The first Gran Turismo game I won't buy

I've owned and played all previous 6 iterations of Gran Turismo, and I'm sorry to say I will not be purchasing the newly released Gran Turismo Sport anytime soon. After reading the reviews, I can't justify spending the proper $60 for a game with so little content and such draconian requirements in order to play. 

The core attraction of Gran Turismo for me is the sheer number of cars spanning all eras and the numerous tracks I can drive those cars on. I can still remember the seminal moment it was to drive the full Nurburgring Nordschleife in GT4. The car and track count in GT:S is, without mincing words, utterly atrocious. Discounting all the variations, there's only about 90 unique cars in the game, a system shock to those us used to 600+ car libraries. GT:S only has six real-world tracks, which is bizarrely embarrassing especially when the main focus of the game is e-sport online racing utilizing the FIA license.

How did Polyphony manage to partner with the FIA yet only produce six real-world locations? Where's Silverstone? Where's La Sarthe? Spa? 

The online racing component also brings with it an enormous negative externality: GT:S requires a constant Internet connection in order to play most parts of the game. I did not think ill of this until I found out that even non-racing portions of the game such as the amazingly beautiful photo-mode is locked behind the online authentication wall. If Polyphony ever decides to turn off its game servers (as it has for GT5), GT:S as constituted today would be no more than a drink coaster. 

GT:S would need to the following updates before I part with my money: massively increase the amount of cars and tracks, add more single-player campaign events/races, bring back dynamic time/weather (how they have regressed on this from GT6 is baffling), and get rid of the online connection requirement for parts of the game that obviously don't need it. 

Being 'in the moment' is difficult

As studying stoic, one of the many things taught to us is to focus on the present, take in what's directly in front of us and not let the mind wander forward towards the future nor backwards to the past. 

Easier said than done. 

Take for example driving to work. As soon as I get into the car, I start thinking about what's ahead waiting for me once I get there. Try as I may to focus on enjoying the drive, taking in the weather, being grateful for the sublime engineering that is the Mazda MX-5, my mind inevitably skips ahead to the workplace. Being in the moment takes constant practice, and some days are more difficult than others. 

A good trick to alleviate some of the impulses is to never procrastinate at work - and at home. Whatever items need to be done, I try to complete it as soon as possible - don't wait. Otherwise the unfinished things will compound the tendencies to distract from the present, especially those of the workplace. 

I don't suppose it'll ever be perfect, this 'being present' business, but getting near it is good goal because my anxiety levels have gone down commensurately. 

Clean your smartphone everyday

I recently saw a tip on the Internets that made so much sense I wondered why I didn't have the habit already: one should clean their smartphone at the end of each day. 

It was indeed a lightbulb moment. Smartphones have become an extension of our own bodies with the sheer amount of time we spend with it. Naturally we take it everywhere with us, and in the process it attracts all sorts of germs and contaminations. I'm sure there's a study somewhere that found smartphones to be dirtier than public toilet seats. At the end of the night it all gets taken to bed with us, akin to people that don't shower before going to sleep. 

As someone that prefers tidy and cleanliness, I'm surprised I never got into routinely cleaning my phone. At most I'd simply wipe the screen with a shirt part if the grease and grime become overwhelming. All those lazy morning hours spend browsing on the phone while in bed seems ghastly to me now. It's advised to wash our hands often, therefore the object our hands touch most often should also require similar hygienic diligence. 

Nowadays at night before bed I wipe the iPhone down thoroughly with a microfiber towel that's been spritzed with all-purpose cleaner. The peace of mind gained is immense. 

Interesting weekend

This past week leading into the weekend was interesting indeed.

Due to the smoke and fallout from the Napa fires engulfing the San Francisco atmosphere, classes - and therefore work - at State got cancelled from Thursday evening on until Monday morning. Due to my peculiar work schedule, it meant I only worked three hours on Thursday, and had the entire Friday off. 

It couldn't be helped, the air quality in the latter parts of the week was awful. I've been to China and even then it's comparable only on the worse days. The city was covered in a fog of dust, turning the midday sunshine into an amber orange you'd only find during sunset hours. Upon opening my front door, it smelled as if the entire city was having an outdoor bbq. On my commute I catch a glimpse of the new Salesforce Tower, and with each passing day last week it kept disappearing into a thicker and thicker smog. On Friday the building vanished entirely. 

Air quality didn't get better until Sunday. Naturally, I stayed indoors for the whole duration, less a few hours to run some errands.

In that time I managed to finish the third volume of 'The Last Lion', the biography of Sir Winston Churchill. Some 3,000 pages later, I don't think I shall endeavor to read another biography of that length. Not to say it was a bore; Churchill was a great man who led his country - and the world - through a time of unprecedented evil. Due to his circumstance of having been aristocratically born at the end of the Victorian era, living through the two World Wars, and witnessing the twilight of imperial Britain, Churchill is a unique character positing a fascinating study of the period. 

Conditions are much improved today, and good news up north the fires are for the most part contained. By the end of this week normal skies ought to resume for us San Franciscans. 

I find your perspective lacking

It's important to keep the proper perspective on things.

We get so caught up with what's going on with our own lives, and how every slight or misfortune seem monumental and woe-is-me. That sort of tunnel vision is an easy trap to fall into, myself included. 

Take one moment out of your own sphere to look at a bigger picture, any bigger picture. Doesn't have to world news, simply take a look around. Right now entire counties north of San Francisco is raging with wild fire. Homes are destroyed, lives lost, and many hundreds displaced. I don't deserve to be angry at the guy that cut me off on the road when there are people huddling in shelters because they've lost literally everything. I still have my bed to go to at the end of the night. 

It's too easy to complain, and extremely difficult to stop and think about will it achieve anything positive. In the same vein of Dave Chappelle's famous "when keeping it real goes wrong" sketch, sometimes things can get worst in protest.

On campus our student assistants were given a memo recently reminding them to be professional at all times and put the work first. Some of them took this as an immoral imposition (how dare our superiors tell us what do do!) and escalated the situation. The end result is they used to be able to do homework during any downtime, but now homework is completely banned. 

Way to go.    

Thoughts on the Star Wars 8 trailer

So, about that Star Wars Episode 8 trailer...

Shut up and take my money! The trailer is spectacular; not that it was needed to get my butt into the theatre, but my interest is piqued to the maximum. I plan to watch it at least a thousand times before December arrives. 

Obviously there's tons of obfuscation and misdirections in the trailer. It'd be too on the nose if Kylo Ren kills his mother after killing his father in Force Awakens, though I wouldn't mind if that's how they send off Carrie Fisher's character. The last shot of Kylo offering his hand to Rey means there's almost zero chance Rey is the one to turn dark, cause why would the producers spoil the movie's major shock point at the end of a trailer? The scene was also a bit too reminisce of Empire Strikes Back, what with Darth Vader offering his hand to Luke to join him. 

Rian Johnson really need to do all he can to avoid any call-backs to Empire. 

Anyways, not to say I don't want Rey to turn dark, because that would be awesome. My ultimate fan-dream for the next two movies is for Rey and Kylo to team up, destroy the First Order, and then go their separate ways. Rey will then form a new Jedi academy, while Kylo will restart the Sith Order. We shall then have balance in the Force. 

The only flaw in the trailer is the Porg. I don't care how adorable it is, unless/until proven wrong by the movie, to me the Porg is nothing more than a blatant merchandise grab by a franchise that don't need it. Guardians of the Galaxy got to it first with Baby Groot; Star Wars is merely copying it. 

Ferrari building an SUV is not sacrilege

The automotive world is in a tizzy due to reports of Ferrari in serious consideration for producing its first ever SUV. If there's one marque in the world where an SUV would be seen sacrilege by the petrol-head gallery, the Prancing Horse is it. For a company dripping with racing and speed for over 70 years, an SUV, well, simply isn't. I counter that a production Ferrari SUV wouldn't be breaking anything sacred - it actually honors the tradition. 

What's the point of Ferrari as a road-car manufacturer? Back in the early days it sold cars to the public not because Enzo Ferrari wanted to, but rather to finance his lofty racing ambitions. That was the ethos. These days, what are the best money-makers in the automotive world? The sports utility vehicle. Ferrari producing one makes sense - maximize revenue from the road-car business to fund it's racing. Perhaps with an SUV the Scuderia will then have the resources to design a reliable engine for Vettel.  

People griped hard when Porsche first introduced the Cayenne SUV, but without its sales bolstering the company's bottom-line we probably wouldn't get all the delicious GT cars and the 918 Spyder. Even Lamborghini, Ferrari's eternal rival on public roads, will soon have an SUV on sale. It's a business, and there's immense pressure on these publicly traded companies to steer towards the hot item in the market. 

A Ferrari SUV is a complete positive: the extra profits can be diverted back to developing its more sporting road-cars a la Porsche, or pump additional resources into the F1 or GT3 program. Purist need not be alarmed because those with the means and in the know will ignore it entirely and buy the "good" ones.