Marry My Husband is a South Korean romance-drama running sixteen 70-minute episodes.

It's 2023 and Kang Ji-won (Park Min-young: Her Private Life, 2019; When the Weather is Fine, 2020; Forecasting Love and Weather, 2022) is dying of terminal cancer. All the worse when she walks in on her husband Park Min-hwan (Lee Yi-kyung) cheating with her best friend Jeong Su-min (Song Ha-yoon) and they end up accidentally killing her.

And then Ji-won wakes up and it's 2013 with all her future memories intact. She's back as an office worker with longtime boyfriend Min-hwan and best friend Su-min also working in her office. Ji-won soon discovers that events will still happen (for example getting an injury in the same place even though she avoided the initial accident it still happens a bit later in a new accident).

One thing that's different is Yoo Ji-hyuk (Na In-woo), one of the directors at her company, who seems to show up in her life and interacts with her much more than she remembers. This is also how she discovers that fate can be transferred because he saves her from an injury that he gets instead. So Ji-won decides that to avoid her gory fate she has to get Su-min to marry Min-hwan.

Unbeknownst to Ji-won though, Ji-hyuk also came back in time and is determined to help her. He also knows that he is destined to die in a car crash which happened soon after her death in 2023 and this is a fact he does not tell her until much later so even though romance is forming between the two he is still sometimes standoffish.

This is a high quality production with lots of nice locations. There's a cool CGI sequence when Ji-won sees her 2023 memory of Seoul's buildings get unbuilt back to 2013. This is also a production where everyone is rather attractive and Ji-won going from indifferently dressed office worker to a knockout after getting styled and dressed by her new friend Yoo Hui-yeon (Choi Gyu-ri).

I do like upper class romances so I think this is my favorite Park Min-young series so far. The gimmick is interesting without giving the main characters super powers. The last episode does a fair job getting to a good ending. Overall a really good series.

The Sackhoff Show is actress Katee Sackhoff's interview podcast that she started in mid-2023. In each episode she interviews one guest, mostly from the tv and film industry. Although she prepares for each interview and has some questions after the first one or two the conversation goes to unanticipated places and she lets it. I like that she includes her own personal experiences and thoughts so it's more of a conversation than an interview.

Initially every other episode was a discussion about the previous episode between Katee and her producer and/or her husband. Then the after show part was included at the end of each podcast. I've listened to some of the latest podcasts and it seems like the after show is now a Patreon exclusive. The show is also on YouTube -- the podcast started with videos (in a home studio) then audio only (so she could visit guests and interview them) and now back to video (since recording video conferences is now a thing).

The tone is generally positive and Katee doesn't go into politics and other divisive topics. The conversations are mostly interesting or more so and overall it's a worthwhile podcast to listen to.

Stick s1 (2025) [/] Apple TV golf comedy of 10 episodes in season one. Pryce Cahill (Owen Wilson) was once a promising rising star golfer who self-destructed and 15-20 years later is very washed up. But he encounters Santi Wheeler (Peter Dager), a young phenom who works as a stock boy. Cahill bets it all that he can make Wheeler into a pro golfer but as the series goes on Cahill has to deal with his own demons and Wheeler's ones. Meanwhile the two travel in a Winnebago -- with Cahill's good friend Mitts (Marc Maron) and Wheeler's mom Elena (Mariana Treviño) and later with Wheeler's slacker girlfriend Zero (Lilly Kay) -- doing the small regional golfing events... Has funny moments and dramatic moments and half-hour-ish episodes means there is no time to be boring.

TMNT Splintered Fate (2023) [+] Multiplayer roguelike using Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle characters. Venture into the sewers where it's three random rooms of minions then a random miniboss or boss. Get temporary power-ups that last for a few rooms or your run; collect dragon coins which you use between runs to buy permanent enhancements. Supports co-cop either on same iPad (need a controller) or online (create a public or private run) and up to 4 players. There's a storyline where you are trying to rescue Splinter and lots of voice acted dialog. Runs smoothly on my iPad even with touch controls. It's a fun arcade brawler.

Vampirella: Feary Tales TPB (2015) [/]. Collects the five issue series. Vampirella is trapped in a magic book and forced to live through various twisted fairy tale stories (e.g. the first issue is "Bluebeard", also the subject of the RPG Bluebeard's Bride, and "Cinderella"). Meanwhile the unseen Narrator taunts Vampirella with many puns.

This is somewhat of an homage to the old Vampirella Magazine wherein Vampirella was the narrator of various horror tales, before she eventually became an actual character in the tales. The stories are by various authors and quality varies. Overall though it's an entertaining series.

She and Her Perfect Husband is a Chinese romance drama running forty 45-minute episodes.

Qin Shi (Yang Mi -- The Interpreter, 2016; Fall in Love Like a Star, 2015) is a female lawyer at one of the top firms in the country but her initial hiring and upward mobility were aided by a fake marriage to a handsome guy she found on Instagram and Photoshopped herself on his pictures. And then one day her fake husband Yang Hua (Xu Kai) shows up at a party because he was the blind date of Qin's rival Li Dai (Tang Jing Mei).

Qin Shi convinces Yang Hua to pretend to be her husband for at first three days then longer with the excuse that she will come clean to her boss. But due to family pressure Yang Hua realizes that Qin Shi can pose as his older fiancée (she's 8 to 10 years older) -- someone unsuitable to his parents so that they'll be shocked and allow him to remain single.

The two move together. While Qin Shi takes on some tough cases Yang Hua ends up helping her because he has financial expertise. The two eventually start caring for each other but Qin Shi never really acknowledges it and Yang Hua comes to see their fake relationship is an obstacle to a real relationship.

Meanwhile there's Qin Shi's ex-fiancé Tao Jun Hui (Li Ze Feng) who comes to work at the same firm. Tao's fiancée is Wu Fei (Wang Zi Xuan), a young assistant attorney at the firm and secretly the daughter of a powerful businessman. When Wu Fei comes to see Qin Shi as a rival she starts using her connections with the goal of driving Qin Shi out of the firm...

This is an elegant and nice romantic story. The last few episodes of the series are not as good though.

I reviewed Amazon Prime Video last year and was unimpressed. I had another free month this year and here are some notes.

• Commercials are longer on iPad. If you subscribe to Prime you still get commercials unless you pay an extra monthly fee.
• Prime is $15 per month and no commercials is $3 per month so $18 per month which is the same as Netflix's standard plan of $18 per month... Actually you can get Prime Video alone (though how you get to it navigating Amazon web site, I couldn't figure out). It's $9 + $3 for no ads so $12 per month. Netflix ad-free is $8 per month.
• When you browse it shows programs from other streaming services which I think clutters the results. Would like those filtered out but there is no option.
• No independent volume control on Mac.
• Mac app always dims screen when paused and it shows video controls. And if there is X-Ray it also shows when paused. So if you want to examine a detail when paused it's hard to do. On iPad the overlay can be removed with a tap.
• Video quality is good but less good than Netflix,

A streaming service is not just the available content but the UI and usability. Paid Amazon Prime still feels second-tier compared to Netflix but I guess not as bad as when I initially reviewed it.

Love Between Fairy and Devil (2022) [-] Chinese fantasy romance drama. Orchid (Yu Shuxin/Esther Yu - Ski Into Love [2025]; Love Game in Eastern Fantasy [2024]; supporting character in Find Yourself [2020]) is a low level fairy who accidentally frees Dongfang Qingcang (Dylan Wang), the Moon Supreme and leader of the Moon Tribe. After being branded a traitor she has to live with Dongfang in the Moon Tribe lands -- he can't kill her because their souls are magically bound and she tries to reform him and thaw his emotionless heart (which turns out to be the foundation of his great powers). Along the way they start falling in love...

This is a very heavy green-screened production and the characters didn't seem all that great to me. Much like Love Game in Eastern Fantasy there are good parts, especially in the beginning and setup, but as the story goes it gets a bit boring.

My Town: Home (2023) [-] I launched this Apple Arcade game and could not figure out what was going on. It's a kid's game where a kid can interact with the various items and people in a house. Dollhouse video game is an apt description. Don't mind the concept so much as the lack of an intro for parents.

Premier Pizza, Santa Clara [+] A bit small pizza place in a mall. I only ate the meat one we got though we also got a gluten free one and a cheese pizza. These are thick pizzas with lots of bread (and the cheese pizza had loads of cheese). Lots of toppings too so quite filling. They had a couple televisions on one with basketball and one with soccer.

F1 the Movie is a racing action film that spans the course of a Formula 1 season.

After winning 24 Hours of Daytona, veteran race car driver Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) is recruited to be the lead driver of APXGP, a struggling F1 race team that half way through its second season has always finished near the bottom. Minority owner and Hayes friend Rubén Cervantes (Javier Bardem) needs the team to do better or it will be sold off.

Hayes has been in F1 before when he was a young hotshot driver but a horrific crash retired him from that sport though he continued to do all sort of other races. In addition to that checkered past Hayes also has to deal with his fellow driver Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) -- a lot of potential but more concerned with looking good and his endorsement contracts. And the last main character is engineer Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon) who designs the cars and is a potential romantic interest.

So far a typical setup that works well just because of Brad Pitt. But the racing scenes are quite exciting. We see how much tech is behind the scenes in design, training, and during the race. The story covers 11 races and it seems like most get some coverage. Each race as has a bit of story and character development -- Hayes showing his recklessness side and his crafty side as he's quite willing to stretch the car's performance to stay competitive and to arrange for slight accidents to slow down the pace so his team can stay in the game or catch up.

There's a rivalry between Hayes and Pearce. Hayes has a no non-sense train hard, work hard, concentrate on the racing, exclude everything else which eventually gets the rest of the APXGP team behind him and brings around Pearce. Hayes and McKenna's thing is mostly tension and flirting and a culmination then a poignant goodbye because for Hayes this is a one season mercenary-type of contract and he's moving on to something different.

But the racing is the best and shot in a way that makes F1 exciting (I've seen F1 when I was younger and it always seemed more boring than NASCAR or Indy). So now I'm looking forward to watching F1 on Apple TV.

Overall a really exciting film.

The Battle of Goose Green: A Battle is Fought to be Won was published in 1992 and I'm not sure if the 2019 edition adds anything.

Chapters

1. 2 Para - an overview of the 2 Para battalion that went to the Falklands
2. Task Force Mercedes - overview of Argentine forces in the Falklands and especially at Goose Green
3. Operation Sutton - British initial landing
4. It's on - It's off - It's on again - whether or not to send a force to take Goose Green
5. Preparations - 2 Para moves south and recons Goose Green area
6. 2 Para's Plan - the complicated plan of attack, going north to south
7. The Low Pass and Burntside House - initial attack
8. Dawn at Darwin and Boca House - dawn and 2 Para way behind schedule
9. The Gorse Gully - A company attacks the left flank of the Argentine main line of defense
10. Boca House - contemporaneously with A Co., B company attacks the right flank
11. Action for the Airfield - once past the main line, the battle for the airfield
12. Action for the Schoolhouse - contemporaneously the the airfield, the battle for the nearby school house
13. The Argentines' Surrender - negotiating with the Argentines and getting them to surrender

Adkin builds upon previous works (apparently 2 Para did a good job interviewing participants after the war) and he also did more interviews in person and via letters. Although the Argentine perspective is a bit more limited it's still fairly good and a lot. Lots of quotes throughout the text.

He has lots of makes he drew himself and the maps are close to the text where they're used so there's some page flipping but less than if the maps were all at the front or back of the book. They're simple maps showing the action often with numbers to show sequence of events.

There are also photos of people and terrain.

Adkin points out some controversies. 2 Para commander, Colonel H, got himself killed leading a lone charge in the Gorse Gully. Some close Blue on Blue incidents at the airfield perhaps because the Major who took over didn't clearly spell out missions. Also the question of why send 2 Para to Goose Green because it was a diversion from the main thrust at the capital, Stanley.

There is a huge amount of friction getting 2 Para to their starting point so the actual fight they are very low on support (i.e. artillery, planes, naval gunfire) and are mostly on their own and even that rather light on their organic support (their own artillery had few shells since 2 Para had to lug everything themselves several kilometers to the start point).

I found this an interesting read. An in-depth look at a modern infantry tactical battle.

Sheriff Country 1.1 to 1.6 (2025) [/] Police procedural drama on CBS. Mickey Fox (Morena Baccarin) is the interim Sheriff of Edgewater County (a fictional county somewhere in Northern California I'm guessing) dealing with various crimes while running for Sheriff in the next election. Each episode tends to be a self-contained scenario but there are multi-episode plot lines (e.g. Mickey's recovering drug-addict daughter Skye [Amanda Arcuri] who is accused of murdering her boyfriend and that takes three or four episodes to resolve)... I like the concept and Baccarin playing the lead but this is kind of typical network show so far.

Octodad: Dadliest Catch+ (2023) [-] You are an octopus trying to live a human life. The game is about trying to do human things in a physics based environment where your controls are very unreliable. For example your first task is clearing a table of objects and you slide your finger to move your tentacle arm, which flops around and generally misses objets. Similarly grabbing a key and getting it to a lock is a frustrating exercise. Really not my game though possible better with a two-stick controller.

Vampi Omnibus v1 TPB (2012) [/] This is a compilation of Vampi #1/2, #1-18; Vampirella Manga 2999 Ashcan and Vampirella Manga 3000 Ashcan. The Ashcans are b/w that came before the regular series and are a different tone. Vampi the series is an anime version of Vampirella set in a cyberpunk Neo Tokyo. It's sexy and very gory and almost everyone other than Vampi ends up dead by the end of the big 18-issue arc. Good color art though the word text is often a bit off like it wasn't rendered right in PDF. I guess Vampi went 25 issues but there is no Omnibus v2 or similar.

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED is a 48 episode series (on Netflix, originally 50 but two were recaps and omitted) set in the future of the main timeline. There's a war between the Naturals (who are Earth-based) and the Coordinators (DNA-modified humans, all based in space colonies near Earth). Besides the Earth Alliance and ZAFT there is the neutral Orb Union which has both Earth members (based in Panama) and orbital colonies.

ZAFT raids neutral Heliopolis which was making two military items for Earth Alliance: the Archangel ship and five Gundam G mobile suits. Four Gundams are captured while the Archangel and one Gundam escape with military and civilian survivors. The survivors try to make it back to Earth Alliance territory pursued by ZAFT forces.

Kira Yamato is a teen Coordinator who was studying on Heliopolis and he gets caught up in everything because he's the only one who can effectively pilot the Gundam (even though built for Naturals to pilot a Coordinator is still 10x better). Meanwhile Kira's best friend Athrun Zala is on the ZAFT side piloting one of the captured Gundams. And once the survivors find out he's a Coordinator even his friends treat him a bit differently.

The series has cool Mecha combat. I like that all the ships are pretty much Mech carriers -- they are armed but their main offensive and defensive punch is the handful of Mecha a ship carries. Archangel does have a space fighter piloted by Mu La Flaga who is extremely good yet shows that the best human in a space fighter can barely take on an average ZAFT or two in their regular Mecha.

Animation is good. Lots of character interactions and drama. Not too much whiny kids (mostly in early episodes). I like the military detail and different units. A fair amount of politics to the point that both sides leaders are full of bad guys. More depth and a bit more mature topics than Robotech (e.g. there's a sex scene).

Overall an entertaining Mecha series.

Kingdom Two Crowns is a side-view village building game. You are the king (or queen) on their horse. Collect coins and use them to recruit peasants, build items that an available peasant will grab and use, and upgrade walls and buildings. At night cultists attack so build walls and guard towers. Keep cutting down trees and expanding your small kingdom. Later on there are more unique things to find and this ghost that urges you on.

iPad UI is pretty easy. Slide left or right to move. When you stop at an action spot there will be empty coins and you swap down to add coins until the spot is paid or you don't have enough coins in which case they drop to the ground and you pick them up. You can swipe down at any time to drop a coin which is how you recruit people (since they move around moving to a "coin drop spot" would have been hard) and I realize if you have lots of money (your money bag only holds so many coins) you can drop them outside and a cultist will grab a coin and run off instead of attacking.

I did find the graphics a bit too 8-bit retro and with no text it was sometimes hard to tell what I'm doing. Also it bothers me I can't tell how many people I have and how they're equipped (i.e. how many builders, archers, warriors, farmers) unless I go around and count them.

You can play two players split screen (one on top and one on the bottom) though that doesn't seem like it would work in practice -- maybe if one or both players had controllers.

Kingdom Two Crowns+, the Apple Arcade version has the optional worlds unlocked so you can play in a Shogun world or a Norse world or three other worlds.

At a few minutes per day/night cycle and with several things that can only be done daily a game is sort of a slow ramp up. Cultists get more numerous and worse as time goes on but your village gets bigger and you have lots of people to do work and fighting. Physically having to move around to do things is an interesting limitation that also promotes a slower build up.

I found this to be a sort of fun game. A little too real-time for me.

The Family Plan 2 (2025) [/] Wholesome action-comedy sequel. Dan Morgan (Mark Wahlberg) is a former criminal with a very sordid past who reformed, got a new identity, married Jessica (Michelle Monaghan) and fathered two kids. In the first movie his secret was revealed to his family when Dan's father and his criminal organization went after him. In this movie it's Dan's half-brother Finn Clarke (Kit Harington) who is after Dan -- first to recover the Key to dad's criminal database and once Finn has control of the empire to go after Dan for revenge. The story mainly takes place in London and then Paris to give it an European flavor. This is a nice and safe family action film.@

Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance (2024) [/] 6 episode series set in the Gundam universe. During the invasion of Earth a Zeon mobile suit unit (of four Mechs) led by Captain Iria Solari (Celia Massingham) encounters the new Federation Gundam mobile suit. After her unit is wiped out she and other survivors find themselves behind enemy lines and have to make it back to their lines even as the Zeon forces retreat... Good Mecha action. I think the regular Gundam stories are told from the Gundam side so seeing them from the other side's perspective as unstoppable killing machines is kind of neat. A bit of a sad "war is hell" ending though.

Iron Marines+ (2023) [/] Iron Marines is an RTS Warcraft/Starcraft sort of game where you have a base with buildings and guns and generate units to send them out to complete the mission (e.g. kill enemy base or rescue someone). Humans vs aliens. Get XP to upgrade units. Mobile friendly in that there are few units and you don't have to jump around the map taking care of multiple battles. Nice cartoony graphics and sounds.

PPKP+ (2023) [/] A simple retro-graphics fighting game on Apple Arcade. There are only two big buttons: kick and punch. You face a bad guy and get first strike -- some bad guys take more damage from punches than kicks. Then the bad guy attacks and you can defend with a kick or punch -- if you miss you take damage, if you're early you take some damage, if you time it right you counterattack and do damage. Once you die you can refill your health to 100 (using 10 coins) which also gives you XP and eventually you level up. Later on there are upgrades but I lost interest after a few minutes since the gameplay loop is rather repetitive.

Trader Joe’s Manchego Cheese [/] Apparently they have their own branded Manchego cheese from Spain, aged 6 months. Doesn’t have the strongest flavor but does taste like Manchego. Was $15 per pound and I’m not sure if that’s a good price or not.

The First Frost is a Chinese romance-drama of 32 45-minute episodes and is based on a novel. Wen Yifan (Zhang Ruonan) is a local tv station news reporter and one day she runs into Sang Yan (Bai Jingting), her old high-school crush who she broke up with eight years ago for her own reasons. Sang Yan is still in love with Wen Yifan and although he's rather cool and aloof to her he's secretly trying to win her heart. Part of that involves moving in with her when fate burns down his apartment while her roommate moves out leaving her with an expensive lease.

As the story progresses we see that Wen Yifan has had an unfortunate life with the first episode starting off with a married neighbor trying to rape her. But throughout the series we learn that her father died then mom remarried and left her to live with her uncle and his wife while she kept going to high school and they were abusive and a relative tried to rape her and that incident left her with a broken ankle that ended her ballet dreams. And then in her first job another married man pursued her and even though she never did anything once the wife found out Wen Yifan was blamed for everything because she is pretty and unassuming.

Wen Yifan now goes through life keeping her head down and being afraid of men who try to be friendly to her. She internalizes everything so not even her best friend Zhong Siqiao (Zhang Miaoyi) knows everything. It is this shell that Sang Yan slowly cracks and peels as he finds out how bad she's had it. Even though Sang Yan had his own troubles and kept stalking Wen Yifan for years every time he finds out a secret he realizes she's had it worse.

Although it's low key depressing for much of the series it's a slow build as their relationship becomes something and she becomes more and more confident. I guess because the dark parts are revealed slowly and the recovery is also slow it feels less melodramatic and more meaningful and I found I really liked this series.

Apple Keynote is the third of the big three Apple productivity apps. Apple Numbers I use all the time mostly for tracking things in various games I play and sometimes like a real spreadsheet with calculations. Apple Pages I use sometimes especially for stuff I want to print -- even for email if I don't write in Apple Mail I'll write it in TextWrangler and copy/paste.

I have created a slide show or two for work and done a presentation without any fancy transitions. I've used Keynote more as a diagramming/drawing to do sequence diagrams and flowcharts. But Keynote is neither a good Draw or Paint app and for publishing you are freezing the page as a JPEG or GIF and if you want to modify you have to go back to the original document. Nowadays I see the convenience of draw.io or similar where you can publish a drawing on the web and if you want to modify click edit which goes to draw.io, make your changes and save and the drawing is updated on your site.

Keynote is designed for slide show presentations which I rarely need. I've tried using it as Draw app which it is ok as (and better than using Pages/Numbers draw capabilities). I forgot Apple Freeform now exists so I should try it as a draw app even if I'm not doing a collaboration. Overall though I like Keynote when I've used it but imho not the best choice to fill out the basic trinity of Apple apps.