The Tendo residence is a traditional Japanese house that has been in the Tendo family for generations. The front of the house faces the street, and there is a small garden with a gate that leads to the street.

On the ground floor, there is a genkan (entrance area), a large living room with television, a dining room, a bathroom, and a kitchen that provides easy access to a boiling kettle of water at all times. The living room and dining room are separated by a shoji (sliding paper door) that can be opened to create one large room.

On the first floor, there three bedrooms and a spacious guest room. The rooms belong to the daughters, Kasumi, Nabiki, and Akane. The guest room is usually occupied by Ranma and a Panda. Where Soun’s room is supposed to be beats me… 🤷

The training hall is a large, open room with wooden floors and sliding doors on either side. On the walls of the training hall, there are several banners with japanese writing on them.

The Dojo and the Residence are connected with a covered walkway that extends from the back of the Tendo residence to the front of the dojo, allowing for easy access between the two buildings.

The ensemble is surrounded by a beautiful traditional japanese garden with a pond that can easily accommodate a giant panda plus a boy or girl.

The walls surrounding the property regularly break as well es walls inside the house and power poles in the area around the property but they keep on being miraculously fixed when the next episode is around.

Zum Schwarzen Bären ist der Name des Gasthauses in Hooksiel, den ich an der Küste nicht vermutet hätte. Sei es drum. Parkplätze sind ausreichend vorhanden, denn die Anfahrt mittels ÖPNV ist außerhalb der Touristensaison schwierig.

Innen herrscht die klassische Gasthofeinrichtung vor. Alles mit einem ostfriesischen Touch, sprich in hellblau und weiß gehalten.

Die Karte verspricht auch keine außergewöhnlichen Gerichte und bietet sehr gute Hausmannskost. Wer dies zu schätzen weiß ist hier auf jeden Fall richtig.

This is a collapsible plastic trowel for digging… umm… holes to the ground for you know what when you’re backpacking.

The trowel in it’s extended form. (Credit: Sea To Summit. Fair use.)

Does it work?

Yes, it digs a hole and packs pretty small. This is also a pretty handy thing for shoveling snow to your pot when you’re melting drinking water in the winter.

Is it good?

I wouldn’t go so far. The collapsible structure is not very tight, aka it clatters cheaply. Same thing with the handle container lid.

The verdict

This will do but I would recommend checking out other options as well. For example, there’s an aluminum version of this as well. Maybe that would feel like a proper trowel? Or something else entirely.

This is a sleeping bag liner. Given that Sea To Summit makes excellent sleeping bags, one would expect their liners to fit in perfectly, but unfortunately this isn’t the case.

The liner and it’s stuff bag. (Own work. License: CC-BY-SA.)

The hood

For a longer person this is just too short. The 2 dimensional hood flap will escape from under your head when twisting and turning in the bag. There really should be a 3D sewn hood for it to stay in place (+ a little longer overall).

The bad hood is really a bummer because it’s precisely the head that usually exerts the most dirt to the sleeping bag.

The rest

The lower parts of the liner are ok. It also packs into a really small pouch. Gets all crumbled up as you can see in the picture, but who cares.

The verdict

This isn’t all terrible, but as it’s also quite pricey, try to find something else.

Der großspurige Untertitel “Von den Anfängen bis in die Gegenwart” wird von den Autoren leider nicht erfüllt aber Nichtsdestotrotz handelt es sich bei diesem Buch um gutes Nachschlagewerk zur Stadt Hannover.

Von einzelnen Brunnen über Straßen bis hin zu bedeutenden Persönlichkeiten der Stadt ist alles vertreten, was in dieser Stadt Rang und Namen hat(te).

Lexika laden mich nicht zum schmökern ein aber sind eine gute Möglichkeit um schnell etwas nachzuschlagen, was es im Netz (komischerweise) zu Hannover oft nicht oder nicht ausreichend zu finden gibt.

Insgesamt eine Empfehlung für alle Freunde der Hannoverschen Geschichte. Alle Anderen dürfen es gerne im Buchregal stehen lassen.

I used to use Twitter but only for reading. I don’t know why but on Mastodon I feel more inclined to actually post statuses.

So this is a city that is supposed to be a fortress for humanity. It is a planned city, for the most part based on an octagonal grid pattern.

Basic structure

Gaps in the octagon are used to house water reservoirs which are interconnected by drainage channels. The city seems to be designed to deal with flooding events. Sounds reasonable considereing that nearby old Tokyo is submerged within the pacific ocean (in this distant future of the year 2015, that is). There also seems to be a reliable alarm system. The whole population fits into onsite emergency shelters. Central city highrise building can be submerged into the ground in case of a catastrophe.

Nature & Environment

The outline of the city blocks vaguely resembles crucifix that is 3.5km on its long axis, which appears tiny to me. But I like the idea of living in a tiny superdense city surrounded by a beautfull green mountain range and a scenic crater lake. Too bad they had to destroy part of a natural reserve (and a golf course) to build it.

Transportation

The city seems to have a reliable monorail system but also a dense grid of six lane roads which seems incredibly car oriented for my taste. Who needs that many lanes? Well maybe if the city is designed to be navigated by giant robots to destroy titanic (alien?) monsters that regularly venture to the city center for no reason.

Pupulation

The city is largly populated by officers of the semi military force NERV with cool uniforms and a weired cult like slogan on their logo. In the later parts of the show, the city appears strangly empty and melancholic. I like the vibe of it but I wouldn’t wanna live there.

The first few chapters are a great journey. The last few chapters feel somewhat convoluted…

This is a small camping lantern for lighting your tent (or whatever really). It’s small in size and the light is bright enough for most uses, while also being dimmable. Positioning is really easy, as it has hooks and magnets in the bottom. It’s also water resistant.

There are also other versions than this R+ but I wouldn’t recommend them, as they can’t be charged with a USB. Speaking of which, it’s a bit embarrassing that the USB in use is of the outdated micro variety and not USB-C.

You can set the lantern to any color, which in my opinion is just spurious. Unnecessary complexity that’s introduced just as a marketing “advantage”. Because of this it’s also a bit overpriced.

The big button controls brightness while the small one operates color. (Credit: Black Diamond. Fair use.)

Wrap up

This is a good lantern which has pretty much all the features you’d want, and some useless extra too. It’s not perfect but I would still recommend this product. It’s also widely available around the globe.

The protagonist holds a stressful job in the big city. Circumstances lead them to an extended stay in their old hometown. They rekindle old relationships, form new ones, and ultimately have to make a big decision.

It’s a trope all too familiar from film and television, but less common in video games. Lake, released by Dutch indie studio Gamious in 2021, embraces the premise wholeheartedly.

Holiday job

The year is 1986. You play as Meredith, a 44-year-old programmer who spends her holiday in her old hometown of Providence Oaks, Oregon. It’s not much of a vacation, though! For two weeks, you fill in for your dad at the local post office, delivering letters and packages to members of the small lakeside community. Meanwhile, your parents are on an actual vacation in Florida.

The core mechanic of the game is to drive the Post Office truck, put letters in mailboxes, and deliver packages to homes and businesses. Occasionally, this offers opportunities for interaction with the town’s residents. These interactions are used to advance a slice-of-life narrative.

There’s no larger plot to uncover here, but you can get involved in small town drama. A lumberjack is protesting plans for real estate development; a young couple is on the run from the law; a small video rental store is fighting for its survival. Many of the characters are one-note stereotypes, but it’s still fun to talk to them.

Trucking along

These interaction opportunities are only delivered in small morsels. You spend a lot of your time just driving around and delivering mail without talking to anyone. (Occasionally, Meredith will issue a bit of monologue when putting a letter into a mailbox, like “Here’s your mail”.)

The local radio station helps break the monotony, until you notice that the same handful of songs keep repeating, at which point you’ll want to turn the radio off to keep your sanity.

Meredith is driving her truck around the lake. Get used to the view, because you’ll be seeing it a lot. (Credit: Gamious. Fair use.)

When outside the truck, Meredith can walk slowly or … walk slowly. In theory, you can accelerate her walking speed, but the increase is almost imperceptible.

Lake, then, is a game best played when you want to let your mind wander. The town is pretty to look at, and there are some nice details, like a fox or a deer crossing the road, or changes in the weather.

Uncanny hometown

Overall, however, the game’s reach exceeds its grasp. There’s a reason most “walking simulators” stick to just that: walking. The driving mechanic is awkward and immersion-breaking—you can drive your truck into anything or anyone without as much as a honk or a frown.

On my system, which plays far more demanding games without issues, the game’s frame rate dropped from time to time, and the audio sometimes fell out of sync. There were also occasional visual glitches: cars floating in the air, people disappearing, lights flashing or flickering. Close-ups on characters are straight from the uncanny valley, with dead stares and robotic lip movement.

The game has three different endings; to its credit, you can pursue a male or female love interest. It doesn’t really broach the issue of small town homophobia in a meaningful way, and I was disappointed in the limited choices it ultimately offered for Meredith’s future.

The Verdict

All in all, I cannot recommend Lake: the mail delivery mechanic is too tedious, the technical problems are too numerous, and the story is too underdeveloped. Indie games like Firewatch and have demonstrated that it’s possible to deliver technically excellent narrative experiences with a small team—Lake never reaches that high bar. That said, many folks have found enjoyment in the game, and if you’re really looking for that small town vibe, you may want to check it out.