Dicey Dungeons+ is the Apple Arcade version of Dicey Dungeons which is a $5 game with no in-app purchases.

A single player dungeon crawl through I think five levels, each with half a dozen or so rooms connected by lines. A room can have a monster (which you can see so if you remember you can plan for it's attacks and weaknesses), a treasure chest, a forge (to upgrade a card), a merchant, or an exit. After five levels the exit leads to the boss.

Game play is dice based. You have an equipment bag of items (and I haven't run out of room in the bag so effectively infinite). You have an equipped items area which is a grid that you fill like in Diablo though it's simpler. Three full sized items and there are half-sized items so two can be used instead of a full-sized item.

When it's your turn you roll a few d6 dice (more as you level up). Each item has a number or range for allocating a die (or two) to it. So a sword may say does damage equal to die and the spot has 4 or less meaning you can put a die of 1 to 4 on that spot to do that much damage. Similarly other items may say even number to active (any even die activates the effect). Special abilities work the same way: an ability might be duplicate any die or duplicate any die of 4 or less. During a turn each item can be used once unless it says unlimited use.

Every item or ability can be upgraded once via the forge (and sometimes a merchant has a forge). You can freely change equipped items around between combats.

When the bad guy goes they also roll dice and have their own items to activate. One or both sides might have items that do fire (puts a die on fire and if used they take 2 points of damage), ice (locks an item, you have to use any die to unlock it for use), blindness (makes one or more dice black so you don't know what number it is but can still try to use it), or other effects.

You start with a fighter and as you do runs you unlock a cleric, a thief, a wizard, etc. Each unlocked character is a bit harder to use than the last. I got stuck on the wizard: instead of items you get spells, each spell taking a slot of 1 to 6 and you need to use that exact die to activate that spell (which might have a variable effect depending on die so now you also have to put spells in appropriate slots).

The game has some dialogue with a demonic hostess and you are contestants in a hellish game show. It's fairly cartoony feel. Every monster is fairly unique so it's not like you're fighting three different types of slimes each pretty much the same.

Overall an entertaining game. I played about 10 hours but now that I'm stuck on the wizard I don't feel like playing even though you can play previous characters (the difficulty level for that character increases whenever they defeat a boss). Certainly worth $5 if you don't have Apple Arcade.

The Rose of Versailles (2025) [-] An animated film which -- as far as I can tell from only seeing a bit of the anime series -- is composed of clips from the anime series with perhaps the narrated bits added to glue everything together since the story runs at least a decade. The story focuses on Oscar François de Jarjayes (Caitlin Glass) -- a noble women who trained swordsmanship and joined the royal guards -- and Marie Antoinette (Megan Shipman) -- child princess married to the Dauphin of France (eldest child of the king) whom Oscar is assigned to protect. There is friendship, romance as each falls in love with someone else, and fated tragedy as their political paths start to diverge -- Oscar sympathizes with the oppressed commoners and Marie comes to believe in the infallibility of nobility... Anyway, there is so much skipping and brief scenes that the film does come off as a 2-hour long clip show with brief musical numbers. The characters and plot develop but almost in between scenes so much is skipped.

Bloons TD Battles 2+ (2024) [/] Apple Arcade version of Bloons TD Battles 2. Bloons is a popular cartoony Tower Defense game. In Battles it's you vs an opponent each with an identical map though you each get to choose your heroes. The basic formula is the same: put units out (that don't move for the most part), pop balloons to get coins, use the coins to upgrade units or put out more units. In addition you can spend coins to send a bunch of balloons to the opponent and you have several choices so if you see what he's weak at you can send those balloons. It's an interesting twist if you've tired of regular Bloons.

Crayola Adventures (2024) [/] Kids activity app. Create your persona and friend and as you do stuff the narrator sort of customizes the story for you. I feel it'd be good for about ages 8 to 10 -- my nephew is very creative and would have probably liked this a couple of years ago but at 11 he's more into Roblox.

Casuals with Katie Nolan (2025) [/] Katie Nolan's latest endeavor is a sports podcast that comes out like three times a week and is 1-1/2 to 2 hours per episode including a few minutes of commercials. The audience are new and casual fans and she talks about all sports and sports adjacent stuff. I find it's less about sports and more about athletes doing weird non-sports stuff. Also a lot of ranting. I feel she's trying to be over the top to get more engagement. I've listened for about a month and the first few episodes and I'm starting to skip more and more.

Our Unwritten Seoul is a South Korean series of character drama with some romance and running 12 hour-plus long episodes. Park Bo-Young plays twin sisters Yoo Mi-ji and Mi-rae (Lee Jae-in plays the teen version in the many flashback scenes) who grew up in a small seaside town a couple of hours drive from Seoul with their single mother (played by Jang Young-nam, and grandmother.

Mi-ji was the popular athlete and Mi-rae the shy intellectual and not even their mom could tell them apart. Mi-rae was a sickly child and has health problems even today. Mi-ji suffered a traumatic ankle injury that ended her athletic career and sent her into three years where she didn't leave her bedroom (although it wasn't a small space -- an ante-room which is like a normal bed-room size and an attached bedroom area maybe half a bedroom size or large walk-in closet area).

Now they're adults. Mi-rae works at a public finance company in Seoul. Mi-ji lives with mom and is a cheerful temp-worker doing odd jobs all over town.They live separate lives and almost never talk to each other.

Mi-ji finally visits Mi-rae in Seoul and all seems well but Mi-rae is acting odd. Later that night as Mi-ji is waiting at the bus stop for her ride back home things Mi-rae said click together and Mi-ji rushes back and stop Mi-rae from jumping out her balcony in order to be injured enough to miss work for a few weeks. Turns out Mi-rae has been shunned and bullied for months by her co-workers because she spoke up about other bullying.

Mi-ji's solution is to switch places with Mi-rae, something they did often as kids and teens. Mi-rae can go home and live a simple life while Mi-ji just kind of holds her place for a few weeks. But once Mi-ji is at the office she can't help but kind of fight back a bit and be more involved in work and is soon in charge of a vital task that is also a trap to push Mi-rae out of the company. Also secrets are slowly revealed because Mi-rae did not tell Mi-ji the real reason she became an outcast at work.

The primary romance is Mi-ji and childhood friend Lee Ho-soo (played by Park Jin-young as an adult and Park Yoon-ho as a teen). He was the new kid in school and had a secret disability (survived a car accident that killed his father and left his body a wreck). In school Mi-ji liked Ho-soo but it seemed Ho-soo and Mi-rae were a thing (which later on we find out wasn't the case but as often happens characters infer the wrong things without ever talking and asking directly). Now he's a lawyer in Seoul who runs into Mi-ji as Mi-rae and keeps running into her.

Meanwhile a secondary romance is Mi-rae back at home. She takes a temp job working at a strawberry farm and befriends owner Han Se-jin (Ryu Kyung-soo) who is a bit eccentric because he's a former finance guy who inherited his grandfathers farm and wants to make it work in honor of his grandfather. This romance is less complicated and a nice contrast to the other one which is rather twisty.

The first episode wasn't that great as they establish the characters. But with only 12 episodes it does pick up quickly and does become very interesting. With the estranged twins switching places they learn secrets about each other and understand each other better. They both have mental issues to resolve so that they can grow as adults. Park Bo-young does a great job playing twins. Both act a little different though much the same.

Overall one of the better K-dramas and I quite enjoyed it. A little more serious than usual but still with a good romantic subplot.

Joseph Balkoski, besides being a wargame designer (started with SPI and that's how I know of him), is also historian for the 29th Infantry Division. It took him a quarter century to write a five-volume history of the division during WW2:

Beyond the Beachhead: The 29th Infantry Division in Normandy (1989)
From Beachhead to Brittany: The 29th Infantry Division at Brest (2008)
From Brittany to the Reich: The 29th Infantry Division in Germany (2010)
Our Tortured Souls: The 29th Infantry Division in the Rhineland 2013)
The Last Roll Call: The 29th Infantry Division Victorious (2015)

Balkoski used the divisional historical archives (they had the foresight to archive everything ever written down -- radio communications, reports, orders, etc) as well as lots of interviews with surviving veterans.

There's a lot of detail of their campaigns and battles and skirmishes. Lots of people are mentioned and usually if Balkoski mentions someone he usually provides a bit of biography. Sometimes he goes high level to mention what's going on around the 29th and the bigger picture but mostly it's fairly focused on the experiences of the three combat battalions with other supporting units often mentioned but not as much as the riflemen.

As military history of a specific unit think it reads fine. I've read several histories of units in the American Civil War and World War 2 and they do get kind of in the weeds stuck on small unit actions that seem a bit repetitive at times. Balkoski is not really any different and that's the nature of the subject and going down to a low level.

For the most part I found it interesting though at times maybe a little too much describing every little thing that happened but then again for the official history you want everything. There are also lots of maps, many of them like official maps with drawn in unit positions and maneuvers which I guess is more realistic but Army maps have maybe too much detail and you're supposed to know how to read topographical lines to determine terrain.

Overall this is an excellent series and I'm glad I finally finished reading it all.

Shrinking s3 (2026) [/] Maybe not as good as the previous two seasons mostly because it's kind of tiring that the main character, Jimmy (Jason Segel), keeps not wanting to get mentally better until maybe the last episode (which apparently ends the 3-season story arc and next season will be a new arc). Paul (Harrison Ford) still the best character though Gaby (Jessica Williams) has her moments whereas Jimmy does not.

Be With You (2018) [/] South Korean movie. The next rainy season after she died Im Soo-ah (Son Ye-jin) is found alive by her husband Jung Woo-jin (So Ji-sub) and son Ji-ho (Kim Ji-hwan) except she has no memory of the last 8 or so years so doesn't remember her marriage at all. As she gets used to being a wife and mom we get a bunch of flashbacks to how she and her husband met in high school and their start and stop relationship over the years. But eventually once the rainy season ends she has to leave and in her diary her husband finds a letter that ties up the movie. But still it's not that romantic nor poignant of a movie. Maybe the best part was the intro where she narrates a children's story with cutesy animation.

Words in Progress (2024) [/] Apple Arcade word game. A stack of Scrabble-like letter tiles which you can drag together to form word fragments. As you join two tiles another tile appears until you run out of tiles. Try to create the longest words possible which can be tricky if you're waiting for certain letters. Kind of a clever game.

The Complete Quantum and Woody Classic Omnibus (2014) [-] This collects the Acclaim Comics run of about 22 issues. Eric Henderson -- former military, scientist, and all-around boy scout sort of guy -- and his best frenemy childhood friend Woody Van Chelton -- slacker wanna-be musician -- end up each wearing one of a pair of Quantum Bands that won't come off and if they don't clang them together every 24 hours their bodies will destabilize into pure energy. On the positive side the Quantum Bands lets them emit force beams for one and blast beams for the other and the difference seldom brought up in the series. The series is The Odd Couple mixed with Superheroes. The humor is pretty bad and the 600+ pages of this omnibus was a chore to read. This series was re-imaged by Valiant Entertainment. It still tries to be humorous but more sophisticated -- less sophomoric and slapstick -- which I found better.

Flower Crew is a South Korean romance-drama-comedy set in Joseon era Korea and runs for 16 hour-long episodes.

Ma Hoon (Kim Min-jae) heads a boutique marriage agency along with Go Young-soo (Park Ji-hoon), specializes in makeup and clothing, and Doo Joon (Byeon Woo-seok), specializes in attracting women and information gathering. For the most part their agency finds suitable partners for their clients and act as go-betweens because often the couple don't even meet until the wedding. They also do wedding planning.

Blacksmith's son Lee Soo (Seo Ji-hoon) hires them to help him marry his long-time friend Gae-ttong (Gong Seung-yeon), a lower-class escaped slave who can't read and works doing odd jobs in order to raise money and find her brother who is a household slave (apparently she escaped when she was little and doesn't remember where she was "employed").

The wedding day arrives and Lee Soo doesn't show up because he's kidnapped, brought to the palace, and is revealed to be the long-lost prince and heir to the throne because the king recently passed away and the crown prince was murdered the same night. King Lee Soo is trapped in the palace, manipulated by his "benefactor" Chief State Councillor Ma Bong-deck (Park Ho-san), who also happens to be Ma Hoon's estranged father.

About halfway through the series the concept solidifies. Lee Soo asks Ma Hoon to make Gae-ttong into a court lady so that she can be chosen as the new queen. Gae-ttong wants to be a court lady because she bet lady Kang Ji-hwa (Go Won-hee, one of two friends of the lead in King the Land, 2023) that if she passes a court lady gathering Ji-hwa will release her brother. And all the while Ma Hoon is falling for Gae-ttong (and eventually vice versa because at this point she still thinks Lee Soo ran away on her wedding day and it's not like commoners ever see the king in person)...

This series was a pleasant surprise because I thought it was going to be more about the Flower Crew arranging these zany marriages (like making sure two people accidentally meet and foiling rival agencies). But that part quickly becomes a vehicle for the romance which gets better and better as the series progresses.

Overall a good romantic series.

MacPorts is a package manager for macOS used for installing mostly UNIX/BSD/Linux software. Many packages are pre-compiled for various versions of macOS so installation is fairly quick.

I do like Homebrew which I was using before and here are some differences:

• MacPorts supports older versions of macOS. Homebrew is the current major OS plus two major OSes back (which means my 2018 Mac mini is too old -- you can still use Homebrew but it wants to compile everything which can take hours). MacPorts has an installer back to macOS Leopard (10.5) and for each package you can see in the details which ports that package built successfully or not.
• MacPorts uses sudo a lot which Homebrew generally does not.
• Since MacPorts seems less popular they don't seem to get the latest versions as quickly as Homebrew. On the other hand they have older ports than Homebrew.

I used MacPorts to recreate my server environment on my Mac mini (running macOS 12) when my MBP Intel (running macOS 26) died. Only problem I had was with Postgresql -- MacPorts and Homebrew set up the default environment differently so I couldn't just copy the data directories. Theoretically you can export then import schema+data but that didn't work so I ended up using Homebrew to install Postgresql 15.

Overall though MacPorts seems quite fine for installing UNIX/BSD/Linux software on macOS.

(There is also Fink, which covers macOS 10.9 to 10.15 so not as good OS support as MacPorts.)

Imagine Me & You (2005) [+] British rom-com. As she's walking down the aisle on her wedding day Rachel (Piper Perabo) sees florist Luce (Lena Headey) and there is an immediate attraction but now she's married to good guy Heck (Matthew Goode)... I've watched this movie at least three times now and still a nice lesbian romantic story. Anthony Head is kind of amazing playing Rachel's dad. I also forgot that Rachel and Luce only kiss like once in this movie.

BEAST: Bio exo Arena Suit Team (2024) [/] PvP 2v2 3rd person view arena battle game where if you get enough energy you can transform into a mecha for like 30 seconds. There are various game modes and you can play with your friends or solo. Nicely executed design.

Game Room (2024) [-] A rather generic old board/family games app with Mahjong (the tile matching version not the 4-player game), Word Wright (guess 25 words using 7 given letters), Solitaire (cards), Chess, Yacht (Yahtzee), Sea Battle (Battleship), Checkers, Backgammon, Hearts, Flip It (Reversi/Othello). You can play vs AI or your contacts. Overall looks nice but unremarkable. I'd rather have individual games which would probably mean each game is better developed. But I guess this is an app for old people.

Trader Joe's Indian Fare Tikka Vegetables [/] "potatoes, carrots, peas and onions with a satisfying Tikka Masala-style tomato and cream sauce" 10 oz bag (2 servings) for $3. Was not as tasty as I'd hoped so may skip next time. TJ's has other Indian Fare bags to try.

Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table is an 11-episode anime. Yuki (Chiyuki Miura) is a teen who participates in Death Games where contestants (in this series they're all girls and women) are put in a scenario and have to survive while being monitored on cameras for the viewing audience (there's always a number like 10/21 where the 10 goes up and down -- feels like maximum 21 viewers and but most don't really watch until it gets exciting and I think the highest max is 30-something; small viewing audience implies elites implies the games are very illegal rather than a reflection of a dystopian society a la Running Man).

Survivors get paid very well so most only do it once but Yuki wants to survive 99 times (we kind of learn why in the last episode) and there are many girls who play multiple even dozens of games (though there is a psychological 30-game barrier that many expert players can't get past). The games are varied: the first one is like a series of escape rooms; there's a game where it's war between two sides; there's a hunting game where half hunt the other half and then in phase 2 the tables turn; and another game where the girls try to get to the bottom floor of a trapped abandoned building. Each game lasts from 1 to 3 episodes so I think I listed them all.

The games are not told in order. Episode 1 is game 10 for Yuki where she is experienced but still fairly new. One game is Yuki doing her 30th game, I think another is when she was kind of starting, and the final one she's very experienced but up against someone who wants to kill her.

One thing is that the girls have their blood and organs replaced with magic stuffing and I guess the process is reversed when they come out. But that means they can be shot and lose limbs without bleeding everywhere -- it's just stuffing flying everywhere. It's so that the viewers don't get sickened by all the blood and I guess a really bloody anime would change the tone.

Besides the games there's a fair amount of psychology. Why is Yuki playing these games and what does she hope to accomplish. We get a bit of this about other girls. There are also girls breaking down because life and death situations are stressful. There's often a cooperative aspect in that at least at the beginning working together increases survival chances but often in the end someone has to die and then some girls turn on each other. There are also girls who love killing or love winning or love being in charge.

Animation is pretty nice. About half is rather detailed and the girls are often wearing elaborate Lolita or maid costumes. The other half of the time the animation is more stylized, often wider and farther away shots and in a water-color style so not very detailed. Does it make it seem a bit fairy tale like at times.

I did like the series but it is fairly dark. There is no resolution to whether or not Yuki makes it all the way to 99 games or not. Perhaps that's not the point and Yuki is stuck in a world of vibrant Death Games while her real life between games is rather drab and lifeless.

Viki is a streaming service for Asian dramas - Korea, China, Taiwan, Japan and Thailand. Unless you're looking for something specific there's enough free ad-supported content (even good content) to be satisfied especially if you view other streaming services.

One of the key things is that nothing is dubbed (because that's expensive) but everything has fairly good crowd-sourced subtitling in several languages. I've never found the subtitling to be bad and often they add subtitles for written words on screen (Netflix rarely does) or add a quick explanation for a term (especially for Chinese terms that can mean two things they'll point out which one is meant). So in general it's the best subtitling of any streaming service.

Standard is $8 per month (or $80 per year). Listed benefits:

• No ads
• Access to full library (Plus tier used to say you get some Kocowa shows too but doesn't say that anymore)
• 720p videos (Free is 480p which is fine one a phone or tablet, Plus is 1080p)
• Stream to televisions (I don't need it since I don't have a television)
• Play on one device at a time (Plus is four devices)
• (Plus also allows you to download videos to watch offline)

Another benefit of Standard is P-in-P which isn't enabled in Free tier.

Avoiding ads is kind of nice. Viki has many ad breaks, each 5-ads long (though you can skip an ad after a few seconds), and there is no time limit for an ad (I've seen ads that are 20-minute informercials). Since I mostly watch on my desktop the 720p videos are nice -- 480p definitely has artifacts on a desktop monitor.

I hate the Viki on desktop. It's like a really bad and laggy version of the mobile app and doesn't even support keyboard shortcuts (i.e. space to pause/play or left and right to skip 10s). But I found that Viki on a desktop browser is actually quite nice. UI is responsive. it does auto-start next video unless you click on X (and you have like three seconds to do so). It also shows you which shows require a subscription which the mobile/desktop apps do not show.

So at this point I think Viki Standard + Desktop Browser is a good experience. Right now $120 per year for Plus doesn't seem worth the upgrade (if I had a family then it would be a must for simultaneous viewing).