Cav's Place

After a wait of more than four years, Nightwish have finally released their seventh album. It was supposed to be titled Imaginarium, but shortly before release they were asked to change the name in order to avoid confusion with other things with the same name, so it became Imaginaerum. The name of the last song has also been changed to reflect this, though the word “imaginarium” is still found in the lyrics of Storytime, which was selected as the first single.
The original plan Tuomas had was to film a video for every single song, all of these videos having a common theme, which would be best understood by watching all of them in order. However, once Stobe Harju, who should have directed these videos, heard of it, that crazy plan evolved even further. As such, the album will be followed, most likely in the spring of 2012, by a movie with the same name, for which it is essentially a soundtrack, though some changes have been made to the songs in order to make them fit the action of the movie better.
But I should stop here, as this post should in fact be a song-by-song review of the album, which I have been listening to for the past four days. It’s the first time I’m trying something like this, so I’ll just be taking the songs one by one and writing my very honest but purely personal and highly subjective opinion of each. If that’s all right with you, keep on reading. If you were expecting or desiring something else, move along now, because you won’t find it here.

The first song, Taikatalvi, is one I tend to ignore. It’s supposed to be an intro, but it seems to be something in between, too much for an intro and too little for an actual song. The music itself is nice enough once the lyrics end, but I can’t get much out of it before that. A large part of the reason why that happens is likely the fact that it’s in Finnish, so I can’t understand what’s being said, but I get the feeling that I wouldn’t care for it even if I did. The music box sound it starts with, before the orchestra steps in, adds to the feeling that it’s a bedtime story for a child, which is another thing that bothers me, for quite a few reasons, not particularly related to the song itself.
Then we have Storytime, which has already been released as a single. It seems to me to be the most commercial song on the album and quite similar to Amaranth in that way. It’s reasonably catchy, but otherwise it didn’t impress me when I first heard the single version and the longer album version doesn’t impress me either, instead appearing more like something that had to be included for the sake of the record labels, so Tuomas could get them out of his hair and be free to work his magic on the rest of the album. Taken like that, a bone thrown for the suits to chew on, it’s good enough, but let’s just let them play with it while we move on.
I’m tempted to say that the album actually starts with the third song, Ghost River. It’s likely the harshest and heaviest song on the album and, despite being nothing compared to Dark Passion Play‘s Master Passion Greed, my initial reaction was to reject it for that reason. Listening to it once was enough for the chorus to burn itself into my mind, but I had to listen to the entire album a few times before allowing myself to open up to this song. Once that happened, I saw its purpose and started liking it more and more. It’s not one of my favorites, but I can see myself looking for it in my playlist while angry or scared for quite some time to come. The lyrics certainly help as well when it comes to seeing it fit for such a purpose.
By contrast, Slow, Love, Slow is likely the most unusual song on the album. The other songs are quite different from each other as well, but this particular one is unlike anything Nightwish has ever done before. When I first heard it, I was puzzled and tended to reject it, so at that point I feared that I wouldn’t like the album at all, the first four songs all seeming inadequate from my point of view. However, as in the case of Ghost River, listening to the whole album a few more times made me see this song’s value and purpose as well. It’s not a sound I’d particularly care about, but the song is better suited for your mind’s eye than your ears, as it intends to create a certain atmosphere and does so perfectly. In addition, a line like “only the weak are not lonely” could be enough to win me over on its own, plus that Anette‘s voice sounds surprisingly good on it, being different in a good way from what I was expecting.
I Want My Tears Back was the first song I liked right away, without needing to listen to it multiple times first. The guitars are actually quite angry and the vocals can get there as well, but the Celtic portions have been mixed wonderfully into it, taking away that edge and creating a simply brilliant whole. Anette again sounds surprisingly well and the lyrics can paint pictures faster than your mind can process them. This is where the album, the movie, the spirit of Nightwish and what we know of Tuomas truly tie together. It’s the first song I liked right away and also the point where this album grabbed hold of me and never let go. From this point forward, expect magic.
Once hooked by the previous song, Imaginaerum will throw you straight into a carnival of horrors with Scaretale. Anette’s voice, now depicting an evil queen who has you in her clutches, again fits the song just perfectly, and Marco completes the picture like he was born specifically for it. There may be one or two places where the guitars have been allowed to take center stage for just a little too long, but for nearly all of the song’s seven and a half minutes music and lyrics blend again to put images into your awestruck mind. It’s creepy, it’s epic, it’s memorable and absolutely, completely brilliant.
And then you suddenly find yourself in the desert. Arabesque is the album’s first instrumental track and is performed strictly by the orchestra and the choir, without any members of the band. Yet even without words it paints a vivid picture, which is all the more shocking when it’s so different from the one painted by the previous song, or in fact by any of the previous songs. At first glance, you could be tempted to say that it doesn’t fit with the rest of the album, but then you realize that the album is held together by imagination, fantasy and storytelling. Are not the Arabians known for all of these?
The next song, Turn Loose the Mermaids, reminds me of The Islander. It’s a soft, melancholy tune, sung entirely by Anette, whose voice again fits it like a glove. I know I keep saying that, but it’s true for most of the songs, and perhaps even more so for this one, and I was surprised to say the least, seeing as I had relatively low expectations from her. You can simply close your eyes and let her voice and the beautiful music accompanying it carry you away, allowing new images and emotions to fill and calm your mind and soul. After a carnival of horrors and the Arabian desert, it was perhaps time for some rest.
And that’s exactly what the following song, Rest Calm, tells us. However, the song itself is anything but calm or restful. During the first half, Marco’s voice is actually rather angry and the guitars carry a punch, the only calm and restful moments being the two times Anette sings the chorus alone. And then you get to the second half, which consists of nothing but the chorus being repeated several times, delivering an increasing amount of energy. At first it’s still soft and soothing, sung by Anette and a children’s choir, but then Marco joins in and seems to take charge, with the orchestra and the drums becoming more and more powerful with each repetition. It’s supposed to present the end of the journey, the final moments before death, yet it feels more like a rebirth. Which, perhaps, it is.
However, after recharging us with energy, Imaginaerum takes us to another soft and lovely song, The Crow, the Owl and the Dove. It features the vocal talent of Troy Donockley and again makes me think of The Islander, particularly due to the sound of acoustic guitars. Also like The Islander, it was composed by Marco, so the connections are obvious, as is its place in the album, at least musically. No matter how energized we might have been after the end of the previous song, it signified death, and death brings rest and peace, which is exactly what we get. On the other hand, I’m still not quite sure how the lyrics fit into the story at this specific point, though in themselves they’re every bit as deep and meaningful as anyone could expect. I’m also still wondering about the meaning of those two lines that aren’t in English.
But those questions are forgotten as soon as Last Ride of the Day starts. It’s the proper conclusion to the album’s story and, while only four and a half minutes long, it’s every bit the rollercoaster ride it means to represent. Mostly energizing, but alternating in intensity, having a few moments when it seems to almost die down only to suddenly pick itself back up and throw you with all its force past the next peak. It’s the kind of song to listen to when you need to get yourself going, especially if you also pay some attention to the lyrics, which will once again paint pictures faster than your mind can register them. I don’t exactly agree with the meaning behind those lyrics, but that was a given, seeing as the album is supposed to be a celebration of life and its beauty.

What could possibly follow after the conclusion of the story? The conclusion of the album, and perhaps of life, which I’m going to make a separate section for because it’s a world apart from the rest. If this album would have ended before Song of Myself, it would have still been a very good album, it would have still been a testament to the talent of one of the greatest living composers and lyricists. However, it would have been a regular album, made up of songs. The songs may have a somewhat common theme, most of them may be very good, they may leave an impression on you, may make you dream or remember, may energize or depress, soothe or anger, but they’d still just be songs. This is more than that.
What could be said about Song of Myself to do it justice? I simply don’t know. It’s 13 and a half minutes long and so much is going on in it that I don’t even know where to begin. I’m not even sure if it wouldn’t be better to just read the lyrics and let them sink in before listening to the song, especially since the second half is a simple recitation, on many voices, on top of a very soft orchestral background. At first I thought that it was a portion of the original poem, but it’s not. The quality and depth of the lyrics is absolutely outstanding in itself, and I’m sure that in fact nobody but Tuomas himself could ever find all the references and meanings hidden inside them, past the obvious ones.
As I said, this is more than a song, it’s an experience. You simply have to listen to it, read the lyrics, let it all sink in, course through your body, mind and soul and forever leave its mark on you. It’s far more than the sum of its parts, and if it won’t move you to tears then… Well, then nothing I say will change that, but I have to wonder what’s so terribly broken inside you to cause such a lack of reaction. I only know what’s broken inside me to make me only choke on tears that only moisten my eyes but will not come out…
The only bad thing I can say about it is that it makes me miss Tarja. Only after noticing that Anette’s voice doesn’t fit this song, which still took me some time, did I notice a couple, and just a couple, of other moments, on other songs, where she sounds more or less like I expected her to, which isn’t exactly a good thing. All I can say is that, overall, the rest of the album is so wonderfully tailored to Anette’s voice that I’m quite sure it sounds significantly better like this than if Tarja would try to sing it. However, something as massive, as epic, as extraordinary as Song of Myself simply begs for Tarja’s voice… Then again, perhaps it’s better that she’s not singing it. Humans aren’t meant for perfection, so if we were to hear it we all might have simply broken down, never to recover.
And after all of this, what could I still say about the last song, Imaginaerum, which is in fact the final portion of Song of Myself, separated due to the requirements of the movie? It’s an instrumental piece, essentially made of portions of all other songs and arranged by Pip Williams. It’s meant to be the credits song of the movie, but if I were to also guess at its purpose in the album I’ll say that it’s yet another way to remind us to dream. It’s supposed to be a memory of imagination, a dream of a fantasy. And after Song of Myself, or more exactly after the other parts of Song of Myself, it fits wonderfully.

Perhaps I criticized a few little things too much, or pointed out my initial impression too much instead of the fact that I’ve been more or less listening to this album for four days straight and it just seems to keep getting better. Or perhaps I let myself get carried away with what impressed and awed me and forgot to mention other details that may be more meaningful. But I simply wrote what I felt, what it made me feel.
This is not the Nightwish that brought me to metal, at the end of a process that required some four years. This is not the Nightwish that made a song I fell back to without fail whenever I was in any sort of negative mood for over a full year, which was obviously also the first song I fell back to after Andra left. This is not the Nightwish that made a song that made me cry my eyes out for 40 full minutes, hugging myself and rocking back and forth, only stopping because I was walked in on and asked what was I doing. This is not the Nightwish that made an album I gave a huge personal significance to for years. However, in every way except the female vocals, this Nightwish is significantly better than that Nightwish. And when even that single issue is mitigated close to perfection on all but one of the songs, we perhaps need to be thankful that it exists. Otherwise, as I said, we might have found ourselves in the presence of true perfection and broken down as a result, never to recover.

Imaginaerum is an absolute masterpiece to which my words could never do justice. Not to diminish the merits of all the others, I must say that it’s yet another testament to the genius of Tuomas Holopainen, who is undoubtedly one of the very best composers and lyricists alive today. No amount of work or training could ever result in something like this without an inhuman amount of talent. And likely no amount of talent could ever result in something like this without certain life experiences meant to trigger such an outpouring of meaning and emotion. Unfortunately, those experiences could not be pleasant, as the best art is always born of pain. However, what Imaginaerum reminds us is that there’s always a hope for better days. As long as we can still imagine, as long as we still remember how to dream, we can still hope that one day it’ll all be worth it. And we can still hope for that one moment of perfection… Even if it’ll be our last.

No, the three things mentioned in the title don’t exactly have anything to do with each other. They’re simply what this post will be about, being the things that have been on my mind for the past couple of days… Actually, some of the things that have been on my mind for the past couple of days, but I won’t be writing about the rest now. A couple of those deserve posts of their own anyway, so maybe I’ll get around to it at some point in the near future.

To start with the first issue, my computer’s been causing trouble again. The problems seemed gone for a while, as there had been no more of those freezes for a good two months, but then it happened again and kept getting worse. I ended up experiencing those problems several times over the past month, culminating with having it happen twice yesterday. The last of the two was also way worse than before, probably because I had recently managed to reboot normally once, after something like this happened, and tried to repeat what I did that time but ended up getting errors, making my system become almost completely unresponsive and obviously making it worse. This seemed to result in some corrupt settings which couldn’t even be changed back and quite a mess with BitDefender.
Now it’s quite obvious that BitDefender is the cause of these freezes, which tends to be a rule towards the end of a version’s active lifespan, starting around the time the beta for the next version becomes available. In previous years they only lasted until the new version was released, because I upgraded immediately and these problems vanished, though they tended to be replaced by others, everything finally getting smoothed out only around the end of the year. However, I really don’t like the fact that they took the control away from the user even more in the latest version, not to mention that their “next generation” project would give the user next to no control at all, so this time I didn’t upgrade and was obviously left with these issues.
On the other hand, while it’s obviously the key, it’s equally obvious that it’s not just BitDefender that causes it all to happen, as another clear requirement is having a browser open at the time. Whether that has to be Internet Explorer specifically or it could be any other browser it interacts with, I don’t know, though I do know that it uses some Internet Explorer components regardless of what your default browser is. On top of that, a number of other factors, which I was never able to fully identify, also contribute to it, as the likelihood of such freezes drastically increases when I’m experiencing connection problems, when Flash objects are loading, as well as when I open or close a browser tab just when BitDefender is checking for or installing an update. A combination of at least most of these elements seems to usually be required to cause the problem, though probably not quite always.

Either way, I absolutely had to do something about it. I first tried to repair BitDefender, but that only resulted in a bunch of errors, so I had to take the longer but clearly better route. After solving the issue with the Internet Explorer settings under safe mode, I downloaded and installed the latest version of CCleaner, ran the latest version of the BitDefender Uninstall Tool under safe mode, and then ran CCleaner to clean up the remaining registry entries, as well as a few other things it noticed. Afterwards, I reinstalled BitDefender, went through the settings again, updated, rebooted, updated again and rebooted again.
Whether that actually solved the problem or just bought me some more time, I don’t know yet, but at least everything seems fine for the moment and my computer actually seems a tiny bit faster than before. If the issues were caused by some faulty update or simply by the number of updates, for BitDefender as well as for the programs it interacts with, that had piled up and had somehow accumulated very tiny issues in the process, resulting in a sort of death by a thousand cuts, they should be solved. If not and it’s an actual issue with this version of BitDefender, it’ll happen again and I doubt I’ll be able to get rid of it, seeing as they won’t be updating it anymore now that a new version is out. And I still have a paid license valid for close to two years, which makes it even more unpleasant.

One thing that I was worried about when I noticed that corruption was that I never included the Tropico 3 user data among what is automatically backed up every morning and I recently started playing through the Absolute Power campaign, completing six of its ten missions over the past few days. Of course, that’s only a problem due to this trend that I keep noticing in recent years, games saving things into the user folder instead of their own folder. It’s infuriating and likely to cause all sorts of problems, but they seem to be doing it more and more.
Thankfully, nothing seems wrong with that, so I won’t have to go through those scenarios again and I’m actually likely to finish another game this year. I’ll be writing a review once that happens, and then probably look into Tropico 4 as well. Not right away, especially since I see it’s mostly an enhanced remake of Tropico 3, but maybe a year or so from now it’ll be a good idea to play it. There should probably be an expansion by then as well.

And for the end of this post I’ll move away from computers and on to music. Yes, Nightwish finally released their seventh album, Imaginaerum. I have listened to it start to end several times already and all I’m going to say right now is that it’s likely their best yet in every way except the obvious one, namely the female vocals. But I’ll do something I never did before and write a song-by-song review of it, likely by the end of the week, so I’ll leave any other opinions for that and just get back to listening to it now.

With the launch of two very ambitious missions, this month should have been incredibly exciting for the future of Mars exploration. Unfortunately, while Curiosity started its journey without problems, Phobos-Grunt failed to do so and is now very likely to fall back to Earth. Even worse, its fuel tanks are filled with several tons of highly toxic substances, which would obviously cause even worse problems upon impact if they would survive reentry, on top of the obvious ones caused by huge objects falling from the sky.

I watched the launch of Curiosity on-line yesterday and was left wondering what amount of planning and work could make something like this appear actually quite boring. Everything seemed to go perfectly even in spite of the signal loss experienced for long stretches of time, which meant that the flight and spacecraft parameters could only be verified intermittently. I’m sure that the people from NASA were quite stressed over it, but from where I was sitting, casually watching the broadcast on my computer, everything appeared to go so smoothly that it was almost an anticlimax, the lack of data making it even more boring, as there was nothing to see for a good part of the 45 minutes between launch and the spacecraft’s separation from the Centaur upper stage.
Granted that the hard part is still ahead, the landing standing out as particularly difficult due to the ingenious but also complicated and risky landing system, never before used during a mission. Considering the problems previously experienced during attempted landings on Mars, that’s guaranteed to be an extremely tense moment and I wouldn’t be particularly surprised if it’ll fail in some way. On the other hand, since we’re talking about NASA, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’ll succeed perfectly either. All I know right now is that, if I’ll still be around and able to do so, I’ll be following the developments as closely as possible next August and hoping for the best.

The only real problem I have with this mission is the nuclear generator used for the rover when we can’t completely rule out the possibility of any sort of life still existing on Mars, and especially at a time when we really need to make the move towards green and sustainable energy here on Earth, which is a process that could be greatly aided by developments initially meant for space exploration missions. After all, Opportunity is still making its way around Mars powered by nothing but solar panels, seven years and ten months into a mission originally supposed to last for only three months, not to mention that Juno is also supposed to be able to power itself with nothing but solar panels as it orbits around Jupiter, so it is possible!
I’m not saying that this mission’s goals could have currently been achieved without the use of a nuclear generator. Considering Curiosity’s size and weight, the amount of power required by its instruments and the selected landing site, that’d have quite obviously been impossible. However, I believe that the priority should have been figuring out how much could be achieved without risking to contaminate another world and aiming only for that. Putting something like this on a planet where some sort of life could possibly still exist, and also a planet that we plan to colonize in the not too distant future, is extremely unwise. For one, the landing itself could result in a disaster, and then it’s quite obvious that there is a significant risk of some sort of radioactive leak at some point in the future, even if long after the rover will cease to function.
Yes, there have been other probes sent to Mars which used nuclear generators, so there is likely some contamination already, plus that a fair amount of solar radiation does reach Mars’ surface, but we shouldn’t add to it, particularly when we’re specifically looking for spots where the right conditions for life could have existed. We should know better now than we did in the past, so we shouldn’t keep messing with other worlds when we’re not absolutely certain that they are not home to any life forms whatsoever. We should be trying to figure out how to fix the damage we have already done, and are still doing, to this one, not expand this negative influence to others as well.

But enough about Curiosity. The other important event related to the exploration of Mars that took place this month should have been the launch of Phobos-Grunt, the main goal of which was to land on Phobos, scoop up some soil samples and then send them back to Earth. Unfortunately, the only successful part of the mission was the actual launch. The spacecraft was successfully placed in Earth orbit, but then neither of the two planned upper stage burns meant to take it towards Mars took place. As a result, it is still orbiting the Earth and, according to current estimates, likely to reenter the atmosphere in early 2012, still carrying several tons of highly toxic fuels.
The only good news was that ESA successfully established contact and briefly communicated with the spacecraft, proving that it was still operational a few days ago. However, further attempts resulted in as many failures, reducing the already very slim hopes of regaining any control over the spacecraft even further. What this means for us is that it’s no longer a question of how much knowledge could humanity still gain from this mission, but of how much can we reduce the risks of it causing any significant damage when it’ll fall back down, likely a month or two from now.

In the end, we have a lot to look forward to, assuming Curiosity will manage to land and carry out its mission. And I’m still wondering how much planning and effort it takes to make launching what’s essentially a car to Mars look boring. Far more than the Russians were willing and able to put into poor Phobos-Grunt, obviously, as they certainly made it very interesting. But it’s probably better than if it would have happened the other way around, as having Curiosity and its nuclear reactor fall from the sky in a random location would probably have ended up causing even more harm than Phobos-Grunt and its highly toxic fuel will, assuming any of it will make it back down in one piece.

It’s always “fun” to try to piece together where the fuck I was after a failed “trip” through the city, but this time it was actually surprisingly easy to make a map. So now I’ll just tell you exactly what happened yesterday and rely on the marked spots on that map to make it easier to understand. Not that anybody’d be interested, of course, but I may want to keep this for my own reference and either way I really need to write something here, seeing that I once again failed to do so this week before today.

The plan was to go check out a book fair, which is taking place at Romexpo (2), but I started completely wrong, due to basing the whole “travel plan” on an obviously completely false memory when I left. You see, I missed this year’s summer book fair, so the last time I was in the area was last summer and my mind confused some things. I knew that I hopped off something to get there before, I knew that I could take the metro to get to Herastrau Park and also knew that the entrance to Romexpo was on the opposite side of a square from the entrance to Herastrau Park, which is the big green area with the trees and the lake in the upper-right part of that map, not including the sports complex on its left. From these three things, my mind became convinced that I just had to take the metro to Charles de Gaulle Square (1) and I’ll be there. However, the square I needed to get to was Free Press Square, which is right at the top of that map also has an entrance to Herastrau Park, but where the metro doesn’t go.
The result of that mess was that I hopped on the metro, switched lines at Victory Square (6) and hopped off one stop later, at Charles de Gaulle Square. I saw the park entrance and, since I knew that the Romexpo entrance was on the opposite side of the square, I started crossing those streets. Of course, when I got to the other side, I saw nothing of the kind. All that was left was to look around in confusion and keep making my way around until I found myself back where I started. Only then did I realize that the starting assumption was wrong, but still thought that I could reach Romexpo by metro, so was wondering whether I should just hop back in, use up another trip on my card for just one more stop, but get there quickly and without any risk of getting lost. Lucky I didn’t, because that would have taken me to the other side of the park, outside of the pictured piece of map and well to the right. Never been there before, so if I’d have hopped off there I’d have really been lost.
After deciding against that course of action, I tried to see the map in my mind and said all right, I need to go up and left, so let’s take it geometrically. Do I try to cross through the park? No, next to no chance of finding my way. All right then, go around, but what’s the priority? Left, probably, I told myself, picking the way to go according to that and eventually making my way to the Arch of Triumph (3), before which there was a sign saying go right for Romexpo. That made perfect sense, geometrically, so I thought it should be easy enough from that point forward.
Well, it wasn’t. When I looked, I saw Kiseleff Boulevard and my mind again made a wrong connection, with the Kiseleff Park, which is the green area with trees in the bottom-right part of that map. That should go to show that I was already in quite a state at that point, because I normally know where Kiseleff Boulevard is and where it goes, so if I think about it now it’s quite strange that I said to myself that I couldn’t possibly need to go there because that’s in the opposite direction of where I want to go, so perhaps the sign meant to take the second right, as you go around the square.
So I did, stared in confusion at the sports complex and, knowing that Kiseleff Boulevard was going right and thinking that I had to go in the opposite direction of that, I turned left at the first good opportunity (4), though I could have yet saved it at that point if I’d have turned the other way instead. The fact that turning left essentially meant that I was going back was obviously quite lost on me at the time, and so was the fact that I saw trams going to Free Press Square pass by in the opposite direction. Then again, since I couldn’t see what it said on the ones going in the opposite direction, I wasn’t sure whether they were going to or coming from it. Got the feeling that I really should turn back and go the other way, but was already in damage limitation mode at that point. It was starting to get a little dark and I just wanted to figure out where the fuck I was first, as I had never been in that area before, left of the road that connects the Kiseleff and Herastrau parks on the left side, and at that point nothing was familiar.
So I just winged it, trying to stick to major roads, which I clearly did, and keeping an eye for major intersections and metro stations. At some point I saw a sign pointing towards Victory Square, which was at least familiar, if obviously the wrong way, so I went the way it pointed until something just seemed all wrong and I made yet another very wrong turn (5). Also somehow managed to miss Ion Mincu Street, which borders Kiseleff Park to the north and which I knew. I remember noticing all other street names as I passed by them, but not that one. Maybe that “entrance” towards it has another name, maybe there was no sign or maybe a car distracted me as I crossed, but I somehow missed just the one street which could have told me where I was. That’d have prevented some more confusion, but as it was I kept going and then turned wrong… Again.
Still, I quickly became aware that I was heading the wrong way and that I should make a left at the first good opportunity, so I did that and eventually reached Victory Square and the metro station there when it was already quite dark. Then again, after checking the map I saw that there was a metro station straight ahead as well, if I wouldn’t have turned left where I did, but I had never been in that area, so I could have gotten all confused again before reaching it.

In the end, all’s well that ends well, but I really should be more careful about planning my trips! Not that it was the worst such “adventure” so far, that “title” probably going to the first time I made my way to Carol Park on my own, on foot. That resulted in me getting there well enough, but somehow getting lost in pretty much every way possible on the way back, making for a total of some six hours spent walking. For comparison, this only took a little over two hours, from the moment I went out the door and until I got back, so including the time spent on the metro. However, all of it happened under a constant light rain and the fact that it was quickly getting dark made it far more worrying than it would have been otherwise.

That’s the number of non-personal posts on my mind, of course. I was saying that I had two such posts on my mind, wrote one of them, but now there are three left. Admittedly, it just struck me that I should write one of them while preparing to write this one, after I had already come up with the title. Still, at least it means that I’m back to having plenty of ideas, if the drive and the ability to put them into words is still lacking. For a while I was finding myself rather short of ideas as well, which was troubling.
Until about one hour before I started writing this post, I fully meant to write one of the two that I had on my mind at the time, but realized that it was highly unlikely to turn out reasonably enough. Besides, my ISP seems to be having some issues again today and trying to write a non-personal post automatically meant fighting with it for hours and possibly rushing to post it shortly before midnight, at which time I just might not be able to, considering the issues, so found another excuse in that, saying I’d better not risk it.

Otherwise, there have been new developments regarding the various ongoing situations, but none of them good, so I won’t get into any of that at this time, especially since nothing major seems to have happened just yet. When something will, you’ll probably find out about it here, assuming I’ll somehow still be able to function enough to write about it, which will depend almost exclusively on exactly what will happen.
Or, all right, just so I’ll actually say something in this post, I’ll move away from said ongoing situations and say that I finally finished the original campaign of Tropico 3. Somehow completed that last scenario in September of 1985, so over four years before the deadline, and on the first try, despite not thinking it possible until I got past 1980. I had a plan from the start and steadily worked on it for 30 game years, but once it started working, it really started working! Admittedly, I once had to reload an earlier save due to getting myself into a tight spot, but this was nothing like that terrible Viva Tropico scenario, which I had to restart several times. (Actually, had to load an earlier save twice, but the second time was because the game froze, which was actually the first time it happened, and this shouldn’t count because I more or less did the same things I had done since the last autosave.)

And this is just about it for this week. Once again, I’m hoping that next week I’ll somehow manage to write two serious and non-personal posts, whether or not they’ll include any of the three that are currently on my mind. Of course, I highly doubt it’ll happen, but at least I have a much greater chance of achieving that than any of the other things I’m striving and hoping for, so I should probably at least start here and then see about everything else… Or something to that effect.