The Great Doctor #1.1 to #1.10 (2012) [-] Korean drama-romance. Modern day plastic surgeon Yoo Eun-soo (Kim Hee-sun) is abducted by Captain Choi Young (Lee Min-ho) and ends up in Goryo-era Korea (which is the dynasty before Joseon). The weak Goruo king is being oppressed by a much stronger vassal and uses "Heavenly Doctor" Yoo Eun-soo to prop up his legitimacy but she quickly finds herself being manipulated by everyone and is mostly a whiny foil who occasionally gets agency when medicine is involved (though they do limit her knowledge as she doesn't know ancient herbs or physician methods). This is a fairly low-budget production -- kind of soap opera-ish. I found it a bit grating and after ten episodes (of 24) decided I should concentrate on finishing another Korean series instead. In 10 episodes we only get a hint that Choi Young is developing feelings for Eun-soo and maybe vice versa so the romance is slow paced or perhaps a minor component.

finity. (2023) [/] A neat Apple Arcade puzzle game. 4x4 grid where you are trying to do match 3 by scrolling a line sideways or up and down (it's a loop so if a square goes off one side it appears on the other side). The complication is that every square has a number that counts down after each move. If the square hits 0 it freezes in certain ways, like that square can only be scrolled sideways OR up and down, or even can't be scrolled at all. So you have to plan ahead to get rid of squares with low numbers. Nice graphics and polish, designed for iPhone screens.

Kingdoms: Merge & Build (2023) [-] Apple Arcade game. Game play is that there is a grid with stuff. Match two items (they don't have to be next to each other) to merge them into the next item in the chain. Continue until you get the items needed for the level. There's the usual match 3 sort of obstacles and I suppose power-ups. I've seen this game mechanic in another game and didn't like it there either.

Bush's Best Rustic Tuscany Chickpeas [/] "in a tomato and olive oil sauce". Actually because of the sauce it tastes quite alright even though I'm not a fan of whole chickpeas (quite ok with hummus though).

I watched season 4 of the British spy show The Avengers. It's 26 50-minute black and white episodes.

John Steed (Patrick Macnee) and Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) work for an unnamed Ministry investigating cases throughout England (don't recall any Scotland episodes) and usually the cases involve national stakes like foreign agents infiltrating a sleepy seaside town, or businessmen trying to take over the government, or protecting a visiting head of state who takes a liking to Emma Peel.

The duo together or separately investigate, talk to people, find clues, figure out what's going on, then stop it. Steed is a Ministry agent who served in World War II and though he can fight he's more the British upper class socialite. Peel is a civilian specialist (not in the Ministry), has several PhDs, knows various unarmed fighting styles, and often seems to do more physical fighting than Steed. Both are quite good at improvising and taking on a role at an instant.

From the get go (Emma Peel's character is new starting in season 4 and only lasts another season) they have a friendly familiarity often trading quips and double entendres. Also lots of puns especially about whatever current situation they find themselves in. Emma Peel is also a bit of an eye candy character sometimes wearing a leather suit or being quite dressed down.

The chemistry is quite good. The missions are varied, often spy thriller, often have a fair amount of humor and funny moments (and every ending has them talking a bit in closeup then pan out to see what weird vehicle or conveyance they are riding to their next mission).

Overall pretty interesting. You can watch on Prime Video for free -- season 4 and season 6 are available. Season 5 is the first one in color and season 6 replaces Emma Peel.

Hero Wars is a browser-based (and mobile though it works really well on browser with low overhead) free to play fantasy game. You collect heroes and upgrade them, go through a 15-chapter campaign, and have lots of other activities to do. Pretty cartoon graphics and a combat system that pretty much runs itself.

There are lots of heroes and multiple areas to improve each:

• Level up with experience
• Evolve when you collect enough shards
• Equip six items then promote
• Four skills to unlock and improve
• Different skins: each with a special bonus that you can level up
• Glyphs - not sure what that is as it requires guild membership
• Gift of the Elements - like Glyphs these bonuses come from guild membership
• Artifacts: special items you find, equip, level up

Every category has its own currency and often its own mini-game to get that currency.

The main tasks are done with a group of five heroes. Heroes are categorized by front line, mid line, back line and their role (tank, healer, mage, support, warrior, and others). In general pick a balanced team and you can do everything. Some quests require specific heroes or are tricky and you'll need a combination of heroes. And there's an Arena where you might need specific combinations to beat some teams. (One feature this game lacks is preset teams)

During combats your heroes fight automatically. They slowly generate energy for their ultimate and when full you click to activate that ultimate. But other than activating an ultimate you have no control.

As I mentioned lots of different activities besides the Campaign quests:

• Airship - Expeditions: send a team of five heroes on a timed adventure (a few minutes to a few hours), these heroes can still be used elsewhere. Expeditions are where you get Artifact materials.
• Soul Atrium: summon new heroes
• Outland: Harder quests that require specific heroes.
• Tower: Resets daily, travel up the tower defeating enemies, select tower powerups, getting tower rewards.
• Arena: PvP combat

Like any other free-to-play game they will constantly entice you to spend money. The costs seem less than other games or maybe they start out lower to hook you in. But even basic things have costs: x5 combat speed (you can do x1.5 for free) or instant win for 3-star completed quests. It means that playing this for free it's a fair slog doing quests until you run out of energy (you get a lot of energy in dailies and their promo page).

Overall I think it's a typical game for this genre with nothing that makes it significantly better than others (for example, Raid: Shadow Legends). They do advertise this game heavily everywhere and the ads do show this puzzle bit of gameplay that you only do at the end of each chapter so fifteen puzzles.

My Holo Love (2020) [/] South Korean romance drama with 12 1-hour episodes. Office worker Han So-yeon (Ko Sung-hee) ends up with a pair of experimental holo glasses that project an AI companion, Holo (Yoon Hyun-min). As Han So-yeon keeps working with Holo she starts to develop feelings for him which gets more complicated when Holo's developer Ko Nan-do (also Yoon Hyun-min) tracks her down. A twist is that Han So-yeon has face blindness so can't tell people apart by their faces -- but she can see Holo just fine and also Ko Nan-do (because they have met before in childhood). There's a murder mystery and possible physical danger for Han So-yeon which gives a reason for Ko Nan-do to hang around her and eventually fall for her... Kind of an average story but still entertaining.

Nekograms+ (2023) [/] Cat cafe-themed puzzle game. On a square grid there are single to three-square-long cats, cushions (of 1 to 3 squares) and obstacles. Cats can be moved left and right. Cushions up and down. Make sure every cat has a cushion underneath it. A bit like that parking cars puzzle game where the sequence is important since cars can't go over each other -- same here with the cushions (can't overlap) and cats (also can't overlap) with the obstacles which can be pushed around.

Barbarella/Dejah Thoris TPB (2019) [/] Collects the 4-issue limited series. Barbarella and Dejah Thoris are transported to a water world where the inhabitants are losing a war against interstellar invaders. I like this neat science fiction story where time and time travel is a major element and there is a mystery as to what is really going on that is revealed in issue 4. And there's a small kiss at the end so that's really nice since there's a fair amount of flirting and innuendo throughout the series.

My Sunshine is a Chinese romance drama running 32 45-minute episodes. After six years in the USA photographer Zhao Mosheng (Tiffany Tang, The Princess Weiyoung, 2016) where she gets a job at a fashion magazine and soon comes to the attention of her college love He Yichen (Wallace Chung) whom she left behind unexpectedly (though for reasons explained in bits as the series progresses).

At first He Yichen is rather harsh to Zhao Mosheng as he believes she's the one who abandoned him. Even though she believes he's the one who broke up with her she's too passive to bring it up so most of their friends believe she was the one who broke his heart. Near the beginning there are two or three episodes devoted to their college romance with Janice Wu and Luo Yunxi playing the two characters (weirdly the last episode or two has the two reminiscing and recreating several of the scenes this time with Tiffany Tang and Wallace Chung playing their college personas).

Zhao Mosheng slowly wins back her friends as she reveals to them what happened from her perspective. Her best friend in college, now model Xiao Xiao (Mi Lu) and also client to lawyer He Yichen, becomes a big ally. There is also a romance subplot between Xiao Xiao and Zhao Mosheng's co-worker Lu Yuanfeng (Yang Le) but he's in love with He Yichen's "sister" He Yimei (Jian Renzi) who is in turn in love with He Yichen (he was taken in by He Yimei's family when his parents died hence he's always seen her as his sister).

Zhao Mosheng goes through phases. She's kind of dowdy looking and very passive in the beginning. As she gains more confidence she first cuts her hair and starts wearing better clothes and finally gets a makeover and fashionable clothes and becomes an equal to He Yichen.

The series starts slowly and is an upward climb. It kind of peaks a few episodes early so the last three or four are mostly filler to tie up subplots and then reminisce a lot. Still I mostly enjoyed this series and is worth watching.

Nine years ago I surveyed Calorie Counter apps and apparently settled on Nutritionix Track, which I don't really remember so must have stopped using it soon after. I've been using Lose It! for 1051 days and it's an acceptable app.

My notes back then were:

+ One window for everything eaten today.
+ Daily calorie intake by week.
- In-UI Ads, including motion ads.
- $30 yearly fee to remove ads.

Time and inflation marches on and it's now $80 per year to remove ads and unlock advanced features. Without a subscription the main view shows a banner ad and sometimes a bigger rectangular ad and also will do a full screen ad (and here is where you get ads for some really suspicious apps and services).

Lose It! has a large database of foods, probably mostly user entered. There is a lack of asian foods and of course the spelling of asian foods are quite varied so adding those is tougher. It keeps track of your previous entries and you can search just those so if you have the specific entry you like you can easily reuse (though you can't delete entries).

Also you can search by meal then add the whole meal (and unselect specific items but changing quantities you have to edit after the meal is added). You can also add by recipe, which I've never used. That suggests you can add recipes but I only see a way to do it from the add recipes page.

I don't use any of the insights or history tracking. It's mostly for tracking things so I get a sense of what I'm eating. It does sometimes try to give me an insight like "you eat less when this specific food is eaten". I think my point is that even minimally tracking meals and not learning anything is better than not tracking at all.

Cinderella Closet (2024) [-] 6-episode Japanese half-hour comedy-romance based on a manga. College student Fukunaga Haruka (Osaki Ichika) befriends cross-dressing hair stylist Kamiyama Hikaru (Matsumoto Leo) who agrees to help her land her crush Kurotaki Keisuke (Hachimura Rintaro) but Hikaru quickly starts to develop feelings for Haruka... It's a light comedy style and a really quick series so hard to develop an attachment to any of the characters. Probably more of a pass than a should watch.

LEGO DUPLO World+ (2023) [/] Apple Arcade version (the regular version has a monthly or yearly subscription). 50 mini activities for toddlers with parental support -- many activities have parental suggestions for what to discuss with kids. UI is forgiving: if you're assembling an object the Duplo pieces align themselves or if you do it wrong there is a gentle animation of removing the piece.

Trader Joe's Gluten Free Tagliatelle Pasta [/] This is $2.50 for 8.8 ounces. On the positive side it's pretty good and made with corn and rice flour so somewhat like rice noodles. On the other hand because it's like rice noodles you have to serve it out quickly otherwise it kind of sticks into this hard-to-separate noodle pile. From TJ's description: "the long, ribbon-like noodles are wider and slightly thinner than fettuccine". I have had better Tagliatelle though I don't remember the brand which is why this one is a [/].

King the Land is a South Korean romance drama set in modern day Seoul. Cheon Sa-Rang (Im Yoon-ah -- Bon Appétit, Your Majesty, 2025; Big Mouth, 2022; second female lead in The K2, 2016) achieves her dream of working at King Hotel luxury resort and immediately annoys the chairman's idle son Gu Won (Lee Jun-ho) because he hates fake smiles.

Luckily he leaves for the UK to attend college and doesn't return for six years by this point Cheon Sa-rang has just won her second MVP award for best hostess. That gets her promoted to King the Land, the top floor of the hotel which caters to the top 1% of society. There she runs again into Gu Won who is the new head manager of King the Land.

Through several happenstances they are thrown together with other people and by themselves. Gu Won starts to see Cheon Sa-rang as a valuable employee who truly cares about customer experience while she starts to learn that Gu Won cares more about the hotel and its employees than he lets on. Meanwhile Gu Won is low-key battling his older half-sister Gu Hwa-ran (Kim Seon-young) who is president of the King Group conglomerate.

Their romance is fairly uncomplicated in terms of challenges. They need to keep it secret but when it comes out doesn't really hurt them even from Gu Hwa-ran (who once she loses the big battle threatens to make a comeback but that plot kind of dies). Cheon Sa-rang has a loser boyfriend who I forgot about. She breaks up with him but he is still insistent until Gu Won shows up. Gu Won has an arranged marriage introduced late in the season but that's like two or three episodes and the other woman, although daughter of a powerful family, never actually attacks Cheon Sa-rang and or make difficulties for Gu Won.

To compensate there are some subplots. Cheon Sa-rang's best friends Oh Pyung-hwa (Go Won-hee) and Kang Da-eul (Kim Ga-eun) both work for King Group, Oh Pyung-hwa as a flight attendant and Kang Da-eul as a duty-free store top saleswoman. They are both kind of bullied by their managers who are following unwritten company policy and showing that King Group president Gu Hwa-ran doesn't care about her employees which contrasts with Gu Won's attitude. Oh Pyung-hwa has a small romance subplot with a fellow flight attendant whilst Kang Da-eul subplot is her deadbeat husband so that she both works hard at work and at home.

Gu Won has his long-time assistant and friend Noh Sang-sik (Ahn Se-ha) but the character is mostly a bit comedic and has no subplots. Gu Won's other subplots similarly light. A mother he's been searching for who shows up unexpectedly towards the end and they have a talk and that's it. A father, the chairman, who puts one significant obstacle when he banishes Cheon Sa-rang to a distant and failing King Group hotel but she comes back and stands up to him and he respects her for it.

There is so little conflict that the final two episodes are mostly filler of Cheon Sa-rang and Gu Won being together and growing professionally. It does lead to a stress-free pleasant ending though a bit hard to pay attention for me.

Overall a good series. For Im Yoon-ah I preferred Bon Appétit, Your Majesty for the great food porn and higher level of danger and stakes.

There were three Elvira, Mistress of the Dark trade paperbacks in the Humble Bundle Dynamite Comics collection I recently bought.

Elvira Meets Vincent Price (2021) - 5 issues. Elvira teams up with the ghost of Vincent Price to stop a Cleopatra-themed Elvira copycat from raising the god Amun-Ra.

Elvira in Monsterland (2023) - 5 issues. Vlad the vampire is going into old monster films and recruiting the monsters into his army. Elvira chases after him and we get so many movie references (for legal issues they rarely use the actual movie and character names but similar sounding and often pun-filled names).

Elvira Meets H.P. Lovecraft (2024) - 5 issues. Elvira hates it but she must team up with racist and misogynist H.P. Lovecraft to recover the real Necronomicon before Nyarlathotep does. Lots of Mythos references including a one-on-one with Great Cthulhu himself!

David Avallone does all the writing. I like the humor and references. Lots of puns which normally I don't like unless they're in theme and these puns are very much themed. Elvira manages to be a forceful character even though she's only a girl with a sharp tongue and voluptuous figure. With Vincent Price and H.P. Lovecraft she has two ghosts helping her and in Monsterland she has a magic dagger but it's often down to kicking people in the nards, yoinking things, and running away fast.

Juan Samu draws Vincent Price and Kewber Baal draws the other two series. Both artists draw a lot of detail. Characters in the way background are recognizable doing funny things. Elvira has lots of facial expressions, mostly of disbelief ("you gotta be kidding me") or sarcasm or side-eyes. And of course she's always showing her legs and cleavage (and is maybe once out of her trademark costume), but it's rarely referred to unless there's a joke or tactical advantage.

I wasn't expecting but these comics were great reads.

Apple My Love (2024) [/] A Thai LGBT romance series of six 45-minute episodes. Kris (Ormsin Supitcha Limsommut) has had a crush on local tv newscaster Karn (Folk Sutima Korkiatvanich) and her dreams come true when Karn comes to work for the Internet media startup that Kris also works at. Romance blossoms but is threatened when a video of them kissing gets out, which damages Karn's celebrity reputation. There's also Karn's former ex-boyfriend who wants her back and has the influence to pressure their small company, though this thread dies quickly. It's a pleasant series with attractive characters though kind of lacks deep emotions.

The Ultimatum: Choices NETFLIX (2024) [-] This is an XO Games production and they also did Single's Inferno which I loved. Based on the Netflix show, a bunch of couples are brought together to see if they're right for each other or not. Everyone has to choose someone else to live with for three weeks and then choose if they want to marry their original partner or their new love. Unfortunately I didn't find any of the other characters appealing. Also this game has some long load times so unlike other XO Games this one seems to be rather server dependent.

On Wargaming (2019) [/] Matthew B Caffrey's paper subtitled "How Wargames Have Shaped History and How They May Shape the Future". The focus is more on wargames used in the military and how wargaming has given militaries an edge historically and how they can help today. It's 400+ pages so a lot of information. I like the history part as he goes from wargaming beginnings and through the various eras and splits them up concentrating on different countries and for the USA our different military branches. Lots of footnotes so a wealth of more material to find if you want to read more.

Tale of the Nine Tailed is a South Korean urban fantasy drama/romance set in modern times.

Lee Yeon (Lee Dong-wook, male lead in Touch Your Heart, 2019) is a nine-tailed fox and a former mountain spirit (there are four powerful mountain spirits each responsible for a fairly large area I assume). He's been around since the Joseon era (Korean kingdom era) and since that time he's been searching for the reincarnation of his lost love.

Lee Yeon is tracked down by reality show producer Nam Ji-ah (Jo Bo-ah, female lead in Military Prosecutor Doberman, 2022, and Destined With You, 2023) who turns out to look exactly like Lee Yeon's lost Yi Ah-eum. Except she's not because Ah-eum has a Fox Marble that he gave her and Ji-ah does not. He did save Ji-ah as a kid and turns out she's been looking for him ever since.

Ji-ah enlists Yeon to find her parents who disappeared 21 years ago. To do that he reveals the hidden fantasy world that co-exists with the human world. And in time Yeon discovers that Ji-ah is Ah-eum but that she also has an evil snake spirit inside her. The snake spirit was banished by Yeon when Ah-eum died but now it's back and wants Yeon's body or lacking it wants to burn the world down...

This is a fairly high end production with good special effects as there is a lot of magic stuff happening. For the most part an interesting story with a couple of subplots -- Lee Yeon's brother Lee Rang (Kim Bum) who kind of wants to kill him for past wrongs; and Lee Yeon's assistant Goo Shin-joo (Hwang Hee) falling in love with Lee Rang's assistant Ki Yu-ri (Kim Yong-ji). I didn't love the ending because it's a bit too deux ex machina.

Overall though, sort of a typical good Korean drama with a lot of romance.

Retro Bowl+ is the Apple Arcade version of the pixel-graphics NFL-like management game Retro Bowl. You have been hired as the new head coach of a (random team) and you're goal is to do well enough to be hired by a better team and so on until you finally get to your (pre-chosen) favorite team and lead it to the Retro Bowl Championship.

You start the new season with a three-round draft. Players have 1 to 5 stars as their current level and you have a dozen-plus scouting actions which you can use to drill into specific players and see their potential stars and max stats. During the draft you can also trade out players for draft picks -- so if I'm drafting a good QB I can trade out my current QB to get another draft pick.

Your team has 10 players (the game notes these are above average players and other positions have average players -- in my experience even a 1-star player is better than average). If you are overstocked in a position then the extras don't play on game day (though you can platoon them and alternate starts). In general it's better to have everyone playing as injuries are not that frequent -- I see one to three (of 1 to 4 weeks each) per season.

Each game can be played manually or in simulation. Two minute quarters and at least in simulation it's relating the 3rd down play and either you move the ball forward for another set of downs or it's 4th down. You might go for it on 4th down, try for a long FG, throw a Hail Mary as time expires, or go for two-point conversions. In simulation your coaches determine that and sometimes it doesn't make sense to me for the situation but I haven't played with good coaches (you have an offensive and defensive coach of 1 to 5 stars). In the end the game scores are fairly in-line with what you see for the NFL.

A win increases fan popularity and a loss decreases it. Winning and losing also affects team and individual happiness (really unhappy players become toxic to the team). There is a news conference after the game where you have two choices to distribute a good or bad event (praise a player or the fans? blame a player or the refs?) Before the next game there is a random event which sometimes gives you a similar choice and sometimes doesn't and is just an effect.

After a game you get a Coaching Credit (CC) or two, more if you win and your fan base is really happy. CC can be used to get free agents, hire new coaches, or improve facilities (re-resigning a player with an expiring contract costs 0 CC, though re-signing a coach does cost CC, maybe because players have a salary and you have a salary cap to manage). For facilities you have stadium (fans are happier and are as unhappy about losing), training facility (XP bonuses to players), and rehab facilities (players don't get hurt as much or if hurt are out less weeks). Facilities go from 0 to 10 and each level costs that many CC.

The league is realistic in that all the NFL cities are there (cities with two teams have an N and an A team, e.g. Los Angeles A for the team in Conference A). Getting into the playoffs is the same as in the NFL and the playoff format is the same too. You can play/sim every playoff game or skip and it tells you who won the Retro Bowl.

I'm finding this to be a very fun game. There is enough complexity for casual play (I've tried one or two PC manager-type games and they are way too complicated for me). A game can be simulated in less then five minutes (or you can hit the skip button four times and finish it in 5 seconds), so a full season is a couple of hours if you're watching the simulated games. And you gradually improve the team year to year which makes drafting important and trading out aging stars important.

Overall a pretty good game and I never played the games manually which I guess it's its own sort of fun. I don't want to do that because I'm afraid you can just play the video game well and the players don't matter much so the coaching infrastructure doesn't matter much.