This is wonderful.

This is magnificent.

Morning Champions, and welcome to another week!

What's floating your boat right now?

For me, having spent a massive chunk of yesterday sat in the sunshine in the garden playing No Man's Sky, I'm rocking the 65daysofstatic soundtrack.

I've been a huge fan of this band for a good number of years now, but kinda missed this when it came along, because I wasn't then able to play the game for whatever reason. There was a part of my brain that told me that there was no point listening, as I'd be missing much of the context, which turns out to be a load of bollocks. It's a great record on its own terms.

Three years ago my wife and I got three pet rats. A little over a year later, we added two more, and for a brief moment had a lovely little mischief of five happy boys.

Then we lost one of the new babies in a freak accident after he got injured during a scrap, then, a few months after that, the first of the original trio left us, and so on, and so on, until today, when the last of the new babies, who was now just over two, passed away.

And as much as I try to focus on the happy times, watching them boing about on the sofa, or stealing snacks from us, or just snuggling inside the hood of my jumper and falling asleep, it’s really hard to reconcile that with their short little lives.

We recently adopted a pair of 6yo cats, and while they could feasibly spend the next 10/15 years with us, there’s always that nagging doubt that they’ll suddenly develop an incurable illness, and we’ll lose them too soon.

But that’s all kinda worth it when they’re asleep on your lap, purring away. Or in the case of the ratties, boggling and bruxing.

Sorry if this is a bit maudlin; I’ve just buried Wilbur in the garden, and I miss my little toast-stealing friend.

Good piece here from Jason Snell, and I have to say, I get exactly where he's coming from.

I tried to do the iPad-only thing, and was evangelical about it for a good year or so, but in the end got tired of having to figure out workarounds when iPadOS got in the way, trying to do things I knew a Mac could do without complaint. iPads are cool and all, but ultimately they're not (to me) an essential device.

Which left me thinking about whether or not I could justify even the price of the cheapest model. And I can't. Not any more.

Mostly for me it comes down to the gulf between what I see an iPad being capable of, and what Apple envision it to be. To my mind, if it has the same processor as a MacBook Air, then it should be able to run macOS as well as a MacBook Air does. But Apple is more concerned about product lines eating into each other's profits than it is about making a great device that can do anything.

At a stretch, I might consider an iPad mini to use for browsing the web, reading articles and such, but despite how hard I railed against people claiming that iPad was only a device for media consumption, I kinda agree with them now.

I got a 15" M2 a couple of months back and have been consistently impressed with just how capable this thing is. So with games like No Man's Sky finally making their way to Mac, I figured I'd dip a toe in and see what it can do.

In short, I’m blown away.

Sure, it’s not going to be challenging the PC Master Race any time soon, and no Serious Gamer™️ will be using one for any pro Call of Duty tournaments, but damn if this thing isn’t a capable device for the casual and patient gamer.

Over the past few days I’ve finally been able to play Red Dead Redemption, after absolutely falling in love with RDR2 last year. I bought the original for my PS3, which promptly yellow light died on me about fifteen minutes in, so I’ve never actually played it.

But now it’s available for Switch, and there’s a perfectly capable Switch emulator for macOS (called Ryujinx, if you’re interested), I’m able to play it. And it runs damn near perfectly. With vsync off, I’m getting around 50fps, with the GPU peaking at about 95°.

Now, many would say “so what? You’re talking about a 13 year old game”, and that’s true, but this is a fanless machine. That kind of performance on any game would be impressive a few years ago.

I’ve also put some time in to No Man’s Sky (the new Mac-native version on Steam), which my Mac handles like a champ. An hour of NMS used about 15% of my battery. An hour on my old 2015 MBP would have used three times that. And going back to emulators; it runs Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD from the PS3 without any major glitches and a decent frame rate.

In theory, the same kind of performance should be available from the 13” M2 Air. So for £1k you can get a MacBook that does all the good Mac stuff as well as be a solid little portable gaming device. You can’t argue with that.

Thought I'd see if there were any likeminded individuals around.

This is three of my small collection that I have with me at work. The 4G Classic (left) is modded with 64gb, the Mini is 128gb, and the 7G Classic is currently in need of storage and battery. My plan for that one is to give it 512gb and as big a battery as I can squeeze in there.

Had a hankering to listen to this yesterday, and have probably spun it a dozen times since then. It's an utter, utter belter.

As per the title, I downloaded this game, have added it to my Gatekeeper exemption and disabled SIP and all that, and even though it's added to Steam as a non-Steam game, all I get when it loads is a message saying "Steam not found, please start through Steam client".

Does anyone have any ideas?

I loved the first season because I'm a huge fan of Pratchett and Gaiman, so was a little nervous that the next series, with no source material to adapt wouldn't hit the mark. But then I saw that Neil had asked John Finnemore to help him write it, and that sealed it for me. No one could replace Terry, but John Finnemore comes damn close.

Anyway, season 2 is wonderful, with some beautiful little references to Pratchett's Discworld. Also, I'd gladly watch Sheen and Tennant together in anything.

Any day when I don't have to use my AK is a good day.

Morning Champions!

Here's our weekly music thread. What are you obsessing over this week? What's new on your horizon?

Drop some links and share the love.