AteBit

What!? How are you out? What the fuck is happening down there? You guys are fucking with me right? This fucking game man. Should be called Neptune's Paranoia.

Insufficient!! Everybody has an "e" in it. My colour has an "e" in it. I don't know what is happening.

Crushed Act1 earlier today. I was playing a lady Demon Hunter. Maybe it's because I had already run through the first part during the open beta weekend, or the fact that I only use my mana to spam the dash ability over and over. Regardless... I cruised through it. At this rate I'll actually be waiting for the new Torchlight to comes out.

What colour are you? Sorta freaking out here.

AteBit#1261 Edit: NA Server (EST) Currently playing a Demon Huntress.

There are more than a few projects still being worked on. Maybe wait for the next version to hit (and reset with the new huge biomes option?). I really liked the town square community project. Always wanted to build something there, but felt it would have been greedy do so while my giant building loomed nearby. Smaller scale builds like those, are more approachable, and less likely to get abandoned. Though for some they can be less engaging. Common rookie mistake in MC is to start an impossibly big project.

This is what I saw when I launched it earlier today. Which is 3am for me. Though I just checked now and it says 12:01 am PDT. So they pushed it back a whole minute since I last checked.

Focusing on drawing cards will put your economy in a good place, but a good economy alone doesn't mean you will win (vs human players that is). The real strategy is in the discarding. Discarding a card is like running a whetstone along a blade. You get rid of the imperfections in your deck, which improves every successive draw. Though, you can also ruin a blade by over sharpening it. That's where the real decision making comes into play.

Ottawa's first Comiccon is currently underway. The same organization who is responsible for Montreal's much larger Comiccon are behind it, clearly they know their shit. Day 1 First Speaker: Lou Ferrigno (Original TV series Hulk) Older but still a beast of a man. Just gripping the tiny mic made giant veins pop along his forearms. No talk, straight into QA. After 15 minutes of stupid questions, he says thanks and retreats to the exhibit hall to continue signing 40$ autographs for the rest of the day. Not the best use of his allotted hour of stage time. Second Speaker: Marina Sirtis (Troy from ST:TNG) Not a huge Troy fan, wasn't expecting much out of it, so glad I attended anyhow. She's been doing conventions for 21 years and it shows. Total pro, amazing talk/standup routine. Upfront about how dull and useless her character was, but had fun with it. When QA started she had full control of the situation keeping things light, and moving through the line at a good rate. The whole hour flew by to fast.. Best speaker of the day. Third Speaker & Guest of Honour: William Shatner (Bill) Line up was huge. The main hall was packed, huge standing ovation when he finally came on stage, and by the end of his hour long ramblings, the room wasn't so packed anymore. After the usual platitudes about Canadians, and how Ottawa is a greaet city, he jumped to QAs. Shatner's ability to "riff" (as he put it, though we obviously have different interpretations of the term) on the questions asked isn't exactly the most gripping stuff. In fact many didn't find it gripping at all, and approximately 15 minutes in, small pairs and groups of 3-4 started leaving piece by piece. It was a pretty sad sight. Each time people got up, I felt worse and worse for the aging pop culture icon up front, and at the same time, a bit envious. It was a sad, slow motion train wreck. Made me realize that maybe Lou had figured something out that I hadn't yet. I didn't attend any of the second stage talks/QAs. So nothing to say about anime dub English voice actor Vic Mignogna (Dragonball Z, Fullmetal Alchemist, SF2's Vega), comic book artist Neal Adams (DC), actress Erinn Gray (sexy lady from Buck Rogers), and actor Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett). The only good thing to come out of the Shatner event, was getting to talk it up with a cute red shirt while in line. We even sat together for the program. Any momentum I had (real and/or imagined), was destroyed by the great Shatnering. We talked for a bit afterwards, but at this point she was clearly more interested in the up-coming photo op with Brent Spiner to noticed that this Optimus was Prime. Tomorrow's line-up: Jamie Bamber (Apollo BSG), John Delancie (Q ST:TNG), Adam Baldwin (Jane Firefly), Brent Spiner (Data ST:TNG), and Cassandra Petersen (Elvira Mistress of the Dark).

Day 2 - Chasing the Dragon. Thanks to Mother's Day, I found myself running around solo for most of the day. Combine that with having nothing left to explore on the main floor. I was left with more time to catch different speakers. First Speaker: Jamie Bamber (BSG's Lee "Apollo" Adama) Slow start. Straight into QA. Mostly informative. Occasionally interesting. Never entertaining. This talk fell in line with what I was expecting from one of these. Problem with this straight forward approach is that the talk will never be more interesting than the questions being asked, and the quality of the questions being asked by fans can be pretty dodgy. Second Speaker: Cassandra Petersen (Elvira Mistress of the Dark) Grabbed some food, and made my way to the second stage. Caught the first half of Cassandra's talk (before leaving to queue for DeLancie). She started the talk with the caveat that she goes to many conventions, but never as a speaker. She didn't really know where to start, but quickly found her footing, and finally explained how Elvira came to be, before launching into QA. Again.. Interesting, but not very entertaining. Third Speaker: John DeLancie (ST:TNG's Q) After a bit of sun while in queue for Q (never gets old), it was clear from the moment he started talking that this was going to be one of the highlights of the day. Since Q only appears in 9 episodes (across the 3 series - TNG DS9 Voyager), DeLancie made it clear that asking about specific episodes would not be fruitful. So the talk went more into an exploration of power, human nature, parenting, growing-up with severe dyslexia (overall a surprising lack of Star Trek). When attendees asked weird questions, he'd call them out, and launch into anecdotes of even stranger fan encounters. Great speaker. Never lost the audience. Enjoyed every minute of it. Fourth Speaker: Adam Baldwin (Firefly's Jayne) Rolled out of the DeLancie talk right into this one. This felt a lot like the first one of the day (Apollo), but with more frat humour, and long pauses. Overall it was funnier than Bamber, but lacked a steady pace. Had no flow. I didn't feel to bad about bailing early to get into the queue for Spiner's talk. Fifth Speaker: Brent Spiner (ST:TNG's Data) I was told he was going to be the best speaker at the show, and that was the case. He put on a solid one man show. Slipping in and out of his Patrick Stewart voice for pure hilarity. Once he noticed the 2 camera/angle composite shot on the side screens, he started moving erratically to troll the camera crew, and continued to do so for quite a while. Called to his mother to have the audience wish her happy mother's day. Yet still managed to go through more fan questions than any other speaker. Perfect way to close out the show (for me at least). In retrospect, it's not to surprising that the actors who have been doing the convention thing for the last 20+ years ended up being the most fun watch. I don't think I'd travel to one, but if one of these lands in the area again... I'll likely attend (after checking the invited guest list first).

Yeah, this was my first convention (of any kind). I was warned, I thought they were exaggerating. They weren't. The "stink" is a very real thing. It was only made worse by the organizers making everybody queue outside which was a nice sunny 26C all day. Not insanely warm, but for the many who showed up dressed in costumes, or always popular all-black... disaster. I actually had no intention of attending. A friend of mine, had a friend of his cancel, so I ended up with a free weekend pass. So I ended up going. The exhibit floor vendors, the autographs, movie props, Magic tournament... all that stuff is more or less forgettable fluff. So I was looking forward to the first program which was Lou Ferrigno (see OP). Things were looking grim until the 1pm program with Marina Sirtis (see OP). That's when I finally saw the appeal of the whole thing. It's the same appeal as behind-scenes, and making-of featurettes you find on special edition DVDs/BRDs, but (seemingly) more personal, less filtered. There is also the crowd element, like movies/theater/concerts, it's always more enjoyable when everybody around you also gets it.

On a side note, while a friend was in-line for an expensive autograph yesterday.. I went around taking pictures of cosplayers. What else is there to do near end of day. I'll probably have more tonight, and maybe try to set up some gallery type thing. So far though.. no Sailor Planet (That's no moon!), but Sailor Penis (Wait! was that a guy?) is confirmed. Maybe I'll even donate the 20$ to the Team Fox charity, and have a pic of me in a certain car shaped time machine from some old movie. If the lines are better today that is. Time to go stand in queues for the better part of my day.. again. Queues: A true Canadian pass-time.

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Very cool video.

Worse. Promo. Ever. I know what they are trying to do, but seriously, this shit is embarrassing. (May not be safe for some work places.) VrmlfLUgMMM

Great! It's old. I should update it, probably won't though.

Err Nope.

Turns out I don't really have much to chose from when it comes to pictures of myself. I'm wearing the "You Sank My Battleship" tshirt from threadless. Who knew combining historical battles, and popular children's board games would work so well?

I'd like to mention ΠΛΑΝΗΤΕΣ プラネテス [PLANETES] from a few years ago. It's a decent attempt at hard SF. With lots of suspense, humour, and even some heartfelt moments (for big softies like me). PLANETES follows a space station's colourful debris-removal team. The future's equivalent of garbage collectors. The small department is grossly under funded, under staffed, but requires a high level of skill from the pilots, and the astronauts who do the EVA work. A series with a surprising climax which comes out of nowhere (caught me by surprise at least). I can't recommend this series enough. I picked up the original Japanese VODs back when it originally aired. Then hunted down fan-subbed versions so I could show my friends. I has since been released on DVD in NA. Look it up if you haven't seen it yet.

Just got back into it. Looking for the link to the game now. It's on!

Maybe just edit out the links in the original post.

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Ender Pearls.. so beautiful, so dangerous.

Yeah. When compared to the new TV spots for Diablo 3. They've come a long way. 7RIeY74gfM8 QarV3DnKi4k

The Killing is pretty amazing. I haven't seen the original it was based off of, but I really want to see how they differ.