Prime Video Deal in time for The Tomorrow War

I love me some cheesy time travel movies. And I hear The Tomorrow War delivers. 

Amazon is offering a free trial for Amazon Prime which includes Amazon Videos. The trial should grant enough time to watch not only The Tomorrow War, but many other offerings. Go ahead and give it a try. 

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Audible Deal

Amazon is offering a couple of deals on Audible right now. Audible Plus, because why wouldn't some add "Plus" to the name of a product, is $7.95. Click this link to Try Audible Plus 

Plus Premium is $14.95 a month.Try Audible Premium Plus and Get Up to Two Free Audiobooks during your first month. Don't worry, unused credits roll over each month.

Both pair nicely with a Fire. I have a seven inch, but the 8" is a steal, too. 

Podcast Time Crunch: The Best Hour (or longer) Podcasts

I've been listening to podcasts for decades. It started with Astronomy Cast and exploded from there. 

I have a couple categories of podcasts I enjoy. Many are about gaming, but the rest cover science, history, travel and entertainment. 

Current thinking on podcasts is that 15 to 30 minutes is best. I'm inclined to agree, but my habits are not rational. Many of my favorites are all at or over an hour in length. 

Let's start with the shortest, The Dis Unplugged hovers at about an hour. This one is a weekly round table show on all things Walt Disney World. Hosted by Dreams Unlimited Travel, this podcast is definitely an ensemble performance. I love hearing all the different perspectives. It's been going on for years and they have a back catalog of over 1000 episodes. 

The Dreams Unlimited gang has many shows in different travel locations. They cover Universal, Disneyland, Disney World and tangentially, many other places. I tune in for the main show plus The Best and Worst of Walt Disney World and Si, Disney, their Spanish language show. 

SI, Disney isn't a translation of other shows, it has completely different hosts and guests and offers a more global look at the House of Mouse. Most Si, Disney episodes are under and hour but a few make the hour mark. They speak nice and slow which is great for me. My Spanish comprehension skills are years out of date. Unfortunately, it's a Youtube only experience, so I have to plan ahead if I want to listen offline. 

Moving on, The History of English podcast tells the epic story of the English language. It started off at about 45 minutes but now tops out at around at hour and 10 minutes. Kevin Stroud is an excellent host for this history focused romp through the English language. Mr. Stroud starts off way back in prehistory with a multi-episode arc on Proto-Indo-European languages. Being a history of English, he rapidly blows through Latin, proto-Germanic, and other languages on the way to French, which is how many Latin terms came to the English language. He touches on linguistics, but this commentary runs along side the history of the people who made English what it is. 

Additionally, he has an audio book, The History of the Alphabet. You can get it on Youtube Music for free with your monthly subscription or purchase it at retailers like Amazon. 

Froth's Thought Eater podcast was an excellent blogroll of the OSR and D&D world. Sadly, he has his last show in the can. However, he has 200+ episodes in his catalog, so start listening now before he starts recording again. No promises here, but he has the blog at the link above and I wouldn't be surprised if we got a 5 minute update from time to time. 

Jeremy "Froth" Smith's format is a round the blogosphere run down on everything happening in the OSR and gaming. It's quite the show. 

(I have to say thank you to Jermey for all of the times he mentioned my website, These Old Games. Every time made my week... or more. Thank you, again.) 

I've written about Safco Cast, the Traveller game themed show. This baby tops out at 90 minutes and it is excellent. Hosted Jeff Koenig and Bob Loftin, the back and forth chat reminds me of Astronomy Cast's Pamela and Fraser. But that's not all, they do interviews and game recaps. It's awesome!. 

I have to be honest, I suck at Traveller. I don't play it unless I'm a part of group of longtime players. I don't understand one bit of it, but Jeff and Bob make me want to grok it. I sort of get it when listening and incorporating some of the ideas and methods used for the game always seems to improve my D&D campaigns. 

Finally, the big one. 

Mike Rowe's The Way I Heard it started as a short 15 minute, Paul Harvey style podcast that morphed into so much more. Hovering around 90 minute mark, the show includes great stories and writing plus interviews on a great number of subjects. In addition to the regular stories and guests, Mike has been reading his autobiography chapter by chapter. 

Tune and engage, it's a lot of fun. 

Next week, I'll be looking at some other, shorter podcasts. 

Cool Little Modding Chromebook at NewEgg.

There is really not much to Chromebooks. They're solid little machines for modest work with cloud based apps. But this one caught my eye. It's an 11.6 inch machine with 16 GB of storage and 4 GB of ram. It's not much to look at, but at less than 200 bucks, it might be worth getting for modding practice. 

I would totally take this thing apart to see what I could do with the parts. Click the image below to see it on NewEgg. 

I also found one on Amazon for slightly cheaper, which makes the idea of picking one up more attractive. 

Kindle Sale!

Amazon is running a sale on Kindles. It's too good to pass up. They have the basic 7" Fire for $40, the 8" for $65 and the 10" at $95.00.

Personally, I loaded one of the 7" Fires out as a mini laptop. I picked up a great keyboard, stylus and Fire for less than $100. If only I had waited.  

But you don't have to wait. The deal is on now. Check it out. 

Christmas Request - The Falcon

My daughter has asked for the Falcon for Christmas.

Click to Purchase

I found one over at Lego.com. It comes 1353 including 7 mini-figures from the Solo Movie. 

I'm not sure if this is the right one. Knowing my daughter, she likely means the larger set - 7965. Lego.com lists it as hard to find, but I found it at Amazon.

This set has 6 mini-figures and 1254 pieces. I don't know...

A Chrome for 2021

Back in July, I posted about getting a new Chromebook. 

My current Chromebook is an Acer C710-2487 from Feb 2013. I've gotten far more years out this thing than I expected. And back in July, I really thought I needed an newer machine. 

Now, remember my main website is Theseoldgames.com. I use really old and odd equipment. "New" isn't a thing with me. I asked myself, how many times do I go mobile with a laptop or tablet and have to have the latest, greatest. 

It turns out that for 2020, that's zero times. I hauled the ol' C710 into the backyard for Zoom meetings, no problem. I keep a copy of every assignment for school on my Google Drive. In 2019, there was one assignment where I needed to edit or draw a picture. And I did that with a 10 year old desktop. 

I don't NEED a new laptop, I merely want one. Having said that, it really narrows the range down. 

I need to do some comparison shopping. I have a heavy bias towards Acer and ASUS. Those are my last to laptops and they are still running. Since it is something I want, I should jetision my old price limit of 400 bucks. 

I like compact designs so I want to get between a 11 and 13 inch screen. This machine has 4Gb of memory and I can't see going less than that. I also don't want a wacked out system with 6Gb, so I guess I want 8 or more. I already have a couple of TB drives and a good system for backups, so I don't have any concerns about storage space. I want another laptop that lasts 5 years or more. 

A couple of machines keep rising to the top of the list. 

These are all nicely appointed machines, which may lack a little storage that I desire, but each also has two modes of use: laptop or flip/tent mode. I think this would pair nicely with my method of use, drawing, reference images and a wacom tablet. 

Recently, I suffered a user induced setback where I wiped my system and all of my backups. It's a pain, I lost some software that I had been using and for whatever reason, I can't get JAVA installed correctly. The only backup of this exists on my Acer C710. So, until I get over this hurdle, I need to keep this machine in operation at least until I can purchase a new machine. Since this is a user error and not a machine error, it's kind of debatable if a new machine can and will help me. 

I decided to upgrade the memory in this Acer and goofed twice. I know... I know. 

First I ordered the completely wrong memory chip: 

Then I ordered the right chip in the wrong size.
What I need is:

I am not suggesting you order the wrong memory like me, I just want to report what great vendors these guys are. It's hard to judge by Amazon stars and reviews, but I had a great experience with both Arch Memory and Kingston. Kingston refunded me on return and Arch ripped out an order in just a few days. It was really nice to work with such responsive companies.