A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

A glimpse at a part of my Blu-ray collection, courtesy of my member page at Blu-ray.com. Some of the movies I own in 2019 were ones that I bought for Mom during her last four years; I kept them for sentimental reasons.  Hello and welcome once again to Bloggin' On, the "blog-within-a-blog" section of A Certain Point of View. It's Tuesday, November 25, and as I write this it is mid-afternoon here in my corner of Florida. The weather outside is nice, right now it's mostly sunny and the temperature is 72℉ (22℃); the low is expected to reach 51℉ (10℃) tonight, but I don't foresee myself venturing outside for any reason. I should at least try to sit out on the front porch with a book and get a bit of fresh air and sun, but I don't have any desire to do so. A little while ago I saw on my Amazon account that the home media release of  It: Chapter Two is available for pre-order, so I did that. Warner Bros. is dropping the various videodisc (Blu-ray, 4K UHD

Hello and welcome to another edition of Old Gamers Never Die, the section of A Certain Point of View in which I talk about one of my long-time hobbies - computer games. In this installment, I'll review Order of Battle: World War II, a turn-based strategy game developed four years ago by Britain's The Artistocrats and Slitherine Ltd.,  and published by Matrix Games. Order of Battle: World War II is touted by its developer as the spiritual heir to Panzer General, a 1994 operational-level PC game published by the now-closed Strategic Simulations Inc. of Mountain View, California. Like Panzer General and its sequels, Order of Battle allows players to command either Allied or Axis units in either single battles or campaigns that take place in all the major theaters of the Second World War. Order of Battle consists of a basic free-to-play game called Boot Camp, which is a single campaign in which the player takes command of American land, sea, and air units during a series of t

My former neighborhood, as seen in Google Maps. Contrary to what the satellite photo shows, there is no restaurant in the middle of East Wind Lake Village.  Hello, Constant Reader, and welcome to another edition of Bloggin' On, the blog-within-a-blog section of A Certain View in which I write about topics that don't fall neatly into my usual reviews-and-political commentary content categories. It's Sunday, November 24, and as I mentioned yesterday, Thanksgiving 2019 is just around the corner. I'm trying to not get into a funk about my fifth major holiday season without my mom, but it's hard not to think about it. We were close, my Mom and I, so her absence around this time of year is a bit more palpable than in others. Anyway, enough about that. Right now it's mid-afternoon in my little corner of Florida; the temperature outside is 70℉ (21℃) under sunny skies. It's definitely not as chilly as it is in more northerly regions of the U.S., but it doe

It's been almost four years since I last saw East Wind Lake. (Picture by the author) Hello and welcome once again to another edition of Odds and Ends, my blog-within-a-blog where I step out of my usual role of entertainment writer and sometime political commentator. It's Saturday, November 23, and (as you can tell from the post's headline) it's the weekend before Thanksgiving. Right now, the temperature in my corner of Florida is 77℉ (25℃) under mostly sunny skies, which is nice because it's not too hot nor too chilly. The forecast low is expected to be 61℉ (16℃), but since I'll be indoors, I won't feel that slight nip in the night air. I'm a bit tired - not to mention somewhat out of sorts - today. I went to bed late last night after trying to watch The Empire Strikes Back (the 2011 Blu-ray edition) with my significant other. We didn't see much of it; we both fell asleep well before the film reached its midpoint. I think that waking up ear

Image Courtesy of NaNoWriMo Greetings! Welcome to another edition of A Certain Point of View, the blog that I started almost nine years ago. This is the 1,213th post overall and the 395th for 2019. Back in January, I resolved that I'd have at least 365 posts written and posted by December 31; now it looks like I'll end the year with a minimum of 400 posts, perhaps even 430, if I don't slack off for the rest of November and write at least one post a day in December. Anyway, it's Friday, November 22, and it looks like it's going to be a cool autumn day here in my corner of Florida. According to my Weather app, it's 70℉ (21℃) outside under sunny skies; the forecast high is expected to reach 77℉ (25℃), with some cloud cover moving in later this afternoon. Today is also the 56th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Texas, by Lee Harvey Oswald. I was only eight months old at the time so, naturally, I don't have any recollect

Screenshot of  Unity of Command II's  main title page. Graphics © 2019 2X2 Games and Croteam Hi, there! Welcome to another installment of Old Gamers Never Die, the section in this blog where I talk about computer and video games I either own and play now or owned and played on other platforms or computers. Today I'll be talking a little about the latest addition to my modest collection of games – Unity of Command II, a brand-new game from Croatia's 2X2 Games and Croteam. It was released on Steam on November 12, and it's the long-awaited sequel to 2X2's 2011 game  Unity of Command, a turn-based operational level (as opposed to tactical level) game set during World War II. I've never played Unity of Command, but from what I've learned from watching the  thehistoricalgamer's channel  on YouTube, that game is a simulation of the German-Soviet war on the Eastern Front and covers (in the core game, anyway) the campaigns that led up to the Battle o

© 1990 MicroProse Software/MPS Labs and Retroism  Hello there, Constant Reader! It's Wednesday (Hump Day), November 20, and it's a chilly (by Florida standards anyway) morning in my corner of the world. Currently. it's mostly sunny here, with the temperature at 51℉ (11℃); per the forecast on my Weather app, we are expecting no rain and a high of 72℉ (22℃) later today. This is as fall-like as we've gotten so far in 2019, and after a long hot summer and a tense hurricane season (which, by the by, ends on November 30), it's literally a breath of fresh air. I was going to try and write a review today, but I woke up a bit too early and I don't think I can pull that rabbit out of my hat, so I'm going to give you one of those "lightweight" list-type blogs till I can get my shit together as a writer. As a regular reader of A Certain Point of View, you know of my fascination for the Second World War. You also know that this interest in the largest a