Falling Into Your Smile is a 31 part Chinese romantic series of 45-minute episodes. The story follows Tong "Smiling" Yao (Cheng Xiao) as she joins ZDGX and becomes the first woman to join a top-tier e-sports team. She struggles with developing her skills while building a fan base, dealing with an ex-boyfriend that's on another team (and the unwanted attention of a couple of other players), and a budding romance with team captain Lu "Chessman" Sicheng (Xu Kai) which brings a lot of Internet trolls against her.

The series takes place during one season of the top tier league. I'm fairly sure they're playing League of Legends though probably a fictionalized version with new characters but the gameplay seems LoL from what I know: three lanes with a jungle in between; trying to take out the opponent's base; top, mid, solo, jungler, support roles; banning characters before a match; farming kills and gold to upgrade your character... A good amount of time is spent on the game action -- seeing players, seeing their screens, and then animated sequences of big fights.

The LoL stuff was done well and with an audience I kind of see the appeal of watching games live in a stadium. It does feel a bit weird that a match can be two or three games (first to win 2 games wins the match) since games are 45 minutes it's a high variance between a normal match and one that goes into overtime.

The romance itself is not too badly done. There is not that much pushback against it in terms of the team or Yao and Sicheng's families. It's mostly Internet pressure that puts obstacles in their romance so I felt the stakes weren't as high as in other romance drama's I've watched.

Overall I'd say it's a B for the romance story but an A for the e-sports stuff of the fictional behind the scenes and actual game play.

Robert A Heinlein's Friday is a future Earth novel set in the latter half of the 21st century. The main protagonist is Friday, an Artificial Person who can unerringly pass for human and is employed as a specialized courier for a private spy/merc organization.

After her personal life is turned upside down when she reveals her AP-ness to her New Zealand "family" and they reject her Friday is then caught up in Red Thursday, a worldwide string of assassinations that destabilizes governments and causes all nations to close their borders. About half the book is Friday trying to get back to her organization while meeting people and touring North America, which is now a bunch of balkanized small countries (e.g. Quebec is independent, California is independent, Chicago and the central states are their own thing).

Once she's back home another shock as her organization is shut down. With nothing better to do with her life she takes a hazardous assignment off-world and we get a bit more info on the various colonies. Meanwhile Friday has a last challenge in escaping from her employers once she realizes that she's have to be eliminated to keep her package secret from ever being revealed...

Everything is told in first person from Fridays POV but as memoirs she's writing a couple of decades later and based on notes she made at the time. There are a few larger events that she narrates because she found out later but for the most part it's a lot of Friday stumbling about with little information.

Besides this being a sort of tour of the world the other main theme is Friday's humanity. She doesn't consider herself human and a lot of things that human she thinks she does because she's imitating. It's not until after the story in her two decades later epilogue that she admits that it doesn't matter whether or not she thinks of herself as human as what other people think and how they treat her.

I listened to an audiobook of this novel in the mid 1980's and it was quite exciting to a young teenager hearing a woman narrating her story -- and it's not like there's really any sex but Friday does a lot of kissing of both sexes so that was something. Reading it for the first time it's kind of funny how much Heinlein makes fun of liberals and taxes and governments.

For the most part a readable novel with an interesting protagonist. It is a bit archaic for today's audience and Friday writes colloquially for her time and that also did not age well. Still, a story I still like and a story that updated would be cool to read or see on tv or film.

Super League: The War for Football (2023) [+] A four-hour (in four parts) documentary centered on the four days when the European Super League was officially announced in April 2021. Each episode is one day though lots of looking back at history and looking forward at today (with this scrolling timeline segue-way so it's clear we're moving forward and back in time). With interviews from some of the notable participants. For the most part tries to give the ESL representatives their fair say though they do come off a bit as deceptive and self-serving. The documentary is done in a way to heighten drama so it's very watchable.

What If...? s2 (2023) [/] Nine more animated half-hour-ish long episodes about alternate universe Marvel Cinematic Universe characters. #2.1 Nebula Joined the Nova Corps? Is a nice noir story. #2.3 Happy Hogan Saved Christmas? Is the CMU version of Die Hard. #2.4 Iron Man Crashed Into the Grandmaster? Has Iron Man doing Thor: Ragnarok. Other episodes not so good though the finale is nice since once again it ties in past episodes.

Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me (2022) [/] Documentary, all of it behind the scenes and some interview footage, covering early life (a bit) then the Revival Tour and its cancellation midway when she had a breakdown, and then recovery and comeback. It’s good behind the scenes, not trying to tell a coherent story, showing the trials Selena was going through.

Variable Star (2006) [-] Science fiction novel by Spider Robinson based on an outline from the late Robert A Heinlein. I read the first 1/4th of the novel, which is told from the first-person of Joel, a Ganymedean who runs away from one life-changing choice to the life-changing choice of enlisting on Earth’s first colony ship to another star. I finished reading when he actually gets on the ship for takeoff and at that point he’s unlikeable enough that there’s not much reason to keep reading. I’m sure he becomes a better, more mature man but I don’t think I want to devote that much time to get to that point in the novel.

Bell & Evans Air Chilled Breaded Chicken Breast Nuggets [+] Pretty good tasting chicken nuggets. Not heavy breading and a bit oily. Baked it in a toaster oven and does not come out crispy in case that’s what you want, but the inside is juicy not dry.

Star Trek: Prodigy is an animated teens series set in the current Star Trek Universe. A group of teens enslaved and working at an asteroid mine find a starship, USS Protostar. Using the Protostar they manage to escape and with the aid of the ship's hologram, a replica of Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), they make their way from the Delta Quadrant towards Federation space.

Dar R'El (Brett Gray) - back-talking and clever "leader" of the group. He has to do some growing up to actually earn the leadership.

Gwyndala (Ella Purnell) - her father was the one who imprisoned the others. She knows it was wrong and her loyalties are torn between her new friends and her father.

Jankom Pog (Jason Mantzoukas) - Tellarite 3rd class assistant engineer and the group's mechanic.

Zero (Angus Imrie) - a Medusan in a workbot. Her very appearance would drive almost any sentient mad. Not sure there have been any Medusans in canon Trek since that one TOS episode.

Rok-Tahk (Rylee Alazraqui) - a Brikar (a race introduced in Star Trek: New Frontier novels and this is the first time in canon). She is this big rock monster but still a little girl and doesn't want to be pigeon-holed into the security role.

Murf (Dee Bradley Baker) - a blob sort of pet who gets a more anthropomorphic body in the second half of the season and a bit more intelligence to go along with it.

In the first 10 episodes they're trying to flee the Diviner (John Noble), Gwyndala's father, whilst the Janeway hologram teaches them how to be Starfleet Cadets. In the second 10 episodes the real Janeway on board USS Dauntless is after the Protostar and the thieves who stole her. But the kids can't let her catch them because there's a virus on board that will bring about the Federation's destruction.

I think the episodes are good. The teens are not annoying as is often the case in stories. It's still trying to be Star Trek with Federation ideals. Certainly better than I expected considering it was cancelled after one season, though Netflix picked it up and season two is in production. I like the spirit of the show and it's a show that can be watched by an audience not familiar with Star Trek.

I've had my AirPods Pro 2nd Gen for about a month. Audio quality is good. Microphone I haven't had complaints -- my friends said I sound fine. Sometimes the Bluetooth drive on my MBP gets wonky and I've had audio sound like it's really slowed down but I think that's my MBP's Bluetooth.

The battery lasts 5 to 6 hours or so and you get warning beep at 10% It does recharge fast in the case and taking a half hour break replenishes the battery. The case also has memory so it tries to keep the AirPods Pro at 80% until just before it thinks you need it (i.e. once you end at night and through the night). The case itself can charge the AirPods Pro 3 or 4 times so it allows you to kind of use it all day without plugging into power.

There's been some drilling work in our building. Noise cancellation is not bad. Definitely not as good as AirPods Max (which has great noise cancellation in regards to construction work) but helps to keep noises down to where you can hear audio content just fine.

In-ear buds means both can be a bit uncomfortable and also they can slip out. I changed one of the buds to smaller tip but I'm having trouble getting the other bud's tip off so I can downsize it. It comes with four tip sizes in total (and besides the USB-C case a USB-C to USB-C nylon connector but no charger -- I have a USB-C charger from my Apple Watch).

Switching from Mac to iDevice and back is about as good as before as it's more OS than AirPods doing it. Sometimes audio switches without warning which is probably because I might have audio sources playing in multiple devices and it's trying to use near field communications to determine which is the one I'm actually using. It's still annoying that if I start Netflix on my iPad there is no way to set audio output so I have to start a TV app video, set audio output, then switch back to Netflix.

Overall I do like these AirPods Pro 2nd Gen. Not my preferred form factor (I'm more of an over-ear headphone user for comfort, noise cancellation, and battery life) but they work remarkably better than I expected for such a small device.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) [+] Set in 1969 Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is now an old professor who gets embroiled into finding the Dial of Destiny by his god daughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Walter-Bridge). It's a globe-trotting adventure of pulp action vs Nazis led by Jüegen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) who wants to use the Dial to go back in time and change WWII. Cameo appearances by John Rhys-Davies as Sallah and Karen Allen as Marion... I liked it a lot because it harkens back to the first film. Dial of Destiny is a fun romp and doesn't try to be more like what the in-between films tried and failed.

The Sky is Everywhere (2022) [/] Apple TV+ drama film. Gifted musician Lennie (Grace Kaufman) grieves a year later after losing her older sister Bailey (Havana Rose Liu) so much that her music is gone. Enter Joe (Jacques Colimon), handsome newcomer at school who plays the same instrument. There’s a budding romance there though Lennie’s grief threatens to ruin it… It’s an ok film with an unusual cinematography showing Lennie’s imagination going wild at times.

Run On (2020) [-] South Korean romance drama. Seon-gyeom (Im Si-wan) is a national track athlete. Mi-joo (Shin Se-kyung) is a struggling translator trying to break into the movie translation business. After she gets a temp job translating for him during a week-long press event they start forming a bond which gets stressed because he’s very taciturn and often leaves out important clarifying details when he speaks. Overall not really that great of a romance. There’s a B plot involving Dan-ah (Choi Soo-young), who runs her own ad agency, and college artist Yeong-hwa (Kang Tae-oh) who’s art captivates Dan-ah. But she has low empathy which stymies his attempts at romancing her. I liked the B plot more because it seemed more romantic whereas the main plot didn’t feel all that romantic to me. In the end a disappointing series which I almost dropped after watching three episodes but the fourth was finally interesting enough to keep going.

Tejas y Chocotejas Sra Buendia, Lima, Peru [+] Receive a package of chocolates from my cousin. It’s chewy chocolate and either plain or along with a filling. Covered with a hard candy shell that breaks easily. It’s quite good and feels like it’s loaded with sugar and calories.

Hitchhiker - A Mystery Game (2021) [/] Apple Arcade first-person-view game, though you're always the passenger in a car so the pfw is looking around at the driver, car interior, and the outside. The driver talks to you and you have two response choices. You can examine items, some of which go into your backpack. Mysterious things happen like items can suddenly appear or the driver knows a bit too much about you. It was getting interesting even with the first of five drivers but I hit a bug where my backpack was emptied and I needed to look at one of the items to progress. Restarting didn't seem to work and I didn't want to restart the whole game (there are no save points to go back to). Still it's light and interesting enough that I might have played it through... Actually it was removed from Apple Arcade Jan 18th so the backpack bug might be because of that. You can get the game on Steam for $15 which would be too pricey for me.

Well-Intended Love is a Chinese romance series that ran for two seasons.

Xia Lin (Simona Wang) is a small time aspiring actress who is diagnosed with leukemia and the only available donor is Ling Yizhou (Xu Kaicheng), CEO if the Lingshi Group, a family conglomerate. She is able to convince him by agreeing to pose as his girlfriend/fiancée/wife for two years.

He's reserved and she's more emotional but an attraction develops. There's competition from Yizhou's best friend Chu Yan (Ian Yi), an accomplished actor who doesn't trust Xia Lin yet later falls in love with her. There's machinations from Yizhou's estranged mother and half brother. And there's the secret that Yizhou arranged for the leukemia diagnosis in order to force Xia Lin into his life.

It's not an especially different romance series than I've seen before.

I do like the twist of the season two where they reset everything as an alternate universe. Xia Lin now starts out as a rising actress with much more fame than previous and Chu Yan is her friend and mentor actor. Ling Yizhou is still CEO of Lingshi Group and once again, though this time through happenstance, manages to get Xia Lin into a secret girlfriend/fiancée/wife contract.

In season two Yizhou's assistant Wen Li (Huang Qian Shuo) and Xia Lin's best friend Jia Fei (Liu Jia Xi) begin a romance of their own which gives them more screen time. Season two is a few episodes shorter which is good because season one's last few episodes were quite gonzo.

Season one had a few episodes where Yizhou loses his memory right at the time when Xia Lin realizes she likes him. In Season two it's Xia Lin's turn to lose her memory after finally falling for Yizhou and this time as she reviews publicly what happens she comes to believe Yizhou has been manipulating her all along. Until the final episode when she regains her memory for a happy ending.

I liked the series. I like Chu Yan as a possible rival. The main protagonists are attractive and a good-looking match. Season one latter half had some plot lines that were a bit too much but they fixed it in season two. Overall an enjoyable series.

A Frozen Hell by William R Trotter is an account of the Russo-Finnish Winter War which the Soviets started about 18 months before Germany invaded the USSR. It has the usual background on Finland and it's relation with their big neighbor and the politics as Stalin tried to negotiate to lease prime territory in Finland to use as bases to defend against the eventual German war.

The majority of the book details the fighting. Most of that concentrates on the Karelian Isthmus where the bulk of the fighting took place. A few chapters detail other operations and in general more material from south to north of the eastern front since the farther north it went the colder and sparser the terrain and the worse the Soviets did.

There are some simple drawn maps which you can kind of use to follow the fighting but often there are place names given in the text not on the maps. There are also a couple of photograph sections so you can see the principal generals, troops, places and equipment.

Trotter is an American with I guess Finnish roots. He did a bunch of research in Finland: reading and interviews. He also cites a bunch of American sources, mostly academic type materials. Although he does cover of the Soviet side this book is mostly from the Finnish point of view and has more details about their side of the story.

I have not read other books on the Winter War but overall this seems to be a nice one. It gets into a fair amount of battle details though still written for a general audience.

Doctor Who 2023 Specials [/] Three specials in Nov and Dec was an arc where the new 14th Doctor turns out to be David Tennant, who is quite confused about it. He reunites with Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) for three stories: The Star Beast, based on the first Doctor Who story I ever read in Marvel's Doctor Who comics #1; Wild Blue Yonder, a bottle episode with the Doctor and Donna alone on an abandoned space ship, except for two creatures that take the form of the Doctor and Donna; The Giggle, bringing back and old old nemesis, the Toymaker (Neil Patrick Harris), and forcing a bi-regeneration as the 15th Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) splits off from the 14th leaving both present at the same time. The 14th Doctor ends up taking a vacation on Earth with Donna and her family while the 15th becomes the new Doctor... The first story is nostalgic for me, the second a bit of a letdown, the third made up for the second. These episodes are on Disney+

Flight (2012) [/] Flight is a character drama starring Denzel Washington as alcoholic and drug-addicted airline pilot Captain Whip Whitaker who dramatically saves his airplane from crashing when a serious malfunction endangers everyone on board. The resulting media and investigation threaten to reveal his addiction, which would mean he never pilots again. Most of the story is Whip coming to the realization that he should be truthful to himself and the public… The “airplane is going to crash” sequence is great. The rest of the film a bit too dark and heavy though I did watch all of it.

Messi Meets America (2023) [/] A documentary series of six half-hour episodes chronicles Lionel Messi as he joins Inter Miami of the Major Soccer League. Each episode has its own little story and often focuses a bit on the city Inter Miami is playing and one or two Inter Miami players. It’s kind of nice seeing how his arrival changed the team and invigorated the fans not just in Miami but all over the USA.

Trader Joe’s Coffee Bean Blast Ice Cream [+] This is really tasty with a delicious coffee flavor and very creamy and rich (320 calories per 2/3rds cup which is more than other ice creams).

Farm It! (2021) [-] Apple Arcade game for kids, like four to six years old. Two activities: (1) cut down and gather produce by swiping a huge scythe up and down (this is a portrait mode game), then a back-and-forth bar you have to stop at the best spot to put all the produce in the truck; (2) cook a meal by tapping and dumping produce into a pot, then tap more to make the fire hot. You unlock new produce to “grow” and new buildings and furniture to add to your farm. Naturally it’s an amazingly boring game for my age group.

Blue Eye Samurai is an animated series of eight 45-minute or so episodes. The story is set in ancient Japan where two decades ago the Emperor closed off the land to outsiders.

Mizu (Maya Erskine) is an intense blue-eyed half Japanese women who poses as a male ronin wandering the land seeking revenge on four white men, one of whom must be her father. Along the way she is followed by Ringo (Masi Oka), a handless noodle maker who wants to be a samurai, and keeps crossing paths with Taigen (Darren Barnet), a samurai who used to be one of her childhood bullies and who she's defeated and wants a rematch...to the death. Mizu crosses path with Princess Akemi (Brenda Strong), a head-strong woman who runs away from home to find and marry Taigen but the real world is no place for a Princess.

There are some fairly cool samurai fights and Mizu has some pretty cool tools that enhance her sword fighting when needed. It's also quite graphic at times both showing some brutal deaths and showing a good amount of male and female nudity. The part where Mizu breaks into castle home of Abijah Fowler (Kenneth Branagh), her primary target this season, is also cool due to the traps and challenges inside.

Season one ends with Mizu leaving Japan in pursuit of her final two targets (oh, apparently the first one is already killed when the series starts). Season two has been greenlit.

Apple Arcade's Fruit Ninja Classic+ is an enhanced version of the old iOS game, which I've never played so won't compare.

The basic gameplay is that whole fruits fly up, gravity stops them in the air then they fall down off screen. You make swipes on the screen to simulate a blade slicing each fruit. If you split three or more fruits in one swipe you get extra points.

Occasionally there is a black bomb that flies up. If you slice that it explodes and game over. If three fruits fall down off the screen it's also game over. Naturally as a game goes on you get more and more fruits and bombs and it's quite hectic.

There are also power-up fruits that don't necessarily arc and fall with gravity. Sometimes they come from on top or the sides and streak across the screen. Power-ups include freeze (which actually just slows down everything), frenzy which sends a whole lot of fruit flying in (though in frenzy missing fruits doesn't count against your three strikes), and double where everything is double points.

You collect two types of currency. You unlock different blades and dojo backgrounds. You can upgrade blades and each blade has two minor and a major power.

Graphics are cartoony. Background music and sounds are appropriate.

This is really more of a younger person's game. At the time Fruit Ninja did a great demonstration for touch screen swipes. It's still a good arcade game though I played it for about an hour before I got bored.

The Family Plan (2023) [+] Apple TV+ movie. Dan Morgan (Mark Wahlberg) is a car salesman who likes his boring life with loving wife Jessica (Michelle Monaghan) and kids. A life which is upended because he used to be an assassin and his old organization has found him. Dan takes his family on a surprise road trip vacation from the East Coast to Las Vegas all the while fending off assassins without alerting his family who wonder what's gotten into him... The action is quite well done and there are good funny bits. Besides having good actors the story is well written and the cinematography is good; certainly a better than I expected based on having seen this concept executed less well before.

Blue Beetle (2023) [/] In this DCU film Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) becomes bonded with an alien scarab that manifests as an eco-skeleton suit with morphing appendages. Unfortunately Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon) wants that scarab back so she can create super soldiers, though niece Jenny Kord (Bruna Marquezine), daughter of Ted Kord the first Blue Beetle, aims to stop auntie from corrupting Kord Industries… Perfectly fine super-hero movie. I do miss the 1990’s Blue Beetle, who was a lot more like Batman detective/gadgets with Spider-Man’s humor. Special effects are good.

Arcane (2021) [-] This is an animated series based on League of Legends video game lore. Set in a steampunk-ish city with the rich living on the upper stories of a very tall city while the poor live in the gloomy lower levels. Vi (Hailee Steinfeld) and her crew of thieves accidentally set off a power struggle and have to survive or maybe even stop it... I watched three episodes and it's not interesting. Perhaps if I was familiar with LoL lore.

Porridge & Things, Millbrae [+] Same owners as Noodles & Things. Had Hong Kong style porridge with minced beef. The porridge itself was quite good ($6) but the minced beef wasn’t that much for the +$6. And then adding green onions would have been another +$6. But if you just want plain but delicious porridge it’s a good price. We also got (something) fried rice, beef chow fun, fried chicken wings and potstickers an they were all good.

Let's Roll - Fire and Water's Role-Playing Podcast (2013) [+] When it first started out it covered DC Heroes RPG as the Hero Points Podcast. Then in late 2020 it renamed and now covers RPG games in general though emphasizing the hosts long-running GURPS multi-dimensional campaign and older RPGs. It comes out once every month or two and is reasonably interesting and nice that it covers smaller RPGs for the most part.