RadicalBomb.com
The homepage for Steve Radabaugh
Adventures in a Trip to the Orthodontist
Today I had to take my daughter to Gilette to see the orthodontist. I gave myself 4.5 hours to drive what is normally a 3-ish hour drive, because we had snow last night, and I have to go over the mountains. I’m glad I had the extra time as the roads over the mountains were a bit sketchy.
Anyway, on the way back, I stopped in Buffalo to get gas before going back over the mountains. When we got back in the car to take off, the car started fine, and I could get it into reverse or neutral just fine, but I couldn’t get the shifter to physically move into the drive position. At this time it was 6:30 pm, so I knew that there would be no chance of getting a mechanic until morning. I had visions of driving my car in reverse to a hotel to spend the night, an idea I quickly abandoned.
I ended up pushing the car away from the gas pumps to a parking spot, with my daughter manning the wheel (with a LOT of guidance). Then I started Googling the problem and found some threads on X-Terra owner forums about people who have the same year of X-Terra as I do with the same problem. It turns out that a little piece of metal tends to come loose within the shifter that blocks it from moving into the Drive position or beyond.
With the guidance of the forum thread, I was able to get the piece moved back into place and get my car into drive. The trip back over the mountains was slow (due to road conditions) and uneventful. I’m extremely grateful that the problem was something that I was capable of fixing and that the Internet exists to provide answers. 20+ years ago, I definitely would have been getting a hotel room and finding a mechanic in the morning.
Steve's Life • January 20, 2022
The Pedestrian
I found myself with some free time this weekend due to everyone else being out of the house for a large chunk of Saturday. I had heard some good things about The Pedestrian, and since it just came out on Gamepass, I figured I’d give it a go.
On the surface, it’s a pretty normal 2D platforming puzzle game. However, it quickly adds complexity as it adds new functions to the puzzles. The gist of the game is that you are playing a character on signs, and you travel from sign to sign. After a bit, you’re re-arranging signs in order to play through the pieces of the level in the right order to get what you need.
The game originally came out on Play Station about a year ago. It came out on PC and Xbox on January 3rd and hit Gamepass on that same day. The game is fantastic, I ended up playing it the rest of the way through on Sunday. If you haven’t played it, then it’s worth checking out, and if you have Gamepass, then it’s a no-brainer.
Video Games • January 18, 2022
A Swarm of Pis
In general, I try to keep my posts written in a way that non-tech people can follow along. This one I’m probably going to go a bit deep.
This is my Raspberry Pi cluster. They’re running a Docker swarm. Docker is a software that allows computers to run programs in a sort of jail where they cannot interact with things outside of their container unless specifically allowed to do so. Since these are running Docker in a swarm mode, they can move applications from one raspberry pi to another in order to balance the workload amongst all of them.
Here’s a graphic that shows the 4 Raspberry Pis and the software running on each one.
Raspberry Pis are great little computers for projects, but they’re a bit unreliable for storage. So last week I finally got them working with saving all of the data for these containerized programs onto my network storage. It’s using NFS, and while it should have been easy to set up, it was a pain. Now, things are pretty well set up that if one of the Raspberry Pis goes down, all of the programs running on it should just migrate over to a different Raspberry Pi.
Now I just need to learn about more cool software packages to run on these.
Cool Stuff • January 17, 2022
Retrospective: The Amazing Spider-Man
I watched The Amazing Spider-Man with my son tonight. The one from 2012 with Andrew Garfield in it. This movie is a lot better than I remember. I didn’t remember much about the movie, I think I only saw it one time when it was in Theaters. If I remember right, I was pretty salty at the time that Sony was making their own Spider-Man movies that weren’t involved in the MCU, and I really wanted them to just sell Spider-Man back to Marvel.
I guess since the second ASM movie flopped and Sony started working with Marvel, and I got what I want, I was able to go back and watch this without the salt. I found this to be a solid film. It had a solid cast all around. I always enjoy finding Dennis Leary in movies where I don’t expect him.
If you’re like me and you wrote this movie off when it was new, maybe give it another chance. You might enjoy it more than you think.
Movies and Television • January 16, 2022
Thoughts on The Expanse
The final episode of the Expanse was released yesterday. I’ve been reading the books since I saw someone talking about the first one on Twitter back when the first book was the only one out. The 9th and final book was released in November. With the books and the show both wrapping up within a couple of months of each other, I feel like I’m saying goodbye to this series twice.
It’s been interesting to watch the internet fandom grow over the years. The show was originally on Sci-Fi channel and was canceled after the third season. Fans petitioned hard to get the show saved. I even pitched in $10 to fly an airplane over Amazon HQ with a banner that said: “Save the Expanse”. It was pretty well known that Jeff Bezos was a fan. I’m not sure if the plane helped, but Amazon did pick the show up for 3 more seasons.
Anyway, I’m a bit sad that there isn’t more to look forward to. (at least nothing announced). However, I’m quite glad that I got the shows and books that I did get.
Movies and Television • January 15, 2022
The Green Knight
I finally got around to watching “The Green Knight” the other evening. It’s been on my list of things to watch since it came out last July.
I told my wife that it was a really good movie, but she wouldn’t like it. It had a very surreal feeling to it, which I figured that it would after watching the trailers. The Story of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight is a 14th Century story and is one of the more well-known Arthurian tales. Much of the Arthurian legend comes from centuries of oral traditions that predate the first written account of Arthur which was in the 12th Century. Because oral traditions tend to evolve as they’re retold, there is no single canonical version of the Arthurian Legends which is true for much folklore and mythology.
The Story of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight exists as a text from its original author, who is unknown. It pulls influence from various existing folk-lore, but it does have a single canonical source. The movie definitely took some liberties, but it stayed fairly true to the original story.
The Cinematography was fantastic. I had to pause the movie several times to assist my children with bedtime routines, and each time I came back, I was impressed with whatever still image was on the TV.
The movie definitely isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I enjoyed it.
SPOILERS AHEAD:
I’m going to talk about the ending here a bit. The original story ends with the Green Knight giving sir Gawain just a nick on his neck, then he reveals himself to be the lord of the castle. Gawain then goes back to Camelot with the shame that he didn’t give the lord the green sash. The movie of course leaves that open to possibility. I think I prefer the movie ending where it left things open to interpretation. I wouldn’t mind seeing a deleted scene or something with the story’s ending in place, but I like the movie standing as is.
Movies and Television • January 14, 2022
The Birdle is the Wordle
You’ve probably seen posts similar to the one above on your social media in the past week or so. This is a game that’s gained popularity quickly in the last couple of weeks called Wordle. Each day is a unique puzzle where you have to guess a word. The colored blocks tell you if the letters in the word you guessed are right. If they’re yellow, they’re in the word somewhere, if they’re green, they’re in the right spot. You have 6 total tries to get it right.
What I find super interesting about this game is that there are 3 things that really work towards its current popularity. The first is that there is only 1 puzzle a day creating a feeling of artificial scarcity and making it like a quick snack that you can enjoy and get back to your day. The second thing is that everyone in the world is doing the same puzzle for the day. The third is that it’s really easy to share your results so that everyone who plays can know how you did. So you can see above that today I got the word right after 6 guesses.
Cool Stuff Video Games • January 13, 2022
A Tour of my Office
I finally got some blinds up in my office today, and since it’s new, I thought I would show it off.
Here’s the desk where I do any of my remote support and coding and general email and whatnot. The hexagons above the monitors are sound dampening to help with echos. They’re especially helpful when I’m on zoom calls. The actual desk is the podium that I build when I was teaching. I’ll probably eventually replace it with a new one built to match the workbench that’s opposite it.
This workbench is where I do PC and Phone repair and any other electronic work. The art piece hanging there is one I picked up last summer at GenCon. The wood for the counter came from my inlaws. It’s all wood from their property in Ohio.
This is my 3D printing station. Just the 1 printer so far. If I can figure out a way to make some money from 3D printing, then I’ll add some more. The sound damping tiles here are more for decoration than anything as there aren’t enough in this spot to make much of a difference.
This is just the North wall. I’m planning on putting something under the TV that’s hanging there. Probably a little table with a printer on it or something. The chairs will eventually be replaced with a little couch.
Cool Stuff • January 12, 2022
Who wants to be a Space Rebel
I’m a subscriber to Microsoft Gamepass. For those who don’t know, it can easily be described as Netflix for Games. One of the things I enjoy about it is playing small games that can be finished relatively quickly.
“Unpacking” and “The Artful Escape” are two great examples. They both could be finished within a couple of hours, and there was no price barrier to entry for me due to them being on Gamepass. Both games also had quite a bit of conversation happening online about them.
I keep coming back to a bit longer game, but still very indie, and that’s Next Space Rebels. In this game, you build rockets, then record videos of them and upload those videos to “Star Tube” So, it’s a bit of a physics simulator with the rockets, but there’s also a whole nother piece of the game where you’re managing your online presence. If you are a fan of Kerbal Space Program, then it’s definitely worth checking out.
There’s also a non-zero chance that I’ll be getting a model rocket kit to launch with the kids this spring because of this game.
Video Games • January 11, 2022
State of VR
This last week, Sony revealed the specs for the PlayStation VR2, the follow-up to their previous headset. I thought this would be a good time to look at the various Virtual Reality options and what’s available.
I currently have an Oculus Rift S. It’s the most recent product in the Rift family and it’s discontinued. At this point, it’s pretty clear that Meta (Facebook) has dropped the Rift family in favor of the Quest. The Quest 2 is their current device, and it sold really well over the holidays. It originally came out in October of 2020, so it hasn’t been around that long. I suspect that it sold well over the holidays due to the lack of stock for new PlayStations and Xboxes. Also, I’ve heard that they’re really pushing it via commercials.
What really differentiates the Quest and Quest 2 from other products is that they are standalone. My Rift S along with other headsets like the HTC Vive, and Valve Index require a fairly powerful computer to use them, and PlayStation VR requires a PlayStation. The Quest and Quest 2 can be used with a computer for more demanding games, but they work perfectly well as a stand-alone unit.
Honestly, it’s a pretty good product, the biggest downside of it is that it’s owned by Facebook and is tied to your Facebook account. They’ve said that options will be coming to allow it to be used with an Oculus account that isn’t tied to Facebook. Of course, it’s still a Facebook product and I’m sure that all the privacy concerns are still there.
As an enthusiast, I’m personally intrigued by the PSVR 2. There are a handful of VR games on PlayStation that are not available for me on the PC. Also, it’s not owned by Facebook Meta and looks like it’ll be a fairly comparable product to the Quest 2. Spec wise it’s fairly comparable aside from the fact that it’s not a stand-alone unit.
As for pricing, You can get a Quest 2 for $300. I’m guessing that PS VR2 will also be close to $300. Nothing else comes close to that price. Of course for the PS VR2, you’ll need a $400-$500 PS5 to power it. If you already have that, then the prices are comparable. If you don’t, then that makes the PS VR2 considerably more expensive.
In the end, if you’re asking my advice for a VR headset, I would probably tell you to either get a Quest 2 as long as you don’t mind Facebook Meta being involved. You really can’t beat the price. It’s possible that a higher-end Quest 3 or Quest Pro will be announced soon if you want to wait. If you don’t want Facebook to be involved in your Virtual Reality, then waiting for the PS VR is probably the best option unless you’re willing to fork out a lot more money for a Valve Index ($999) or HTC Vive Pro 2 ($800).
Cool Stuff Video Games • January 10, 2022