A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Photo Credit: National Archives via US Navy   Hi there, Dear Reader. Well, today is Friday, September 18, 2020, and right now it is late afternoon in my corner of Florida. According to my phone’s AccuWeather app, it’s hot – Africa hot, as Eugene Jerome liked to say in Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues. It’s mostly cloudy and the current temperature is 89 ˚ F, but with 62% humidity and a westerly breeze of 6 MPH, the feels-like temperatures are 95 ˚ F in the shade and 98 ˚ F in the open. Not as bad as yesterday, but it’s still summery rather than getting close to autumn. That’s what living in the subtropics entails, really; we are spared from the bone-chilling ice and snow of northern climes, but by the same token we need to live in houses and apartments with functioning air conditioners and endure the six months-long hurricane seasons. Photo illustration courtesy of Pixabay Today was a productive day, at least on the writing-blog-posts front. I actually wrote two posts in A Certain Point of

  © 2017 Killerfish Games If you are a regular – or semiregular – reader of A Certain Point of View, you probably know that in July I purchased Killerfish Games’ 2017 submarine game Cold Waters from Steam. I had been wanting to get it for some time, but I waited till it was on sale; I didn’t want to shell out nearly $40 for a computer game, even if said game billed itself as the a spiritual heir to MicroProse’s 1988 classic, Red Storm Rising. Like Red Storm Rising, Cold Waters has Training, Single Mission,  and Campaign modes; unlike Sid Meier’s game, which is based on the late Tom Clancy’s 1986 best-selling novel, it gives players the option to play as an American, Soviet, or Chinese submarine commander in Cold War-turned-hot campaigns set in three distinct eras (1968, 1984, and 2000) in alternative histories which take a turning point in world affairs – say, the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August of ’68 – and tweak it so that the two blocs that waged the Cold War find

Single Mission menu from Cold Waters, with Junks on Parade selected. © 2017 Killerfish Games   Death in the Taiwan Straits If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that I've been playing a cool submarine simulation by Killerfish Games, Cold Waters. Released three years ago by the Australia-based game designer behind Atlantic Fleet, Cold Waters is the spiritual successor to one of my all-time favorite games, Red Storm Rising,  Like that 1988 MicroProse classic based on Tom Clancy's eponymous 1986 novel — which I've written about in both my blogs — Cold Waters puts the player in command of a nuclear-powered attack sub in a hypothetical conflict set in the latter part of the 20th Century. Unlike Red Storm Rising, which posited a Third World War in what would have been the "near future" in 1986, Cold Waters examines three different "alternative histories" set in three different time periods: 1968: In this alternate version of the tumultuous year

A Soviet warship cruises into battle in Cold Waters. © 2017 Killerfish Games   Greetings, A Certain Point of View readers! Well, it's Friday evening here in my corner of Florida; as I write this, the temperature outside is 88℉ (31℃). With the sun coming down and the wind blowing gently from the north at 5 MPH and humidity at a sticky 67%, the feels-like temperature is 98℉ (37℃). It isn't as hot as it was five hours ago, but it's still not good walking weather, at least not for me. Today was not a productive day here. I went to bed late last night; it was well after midnight when I finished watching two episodes of The War: A Ken Burns Film, that much I know. I'm guessing it was at least 2 AM when I finally hit the sack. I slept well, I think, but because my Significant Other is lax about food shopping, we didn't have milk and we were out of orange juice. As a result, my breakfast - lunch, really - was two slices of pepperoni pizza that someone had taken from the fre

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