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.

The Great Flood (2025) [/] South Korean action/apocalypse movie set a few decades in the future. As sudden flooding threatens her city researcher Gu An-na (Kim Da-mi) and her son Ja-in (Kwon Eun-seong) have to escape up 30 floors pas the panicked residents of her rather large apartment building. She is helped by a corporate security guard Son Hee-jo (Park Hae-soo) sent to evacuate her via helicopter, but apparently only she and not her son... The first half of the movie is fairly exciting with some nice CGI of flooding and huge waves rushing in. Then the second plot twist and the second half could have been done better I guess -- it didn't seem quite that satisfying as the first half.

Ridiculous Fishing EX (2023) [/] Apple Arcade version of Ridiculous Fishing. Simple three part gameplay. First you cast a line which goes down and rotate device to move fishing lure left and right and avoid all fish. Once you hit a fish or get to the end of your line it starts going up and now you rotate device to catch fish on your lure. Once the fish reach the top they're flung high into the air and now you tap fish to shoot them for money with rarer fish giving you more money. Afterwards you can buy stuff at the store (longer fishing line, better weapons, special lures, cosmetic items). If you catch all the fish types the game gets harder. Not a game with a lot of depth but makes good use of device rotation.

Star's End (2017) [-] Science fiction novel by Cassandra Rose Clarke. Esme Coromina is heiress to a multi-planet conglomerate built on genetically engineered warriors sold to anyone who can afford them. While she plans to reform the company after she takes over her dying father asks her to convince her three estranged younger sisters to visit him one last time. As she goes about this task the story keeps flashing back to her childhood and how her relationship with her sisters crashed and burned... More of a character story I guess. I read 80-odd pages and got bored. I then read this review which convinced me this story wasn't for me.

Eternal Love is a Chinese ancient fantasy romance series running 58 45-minute episodes. The main plot is the thousands-year-long romance between Queen of the Fox Tribe Bai Qian (Yang Mi) and Crown Prince of the Nine Heavens Ye Hua (Mark Chao).

In the first part a young and adventurous Bai Qian disguises herself as a young man, Si Yin, and becomes the 17th disciple of God of War Mo Yuan (Mark Chao in a dual role). She becomes quite attached to Mo Yuan and he to her (as a high god he automatically knew she was a woman). But their happy times ends when Ghost Tribe Lord Qing Cang (Lian Yiming) leads an uprising and Mo Yuan has to sacrifice his soul to imprison Qing Cang for 70 thousand years. Si Yin steals Mo Yuan's body and brings him to Fox Tribe's special regeneration cave where she hopes his soul will eventually reform and return to his body.

70 thousand years later Bai Qian is betrothed to one the Nine Heaven princes but she manages to foil that plan since she's still waiting for Mo Yuan to return. She is then betrothed to the young Crown Prince Ye Hua. Before they can meet though Bai Qian reseals Qing Cang but as she seals him he strikes her, flinging her to the mortal world where she is a mortal amnesiac and lives on a haunted mountain.

Ye Hua happens to save the moral Bai Qian but is injured as a black snake which Bai Qian poorly nurses back to health. Ye Hua becomes enamored with the mortal girl and tries to win her heart by posing as a mortal mercenary who saves her and names her (because she forgot her name) Su Su. They live happily together and even after she finds out he's the Crown Prince of the Nine Heavens she is willing to follow him to heaven and live with him (and they married as mortals already).

But in heaven the machinations of Su Jin (Huang Mengying), Ye Hua's childhood "friend" and now sole consort, first alienate Su Su then implicate her in various crimes and offenses against heaven. Thinking that even Ye Hua has abandoned her Su Su commits suicide by jumping into the gate to the mortal world but some kinsmen find her broken body and bring her back to Fox Tribe lands to recuperate (in this 20+ year period Bai Qian was officially doing "self reflection" even though Fox Tribe leaders couldn't find her). Ye Hua is left with their son A Li (Hummer Zhang).

Now we're back to Ye Hua and Bai Qian being betrothed to each other. They manage to not quite meet for many episodes for them (and other people) to notice that Bai Qian looks just like Su Su and for her to see that Ye Hua looks like Mo Yuan (and to be fair everyone in heaven knew Ye Hua was the spitting image of Mo Yuan but using magic knew it was a different soul -- later we learn that Ye Hua is Mo Yuan's twin brother but for reasons wasn't born until recently).

Even after they meet and start falling in love Bai Qian is half-convinced he only loves her because Bai Qian looks like his lost love (and by this point Ye Hua knows they're the same person but doesn't think he can convince her of that fact). In episode 56 or 57 Ye Hua sacrifices himself to save the Nine Heavens. Bai Qian is disconsolate for an episode and more (about 300 years). Then miraculously his soul is reformed (thousands of years early due to Mo Yuan's help), he wakes up, and he and Bai Qian have a happy ending. (There are a couple of other romantic subplots that don't end up happy due to Fate and class differences so there's a mix of good and bad at the end.)

The first part is amusing gender bending as even Ghost Princess Yan Zhi (Dai Si) falls for Yi Sin but it's not really developed. Then there's the middle part where Bai Qian and Ye Hua keep managing to not meet each other (or at least meet but not see each other's faces) which is frustratingly amusing for me. The latter middle part where Ye Hua slowly wins Bai Qian's heart is fairly nice. The ending is not bad -- I've seen worse.

Overall a pretty good series.

Single's Inferno is a romance/dating sim based on Netflix's Single's Inferno Korean tv show. A group of single people looking for love are put on a desert island (with amenities as this is not a survival show). They can talk to each other but can't reveal their age or occupation (which I guess must be an important dating thing in Korean culture). There are challenges and activities and I think each night two people get to go to Paradise, which is a high-end hotel on the mainland, where they can reveal all to each other and form a deeper connection.

In this game (I haven't watched the tv show) there are surprises involving a second Inferno island with a separate group of singles. People keep getting switch between islands which sets up new dynamics and the first time you are sent there it's interesting as there is a group of singles who know each other but don't know you. And there are also two or three new singles introduced one at a time.

The gameplay is reading dialog between characters and sometimes you get to choose one of three actions. Sometimes it's obvious that an action will increase or decrease romance between you and the other character and sometimes it's hard to tell. Sometimes you have to choice between two or more people/groups as to who you like more or who you want to do an activity with or who you go to Paradise with.

Every character has a romance bar that and you see the current bar at the end of each chapter and if the bar increased or decreased. In general getting most of the characters to max is pretty easy as it only takes a few romance choices to get their bar to maximum, though even then some characters are not romance-able and instead the romance bar is more of a friendship bar.

In the end each character choosing someone else to be their "One" and if two people choose each other they get to leave the island together. Weirdly at this point it the romance bar doesn't seem to matter as most everyone will choose you as their "One" so you get free choice as to whom to leave the island with.

I played Too Hot To Handle which is a similar sort of game and based on another Netflix show. On the positive side THTH each character has both romance and friendship stats so you can form a bestie relationship with one of several characters. And THTH has probably sexier graphics of the characters.

But Single's Inferno was a better experience to me. THTH characters are rather shallowly-developed and the game play is all about whether you hook up or not. Single's Inferno some of the characters have quite detailed back stories (and the frenemies arc between you and a surprise addition is rather epic) and the characters for the most part behave quite distinct. I went from forming a bond with one character to slowly moving to another character until finally I had a difficult choice as to which of the two to pick.

Single's Inferno also has three commentators, two previous participants and a celebrity commentator. The camera often cuts to them discussing what just happened or they'll have comments as you go through a dialog between characters. The commentary adds to the atmosphere as they elaborate on issues and consequences and are a good way of embellishing the story without a narrator or having the contestants keep talking all the time.

Overall this is a really good story app and I had a great experience playing it.

Vagabond (2019) [-] Spy-action thriller. After his nephew is killed in a plane crash, stuntman Cha Dal-Geon (Lee Seung-gi) is determined to find out what really happened and starts to uncover a multi-layered conspiracy. He gets help from low-level Korean National Intelligence Service analyst Go Hae-ri (Bae Suzy) who is in over her head but sees this as a way to promotion and job stability.

This took me a couple of sessions to watch. The first eight episodes then a long break then the last ten. Especially the first few episodes there are some very long action sequences involving Dal-Geon. Also too many plot twists as to who is the real bad guy. Finally a non-ending maybe setting up a sequel series should there be one but I don't see anything in Wikipedia and now it's six years later.

I watched this for Bae Suzy and she magnetic when she's on screen but everyone other than Dal-Geon is a secondary character and Hae-ri is the top secondary character. Overall a disappointing series. Although I do appreciate the bad girls casting: Moon Jeong-hee as Jessica Lee, power lobbyist and one of the Big Bads; Park Ah-in as Lily, assassin with an attitude; and Ryu Won as Mickey, administrative assistant with gun and spec ops skills.

Millionaire Trivia: TV Game+ (2023) [/] Who Wants to be a Millionaire quiz show. At base it's you vs another global player answering quiz questions that get harder as you get closer to the $1M prize. Vs is nice since it can be asynchronous -- the computer only needs to know other player's level, the quiz id, and when the other player got a wrong answer.

I like how they did the experts. You collect expert cards (and duplicates allow you to level up that expert) and experts are good at one or more categories. Then when you call on an expert the screen shows all your experts and their confidence on this question. I'm not sure expert knowledge is that specific -- I got William Shakespeare card but I don't think he'd be better at Shakespeare questions than another expert with the same rarity can category skill level.

But other than collecting experts it's still Who Wants to be a Millionaire which I don't find that interesting.

Echo Journal [/] Echo (Educational Community for HOA Homeowners) is a non-profit aimed at educating homeowners who live in an HOA and HOA board members. They have a quarterly journal which anybody can download. Besides all the ads (kind of useful actually since they're services specifically for HOAs) there is one or two educational articles (although many are split up into 1 to 3 parts). I feel most of the advice is common sense but some things are new to me so it's a useful journal to at least scan through.

Hi Bye, Mama! is a South Korean bittersweet drama starring Kim Tae-hee as Cha Yu-ri, a mother who died at childbirth and has been haunting her daughter for five years. She is given a second chance when she comes back to life for 49 days. At first her shaman friend Mi Dong-daek (Yoon Sa-bong) thinks that this is Cha Yu-ri's chance to regain a life cut short by a car accident -- if she can reclaim her position as wife to Cho Gang-hwa (Lee Kyu-hyung) and mother to Cho Seo-woo (Seo Woo-jin).

Except that after an intense period of grief Cho Gang-hwa married Oh Min-jung (Go Bo-gyeol). At first glance Oh Min-jung seems a bit distant from Cho Seo-woo and in turn Cho Gang-hwa is a bit distant from his wife. But deeper down they do love each other which Cha Yu-ri knew all along which is why she doesn't want to break up a marriage for her selfish reasons.

Instead Cha Yu-ri wants to protect Cho Seo-woo because the little girl can see ghosts and this is due to Cha Yu-ri hanging around her all the time. Cha Yu-ri gets work at the child care and proceeds to drive off the ghosts. Although Cha Yu-ri tries to stay hidden from people who know her she often forgets so first she's spotted by her best Go Hyun-jung (Shin Dong-mi), then later her ex-husband, and finally her mom Jeon Eun-sook (Kim Mi-kyung).

So now Cha Yu-ri is fully back among the living and even befriends Oh Min-jung, who thinks Cha Yu-ri is a dead-ringer for her husband's deceased wife. The rest of the series is Cha Yu-ri revealing to everyone, one at a time, that her time is limited and she's not sticking around so it kind of becomes a long goodbye. But it's only in the last episode that Cha Yu-ri finally accepts her fate and is fine moving on to heaven, the series ending with a short bit 10+ years later showing a happy teen Cho Seo-woo (Park Jung-yeon) enjoying a moment in the park with her parents...

I mostly liked this series though it does get a bit sad with lots of crying. I like the cameo by Kim Seul-gi replaying her Oh My Ghost character Shin Soon-ae. Overall an above average series.

Slay the Spire+ is the Apple Arcade version of Slay the Spire, a roguelike deckbuilder from 2019.

In the game you travel a point to point map with crisscrossing paths. Each node shows the type of encounter:

• Monster - most nodes are common monster encounters
• Elite - some nodes are an elite monster, adds an artifact reward
• Rest - some nodes are rest areas where you can recover 25-30% of hit points (in general hp are rarely healed otherwise), or instead you can upgrade a card of your choosing (all cards can be upgraded once)
• Merchant - some nodes have a merchant with a random collection of cards to buy, one of the cards at a discount, two cards are higher cost special cards
• Unknown - some nodes are unknown and can be any of the above

Combat is turn-based with card actions. You have a draw pile of cards and three action points. Draw your cards then play them. Usually it's attack one or more enemies (usually one enemy and maybe five max), block which adds to your current shield (e.g. a 10-point enemy attack reduces your shield by 10; shields reset to 0 at the start of your turn), power which is an ongoing effect (e.g. poison 2 on all enemies at start of turn, or the first discard of your turn you draw a replacement card), skill which does some kind of effect like draw more cards or buff/debuff.

There is very little randomness outside card draw. Attacks do a set amount of damage, blocks add a set amount of shield, there is no die-rolling. There are effects that are random: a poison bottle that bounces around hits three or four enemies randomly so can hit one enemy multiple times; or if you're confused your card action point costs are randomized (cards cost 0 to 3 points to use and there are effects that can give you more action points). Similarly if enemies have multiple types of actions the current one they've chosen seems random (and for the most part you know what each enemy is doing).

There are four classes that play quite different and have their own set of cards. Fighter that is mostly attack or block cards; Elementalist that conjures energy orbs that do something at the end of each turn; Poisoner that has lots of poison cards (poison does damage at the start of an enemy's turn then it's value goes down 1); the last one I haven't played yet.

After each Monster/Elite battle you get a choice of 1 of 3 random cards and each character has different builds you can specialize. For example I had an Elementalist but instead of energy orbs I ended up concentrating on this 0 cost claw attack and effects like remove all discarded claw attacks and add them to your hand, or increase strength for more claw attack damage. With a good draw I could do a lot of claw attacks.

A game is traveling through three maps with a Boss fight at the end of each map. After the final Boss fight you get a score, though I'm not sure how scoring works. The score is also added to that characters running score total which unlocks new cards.

Besides the normal game mode there is a Daily Challenge where you play a set character and there are three environment rules (e.g. whenever you Rest you heal 100% but lose 5 max hp so try to find another way of healing). The Daily Challenge has a global high score and your score also contributes to unlocking stuff for that character.

There is a Custom which is like Daily but you can set the environmental effects. Normal game mode you can play Ascension difficulty where it gets more difficult as you win more games. You can also set the game run's seed so I guess if you play with friends you can all have the same randomness.

A full run takes a couple of hours. Since each combat is short the urge to do one more combat is strong and I've started a game at 0100 or 0200 and ended up going to sleep much later. Graphics and sound are good.

My only negative is that with a lot of cards in your hand you have to tap to see the card title then drag up to read the description if you don't have it memorized. And often if you tap on another card it thinks you are still on the same card so once or twice a run I end up using a card I only looked at but didn't intend to use then. Also in the "choose a card to discard or add" view I sometimes double tap or something and end up choosing that card when I just wanted to read the description. I guess in both cases it's a problem of trying to do things too quickly.

Anyway this is a very fun game.

Invisible Us (2024) [-] Japanese serious drama running six 45-minute episodes. After one of her former high school friends stabs a few people in downtown Tokyo, trashy magazine writer Nakagawa Aoi (Fukuhara Haruka, Good Morning Call - 2016) tracks down and reconnects with her other friends, the six of them being Team Float in high school. As we discover their stories (which often goes back to high school incidents where the POV shifts revealing new perspectives) we see that all six did not really achieve their dreams of life and have sort of become more invisible members of Japanese society. With Takeda Rena as one of the friends. It's a somewhat depressing series.

What the Car? (2023) [/] A humorous platformer on Apple Arcade. You have a car with legs and each level there is a twist on your movement (e.g. rockets or extra jumpy). Travel from the beginning to the end (takes like 15 to 30 seconds) as fast as possible and maybe pickup the level's secret item. It's simple enough for kids to play though getting gold star on every level is a challenge for adults.

My Drama List [+] When I want to look for specific minor actors in an Asian drama I usually go to MyDramaList. It's Cast and Credits view includes actor pictures and role name (often with an added descriptor e.g. XYZ's daughter, butler, etc.). There is usually an episode guide with episode summaries though you have to drill down into each episode. Although the show synopsis is ok Wikipedia sometimes has much more info and Wikipedia tends to have more info on show production, music and background.