Andrew Canion

Last night our family and and some friends attended Explosive Pro Wrestling’s Reawakening XX show. This is EPW’s showcase annual event. Their Wrestlemania, if you are searching for a comparator.

At a sold-out theatre the company put on an amazing show.

I’ve always enjoyed wrestling and nothing beats being in a venue where everybody who is there “gets it”. No need to put up with the naysayers who talk about wrestling being fake, or silly, or whatever other negative comment they want to throw at it for some reason.

Make no mistake though, EPW is high-quality. These performers know what they are doing, are well-trained, and take it seriously.

The Main Event for this show was a no-DQ situation, so it was more intense than one would normally see, and did push the boundaries. Full credit to the wrestlers because there is no way I would put myself through that kind of pain. Julian Ward defeated Mikey Nicholls for the EPW Championship belt and the kids were very excited to meet him at the conclusion of the event.

This is the other great thing about EPW - it’s approachability. Kids getting photos with heroes is totally possible. The venue is a great size so you have an awesome view wherever you sit. It’s brilliant.

This post originally appeared on the Hemispheric Views blog for the month of Nostalgic November. You can also read the accompanying posts by Martin Feld and Jason Burk.

I was in Year 5 at a new school. I didn’t know anybody. My previous school didn’t have a formal uniform and I’d worn velcro shoes everyday. Now at this new school I had to wear leather lace-ups, and I didn’t know how to tie laces.

Fair to say, I was nervous and apprehensive.

Until I discovered Stratego. Our Year 5 classroom had a bunch of games, but Stratego was epic. I made a good friend playing Stratego. I found my place. I loved the game. Before classes started in the morning, we’d play Stratego. During rainy lunchtimes when outside play was impossible, we’d play Stratego. The winner kept the board, the loser had to shuffle back to the end of the queue of players wanting a turn.

Stratego helped me assimilate into the school and become safe and secure.

In the early 2000’s I found a rudimentary online version of Stratego but it didn’t have the same experience as using a real board and pieces.

Fast-forward to now. A few months ago we were on holiday in Albany, Western Australia and we were exploring a toy store in town. On their shelves were boxes of Stratego.

I looked at the games. I looked at my 10 year old son. I looked back at the games and grabbed a box. Was I buying this game for me, him, or both of us? I like to think the latter, but it was probably the former.

Now, here we are. Nostalgia has delivered an experience in the present.

This post was originally written in June 2021 for Hemispheric News; subscribe at the Patreon site One Prime Plus to receive this monthly newsletter and other benefits that are linked to the Hemispheric Views podcast.

On 28 May, I posted to my micro.blog:

My kingdom for a good mouse that works with macOS. Logitech MX Master 3 - garbage drivers cause lag all over the place. Razer Viper Ultimate - doesn’t work with macOS. Apple Magic Mouse - ergonomic hell. Why is this so hard?

Despite Apple sales being higher than ever third party vendors aren’t willing to come to the party to develop decent macOS drivers for their products. So a person can spend a lot of money on new hardware but still struggle to aim a pointer with precision.

Less than a year ago I bought a Logitech MX Master 3. It is promoted as the most ergonomic, fully-featured non-gaming mouse on the market. From a hardware standpoint it is beautiful. Contoured edges, metallic construction and magnetic resistance make it move beautifully. Until you have to use the Logitech Options software on a Mac. I have tried the Bluetooth connection, I have tried the RF dongle. It doesn’t matter. Either option results in random pointer stutters, entire pauses for seconds and other random tomfoolery. It undermines everything that is good about the mouse.

It all got too much for me recently so after speaking to my money spending enabler, Jason Burk, I purchased a Razer Viper Ultimate gaming mouse with docking station. Being a gaming mouse it has multi-coloured LEDs and high frequency tracking, so surely it will be good.

The hardware is good. The software? Not so much as dire, but rather non-existent. Razer do not make a version of the software for macOS. So all the goodness is wasted unless you’re on a PC. That being said, I booted into Windows via Boot Camp and the Windows software is a terrible mess as well. It was hundreds of megabytes in size with a UX that made no sense.

I had packed the mouse back into its box and was ready to return it, when a final search and another discussion with Jason led me down a macOS software rabbit-hole. It turns out there is an open-source community that develops drivers and software for the Razer on mac.

This led me to discover the FruityRazer project and Razer macOS - software drivers to control not just the mouse performance but most importantly, the LEDs!

There are also two shareware software options, USB Overdrive and SteerMouse. To be honest, I haven’t figured out the best combination of all these software options yet.

What I do know, however, is that now the Razer mouse is rock solid. I have a feeling that if I trade out Logi Options for USB Overdrive or SteerMouse that the MX Master 3 will probably be stable as well.

What does this say about the ability or willingness or large corporations to develop decent macOS software? It says they are terrible. What does it say about Apple not being able to develop a good hardware mouse that doesn’t deliver immediate RSI? It says that they are terrible.

In all instances, the end-user - us, lose out.

How’s that for customer sat, Tim?