Badfinger

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Posts posted by Badfinger

  1. Posted

    I took Chris's point as being "no matter what, technology changes fast. any author of the internet age can't do something like what mitchell here did and not think it's going to sound dated" specifically for the reasons you're describing.

    For me the futurist use of brands as common nouns dates the book itself (as opposed to it always being (and feeling like) a futurist story written in 2004). I think the book would've benefited from not going down that route as the rest of the book feels pretty timeless.

    Oh absolutely, it does sound dated I agree. Do you think it would be as jarring to you if the book had been written in 1994 rather than 2004? I'm not as taken out of the moment for older books set somewhat past their present day that talk about someone sitting down at their IBM for example.

    Do you think then, as kind of a blanket statement, someone writing about the future should not use current branding in their work? Exceptions as always if they are using it for a specific reason rather than attempting to give the writing a sense of place. I think a book can feel like it's old without necessarily feeling dated or out of it's time.

  3. Posted

    I have not read the book, enjoyed the cast. A comment, and a question.

    Because I haven't read the book, I was shocked when you mentioned a character who was obviously male and then mentioned the love of his life, another man named "Luis Array". That sure was an interesting twist in the book that was completely not real!

    Chris mentioned the weird anachronism of calling a camera a "Nikon", a car a "Ford", etc. The book is less than a decade old, and you kind of have to re-remember that the iphone is only 5 years old. It's just one of those things that an author in 2004 could not know about the next 10 years. Do you think if you had first read the book 10 years from now, reading things like that would be less bothersome, more a look back in time at what the futures from the past look like? This is more tangential to the actual book conversation, but it's one of the stronger thoughts I had about reading and discussing books in general while listening.

  4. Posted

    I think the "old guy holding up his finger" thing is to point out that Groucho Marx didn't make The Great Dictator.

    Oh god dammit I was even having a conversation about Charlie Chaplin earlier this week. And then I read my post. And then I read your post.

    How the hell did Groucho Marx get in my brain?

    um.... The Great Dictator is satire though at least? :getmecoat

  6. Posted

    Parody is Mel Brooks making Men in Tights, and Tina Fey impersonating Sarah Palin.

    Satire is Groucho Marx making The Great Dictator, and the Colbert Report.

    Satire is sometimes mocking a form or style, but it's not necessarily for laughs. You could possibly suggest that Spec Ops: The Line is a satire of modern military shooters. I'm stretching the bounds of comparison here, that's probably a dumb thing to say.

  7. Posted

    Black Mesa has taken on an incredibly mighty task: Update Half-Life 1. I am enjoying Black Mesa and am going to keep playing it, and yes, seeing someone else's interpretation is interesting. I didn't mean my remark of having to think about Black Mesa as basically 30 frame a second fan art as a pejorative. I think fans reinterpreting an original work within the same medium as the original work is crazy. I also think seeing Black Mesa the research facility in higher res is super fun. I can't help but notice the details and moments which are missed. Sometimes it's the absolute tiny things, for instance in the start of the original Half-Life, we fade up and the train is already moving down a tunnel, from an unknown point of origin to an unknown destination, while in Black Mesa we fade up in the train, but it's stationary -- nothing is moving in the scene -- and we're at a station! It's tiny tiny stuff, but they change the meaning and implications present in the very first shot! A bold task.

    Oh wow. It struck me at the time that the opening scene was exactly the same except different, but I wasn't entirely sure why. I didn't even realize the difference of that first moment until I read this right now.

  8. Posted

    FWIW we are friend with those guys and like them very much.

    Since I brought up the internet fan feud in the last thread and have taken long long enough to respond that it's rolled over to a New Cast, I'll reply here. I figured this would be the case since there's been enough crossover you can pretty much tell. They reference you, you reference them. Also you're all adults. Not that something like that would prevent the internet from making wild assumptions and accusations based on where you breathe during a sentence.

    I was surprised and pleased to hear Patrick make an appearance on this cast, it was awesome and I laughed. Tokyo Jungle is insane.

  9. Posted

    Great, now I have Space Asshole stuck in my head. Not that that's a bad thing.

    Also, to interject on the pronunciation discussion, one that's always bothered me was zealot. I never really used the term outside of Starcraft and all that time I never heard it said out loud. Then one day I learned how it was "supposed" to be pronounced. I always read it in my head as "zee-lot" rather than "zel-uht" since zeal is pronounced "zeel" (rhymes with seal) not "zel" (rhymes with bell). I think I even argued with Chris about this on Twitter many moons ago.

    MELEE

    Dear god in heaven, it's pronounced MAY-LAY

  10. Posted

    I hear shots were fired?

    I think it's kind of silly personally. But then again, I was introduced to Idle Thumbs through recommendations from the Giant Bomb community, which I was introduced to by personal friends. The casts specifically have since introduced me to Three Moves Ahead and Gamespot Gameplay. It's, like, cool to know about things people who do things you like also like? And stuff? If someone's not interested in either of those things but likes games in general I think it's their loss, but I wouldn't get mad at anyone about it. It's also pretty obvious to anyone who pays attention to both casts that while there are the overlaps that make for hilarious observation, they came about completely organically.

    Unless Giant Bomb hired Patrick Klepek BECAUSE he's loved Jurassic Park since he was 12 years old...

    The plot thickens.

  11. Posted

    The reason we found out Patrick goes by Scoops is because someone saw "Scoops" in FTL and thought it was Patrick, but it was actually the name Steve chose for his character in that game--so I think we can assume Steve is down with Scoops.

    I was confused at first, because I was uncertain how Patrick "Trick" "Tricky" "Kleptok" Klepek was being mistaken for Steve "Hot Scoops" Gaynor. I'd forgotten That One Time when they called him Scoops I guess, I just don't think of it as his nickname.

    I have to say, you guys have stirred up some ire on The Internet for daring to mention overlapping meme themes on different podcasts. Personally, I blame Scoops.

    It's always Steve's fault.

  12. Posted

    Yeah, gold weapons are greylisted (in that you won't immediately get kicked for scripting restrictions, but the do not come from natural game spawn points).

    Sometimes hackers are interesting. We were traveling as a group of 3 towards the NW airfield, and all of a sudden something spawned behind us. I thought it was a goat... it was a hacker who teleported himself in as a dog and was talking to us over direct comms.

    Most of the time hackers suck, unfortunately.

  13. Posted

    Anyway, I have nothing to really say about the book. I'm always envious of people who can actually get something from reading a book or watching a movie or whatever. I generally... don't. It was a fun read, but maybe I'm just too young to appreciate a lot of what the book has to say? (I'm 25.) I don't really know. I think I just suck at reading books in this way.

    I always detested reading with a goal of specifically thinking critically about it. High school English class is the worst place to learn about loving books. In my high school, Catch 22 was always on the curriculum for your senior year. I was so interested and excited about it that I read it during the summer before the school year. I love it, it's one of my favorite books. I even read Heller's sequel. When it rolled around to spring and it came time to read the book in class, it was horrible. The discussions were trite, the messages were forced, I couldn't just READ. I didn't even finish the book.

    I think reading something and knowing you'll have someone to talk about it with is fun and exciting. Reading with an eye on specifically dissecting a book, taking notes, crunching it up, studying certain passages, and sucking all the messaging marrow out of it sounds like one of the most joyless activities on earth.

    Not thinking specifically about the inclusion of a character like Chief Halfoat or Lt. Scheisskopf doesn't mean I didn't get anything out of those characters.

  16. Posted

    I quit CoD 4 for a long time because I was stuck on the last stand portion of All Ghillied Up on Veteran difficulty. I went back and finally finished it and was glad I did.

    I have never finished Fallout 3, New Vegas, Skyrim, or Far Cry 2. I wouldn't call those games I QUIT, though (except for New Vegas, where I lost my saves 15 hours in and couldn't make myself restart). I put over 30 hours in all of them, I just failed to reach the last mission that tells you that you've won.

    I have yet to finish Darksiders. I stopped, restarted, then stopped again when another game came out. I always intended to finish it. I guess I've straight up quit Bastion. I enjoyed playing it, just didn't have the impetus to continue playing it. I quit at the point right after the demo ended.

    If you include "never played as long as I anticipated" into quit, you can add every Total War game. Thankfully I feel like I've gotten my money's worth, because my dad has put a LOT of time into all of them on my steam account.

  17. Posted

    Oh forgot to ask in the previous post and it's different enough I'll split it out.

    It sounds like you're all reading physical copies of books, with specific discussions on colors and typography? I believe I've read Chris's opinion on physical vs digital in other places on the forums, but I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.

    I'm completely in favor of ebooks, and even being an avid reader I kind of lost the drive to read constantly within the last two years or so, but have read much more now that I have a kindle. The opportunity to have thousands of critical works forever for free on demand is an amazing resource, besides the convenience of the form factor itself. One big factor for me is that I have overwhelmingly been a paperback reader all my life, so the switch from cheap printed pages to cheap digital text is almost transparent to me.

  18. Posted

    I am intrigued by The Sense of an Ending and Cloud Atlas after listening to the first cast, but I am now desperate to read and watch Tinker, Tailor. I really wanted to see it in theaters when it came out and just didn't (I rarely watch movies anymore and even ones I want to see a ton are casualties), and the first thing I did when I got home after listening was look it up on Amazon and see if the film was available on instant play. I'm checking out the free book preview now to make sure I can get into it. I have read The Count of Monte Cristo, though. If you can get through that you can get through anything.

  19. Posted

    Note to all, be careful when opening doors because I just opened a door in the middle of a barracks surrounded by zombies and it knocked me out, made me bleed out, broke my leg and put me into shock. That's one hell of a door! I logged out in despair and when I logged back in later I had spawned at a new player spawn near Kamenka.

    I currently have some fairly good equipment and enough food/water for awhile so I started my slow crawl towards the hospital.

    If anyone is willing to help me mend my broken bones I'd be more than happy to part with my AK with 4 clips of ammo ;) (helixxp on Steam)

    I'm close to your position if you can stand to wait until I get home today. I'm pretty sure I have multiple blood packs.

  21. Posted

    OK. I really want to meet up with people and go explore. I have free time tonight! I'll probably be on by about 6-6:30 EST. I'm pretty sure I'm north of Elektro at the moment, just as my base starting point. If anyone wants to truck around and run from zombies, I'm like 95% sure I'm in the steam group, or drop a post in the thread and we can coordinate in some way.

  23. Posted

    The military usually have passphrases with a caller and a responder. The caller would for instance shout "Flash" and the responder would reply with "Thunder" to indicate his or her allegiance.

    Our passphrases are "Baboo" and "Games!"

    Other than that it's all 3rd party communication software like Steam, Skype or Teamspeak that needs to be used.

    I was thinking more about out of game coordination, yeah. ;)

    I mean, I'll holler BABOO at someone I guess if it's important.

    "Badfinger was killed"

    Saddest part of my day

    Aww.

    It's been a weird day, trust me.

  24. Posted

    The latest update for Dayz Commander added a feature that allows you to search for other players. Feel free to look me. I'm usually soloing in low pop servers tryin to gear up before I hit a more populated server.

    Awesome, I've done that! I'm Badfinger. If I find you playing on a server, how should I get in touch?

  25. Posted

    So due to the Thumbs stream, and happening to stumble across the Hunger Gamez this past weekend, I was FASCINATED by Day Z in a way I haven't felt about any other games for a while. I perched it over the weekend and aside from some annoying issue getting it going, I've been having an absolute blast. I've joined the group (same name, same AV) so if someone would like to team up and pal around evenings EST I would happily do that because I've only had two brief interactions that didn't end with one of us waking up to a fresh spawn on a beach (and not even many of those).

    Ok so that's the teamwork part, and now I have stories I've been bursting to tell. The first was my maybe first ever spawn into the game. No idea where I was, didn't have/want outside resources (interactive map), didn't know exactly how to do anything. I could make a lot of exposition, but the round ended with me literally sitting among medical tents bleeding out, with my backpack STUFFED full of medical supplies because I could not bandage myself fast enough. The only firearm I found was an M16, with exactly zero rounds.

    The other happened last night. I decided I wanted to try a relatively full server, since I figure I'll die early and often and maybe it should at least be interesting. As I'm headed into Tcherno after a fresh spawn, the server blips and resets and I hop back in to about 5 people where there were 45 two minutes before. It's closing in on dusk. So the bustling sniper zone has turned into a ghost town. I get really lucky and find a boatload of gear and a pack in the church, a building, etc. My only two goals are hitting the firehouse as a Just In Case, and hitting the well on the NW side of town to fill a canteen. I scour the firehouse, but there's barbed wire in front of the stairs that makes it inaccessible. I noticed a ladder and wonder if there's a way in on the roof. I climb up, search around, go ALLLL the way to the top of the fire house (you'll notice I'm still alive at this point, which confirms the low pop), can't get in. Damn, I see supplies.

    Suddenly, I hear a noise. I correctly guess that someone with a tool box is coming in and snipping the wires so they can check for gear. I'm on the roof, but I'm right by the window and can COMPLETELY cover the stairs. This person could have been immediately dead, and had no way of knowing I was there. At this point I'm much more fascinated by interaction than just KILLIN DUDES, so I make the decision to just watch. I also chose NOT to announce myself, as even announcing I have them dead to rights but am friendly could get me killed anyway. So I position myself where I can see in 3rd person, but there's no way to get a shot at me. This person is loaded. They have an M4, a glock, a nice pack, obviously a tool kit. I watch them slowly check gear on the second floor, then the third, then ascend past my spot on the stairs. They root around, then start the descent. I shifted around a little, so I'm sure they were alerted but probably couldn't pin down my location. They go downstairs, I hear them eat and drink. I'm covering everything I can, and see them slip out the back towards the west, check the corners, and disappear around a building. I climb down and check the spoils, pick up probably another tool, and the G17 they had been using but decided to leave behind in favor of... something. I finish, check out an industrial building, fill my canteen, and I'm out of town to the North.

    TL;DR: For at least 10-15 minutes, absolutely nothing happened at all. And it was one of the coolest, most intense 15 minutes I've ever had playing games.