Month: August 2023

Kingdom Hearts Updates

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(1) What Kingdom Hearts 4’s Lost Master Arc Could Imply (GAMERANT)

(2) Quote from The Legend of Kingdom Hearts by Georges “Jay” Grouard:

“Tetsuya Nomura was born on October 8, 1970. He grew up in the south of the island of Shikoku in a city located in the delta of the Kagami River with a castle perched above it. From its forests, to its beaches, to its limestone cave, and of course its various capes jutting out into the Pacific, Nomura’s hometown is heaven on earth. It was like the Destiny Islands for the young man, who felt restless and dreamed of adventure and becoming an artist. His life has been marked by the many people he has met along the way. He became a protégé to several important creators who “connected” with his heart and soul so that he would never lose sight of how yesterday’s principles can guide the way tomorrow too. Having gone through his own Mark of Mastery exam over a decade, he ultimately became the Master of his own destiny: an exceptional architect. Through great selflessness, ingenuity, and cleverness, he was able to convince the biggest entertainment empire in the world to yield to his genius, giving rise to one of the greatest works of our time; indeed, one of the greatest because it is much more than a video game…”

(3) This is my KH3 tribute video. Each scene is from KH3 and was taken in-game (not from cutscenes). The track is “Music from 358/2 Days” by Yoko Shimomura. Can you name the land each photo was taken?

(4) Do think now that Rapunzel has been reunited with her family that the festival for ‘the lost princess’ has been repurposed as the festival for ‘the hero’?

KH3
The Old Mansion in Twilight Town

Weekend 580.0

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(1) Work and Monasticism (Imaginative Conservative)

“We find in St. Benedict’s Rule something of a tension between toil and rest. This tension is actually fundamental to the whole monastic life, and to the whole Christian life. Benedict speaks often in terms of urgency, even haste; certainly energy, purpose, determination in pursuing our heavenly goal. To his way of thinking, we don’t have much time in this life, and we need to make full use of the little we have been given. Yet, on the other hand, we need to be at rest in God’s presence. We need to have space and time to listen to his still, small voice. We need to be perfectly clear that we prefer nothing whatever to Christ. As later medieval writers would express it, the monastic life could even be defined as sanctum otium—a “holy leisure”; the life symbolised by Mary rather than her sister Martha (cf. Luke 10:41); an environment which provides for that freedom from the pressing business of this world, and from distraction, and from a divided heart, which St. Paul recommends for the unmarried (cf. 1 Corinthians 7:35, 34).”

Anime: Japan in WWII

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I had a little downtime this weekend and watched In This Corner of the World (2016) on ROKU. It’s a beautiful film and a reminder that the victims of war are never the ones rattling the saber. It’s also good to watch films that portray war from the eyes of those you’re fighting (fought). There are two other great films that deal with similar subject matter. The first is The Wind Rises (2013) by Studio Ghibli / Hayao Miyazaki. The Wind Rises is a fictionalized biographical film of Jiro Horikoshi (1903–1982), designer of the Mitsubishi A5M fighter aircraft and its successor, the Mitsubishi A6M Zero¹. The second is Grave of the Fireflies (1988) and it’s the tragic story of two Japanese children orphaned during the war. It’s a difficult film to watch and does a good job chronicling the dangers children face (particularly) at the end of war. All three hopefully inspire you to always encourage those rattling the sabers to exhaust every measure possible to find peaceful resolutions.

¹Wikipedia

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The Remains of the Day (1993)

Weekend 578.0 (Retro Gaming, Baseball, and Nostalgia)

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I couldn’t get the Box Score and Stats Compiler for Microleague Baseball to work on my APPLE IIE emulator but was able to on a Commodore 64 emulator. Scrambling now to find a dot matrix printer. Do the airlines still use these?

Working on my roster. My original plan was a Boston/Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves ONLY roster but can’t have a team without George Brett. The other dilemma- Smoltz as a reliever or starter?

(1) Microleague Baseball Forever (microleague-baseball-forever.com)

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A Gen Xers Top 20 Video Game List