What I've Watched#
✨Spy Pretend Season 2#
A very heartwarming, cute, and funny anime. Finally found the time to finish watching the second season. Many anime series' second seasons tend to lose their interest and momentum, but this one didn't at all. The pacing is still great and it keeps you hooked. Looking forward to the third season.
😅Dune 2 & Hell Inn#
Mild spoilers
I'm mentioning these two works together because, in my opinion, they both have fragmented plots but stunning visuals. As an animated musical, Hell Inn's shortcomings in terms of plot can be compensated for by its artwork and music. However, Dune 2 really disappointed me. As a movie, telling a good story should be the top priority. The memes of Leto Atreides, the worm scene with Chani, and the easy brainwashing of the Bene Gesserit all left me confused as someone who didn't read the original books. The plot of the gladiatorial arena was also somewhat ridiculous, and the final one-on-one knife fight felt like children playing pretend. The sudden weakening of the Emperor's forces was also not clearly explained.
With these doubts in mind, I read the original books and got some answers. In the world of Dune, the Fremen people are equivalent to the indigenous people, and after centuries of brainwashing by the Bene Gesserit, they have an intense belief in the messiah and the Bene Gesserit. The Emperor's forces were not weakened, it's just that the Fremen people became stronger.
Unfortunately, the book is too old and I couldn't really get into it. I also don't enjoy sci-fi works that heavily rely on outdated technology. The exploration of religion and fate, which many people praise, felt forced to me. It just deepened the impression of destiny by repeatedly mentioning the princess's diary, similar to the "indescribable horror" of Lovecraft's works, which I don't understand. Horror and a sense of destiny are not conveyed through the author's repetitive self-narration in the book, but rather through the description of the plot and scenes. However, their works completely failed to evoke a sense of horror or so-called determinism in me. Perhaps it's just my lack of imagination. Abandoned.
🎊Design Book for Everyone#
A very good introductory book on design. It finally helped me, a beginner, understand layout, colors, and typography.
Others#
🎰Joker Card#
As a poker enthusiast, of course, I had to give it a try. After playing, I realized that it doesn't have much to do with the overall rules of Texas Hold'em. It's not even related to gambling. It's just a card pigeon game that borrows blind bets and hand rankings from Texas Hold'em.
It's relatively easy to pick up and quite addictive. The game's music and interactive system are very good. There are also some drawbacks, such as slow settlement (Update: the speed can be adjusted in the settings), the music is so catchy that it's easy to fall asleep (maybe it's good for helping with sleep), the frustration when not making progress, and some unclear descriptions of certain Joker card effects.
Overall, the game is pretty good, but it's not a long-lasting work. Looking forward to continuous updates and maintenance to bring more freshness to players.
🪅Software Eagle#
After falling in love with video editing and wanting to learn design, the first problem I encountered was managing my resources. Although Mac's file management has tags and search functions, they are not sufficient. It took me a whole week to edit a seven-minute video, with most of the time spent organizing resources, which was a waste of time.
Until I came across Eagle, a resource management software that works on both Windows and Mac. It can manage almost all file formats, fonts, web bookmarks, and of course, audio and video files. The tagging system is very powerful, allowing for multidimensional searches. It also has a browser extension for adding resources. It's the perfect file management software in my opinion. The perpetual license model also won me over, and I couldn't wait to purchase it before the trial period ended.
Eagle places all resources in the /images folder in the root directory of the resource library. Moving files to other folders within the software does not change their location on the computer. This eliminates the problem of missing resources when editing. It's very convenient.
Although it doesn't natively support cloud synchronization, since I mainly use it on my Mac and only occasionally on Windows, I can use shared folders and enable automatic synchronization with Alibaba Cloud Drive for simple backups, which solves the problem of cloud synchronization.
Eagle also provides some APIs and I wrote a CLI tool for daily use. A quarter of 2024 has passed, and this software has already made it onto my annual software list.
🎮PUBG#
I've been playing PUBG for over half a year and couldn't get the hang of it. This problem was solved after I changed my mouse pad. It turns out that a mouse pad full of cat scratches really affects gameplay. Now I can finally enjoy jumping into the battleground without any worries.