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 reality th

© 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 as to

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 start pl

© 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  Red Storm Rising.  So it sh

Checking In     Image credit: Pixabay Hi, Dear Reader. It’s been a while – a month, almost – since I last posted here on Blogger. I didn’t plan it that way, but I’ve been working hard to establish A Certain Point of View’ s sister blog – named A Certain Point of View, Too – over on WordPress. That endeavor is going well; I have over 60 posts up there and I have 68 followers so far – which is almost three times as many as this blog has now. I don’t have as many pageviews on WordPress as I have here, but this blog is far older and has over 1300 posts. Nevertheless, A Certain Point of View, Too is doing okay and I’m happy with it…even though I am not pleased at the reason why I had to create it in the first place. I had hoped that I’d be able to juggle writing for two blogs at once, either by creating content for both on a daily basis and posting at night, or by writing here one day and writing there the next. I had no set plan for this juggling act, though, so I’ve been

Today is Sunday, May 10, 2020. As I start this blog post, it's almost 3:30 PM in my corner of Florida. It's a warm afternoon ﹘ 81℉ (27℃) under partly sunny skies ﹘ and it looks like it might rain. Of course, this is immaterial; ever since I left Miami and moved here I rarely ever go for walks or do anything outdoorsy, so the weather only affects me if there are thunderstorms or severe cold snaps. Right now, according to the forecast, we are experiencing the high for the day; at night the temperature is expected to drop to 65℉ (18℃). In a few weeks, if Florida weather sticks to its normal patterns, the days will be increasingly hotter, stickier, and less pleasant. Today is also Mother's Day, the 10th occurrence of the occasion since Mom got sick in 2009/2010 and the fifth since she died. My older half-sister Victoria and I managed to "celebrate" the day with our Mom for the last time in 2015 ﹘ she died a little over two months later, on July 19, 2015 ﹘ and eve

Publicity photo of Buena Vista Home Entertainment's region-free Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga 18-disc box set. © 2020 Buena Vista Home Entertainment (BVHE) and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) On Monday, April 20, Buena Vista Home Entertainment (BVHE) and Lucasfilm Ltd. released the 18-disc variant Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, a counterpart to the larger 27-disc box set of the same name released less than a month earlier as a Best Buy exclusive. I bought my from Walmart.com – I haven’t seen it as an official release on Amazon, although I have noticed that the 27-disc version of The Skywalker Saga is sold at the site by third-party sellers at inflated prices – this smaller, less elaborate box set was intended primarily as the region-free European release, as it sports the rating seals from the British and Irish counterparts to the Motion Picture Association of America as part of its indicia.  From a young Anakin Skywalker’s descent into the dark side to the rise of the Resis