Z wasn’t available in my country. And it was mainly about saving space. Having grown up in an apartment, N still fit with a bit of planning. H0 was simply too big to build around.

H0 is for people with really big attics or basements, and thick fingers who couldn’t do landscape modelling properly. I was part of the vastly superior N crew.

1492: Conquest of Paradise. Very few people remember the movie (I still do and rewatch it regularly), but the soundtrack by Vangelis is an absolute banger.

In general, his soundtracks tend to be better than the movies. Alexander is another great example. Chariots of Fire and Bounty are fine movies, but still greatly enhanced by his soundtracks. Perhaps the only movie that stood on its own against a soundtrack by Vangelis was Blade Runner.

You can still run Win 3.11 in DOSBox in that Ubuntu instance. I did it once for fun (from a Mint VM), but couldn’t get anywhere online.

Yesterday, I visited new Reddit. No VPN, Chrome in incognito mode, so no extensions, clickedon a link directly from Google search. Got a message that my access was blocked for security reasons. Copied the link to Firefox (with uBO and a few privacy-centric extensions), changed it to old reddit (where I was already logged in), and it worked just fine. I found out that when Reddit kills old reddit, I won’t even have the choice to switch to the new one (not that I ever would) because I’d be blocked anyway.

My headphones beep 10 minutes before they die. Which is especially frustrating when they do that a few minutes into a 2-hour run.

I just thought about my old phone. Got a new one in May, andjust before I left for a long trip a few weeks ago I loaded it with a few movies. During the trip I realised that the new phone didn’t have a headphone jack anymore, so I couldn’t watch anything. It made me irrationally angry.

Mr Carney said one reason the deal collapsed was US negotiators at the 11th hour introducing restrictions on Canadian trade deals with other countries.

I think this is the most important issue. The US administration is realising that other countries are making new deals around the US, and they are using trade pressure to revert that trend. Carney was right to reject the deal. It may hurt in the short term, but it also gives him the opportunity to develop new trade networks.

Don’t worry; I don’t know any spoilers. I’m playing the 1995 DOS game from Microprose, and I didn’t come across a commander yet. All characters are soldiers, and 80% of them are cannon fodder that locates the aliens, which then I snipe with my few trained survivors from the distance.

X-Com: Terror from the Deep. Life expectancy of a Russian soldier in Ukraine.

When I was 34, I got one of them smart scales, and it told me my physical age was 66. So, I started running. At 50, the same scale is putting my physical age at 29. The numbers may not be accurate, but still show how dramatic the effect of active lifestyle may be. Of course, along with running came other changes, such as a healthier diet, but adopting a fitness routine (may not be necessarily running) is the first step.

For the record, I look like a daddy long legs now, not like a cheese grater. But still better than a beer keg I was before.

I want my Geocities back.

I’d tell you what Pontiac stood for, if it was still the 1970s. It hasn’t been politically correct since then.

It all started with The Rundown. Before that, it was all desert, but I guess he didn’t like the sand.

I think this is just for fun. However, I did work for a company where we did everything in-house from scratch, down to our own font face, because we couldn’t afford the legal costs associated with deciphering license agreements.

You guessed right with the economic migrants. Americans aren’t the only ones doing it, though. In Europe, it’s primarily the British moving to Spain and Portugal, but others do it, too.

In terms of trying to influence local customs: this ranges from very blatant (canvassing or campaigning in favour of socially conservative causes) to seemingly innocent, but so common that people are annoyed about them even more (trying to introduce American tipping culture to pubs and restaurants). Usually the best people in this regard are well-traveled Americans who already lived abroad. Of those, by far the best adjusted are children of former military personnel stationed abroad.

Let me start by saying that some of my best coworkers are American immigrants. They are hard working, humble, and always willing to learn local customs. However, these are highly skilled workers who secured a job ahead of time, and they contribute to the local economy.

Then we have loads of economic migrants from the US. They distort the local market, especially housing, and instead of assimilating to the local culture they try to impose their norms on us.

I always welcome the first group of migrants and vehemently oppose the second group. So, if you are coming to work and in exchange enjoy the benefits of a more humanistic and social system, you’re welcome. Otherwise the locals will try to make your stay quite unpleasant.

The English football team. Especially when they start talking about how “it’s coming home.”

This is indeed Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Hamilton had really cool use of portals in the Salvation series, though. Among other things, they could:

• Make people travel (and indeed have distributed houses as well),
• Source of free energy by placing one end of the portal close to the sun,
• Solution for garbage by placing one end of the portal into outer space,
• Geoengineering, for example, by placing one end of the portal above the Australian desert, and feeding it icebergs from the other end.

My favourite use was a protagonist placing one end of a portal on Earth, and smuggling the other onto a penal colony to rescue a prisoner.

Batteries can get quickly depleted when the wifi connection is unstable. My camera had to be recharged every month until I got a dedicated wifi extender in the hallway by the front door. Since then the battery lasts about half a year.