Alchemy of Souls is a South Korean romance fantasy drama running two seasons on Netflix. Season one is 20 episodes, season two is 10 episodes, and each episode is about 1-1/4 hours long.

In a mythical land there is an Emperor and the Royal Family and there are mages in various houses.

Mage Assassin Nak-su (Go Youn-jung) is finally caught by the mage guild and after being pursued she is wounded and cornered. But she use the forbidden Alchemy of Souls to exchange her soul into the body of Mu-deok (Jung So-min, who thereafter is Nak-su throughout season one). Nak-su is stuck in the comparatively frail body of a blind woman with no magical powers.

Hiding out she runs into Jang Uk (Lee Jae-wook), the scion of the Jang mages who are foremost in the mage guild. But Jang Uk's magic was locked out by his father (who then disappeared) and he's been trying all his life to find a master who can unlock his magic. Having failed with 12 masters Jang Uk recognizes that Mu-deok is really Nak-su but instead of turning her in he makes a deal: he wants Nak-su to be his master and help him unlock his magic.

So the series is about Nak-su hiding out as Jang Uk's new servant, teaching him secretly — first discipline and fighting, then unlocking his magic through trickery, then teaching him various magical arts. She is a harsh master who often puts Jang Uk in danger but she also puts herself in danger to spur him on. Naturally a more romantic attachment starts to form because Nak-su is not really a bad person but has justifiable hatred for the mages who murdered her father whilst Jang Uk is not the lazy dilettante that he portrays to others.

I love the first season. Nak-su is a great character and Jung So-min is so freaking good (she was also great in Because This Is My First Life and good in Love Next Door). I'd say if you watch episode 19 and then stop that's a good ending point as it's a soft ending leaving everyone happy.

Episode 20 changes it to a bad ending so that we can have a season two. Now Nak-su is played by Go Youn-jung (still in the same body but due to blah-blah-blah her outside appearance now reflects her inner spirit). One the one hand, since Nak-su has amnesia and it's been three years, when she meets Jang Uk again they don't recognize each other. He's still mourning for Mu-deok who "died" but Nak-su keeps reminding him of his lost love. Meanwhile the same bad guy Jin Mu (Jo Jae-yoon in an excellent evil baddie over-the-top portrayal) still wants to control the Emperorship using the Alchemy of Souls.

Season two is still fine viewed standalone (and it's half the length since a lot of backgrounds carries over from season one) but suffers in comparison with the great season one. So it's not like I regret watching it.

Oh, I like the romance subplot between Maidservant Kim (Oh Na-ra), who is like a mother to Jang Uk, and Jang Gang (Joo Sang-wook) who is the current head of the family (and he is not Jang Uk's father). They both like each other but don't say it and he's rather oblivious to all of her hints.

Anyway, Alchemy of Souls is one of the best Korean series I've seen and there are lots of good Korean series.

This is Free Trader Beowulf: A System History of Traveller ($30 PDF, $50 Print+PDF), by Shannon Appelcline, is a 300-page book (digest sized landscape format I think) going over the history of the Traveller RPG and the various companies that have published for it.

Table of Contents

1. GDW: Before the Game (1973-1977) - how GDW was formed and their early games
2. GDW: The Little Black Books (1977-1979) - Traveller when it was digest-sized books
3. GDW: Discovering the Imperium (1979-1985)
4. Licensees: The Guild to the Lords (1979-1985)
5. GDW: The Big Color Books (1982-1987) - Traveller when it went to regular-sized color books
6. DGP and Seeker: New Traveller Partners (1985-1987)
7. GDW: The Megatraveller Era (1987-1992)
8. HIWG and 'Zines: The Growing Fandom (1981-1992)
9. GDW: The New Era (1993-1996)
10. Imperium: The T4 Era (1996-1998)
11. Shattered: The Long Night (1998-2007)
12. Mongoose: Rise of the Third Imperium (2008-2015) - Mongoose Traveller 1E
13. FFE: T5 & Beyond (1997-Present)
14. Mongoose: Strephon Lives (2016-Present) - Mongoose Traveller 2E

Each chapter includes a page-sized aside going over how the rest of the industry was doing at the time. There's also an aside for unpublished products. Each chapter ends with product checklists including SKUs so collector's can keep track of what they own. Each chapter also ends with references and sources for Appelcline's research.

There are plenty of good product photos (and people). There are sector maps showing where each adventure mentioned in the chapter was set and also some overview maps showing the various land grants (a land grand was given to a publisher for their exclusive use so that their stuff was canon for that grant) and the whole Traveller space (mostly centered on the Imperium).

If you've read Appelcline's Designers & Dragons series then this book has pretty much the same style and attention to well-researched detail. Although the focus is mostly on companies and organizations lots of people are mentioned and if someone disappears then comes back later there's a bit of callback so you remember. There is some stuff on non-Traveller because a company (especially GDW) also published other products or because a person either did something RPG-notable before or after their Traveller contributions.

Overall it's a good read and a nice history of Traveller a lot of which I didn't know even though I lived through the times and sort of paid attention to the industry. Kind of pricey for a PDF (although I got it as part of Traveller bundle which helped). In print I assume it's to the standard of current Mongoose Traveller 2E books (hardcover, full-color glossy pages) in which case the price is fine for that. This would look good on a shelf alongside Designers & Dragons though I'm guessing the size and spine won't match.

Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld (2025) [+] The third season of Star Wars Tales once again focuses on two 45-minute stories, each with three 15-minute episodes. The first one is Ventress (Nika Futterman) back from the dead trying to live an anonymous quiet life amidst the Empire. The second story is the origins of Cad Bane (Corey Burton) from childhood when he was recruited and eventually took over his dead mentor’s gang. I love Ventress so loved her story. Cad Bane is too bad guy for me; I’d rather have seen a story focusing on the more amusing Hondo Ohnaka.

Marvel Strike Force [/] Two years later I re-downloaded this iOS game and got back into my account to play for a few weeks. Much the same as in my review. Did get lots of bonus stuff; I guess since I’ve been gone a long time. New recruits Captain Carter and Emma Frost at Red Tier 3 (red tiers are more power than normal tiers) made them the two best characters in my portfolio. Went from level 41 to 55 and I don’t think any new modes unlocked (there stuff still locked for me). In the end will probably delete this game again.

Samorost 3+ (2022) [-] Apple Arcade version of Samorost 3. Point and click adventure game where you are this little guy exploring his home asteroid (which seems strange since you live here and the first obstacle is a bridge pulley system you don't know how to operate). No text or speech though there's music and picture bubbles for speech. I couldn't get past the first puzzle so maybe not the game for me.

Trader Joe's Snickerdoodle Cookies [+] I'd only heard about Snickerdoodle cookies from watching Hope & Faith or maybe one of the Southern cooking shows. Turns out it's just a cookie with cinnamon and lots of sugar. It keeps in the box for a surprisingly long time so that the cookie is still a bit chewy on the inside. It's like $6 for 8 but with small bites half a cookie lasts two or three cups of coffee so a box will last a couple of weeks.

Hyper Knife is a South Korean medical crime dark drama running eight 1-1/4 hour episodes on Disney+.

Jung Se-ok (Park Eun-bin - The King's Affection, Extraordinary Attorney Woo) is a brilliant brain surgeon but disgraced and I assume not licensed so she does black market brain surgery for criminals and such. Enter her former mentor Choi Deok-hee (Sui Kyung-gu) who needs her skill to perform brain surgery on him. But she hates him so much she's not willing to be rehabilitated in return for saving his life.

The series is Se-ok living her life while Deok-hee slowly turns the screws driving her into a corner where she will have to do the surgery. One of those screws is the police investigating a murdered nurse who was trying to blackmail Se-ok but turns out Se-ok is quite willing to murder people who get in her way as she does again later. But Deok-hee's secrets are slowly revealed and turns out he's as much a psychopath as she is.

It's a short series but quite tense with several plot twists. Park Eun-bin has a wonderful performance playing a psychopath with anger issues (she does a lot of yelling). The murders I found a bit disturbing as people die kind of slowly, for example the nurse is strangled by Se-ok with a medical tube from behind and that takes a minute of writhing (slower than real life but fairly long for a tv series). So it's good that this is only eight episodes as the tension would be maybe too much over 16 episodes (the story ramps up and never really lets you take a break).

Good intense series not really my type but I'm willing to watch Park Eun-bin tearing up the screen.

I bought a TP-Link Dual-Band AX3000 Wi-Fi 6 Router Archer AX55 router (AX3000 is the box and all contents, AX55 is the WiFI router itself which is a bit confusing) and eventually set it up when I bought my MBP M4 Pro and have been using it for half a year or so.

Very solid so far but then again only like 8 months in use. WiFi 6 with my MBP M4 Pro is rather fast and I can copy to/from a file server (connected via Ethernet to the AX55) at USB-2 speed (120 MB/s or so). Did a Speediest and got 56 MB/s down 29 MB/s up which is a lot faster than before though I guess not max for my Fiber connection. 4ms ping which is great.

There is web admin which is easy enough to use. Manual is not too bad.

It's got the standard features. Internet Gateway with DHCP and port forwarding. Features I use:

• DHCP Server and give set IP address to my printer and server machines so I can find them by IP address if need be.
• NAT port forwarding to the server machine. It only forwards to an IP address hence the server has to have a set DHCP address that survives reboots.
• Dynamic DNS using TP-Link service provider. Then on my DNS records I set www2 to point to xyz.tp-link-dns.com or whatever. The xyz.tp-link-dns.com updates maybe up to an hour after IP address changes (which for Sonic only if there is a reboot).
• VPN Server. It supports several: OpenVPN, PPTP, L2TP/IPSec, WireGuard. I setup OpenVPN which doesn't give you much configurability compared to OpenVPN full but you can have guests access the home network only or home and Internet but on a separate network than DHCP server so accessing home network is not easy if you don't know the IP addresses.
• Reboot at a set time. I do once a week just in case.

Other interesting features which I don't use:

• You can have a HD attached for NAS or Time Machine.
• HomeShield is their monthly service with more scanning and white lists and so forth. Haven't really looked into this.
• EasyMesh to add more access points and connect them as one network.

I paid $70 on Black Friday Sale and it's definitely better than I expected. Love the VPN server (OpenVPN is not that easy to setup and costs money if you hav more than one client connecting). Dynamic DNS support also nice as I don't have to set it up on my server. Everything else I was getting from my trusty AirPort Time Capsule.

Overall very pleased with this product.

Doctor Who s2 (2025) [+] Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) joins The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa). But when she wants to return home the TARDIS can’t get back to Earth in May 24 2025. Subsequent episodes hint and then reveal that the Earth was destroyed on that day but not how or why. The mysterious Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson) makes a cameo in every episode since the last season no matter where The Doctor happens to be and late in the season it’s revealed who she really is as the final boss is unveiled… A nice two-season arc for this current Doctor and at the end he is regenerated into a new surprise Doctor for s3. The episodes are mostly good with my favorites being the Christmas special “Joy to the World”, episode 2 “Lux” with a cartoon cat villain, and episode 3 “The Well” with it’s sci-fi horror motif.

Miraculous Webisodes (2017) [-] Two seasons of webisodes each about three minutes. 36 episodes in all. Each covers a topic, is composed of clips, and is usually narrated by Marinette. I guess it's a way for new viewers to get information without watching older seasons though they do contain a lot of spoilers. Overall not worth watching as they don't add anything.

Kingdom Rush Vengeance TD+ (2022) [/] Tower defense game and this is the Apple Arcade version. Apparently this time you're the bad guy trying to reclaim his kingdom. You have orcs and goblins and evil heroes to lead them. Although you're nominally on the offensive this is a tower defense game so in each level you're trying to stop the good guys counterattack from reaching your rear areas. Level three on normal beat me so not an easy game to play.

My Talking Tom+ (2022) [-] Apple Arcade kids game, like for really young kids (it says 4+ but that may be too old already). Take care of a cat by periodically petting, feeding, letting it potty, or letting it sleep. Buy stuff to customize your cat or accessories. There is nothing to do other than letting the cat ask you if needs something (via Notifications). Oh, you can also speak to it with the microphone and he talks back, though I didn't try it.

A Dozen Cousins - Rice Cooked in Bone Broth with Sea Salt [-] “This flavorful rice is cooked using real chicken bone broth instead of water so that each serving contains 7g of collagen-rich protein.” Microwave for a minute then eat. The rice came out a bit stiffer than I like so it wasn’t that satisfying to eat. Would not buy or would eat mixed with traditionally made rice.

The Story of Pearl Girl is a Chinese romance drama set in ancient times. Duan Wu (Zhao Lu Si) is a slave pearl diver who manages to escape during a fire. Zhang Jinran (Tang Xiao Tian) is a scholar who is also a roving agent for the Empire who met Duan Wu at the pearl farm and helped her out a bit.

Although Zhang Jinran has affections for Duan Wu unfortunately he is the third wheel. Duan Wu instead ends up as part of Yan Zijing's (Liu Yu Ning) merchant caravan, working herself up from lower decks servant to the main deck and finally one of the merchants in the caravan (although for the first half of the series it's a ship and even later the traditional caravan part is suggested more than shown). In the meantime both leads start to become attracted to each other.

Meanwhile Yan Zijing is on a mission of vengeance as his family was wiped out when he was a kid by the combined treachery of two families (one of them owned the pearl farm and the fire that destroyed it was cause by Yan Zijing and his men).

The first family is the Cui. Yan Zijing is pitted against Cui Shi Jiu (Xie Ke Yin). She's the daughter of the head but not in line of succession because she's a woman, yet she's also the most capable scion since her brothers are lazy. That makes her a ruthless person in a man's world and I like her arc — she is defeated and broken down and finds love and builds herself back up to eventually almost at the end she's Duan Wu's ally. It feels like she was intended as a minor character that goes away after the first half (the first and second halves of the series are quite different) but was popular enough to keep around.

The second family I kind of forgot as they don't have a strong character to lead them. They're based in another city and head the jewelry guild — Zhang Jinran is a jewelry merchant from the West who specializes in colored stones (i.e. rubies and sapphires and such) rather than jade and pearl which are East jewelry. By this time Zhang Jinran and Duan Wu have split up for the usual "he wants to protect her from getting hurt in his machinations so he alienates and breaks up with her". Duan Wu sets up her own small jewelry shop (Clear Mind) and proceeds to make it a success even though the jewelry guild is arrayed against her.

This is a 40 episode series of 45-minute episodes. Lots of sets and excellent production — not meant to be realistic but the nice version of ancient times in terms of clean and bright cities. Zhao Lu Si is very good and as I called out Xie Ke Yin is also quite good. The ending is not ideal — sometimes I think Chinese dramas set in ancient times are prone to bad endings to show that life goes on and you have to accept your fate.

Still, a very good series and I quite enjoyed it.

I've been using DuckDuckGo as my primary web search engine so it was natural to try out DuckDuckGo Browser. I believe the browser on macOS uses WebKit engine so it'll have the same rendering behavior as Safari.

It includes a lot of privacy stuff built-in and blocks lots of cookies and popups and such. I guess because of that focus they don't have an extensions support — perhaps someday but extensions can get so much data from you if they really want to it'd be hard to prevent.

It also doesn't integrate with macOS Passwords and since no extension support there is no Apple-provided extension like for other browsers. It does have its own passwords vault and you can import from macOS Passwords but it won't be kept synced.

I use DuckDuckGo for Twitch modding. That way it's a separate environment and if Safari crashes it won't cause problems while I'm modding (not so much a problem these days). I do keep logged into Instagram to check collab streamers and I'd rather not have Meta track me so I don't login on Safari.

One thing I miss is that with Firefox I can make the Twitch window smaller while still having chat showing. With Safari/DDG at the same size Twitch hides the chat.

Anyway DDG browser works well and I like that it uses WebKit engine (tbf it uses the native OS html rendering engine so on Windows it'll be different).

Another privacy-focused browser is Brave which is based on Chromium if you like that engine. There's also Orion Browser by Kagi which is also WebKit but when I tried it last December still rudimentary on the other hand it does support extensions and macOS Passwords integration.