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I'm very picky about some grammar points, but sentence ending prepositions and split infinitives don't bother all that much. In a lot of cases sentence ending prepositions make for more natural sounding language and don't cause problems with ambiguity. I haven't seen a good argument against them in the general case. No, Churchill disliking them isn't a good argument. In some cases they're redundant, like "where are you at?". That sounds like slang, but in other cases it sounds fine "what were you looking at?". Actually, split infinitives don't bother me at all, I think they're useful. People pointing them out is what bothers me, because they're just doing it in slavish obedience to a prescriptivist rule they can't argue in favour of. Caring about grammar doesn't mean finding as many things to nitpick as possible. (Yes they do sound awful in some constructions, but you don't actually see that very often.) "I really want to like this" "I want to really like this" Those two sentences mean slightly different things.

Oh man, Avellone. I need to make some time to listen to this.

What is with pitched up/down songs on youtube? I guess it's to avoid the content recognition system, but you notice instantly. Well, I do anyway and I assumed most other people do too, but sometimes these videos have more views than the correct ones. Case in point: 3 mil views? Gah!

I was going to say that I'm not picky about hair in my food, but I guess I am in the literal sense because I pick it out and keep eating

I think that's the best boss in the game (haven't played the DLC though). It's true you have to run around a lot, but I think the moveset is well designed because the tells are clear, you can avoid all the attacks reliably and there's more to it than just dodging sword swings.

I applied for a PhD position at my uni a few weeks ago, but I was in the awkward position of being signed up for an exam given by the head of the group that I was applying to join. In a rather difficult course too. Oh and it was the same week I had to hand in my master's thesis, great timing eh! Got the results back, and it turns out I did really well, I can't remember being this relieved for quite some time. I don't know that it affects my chances much, but doing poorly certainly would've and I'm glad I won't have to be haunted by that.

For me, mouselook makes the games more fun because it feels more natural and it doesn't significantly change the game in any way besides making it more pleasant to play.

I'm a little behind on the show so I just listened to it today and it was a pleasant surprise. Quite often their guests don't contribute much to the discussion, and I think that even the hosts themselves haven't found as much to say about some areas this season, but this episode was great. Danielle fit in super well.

I got into StarCraft through watching Korean Brood War matches, so I've always been more of a spectator than a player. While I agree that having a healthy player base is important for any competitive game, I think StarCraft II's success as a spectator sport came in large part from it being possible to get in to simply as a spectator. It is much easier to get an understanding of what's happening and why it's exciting in SCII than it is in DotA2. The reasons I stopped watching were primarily: Difficulty in finding someone to root for. I was more of a fan of some Korean players than others, but the truth of the matter is that as great as the games were at times, I never cared as much about Korean vs Korean matchups. The language barrier and their reclusiveness made it hard to be a fan of anything more than their play, and that was not enough for them to stand out sufficiently. There were exceptions of course, but still. Rooting for foreigners was more exciting because they were the underdogs, but there simply weren't enough success stories and they became fewer as time went on. Things like ThorZaIN winning TSL3 fuelled people's excitement and as it happened less and less that excitement was depleted. It certainly wasn't helped by some of the best players not being fit to be in the limelight. Another factor for me was the tournament format. SCII tournaments were all weekend affairs that you had to dedicate a ton of time to watch. I found that as I had less time, I tried to pick the matches I wanted to see the most and they would invariably be delayed. From half an hour to one and a half hours, with no clear messaging about what's going on. It's a horrible spectator experience and it never got much better. It was too hard to be a casual fan. Maybe the biggest reason is that the game got stale. I don't think Blizzard supported the game nearly as well as they could have, especially considering the kind of resources they have. Yes, it's a hard game to balance and you can't fiddle with it too frequently, but leading up to HotS the metagame was absolute crap for over 6 months. I also think there were lingering flaws in the core design of the game that they refused to address. SCII was a good game, but I don't think it was good enough. Things like the Corruptor being an utterly boring unit that simply doesn't fit into the game well, unit clumping drastically changing how powerful splash damage is and making Lancherster's law apply to engagements, the race specific mechanics probably being too dramatically powerful for the good of the game, etc. I think it's interesting that there were two massive competitive games, Counter-Strike and Brood War, that both had thriving scenes for over a decade with zero balance input (other than maps). Now they both have sequels that are constantly rebalanced while never quite getting there. I don't know how you replicate that, or if you even can, but I don't think SCII got close enough and I doubt LotV will randomly strike gold. Finally, I think Blizzard screwed up monumentally when it came to BNet 2.0. People joke about it being worse than the 1998 BNet, but it was true. It was awful at launch and I don't think it ever got good. It's not a place that fosters communities, that's why the game is lonely.

It bothers me too because it's a real feeling and I guess there's just no word for it in English now. I mean, you even see it in pets.

I didn't know there was some beef between Taylor Swift and Katy Perry, but I think it's rather amusing considering one guy has written/produced most of their respective hit singles. They have too much in common to throw crap at each other.

We got a lot of mulberries this year, so I decided to make a cake and put some (a lot) of them on. I know I'm not exactly breaking new ground by putting berries on a cake but I was honestly surprised how well it went together. I like cake with strawberries, blueberries, raspberries or whatever other berries I can go out and pick, but this was different because it's a taste explosion when you bite into one. Mulberries can be a bit too intense to just eat on their own, not sure why I hadn't tried this sooner. The only downside is that they're a bit too big.

I'm doubtful it'd be possible without the trolls, but I'm confident it won't be with them. Wasting all estus as soon as they respawn. Also, staying away from all DkS3 footage. Gonna play it anyway.

I agree that the fourth episode brings the whole game down, but: I fully agree with this. I love the utterly incoherent theme in Quake. To me it doesn't matter that it's unintentionally great, if anything that makes it better. I don't like things that are weird just to be weird, but Quake's weirdness feels genuine to me. I don't think you could remake it, partially because the low fidelity graphics let them get away with things they wouldn't today, but also because the intentionality would ruin it. If you remade Deus Ex, what would you do with the weird stuff, like some of the horribly cheesy lines or racist voice acting? You can't intentionally remake it that way, but you can't remove it without making something that's not Deus Ex either. Anyway, I probably like Quake's theme more than I reasonably should. I think the game is good for other reasons too. A lot of early 3D games are interesting because level design conventions hadn't solidified yet, and Quake is a perfect example. Much of the level design is strange by today's standards, or even the standards set a few years later, but I think most of it is great. It's another area where the game feels different from anything else in a good way. It doesn't have the giant maze like key hunts of Doom II, the levels are much tighter. Like aoanla said above, Quake II doesn't hold up nearly as well and while I agree that the theme is part of it, I also think the level design in Q2 goes against everything that's was good about Quake. Also, Quake just still feels so damn good to play. The sound effects are spot on. There's a reason they still reused many of them (like the Quad Damage sound) for every subsequent game. It doesn't get much recognition anymore, but I think it's actually an accidental masterpiece. Love it.

I have so many favourite levels, it would take me a while to think of all of them and long lists are boring. I love all the classic CS maps, but I have a special fondness for de_nuke because it's so unorthodox. It's from a time when people didn't understand what made a good map yet, and it's from one of the earliest betas which was a completely different game. Had it been introduced later in the game's life people would've torn it to shreds. Not because it's a bad map, communities aren't afraid to drop bad maps, but because it just plays so differently. Another favourite of mine, that's basically the complete opposite, is Q3DM6. Specifically in CPM Clan Arena. That just flows so well, it's perfect for building up speed:

I never think about what a fair price would be, I think about what I'm willing to pay based on how much I'm expecting to enjoy a given game, as well as how hyped I am for it (that's essentially momentary lapse of judgement). These days the chance of me enjoying a game enough that I feel a drive to keep playing it are pretty low, and I'm rarely all that hyped for games either. As a result, the times when I'm willing to pay $60 for a game are exceedingly rare, it has to be something like the sequel to my favourite game of all time (as Dark Souls II was). The games that I love I would gladly have paid more for, but I wouldn't be able to find the games I love if I paid more for them. I'm a student with basically no income though, I'm not sure how my spending habits would be affected by having more money. I've always been quite frugal. I don't think this is a problem that would be solved by games costing more. Does Infinity Ward not crunch their asses off making CoD even when it's raking in billions for Activision? It's a cultural issue within the game development community. Some people put up with it, some defend it and too few stand up against it. The ones who don't like it can find better paying jobs elsewhere and there are people lining up to replace them. It's not unique to the game industry, but people who give up their lives tend to do it for money, not to be exploited because they're passionate. I think it's disgusting. If you need people to work 80 hour weeks for months on end you fucked up as a manager.

I've never thought about it before, but I keep my left hand on <AEF ('<' is next to 'z' on Swedish keyboards, the left shift is shortened) and the right hand on JILÖ ('ö' is to the right of 'l'). Or maybe JIOÖ sometimes. I'm self taught though.

Yes. To undo having pressed it by mistake I also use that set of keys for extra buy binds in CS.

They made a third video, which I think is much better. The professor featured is a bit more careful with his wording (and use of equal signs!)

Both those videos have some issues. The first sum (S1) isn't equal to 1/2, it's divergent. Apparently it's convergent in a different sense, but that's not what they say. If you assume that S1 = 1/2 you can directly derive a contradiction from that, so the rest of their derivations using that result are wrong too. Secondly, the maclaurin series expansion for 1/(1-x) is only valid for x on (-1,1), and of course they plug in x=-1. It bothers me a bit because I swear the professor in the video knows it's wrong, there's no way he doesn't. He even puts 'proof' in quotes when he's done. The sum doesn't converge in the usual sense, that is in the limit of n->inf. Also, zeta(0) = -1/2, if we say that zeta(-1) = 1+2+3+4+... then zeta(0) = 1+1+1+1+... however, 1+2+3+4+5... - (1+1+1+1+...) = 1+2+3+4+5... = -1/12. It doesn't seem to me like you can interpret the zeta function as that infinite sum when s<1.

People often say that you should read math books with a pen. It annoys me a bit ("proof is left as an exercise for the reader"), but it's true. You're not meant to take things at face value, you need to read it half a dozen times or more, and work through the implied details on paper yourself. I took some fairly advanced math classes last fall and dreaded them for that reason. Ended up putting in the work (which turned out to be just as much as I dreaded) and surprised myself with some really good grades. Now I sort of regret not taking more. I know if I did/had I'd hate it in the moment, but appreciate it once I got through it. Can't stay in school forever though.

Part of the point of the proof is to gain some insight into why it's true.

I'm going to say that you probably would. Harder proofs aren't fundamentally different, they just typically involve more abstract concepts that take longer to grasp. It's satisfying once you grasp some theoretical tool that allows you to prove very powerful statements almost trivially. Here's a problem I think you might like if you haven't seen it already: Show that for any set of n > 3 points in a plane, unless all points are contained on a single line, there always exists a line that only contains two points. It sounds almost trivial, but it's harder than it seems to show. There's a very elegant proof that I like though I'll give the name below but you should give it some thought before looking it up.

You might be working on the same game, but that doesn't mean your tasks are repetitive. I bet they have a ton of interesting problems to solve. Not being slaves to a publisher and all that comes with it (crunch, game design mandates, etc.) probably helps too. I don't give a damn about Riot but to me it seems like a more interesting place to work than say Treyarch. Neither is particularly high on my non-existent list though.

Yeah, I think the 'o' in food is [uː], but I could be wrong. edit: I'm replying to the wrong thing and no one