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No Netflix, no cable, no television at all in my life. I read, listen to podcasts, and watch a lot of Youtube. A lot of times it’s just to have something on in the background that I don’t necessarily feel like paying strict attention to. And that’s where Let’s Plays come in.

For the uninitiated, an LP is where you watch someone else play a video game. This notion strikes some people as hilariously wrong. And I would be the first to say that sometimes it is. But stick with it long enough and you will find that there are a few content creators that are worth watching, if only for that background noise purpose most of the time.

Tex, the frontman for the Black Pants Legion, is not my favorite LPer–maybe third or fourth on my list–but he’s what I’m watching tonight, the same night that I got my invite code to lib.reviews. So he’s the one I’ll talk about first.

One of the good things about his channel is that he plays a LOT of Space Station 13, and is one of the few people who do it consistently and well. If you’re not familiar with SS13, you should be, and it’s worth checking out BPL just to get a sense of it.

Tex’s videos are slickly but minimally produced. A brief visual intro is provided, and then he just drops straight into an SS13 round or other game. SS13 and the other things he plays move slowly most of the time, and this allows him a lot of room for commentary on a wide range of topics. Which is good, because he’s smart and well-educated, especially on matters historical. While I don’t agree with him all the time (he’s from Texas, so how could I?), I find his viewpoint on many things congenial or at least interesting.

I say: Give him a shot, and see if he’s your cup o’ tea.

Because the game system is so easy to master, Markoshiki is less about enjoying the game, and more about using the puzzle as the mental equivalent of a palate cleanser. The UI is clean and simple, but perhaps a bit too simple–the note functionality could be improved.

Nike Training Club generates exercise routines for the user according to various criteria (available equipment, BMI, fitness level), which routine is periodically automatically tweaked according to the user’s recent performance and how they have rated previous exercise sessions.

Users can also manually choose other routines from an ever-increasing assortment, most all of them created by professional trainers and athletes. (There are some celebrity routines, which are, at worst, harmless.)

Sessions include audio coaching and video examples of each of the exercises.

This is a fantastic app for laypersons looking to get fit or lose weight because it adjusts to the individual user and doesn’t require any knowledge or even thought–planning out one’s exercise becomes one less thing to worry about. I’d also recommend it for people who want to add more variety to their exercise routine.

In The Greatest Show on Earth, Richard Dawkins minces no words confronting those who propagate the idea that all life was created thousands of years ago, in spite of the mountains of evidence to the contrary – from geology to species distribution, from radioactive clocks to skeletal morphology, from molecular biology to computer science. His point is clear and well-argued: to deny the evidence of evolution is to be part of a modern, well-funded and aggressively evangelical Flat Earth Society, and it’s only appropriate to treat it as such.

He does not spend as much time on the bizarre offshoots of creationism that exist today (the arguments that species only ever “devolve”, that evolution happens but can never lead to speciation, that an intelligent designer is constantly tweaking the process). That’s because, after laying out the evidence, it becomes abundantly clear that these are simple “God of the gaps” arguments, attempts to shohoern theism into whatever parts of current scientific understanding can be assailed most seemingly plausibly.

Leaving aside the directness, the book is trademark Dawkins in other ways: full of details, anecdotes and diversions. Most of the time I enjoy these, but the book would have been better with more rigorous editing (which, I’m sure, Dawkins would or did push back against). Dawkins is a storyteller, and you have to be ready for an experience not unlike listening to a very knowledgeable, slightly eccentric professor in order to truly enjoy this book.

If you have your doubts about evolutionary biology, or are just not very well-versed in it, this is a good introduction, but it is not a gentle one. Look elsewhere for that. If you’re ready to be shoved into a world that is truly filled with wonder, this book is a great start. You don’t have to leave your delusions at the door, but be prepared to have them shattered.

Openstreetmap is the open source alternative to Google Maps.

Most all of the data for the project is crowdsourced, which is both a boon and a bane. The more developed and populated an area is, the better the OSM data for it will tend to be; unfortunately, the inverse is also true.

OSM’s maps tend to be more complete and up-to-date than Google’s, but the project has no equivalent of Streetview or Google Maps’ user-submitted photos, and business information is nowhere near as complete as Google’s. Also, because OSM relies on free satellite data, a lot of the aerial imagery is very outdated.

Contributing to the project is not as easy as it could be, and there’s a rather steep learning curve even for beginners, but once one gets stuck in, it can be quite satisfying to add information–I’ve occasionally found myself filling out the map for hours at a time.

Gab mixes Reddit’s voting system with what Twitter was before concerns of monetisation began to affect the running of the company.

The service is technically in alpha since a lot of core functionality is still in development. Currently, users can:

• post text (up to 300 characters per post, AKA a “gab”)
• use hashtags
• embed cards of external web pages
• access emojis by typing a colon
• embed gifs from giphy.com
• block users and keywords from appearing in their feed

The userbase is heavily conservative and libertarian but may become more balanced as more people adopt the platform.

We went here for a birthday dinner and weren’t disappointed. We had the brie/gorgonzola cheese fondue topped with roasted hazelnuts, and a “Black Forest” dessert fondue with cherries. Both were pretty inspired creations (the hazelnuts were an especially nice touch). We came on a busy Saturday night. The noise level was moderate-to-high, but still allowing conversation.

It took about 10 minutes for them to get our order, which to me is well within reason for a busy night, but they apologized repeatedly for it and even let us have a side and dessert on the house. The service was overall super-friendly and helpful. They recommended we try the “fondue experience” which is a combination of a cheese fondue with one of their regular entrees, followed by dessert.

Unfortunately the vegetarian options among the entrees are a bit limited. If you end up doing what we did and skipping the entree, it’s safe to order one pot of fondue per person as the amount of cheese isn’t huge (though bread was in ample supply!). Overall I prefer this place to Melting Pot and am looking forward to trying more of their fondue creations.

(Update 4/29/2017) Second visit, ordered the Tillamook White Cheddar/Caraway and the Smoked Cheddar fondue, as well as a house salad and some sides. Very busy Saturday night and the timing was a bit off — we got the fondue well before we got all the dipping fruits/vegetables. The salad was meh, but the fondues were delicious.

Twitter has become a bloated, politicised disappointment. It’s still useful for its intended use, microblogging, but all of the extra functionality and ads, the meddling with trending hashtags, the arbitrary banning of controversial users, and the third-party block lists have ruined what was once a perfect platform for expression.

Woolworths are the most upmarket of the South African retail stores. As such, they demand a premium price for their offering.

The more unique, prepared food products from the Woolworths Food line are worth the price, and it’s difficult to find better fresh produce elsewhere. I also appreciate that almost all of their food has the nutritional information included on the packaging.

Their in-house clothing, kitchen/bathroom products, and homeware are okay but nothing special. They’re a good option if one isn’t willing to pay a designer/brand price but also wants something better than one can get at other supermarket chains.

The stores themselves are always clean and orderly, which isn’t the case for other supermarkets.

My only disappointment is that there is a ridiculous markup on third-party and household cleaning products; one can never get all their shopping done at a Woolworths unless they’re willing to waste money.

Before John Boyega became forever identified with the rebellious Stormtrooper Finn from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, he played Moses. Not the biblical one, but a 15-year-old kid in South London who leads a gang of teenagers in the middle of an alien invasion.

There’s little question of the film’s moral purpose. It begins by showing us Moses and his gang robbing a middle-class woman at knife point – and then proceeds to humanize them as the plot of the film unfolds, while painting their environment as largely devoid of any compassion or interest.

The aliens, here, are just an exaggerated stand-in for an arbitrary crisis that’s playing out in these kids’ lives, a plot device to make the point that no matter how extreme the circumstances of our protagonists, society will regard them as outcasts. This kind of allegory is difficult to pull off, and Attack the Block doesn’t quite manage it.

Boyega does shine in his role, portraying Moses first as sullen and mean, then as driven and quietly heroic. Unfortunately, the other characters are forgettable. The female lead goes through the conventional “Skeptic No Longer” trope, Moses’ gang members are defined by a strict adherence to a limited subset of London slang, the clueless pothead next door is … clueless. Nick Frost (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead) plays a small part as a weed dealer, but he’s wasted on a character without charm or wit.

The aliens are boring and mindless, and the premise that nobody much cares about massive meteorites smashing into parts of London is unbelievable. While there is some good fight and chase choreography, the film is strongest in its quietest moments, when characters of different backgrounds come together and start seeing each other as humans, or when we learn about who Moses actually is.

These are moments during which the film redeems itself, though not enough to recommend it, unless you just want to see how John Boyega managed to charm J.J. Abrams’ socks off. There are, it turns out, better vehicles to promote human understanding than corny alien invasion plots.