A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

My older half-sister Victoria sometime in 2014.  Good afternoon, Dear Reader. It’s late afternoon on this Monday, July 20, 2020. As I type this, the temperature outside is 90 ˚ F under mostly cloudy skies. With humidity at 63% and a 7 mph breeze blowing from the east, the feels-like temperature is 101 ˚ F. As much as I’d love to go out for even a brief walk like I used to when I had a home in Miami, I don’t think I could stand that sort of hot mugginess. Anyway, yesterday marked the fifth anniversary of Mom’s death. I have been trying my best to not dwell on things, or to wonder what would have happened if things had somehow been right between my half-sister Victoria and me. I long ago came to accept that my mother’s quality-of-life was almost non-existent during her last two years –   especially the last six months – of her 86 years on Earth and that her passing was a release from the physical and emotional hell she was enduring. I’ve also come to grips with the r...

© 2017 Killerfish Games Do you like military-themed simulations or games based on hypothetical wars? Do you like submarine games? Are you a fan of Tom Clancy’s 1986 novel Red Storm Rising or its computer game spin-off from 1988? Then have I got a computer game recommendation for you! In the early 1990s, back when the original version of MicroProse was the go-to source for user-friendly military simulations and strategy games, I played a game called Red Storm Rising.  Based on the eponymous 1986 novel by the late Tom Clancy, Red Storm Rising was a nuclear sub simulation set in a fictional Third World War between the still-in-existence Soviet Union and the U.S. led North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In it, you played the role of a U.S. Navy officer in command of a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine assigned to seek and destroy surface and submarine units of the Red Banner Northern Fleet to thwart the Soviets’ offensives on land and sea, as well a...

Actual screenshot taken from a Quick Battle scenario I created. That is a Sverdlov- class Soviet light cruiser sailing out to escort a Soviet amphibious force. © 2017 Killerfish Games  Well, as you know, I’ve been dividing my COVID-19 stay-at-home time between writing on my two blogs and entertaining myself as best I can without being online. This means that I’ve been getting back to reading on a more-or-less regular basis, which is something I have not done since Mom got sick in 2010 and endured five hellish years struggling with a long – and eventually futile – rehabilitation effort after back surgery and the devastating effects of dementia. Between dealing with the legal, financial, and emotional repercussions of Mom’s death in 2015 and the life changes that followed, I really haven’t made much of an effort to return to my old routine of reading something at least once a day. I’ve also started gaming again, although I no longer do marathon sessions where I’ll star...

© 2017 Killerfish Games Between the Devil and the Deep Blue If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that I've long been a fan of military-themed computer games, especially those that simulate specific weapons systems, such as aircraft ( F-15 Strike Eagle III ) armored fighting vehicles ( M-1 Tank Platoon ) and warships ( Strike Fleet, Destroyer ). Although my top favorite category of military-themed computer games is "flight simulations," a close second is the submarine simulation genre. Ever since I watched Irwin Allen's 1960s TV series  Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea  and classic movies such as  Destination: Tokyo, Operation Pacific, Run Silent, Run Deep,  and  The Enemy Below  (which is technically a destroyer-vs.-sub film) ,  I have long been fascinated by undersea warfare ﹘   a fascination that was rekindled in the mid-1980s by two novels written by the late Tom Clancy:  The Hunt for Red October  and...