Fred and Loathing on The Internet

Loudon Is The Better Wainwright

2023-Jul-22

Allegations about involving Spark in any way to this project have been greatly exaggerated. Even though I sorta worry that using Pandas right before I take a Spark exam is going to cloud my thoughts about code syntax. I sorta think the big thing to remember is explicitly having to select from a dataframe or using col() if you want to do anything in Spark. The dataframe methods felt like the same exact syntax. Oh well. I don’t expect to add any more Pandas work to the website before the next exam.

If you mosey over on to /dash/genres/, you will find a new Plotly Dash interactive chart. I stuffed some data about the genres in my listening history into a treemap. The wide range of popularity made it difficult to find color scale options that give the highs and lows a chance to use color to show some difference. Add-ons to follow will be adding a link to the charts landing page at /dash. Then making another of this type for each genre, with a dropdown menu to switch between categories.

Red Dead 2 has been left on indefinite hold at the last five percent. I am in no rush to get the Steam achievement for completing all of the single player campaign story missions. That seems likely to happen but there’s no rush. The last game to take up my manic video game bender was Warhammer: Total War 2, or is it Total War: Warhammer 2?

I bought it a few years ago, gave it a go as the Lizardmen on normal difficulty. I remember things getting away from me quickly after a few dozen turns, with battles getting stacked against me too often for my comfort. That was on my old rig, which could handle it on low-mid with no particle effects with 1080p/45fps grace. This new one works splendid at 1440p at Max, and stays above 60 fps when I keep the camera in my normal super high playing position. It can bog down below sixty when I zoom around close to the combatants in replay mode.

On easy mode I barrelled through the Lizardmen campaign that involved the acquiring of holy plates used to cast spells in the Vortex. Warhammer Fantasy or any fantasy game setting had given me a strong enough pull to bother figuring out what is going on behind the game mechanics. This game is no different. The visual storytelling shines through my clumsy playthrough. Each army sticks out on the battle lines by their very characteristic infantry, cavalry, siege, or super large units.

I prefer 40k over Fantasy, but Warhammer’s fantasy is dark enough for my amusement. The Lizardmen are the hidden underdogs of order of creation fantasy racism. Ordinarily its elves, but these Lizardmen are so distant from normal civilization that the other races have no idea they’re the first. All the races hate each other. Just like 40k, but I suppose the swords vs projectile weapon battles happen only on Earth, and with magic instead of ‘plasma’.