Darkshade Forum

Stacked is a relatively new breakfast restaurant in the Zehr's plaza on Weber in Kitchener.  They do have lunch items as well if you're not in the mood for breakfast at lunch.

We were stopping for a quick lunch and were pleased with the food.  I ordered a toasted western with cheese, and Chiquita had a grilled cheese sandwich.  Both were cooked perfectly and quite tasty.  We do intend to go back and try their breakfast and pancakes some day soon.

For the better, hopefully, McDonald's is refreshing their burgers in Canada.  The plan is to make the patty tastier by using 100% Canadian Beef, and cooking the onions right into the meat.  They'll also be changing up the bun and condiment storage, but I think the meat will be the most notable difference.

Have you tried one of their new burgers?  What do you think?

What mode of music do you use most often?

Annihilation - Interesting sci-fi movie uses being cerebral to excuse off-the-rails ending 
Hellboy - Arguably too true to the comics and spends too much time in exposition.  Enjoyable portrayal regardless.   
Alita Battle Angel - So much potential!  Strong movie that fizzles into a non-ending.   
Shazam - Second best DC movie since Nolan's Batman, but admittedly slept through part of it.   
I Am Mother - Decent man vs machine scifi, but a little extreme at the end 
Batman vs TMNT - Surprisingly good crossover!  Motivations make sense.  Splinter isn't a tool.   
Cold Pursuit - Liam Neeson ineptly serial kills gang members and somehow avoids the consequences 
Fighting with my Family - Great biopic about how Paige became a WWE wrestler.  Probably sanitized, but still enjoyable
Glass - Frustrating, but gotta finish the trilogy.   
The Mule - Fantastic story of an old gardener who runs drugs to provide for his daughter 
Finding Steve McQueen - Fun heist movie (based on a true story) 
Stan & Ollie - Sad recount of how Laurel and Hardy repeatedly betrayed each other by trying to look out for each other.   Impressive acting!

Ebert gave it 4/4 stars, but I feel John Wick 3 lacks the depth of the first two.  Yes, it's a crazy high octane action movie, but there was a certain poetry and symbolism in 1 and 2 that I feel was lost in the 3rd.  Don't get me wrong, the action is still top notch.  It just rang a little hollow, and I actually found myself tuning out at points.  Needs more story, less nameless henchmen to kill.

Also, I need some explanation when it comes to the world building.  How did "he who sits above the table" come to be?  I expected some much older version of John Wick, not what we got.  I saw no hint of why this guy holds such power.

The Good: Gruesome violence and amazing "gun-fu"
The Bad: Lacking nuance
The Ugly: Feels like most of the movie is a set up for the next film

Easter is a time of rebirth, and this year something unexpected happened.  A secret stash of server code from that MMO of long ago, City of Heroes, was leaked onto the internet.  Yeah it didn't compile, and there was no database, but talented coders leapt upon it and started hacking away.

I watched on Discord while they jumped hurdle after hurdle to get this thing, this gift, running.  In about two days, they got it working and a test server live.  People were able to log into City of Heroes and play again!

It's still rather rough, and the repaired source code is not yet available, but it's pretty exciting to see the squeals of joy from people when they rebuild their old heroes and start doing missions.

[Update] The running source code is available now on gitlab

Like bacon?  Like little piggies?  Scientists are working on lab grown bacon so you don't have to slaughter little Babe for breakfast.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47611026

Reaper is fantastic music software.  I'm amazed it is such a low price.  One thing that I found annoying though is just playing general midi.  There's lots of ways it can be done, but I don't want to fiddle with finding the perfect instrument samples for each channel for whatever VST has the best sound.

So here (for my own benefit as much as anyone elses) are the steps for quickly setting up Reaper to play a midi using your favourite soundfont (assuming it contains all the general midi instruments)

• Get your desired soundfont(s) in .sf2 format.  There's a decent free one here: http://falcosoft.hu/reality_gmgs_falcomod.zip
• Put them in the /Library/Audio/Sounds/Banks/ folder on your mac
• Open Reaper (or start a new project)
• Select Insert -> Virtual Instrument on a New Track
• Look for AUi: DLSMusicDevice (Apple) and select that one
• You should see your soundfonts as options in the Sound Bank dropdown.  Pick one
• Close the FX window and turn this track into a folder (tiny icon, bottom right of track control
• Select Insert -> Media File
• Pick your desired midi file
• Rewind to start, and hit Play!