In My Wife is a Gangster 3 Lim Yaling (Shu Qi), daughter of a Hong Kong mob boss, is sent to Seoul, Korea to hide out from assassins. The local boss there assigns Ki-chul (Lee Beom-soo), a fairly low-ranked gangster with two inept underlings, to guard Yaling.

He thinks she's a harmless stuck-up princess. She thinks he's a fool. It doesn't help they don't speak a common language and it's hilarious that their forcibly hired translator Yeon-hee (Hyun Young) doesn't do literal translations and instead says whatever she thinks is appropriate.

Anyway there is a rival Korean gang and Yaling shows off her fighting skills, though not to any of her companions who got knocked out first. Then there are elite HK assassins and once again Yalin demonstrates she can handle herself and by now her companions realize Yalin is a bad-ass fighter.

And during all this stuff Yalin and Ki-chul start falling for each other and they have some funny conversations without an interpreter where they totally misunderstand what the other one is saying.

Eventually a final showdown. Yaling returns to HK to avenge her father and Ki-chul follows like a love-sick puppy. She becomes head of the HK Triad and empathically forces him to propose marriage, which is not necessarily against. Happy ending.

This is an entertaining film though feels low budget (produced in Korea). I haven't watched the previous two though I guess this one has no continuation. Shi Qi is charismatic. Lee Beom-soo less so. Hyun Young is a scene stealer.

I bought my Braun 8595 back in Aug 2005 and it's been working just fine until now. It came with a cleaning unit (you place the shaver in the unit to charge it and it'll tell you if you need a light to heavy cleaning which you initiate with the press of a button).

Shaving is fine. Best when the shaver is fully charged and for a few shaves afterwards. Once the battery starts getting lower the shaver slows down and shaving seems a little less crisp. After 19 years the battery is really old and even on full charge maybe one crisp shave and a few more shaves before it's too run down.

The cleaning unit is nice. It uses a replaceable fluid unit which has cleaning agent and a bit of oil so it keeps your shaver well maintained and it always felt nice after a clean. It's not going to get everything so periodically you open up the shaver and clean with a brush. I tended to not use the cleaning unit much because the fluid cartridge needs to replaced monthly or so with daily use.

Luckily after 19 years you can buy replacement shaver heads (series 8 heads) and cleaning fluid. Naturally fairly expensive and even though the Braun 8595 at $200 was expensive you can re-spend that much every two or three years in consumables.

Anyway, after 19 years the cleaning unit recently broke and won't recognize the shaver when I put it in. Also as I mentioned the shaver battery is quite bad, so time is getting close to replace the shaver and it'll probably be the current series 8.

Snowdrop (2021) [-] South Korean series set in 1987 when the government was corrupt and colluding with North Korea to remain in power. North Korean spy Lim Soo-ho (Jung Hae-in) and university student Eun Yeong-ro (Jisoo) meet and are attracted to each other but circumstances eventually force him and two comrades to take Yeong-ro and all the other girls at her dormitory hostage... This is a much more serious series than I wanted to watch and since it's one storyline it does seem to crawl as they try to fill sixteen episodes. I watched until midway through episode six.

macOS 15 Sequoia - Window Tiling [/] A simple tiling system which does left, right, top, bottom, fill, corner. But it's like a virtual size change -- if you move the window it resizes to the size it had before you tiled it and I find that incredibly annoying. It's back to Mosaic.

LEGO Star Wars Battles [/] Real time PvP tactical game on a vertical 2-lane battlefield. Bases at top and bottom. Drag out units into the playing field and they'll automatically advanced and fight along the left or right (there are horizontal barriers to prevent them going through the center). Each side has two lane towers and there is a tower in the middle and if a tower is empty when your unit passes it you can build a tower there. Special units (e.g. Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker) have a special attack which you have to remember to activate. Collect cards and XP which you use to get new units and upgrade them... Overall kind of fun but it's basically all PvP battles and I'm not really into that.

Snapdragon Vietnamese Pho [+] Unlike their ramen offering (which is average) this one is quite good. Rice noodles with a savory beef-flavored broth and a little bit of spicy oil.

Gangnam Beauty is a South Korean romance/drama running the standard 16 episodes at an hour per episode.

Taking place during Freshman year at Korea University the main character is Kang Mi-rae (Im Soo-hyang), a formerly unattractive girl (though in the plenty of flashbacks we never see her face so whether she is physically unattractive or she just thought of herself that way is never said), who during the Summer gets extensive plastic surgery to make her into a beauty.

Unfortunately as the series progresses Mi-rae finds that her beauty doesn't fix her anxiety or social awkwardness. She is torn between wanting to be average, which is hard when is maybe the best looking girl in the Chemistry Department, and wanting to be invisible. Later on she becomes fearful that her classmates will shun her if they find out she is "Gangnam Beauty" which is slang for someone who's had so much plastic surgery they look a bit unreal and fake.

Meanwhile Mi-rae befriends Do Kyung-seok (Cha Eun-woo), the most handsome Freshman in the Chemistry Department. They actually come from the same high school and even though Kyung-seok was only there for a year she did leave an impression on him. A lot of the series is them slowly becoming attracted to each other but taking a long time to do it because he is very reticent and non-communicative.

And because it's not explicit everyone else thinks that Kyun-seok and class beauty Hyun Soo-ah (Jo Woo-ri) make the perfect couple. Soo-ah is outwardly the nice girl who befriends Mi-rae but as the series goes on Soo-ah is shown to be fairly manipulative and always wants the limelight and wants all the boys to like her in preference to any other girls. Still, she is not a totally unsympathetic character as late in the series we find out about her childhood and about her current hangups, for example an eating disorder.

Other characters:

Yeon Woo-young (Kwak Don-yeon) - Chemistry Department senior and rival for Mi-rae's affection

Oh Hyun-jung (Min Do-hee) - Mi-rae's childhood friend and roommate, studying Psychology and attracted to Woo-young though by the end of the series that hasn't panned out

Na Eun-sim (Kim Sun-hwa) and Kang Tae-sik (Woo Hyun) - Mi-rae's mom and dad, she supported her daughter's decision to get plastic surgery behind his back so when he finds out it creates a rift in the family.

Na Hye-sung (Park Joo-mi) - Kyung-seok's estranged mother, who left the family when they were young and now wants to reconnect. She is CEO of a cosmetics company and becomes Mi-rae's mentor.

Do Kyun-hee (Kim Ji-min) - Kyung-seok's teen sister who has her own influencer channel.

Do Sang-won (Park Sung-geun) - Kyung-seok's father, a politician who lied about why mom left the family.


The romance angle is about average as the show pays more attention about how toxic beauty can be for the one who is attractive. Overall it's a watchable series and I enjoyed it though it's not one of the best.

The Hammer of Gold is an Arthur C Clarke novel written in 1993 and set in the early 22nd century. An asteroid, Kali, is heading towards Earth and will wipe out most life if it hits. Captain Robert Singh and the crew of the Goliath are tasked with intercepting Kali outside Saturn's orbit, attaching giant rocket engines on it, then having the engines infinitesimally push Kali so that it misses Earth.

The novel is a bunch of short chapters jumping around from topic to topic. Some of them are about Singh and his life, which illustrates how humanity has changed in a hundred years. Other chapters cover SPACEGUARD, which is the detection network that found Kali. And then other chapters cover the mission and the plot twists to saving Earth.

There is little characterization and even Singh is not much of a main character. I guess because it jumps around there is also not much sense of suspense and the various plot twists are overcome rather easily. Overall I'd say not one of Clarke's better novels.

Cheese in the Trap (2018) [-] This is a Korean drama-romance film based on a web toon (and also was made into a regular 16-episode tv series. Hong Seol (Oh Yeon-seo) is a freshman at university who attracts the attention of the aloof Yoo Jun (Park Hae-jin) and his "brother" Baek In-ho (Seo Kang Joon). For romance it has very little romance and it's ambiguous whether Yoou Jun actually likes Hong Seol or is dating her for a different reason. I watched the first hour and it's quite lackluster also the movie is divided into chapters so it kind of skips ahead which doesn't help. (One joke I missed until writing this review. In the first episode students compare Hong Seol to actress Kim Go-Eun, who played Hong Seol in the tv series.)

Crossy Road+ (2021) [/] Apple Arcade version of Crossy Road, a Frogger-type endless hopper. Collect coins and accomplish tasks (e.g. scare five birds or get hit twice by a train). Every 100 coins you can buy a random character (and you get coins fairly easily). There is a two player simul mode if both have controllers. With touch this game is a little annoying since any random touch moves you forward. With controller it's much easier to play.

Tiny Wings+ (2021) [/] You're a bird sliding down a bumpy hill. Tap and hold to speed up downwards (i.e. if you're going downhill you speed up, if you're going uphill you slow down more). If you go fast enough then on the uphill summit you fly off which lets you skip a bunch of terrain and the objective is to get to the end as fast as possible collecting coins if you can. It's a cute game but it's surprisingly difficult.

Urban Kitchen, Burlingame - Asian Chopped (Salad) [/] "chopped romaine and cabbage, carrots, scallion, won ton crisps, mandarin wheels, cilantro, sesame seeds, miso ginger dressing". $16. Presentation is good considering it's in a to-go plastic container. Tastes fine though I think I like the Trader Joe's Chinese Chicken Salad better even if I omitted the chicken. I like sesame taste and this salad doesn't have quite enough. I also go french fries ($6) which were quite good and enough for four people.

Constellation is a science fiction drama series that ran one season of eight episodes on Apple TV+.

Set in the present day, an accident on the International Space Station leaves one astronaut dead and another, Johanna Ericsson (Noomi Rapace), stranded with about a day of oxygen and barely enough time to repair the second escape capsule. Meanwhile though she's kind of hallucinating, hearing and seeing things.

Once back on Earth Johanna finds things are not quite how she remembered. Her husband Magnus (James D'Arcy) says she's as cold as before, her daughter Alice (Davina and Rosie Coleman) doesn't understand Swedish, their car is a different color, and she doesn't remember one of the experiments that the ISS was conducting.

It's fairly clear early on to viewers that there are two alternate universes and Johanna is in the wrong one. But it's not until midway that we are shown this is not Johanna that was shown at the beginning but the other Johanna. Also we learn that some astronauts go crazy once they return to Earth, that it's been happening since the early days of space exploration, and that the various space agencies have been covering it up.

There is a subplot with Henry Caldera (Jonathan Banks) whose experiment, the CAL (Cold Atom Laboratory and apparently a real experiment on the ISS) was running when the accident occurred. Johanna brought the CAL core back to Earth and apparently some people when close to the core can see and temporarily travel to the other universe. It turns out Henry is from the other universe, stranded here decades ago during the Apollo 18 mission. In the last episode he switches places with Bud Caldera who has turned into a bit of a psychopath during the decades stuck in the wrong universe and now he's back and unpredictable.

I like this series. It's a science fiction mystery which slowly reveals new things and surprises. There is a good setup for season two. Unfortunately the series was cancelled so I'm mixed about whether or not to recommend it. I guess it's still worth watching as it's good science fiction without having fantasy, horror or action mixed in.

Temple Run: Puzzle Adventure is a match-3 game set in the Temple Run franchise.

Switch two adjacent gems to make a match of 3+ horizontally or vertically. You can also match to a 2x2 square or a 5-gem T. The bigger matches create special items: bomb, vertical or horizontal laser, scarab that eats a random (though general useful) gem, color killer that destroys all gems of a color, color converter that converts gems of one color to another. The items don't automatically activate and if you switch two items the effect is much greater, for example bomb + laser both explodes and does a 3-width horizontal and vertical laser.

As the levels progress the "gems" get more difficult: they can be in ice and you have to match to free them, there can be boards you need to break, ore carts you need to empty by making multiple matches next to them, stone floors you have to lay by matching from a stone floor to a non-stone floor. And all this in a limited number of moves. If you get stuck you can skip the level with 50 gems

You can start a level with a power-up which you spend some gems. You also have various power-ups during a level although limited charges and I'm not sure if the charges carry over. Things pick axe to kill one gem or obstacle or cannon to clear out a row or column.

When you complete a level you get 1 to 3 stars depending on how well you did (and you get 10 to 50 gems for finishing). This advances you through the "world" by 1 to 2 spaces and there are stopping points where you have to get 10 or 15 or more stars to unlock a door or get past an obstacle. The world view is also where you have tour three companions talking to you and where you see the overall story progressing.

I guess this is pretty much Candy Crush. It has good graphics, sounds and gameplay and at least if you get stuck you can skip with gems instead of spending a bunch of power-ups to maybe finish a level. Not a game I'll keep around but quite fun for a few hours.

Monsters (2010) [/] Small British science fiction film. In the near future a NASA probe crash lands in Mexico and soon after alien monsters appear and overrun the country whilst America builds a giant wall to keep the monsters out. Photo journalist Andrew (Scoot McNairy) is convinced to bring back heiress Samantha (Whitney Able) through the Infected Zone. As they travel through the zone they interact with the Mexican people and find that the monsters, although dangerous, are a danger that people can live with side by side... I guess it's mostly a character piece as Andrew is the jaded veteran who's seen it all and is attracted to Samantha who is more idealistic and I'm not sure we find out why she was in Central America. Not that bad a film and the monsters for the most part are not seen or briefly glimpsed until close to the end (and the CGI holds up pretty well).

Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls (2021) [/] A combat platformer in the Castlevania universe. You play Dracula's son who has to go into ancient grumoires and defeat the boss monster inside them. You can also play previous Castlevania heroes and heroines. Lots of customization (skill trees, weapons and weapon upgrades, cosmetics) and lots of controls (makes more use of my XBox controller than most Apple Arcade games). A professional game from Konami and maybe a bit too complicated for me.

Bibigo Korean Style Crunchy Chicken with Sweet & Spicy Sauce [/] Bibigo has various Crunchy Chicken packages each with a different sauce. Oven bake (it's raw) then heat sauce in warm water and pour over chicken. Tastes fine. Hard to get it crunchy without burning it -- first time I undercooked it and had to microwave a couple of larger pieces. Then I burned some of the smaller pieces. Piece size varies a lot which I guess is part of the problem. Third time at the 10m turnover I removed the small pieces then finished cooking the rest and that batch came out fairly good.

Furiosa is a prequel film to Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). It's post-apocalypse Australian desert (using a zoom in from space, I don't remember if Fury Road set the location of events). A world where vehicles, gasoline and bullets are all important.

A young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) is kidnapped from the Green Place and ends up "adopted" by Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), leader of a Biker Horde. A bit later (maybe months or a year or two) Dementus captures Gas Town and seals a bargain with Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), ruler of the Citadel. As part of that bargain Furiosa is given over to Joe and his War Boys. But Furiosa manages to "escape" and hide among the Citadel's many workers

Young adult Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) rises up in the lower ranks. She stows away on a war rig run and tries to hijack it after a rogue biker attack (where she also shows off her mechanic skills). She fails but impresses Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) who takes her in as replacement crew. He teachers her more skills and we fast forward a bit.

Dementus runs Gas Town badly. In order to keep power over the increasingly unstable populace he attacks and takes over Bullet Town and ambushes the war rig. Furiosa manages to make it back to the Citadel and warns Immortan Joe. The 40 Day Desert War follows (in a montage sequence). With both forces exhausted it's time for Furiosa to take revenge on Dementus...

Like Fury Road, Furiosa has a lot of gorgeous desert scenes, road travel and combat. I guess because we have Fury Road this film doesn't seem as impressive with the same budget (which is probably effectively less budget due to inflation). I also watched this on my iPad and a theater viewing would have been more impressive.

Also like Fury Road all the characters around the lead are more interesting. Mad Max did not talk through most of his film. Furiosa after being kidnapped doesn't talk until she resurfaces as an anonymous wincher. She has a bit of a speech at the end (and other times she "talks" but the camera is farther away and we don't hear speech).

Dementus is a great character that dominates every scene he's in. Talkative, rambling, dissembling, and quite ruthless. He's the main villain that Furiosa can beat (Immortan Joe and his have to live to be in Fury Road) and at times he seems barely capable and other times he shows he's actually quite dangerous man-to-man.

Overall it's a good film and definitely a Mad Max-style film. Not quite as good as Fury Road simply because that was original for the time and this one has follow otherwise it's not a proper prequel.

I used ChronoSync many years go and switched to ChronoSync Express (the Mac App Store version) a few years ago and it's worked just as well because my needs are modest.

ChronoSync is a folder syncing app that can run schedules. Choose source and target folders and choose syncing mode and that's it for the simplest and very common use cases.

Source or target can be network drives in which case ChronoSync will mount the drive if needed and can also unmount after it's done.

For syncing you can do Backup (if source and target file differ then copy to target), Synchronize (changes on either side will be copied), Blind Backup (changes on target are ignored), Mirror (changes on source or target trigger copy). Optionally Bootable backups if you purchase ChronoAgent (though for that I use Carbon Copy Cloner). I use Mirror with Delete Immediately because I want my target to be a duplicate of source.

There is a page for configuring specifics like reporting, how to copy and what changes trigger copy, how to handle deleted files (you can delete them or archive them in a folder), running scripts before or after (oops I don't see that so probably regular ChronoSync feature). I never set these though I have in the past when ChronoSync was always copying certain files because the a trigger was being tripped.

Another page for filtering rules so you can filter in or out which files to copy. Mostly I use rules if I have to syncs. One for specific folder and one for the rest of the folders in which case I want the second to be "sync all except these folders" so that it'll pick up new folders without me remembering.

Analyze page you can see what files are going to be copied and why and it's great for debugging issues. You can also force an immediate copy of a file from here.

Archive page to see your archived (deleted) files.

ChronoSync is not really a backup solution, there is no real restore to timestamp option for example, but for keeping two folders synchronized it's great. I use it to keep my web site updated -- I can update my local copy and have it sync overnight. I also use it as a way to manually mirror my backup hard drives without needing an active RAID system. For actual backups I rely on macOS Time Machine.

For whatever price I paid for it (it's currently $30 in the Mac App Store) and free updates for years it's well worth it.

The Exchange (2021) [/] NZ or AUS film. Mexican foreign exchange student Annie (Mirene Castelltort) comes to stay with Sabina (Lucy Wyma) and her dad and her presence eventually causes Sabina to break up with her girlfriend Esther (Celine Dam) who in turn falls for Annie. A small indie film with no bad guys -- the three characters each have their own issues and Sabina and Esther would have probably broken up regardless. It is a slow story which picks up in the last third to finish with a satisfying ending.

Zookeeper World (2021) [/] Apple Arcade match-3 game with a meta-story about building a zoo. As you complete levels you get coins to buy zoo components and animals and attracting more crowds gives you passive income. The match-3 game play is typical of the genre. I like that you can place zoo components wherever you want on the grass and that you can walk around in 3rd-person view and interact with the zoo stuff.

Snapdragon Miso Ramen [/] Pretty typical cup of noodles. Does include a small an oil packet for a bit of extra flavor.

Queen of Tears is a South Korean modern-day romance drama running sixteen 1-1/2 hour episodes. Baek Hyun-woo (Kim Soo-hyun) is the long-suffering husband to the cold and beautiful Hong Hae-in (Kim Ji-won). She is CEO of Queens Department Store and the scion of the powerful Queens family whilst he heads the Law Department of Queens Group and comes from a prosperous farming family in the country.

On the day he finally summons the courage to serve divorce papers to his wife she tells him she has a terminal brain disease. Her doctor says she only has six months to live but she's determined to beat it and at the last second he decides to stay and suffer for another six months. But it turns out this crisis, which she wants to keep secret from everyone especially her family, starts to bring the two back together, coinciding with short flashbacks to how they met, courted, got married, and the crisis that started driving them apart.

Meanwhile enter Yoon Eun-sung (Park Sung-hoon), an old university mate's of Hong Hae-in who now represents a big American investment company that wants to invest in Queens Group. But Eun-sung's real motives are to take oust the Hongs and take over Queens Group and marry his long-time obsession Hong Hae-in. As the series goes on he is shown to be more and more unstable, willing to have people killed, and is more of an evil villain than a romantic rival. I didn't like his scenes because the character is rather scary.

There is also the Hong family and the Baek family. Later on the Hongs hide out in the country at the Baek's which forces the two families together and gets them to understand each other better. Previously the Hongs were rich and looked down on the country bumpkins of Baek's family.

One nice subplot is Cheon Da-hye (Lee Joo-bin) who is the wife of Hae-in's younger and very naive brother Hong Soo-cheol (Kwak Dong-yeon). She betrays the family as she was working the bad guys and she leaves with their child. But by and by she starts to regret it and eventually switches sides and comes back even though she'll probably go to prison. It's a nice little love story subplot.

For the most part I like the series. As usual it takes until episode 4 before the characters start becoming sympathetic and then the romance slowly builds up. As I mentioned I didn't like the bad guys because they are dangerously bad and jars with the romantic mood. Usually bad guys are not this evil or they're not this competent; so a real danger of winning.

Still, it's a good romance with two photogenic leads and a good ending.