Dewar

I don't know what's happening with my account, but I only see nasty games like are described here maybe 1/10 of my games, probably less. I queue almost exclusively alone and all-pick.

I can't wait. I'm more excited for this than any XB1 or PS4 news.

Using an electric smoker is great because they heat slow (so you don't have to worry about the big oven element causing big fluctuations in temperature) but are still electric so you can buy a simple PID that turns them on and off depending on a temperature probe, for more accurate temp control than the built in thermostat or running charcoal/gas. My ex-housemate had one and we used it all the time. For the pork (or any meat really) I recommend a good (organic and local if possible) apple vinegar. The acid has the effect of loosing up the collagen a little, but it doesn't get very sour, just an extra tingle.

I assumed he was lying since he could have gotten plenty of that from stock photo websites. I guess it depends on what was intended by "making" pictures. I assumed painting.

As long as you aren't on the bus during the height of rush hour, riding in a bus with luggage is a bit of a pain, but definitely do-able. Especially if the bus is going to the airport, that's got to be somewhat common. Another option would be to ship some of it and just take a couple of bags, though that might cost the same as just grabbing a taxi.

Firefall releases to the public and is free to play today. I booted it up last night (as I have beta access) and tried it out. It's come a very long way from when I got into the beta almost two years ago. I'm not sure if it's come far enough, but why not try it for free?

It's basically mutated "try before you buy." After I have played the free portion of the game, I'm more informed to decide if I want to pay money for more of it. I don't have a problem with that. I believe that developers do get a little cash for the PS+ downloads as well, and Sony counts on the people who have the subscription and don't download anything to balance that out, same as Netflix DVDs count on people holding one disk for 8 months.

I have heard them say "not long" but who knows what that means. I'd wager about the same as "soon."

If you ask me, they should take it out of pro games as well. A couple of teams during the international were a bit too quick to give up. Where are my desperation rapier purchases?

Probably related to the Mr. Wizard (or other childhood science show) showing that a bowling ball and a baseball fall at the same speed. It quickly glossed over the concept of air resistance. For as awesome as that show was, there were a few questionable bits of science on there.

I downloaded this on my PS3 on Friday, and then couldn't be arsed to actually play it at all. Though part of that was due to intense drinking, I was also saddened by how uninterested I am, especially since I don't have a current console and I'd have to play it on my old 360. Edit: I should mention that this doesn't have anything to do with gameplay (obviously, as I have not played) more a comment on the general marketing buzz and a few quick look videos.

Keep in mind I never played any of the other games in the series, so I didn't have much to compare it to at the time. The main thing that really grabbed me were the alien conversations. They had some really nice looking CG for the aliens and I think it might have been the first game I played with full voice acting. The story really gripped me at the time, and the puzzles were just hard enough to keep me interested without getting me stuck for too long. Ship combat was somewhat average, but I remember having quite a bit of fun playing multiplayer fights with friends. That game had a time limit too and i remember that making the end of the game a pain. I really like the time limits in Dead Rising for instance, as you have a set goal, but also all this side stuff, so you have to decide what side stuff you can fit in and it creates this really cool balancing dynamic that makes the open world feel larger than it really is. The problem I had with SC2 is that there's no real direction, and it felt as if every time I finally figured out what I should be doing, the game would end on me. SC3 has a little bit of a clearer mission path to follow.

Yay work things. We have a software deployment (Office 365 if anyone is curious) that's supposedly due by the end of the month. We had a project meeting today where everyone pretty much agreed that we weren't going to be ready in time. However, my manager's manager (who was my manager for a while until we found a replacement for that position) insists that she won't make the go/no-go call yet, and we should try our best to be ready for the deployment next week. My manager is out on tomorrow, leaving me in charge of our end of this crappy project. I'm tempted, just to spite everyone, to say no one goes home on Friday until we're ready to deploy. I realize that it's more out of spite than anything, and that no one will really care if we miss the deadline, but I'm following the letter of the law when she says to try our best if I don't let anyone leave until we're ready right? *Please note that I've had a couple of drinks and don't intend on actually making us all suffer for some arbitrary deadline, but it's nice to talk about it anyway.

I played Star Control 3 when it came out and loved it. I went back to play Star Control 2 from the open source Ur-Quan Masters thing, and I just couldn't get on with the time limit.

Finally, after years of being without an important core gamer experience, I have beaten XCOM: UFO Defence with the help of the OpenXCOM project. It's crazy good, and I can see why people were a bit annoyed with the mechanics that were left out of the new game. I ended up getting a bit lost toward the end, getting swarmed by UFOs a few an hour, until I realized that the aliens build bases on earth and I had one right next to my HQ. Once I figured that out and took care of business, it was smooth sailing.

I suppose that would depend on how bad it's gotten, but I usually see people call for a rotate (swapping lanes) in these situations, thus putting your more-farmed team members up against their farmed Brood.

Interesting. I'm not a runny yolk fan, but interesting regardless.

If something goes down, I'd be happy to show up and have a drink or a bite. I'm not much of an organizer these days, it stressed me out.

I have never seen egg in a ravioli before. Does it basically turn into a hard boiled egg in the pasta, or does it more absorb into the shell?

Aye, different parts of that letter describe different parts of my life. Thankfully, I'm past the worst of it, being married and all.

I imagine that huge funding jump at the end was probably determined to be self-funded. If there were concerns about the software itself being a fraud, I find it hard to believe the campaign would have gone on this long.

Chat on the noob stream wasn't too bad, it had around 5k in there when I was watching and there were even some honest noob questions getting answered in there. I did watch some of the games from the client, but with chat turned off, so I don't know what was going on there.

It was actually the Xenonauts video that made me think of the original XCOM, which then had Steam news about OpenXCOM, which has now lead me to finally beating this piece of gaming history. Even today it's an incredible game. at least with the interface improvements and bug fixes of OpenXCOM.

I'm not exactly a noob, but I found the noob stream a good mix of new things that I didn't know and repetative information about the very basic mechanics. Purge especially did a great job, and his explanations of the heroes and their different power at the start was super useful for someone who hasn't seen a lot of them played. As hero picks got repetative and I had a good idea of what each of them could do, I tuned into the noob stream a lot less.

Given that a doctorates (or any college degrees) in video game production are fairly recent, it's reasonable to assume that most of the college graduates are newer to the industry while the folks with "some college" might be veterans?