizzly so we decided to wait until the next morning for better weather and camped at a lake. We made an amazing dinner of portabella mushroom burgers and red kumara (like a sweet potato) fries and snuggled up in the van to play a rousing game of monopoly. As monopoly always does, the game dragged on quite a bit, and I won by forfeiture - me and my sisters play monopoly back home so it was a really fun throwback game night. The next morning we got up early and drove an hour or so into the national park. We made a first stop and did a 3 km hike up to an overlook of the Tasman glacier. It was the first time Madeline had seen a glacier so that was really cool, and the views of the mountains were absolutely gorgeous. We continued up the road to its end where there were hundreds of cars/vans parked at the staging camp for a plethora of hikes. We opted not to join in on the difficult and crowded trails but just hung out, had some snacks, and enjoyed the view of NZ’s tallest mountain. After we left we had a hefty driving day and made it a long way south to yet another lakeside campground. 

The next day we drove even further south to the town of Bluff. We had spent the last 3 nights staying at freedom camps in our van - we had to pitch a tent as well because the van really only has space for 2 people - and were a bit weary of the cold and loneliness accompanying being alone out in the tent so we booked some more cheap Airbnb’s. The Airbnb in Bluff was really nice and after driving to the end of the peninsula at the end of NZ we utilized the real kitchen space to make an Italian feast of salad, gnocchi and vegetarian bolognese sauce, and garlic bread (and a little bit of wine). 

The next day we drove through the Catlins, a large forested area of southern New Zealand stopping along the way at some really cool natural features. We went to two different waterfall areas which each boasted multiple waterfalls and took in the beauty and got some great pictures. We stopped for a couple hours in a small town called Owaka so Madeline could take an online test back home which she took at the local library - after that we did a little souvenir shopping before heading to Jack’s Blowhole. After a sizable walk we made it to the blowhole, which was over 600 feet inland and nearly 400 feet deep! It was really crazy to see the tides flow in and out and spray up, we got there at high tide so it was in ideal form. After that we headed to Kaka Point, a small beautiful seaside town where we got another Airbnb up on the cliffs. Our host, Mary Jo, was super nice and gave us some good advice of what to do around there and let us play with her Red Heeler, Matty. I don’t have enough dogs in my life… :( The next morning we woke up very early to go to a lighthouse ~15 min away for sunrise. Madeline was in a sleepy stupor and was unable to rouse herself so Bryn and I made the journey on our own. It was really nice to be out in the early morning hours and we got some absolutely amazing views at Nugget Point. There were large rock outcropping all around the peninsula that looked like nugget of gold (or chicken). It was a lovely morning, despite a cloudy and slightly underwhelming sunrise. After going back to the Airbnb and making breakfast, we headed back through the Catlins to stop at some of the spots we didn’t have time to see on the first pass. We went to the famous Purakaunui falls as well as Curio bay. Curio bay had a petrified forest outcropping along the sea that is now home to the rarest species of penguin in the world. We were graced with a lucky sighting of the 2019 bird of the year, the Hoiho (noisy in Maori) or Yellow-eyed penguin. We were able to get reasonably close and watch it hang out along in petrified forest rocks. We went to a cafe afterwards and had some really nice snacks before heading to Weir Beach. We camped in a big open field along the ocean at the farthest south point in all of NZ this night and luckily, it wasn’t all that cold. 

The next morning we got up early and drove to Dunedin for our final day together. We got to our Airbnb and after taking showers we went into town. We walked around town a bit, stopping in some art galleries and cool shops to get a few souvenirs. We got a gelato in the main square downtown and played ping pong in the park for a while. Afterwards we went to the Black Dog, a chic restaurant bar for a final meal together. We shared cream of tomato soup as a starter and a chocolate mousse for dessert, along with our individual entrees of course - it was a really nice last supper together. We headed back to the Airbnb and hung out and snuggled before going to bed. We got up and drove to the airport the next morning for Madeline’s very early flight - I was very sad to say goodbye to her but am so thankful she came. I miss her and my family a lot so it meant a lot to me that she came all this way to see me. <3 

After we said goodbye to Madeline we packed up and did a long haul drive up to Christchurch where we are now. We will be in Christchurch for another ~2 weeks trying to sell our van and then we will head to Australia!!! Wish us luck selling the van, we might need it! :) 

Expect our best,

Christopher and Bryn

[osmw1]

Dimension Wave   Chapter 4—The Bright Fishing Idea

The first meal I had since coming to Dimension Wave was mackerel and herring. Alto got in contact with the girl who is leveling up her cooking skill and I had her grill some fish for me. It might seem like I’m bragging since I was the one who caught the fish, but they were big and delicious. I gave the girl 10 herrings as thanks. Alto was quite happy for the three herrings I gave him for introducing me to the girl. Perhaps herring is the key to friendship.

“You seem to be well-connected, Alto. Were you a beta tester?”

I recall that they were recruiting for the beta test.

“Nah, I haven’t played the beta at all. In fact, I think they intentionally accepting only a few people for it.”

According to Alto, it seems like they did indeed have a beta version of the game, but there were zero changes for the gold release. Not only that, but the company didn’t want beta characters to be mixed in new players, so everyone was reset to level 1.

“I see.” “I heard there was leaked content.” “Oh, I’ve heard about that too, though I don’t know the details.”

They say a beta tester leaked details about the game on an anonymous textboard, including content protected by the non-disclosure agreement. That’s what I read about at least, though I wasn’t there to witness it in real time.

“What kind of information was leaked?” “Pretty much everyone in the game knows about it, y’know? It’s basically about how Spirits are way underpowered. As far as I remember, though they can get unlimited skills, their stats are the lowest of all races.” “… you don’t know?” “Speaking of which, what race are you playing as? I haven’t seen any like your kind before.”

I take an awkward look at myself. From time to time, I’m half transparent. That’s one of the traits of Spirits.

“The exact Spirit we’re talking about. They seem pretty unusual, but I just learned that they’re not really strong.” “Oh, that’s it. So? What’s it like?” “Ehh. I’ve only been fishing up ‘til now, so I haven’t run into any difficulties so far.”

Since my status and Energy are one and the same, any slight mistake might put my life into jeopardy. If you think about it that way, you could say it’s pretty weak. It seems pretty well-suited for me if I’m just fishing or crafting in town, seeing how I don’t have to do anything to get more Energy or Mana. Well, I guess Dimension Wave focuses more on the combat aspects though.

“I see. Let me know if Spirits are easy to use. I don’t think many people are playing as one because of the leaks.” “Yeah, if I feel like it.” “Alrighty then, I’m gonna head off. Contact me if you have anything you want to trade with me, okay?” “Aye, aye.”

I respond to his wave with my own. After taking a bow, Alto sets off to find his next customer.

“Whew…”

I heave a sigh before opening my inventory to look at the fishing rod that I had Alto’s acquaintance make for me. Wooden Rod +2. It’s made from a flexible stick, silk line, and a copper fishhook. All of these things are from different places, so Alto must have run around quite a bit.

Though Alto says the +2 was merely incidental, I don’t think that’s the case. It’s probably more to do with the crafter’s skill and the quality of materials. When he showed me the stick, line, and hook, it already seemed like they were of nice quality, so I think I’m right.

It also costed me 700 serin, but it seems like it’d perform a lot better than the 600 serin Shoddy Rod. And since it was specially made for me, I’ll be extra careful not to let it get stolen away this time. Oh, isn’t it about time my Energy ticked up?

Name/ Kizuna†Exceed Race/ Spirit Energy/ 1,320 Mana/ 60 Serin/ 2,000

Skills/ Energy Production II, Mana Production II

Energy Production II → Energy Production III Generates 200 Energy per hour → Generates 400 Energy per hour Costs 50 Mana to upgrade

I’ve got enough Mana now, so I’ll upgrade my Energy Production to rank III. Give it another two hours, and I’ll take Fishing Mastery too.

“I’ve got an upgraded skill and rod plus a full stomach. Time for round two, I think… oh!”

A light bulb came on above my head. I know it’s an old cliché, but in any case, it’s a bright idea.

—The fish at night will probably be different than the ones at noon, right?

If I get pangs of hunger, then surely, I’ll get sleepy too. I can’t risk falling asleep while fishing. At the very least, I’ll take a cat nap at an inn. After deciding on that, I decided to report to my sisters.

I select “Chat” from my menu. Now that I think about it, I haven’t added them as friends yet. I type in “ Tsugumi†Exceed” and send them a chat. The game plays a dial tone like a telephone would. I have a feeling this is why Tsugumi mistook the chat to be a phone call before.

“Big Bro Kizuna? What’s up?” “Oh, I was just about to hit the sack. Figured I’d give you a call first.” “What, already? Isn’t it a little early?” “Nah, I was hoping to see if there’s a different between the fish during day and at night.” “Is that right? Okie dokie. I’ll let Big Sis know for you too then.” “’preciate it. How are things over at your end?” “ Mm, just fighting like normal.” “Hey… you alright?” “Ahaha. I’m being surrounded by five of them.” “Concentrate!”

Jeez!

I figuratively slam the receiver down. She’d do that too when we game together. We’d play an FPS together and she’d be chatting with Kanata. I’m in the game too, you know? I kept it to myself, but it ticked me off. What’s worse is that she’d top the scoreboard with the highest kill/death ratio. Thinking about it again, it was Tsugumi who got our passes for Dimension Wave. Being surrounded by five of anything would likely be nothing to her.

… I’m still not happy about it, but whatever. Time to look for an inn. I open up the map from the menu. There’s a few places marked with “ZZZ” here in town. I take a look at which of the five seem good. Well, this is a game after all, so there’s probably not a huge difference, but the prices differ. In the end, I chose the one in the middle of the pack that’s neither cheap nor expensive.

“—That will be 150 serin for one night’s stay,” says the lady who is seemingly the innkeeper.

I feel like I’ve heard her voice actress before somewhere. Handing over 150 serin rewarded me with a key. I head towards my room. It seems like you get to use the room for a full 24 hours too. That means I can catch some sleep and go shopping afterwards. I feel like I’m here on vacation.

In any case, I look around the inn. Looks like I’m the only one here. Well, today being the first day, it’d be rare for anyone to head to bed to early. Out of the five, this one seemed the most average. The walls in the cheapest inn were chipped and cracked. Why would anyone choose that, I wonder.

“This is it.”

I arrive at room 101—the same number marked on the key—and unlock the door. It’s a normal room. It’s quite a bit smaller than hotels in real life. I take a seat on the bed. It’s as soft as the bed in my room. To put it mildly, it’s not nearly plush enough to be a hotel bed. Well, it was only 150 serin to stay here.

“… let’s get some shut eye for now.”

I don’t feel right sleeping in my clothes and shoes. I put my shoes aside and take my clothes off. What was left was a little girl in her underwear.

—

———

—————

‘Well, nothing wrong with taking more off,’ the demon on my shoulder suggests.

Just to sate my curiosity, I tried to take my underwear off but to no avail. Well, the game’s not rated R after all, so there’s no way I can do anything lewd.

”Tsk.”

I half-jokingly click my tongue because it’s not like I actually wanted to do anything. It doesn’t really matter anyway and so I lie down as I had originally intended to. I pull up the blanket—again, just as warm as the one in my room—and closed my eyes.

I fall asleep right away as if I had taken sleeping pills. Perhaps they designed the game so that it’d be easy to fall asleep. I’d be quite happy if it were this easy in real life. My thoughts start drifting, and before I realized, my consciousness had drifted away too.

previously: /prologue/ /ch001/ /ch002/ /ch003/ /ch004/ /next/

(please support me on Patreon or Paypal)

(check out the other title I’m translating—written by the same author!)

[thunderjust]

Raidfield 2 pc download

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#RAIDFIELD 2 PC DOWNLOAD INSTALL#

Officially there is no way we can install this app on PC. Whereas, for the Desktop platform, the app is not developed.

#RAIDFIELD 2 PC DOWNLOAD FOR FREE#

It is available to download for FREE on mobile platforms. Raidfield 2 – Online WW2 Shooter is the topmost and popular app with more than 100,000+ installations with 3.3 / 5.0 star average rating on Google playstore. Continue reading this blog post to know a simple way to Install the app even though the official version of the laptop is not yet available. I love this game it has large amounts of potential but there are things holding it back for example the servers need to be better split into sections of one overall area like America split servers into different time zones so you can get better game speed because I have great internet but have a average of 173 ms a game and I live in the U.S.One of the popular app in Game_action category, Raidfield 2 – Online WW2 Shooter is now available to download on your Desktop or PC platforms. I really enjoyed playing this game and I hope you read this and decide to add these suggestions to your game. And maybe the friend request can tie into the ball turret for the bomber plane if you choose to do something like that. And if possible can you make a friend request section where you can invite players to a game because me and my brother really love this game and would love it if we could play on the same team and game. Make it so the infantry can walk around on the boats and have anti-air guns on the ship so that players can use them. It would be really cool if there was a map with boats, planes and infantry. Also, please make a map with like a naval setting.

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For example, I would love to see like a back ball turret on the bomber plane that a player on your team can use just so that the driver is a little bit more protective from the fighter planes. I love this game so much but I would love to see some changes. New maps would add some nice variety to the game and improve its replayability vastly. Three maps is too few for a shooter game, as after a couple of hours on the game the maps become boring and stale. My third and final suggestion is to add more maps. This allows players to sit safely behind a corner and abuse this glitch, making returning fire on the player impossible. Second off, bullets in the game need some reworking so that they cannot travel through corners and walls. This is shown clearly as the first gun you receive (the Thompson) is one of the best guns you can get when fully upgraded, which is very cheap to do.

#RAIDFIELD 2 PC DOWNLOAD UPGRADE#

First off, earning money is very tedious, especially when you get to higher levels and guns cost upwards of 30k, and you can only earn around 800 per game (assuming you win, if not around 400.) This causes the game to be overly challenging to get new guns, and then upgrade them to make them viable on the battlefield. This is a very solid game so far, but with a few tweaks could be even better. You will earn extra points when your achievements are completed. It will reward you with the successes of the battlefield, giving fear to your opponents. You can develop your soldiers, tanks and planes with warsupply scores and you can be the wanted soldier of the battlefield. With tanks and bombers, you can destroy all the houses on the map. With the Warsupply points you will win in the battlefield, you can use the destructive war vehicles on the battlefield. In the Conquest mode, you must move on with your unit to win the battle and capture the three regions on the battlefield. 4 types of battle vehicles from different countries: USA, Russia, Japan, and Germany! You can control tanks, planes and turret vehicles. Hey, soldier! Are you ready to take your place in Raidfield 2?! This game will take you to WW2

[arthurhwalker]

Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Extreme Review, Overview, Thoughts

I've had my Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Extreme for a month now. I usually would do a full review and talk about all the specs, but I think I'm going to do something different.

For those that are curious, click these links for more information:

Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Extreme US Site Lenovo PSREF Thinkpad X1 Extreme Entry For reference, I bought one with:

Intel® Core™ i7-8850H

32GB 2400MHz DDR4 RAM (2666 MHz installed, but run at 2400 because Intel limit)

Intel UHD Graphics 630 in processor and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Max-Q, 4GB GDDR5 memory

15.6" (396mm) HDR 4K (3840x2160) with Dolby Vision, anti-glare, LED backlight, IPS, 400 nits, 16:9 aspect ratio, 1200:1 contrast ratio, 100% gamut, 170° viewing angle, multi-touch, anti-reflection (AR)

Pen Stylus Support

M.2 SSD / PCIe NVMe x2, 1 TB ea

Disclaimer: I am a Lenovo INsider. That said, my opinions are my own, and I purchased this device because I wanted it, and I'm writing this review/overview because I feel like it.

Okay, let's begin.

This machine is an X-Series Thinkpad. Everything in that line is meant to be ultraportable, slim, and easy to take with you. Lenovo claims you can get up to 15 hours of battery life on the 4 cell, 80Wh battery.

Yeah, there's no way you'll get close to that.

I knew that going in, and bought the machine anyway for two reasons. It charges extremely fast, and the charger they send you with the laptop is, for 135w, absolutely tiny. My advice is that you buy an extra charger to keep at your desk for a couple of reasons.

First, your tiny charger will always just live in your bag. Second, the docking options situation. There are two routes to take if you want to go with all Lenovo kit. There's Lenovo's Thinkpad Thunderbolt Dock (40AC0135US), and the elusive, you have to search carefully for it, using the compatibility finder, otherwise it's invisible, Thinkpad Thunderbolt 3 Workstation Dock (40AN0230US).

I bought the regular Thinkpad Thunderbolt Dock unaware the Workstation Dock existed. Regular TB dock didn't charge my X1 Extreme very well, and my two 4K Monitors flickered, because the dock isn't designed to do work that way with a machine this powerful. I regretted the purchase for a half second.

Then, I looked at the Workstation Dock on the Lenovo Website, and immediately over at the dock I bought for my Thinkpad P40, now largely useless, with it's proprietary connection. I'd bought the right dock after all, because it will work with any machine I buy in the future with a Thunderbolt port. All I needed was to move the Thunderbolt cable to a different port, and buy another 135w+ charging cable.

And, that's exactly what I did, and it's awesome. True I was connecting two cables instead of one to dock my machine at my desk, but you kind of will anyway. If you're only ever going to buy Workstation grade Thinkpads that have the charging and Thunderbolt ports right next to each other (the connections are wrapped together), pay the extra $100 for the Workstation Dock. Otherwise, naw.

Ubuntu also works with the Thunderbolt Dock. Very rarely it hangs on boot, and I have to unplug the dock, but this hasn’t happened since a recent BIOS update. I've only gotten Ubuntu to push the laptop display, and one other 4K monitor. There's probably a way to do more, but I haven't discovered it yet, and maybe won't as that's plenty for what I do.

I'm going to talk about the actual machine now. ;-D

The X1 Extreme is geared toward the creative that is trying to decide between a 15" MacBook Pro, a 15" Dell XPS 9570, and whatever else compares. It is for the person that needs a powerful machine they can easily take with them, with a premium display option for visual asset creation.

The Dell XPS 9570 does have one advantage over the X1 Extreme, you can buy a "Premier Sleeve" fitted to the device. If anything should have had a custom folio, sleeve, or bag, it's the X1 Extreme. The MacBook Pro doesn't really have any advantage except for access to a few professional programs available only on MacOS. If you know what they are, then you know what I mean. It's not really an advantage as much as it is a harsh reality.

Dell is a worthy competitor for Lenovo these days, and I would definitely check out their things. When you do, compare warranty options, service, duration, and cost. Then, probably buy a Lenovo unless Dell somehow has a better option. I haven't seen that to be the case, but that's the main reason to go with Lenovo. If it breaks, they just handle it.

For now, I recommend people avoid buying the iMac Pro, a 2018 MacBook Pro, and (probably) the new MacBook Air. Apple is actively making machines that could, with a software update, prevent you from repairing your own device, or seeking a 3rd party for service. They are also lobbying to prohibit you from doing so by law, working against Fair Repair Act legislation.

ANYWAY, moving on.

Drawing on the screen with a stylus pen is great, if not a little awkward at first, if you're used to a tablet. The screen will lay flat if that's your preference, and I thought it would be kind of a problem, but I adapted pretty quickly. I would have bought a 2-in-1 Yoga device over the X1 Extreme, but Lenovo doesn't really make one for the creative crowd right now.

And, that's okay, because the X1 Extreme has the nicest display I've ever used on a laptop. I can't bear to put a screen protector on it. It's lack of a Yoga-style hinge is forgiven. The keyboard, styling, aesthetics, packaging, soft-touch exterior, and the ease of upgrading the user serviceable internals are all great.

I popped it open and added a second M.2 SSD easily. The only hard part was finding one of those tiny screws as neither the X1X or the SSD I bought came with a spare.

What I can't forgive is that my X1 Extreme came dirty. I opened up the excellent X1-branded packaging and found factory drit on my device, and stuck in the cracks around the display. This was very obvious because the X1X is a shade darker than other Thinkpads I think. Even the Thinkpad emblem is metallic black (super nice touch, it's like Dethklok designed the exterior).

Also, the display has some light leakage in the corners. While I only notice it on boot with a black screen, it's these small details that chip away at what should have felt like an extremely premium buyer's experience. If someone drops this kind of money on a laptop, none of that should happen. Doubly so, if Lenovo really wants a device to be a MacBook Pro "Killer", and appeal to creatives that pay attention to such things.

Yes, but, what if that isn't you. What if you really want a Max-Q gaming rig with 12 military-grade requirements and 200 quality checks because playing Fallout 4 in a real dust storm might be awesome? Gaming rigs almost never have better than a decent display, and playing any game on the X1 Extreme is kind of a unique experience.

Playing games that I have 500 to a 1000 hours on feels new, like I'm seeing colors and depth I hadn't seen before. I'm usually the first to discount such things, because I'm kind of a retro-gamer, but with newer games like Warframe and Fallout 76, the experience is much enhanced. Even better, the machine runs cool and quiet, relatively speaking, while running games.

Yes, it gets warm, and yeah you can kinda hear the fans, but no where close to what I've felt coming off traditional gaming rigs. Also, I can play Fallout 4, or Age of Wonders III for 2-3 hours before the screen dims and I'm looking for an outlet. And, that brings me to my final observation about this laptop.

For a lot of people, this device could be your only machine. I was jumping between my Thinkpad P40 for work stuff, and travel, and a desktop for games. The X1 Extreme isn't the Thinkpad P41, or P42 I was hoping for, but it does the job, and does it well, with precious few compromises.

I can't wait to make more text, visual assets for book covers, and pixel art with it.

[dailyabx]

Day 20

Hello! Today I only had two classes so I wasn’t as tired. Gladly I was able to sleep in a bit so I didn’t have to worry about being tired or needing sleep today. However, though I didn’t, I still had to take a nap for about an hour today 2 hours after my last class. I had time today to help take care of my niece and nephew, the super energetic one. I always have an issue with him though whenever I have class. For some reason, he loves to come into my room full of energy, ready to mess with my stuff. Luckily, I learned a way to lure him out of my room so that I could study and do my classes without distractions or weird noises in the background. However, my heart breaks every time I hear him cry when he realizes I went to return to my room.

Today I played a lot of my games today! I consumed a lot of the rare currency in it. If I were to explain it... In games there is usually money or coins (Grimm in Obey Me) and then there are diamonds (Devil Points in Obey Me). With coins you can buy the things you can do to upgrade something or someone, while diamonds are used to buy the expensive or rare, but usually very much needed, items. I don’t always use my diamonds until necessary or if I need to because I achieve those through events or achievements. I never paid for anything in or for a game since I don’t work or have a lot of money to spare. However, I really love this game where at one point I wavered and wanted to (but I didn’t). Today, since it was the last day of the birthday event for Simeon, I had to use a lot of my Devil Points in order to get as much energy to get the Ultra Rare card for this side character. I ended up using over 90 points, which is a lot that I wouldn’t use for unless there was a really good deal. That’s because it takes a lot of time and effort to get back to having at least 400 points, I was a bit sad that I now have 200. However, it was worth it.

I also plan on making molten lava cake, through a cake mix of course. I have always wanted to try and make a lava cake, but I never tried. However, on the same day I bought my Splurge item, I bought a lava cake since I was on a spree. I usually would never buy this either, but since I was in a happy mood I bought it. I didn’t even listen to my sister when she said I shouldn’t (even though she was the one who pointed it out). It surprisingly comes with two tin oven-able cups, but I still have to use my own butter and egg. I usually bake around midnight, not because I am stress baking, but I think I just like to since it is the time I have to myself. Today, I was in a bad mood, so right after this blog, I plan to bake these in the oven. I’ll post a picture tomorrow!

Also, here are some songs I listened. totoday. The first one is just something I was listening to because I was getting nostalgic about some anime songs I hadn’t listened to for years! The last two are just some songs I listened to when I was mad at my sister. They are super relaxing songs, not particularly slow, but with a nice melody that doesn’t rush or go into extreme beats.

 - Sakura Kiss by Chieko Kawabe  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFo8BEbEdhw&ab_channel=Chino-Sama

 - 平行線 - Eve × suis from ヨルシカ MV  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxw4Y8qzq4w&ab_channel=Eve

 - ロッテ ガーナ バレンタイン『ガーナ Gift篇』 30秒ver https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_szkTxW9ig&ab_channel=LotteChocomotionTV

 - Pink Sweat$ - At My Worst (Official Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CEJoCr_9UI&ab_channel=ArianaGrandeVevo

 - Ariana Grande - POV  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQJEp-k-ogs&ab_channel=ArianaGrandeVevo

[bloodelves88]

Anime Festival Asia 2018

I was at Anime Festival Asia (AFA) 2018 on its third day (Sunday). It’s my first time ever going to AFA, and it’s pretty awesome. I guess it’s not the main convention in Singapore for nothing. 

I cosplayed as Reaper from Overwatch again, this time with some upgrades compared to the very first time I cosplayed during Cosfest 2017.

Photo credits to my friends who were with me.

Does anyone know who that Genji is? Please let me know if you do 😭

If you played spot the difference, the upgrades I got would be the boots, greaves (that’s the shin armour), and the braces (forearm armour). Everything else is the same as before. I really love the boots and greaves. Don’t they look awesome? I always look at armour-wearing cosplayers in awe - I personally find them much, much, cooler than other types of cosplay.

I actually lost one of the spikes from my arm braces. It fell off and I don’t know when or where. Oh well. 

I mentioned on my Instagram, but this is the last time I’m going to cosplay as Reaper. Okay, that’s a waste, and it really goes against why I decided to cosplay as Reaper (tl;dr: cool enough to keep reusing) for my debut. I didn’t explain why though, so I guess I’ll do it here. Simply put - it’s not fun. 

Whaaaaaat?

No, seriously. To cosplay Reaper, I had to lug one luggage bag, my school/work backpack, and one tote bag all the way to Suntec City. Then, I needed the help of others to put on the costume. It’s like how medieval knights require their squires to help them put on armour.

Then, after donning on everything, I could barely see anything. Lift your shirt and cover your eyes with it. That’s how much I can see while I’m cosplaying. And I didn’t use contacts, so add in a 400 degree myopia to that (I guess that’s my fault though). 

Then, after approximately 1 hour, I already feel spent. Okay, maybe that has to do with how I never ever exercise, but still. It’s really hot when you’re wearing three layers, one of them being thick fake leather. That fake leather cloak isn’t light either. My guns are also 1 kg each.

Speaking of my guns, the fingertips of my gloves are too big to easily go through the hole of the trigger guard, so once I’m holding my gun, I pretty much not able to let go of it until I decide to call upon help to slowly remove it. 

After that 1 hour of cosplaying, taking off my costume is a sight to behold. My inner t-shirt top would be drenched in sweat. Totally. You’d be hard-pressed to find a spot of dryness on it. It’s that strenuous. 

Understand why it’s not fun now? I don’t know how people who regularly cosplay armour-wearing characters do it. Major kudos to you guys.

So yeah, I’m done with Reaper. It’s really a waste, considering how much I actually spent on it. I don’t even know if I should sell the costume to get back some of the money. I doubt I can even recover 50% of the cost though, so probably nah.

Anyway! Merchandise reveal! I bought two items:

I couldn’t really find anything to get, so I just settled on something nice and cute. Who doesn’t like Eevee anyway?

It’s a wooden sword. Really good quality though. I don’t really know why I got this, but it was the last few hours of AFA and it was discounted.

I couldn’t really find any Mystic Messenger merchandise there, so I didn’t get any 😞. Everyone is into HypMic now.

Next, my cosplay plans. My cosplay career isn’t over! Oh hell no. As much as I complained about how insufferable Reaper is, I still find it pretty cool to do. I kind of like the attention as well 😅

But I’m going to tone it down a lot next time, so the cool factor is much, much, lower now. No more armour, and (maybe) no more weapons. I’ll be cosplaying something so simple that I’ll be able to bring everything in a single backpack. It’ll even be normal looking enough to wear almost all of it in public without looking strange. And I’ll have full bodily capabilities while cosplaying as well. Free hands! Full vision! Yes!

Noctis Lucis Caelum. The main protagonist from Final Fantasy XV. Very simple to cosplay. I don’t have the weapon, and I’m not sure if I want one. Remember, free hands and easy transportation! 

To be honest, I’m more interested in cosplaying Ardyn from the same game. He’s an awesome antagonist. But his outfit is way too intricate, and that means expensive. So nope.

But again, this goes against why I decided to cosplay as Reaper in the first place. Reaper has a mask and a hood, so there was no need for makeup, wigs, styling, and appearances. All of this is needed for Noctis. But it’s a tradeoff that I have to make if I want to have an easier time cosplaying. I’ve already bought makeup and hairspray, none of which I’ve used before. I’ve never used makeup before (okay, that’s pretty normal for a guy), and I’ve never styled my hair before (whaaaaat?). So I’m going to need a lot of practice before Cosfest 2019 arrives. That’s six months from now. Should be okay.

[neofoxx000]

Took me a while, but I managed to beat Team Kirby Clash Deluxe.

Will be shortened to as TKCD for the rest of the entry.

Just going to jot some of my thoughts down.

(To mobile users: I’m sorry if the “Keep Reading” cut doesn’t work.)

From the gist of it, TKCD feels like if a Kirby-themed Monster Hunter game.

Free-to-Start model...

The “Free-to-Start” model is just like Pokémon Rumble World (shortened to as PRW). Purchase the 3000 of the premium currency and the access to the cash shop closes and the premium currency needed can be obtained in the hub area for free on a regular basis.

The difference between PRW and TKCD is that the gem stone mines in PRW is only available AFTER you purchase ALL 3000 gems stones (or the physical stand-alone version) where as the gem apple tree in TKCD is available from the start... with a minor caveat of how many apples are obtained per harvest.

Going the pure free route, it’s five gem apples per harvest or ten gem apples a day assuming you’re very punctual about the 12 hour harvest time. Buying gem apples from the cash shop increases the size of the tree in the hub area thus resulting in a larger harvest. Eight apples per harvest at 50 total bought, 14 per harvest at 400 total bought, and I believe there was a harvest increase at 1000 apples bought, but I went straight to 3000 bought after purchasing 850 apples. Reasoning explained below in the “Price Tag” section.

Trust me when I say that the 3000 gem apples from the cash shop as well as the gem apples from completing Heroic Missions (aka: Achievements) isn’t enough. The gem apples are used in unlocking stages, purchasing stronger equipment, upgrading existing equipment, and (if needed) purchasing the Stamina/Attack support potions. You WILL be relying a lot on the gem apple tree in the hub zone.

Price Tag... (in USD)

As stated above, 3000 gems apples is the limit one can purchase, so let’s take a look at the cash shop prices.

🍎✖50 = $0.49 (one-time deal)

🍎✖50 = $0.69

🍎✖100 = $0.89 (one-time deal)

🍎✖100 = $1.29

🍎✖200 = $1.69 (one-time deal)

🍎✖200 = $2.39

🍎✖500 = $3.89 (one-time deal)

🍎✖500 = $5.49

🍎✖1000 = $9.99

🍎✖1500 = $14.99

🍎✖2150 = $19.99

That last one of 2150 gem apples seems like a rather peculiar number compared to the rest of the options, but calculating the four one-time deals results in 850 gem apples.

2150 + 850 = 3000 Gem Apples or 2150 + 500 + 200 + 100 + 50 = 3000 Gem Apples

Using the equation above--filling the prices accordingly and assuming that one takes advantage of the one-time deals--the total price comes to $26.95, which is less than the price of the average Nintendo 3DS game, which is commonly $40.

Class Roles...

There are currently four class roles to choose from, with the comparable MonHun weapon next to it.

Sword Hero (Sword and Shield)

Hammer Lord (Hammer)

(with the mobility of a Great Sword...)

(and the inability to sheath your weapon... 😣)

Doctor Healmore (Hunting Horn + Hunter’s Oasis)

Beam Mage. (Bow Gun)

(mobility of Light Bow Gun)

(power of Heavy Bow Gun)

However, the class rolls in TKCD differ slightly from their counterparts in the core Kirby games.

Sword Hero - Unlike it’s core series counterpart, the Sword Hero has the added benefit of the Hero Shield, blocking summons a dome shield making everyone within the area of effect almost invulnerable. The charge ability is called the Spin/Twister Slash, which is the same as Link’s spin attack from Legend of Zelda. A pretty high sustained DPS move.

Hammer Lord - Oh boy... a powerful son-of-a-gun, but as mentioned in the buttons above it’s very unlike it’s core series counterpart in that your walk/run speed is slow as molasses on a cold winter day. In addition to that your jump height is also reduced by roughly 50%. At least the redeeming features would be having the highest health pool out of the four class roles and their hard-hitting Hammer Flip attack.

Doctor Healmore - I can’t really do any comparisons to it’s core series counterpart as I’ve never played Planet Robobot, so I’ll talk about their two primarily used abilities: Healing Area and Science Lab. Healing Area places a restoration zone on the ground. Longer the charge, the more effective the heal and bigger zone. Science Lab appears to be three random damaging potions that’ll do fire, ice, or shock damage. Could be more, but those were the only three I saw a lot. The crafted potion can be saved for later use by pressing the block button (shoulder buttons), à la Smash Bros. 

Beam Mage - They can place a stacking debuff on the bosses which will eventually stop time with their charged blast, the aptly named “Time Beam.” Other than that I can’t find any other discernible difference between the Beam Mage class role and it’s core series counterpart.

Gameplay...

In general, it’s one big time-attack game. Faster the time, the better the medal. A faster time also means more EXP to level-up and get stronger, capping at Level 50.

The game can be played as single player or local co-op. Currently there is no online party system. The only online interaction you can do is look for Wandering Adventurers, avatars of other players, and you may use them as your AI-controlled teammates instead of the standard AI-controlled teammates the game provides.

Early game, the Wandering Adventurers are quite useful as most of the time they’re several levels stronger than you and might have better gear. However, late game their usefulness slowly diminishes as you level-up and get better gear.

Anyway, each quest has their own set of goals, such as “Clear this quest as [class role] and earn a Gold Medal or better,” “Clear this quest in 40 seconds or less,” and “Clear quest while equipped with [specific weapon and/or armor].”

Some of those goals can be done by playing the game normally, while others have you need to use a very specific team build to meet the conditions, such as a DPS rush build for the timed ones.

In addition to the regular quests, there are quests that are classified as “Ordeals.” They’re comparable to MonHun’s Urgent Quests. They serve as a road block of sorts and must be dealt with before gaining access to the next series of bosses. Beating these Ordeal Quests will also unlock the next tiers of equipment that can be purchased from Malagor.

Completing quests will result in red, blue, and/or yellow shards. Just as how in MonHun one gets materials at the end of a quest to acquire and upgrade gear, these shards do the same. There’s also the appropriately named “Rare Shard” that has a chance to spawn during a quest. Bash it to collect it! Rare Shards--in addition to the other three shards and a crate of gem apples--are used to upgrade gear you already own to their Deluxe form (”DX” in game), giving ‘em improved stats, even making to newbie gear (somewhat) viable against the endgame bosses.

Closing Thoughts...

Despite it’s lack of online multiplayer, the game is actually quite enjoyable, though for what it’s worth the game is rather short. However, since the game is technically free, I can at least toss my hat in to encourage you to try it.

Future Hopes...

What I would like to see the most as a future content update is online multiplayer as well as some additional quests and class roles. As for which bosses... I’m not sure. As for powers, my personal favorite Kirby powers (aside from Sword, which is already in game) are Archer, Bomb, Fighter, Ninja, Whip, and the elemental powers, all of which could probably fit nicely in the medieval fantasy setting of this game. Only time will tell on that.

[sentinelkelly]

“Disappointed Fans” Stopped  Being Fans Months Ago or Never was to Begin With

Rise of Iron: Same Shit, Different Day (the most tired and incomprehensible argument still being used). Ever since Rise of Iron released, a lot of people who claims to be fans of Destiny were up at arms about how lackluster Rise of Iron is. Not because it’s boring or anything, but because “its same thing.” Oh Lord... Where do I even begin?

The Story is Short

Whaa the main quest line is only 5 missions long, Kelly! It’s short like The Dark Below and House of Wolves! OH NO! The set of missions that you were only going to play three times before you play nothing but Strikes, Raid, and Crucible is short! BUNGIE PLEASE FIX THIS! Honestly, who the fuck cares? If Wrath of the Machine was available before even taking back the Iron Temple, a good portion of the Community would have 20+ completions without ever setting foot on Felwinter’s Peak. But Kelly, MUH LORE! I remember being ridiculed because I didn’t know Queen Mara was alive until Bungie released a statement about her fate. You people laughed and said, “lol It was stated in the Grimiore Cards!” You suddenly forgot about those? Your precious lore is on an app.

Another thing: In Main Story, you hunted the Black Heart and destroyed it. In the Dark Below, you hunted down Omnigul and Crota then killed them. In House of Wolves, you hunted down Skolas, captured, then killed him. In the Taken King, you hunted down Oryx and defeated him twice. In Rise of Iron, you stopped Fallen occupation in an important location of the Cosmodrome and stopped their bioengineering experiment from giving them upgrades that could have made them unstoppable. SIVA IS NOT A PERSON! HOW COULD THIS POSSIBLY BE CONSIDERED “THE SAME THING?!” Whatever, let’s move on.

Wrath of the Machine

This is basically another point to the statement I made earlier. I haven’t heard anything too bad about the raid itself surprisingly. In fact, all I hear is “Rise of Iron is bad but I love the raid tho.” What are you, retarded? That's like saying, “I’m smart, but I’m a terrible test-taker” or “She has an ugly face, but have a nice ass so I’d still bang her.” That’s hypocritical! You just got finished belly aching over how short the story is, yet you enjoy the very thing you unlock after the story. And I bet you have more play time in the raid more than of the story.

One of the few criticisms I do hear about the raid is that bosses are bullet sponges again. ..What are you smoking? The whole raid was a combination of Bullet Sponge and Mechanic. Hell, I use “Bullet Sponge” loosely because some YouTubers/Streamers make Vosik and Aksis look like a joke. For people who aren’t that skilled or knowledgeable of the game, playing normally involves a lot of mechanics. Plus, Gjallarhorn, the God-Slayer of Year One, didn’t make the boss fights any easier, Dark-Drinker did!

Crucible is the Same Shit

Supremacy, Private Matches, and eSports compatibility aren’t new concepts in gaming, but it’s a first for Destiny. For Destiny fans, that’s all that matters. Hardcore Crucible players welcome new modes, whether they’ll play it a lot is up to them. Casual and Hardcore Crucible players alike always wanted a mode to have a friendly contest of skill with their friends without trying to lock a skirmish lobby. “Professional” Crucible players always wanted an eSports league to actually be considered a Pro. Pre-Rise of Iron Crucible was just a competitive mode.

Before I get hit with the terrible RNG post game drop rate, lemme just tell you something: SHUT UP! RNG giving shitty drops is normal, has always been apart of the game, and won’t be changing anytime soon. Yeah it’s annoying, but you’re not going to get an exotic every time you play, no matter how good you did. Deal with it.

Grinding is so “Easy” Now

I wouldn’t say that... I virtually have no life. Just throwing that out there. I take online classes, work around 20-24 hours per week part time, my girlfriend and close friends all live in other time zones, and usually have no interest in leaving my home. Reaching 400 Light was easy... for me! FOR ME! But that’s because I converted my free time into hours and hours into getting to 400 Light on all of my Xbox characters and at least 385 on my newly created PS4 characters. That and, unlike most people, I use LFG Forums and get raids and Nightfalls done weekly. Sometimes I play crucible. There’s people with more free time than I do and played since Day 1, but never peaked 375 Light on one character yet... To this day! I can’t fathom the thought of that! What can you possibly be doing to stay that low yet play everyday? The Heroic Strikes alone can get you up to 385 as of October 18th. People belly ached that reaching 310 Light and eventually 320 Light was difficult last year (which it was), unless you were lucky. King’s Fall was the only way to reach 320 if I remember correctly. The factions weren’t going to give 310 Light gear. Crucible was iffy. Court of Oryx did nothing really. People were pushed to do King’s Fall and Nightfalls every week to have a chance at high Light gear. Even then, it wasn’t guaranteed. The old infusion system wasn’t helping much either. Now, the max level cap is achievable without depending on a single activity, yet that’s still a problem because no lives like me play too much. The real problem is the changes were meant for the people who choose to play a social game like Destiny, but blames their social anxiety and lack of friends as the reason why they haven’t got to a certain light level yet. The problem is these people claim to love Destiny, but aren’t motivated to actually play it. Of course, lots of people have responsibilities stopping them from playing a lot of video games in general and I’m not referring to them.

One thing I love about Rise of Iron is how the drop rate of Strange Coins and reputation gains have increased. That’s beautiful in my opinion. The material and reputation grind is a bit easier now. That’s a good thing!

Microtrans--

I’m gonna stop you right there. It’s still not pay-to-win after a year and few months. If you don’t have money to spend or don’t want to spend your hard earned money, you don’t have to buy anything! But Kelly, I want that cool sparrow and Dab emote. So buy it! I have them and love them. Worth every penny. But why we gotta pay? Shit, Bungie said we were going to get free DLC and it never happened yet. It’s because of cheap whiny assholes like you. If you’re not going to contribute to the Free DLC Cause, shut the fuck up!

Where’s Vault of Glass and Crota’s End?

Wow! You do care about post game content! You was crying about the story, Bungie probably thought you’d just play the story missions over and over until the next game. Unfortunately, Bungie had the bright idea of keeping Wrath of the Machine (and King’s Fall to a certain extent) relevant. I for one want to them to come back too, but mind you, this DLC wasn’t supposed to be a thing at first. We should be playing Destiny 2 by now, but shit happens. I’m glad they’re held back on revamping Vault of Glass and Crota’s End. The Great Content Drought of 2016 was bad. I lived, other people got impatient and abandoned Destiny. Bungie still has the “Bring Back the Old Raids” card. Had they would’ve used it early, they may not have anything planned for post-SRL 2k16 Destiny. We’ll have to wait and see what they’ll do, but there’s still hope.

The Plaguelands is Just an Expanded Version of the Cosmodrome with Snow

So? That’s still technically not a copy and paste job. It’s still new and different with some respect.

Quality Wise, Rise of Iron is Living in the Taken King’s Shadow

I agree, but that’s a good thing! It’s a very beautiful thing. What if Rise of Iron was the best DLC to ever happen to the game? What if Rise of Iron was so great that everyone loves it, yet Destiny 2 flops... badly? People like me will try to see the good in Destiny 2, some might go back to Destiny 1, others might stop playing Destiny all together. The Taken King was a great DLC. At least if you love it so much, you can still play it. If being on the Dreadnaught gets you get excited, you can still go there. If fighting Oryx makes you cum in your underwear, you can still do that. However, there’s no guarantee if existing content is coming to Year 4. I rather Bungie save all the magic for the next game because I rather have the Taken King being considered the better DLC than Destiny 1 being considered the better game for reasons that aren’t nostalgia.

Conclusion

I’m not telling that you gotta love Rise of Iron like I do. You’re entitled to your own opinion, but make sure its rational. The bulk of the criticism are coming from people who clearly have stopped playing months ago or just started playing but allowed other people’s opinion affect their own. It’s clear that they’ve eternalized something from another DLC and are trying their best to not be opened to change (even though they claim that’s what they want). Saying Rise of Iron is the same is a down right lie. It shows that you haven’t put enough time into it. If it is the same, how the Taken King better? Shouldn’t they be equals if that was the case? There’s nothing wrong with admitting that Destiny doesn’t hold the same appeal to you as it have at whatever point. It’s okay to admit that you play occasionally just to see if you get invested again. It’s okay to admit that Rise of Iron is not your thing. You can’t say it’s the same thing when you weren’t there for the changes or choose not to acknowledge them.

[jobsearchtips02]

SXSW was canceled however informal occasions still happened

Claire Shefchik

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2020-03-15 T19: 06: 32 Z.

.

A plastic giraffe sits near empty tables outside the entrance to Unbarlievable in Austin, Texas.

Thanks To Claire Shefchik.

Claire Shefchik is a travel and culture author in the British Virgin Islands.

This year, she planned to go to South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas for the very first time, however the culture and tech festival was canceled as part of a nationwide attempt to fend off more spread of the coronavirus

Shefchik chose to keep her travel plans after hearing that lots of unofficial occasions would still be happening in Austin today.

While she did find vibrant crowds at some regional bars and places, “it was as if a giant broom had actually swept everybody over the age of 40 off the streets,” she writes.

Visit Organisation Insider’s homepage for more stories

” I have actually never seen Rainey Street like this,” said my good friend Hugo. “Not this week, anyway.”

It was 2 p.m. on Thursday, March 12, the day prior to SXSW had been arranged to start. A huge plastic giraffe greets us as we enter Unbarlievable, where a solo cover singer with an acoustic guitar takes demands from 4 or five people collected; one gets the impression he ‘d be happy to play anything from ABBA to ZZ Top just to keep us around. A sign in front of the bar across the street checks out, “I participated in SXSW and all I got was this poor coronavirus.”

A staple of Austin

Thanks To Claire Shefchik.

For me, it had been set to be not just my first SXSW, however my first journey to Austin, the notoriously, hip-slash-weird Texas capital city I ‘d felt particularly called toward ever given that my days as an underemployed indie rock music critic.

Peaceful, empty streets

Thanks To Claire Shefchik.

Instead of music, parties, food and enjoyable, I was headed directly into what the mayor had declared a “city-wide disaster.” Was there any point in coming?

The unofficial SXSW

The quiet streets of Austin.

Thanks To Claire Shefchik.

” Of course,” stated Hugo, a longtime Austinite.

Later on in the afternoon, Rainey Street started revealing indications of life.

‘ We understood people were going to head out anyway’

A solo cover singer at Unbarlievable in Austin, Texas.

Courtesy of Claire Shefchik.

In any case, “Keep Austin Weird” was living up to its credibility.

On Friday, encouraged by the previous night, Hugo and I got on his bike and headed to the Hipstirs mixed drink bar on South Lamar Boulevard. By now, the city had actually confirmed its very first two cases of the virus. Public schools were closed, and SXSW announced that it was laying off a third of its workforce With the stakes raised, we weren’t sure what to expect.

What we found was a young, stylish crowd drinking lavender-tequila mixed drinks and brick-oven pies from Ghost Pizza, delighting in the sounds of San Marcos-based band The Ooey Gooeys.

Jordan Lecroy, executive director of MSB Ventures, the company behind the occasion, stated she ‘d been closely keeping track of the situation and had been in touch with city leadership, but decided to go on. “We understand there’s a great deal of uncertainty out there right now, however we understood people were going to head out anyhow,” she discusses. “We desired them to come here.”

What about now, when there have been cases diagnosed? I asked her. She stopped briefly.

” We’re re-evaluating, taking it day by day,” she stated. Still, she happily handed us a leaflet for a mixology seminar prepared for next week.

Occasions were still taking place

A small crowd at HipStirs.

Thanks To Claire Shefchik.

According to Evan Granberry, drummer for the Ooey Gooeys, “We had some coronavirus issues, but we never really considered not coming,” he stated. He admits he presumes this could be the band’s last program for a while.

A nice break

” It was as if a giant broom had swept everyone over the age of 40 off the streets,” writes the author.

Thanks To Claire Shefchik.

Later on that night, after dinner, we struck ’80 s night at famous downtown bar Barbarella’s. It was dynamic enough, but it was as if a huge broom had actually swept everyone over the age of 40 off the streets. Earlier, around rush hour, Congress Avenue had been almost lacking traffic as the city’s labor force had actually resigned itself to telecommuting. We shared a sobering flight in an Uber with a chauffeur who’s sorely missing out on the $400 a night she had actually generally take in throughout SXSW. “Poor little Austin,” she said, surveying the dwindling crowds on the streets. “It resembles a Monday out here. A sluggish Monday.”

Our fellow passenger, a born and raised Austinite, works at a barbecue dining establishment downtown. “I had 4 consumers today,” he said. He stated, he gets paid a wage, so he wasn’t grumbling. “It was a great break,” he stated.

Not surprisingly, he’s not the only Austinite to express a type of grudging relief at the unforeseen peace and quiet. “I have a buddy, born and raised here, went to McNeil High School,” the driver added with a chuckle. ‘” He resembles, ‘I’ve been waiting 25 years for them to cancel SXSW.'”

Hugo and I follow a promoter’s Instagram page to a “secret” house music program at Empire Control Space downtown, where a DJ spins records on a stand wrapped in foamy gauze and a lady with Christmas lights trimming her corset go-go dances in front of the crowd. Our bartender welcomes us with a fist bump. “Can’t be too mindful,” he said with a sigh, prior to handing us a mixed drink menu.

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Claire Shefchik is a writer and reporter in the British Virgin Islands, where she authors about travel, culture, and the “opposite of paradise.” She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and her work has actually appeared in The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Seattle Times, Town and Nation, Fodors, Atlas Obscura, Mental Floss, and more. Find her on Twitter at @clairels

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Hey everyone,Over 6 months ago I posted here with growing 57 trends that you could capitalize on for business opportunities, along with a plug for the app I’d created that found them.Your feedback was awesome and motivated me to keep running with it and growing it. And thanks to that, I managed to sell the site to Brian Dean of Backlinko recently. So I thought I’d share the story here.I have to admit though, I hadn’t monetized yet and I was incredibly lucky with how things worked out. So I’m not recommending this as a reproducible guide for anyone but hopefully you still enjoy the read.How It StartedI began work on Trennd.co back in April while living in Japan, and back then it was originally called TrendList.io.imageI’d started to realize that it’s 100X easier to bootstrap a profitable online business if you ride a big market trend. Jump on the opportunity before the competition gets too fierce.A great example of this is Jon and Justin at Transistor.fm, who spotted a growing B2B market for podcast hosting and bootstrapped a SaaS for it.Another classic example — Pieter Levels tapped into the digital nomad and remote work trend while scratching his own itch with Nomad List and Remote OK.Both market awareness and market timing were critical for these guys. On top of execution skill of course.But also, businesses take years of sales, marketing and general hard work even after you’ve launched. I’d like to know that life force is going into a growing opportunity, not a shrinking one.I needed something that could surface opportunities by automatically monitoring the web for new topics. So that I can then plug them into Google Trends.I needed a shiny new app or tool to play with. 😛But I couldn’t find anything, so I started to build it for myself.The first version was literally just a CLI tool that output trend graphs to the console.I thought I might as well package it as a B2C SaaS product. But woaaaah no, not another sales grind. Especially B2C.Let’s just put it up for free and see if I can even build an audience (basically email list) around it first.As I proclaimed on the about page, “Revenue is obviously at zero right now. It will likely stay there for a while. Probably forever.”Not wanting to miss the opportunity to try a fancy new web stack, I wrapped the tool up into a NextJS web app. This choice was primarily to capitalize on the out-of-box server-side rendering it offers. That way, I could actually get this project to rank properly on Google for all the various trends.I listed Trennd in early May (way before it was finished) on Product Hunt’s Ship service. Admittedly though, I probably should’ve done much more than this and actually talked to potential users/customers before writing any code.But I was very bullish on the concept since I was building Trennd to solve my own problem. 👹imageBut with a total of 153 subscribers from PH Ship 2 months later, it definitely felt like there might be more cost-effective ways to acquire initial users than the $80/month there. But the brand exposure and potential support from those guys on launch is still valuable.By May 20th I felt I had something that I could finally start to show people.But around the same time, I also realized that Trend List was the brand name of Trendlist.org. This is a contemporary graphic design site with Domain Authority of 38 and a huge presence on Google SERPs. I really didn’t want to compete from day 1 just to show up on Google when people search the brand name.imageAnyway, I found 3 other names that I’d be more than happy with: Trendful, Trennd and Trend Geek. I threw Nice Trend Bro into the running at the encouragement of my wife.Then I realized this rebrand could be a fantastic marketing opportunity in itself. So I decided to run a public vote on the new name via twitter poll as a fun and novel way other people could get involved. Plus this way I’d ensure it’s a solid name that works for everyone.With the Twitter poll underway for a week, I wanted to capitalize on this 7-day window and get as many votes as possible.Reddit Pre-launchI quickly got it up on Reddit as an initial “pre-launch”. I’d mainly wanted to get some initial users to help iron out any wrinkles and bugs, and to point out any big holes in terms of functionality.And as a professional “wantrepreneur”, I’m often lurking here on r/entrepreneur and I thought you guys might find Trennd useful.But I came in with my guard up. I knew full well you would chew me up and spit me out in an instant if you sensed I was here solely to promote.So I found 57 of the most interesting trends I had at the time and used them as a shield going into the post. I made sure to provide value first and ask for feedback second. I stuck around the comments section all day replying to everyone who took the time to comment.imageThe response to this Reddit post was huge! It received over 500 upvotes across 3 subreddits. One kind stranger even gave me Reddit Gold.In terms of number, Reddit brought:80 email subscribers50 user signups1k trafficNot a bad start.I also got a huge amount of awesome feedback on how I can improve the app and make it more valuable. Like requests for:Better data granularity for shorter time frames.Enabling Keyword trends too, not just Google Topics.Plus dozens of smaller things (like moving the trend close button to the top right so it’s easier to click on mobile).After this Reddit success, the twitter poll had over 100 votes for the new name. It was a close run between Trendful and Trennd.And, somehow, Pieter Levels came across Trend List, loved the concept and voted for the name Trennd!imageI’m a huge fan of Pieter’s and Nomad List. I was watching his Bali video about his maker journey literally days before starting Trend List! So for him to vote and like the idea was both uncanny and amazing.And in the end, the name Trennd won by a small margin.Following all this initial traction, Trennd was featured on Harry Dry’s killer Marketing Examples blog.imageI made the front page of Indie Hackers too with the top milestone too. Love the IH community so this was a big deal to me!imageAfter the first 5 weeks I was absolutely chuffed with the results. (That’s British slang for very pleased!)I hadn’t set any goals, but 353 email subscribers was way beyond anything I expected.And I was even more pumped that the initial feedback was so overwhelmingly positive.I’ve made some other small products, but they were like trying to get a massive boulder uphill. Every time you stopped pushing for new customers, it would roll back down on you. Old customers would churn and you hadn’t replaced them.But this one felt obviously different. It was the first thing I’d made that people just shared automatically and it kind of took flight by itself.And with an email list in the hundreds, I started a weekly email newsletter called Trennds For The Weekend**.** My primary goal there was to make no-fluff, straight to the point emails, with a carefully curated list of the most interesting and fresh trends each week.imageThe newsletter was the one thing that I made sure happened every week. It was great motivation to get things done to have something to talk to the readers. Plus it was an invaluable way to keep in touch with Trennd’s growing audience and have an open channel for feedback. If I started to go in a wonky direction re: trend quality, web design, email format, bugs, or anything really, somebody would usually let me know via email reply and help to straighten the ship’s course.Next up was a Show Hacker News launch, which I expected to be a giant flop as most things usually drown in the noise.Show HN LaunchSo Friday at 10pm and I’m sat at my desk in Japan ready to post to Hacker News. My wife’s already gone to bed, but I figured this was the best time to post such that people were awake in both US + Europe. Plus I could reply to any comments and keep check on things through to Saturday morning JST if I had to.So I drafted my opening thread comment and hit submit.“Sorry, your account is too new to submit this site.”Oh man. I’d been thinking about this submission all day. And I couldn’t even post. 🤦🏼‍♂️Anyway, I emailed the mods at Hacker News to explain and they very quickly and kindly marked it ready to go through. My account was made in 2017, but turns out “too new” can also mean not having participated much in the community.Flash forward to the following Friday and this time it went through.We’d made sure to phrase the title to resonate with the audience. On Hacker News (and in most places I suppose) simple, clear and humble works best. this is where fellow indie maker Vincent was awesome — he helped me to get this title spot on, along with a bunch of other great advice that made a huge difference.The post immediately moved onto the best of Show HN page, and then quickly onto the main page.imageTraffic increased to 400 concurrent users on Trennd and we briefly peaked at #1.imageIt was at this point that Trennd got the infamous “Hacker News hug” and the site died. The free MongoDB Atlas database plan did not appreciate this flood of connections. So I had a frantic 15min where the website was down while I upgraded to the paid tier.It’s a shame that I lost this quarter-hour of Hacker News prime time. And I’ve since implemented some server-side caching that prevents the database from getting hammered.But since I recovered quickly, we remained near the top of the front page for 12 more hours, which is good enough for me. Let’s not be greedy. 😛I manned the comments section into the early hours of the morning, got some great discussion and a tremendous amount of positivity from the crowd.Twitter BonanzaJust as I started to think everything was all over and we were back to normality. The buzz started to spill over and have a huge domino effect onto Twitter.Dozens and dozens of people tweeted about Trennd.Thankfully I’d updated the twitter preview image beforehand (thank you Michael!). So there was a pretty placeholder image and sweet description when dozens of people shared and tweeted about Trennd.And then, the cherry on top of it all was that Rand Fishkin of Moz tweeted about it! Unbelievable! This made my month. 🍒imageThe number of likes and retweets on the back of this was insane too. I’m a twitter newbie, so to get this kind of exposure blew my mind! 🤯It also led to us getting picked up by the hackernewsletter and kottke.org which drove some good traffic our way too.imageAll of this combined to rocket us above 2000 email subscribers:Subscribers: 2,163 🎉Visitors: 28,353 🕵️‍♀️Pageviews: 124,026 👀It was really cool how ready people were to contribute and add trends of their own too. It confirmed my hypothesis that we could crowdsource the surfacing of new trends to some extent. In a similar way that Product Hunters crowdsource new products.But with this came the issue of quality control. One visitor, for example, added “Donkey Porn” as a new trend, and it may well be trending, but I had to moderate it away. 🤫At this stage, I felt I’d truly validated interest in the project with over 2000 subscribers, marketing to get another X hundred subscribers wasn’t going to change anything.I needed to make the platform more powerful. So I held off a Product Hunt launch thinking I’d keep that powder dry.Monetization (Or Lack Thereof)I also started to think long and hard about how to monetize the site at this time. I needed it to at least pay some of its own bills and maybe even some of mine!In the medium to long term, I knew a premium version of Trennd was the way to go.But I couldn’t figure out what this should look like and wanted to do it right.There’s no point damaging hard-earned goodwill by pushing out a rushed premium product too soon or something that’s the wrong fit.Somebody did ask for a “private Trennd dashboard” where they could favorite trends and even get personal alerts. They even said they’d pay $100-$200 per month for it. Turns out, they found Trennd immensely valuable to discover new programming languages sooner so that they could make Udemy courses around them. (If they were the first to get a course out and get good reviews, it’s like a winner take all market and can be very profitable.)But, to me, all the value seems to be in the trends themselves and spotting hotter trends sooner. Not the ability to put certain ones in a personal dashboard. They’d just use the free version! Plus how many tech course creators are there out there? For better or worse (I think better!), I dismissed it as a dead-end.Instead, I began to look for a community or affiliate sponsor and started to have pricing conversations with people. Even though I was still small fry in terms of traffic and a few thousand email subscribers.I managed to set up a nice sponsorship ‘swap’ with Unreadit (which is awesome, check it out!) and that was a good fit and worked out well for both of us.It drove a bit of traffic, some new subscribers and gave me some stats about how well Trennd sponsorship slots converted for future potential sponsors. But it didn’t bring in any cash money since it was just a swap.imageHaving that deal in place did give me an excuse to scuttle back into my code cave though. 🦀Code CaveThis was with the view to making Trennd more robust and sustainable for the long term.The #1 challenge was, and still is, the noise to signal ratio. Nobody wants to click through page after page trends to find the ones relevant to them. They need to be able to slice and dice the trends in more ways/dimensions that are relevant to them.So I hunkered down in my little white room in our Japanese “mansion” (which in Japan basically means an apartment).imageI added things like absolute search volume data and the ability to sort on it. More consistent categorization standards and automatic classification of trends too.With the data granularity, you can see the 3-month chart data was weekly at first. So pretty crummy with only 12 data points.imageBut then below that with daily data points instead you can really see the difference.imageAnyway, I’ll stop boring you with the various small additions and improvements I made over this time. Back to the story. 😛Traction Despite InactionI’d done zero marketing for over a month. 🤦‍♂️The hype last month around the Hacker News launch and Twittersphere had naturally died down, along with the web traffic.It’s way too easy to put marketing on the back burner and keep building in general. That’s where I’m personally most comfortable.Yet, I know too well marketing should be an ongoing crusade, alongside product improvement.The most successful indie hackers I see around — they have systemized routines that enable them to continually output valuable content.But to my surprise, the mailing list count was still ticking up every day despite all this, and the site had seemed to reach a healthy equilibrium of 100–300 daily visitors.imageThese were both big green flags to me. (I’m not sure if green flags are actually a real thing. Emojipedia doesn’t think so… 🚩)Pieter Levels tweeted about us again out of the blue too! This was several months after the first time and drove several thousands of visitors to the site. imageAcquisitionAll kinds of people had been putting themselves forward asking to get involved. And this was happening on a semi-regular basis!The problem is, co-founders bring a huge amount of risk with them. Differences in vision, work ethic, and so many other things.They’re big unknowns, so I’d decided to stick by myself and the devil I know.That is until I received the following email from:imageI thought I recognized that name. Googling Brian Dean… Oh snap!Yep, it’s Brian Dean of Backlinko.com 😮imageMore googling… Interesting, he’s acquired things before. I don’t think he’s joking around.imageI’d just had my wedding 2 days before and we were off to Okinawa for 4 days, so my call with Brian had to wait. Best to play hard to get anyway. 😜Then 1 call, 1 hour, 21 minutes and 31 seconds later — we had a deal.And we literally shook hands over Skype video! 🤝As for the acquisition number… that’s why you’ve read this far, right?!It’s really difficult to put a price on something that’s not making any money yet. Well, actually it’s not. Most people would just say $0. And traffic was growing but spikey and low in an absolute sense.But at the same time, we were both massively excited by the potential and the concept is partially validated and de-risked given the initial traction obtained.We settled on an amount equivalent to how much I’d earn as a US-based engineer working 6 months, but then multiplied by X for the traction/success factor already achieved. And I also still have a stake in the project going forward.So I can’t retire yet, but it’s a HUGE win!The main thing is - now I don’t have to worry quite so much about paying rent every month and I can start to think more big picture in general.And perhaps even more importantly, it provides validation to myself (and my wife!) so that I can keep working on these “projects” of mine and not get a “real job” just yet.To be honest, I didn’t know if I was just crazy and wasting my time for 6 months.To my Japanese in-laws, I was the slightly strange, unemployed “freeter” at home on my computer all day.imageI have to say, writing during the process made a huge difference. It keeps you sane as a solo-founder and allows you to track your own progress at a high level.Also, being as open as possible and sharing metrics such as subscriber growth, traffic and revenue helped to attract support and keep me accountable when it was only me working on it.And overall, all of this helped to create a story around the product, without which people don’t have reason to care.What’s NextIt’s awesome to have Brian behind the project now. This is fantastic news for Exploding Topics. He’s a massive name in the SEO industry of course, but also a super-smart guy who really knows his stuff and enables us to take the project to the next level!He has a great instinct for direction, based on years of experience and success online. This includes his “head-ache detector” as he calls it, which can foresee potential problems way further in advance than I can.And we’ve also fast-forwarded to having Brian’s huge audience to put new features in front of and see what they think.I no longer need to slowly grow Trennd’s audience via a trend community/discussion platform over months and years, while also trying to wrestle with product-market fit.Instead, we can focus on building a better product. This means the core value of trend discovery and getting people hotter trends faster**.**To this end, we’ve been able to refocus on the backend. Now we monitor way more places on the internet as sources for interesting new topics and keywords across health, business, marketing, fashion and more.We’ve also decided to niche down. This is a vital step and something I’d been sweating and delaying for several months. But with Brian’s help, this is something we’ve been able to move forward on.The problem is there are so many different potential customers: indie makers like me looking for their next project idea, investors looking for a company stock pick, affiliates seeking the next hot product or people just seeking to feed their curiosity.But we’ve settled on professional bloggers**.**These guys are our new focus as they constantly need fresh content ideas across a range of categories to write about. And if they’re one of the first to write about an exploding topic then this makes a huge difference to their results.They also potentially make for good customers. (Even though we don’t have our premium version yet!) It’s still good to choose a nice market where people immediately ‘get’ the product and are willing to pay for it if it provides value.This market has proven itself before too, as Nathan Barry of ConvertKit said about going from $1k — $10k MRR:Niche down as small as possible. Going from a generic email marketing company to “email marketing for professional bloggers” was critical. (source)We’ve renamed it too. I know, I know… I’ve already rebranded from Trend List to Trennd, and now we’re doing it again? But hear me out.This product spreads by word of mouth very well.But try telling your friend to “check out trend, but with two n’s. Oh and it’s .co not .com”. Not good. 😅So we’ve gone with ExplodingTopics.comLovely. Easy to remember and easy to spell. Has a balanced look to it on paper too, but maybe that’s just me.And the word “topics” aligns better with our new target audience.Plus we now have a sweet new design. I feel it’s much more intuitive and way sexier in general. 🤩imageBefore it looked like a project, now it looks like a product.And here's the plug, the inevitable plug:And we’re finally launching on Product Hunt today. Both Brian and I will be active in the discussion all of today (3rd December 2019):That’s it! Glad you made it to the end, hope you enjoyed the story and thanks again to you guys at r/EntrepreneurUntil next time,😘Josh

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Turks & Caicos: Family Beach Travel Vacation

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This post may contain affiliate links; please read my disclosure here

Contents: ⇨ Airport ⇨ Activities ⇨ Restaurants ⇨ Gadgets ⇨ Swimming & Snorkeling ⇨ Sunset

On our latest vacation travel, we chose the islands of Turks and Caicos. This was our second visit to Turks, with the first one being to Grand Turks while we are on a cruise about 10 years ago. A lot of things have changed on the islands with new constructions, new hotels, and lodging. One thing did not change was the crystal clear gorgeous water. Airport There a few airports that are currently working on renovations to not only their facilities but also tarmac as well. This is resulting in additional time outside of the terminal as well as inside. While the standard recommendation is to get to their airport a couple of hours before your flight, due to these ongoing upgrades it is a good idea to add on a half-hour to an hour. That is just what we did to make sure that we got to our terminal in time for our morning flight with the rush hour traffic starts. When we got to the airport, there were a lot of people, but the lines were moving quickly. We checked in quickly via automated kiosk and printed out our luggage tag for one bag to check-in. Travel Tip: We checked our bag for free since we booked the flight with JetBlue using their JetBlue Plus credit card. It has a benefit of one free checked bag per passenger as long as the ticket was purchased with their card. Additionally, you get 50% on any purchase on the plane and cashback for many things you spend a while on the ground. At the checkpoint, we didn’t need to take off shoes. Which is a rarity as it becomes a staple of just about every security screening. I guess they are trying to keep you on your toes and expected the unexpected. And the security now specifically asks you to put your phone into your bag instead of in the bin. "As if New York-based JetBlue’s flagship Terminal 5 wasn’t hip enough, the carrier opened a rooftop deck in 2015. The 4,046 square-foot post-security rooftop includes landscaped green spaces, seating for 50 people, a 400-square-foot children’s play area and a 400-square-foot dog-walk area." Even though this area has been opened for a while, we had no idea. While at the gate we were playing around and noticed people and coming out through a glass door. They were not employees, but rather also travelers, so we decided to check it out as well. It was a very nice area and we got some "fresh" air and views.

Ready for the flight

For our first stay at Turks and Caicos, we chose Alexandra Resort. It is an all-inclusive resort that is part of a three-hotel property. And because it has two sister hotels. we were able to visit them via a free shuttle. Well actually one of them, the Beach House, is an adults-only resort and we were not allowed inside with our kiddo. We did enjoy a couple of dinners at Blue Heaven, which is a pretty resort with very few guests. It is a bit smaller than Alexandra and the beach is smaller as well.

Alexandra Resort

Alexandra Resort Beach

Alexandra Resort walkway

On the first day of our arrival, we were famished, and so we went to find some food. While the restaurants were closed, there was a pizza and burger shack open. It is all-inclusive after all. This place has some of the best pizza. And that is coming from a New Yorker that has sampled quite a bit. It was so good, we had it for lunch several times during our stay. After we got back to our room. It is a suite. And we were quite impressed with the accommodations. It is a sprawling suite with 2 bathrooms, a large bedroom, an outdoor area, a full kitchen, and a larger pullout couch in the main room. It even had a washer and dryer on-premises.

Energized, we quickly changed into our swimwear and went to check out the ocean and the beach. The water was very warm from the day sun and very clear. The water in the ocean was so clear that you can easily see to the bottom and make out sand and other things on the ground. Even when swimming away from the coast, the water continued to be very clear. It was so clear actually that we did an experiment where we got a water bottle and kiddo filled it up with ocean water and we compared it to a closed water bottle. The ocean water was so clear, we had to mark up the bottle containing it so that we do not mistake it and start drinking the saltwater when thirsty. The following day we got to try the breakfast. The spread was ok and it would be the same, plus or minus a couple of things, every day of the week. One of the best parts was the custom made omelets and fruit choices. We had a lot of honeydew melon, apples, and bananas. We spent a lot of time in the water. Probably 70% of our vacation was spent in the ocean. The rest of the time we were either on the beach, eating at a restaurant, or sleeping. On this day we had to leave the beach a bit earlier as we found out there is a weekly event that happens in Turks & Caicos called Fish Fry. It is kind of a street fair with a bunch of vendors selling souvenir type merchandise and quite a few restaurants selling locally sourced and prepared on the spot food. It is located about a 5-minute walk from Beach House resort.

We took a free shuttle to the resort and then walked over to the open-air area for the fair. It starts around 5pm and runs until 10pm or so. We were recommended to get their earlier as it is not as crowded. So we did just that. It was not crowded at the time we arrived and we got to see the vendors and food choice unobtrusively. We also found out why there are not that many people there at the start, it is very hot still with the sun beating down and not much shade around. One of the first vendors we saw was the truck for Turks Head beer. I have heard about them through some online recommendations and videos as they were preferred over some well-known beer brands. So I had to try it out for myself. Since there was no one there, the guy let me try a flight of various flavors that they make. It was a very good beer and got a pint to go. By the way, the resort also stocks their light version throughout the hotel as well as within the rooms. There was quite a selection of food vendors at the Fry. For the most part, their menus were similar, so it was not as easy to choose. We ended up getting some fried conch at one of the vendors that were cutting it upright in front of you and making if fresh. They also gave us samples to try out of different varieties of cooked conch. Fried fritters were the best tasting. I got a full fish, head and all, plus corn at a place we walked by earlier that I saw the guy grilling it and lobster on the grill just a few minutes earlier. The fish was delicious and corn was real grilled corn. I could not believe I ordered and ate a fish with the head instead of the fillet. Me a few years back would not have done it. The kiddo also likes the fish a lot. The food definitely did not disappoint.

Also, while I got to enjoy a cold beer, the ladies got to enjoy a treat of their own. The little one got a cup of chocolate ice cream from the local shop and my wife got freshly cut coconut with the juice inside.

While we were eating the food, we saw the sunset. Hung around a bit more and got some souvenirs. A T-shirt for the kiddo and a necklace that she bought with her own money. She has a piggy bank that she fills up before a trip. And when it is almost time to travel then we convert the change into dollars and that’s what she gets to spend on vacation. We were too tired to wait for a short parade, which as we found out would only happen 15 min before close so we headed back to Blue Heaven to catch the shuttle. There was a bit of mis-scheduling with shuttles as one left way before its scheduled time and one that came after it didn't want to pick up passengers saying that the next one would be in an hour. We were having none of that and yelled at the driver to get us back as there were a lot of people waiting. Once back at our hotel, we had dessert and played foosball and air hockey before going back to the room. Activities While we didn't venture as far on this beach vacation as we did on a previous one (Family Beach Vacation - Curaçao), we were still active. I tried out stand up paddle boating for the first time. It went much better than my wife expected. I was able to get on the board and then fully stand up and start paddling. I did fall off a couple of times. And of these times were far away from the beach at pretty much the same spot. In this area, the waves were going at diagonal and really rocking the board at each paddle. Initially, I was thinking how am I going to get back on in the middle of the ocean. But I realized that the board is pretty steady in the water and I can pull myself upon it. I did just that, then climb onto my knees, paddled a bit to get better balance, and then stood up. These maneuvers worked both times, though this took quite a bit of energy and after the second one, I was all ready to head back in.

Another on the water activity we did was kayaking. I and kiddo took out a kayak for the first time as well. I have been in a kayak type of boat before, but this was definitely a new venture for both of us as we have not done actual kayaking before. It was a lot of fun. We were able to go pretty fast and covered a lot of areas. Kiddo was in the front and got to enjoy looking around and had fun putting her hand in the water while we were swimming.

On the beach, we built a sand kingdom with several buildings as well as a moat system similar to earlier civilizations to keep out little town safe from ocean waves. It worked well for the most part. Several attempts by the water to engulf the kingdom were diverted by out trenches. And, of course, we also did Swimming & Snorkeling

We have snorkeling masks and tubes for all of us. We take the sets with us whenever we do snorkeling. On a snorkeling excursion at Turks, we also had the gear with us so we did not need to borrow. However, they also provide fins for us. Previously, I have never really thought much of them as they tend to be uncomfortable to wear and get into the water. However, on this swim, I saw a huge difference in swimming without and with the fins. I was able to move a lot quicker through the water just using my legs and using my hand to hold the camera or Kiddo. The speed was significantly different and we will be looking to invest in some snorkeling fins for the entire family. Restaurants Alexandria is an all-inclusive resort and as such it has buffet-style meals most of the time. Breakfast was buffet style every day with the usual staples such as eggs, bacon, some variation of fried bread, and more importantly freshly prepared omelets. We opted for the omelets probably 90% of the time.

Fried conch for lunch with a view

For lunch, we went to the outdoor restaurant as we were coming straight from the beach. There they had a pre-set menu or you can order stuff from the grill. For a few days, my go-to was the fish tacos. They were very good, filled with veggies, fish, and sauce. The other lunch go-to was the pizza. As I mentioned before, they made really good pizza here. I would not recommend burgers, though, as there were not the same taste as you would expect. I tried them once, and that was enough for the trip. For dinner, you have a lot more choices. You can stay at the resort and enjoy a theme sit down dinner at the main restaurant. Or you can go to the second restaurant on-premise, the Fish Deck. We had dinner there a couple of times and the food selection was very good. The service is on a slow side even when compared to other restaurants on the island time. Besides these two restaurants, you can also take a shuttle to the Beach House for dinner if you eating or traveling without kids or the Blue Haven. We went to the Blue Haven a couple of times. The first time we opted for one of their specialties which is the all you can eat meat that you cook yourself right at the table. They have pieces of steak, chicken, and pork that you can grill, plus mushrooms and roasted vegetables. To finish off that dinner, and as you already have the fire pit in front of you, you can make your own s'mores with marshmallows, gram crackers, and chocolate. The second time there they had an outdoor buffet setup with a very good selection of food that was different from what we had at Alexandra. Gadgets Travel staples: Phones * Smartphones are the essential gadgets of travel Private Internet Access (PIA) * PIA is the VPN service that we use to access public Wi-Fi at the resort. At most resort worth their salt these days is the free and open, i.e. public, Wi-Fi available. While it is great for access to email, websites, and being social, it also comes with security concerns. Public internet can be accessed by anyone within the range. And plenty of unscrupulous people know that vacationers are likely to login into various platforms, hopefully not banking or similar, and might relax and throw some caution to the warm beach wind. Stay safe on public WiFi, even more so while traveling. Water camera * We had a blue Olympus Tough waterproof camera that served us well for many years. It has been with us through many trips (Second Go Family Travel to Aruba, We Took A Trip To Bermuda And Came Back To Tell About It - Part 2, Cruise Travel: Digital Cameras and Photo Accessories). Though on our last trip to Curacao, it was on its last legs and a portion of the casing actually came off. While it was still usable and continued to take pictures, we did not feel it would be as reliable on this trip. In our search for a new camera and going through many offerings available online and in stores, we ended up upgrading to the latest version of the Olympus camera. While, strangely, in this iteration, Olympus decided to lower optical zoom and MPs, there were many more features that they added and upgraded in this camera that made it a standout choice. There are a lot more photo filters and settings available. And we can confirm from using it in Turks & Caicos that the resolution is a lot better and the camera can take very good pictures above and below the water and even in dim light. The previous version did not do well with low light. We also got some pretty good videos with this camera when we didn't have the Go Pro around or when its battery died on us. Water wallet * This particular waterproof wallet has been through many hours of swimming at this point. It has been in the oceans and pools. It has been with me during swims in the ocean, playing in the surf, races in the pool, and many snorkeling excursions. Throughout all that water submersion it has kept room keys, cash, and credit card dry. That is if I properly close it. The only couple of times that the stuff inside got wet was with user error. In addition to the plastic wallet, I also put all of the contents in a small ziplock bag. A couple of times I was not careful with closing the lead so the seal was not as watertight. At all other times, 98%, it was great. Belt/wallet under the clothes * This travel wallet with a belt is great for keeping your documents and money safe and very close to you while traveling. The belt goes around your waist and under the clothing. It is so thin that even with money and papers in it you can have it underpants on the waist and not feel it. It is an airport screening friendly as it has no metal parts at all. All of the closures and zippers are made of plastic. I do not use throughout the vacation but mostly during the large legs of the trip. GoPro * For snorkeling and underwater video, Go Pro cameras are best. It is easy to operate, captures video with great resolution, and you don't need to worry about swimming with it and submerging as the casing is waterproof. We have Hero 3, so we need to have a case for it to be waterproof. The newer version, GoPro HERO 7, is waterproof without a housing to 33 feet. * During this trip, we also took the selfie stick for the Go Pro with us and got some great videos of all of us floating on mattresses in the ocean. And we were very glad to also have extra batteries with us as the battery that was inside the camera when we first arrived decided to crap out on our first snorkeling trip. I was able to get a few minutes of video, the rest was taken by the Olympus. (LINK back to above) Sunset On several occasions, we caught some great sunsets in Turks and Caicos. One of these was while we were enjoying some food at Fish Fry. The rest were while we were enjoying the beach later in the days.

Travel Tip/hack: use an elastic bungee cord to tie two carry-ons or luggage together for easier maneuvering.

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The Apple Watch Series 5 Finally Makes The Smartwatch Feel Like A Bona Fide Timepiece

BuzzFeed News

The Apple Watch Series 5 has an always-on display that stays dim — but readable — at all times, until the wrist is raised.

I’ve been living with various models of the Apple Watch for the last four years, and with this year’s new Series 5 for the last four days. What I’ve gleaned from testing the Series 5 is that its new features — an always-on display, increased storage capacity, faster processor, free emergency calling around the world (for the cellular model only), and compass (lol) — all make the Apple Watch a more capable, independent smartwatch.

But by far the most impactful change to the Apple Watch this year has nothing to do with the Series 5 at all. Alongside the debut of the new watch, Apple dropped the price of the perfectly capable Series 3 to a more accessible $199. For people who have always considered the $400–$500 price tag prohibitively expensive, this might be a good time to finally consider getting an Apple Watch. Just not the newest one.

If you are interested in the Series 5, there’s really only one feature worth discussing: the always-on display that finally makes the Apple Watch a bona fide timepiece. Previous models required a twist or raise of the wrist to wake the device’s screen, but the display on the Series 5 always shows the time, like a watch is supposed to. While you’re typing or exercising, the display is dim but still readable. When you raise your wrist, the screen brightens.

BuzzFeed News

The Apple Watch Series 5 has an always-on display that brightens when you twist or raise your wrist.

Being able to glance at the Series 5 meant that I spent less time gesticulating my arms.

Another (positive) side effect of the always-on display is that, when the feature is turned off, there are significant battery gains. Apple claims its latest watch’s battery life is 18 hours, which my testing found to be true. With always-on disabled, the battery lasted over 21 hours (with sleep tracking!) and was still at 43% when I woke up the next day.

Despite the much-improved battery, the Apple Watch Series 5 is still not a device you can take on a multiday hiking trip, given that it needs to be charged at least every 1.5 days.

I’m sold on the Apple Watch — but not necessarily on the Series 5. Unless you prefer (and can afford) the newest model, it doesn’t make sense to pay a premium on a device that’s still very much in progress.

I got my first smartwatch, a first-generation Apple Watch, as a gift in May 2015. There was so much not to like about the Apple Watch then. The battery life barely lasted a day, the watch needed an iPhone nearby to do just about anything, and the third-party apps were an absolute mess.

Every year since, Apple has incrementally added new features to its watch: waterproofness and swim-tracking in the Series 2, cellular connectivity and a stair-tracking altimeter in the Series 3, and a built-in ECG heart rate monitor and an ever-so-slightly larger screen in the Series 4.

As someone who has patiently waited on a smartwatch — any smartwatch — to deliver on the future Inspector Gadget’s Penny promised, the Apple Watch still hasn’t quite met the mark. As my former colleague Charlie Warzel noted last year, it feels like a luxury device for a future that isn’t quite here yet.

Being able to leave my phone behind and stay connected has long been a pipe dream. But cellular plans for wearables are costly and complicated. Most carriers charge an activation fee and a monthly recurring fee for the watch — around $10, not including additional service fees, just for being able to use the mobile data you’re already paying for. Even with that added cost, streaming media over cellular data on the watch is currently limited to Apple’s own apps: Apple Music, Apple Books, and Apple Podcasts. However, Apple recently made streaming functionality for music, radio, and podcasts available to third-party developers in its latest software update, watchOS 6, so there may be more on that front soon (here’s looking at you, Spotify).

The Apple Watch’s battery is where the device needs to improve most. The Fitbit Ionic smartwatch can last up to five days — yes, DAYS — or 10 hours with GPS tracking on a single charge. The Garmin Fenix 5 lasts up to nine days or 15 hours in GPS mode. The Apple Watch’s battery can last up to merely 18 hours, and just six hours (or five hours with LTE I’m on) with GPS tracking.

And yet, despite its shortcomings, I’ve worn an Apple Watch almost every day for the past four years. It is, in my opinion, the best smartwatch for people with iPhones. There’s no doubt that the Apple Watch allows me to interact with my phone less (again, a good thing). I listen to podcasts every morning during my bike or bus ride to work, and being able to control the volume or pause/play the audio without taking out my phone is wonderful. As someone who is constantly running a little late, the ability to add custom messages as one-tap replies is killer. (Mine is: “Running behind! Be right there.”) One of my watch’s most frequently tapped features is pinging my iPhone when I can’t find it.

BuzzFeed News

An Apple Watch Series 3 with cellular service can make and receive calls when your iPhone isn’t nearby.

But the primary reason why, after rigorously testing various Garmins and Fitbits, I prefer the Apple Watch is because it meets the very specific tracking needs of someone who works out outdoors and it doesn’t look like a clunky black box in the way other fitness wearables often do. The Apple Watch is surprisingly elegant for a GPS watch that can track biking, running, and open water swimming. Devices that can track all three of those activities typically look like they’re made for Men Who Do Triathlons. Not a bad thing! But not great if you have tiny wrists and want to wear the watch with regular clothes too, not just aerodynamic sportswear.

In fact, the Apple Watch is a pretty decent fitness tracker and training tool. One of my favorite (free!) apps is Nike Run Club, which has a number of guided runs available to download offline on the watch. You can leave your phone at home, connect Bluetooth headphones to the watch, and listen as a coach helps you work through different running distances. I also like to use Strava to record my bike rides and MySwimPro for pool and open water swims, but the GPS tracking for the watch’s built-in Workout app is far superior to its third-party counterparts. The default maps come out smooth, while routes recorded using Strava and MySwimPro occasionally go haywire. I recently discovered a $2 app called HealthFit, which can export the Apple Watch’s smooth GPS maps from the native Workout app to services like Strava or MapMyRun.

The best part of all of the above is that you don’t need the newest Apple Watch to experience the best the watch has to offer. The perfectly good Apple Watch Series 3, first released in 2017, is getting a big price drop with the arrival of the Series 5 — and, for most people, it is a fantastic smartwatch.

Apple is offering the Series 3 for $199 for the noncellular model, the same price as Fitbit’s Alexa-enabled Versa 2 and less expensive than Garmin’s Vivoactive 3 series (both pool swim tracking wearables that don’t offer open water tracking). You could opt for slightly less expensive, used Series 3 watches on Swappa, an electronics marketplace, but, unless you buy a device in mint condition, you won’t benefit from Apple’s limited warranty and a new device’s fresh lithium-ion battery, which degrades over time.

At $199, the Series 3 has a compelling price, and, thanks to annual software upgrades, it feels just as capable as a fitness tracker and smartwatch as the newer models. Plus, people who are not at risk for atrial fibrillation, or an irregular heartbeat, don’t need the electronic cardiogram feature designed to detect arrhythmia on the Series 4 and 5. The Series 3 is pool- and ocean-proof, and also offers high/low heart rate detection a GPS. It’ll get watchOS 6’s new Noise app for hearing health and the Cycle Tracking app for gaining period and fertility insights. The biggest difference between the older and newer models is the screen size, below, which is a nice-to-have, but not a must. You can compare the two for yourself here.

And if you already have a Series 3, this is great news for you, and the environment. As Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environmental initiatives, said during a 2018 presentation: “We also make sure to design durable products that last as long as possible. That means long-lasting hardware, coupled with our amazing software. Because they last longer, you can keep using them. And keeping using them is the best thing for the planet.” (If you’re starting to see your battery life dwindle on an older Apple Watch, you can get a replacement for $79.)

The Apple Watch Series 5, which starts at $399 for the aluminum case model, is available Sept. 20 in stores, and can be preordered online now. Apple’s new Studio lets you create any variation of watch and band you want. The Apple Watch Series 3, available now, is $199 for the aluminum GPS-only model and $299 for the aluminum cellular model.

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[ratevrs-com]

Oculus Quest review: VR freedom comes at a cost

if the oculus Go was an appetizer for truly wireless VR which is entirely self-contained and doesn't rely on PC the quest is closer to main course it's not as immersive as desktop virtual reality but it's currently the easiest way to show off the potential for this new medium you don't have to setup any sensors just throw on the headset pick up the motion controllers and you can jump into a complex virtual world anywhere you can think of the 399 oculus quest is a massively upgrade version of the go it's powered by 4 gigabytes of RAM and the snapdragon 835 a two-year-old processor that's far beefier than the meager 821 the NGO used it's OLED lenses each have a 1440 by 1600 resolution sharper than the ghost fast switching LCD most importantly it supports oculus insight system which relies on 4 sensors on the headset to keep track of the room and controllers that's even better than the oculus rift which requires setting up external sensors for room scale tracking unlike the go you're not stuck with a single remote the quest comes with oculus is revamped motion controllers which have triggers grip buttons analog sticks and two face buttons they'll let you play the same sorts of games that desktop VR headsets like the rift can in fact the new rift s comes with the same controllers they're a bit smaller than the original versions which I genuinely loved and they have tracking rings above your fingers instead of below oculus tells us this helps a quest keep a better eye on the controller's the headset resembles the rift except there aren't any distracting wires hanging around there are four tracking sensors up front along the USBC charging port and power button along the sides a redesigned adjustable head strap dominates the rear it's more flexible than the rifts but more rigid than the ghost stretchy straps while the quest has built-in speakers you can plug in headphones either 3.5 millimeter port along the sides of the headset and if you're wondering why it has two that's because oculus has custom ear buds that lorelei on both ports so you won't have to worry about maneuvering cables around your head the quest easily fit over my glasses and they only took around 5 seconds to get the head strap in the right spot it felt secure but I noticed very quickly that the headset is a bit front-loaded at 1.2 pounds its own point two pounds heavier than the go in the rift but I easily felt that added weight along my face especially around my eyes and nose it's not a deal breaker but I definitely had to rest more often than I did with other oculus headsets when I put the quest on I saw a ref black-and-white view of my surroundings from there I had to set up the Guardian system to avoid bumping into anything obviously you'll want to use the headset in a clutter-free area I marked the floor level by placing a controller down then I use it to map a boundary around my play space if you're just sitting or standing one spot you can skip that step afterwards I saw blue walls as I edged closer to the boundaries that's similar to the rift but the quest goes a step further when I peek through the boundary I got a monochrome view of the real world again with other headsets I've had to remove them entirely to safely navigate my office well the Guardian system works well overall I often had to remap my play space whenever I put the headset down for a few minutes which got to be pretty annoying hopefully oculus will figure out a way to better remember those boundaries based on its specs alone I expected the quest to deliver far more satisfying VR experiences in the go and it didn't disappoint superhot looked sharper than I did on the rift thanks to those additional pixels and it played just as smoothly it wasn't long before I was grabbing pistols in midair dodging bullets and knocking out bad guys with the motion controllers and speaking of which the new controllers feel great even though I prefer the slightly larger grips of the earlier models another plus they only need a single double-a battery instead of two thumper which was a huge hit in the PlayStation VR a few years ago is spectacularly immersive it's a fast-paced rhythm action game that has you've racing down psychedelic roadways fighting giant creatures and simply a blast on the quest the graphical fidelity is a noticeable step down from what the PlayStation 4 and my PC put out there are fewer particle effects and visual flourishes but it's still impressive for souped-up mobile VR most importantly thumper always felt as fast as it did on those platforms beat Sabre another VR mainstay works flawlessly in the quest it's also a great way to test motion tracking since the game is all about hitting directional blocks quickly the headset had no trouble keeping up with my wild swings even when I tried to trick it by turning my head away I only wish the game had a bigger selection of songs to play but if you're looking for a good VR demo for newcomers this is it I was surprised that the quest built-in speakers delivered clear and thumping sound with all these rhythm games I never felt the need to plug in headphones just be aware the speakers are open so other people will definitely hear you're embarrassing beat saber tracks for some slightly slower paced gameplay I try that journey of the gods a new Zelda style adventure game I enjoy swinging the sword around and taking down monsters with the crossbow but I was more hooked on the sense of immersion I've yet to find the perfect VR RPG but this comes close I enjoyed simply wandering around the serene world and exploring every nook and cranny watching 360 degree content on the oculus video app worked well but that's relatively simple stuff that even the go can do without a struggle the quest sharper resolution helped somewhat but that weight issue made it uncomfortable for longer viewing sessions other apps like Netflix weren't available to test unfortunately to help think we are more of a communal experience oculus also added chromecast streaming to the quest for the chromecast Ultra third generation devices in the Nvidia shield it works surprisingly well in my testing though the video quality can be hit or miss still it's nice to have a way to share your virtual adventures on the big screen oculus claims the quest gets around two to three hours of battery life and that fits with my experience after some heavy gaming for an hour it typically got down to around 50% it'll also charge over USB see in around 2 hours if you really want to spend the chunk of time in VR you can also use it well to being charged but that sort of defeats the purpose of having a truly wireless headset the quest starts at 399 with 64 gigabytes of storage and you can also bump up to 128 gigabytes for 499 games typically clock in under 500 Meg's though a few massive titles like face your fears too can surpass 2 gigabytes at this point though I think you'll have a hard time filling up 128 gigabyte headset the quests biggest competition at the moment are oculus as other headsets the $200 goes still a great option if you want a more inexpensive taste of mobile VR and the 399 rift s will get you better quality VR if you have a powerful computer and unlike a few years ago there are plenty of your already laptops around today Lenovo's mirage daydream which is $400 is technically a competitor since it's an all-in-one headset but we didn't like it too much in our review as for the PlayStation VR which you can find for around $230 now it's a solid platform for ps4 owners with tons of games but it's cumbersome setup might be a turn-off the oculus quest is so close to being my ideal Wireless VR headset it's more powerful in the go has some great motion controllers and there aren't any sensors to set up I just wish it were more comfortable and at 400 dollars it's not something average consumers will jump on immediately especially when the 200 go is still around but if you're looking for a great way to play some trendy VR games easily without the hassles of PC or console it's your best bet that's pretty much it for the oculus quest but if you're looking for more VR headset reviews subscribe to us on YouTube and check out our website and gadget

https://youtu.be/iqxGnMzQZUI

[smoothshift]

My 2003 Porsche 911 Cost of Ownership (996) via /r/cars

My 2003 Porsche 911 Cost of Ownership (996)

Hey guys! I wanted to take a second to share my experiences owning (and daily driving) a 16 year old 911. One of the most common questions in the "what car should I buy" threads is worry about the cost of ownership, so I thought that someone may find this information valuable.

I've had my car for a year now. It's a black 2003 911 Targa. It had about 53,000 miles on it when I bought it and it has about 62,000 on it now. If you drive more than I do the general wear and tear (tires, wheels, brakes) will obviously have to be done more frequently. Here is a breakdown of what I have spent on the car so far:

Required:

$22,500 purchase price

(~$150) Oil Change - Mechanic suggest changing every six months due to age. You don't have to do it this frequently, but it's not a bad thing to do, and it's a cheap way to get them to look over the car. If you do this regularly they will trust that you are going to be a return customer and be way more willing to answer random questions you have and help you hunt down issues (I have my mechanic's cell phone and text him every few months about various things).

(~$180) Brake Fluid Flush - Mechanic suggests changing every other oil change (I may do this every other year/every 4th oil change instead, I have not decided yet)

(~$400) Front Radiators Cleaning - There are two radiators in the front of the car in the openings on the lower part of the bumper, and they fill up with crap over the years. I had already pulled a bunch of crap out of them when I was cleaning the car, so I figured it would be worthwhile to have done. They pull the bumper off, take the radiators off, and pressure wash them. They said it helps the car run cooler, I don't really notice a difference, but I live in Texas so better safe than sorry. Probably won't need to do this again. Make sure you clean out the intakes a couple of times a year with a shop vac to help with this.

(~$1,100) Coil Packs & Spark Plugs - The car would occasionally throw a misfire code in the rain. We decided that it was likely due to the the age of the coil packs. They are made of hard plastic and as they age they can crack and no longer be watertight.

(~$300) Another possible cause for the misfire was the K&N intake that the previous owner had put on the car. The factory intake is much better at stopping water from getting into the intake system. This was a pretty simple fix, my mechanic recommended that I should do it, and told me that I could do it myself. I ordered the parts and it took me a couple of hours (Getting the K&N off was much more difficult that installing the factory system).

(~$150) Oil Change

Optional:

(~$1,000) Upgraded Head Unit - The factory head unit is fine and it was still perfectly functional. However, I wanted a way to play music from my phone. These cars have a fiber optic stereo system, so it is generally a pain to modify the system (you can't just buy a cheap AUX adapter). So, I figured that if I was going to have to spend real money on it either way I would go ahead and get a nice head unit. I purchased a wireless Apple Carplay unit for ~$500, took a gamble on a cheap fiber optic adapter for ~$100 (which works by the way!), and the balance was for miscellaneous parts and install (money well spent). It has made the car feel much more modern, and having Waze directions is very nice. This upgrade was worth every penny!

(~$1,100) Front Bra Removal & Ding/Chip Repair - The car had a bra that had been on the car from the time it was new. If you don't know, these are only supposed to be on the car for 3-5 years, especially for the older ones. It was starting to look like crap and I wanted to take it off. This ended up being a huge pain! It came off the hood just fine as it is aluminum, but it was so stuck to the front bumper that it needed to be refinished to remove it! OLD BRAS ARE BAD NEWS PEOPLE. That was the bulk of this cost, the car had a couple of minor dings and one pretty bad chip. This would have only cost me a few hundred dollars to have done if it were not for the bra.

(~$1,000) I went a little overboard from browsing on r/AutoDetailing... That being said, it's a one time expense and can be used for other cars as well.

(~$50) Wheel cap replacement, the Logo fell off and it looked like shit

(~$30) Porsche keychain replacement, the old one was pretty ragged

(~$30) Headlight refinish kit, this made a big difference! Totally worth it to remove the yellowing.

Looking Forward:

Brakes, Tires, Oil Changes - Normal Wear and Tear

Clutch - The car is still on the original clutch. It still seems to have plenty of life in it, but it will have to be replaced at some point. I will also take the opportunity to retrofit the IMS bearing as it is the same labor. This will be ~$3,000 - ~$4,000 depending on what all needs to be replaced according to my mechanic.

Rear Bushings - The front bushings were replaced by the previous owner for ~$500. The rear ones are starting to get a little squeaky over speed bumps. It's not a critical thing, but it will need to be replaced at some point.

Closing Thoughts & Suggestions

Get a PPI done. Just do it. Maintenance on these cars is expensive. If the previous owner deferred a lot of it, you will end up having to do it. It's not the end of the world, you just need to know what you are getting into and budget accordingly.

Get a good Indy mechanic. The labor at mine isn't cheap, but they know the car as well or better than the dealer. Dealers these days are very much a hook it up to the computer and replace whatever it says is wrong kind of operation. Indys put a little more thought into things and tend to see a lot of older cars that the dealers probably don't. Change the oil regularly AT THE INDY. Don't take the car to JiffyLube, yes they will change the oil, yes it will save you $20-$30 over having your Indy do it. However, Jiffy Lube doesn't know your car and doesn't know the car that well period. Your Indy will be able to look over the car for you while they have it and give you an idea of what is going on/what maintenance items/potential problems are coming up.

Get good insurance. These were expensive cars when they were new. The previous owner had to have the glass in the targa roof replaced due to a crack. It was over $10,000, the part alone was almost $9,000. It was covered under the comprehensive coverage of his policy. Probably the happiest you will ever be to fork out your deductible.

IMS Bearing - As I said earlier, I think that most of the ones that were going to fail unexpectedly have already done so (that's just like my opinion, man). So don't be terrified to buy one that's been well maintained but doesn't have the retrofit. However, as I am doing, budget to have it done the next time the clutch is replaced. It will only cost you an extra ~10% in labor and the cost of the part, probably an extra ~$1,000 total. TO BE CLEAR, you should absolutely replace the IMS bearing, I just think it's prudent to wait until you need a clutch service. I've read a lot of stories about people that have them towed straight to a mechanic to have it replaced as soon as they buy it. I think that's being a bit too paranoid.

Add an extra $2,000 or so to your purchase budget (in addition to whatever is noted in the PPI) to get any issues that pop up in the first few months sorted out. The misfire happened in the first three months I had the car. It had probably been like that for a while, but the previous owner never drove the car in the rain so he would have never known.

Old cars like to be driven regularly. Problems come up when they have been sitting. Pay attention to the miles on the carfax report, if it's only been driven 1,000 miles in the last year or two it's likely to have more problems pop up when you start driving it.

Budget $2,000 a year for the car (IN ADDITION TO YOUR NORMAL EMERGENCY FUND PEOPLE DON'T BUY OLD GERMAN CARS IF YOU ARE PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK). The cars are pretty reliable and most years you will probably only spend money on tires and oil changes. However, it will be expensive when things come up, be prepared for it. I think $2,000 a year (after initially getting it sorted out) is sufficient. On good years you will probably spend less than $500 - $1,000 on the car and you will have saved $1,000 - $1,500 towards the years you have to spend three or four thousand on the car (I have money direct deposited to a separate account every paycheck to automate this).

If you are daily driving the cars accept that they will not be perfect cosmetically... This one was hard. I spent a good bit of money getting dings and chips sorted only for them to happen again pretty much immediately... You just have to live with it unless you want to go broke chasing cosmetic things that only you will notice anyway. My suggestion is to get a paint touch up kit and roll with it. Every few years you can take it and have it professionally touched up/fix the really bad ones. Also, don't be afraid of resprays on the front, as they typically don't impact the value (and black is really easy to match, metallic not so much). It is a much cheaper solution than bras and film. These are $25,000 cars... don't spend $5,000 on clear film people... Obviously if it's a garage queen/you are collecting the car feel free to do whatever you want... But for us daily drivers no collector is going to buy our 100,000+ mile car anyway so just do what you have to do.

Be sure to give it the ol' Italian tune up every now and then. Seriously, go enjoy the damn cars. Treat them well, but don't be afraid to drive it hard every now and then... It's what they were made to do and life is too short not to enjoy it.

[terryblount]

Anno 1800 Review: A Quality Copy of Itself

Anno 1800 is an engrossing and fantastic mix of city building, economic simulation, and real-time strategy. It’s so easy to get sucked in to the whole affair, as the hours fly by and your empire slowly expands. Granted, there’s much micro-management required, and the game strongly favors those of us with a patient dedication to detail. Still, there’s a soothing rhythm to it all if you can find the groove hiding within the various complex systems.

What is Anno Gameplay?

If you’ve never played an Anno game before, let me try to summarize what you actually do. Starting with an empty island, you place houses and production buildings thereupon, connecting everything together with roads. As your population grows their needs increase, which are fulfilled by newly unlocked buildings.

Our cities grow up so quickly! Fine craftsmanship, here we come!

After fulfilling all the current needs of your populace, you can upgrade their houses to unlock even more needs. Anno is basically a game of ever-expanding needs fulfillment—they once longed for fish and schnapps but soon will require sausage, bread, beer, and oh so much more!

Eventually you’ll have to expand to new islands because your people will demand more goods not available on your first location. This leads to the need for ships and trade routes, and soon enough you’ll have a huge fleet all for the purpose of meeting those pesky population needs.

There’s a pleasant ebb and flow to Anno. At times you’re perplexed as to your people’s desires, trying to set up new production chains and deliver the goods. Then a short while later everyone is content, and you can sit back and watch the gold roll in. Of course you can’t relax for long because there’s others who also are trying to seize islands and produce goods—the rival players, be they actual humans in the multiplayer mode or AI characters.

The diplomacy screen helps you try to make nice with others…or be a big jerk!

The complex interaction between building up your cities, producing goods, and dealing with other characters leads to an intense and intellectual challenge that has defined the Anno series for over two decades. Speaking of the series, let me explain the history of the Anno franchise because learning is fun!

An Anno Anthology

Anno began in the year 1602. Wait, no. What I mean to say is the first game in the series was called Anno 1602 and came out way back in 1998, created by a now-defunct company called Max Design. It was a 2D isometric city-builder with goods-based management systems and some real-time strategy elements, and it became quite popular, especially in its home region of Austria/Germany.

Just a pretty screenshot of a ship at sea. Anno 1800 is a very nice looking game!

The inevitable sequel, Anno 1503, was released in 2003, also created by Max Design. It, too, was well-received even if it was very similar to the first game. 2006 saw a big jump in the series with Anno 1701, featuring charming 3D graphics and excellent gameplay depth, winning over many new fans the world over. This new generation of Anno was created by Related Designs, a German studio new to the series. They would go on to develop all the rest of the main Anno games, although they were merged into Ubisoft Blue Byte a while back.

Three years later saw the culmination of years of fine-tuning with Anno 1404. Many consider this 2009 game to be the pinnacle of the series (at least until now, debatably). It was (and is) a brilliant mix of charm and complexity merged with polished 3D graphics, excellent gameplay, and much replayability.

This Anno gives you back the complex trade routes system from the prior Anno games.

Then developers opted to go where no Anno game had gone before: the future. 2011 saw Anno 2070, and 2015 saw Anno 2205. Confused yet? Both titles were disappointments to long-time Anno fans. It wasn’t the futuristic setting that was the problem per se—it was the dumbing down of the gameplay and extreme cuts to content.

Both futuristic titles saw traditional story campaigns mostly cut out. Proper AI enemies were lacking. Combat was contrived, and trading was overly-simplified. The games felt a bit soulless. Oh, and the games became “always online” and “games as a service” through Ubisoft’s frustrating Uplay system and other DRM schemes. In short, Anno’s future was a big letdown!

Anno in 2019: Copy & Paste

The prior history of Anno is necessary to understand Anno 1800. It’s an intentional return to the roots of the series: charming historical simulation with robust gameplay features. If you read between the lines of the marketing, the message has been clear: Anno 1800 is a good Anno game again with a story, proper AI, and all the beloved features from the Anno’s of old!

And they’re not kidding about this game including the features of the old games. They’ve recreated Anno 1404’s gameplay to such an extreme degree. Seriously, this game plays identically to Anno 1404 in all the significant elements. It’s not a stretch to say it’s basically the same game as the ten-year-old Anno 1404, and this is the game’s biggest strength and disappointment.

There’s a secret first-person mode (Ctrl-Shift-R). You can get some nice shots with it.

Being an Anno 1404 clone is wonderful because, as noted, the 2009 Anno is charming, expansive, and a joy to play, even to this day. However, it’s disappointing because long-time Anno fans have already been there and done that since 2009.

Therefore, your feelings on Anno 1800 will largely be guided by your experience with the series. If you’ve never played Anno 1404 then you’re likely to be quite mesmerized by Anno 1800’s creative spirit and whimsical world, never knowing it was already done in the same fashion a decade ago.

For me, though, I have played Anno 1404, and I’m honestly uncertain if I’d rather play the new, shiny Anno 1800 or the tried and true (and very inexpensive) Anno 1404. Read on to find out why I’m torn.

My Anno Experience

I began playing Anno with Anno 1701, but it was Anno 1404 that made me fall in love with the series. I spent several years putting over 400 hours into Anno 1404, and I even made the unofficial patch for the game, which fixes literally thousands of issues (it took a lot of effort!). In fact, the developers even contacted me years ago about including my fixes in a planned new version of the game, but that project was canceled sadly.

Back on topic, besides playing extensively I have a serious understanding of how these games work under the hood. This is why I was taken aback to see this modern Anno 1800 be programmed to function in virtually the same way as Anno 1404, including some of the same UI issues and quest bugs!

OCD players will find much to obsess about. I must build with symmetry! I must!!

Hence, I found it fairly amusing to read some of the developer blogs about AI, supply chains, and other gameplay features. They’d talk about creating the systems for this game, and I couldn’t help but chuckle because the systems are copied from Anno 1404!

I guess it’s not stealing if you’re stealing from your own prior game…but let’s not act like this stuff is new! Although Anno 1800 does include new features, to be fair. Let’s discuss the new stuff.

Anno 1800’s New Features

This latest entry does provide some excellent additions to the Anno formula, including concepts such as Workforce, Influence, Propaganda, Expeditions, and Electricity. We’ll tackle each one in turn.

Workforce requires you to carefully balance your population between a pyramid of classes, starting with Farmers and Workers, and moving up to Artisans and Engineers and beyond. The trick is only certain population classes can perform certain jobs, and managing this system is a rewarding challenge.

Influence is a new (and controversial) feature that grows with your population and must be used for various tasks such as military and trade expansion. It’s not explained well in the game, sadly. However, after understanding the system, it does feel like a nice addition to the game to guide you into specializations based on your gameplay goals.

The Influence system menu. It’s quite confusing at first, but it’s a nice system overall.

Propaganda is controlled by your newspaper, which is pops up every so often in your game, requiring you to choose to spend Influence to alter the news (‘alternative’ facts). It’s a fun system that adds a bit of flavor to the game experience, helping you see recent events or issues in your game world. Although, after playing for dozens of hours it becomes a bit of a chore to have to review the newspaper over and over. An option to auto-select certain Propaganda would been nice.

The newspaper screen. Notice my use of propaganda on the far right. Important news!

Expeditions are Anno 1800’s take on text-based ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ stories. You send out ships on long journeys, and if you equip the right supplies and items and fortune favors you, you might survive long enough to find treasures and return home safely. It’s a fun system to be sure, and it helps break up the typical gameplay loop. I really enjoyed finding all the different options and results from the various text-stories presented.

Fun text adventures! Notice my ship is ultra-powerful. I have a 195% chance to win. Good!

Electricity is a wonderful historical addition, given the industrial revolution setting of the game. After many hours of playing and building your empire, you’ll eventually unlock the potential to generate electricity to turbo-boost your production capabilities and allow you to attract the most lucrative population class to your cities. Figuring out how to lay railroad and manage your power grid is a challenging but fun late-game activity.

Building Culture: Museums and Zoos

Do you like collecting animals and artifacts? Of course you do! Anno 1800 knows this and includes two extremely enjoyable new module-style buildings: the museum and zoo. Both give nice benefits to your city, such as helping to attract visitors. There’s a very strong ‘gotta collect ’em all’ impulse that makes this gameplay element very addictive.

An expedition gives me some nifty sea creatures for my zoo! It’ll be zootopia soon!

How do you get these fascinating animals and artifacts, you ask? Several ways! Expeditions are a great source, but later you’ll get help from the World’s Fair. Speaking of which…

End-Game Fun: World’s Fair Exhibitions!

Another new and excellent addition is the ultimate end-game goal: building and operating a world’s fair. This is a very cool historical theme since the first world’s fair was held in 1851 in real life. Reaching this point is basically the equivalent of a raid or bonus dungeon in other games—it’s the final end-game goal.

Here is the World Fair building being built. It’s a very complex process to create such a place!

To put it into perspective, it took me about 80 hours to finally build the World’s Fair, and it felt really good to finally hold the biggest and best world’s fair ‘exhibition’ possible after about 90 hours of hard work building my empire. The reason this review is so late is because I wanted to ensure I’d experienced this final goal, and I can report to you that it’s gloriously good times!

The Rest of the Review: Issues

I really do love Anno 1800. However, the game does have a lot of issues. Much of my frustration is that they copied Anno 1404 so much but didn’t go the extra step of solving some of the problems the series has had for so many years. Hence, the rest of this review is going to be a whole bunch of criticisms and problems with the game, even though I do love playing it.

The Campaign: Weak!

I’ve gone this far in the review and haven’t even mentioned the campaign. I suppose that’s fitting because the campaign is nothing more than a glorified tutorial that plays out over some 8 to 10 hours (longer on higher difficulties).

The campaign has some cutscenes with voiced characters. It’s…decent, but not great.

The storytelling is weak but semi-adequate, giving a modest investment in characters and happenings. However, the story ends very abruptly and without much resolution. I also experienced a glitch wherein the final battle failed to happen and I won without completing the final quests, which was anticlimactic.

Also unfortunate is the lack of tutorial quests for certain key features. The game never bothers to explain trade routes, despite these being absolutely essential to grow your civilization and finish the campaign. A bizarre oversight.

Overall, the campaign is lame. It needed to go on a lot longer, with a proper plot and resolution.

Questing & Bugs

Anno 1800 features a virtually identical quest system from Anno 1404, although a few new types of quests have been added. Random residents will offer various quests from time to time. Trading partners and NPCs will also give quests such as escort, destroy, deliver, and photograph. Overall, there’s hundreds of these.

Sadly some of these quest types that are as maddening as they were 10 years ago, such as puzzle quests where you have to find and click on very tiny little objects in your massive cities. Then again, you can delete any non-story quest at any time.

There’s fun multi-part quests in the game. The 2nd part of this one is bugged though…

Unfortunately, a fair amount of quests are bugged. I find this pretty funny since many of the quest issues are literally the exact same XML programming errors that I fixed all those years ago in Anno 1404. Maybe they’ll fix the issues in future patches…of course they never did for Anno 1404 (see my unofficial patch for that game).

Old World, New World Blues

Another gameplay change from Anno 1404 is the two distinct world spaces. In Anno 1404, you played a single world space with the upper half representing Europe (Occident) and the lower half representing the Middle/Far East (Orient). In Anno 1800, the game splits the spaces into two unique “sessions” (Old World, New World).

Here’s the world map screen. You almost never use this view, but it’s pretty!

It’s true that it’s more realistic to have separate spaces for the different geography, and the concept is excellent. However, the execution gets a bit obnoxious and invasive to the play experience.

The simple fact is we humans can only focus on one screen at a time, so having two different game maps playing out with one always hidden means constant interruptions and unknown events occurring. Fighting a war on two different screens, for example, simply isn’t fun.

This is very much like trying to play two games of speed-chess at the same time. It sounds interesting in theory, but unless you’re a strategy god, the split-attention results in a lesser experience on both sides.

A Huge Fail: Missing Profile Tracking

One hallmark of the Anno series is robust tracking of your game accomplishments tied to your universal player profile. Anno 1404 is the gold standard in this regard. It features over 300+ tracked accomplishments and 25 special medals. Moreover, there were very fun unlocks as you progressed, letting you get new city ornaments, portraits, titles, and more. A huge joy for fans (called Annoholics) was to slowly make progress toward the fabled 100% complete player profile. It was a badge of honor to know and share your profile progress.

Anno 1800 lacks all of this. All you get is barely 40 Uplay achievements, and some boring ‘Club rewards’ you spend Uplay points to unlock. This is very unfortunate since the game has literally all the same features as Anno 1404 that beg to be recorded and bragged about.

Also strange is how there’s a photograph feature in the game, but it’s only used for quests. There is no photo gallery or showcase or anything like that. This is another missed opportunity to let players showcase their cities in a more permanent player profile fashion.

This is me taking a photograph for a quest, nothing more. There is no photo gallery.

In regard to quests, there are many extensive multi-part quests, but unlike Anno 1404, Anno 1800 doesn’t have any tracking system to prove you’ve befriended the AI and learned their back stories. And the new Expeditions feature would be perfect for tracking all the different outcomes. But alas, the developers couldn’t be bothered with all this.

To summarize, for a game that copies Anno 1404 in nearly every single way, it’s an epic fail to remove the amazingly fun tracking system that kept players motivated for hundreds of hours across dozens of playthroughs and scenarios. Bad developers!

Where are the Scenarios?

Speaking of scenarios, another totally absent feature in this modern game is custom challenges, known as scenarios in Anno 1404. In that game you could take on special modes requiring you to build a monument in so many hours or begin in great debt on a unique island.

Anno 1800 has zero scenarios and only has one game mode: the sandbox. I say this because even the story campaign takes place in a sandbox environment, opening up to an unguided sandbox mode after only about 10 hours.

At least you can select your difficulty and customize the game options. Expert is quite hard.

So let’s review. Anno 1800 copies Anno 1404’s gameplay in nearly every way, but it removes all scenarios, which added dozens and dozens of hours of diverse gameplay challenges. Epic fail.

DirectX 12 Crashing!

Note that many players, including myself, get constant crashes when using the DX12 renderer. I had dozens of crashes and two hard locks requiring a manual restart of my computer. Even after two patches, the crashes still occur. Fortunately, switching to DX11 completely eliminated the crashes for me, but the framerate is slower—a sad but necessary tradeoff.

Ubisoft Store, Epic Store, No Steam

There’s also the controversy with the way the game is sold. It was yet another title to be yanked off Steam shortly before its release. Now you can only buy it from Ubisoft directly or from the Epic Store (possibly). The good news is Anno 1404 is on Steam (it goes by ‘Dawn of Discovery’ in North America).

Other Various Concerns

The gameplay UI is great in some ways but horrible in others. The trade routes interface is especially obnoxious, with the ‘delete’ button overlapping other buttons at times. Some UI buttons simply don’t work, such as some ‘jump to event’ notifications. Overall, the UI is very workable, but it’s not ideal.

The game also features an Attractiveness system for each city. Honestly though, I mostly ignored it all because the game doesn’t do enough to show you the benefits of the system.

Here’s the Attractiveness system. Most players will likely ignore it though…

Despite a robust keyboard customization menu, certain commands can’t be bound to keys for no apparent reason. It would have been nice to have quick shortcuts for every building option, much like how most Windows applications have shortcuts to open Edit->Cut and this type of thing.

There’s also an unfortunate lack of statistics and charts to help you understand where you money is going and how to more efficiently manage your empire. Fortunately, the developers have promised to add a building in a future patch (first featured in the Anno 1404 expansion from 2010, ironically), so hopefully soon we’ll have more tools to manage our empire.

Conclusion: A Gorgeous, Great Game

I loved playing Anno 1800. Yes, the core gameplay is in many cases identical to Anno 1404, but an updated version of such a beloved Anno game isn’t a bad thing. The same engrossing ‘just one more hour’ gameplay draws the player into the world, testing the dedication, intellect, and patience of the player through cunning planning and strategies.

It’s an easy game to pick up and play, making some progress each gameplay session. Soon enough the narrator will say, ‘Warning: you’ve been playing for two hours,’ and you won’t even realize the time has flown by. Over weeks and months you can watch your empire expand, eventually reaching the end-game and proving your Anno-worth.

It’s too bad they’ve ripped out nearly all the player profile tracking and failed to include special gameplay scenarios. It’s also unfortunate online co-op isn’t ready yet and may take many more months to be included. The bugs and other issues also drag down the experience.

Here’s a screenshot showcasing Anno 1800’s beauty and charm after 80+ hours.

Ultimately, Anno 1800 is the smoothest Anno experience available, with some excellent new features to keep you hooked for a long while. So if you want to play the latest and semi-greatest, go for Anno 1800.

However, picking up Anno 1404 Gold Edition for super-cheap is also a very viable and excellent choice since it gives you the same fundamentally excellent gameplay with more actual content. …Just make sure you use my unofficial patch if you do play Anno 1404. And no, I ain’t going to make one for Anno 1800. The developers should have learned to fix their own darn Anno bugs by now!

Gorgeous city building

Engrossing management

Soothing ebb and flow

Expedition diversions

Museums and zoos

Late-game electricity

End-game world’s fair

Old/New world concept

Lame, short campaign

No scenarios (sandbox only)

Few achievements/tracking

Quest bugs, UI issues

DX12 crashes, locks

Lacks statistics/charts

So much like Anno 1404

Old/New world execution

Playtime: 100 hours total. Nick spent 10 hours finishing the story (tutorial). Another 10 hours were spent reaching 20,000 inhabitants. Another 20 hours allowed Nick to reach the ‘Engineer’ population level, with two nicely built cities. Then 10 hours was spent wiping out the remaining AI players and seizing their lands. So at 50 hours in, Nick had conquered all and could begin building his perfect empire, free from distractions. It took another 15 hours to reach ‘Investors,’ the game’s highest population level. At 80 hours, Nick ultimately reached his objective of unlocking all buildings and providing all goods to his people, with a final population count of 90,000. Many world’s fair exhibitions were held. The galaxy was at peace.

Computer Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using an Intel i7-3930k CPU, 32GB of memory, and a nVidia GTX 980 Ti graphics card.

Also read the Anno 1800 PC Performance Analysis.

Anno 1800 Review: A Quality Copy of Itself published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/