• Humble's latest Bundles include a Corel Draw collection that doesn't have Corel Draw in it and a Drizzt adventures collection (R. A. Salvatore's series of D&D novels) that starts from book 7.
  
  This is some really low-effort stuff, HB.  Do better.
  
  
  
• Microsoft's Surface Go Laptop is a reasonable 3:2 12" laptop starting at $699.  (AnandTech)
  
  It's not going to set the world on fire, but it does have a 4-core / 8-thread 15W Intel 10th-gen CPU, and not one but two USB ports.  Screen is 1536x1024, which rates it as not terrible, with 8GB of RAM and just 128GB of storage at that price point.  Neither of which are upgradeable; it doesn't even have a microSD slot.
  
  The screen is touch, and the Four Essential Keys are sort of present - they do double duty as F9-F12, but there's no room for them anywhere else so I'll give them a pass on that one.
  
  With a microSD slot I could see this having some slight potential.  Without, no.  Forget it.
  
  
  
• Microsoft also updated the Surface Pro X.  (AnandTech)
  
  The new version uses Microsoft's SQ2 processor in place of the older SQ1, and costs $500 more than the original version, though the configurations may not be equivalent.  I hope there are other differences, because...
  
  The SQ2 is Microsoft's branding of Qualcomm's 8CX Gen 2, which as I reported earlier is exactly the same fucking chip as the 8CX Gen 1.  Exactly nowhere does Qualcomm mention this or provide any performance comparison between the two, so it takes some digging to realise that this is a purely marketing upgrade.
  
  
  
• The XMG DJ 15 is an unremarkable second-tier thin-and-light 15" notebook except for twelve things.  (AnandTech)
  
  Those being the ports.  It has two USB 3.0 Type A and one USB 2.0, one Thunderbolt 3 with 60W fast charging (I'm not sure if the laptop can charge over that or if it's just for charging other devices), a full-size SD card slot, separate 3.5mm headphone and microphone jacks, full-size HDMI and mini DisplayPort, and a wired gigabit Ethernet port (one of those neat ones that pops open when plug in the cable, then closes up again when you unplug).
  
  Dongles need not apply.
  
  Memory is two DIMM slots and storage is M.2 NVMe, so both are upgradeable.  It's the anti-MacBook.
  
  With a Core i7, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, and a 1080p display, it's €1,337.
  
  
  
• 3270font is a 3270 font.  (GitHub)
  
  Seems pretty complete too.  It has the usual ASCII and EBCDIC, bold, italic, bold italic, underline, overline, weird European frilly letters, single and double line box drawing, APL, Greek and Cyrillic, and...  Ogham.
  
  I might be able to use this.  Just add PETSCII and I'm there.  Have to see how it renders down to a 10x10 grid but I have a cheat if it doesn't look great (thanks to the HP 150).
  
  
  
• Speaking of classic IBM kit.  (Reddit)
  
  
  
  This is an actual working system.  The system and monitor cases are 3D-printed, the screen is a 3.5" LCD, and the hardware is a Raspberry Pi 4.
  
  
  
• Had to go to the shops again today, the first time in a while I've done that during daytime on a weekday.  Everything was normal, except that it's spring here now and there were still about the number of people wearing masks that you'd see during flu season.
  
  Darrell Lea peanut brittle chocolate seems to have disappeared, which is very annoying because it was gluten-free and even better than Cadbury Roast Almond.
  
  And I noticed a girl in the supermarket with Uzaki-chan grey-brown hair.  I'm assuming it was tinted because I've never seen quite that colour before.
  
  
  
  

Manga Notes

The Elf and the Hunter's Item Atelier is a delightful fluffy-wuffy story about an elf and her cough loyal human assistant cough who run a crafting service in a fantasy world that doesn't make a whole lot of sense but the art is wonderful.  Also when occasion calls for it our innocent little elf has a mouth on her that would have a Marine drill sergeant taking notes.




Disclaimer: Yes, I will read anything with the word "atelier" in the title, why do you ask?

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