January Digest #2

21st Century Music

Little known rapper from NZ. First heard many years ago by accident via YT's algorithmn. The video was Runnin' which featured in the FIFA 2014 games. He's not mainstream hiphop but he's done okay for a South Auckland boy. He's 278 whereas I'm 274; same area but still rivals. 

Totally different generation too but the same background and upbringing. 

Now this is the kind of hip hop I do enjoy - lyrical, flow, homage to musical roots, poetical, grounded in real life. Anything and everything produce by him is seriously worth listening to, often more than once. Not that fake gangsta shite or flashy bling bling crud. Nor the usual hollow mainstream or mindless tribal crap. Just excellent solid hip hop. 

David Dallas

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Puzzles Galore

Worked out there's probably three ways to solving a jigsaw. 

Approach one is the one I've adopted throughout. I take time to first separate all the tiles into their shape classes - no nodes, one node, two nodes, three nodes, four nodes. There is also a variation of the two nodes class where the nodes are opposite one another. Every tile fits into one of these five node categories. Every border tile goes into the sixth category. Then I begin by completing the border: you can simply hit B to reveal all the border tiles, and off you go. After that, it's just patience and persistence. 

Approach two is more intuitive and disorganised. Simply pick a section or feature that appeals to you and concentrate on completing that. Not a fan of this part because it would be both slow and disorganised. Have to have a plan otherwise it's just randomised chaos.

Approach three is more a variation of Approach 1 whereby instead of classifying them into tile categories you opt for colour or area (as in sky or water) groupings. It is. after all, just a matter of preference and how you approach the puzzle is just that - personal preference. 

I'm sure there are other approaches I hadn't considered yet. But these are just three basic ones that occurred to me while working on these puzzles. 

As seen above, I am over half done. Made an initial start on this 800 puzzle several days ago but left it to finish the other one (previous post). Returned to it tonight and have made very good rapid progress. Done the sky and distant mountains as well as most of the water foreground. Working completing the rest of water before calling a night and dawn. Expect to have it done when I return to it later on today. 

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Pretty looking Jigsaw Puzzle finished

Completed another puzzle today. Started it yesterday. Either I'm getting better at it or else the puzzle wasn't as challenging as the first one. 

Liked the scene shown above but realised as soon as I started that the colour contrasts make it fairly straightforward when placing tiles. And there's just enough fine detail to make good guesses as to which goes where and so on. I am wondering if they use colour saturation on the images because it looks it.

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Third Super Jigsaw Puzzle Completed in a week

Chicago skyline is a bit more challenging than the last puzzle because there are less contrasting colours as with the previous puzzle. The background image can be distracting. You can adjust the background colour to a colour that is slightly different from the main colours of the puzzle which is lots of grey, black, gold, and sand.

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Doing cities now. This puzzle is of a favourite city of mine. Venice. Did a watercolour study some time ago. Fairly easy completing this which surprised me. Expected it a bit more challenging like the Chicago puzzle (above) but I was mistaken. Managed to complete it in a few hours which was even more suprising.

This time I used approach three which was split into specific groups such as border, sky, canal, buildings. Seemed to work like a breeze. The background image wasn't as distracting as with the Chicago puzzle because I was able to distinguish the required shapes better (came up as a muted shade of green) without having to turn it off and on constantly. 

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World of Snoreships

January is a slow month for WG with nothing events thrown at the unsuspecting and gullible. They are still flogging the Santa crates until February: must have been a slow Christmas for them. Just finishing off the Dockyard event's remaining missions (two left) for the steel, and for something to do while completing the slow commander upskill grind.

Word of caution: If chasing a steel ship, be mindful they're only available through Golden crates which have a 10% chance of dropping. And a separate drop rate applies to Golden crate which is guarantees a ship drop upon opening the tenth Golden crate. 

While a Mega will drop a ship on the 15th and a Gift will drop at the 100th, there is absolutely no guarantee you will get a Golden crate on that drop. And if you do, you better hope it's your tenth Golden crate which will guarantee your goal of a steel ship. That's if you already have every listed ship available this Christmas. Otherwise, you will receive one of the listed Christmas ships. 

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World of Boreships

When it comes down to a choice between gambling and most likely getting nothing for the effort or having a decent home-cooked meal, it's a no-brainer. Stomach will always win out. 

Played Zao again today. Really love this ship despite its weak armour. On the Sunset Isles map, spawned in the middle. Sailed up to the cap. Teammates hung back (to be expected) leaving me to "yolo" against a Napoli and a Montana. Signed my death warrant but didn't care. Chose to sail between the two vessels and loosed off my torps at both, two sets at each. Eight apiece. Did considerable damage to both but no sinking before dying. However, did enough to enable my teammates to finish off both damaged ships easily.  

Lesson here: Never rely on your teammates in WOWS unless you really know them personally or they're clan mates. Ever. And, always fire torps in a wide spread.

Satsuma is bloody slow maneouvring. A snail moves faster. Slow to get movement forward or backward. Turning is okay at low speed which is useful. Sometimes. 

But don't EVER charge into a melee unless you know what you're doing. A couple of days back, I was deulling against a Patrie and a Piemonte. Failed to finish off the Italian supercruiser after a couple of punishing salvoes. Allowed it to retreat behind the Patrie and recover. Was more concerned about the Patrie threat. So while I played chasey around a large island against the French super ship, I was keeping one eye out for the torpedoes I knew would be coming my way. Unfortunately I blundered by sailing into the island I was using for cover. Too slow, I was a sitting duck for the torpedoes that took me out. Cursed my luck. Cursed the Satsuma for taking forever to reverse. 

Lesson here: finish off the kill. Worry about the Patrie after dealing to the Piemonte first.

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World of Yawnships

Mecklenburg in Asymmetrics is not the popular broken Libertad. But it has torps, good secondaries and sixteen 12" guns. More than enough to tackle being swarmed by menacing lower tied ships...up to a point. Suffered just two defeats from over a dozen games played in this fun battle mode. 

However I began the day with Guilio Cesare in a couple of games in Co-op before switching up and staying with Mecklenburg in Asymmetrics for the duration in order to earn the 2600 ribbons needed (battleship only) as part of the Dockyard event mission. Much quicker to achieve this in Asymmetrics than in Co-Op.

In the first defeat just myself and a Stalingrad were left after the rest of our team died. We had cleared our flank then moved into the centre. But there were just too many enemy ships. No point in charging in so we hung back using island cover and picking off our targets who gladly charged at us. We managed to survive intact when the Defeat finally sounded. Failed to cap one island while the enemy scored off two caps.

In the second Defeat, team except for a U-4501 died quickly. Myself included although I was the last to go (apart from the sub). I was on the left flank with a Takahashi which hung back and we both got overwhelmed by about six or seven enemies. The sub "held" the centre and simply survived until the end. I was unable to do much while alive and had positioned myself badly - too far out in the open and capped too early and was therefore subjected to heavy focus fires from the opposition. Our right flank was held by two ships of one was the G. Kurfurst. I don't know the identity of the other ship but it died early leaving the GK to battle valiantly on its own until taken out. By then it was just myself and the sub. 

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