George Wendt played the part of Norm on the TV show Cheers for many years but I just heard he passed away at the age of 75. Here’s an interview he did with his co-stars Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson.
“Afternoon, ev’rybody.”
NORM!
Monthly Archives: May 2025
Syndicate: The Atlantic Accelerator
The Atlantic Accelerator is the final level in the game Syndicate. This game was developed by Bullfrog, and published in 1993 by Electronic Arts, who went on to publish a few more games.
This final level is insane. The mission briefing warns that you are completely outgunned and outmanned, and it finishes with a “good luck” message.
As soon as you enter the map you’re assaulted by enemy syndicates wielding mini guns. You have to pause the game and then frantically select all your agents, put on shields and fight back. It can take more than a few goes to get this right. This video shows how easy it is to be overpowered. Jump forward to about 4:00. Warning, it’s loud!
This video below shows how it’s done. Select all agents and put on shields. Select agent 3, enable panic mode and let him or her take out the nearby enemy with a laser. Mop up the rest with lasers.
An idea I picked up from a comment on that video is using plenty of shields and a flamer (flame thrower). The enemy syndicate stop firing after a certain length of time, which makes mopping them up easy. This worked mostly, but in the end there were two enemies left who refused to stop firing. Cross fire was more effective at reducing the numbers of enemy, however.
I finished this game in the mid-nineties. I bought it a good few years ago on GOG and I finished it again, but this was probably my first play through in a decade. Still a great game after all these years.
One UI 7 on the S23U: Fix the notification pull down
I upgraded my Samsung Galaxy S23Ultra a few days ago to One UI 7, or Android 15 and it has mostly been a good upgrade, but it hasn’t been perfect.
The first and most annoying, change was to the notifications when you pull down on the screen. There’s no sign of the quick settings anywhere. It turns out you have to pull down from the top right. This comment on Reddit explains how to fix it by:
- Tapping the pencil icon.
- Going into panel settings.
- Change it from Separate to Together.
The other annoyance is the three rows at the end of the quick settings panel.
- Play music / Media output
- Nearby devices / SmartThings
- Smart View / Modes
You can sort the order they appear in, but you can’t remove them. I never use them. Annoying.
The camera is fine. The UI has been changed a little. I haven’t noticed any change in picture quality yet.
I’m glad the apps drawer in the default launcher can now be scrolled vertically again. That is a feature of almost all third-party launchers, and “Home Up” used to enable it, but One UI 6 removed it years ago.
I had to delete my phone from my car’s Android Auto interface to get it to connect reliably again. I should say “reliably” with quotes because Škoda cars seem to have problems with this phone (or at least the 2020 Kamiq does), and I had to buy an Android Auto dongle to make it work. Thankfully, the new version of Android seems to work ok with the dongle.
The “do not disturb” Meeting widget is now two spaces big for no reason,
I like the UI refresh, the rounded corners are nice.