Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Spring? What Spring? & Game Log #1

A friend was in Tokyo yesterday.  She's over to Japan for a short visit from Vancouver.  Of course, she sent a photo of cherry blossoms along with her query on when I'd be free for lunch on the weekend.  This is after I had received a photo from my sister of cherry trees in full bloom in Washington state.  I mentioned those cherry blossoms and then added I had seen a few snowflakes drifting down today.  It's early evening now and they're still drifting down but there's a bit of rain too.  As for dinner this evening, it's a meal that would do Yozan-san proud; a modest piece of fish with some string beans.  I ordered an "oo-mori" (extra size) dish of cream mentaiko pasta for lunch so I think I got my day's requirement of carbs there.

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As I now have a desktop computer, I've revisited a few games which ran on my Macbook Pro but tended to send the fans into overdrive.  They don't cause the same issues on the iMac, which has less memory and a slightly older (and slower) CPU than the portable machine, but one has the peculiar habit of crashing.

The one which doesn't crash is the slightly old title, Civilization V.  I don't so much play the game as much as I just fiddle around with it in multiplayer hot seat mode.  It's a fun little time waster but only recently did I notice an odd feature; the Great Wall of China is not a stationary.  The following screen shots demonstrate its every changing shape.

Here it is in one game while in its construction phase;


Here it is a number of turns after its completion.  Note that it has expanded to grab more territory;


And here it is a few hundred years later in game time;






I'm not sure if this is the way it's supposed to work or if it's a strange form of commentary on the real world...


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