Dungeons & Dragons module B10 Night's Dark Terror labels itself as a Basic/Expert transition adventure for levels 2-4. The action centers on the three rivers area around Kelven which includes a visit to Threshold, a town detailed in the Expert Rules. I believe Kelven is a fews days south from The Keep on The Borderlands so it's a natural place to stop for adventurers heading towards civilization to spend their loot. In my campaign I made Kelven be the Keep so the environs of B10 naturally widens the same area the PCs have been adventuring in.

B10 is a double-length module so fairly long.

In part 1 the PCs are hired to be horse wranglers and drive a herd for sale in an Elven village. But when they get to the horse ranch they see it's under attack by goblins. There is a combat map and cut-out counters so you can do a detailed battle. The NPCs are also detailed and some can help defending their home. The goblins are in two different tribes so the PCs might be able to divide and conquer.

But the some of the goblins manage to steal all the horses so part 2 is the PCs going after the horses. Also the goblins have been taking captives so the PCs can try to rescue them too. It's wandering around in the forest where the are three goblin lairs each being distinctly different (e.g. one of them the goblins were previously decimated so their hiding and being defensive). The last goblin lair is a bit of a stronghold.

By the end of part 2 the PCs may know that the goblins have been directed by a Master and most of the captives were taken to an ancient city in the North. The PCs run into a were-horse-centaur (a horse that can turn into a centaur or is it vice-versa?) who agrees to give the location of the ancient city in return for freeing the horses the PCs are supposed to deliver. A good role-playing opportunity to make a better deal with the horse-centaur.

Part 3 is the ancient city of Xitaqa were there are more goblins plus Iron Ring slavers (the Iron Ring is funded by a bandit barony in the west trying to destabilize the region but those machinations are only mentioned in this module). Fight or sneak into the central temple, battle the Iron Ring sorcerer (who is supposed to get away but I thought that was too fiat so gave the PCs a chance and they took him down; not to worry the module provides a second master sorcerer with different stats in case a backup is needed).

With the horses recovered (in part 2) and the slaves rescued (in part 3) the PCs can return and then drive the horses to the elven town and selling them. Part 4 is not very exciting There are some standalone mini-dungeons that the PCs can do: pixies need help with a haunted island; random tombs (burial mounds) to loot; dwarves at a gold mine plagued by mysterious disappearances; werewolves harassing the were-horse-centaur.

Somewhere along the line the PCs were supposed to figure out the bad guys are trying to find a lost ancient city and that weird tapestry in the horse ranch main house is actually a map to a lost valley. If they figure it out then the path leads then North from the elven town to Threshold and then further onwards. Part 5 includes a bandit attack getting to Threshold; an Iron Ring plan in Threshold to lure the PCs into a trap; up the wilderness valley where 200 gnolls pursue the PCs; then up a mountain road past downed bridges to the entrance of the lost valley.

Part 6 is the lost valley. Two degenerate peoples fight a never-ending war (well, the war will end in a generation or two as there aren't many of them left). The jackal people and the stocky humans. The jackal people used to rule this whole region and uplifted the primitive humans to become the servant/slave class. And then a thousand years later the humans overthrew the jackals but the wars devastated both peoples and now the remnants are in this valley. The PCs can side with one side or another or both or neither.

The main action is going to the main temple to stop the undead generator. Then maybe a second trip to the lower level to kill the big Cthulhu-oid tentacled monster. This is the largest dungeon in the module at about 20 rooms -- most of the others are a few rooms to maybe a dozen rooms.

The appendix has a calendar and a small player's map of the area (I like player maps since I can't give out a GM map with labels rubbed out as that's too obvious). There is also a weather calendar showing the weather for each day: cloud, rain, temperature, wind each from level 0 to 3. And a half page on bartering rules.

This is a pretty big module. I ran it in fifteen 2-3 hour sessions and I skipped some stuff. Although there are good motivations in the first half (get the horses back and rescue prisoners) I lost the thread of why the PCs care to go to the lost valley. Maybe to stop the Iron Ring but there is no specific goal other than maybe the lost valley has powerful lost treasure. Or I guess the standard adventuring spirit of going to lost places to discover cool stuff.

I like that it's close to B2 and at a level where this can be the next module after B2. Although it's a "transition module" it does seem pretty much Expert Set from the get go in that you need the wilderness rules from the start.

Overall a this was mostly a fun module to run.

The Lost Bus (2025) [+] In a Northern California town (north of the SF-Sacramento line, nearer to Chico) in 2018 a wildfire starts and becomes the deadliest wildfire in California history. This movie dramatizes the plight of bus driver Kevin McKay (Matthew McConaughey) and primary school teacher Mary Ludwig (America Ferrera) as they try to get a bus full of kids out of Paradise and to safety. It's a lot more exciting than I thought it would be as they make the fire seem like an imminent threat. It does put PG&E in a rather poor light showing some of their hapless workers and a district manager trying to help. I pretty much watched it in one go which gives an indication that it is an engrossing movie.

Hello Tomorrow! #1.1 (2023) [-] Apple TV half hour drama/dark comedy. Set in an alternate 1970’s where Moon colonies exist, Jack Billings (Billy Crudup) is a con-man who runs a small company selling time-shares on the Moon but then takes all the money and leaves his team high-and-dry as he moves to another town. But then in one town he meets the son he didn’t know he had… Bright retro-future graphics but a rather depressing first episode. Did not want to continue watching.

Pixel - Turn Based Racing (2023) [+] Turn-based Gran Prix racing game on a square grid with custom-made maps. You have a gear shift which is how many squares you move in your turn. You can gear up one or two at a time and gear down I think the same so you have to be careful not to go so fast you crash into a wall. A steering wheel to set which direction your car moves (8 compass directions and 90 degree turns are fine). I think you stop before you hit another car so getting in front is a big advantage. There are 40 tracks, weather, fog, and water puddles, and some levels have a timer so even though it's turn-based you still have to think fast. It's a good concept and a nice mobile game. Has a good form factor for iPhone.

Secrets by Episode NETFLIX [/] Romance interactive stories and this app requires Netflix account. I've reviewed Episode XOXO which is the Apple Arcade version. This one is full screen on my iPad (and always in vertical mode only) and sometimes the graphics are a bit pixilated and this one also smoothly goes from chapter to chapter (you can only tell from the loading icon flashing for the next chapter). Like Episode XOXO, Secrets only has a selection of stories (21). I read one and it's a bit racier than Episode XOXO (where I've read at least half a dozen stories) and the second Secrets story is a BDSM romance so even more racier. But I guess this keeps to Netflix's gaming audience target since they also have Too Hot To Handle games.

Grand Hotpot Lounge, Sacramento, CA [+] Newish restaurant in a kind of rundown mall but inside looks nice. Room for a lot of people and they have two or three karaoke rooms and nice bathrooms. It's all you can eat with senior discounts and that includes some dim sum items. They have a lot of different things to cook at the base level and you can pay more for the next two tiers with better items. It's nice for Sacramento.

Tron: Ares is a sequel to Tron and Tron: Legacy (with Tron: Uprising being more of a prequel to Tron: Legacy and no new elements from that made it into Tron: Ares).

Fifteen years after Tron: Legacy, after Sam Flynn and Quorra from that film returned and then disappeared, Flynn's ENCOM and Dillinger Systems are the top two tech companies. CEO Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters) introduces his new invention: a laser-system-slash-3D-printer that can create digital objects in the real world, in this case military hardware and warriors, Ares (Jared Leto) being his ultimate warrior. But Dillinger neglected to mention that his creations only live for about 20 minutes before they destabilize and crumble away.

Meanwhile ENCOM CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee) has been maniacally searching for Kevin Flynn's Permanence Code and in an Alaskan laboratory she finally finds it. With the code digital creations can live permanently in the real world.

Dillinger desperately needs that code and he is ruthless enough to send out Ares and other digital warriors after Eve. But a complication is that Ares is curious about the real world and wants more than just to be a slave to Dillinger. Once Ares accesses Eve's digital history (all articles written about her and all the social media she and her friends and family have generated about her) he realizes that she is the key to making Ares' wish a reality: to live in the human world. (There is not really any romance between Ares and Eve which is kind of nice and would have been temptingly easy to add.)

This movie has great visuals especially once you get the big gear into the world. Cycles and tanks are nice but a giant Recognizer cruising amidst high rise buildings is pretty spectacular. The stuff in the digital world is also nice and Eve is digitized for a bit but that's like once scene or two. There's also a cool part when Ares is digitized into an old computer and experiences a 1980's graphics world of the original film though once again only a couple of scenes.

The film didn't do well so even though there's some setup for a sequel it might never come to be.

I thought this was an entertaining film and needs to be seen in a movie theater with a big screen and great sound.

Uptime Robot is a monitoring service which basically pings your web site periodically and emails you if it's down and when it comes back up. The free account includes 50 monitors and 5-minute interval pings. I vaguely recall when I signed up a few years ago it was one monitor pinged daily so 50/5 is overkill. And if I look at my entry now it is set at 24hr ping.

Mostly I was using it to see if my IP address had changed since internally I can tell if the server is up or not but IP address changes can go for a week or two before I notice. That's not a problem any more since my TP-Link router has dynamic DNS so will update my DNS entry pretty quickly.

With the admin console you can see history of outages and pause individual monitors. Many other things require paid subscription: SSL certificate monitoring so it warns you when it expires, alerts for slow response times, maintenance schedule so it won't falsely alert, sending specific http request with login details and request body, connect with a third-party service like Slack.

For a free and basic "tell me if my server is not reachable" Uptime Robot works just fine.

KPop Demon Hunters (2025) [+] Netflix animated action film with some musical parts. Huntr/x — comprised of lead vocalist Rumi (Arden Cho), main dancer Mira (May Hong), and main rapper Zoey (Ji-young Yoo) — is both the number one K-Pop group in the world and secret demon slayers. But their greatest challenge will be defeating the Dark's new boy band, the Saja Boys, aimed at stealing Huntr/x's fans and robbing them of their power. Meanwhile Rumi has a dark secret that threatens to blow up the group… Awesome K-Pop songs elevates this film. Also like the cute demon cat and crow buddies.

K-Pop Idols (2024) [/] Apple TV documentary series going behind the scenes with three K-Pop artists: Jessi, American born South Korean rapper already successful but recently left her label to do it on her own; Blackswan, an international group with two Korean and two foreign members going through upheaval when members Fatou and Leia have a falling out; and Cravity, a new boy band trying to re-establish themselves after a failed debut during the Pandemic… the series does show you how hard this particular industry is and I can of feel they overemphasized it for the drama. It's well produced but the content maybe bit more depressing than I expected.

Time Locker+ (2023) [/] Vertical shooter with chunky polygon graphics. You are a bear traveling up and automatically shooting other animals, collecting coins and power-ups along the way. Everything stops if you're not moving (except for this blackness behind you that creep up the screen so you can't just tarry too long). But other than the time-stop gimmick it's not much of a game.

Snake.io+ (2023) [/] Arcade snake game where you and a bunch of other people (and bots) are in a large arena. Eat dots to grow your snake. Cause other snakes to crash into you or walls and they die with their bodies turning into more nutritious dots. I've played this before and still not that interesting.

The Moscow Offensive (2018) [-] I guess this is book 22 of Dale Brown's Patrick McLanahan series. I've "read" (on abridged audio books) Silver Tower and Flight of the Old Dog (1987) and a couple of other books. I only read the first five chapters of The Moscow Offensive and didn't find it interesting mostly because the main tech are small combat Mechs. His previous books I'd read are set on a space station, on a B52, or use advanced fighter jets. For some reason high-tech infantry small-unit (e.g. special operations teams) action doesn't interest me and I guess I was expecting more advanced fighter jets.

Bon Appétit, Your Majesty is a South Korean romance historical drama running twelve 75-minute episodes.

Yeon Ji-yeong (Im Yoon-ah, supporting in The K2, female lead in Big Mouth) is a Michelin-rated chef who ends up trapped in the Joseon era where she ends up becoming the royal chef to the tyrant king Yi Heon (Lee Chae-min) who is intent on revenging himself on the people who had his mother killed. But it is that purge that historically known to Ji-yeong leads to his downfall.

In each episode Ji-yeong has to make a unique meal to prove herself or solve some problem (such as a meal that reconciles two rivals). Since she specialized in French cooking most of her meals are either wholly French or French and Korean fusion. The series does a good job of dramatizing making the meal, presenting it, and having people taste it (they are carried away into a CGI wonderland themed around the flavors of the food).

Meanwhile Ji-yeong shows herself as a caring and moral person without any agendas and so becomes king Yi Heon's confidant and later he starts to fall for this mad woman who thinks she's from the future. All the while there are two factions working against him — one wants to paint him as a tyrant so they can overthrow him and gain power and the other supports him but did have his mother murdered so don't want him finding out.

Im Yoon-ah does a good job being the main character as the story revolves around her and with 12 episodes you don't have secondary subplots with other characters to fill space. The sets and costuming are good and the CGI is good (most obvious when people are tasting Yeon Ji-yeong's cooking). The love story is really nice with a satisfying ending (a bit deus ex machina but right at the end so you don't have time to dwell on it).

Overall a really good Netflix K-Romance.

Ty & That Guy is a podcast with Ty Franck (co-writer of The Expanse book series and very involved in the tv show) and Wes Chatham (actor and played Amos Burton on The Expanse tv show). They started out reviewing The Expanse episodes, one per podcast, but also the other half of an episode was talking about stuff and a top 5 movies with a certain theme related to that Expanse Episode.

They both love movies, have a really good knowledge of all movies, and have very similar tastes. They also have pretty good chemistry. There are occasional guests mostly from The Expanse tv show, like actors Thomas Jane and Ron Perlman, set costumer Lindsay Walker, and producer Sharon Hall.

Later on they do movie theme shows. Either something in depth like their series on John Carpenter movies or Raiders of the Lost Ark. The podcast is currently at 197 episodes (currently on a 5+ month hiatus) and I've listened to the first 60 or so. They're also on YouTube if you want to see faces.

Overall I enjoy this podcast. Just love of The Expanse and movies and no politics or negativity.

Foundation s3 (2025) [+] The Mule (Pilou Asbæk) is the big threat this season as his mind control powers are rather astonishing — one man who can change history means he can wreck psycho history. I like that after another generation or two the three Cleo's — Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann), Brother Day (Lee Pace), and Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton) — are all significantly more unstable than before. Demerzel's (Laura Birn) big easter egg about her past is mentioned a couple of times but in passing. It does kind of setup s4 to be either a direct continuation or another jump forward in time.

My Runway (2016) [/] South Korean short format series with six 22-minute episodes. High schooler model wannabe Han Seo-yeon (Park Ji-yeon) accidentally trades bodies with top model Na Jin-wook (Kang Dong-ho) who had previously harshly criticized her modeling audition for a tv show. The difficulty is mostly Seo-yeon trying to be the pro model Jin-wook while her crush Yoon Jae-bum (Kang Chul-woong) is one of Jin-wook's roommates. As the two try to find a way to switch back they kind of fall for each other… It's pretty bare bones but manages to be interesting.

Temple Run+ (2023) [/] Apple Arcade version which I guess is the same game minus the in-app purchasing. It's a reflex game where you are running ahead and have to turn left and right and almost immediately have another action to do like turn again, jump, or slide. I guess intentionally still seems to be the same graphics as 14 years ago. It's fun for a few minutes.

Bold Moves+ (2023) [/] Apple Arcade version. An elegant match 3 game where you are also trying to solve a Wheel of Fortune-style phrase. Some of the matches have letters which if they exist in the phrase are then revealed. Besides completing the standard match 3 objectives you can also guess the phrase to win (though sometimes being able to guess is locked until you complete some objective). It's a nice twist and a nice UI to a rather tired game format.

Taishoken, San Mateo - Tokyo Classic Aburasoba [+] Dry ramen (which means no soup, there is a sauce you mix in along with the toppings). Ramen, green onions, bamboo shoots, raw egg yolk (mixed in you can't tell it's in there), sauce with a slice of fatty pork and a slice of dried seaweed. Tastes good.

Crash Course in Romance is a South Korean romance drama running 16 hour+ episodes. Nam Haeng-seon (Jeon Do-yeon who played the female lead in Kill Boksoon) is a single mom, well not really, she's a single aunt raising her teen niece Nam Hae-yi (Ron Yoon-seo) after Hae-yi's mom ran off because she couldn't deal with a young kid.

Hae-yi decides she needs to attend a math academy since that's her weakest subject so Haeng-seon gets her enrolled into the best math academy in Seoul with star teacher Choi Chi-yeol (Jung Kyung-ho). But unknowingly Haeng-seon had already tangled with him a couple of times other disastrously so they didn't exactly like each other. For Chi-yeol it becomes harder — he often finds food unappetizing but has found that Haeng-seon's side dish (banchan) restaurant has food he actually likes.

The series is Haeng-seon and Chi-yeol falling in love which brings them both trouble with accusations that he's breaking up her "marriage" or that she's using sex to get her daughter favors at the math academy. Meanwhile Hae-yi gets bullied by one of her classmates while being pursued by another one. And then there's the factor that when he was a young teacher one of his female students committed suicide and people think it was his fault.

Oh I forgot that last one is important because that student's brother is out for revenge which later in the series brings an element of danger to Haeng-seon mostly.

It's rather annoying that other people use their influence to sabotage both Hae-yi's education and Haeng-seon's relationship with Chi-yeol. There is a monkaS moment when Chi-yeol's stalker kills one of his students (I guess he kills her since he goes on to kill others) but it's never mentioned again and it's like her parents didn't care enough to inquire why their daughter never made it back home?

Anyways this is a mostly good series and quite enjoyable.

I went back and played Marvel Strike Force for a few months, going from level 35 to level 100. I previously reviewed MSF this a couple of years ago and even a spot review five months ago.

This is a game about collecting Marvel Comics characters, upgrading them, then doing missions. Characters are from the comics and MCU and some original ones. Characters have:

• Tags - things like Hero/Villain, City/Cosmic/Mystic, Support/Brawler/Protector/Blaster/Controller, Fantastic Four/X-Men/Sinister Six. Every character is a hero or villain, has a domain (e.g. City), has a role (e.g. Support), and one or more affiliations or other tags. Characters with the same affiliation buff each other if teamed together. Many missions require certain tags.
• Level - you use gold and training xp to level up characters up to a max of your player level. You are often low on gold (used to buy lots of things) or training xp so you're only going to have a few characters at max level but since missions require certain tags you'll be leveling up secondary characters as you need to.
• Rank, Red Stars, Diamond Stars - You rank up by collecting enough character shards and they go from 0 to 7. Red Stars you get from red star character upgrades (random from certain rewards or you can buy them semi-randomly if you have certain monies) and also go from 0 to 7. Diamond stars from diamond star character upgrades similar to red stars but harder to get. Ranking up just increases all character starts.
• Equipment - six equipment slots and you often have to craft equipment and get components from missions. Equipment ranks up to (hero level / 5 - 1) so a level 85 character can get up to rank 16 equipment. Lots of components and equipment can be used by multiple characters (and equipment is always add on never take off).
• Skills - most characters have four skills (minor soldier types have three skills) and skills go up to level 7. You have skill points of various grades to increase skills.
• ISO-8 - each role has five ISO-8 greens stats which you can upgrade to level 5. Then at character level 50 you can upgrade them to ISO-8 blue stats (if they've maxed out on green first). Then at 75 you can upgrade to ISO-8 purple. When you max out a color you can choose a specialty (e.g. Striker or Healer) which then gives you extra bonuses and/or abilities (e.g. Healer would make some of your attacks also heal allies a bit). I think you can switch specialties though I never did.
• ??? - I saw an upgrade component in the stores but didn't get to a level where I had the option to use them so don't know what it does.

So a lot of effort to upgrade characters though other than choosing ISO-8 specialties a given character upgrades the same so another player with the same character at the same level and upgrade is exactly the same. The choice becomes which character to upgrade as you kind of want teams or widely used characters but characters also have rarity so legendary characters are always better at a given character and upgrade level.

The rest of the game is a lot of missions to do. Missions take energy points of various types and give you set (though sort of random) rewards so you are often doing certain mission to get certain components or character shards. Luckily if you go to a component or character and click Find it'll show you the missions that have that item and you can do them.

There are also alliance wars and high level challenges. Overall I think I was spending two or three hour a day playing. A lot of it waiting for a combat to complete (you can do combats in auto at 2x speed) and the AI is not too bad.

Good graphics. Slightly laggy on my iPhone SE3 (and much more so on my old 2018 iPad Pro). I didn't spend any money so nothing lost and I can always come back and continue.

Overall still kind of a mid game since you don't actually have much choice in building up your character pool. It's just doing missions and getting random rewards and you can lean it one way or another but it doesn't feel like you have a lot of choices.