Richard's Blogosphere
I visited the bridge over the course of its construction and today, its opening day.
A month and a year of staying at home as the weather warms.
12 degrees Celsius and sunny during “Spring” in Toronto was the perfect weather to do a tour from the book Toronto Architecture: A City Guide by Patricia McHugh and Alex Bozikovic. Ontario lifted its "strict stay-at-home order" last month, so I no longer felt guilty about wanting to visit the neighbourhood adjacent to mine.
After 12 full months of working from home during a global respiratory pandemic, I'm not sure I learned a lot.
Things are going about as well as one could hope while stuck at home.
Let me set the scene. I’m up 4-3 in 1-on-1 mode in Rocket Leauge. This is a casual match, an opportunity for to warm up before hitting the ranked 2-on-2 competition. There’s about a minute left, with the ball in my opponent’s side of the court, so I’m setting up to save a shot from long range. (I’m positioned to the side of my net since it’s easier to move east-west to do a save like this than it is to move north-south.) My opponent dribbles, and, I suspect, lost control of the ball and is not able to get a shot off. As luck would have it, we end up locking the fronts of our cars.
Even before I knew it was unwritten rule number one of Rocket League, every time I ever locked up with an opponent, I always find it funny and keep doing it. In a team setting, I quickly realized it took that opponent out of the play, letting my teammate(s) take over. A 3-on-3 becomes a 2-on-2, a 2-on-2 becomes a 1-on-1. In a 1-on-1 situation, a lockup becomes a 0-on-0, which both makes no sense in terms of strategy, and is hilarious! Unless…
In this case, I was ahead with a minute left, and I think to myself “Great! If my opponent adheres to Rule #1, all I have to do is run out the clock!” So I pursue that strategy. Watch the video below to see it play out:
https://medium.com/media/53ee0c541d0451c5aa1d670f4baeed6f/hrefTo my chagrin, Rocket League interprets a lockup between two 1-on-1 opponents as idle time, even though I’m flooring the gas, and moving because I had a very slight edge. Not knowing the timeout time, I thought the clock would run out first, and I would get the win. I don’t know who ended up with the win, either my opponent or myself, and since the stakes were so low, it doesn’t matter. But I found it very funny, and I’m very unlikely to find myself in that situation again.
Adherence to Rule Number One Leads to Loss in Rocket League was originally published in The Gaming Years on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
This is the new year, and we are still "locked down" (if you want to call it that).
Over the course of a month, I visited the University of Toronto to take an architectural tour.
“‘Tis a fine shutdown, but sure ‘tis no lockdown, English.”