clyde

I added Scratch to the list of suggested engines in the first post and included some tutorial-videos for Scratch in the spoiler-tag. The event is this upcoming Saturday!!! I'll post a reminder on Wednesday.

On Pinball FX2 tables, I nudge on one type of occasion. If the ball is headed for the center-drain and it's trajectory is angled toward a flipper, I will lift that flipper and nudge the table in the opposite direction right when the ball is about to pass it. So for instance, if the ball is headed towards the center-drain, but it moving to the right a bit, I lift the right flipper and nudge left at the moment right before it goes through. The other flipper will often have a chance to hit the ball back up into the playfield if the move is successful. It's worth noting that the nudge-system on Pinball FX2 is 3 nudges every 15 seconds; after that it counts as a tilt meaning you lose your ball and your bonuses. It's nice enough to give you three types of audio cues on most of the tables which allows you to know which nudge of the 3 you are on. I use an xbox360 controller and I assign the flippers to the bumpers instead of the triggers because they have much less give. My thumb rests on the joystick for the nudges. I use view #1 on this table. How many modes do you typically get through SgtWhistlebotom? Which ones do you complete successfully? Also, when you lose your ball is it typically through the center-drain or the outlanes?

I noticed that the obsidian pieces don't go away after the wizard-mode is complete. So hypothetically the score would be magnitudes higher if someone is able to reach the wizard-mode twice in the game (assuming they accrue more obsidian during that second play-through of the modes).

This is after finishing the wizard-mode once with 5 pieces of obsidian (which gave me 94 million alone). Here are my current impressions of the table: -I don't remember what completing Stairway does and I'm looking forward to one of us finding out. -I'm curious what Whisper's relationship to the tree is for some reason. Whisper seems to have an expectation of human-rights while no one cares about the tree. I guess maybe it's just some sort of animation spell and the tree doesn't have any self-identity. -The Bones mode (which I call "Skeletons") is very difficult for me. I can get maybe 5 shots on that right-orbit before the time runs out and it doesn't seem to be enough. - I love the two different responses the boy gives depending on whether or not he succeeds at completing Behind the Walls. I forgot how much I enjoy this table. It just has so much stuff, an interesting theme, and I love the obsidian-system.

I guess it is on. Note: This table is free on Steam. You have to download Pinball FX2 though (which is also free, but a large file).

Big points in the Pinball FX2 tables come from finishing modes. This is good because finishing the modes in Pinball FX2 tables let's you see the narratives and animations of the table! The way you start the main modes on Sorcerer's Lair is to hit the three spot targets above the spinning sigil and then shooting into the cellar (lit green, after the platform raises). The dot-matrix will then give you instructions on what you need to do and will start counting down if the mode is timed. Completing modes gives you loads of points. Knowing how to start the main modes is useful, but I also recommend testing hypothesis as they occur to you. I enjoy picking something on the table and trying to figure out what it does by noticing what makes it react. I'm hoping that folks might start developing specific questions and figuring stuff out in posts during the tournament. It's fun to figure it out with other people. Oh and just in case anyone doesn't know this, you can usually tell what targets and lanes will do things based on whether or not they are flashing. Also, to be clear, I'm thinking that it should be the highest score that we manage in the time-period we set for the table's tournament rather than the all-time high-scores on our accounts. Should we just go ahead and decide this is a thing? What should the end date be (assuming the start date is today)? Maybe we should wait until additional people show interest.

I was recently reminded of how much I enjoy playing tables of Pinball Arcade and Pinball FX2. I have so many to choose from though, that I have a hard time committing to one table long enough to truly appreciate its idiosyncracies. The way I used to do it was to try to beat someone's high-score. That stopped working when I became really good at playing pinball-sims. I was thinking that it would be fun to have a friendly pinball-tournament. Any table on Pinball Arcade or Pinball FX2 would do. We could compete for high-scores for a period of time (maybe a week, two?) and then if we have fun doing it, switch to another table. Here's the thing though: I'm going to win. I'm fairly confident that I will consistently end up with high-scores that may demotivate people. This is why it would be important to have more than one participant (besides myself). It may not be true for others, but when I was first getting into Pinball FX2, I wasn't all that excited about beating the best player's high-score, I was excited about beating the high-score of the player that had just a little bit more than my personal best. Incremental one-upmanship is a great way to commit to a single table in order to find out all of it's secrets and strategies (though some feel compelled to repeat an exploit tiresomely rather than explore the table's modes). We could discover modes and tell each other about them during the course of the week. Is anyone interested in trying this out? I think Sorcerer's Lair would be a great table to start with since it is free on Steam.

Twitter was saturated with reactions to Blow's pee-bottle last night.

I just got official word that I will not be going in tomorrow. That's a relief. We have plenty of wood and I bought a bunch of junk-food and beer at the grocery store.

So how are y'all planning on spending your Powerball winnings?

The couple eating a bunch of Taco Bell was fun and adorable. I wonder how they would rate beans if they were from a place that serves better ingredients than Taco Bell. I don't like how Taco Bell beans have gristle in them and I don't remember those beans being very good otherwise either.

Arcade Review just published an essay that attempts to articulate one of Porpentine's main motifs. http://www.arcadereview.net/published/cyberqueen

I read the narrative as an allegory where Wreden was personifying the part of his creative-process that he has no control over. So when the voice became desperate at the end, I took it as an expression of his frustration and confusion paired with narrative contradictions intended to break the illusion that they are two separate people in hopes that the audience would apply everything we've learned to the paradigm that this has all been an attempt to wrangle the genius/muse. In other words, I saw the falling apart of the logic as an intentional literary-device.

I haven't been able to embed youtube videos that take you to the time-stamp yet. I've been using the media button on the forums.

For the impatient, I recommend skipping to 23:14 36:30 Bernie: "Now I want to ask you guys a question. Alright? Here is the question: In your judgment why is it that some many white, working-class people are voting against their best interest?" Dr Cornel West: "Well you got a long history of the wages of whiteness, they invest in their white-identity that obscures their perception of reality. That's part of the vicious legacy of white-supremacy in America, to think that somehow if they can scape-goat the most vulnerable, identify with the powerful symbolically as the powerful is concretely still manipulating and dominating them."

I think this may inspire some science-fiction. Something like Contact, but with doppelgangers from parallel universes.

Yeah that's awkward but sometimes you just gotta be like "fuck it." It's like when someone assumes that I'm hitting on them when I just sincerely share a coincidental interest/time/place. It's awkward, but it's whatever. I'm not going to walk around being aftaid of making other people uncomfortable just by being present in public. That would be miserable and I have a reasonable desire to exist in the world

I don't really understand what a trust is. How does it work? If you ever decide to learn about pottery and you get confused about what equipment you need and stuff, I can help. If you do Cone 6, we can exchange glaze recipes. What business might you go into? Something less profitable? Which one?

Great episode. I especially enjoyed the email-section.

Are you a trap-and-neuter/spay-and-return kinda guy?

I was trying to research the answer to this question last night and I think that this is partially true. So from my understanding, a credit union is basically a not-for-profit, member owned money loaner, but then when you ask yourself "Why would someone use a payday-lender instead of a credit-union?" the credit union doesn't fill that need entirely. I think that you can still get a payday-loan when the credit-union says no (I mght be wrong about this). So what I'm wondering is what a member-owned, not-for-profit that gives out high-interest, short-term loans would look like. It's counter-inntuitive at first, but since people still use pay-day lending, I think there is potential to make those services obsolete with non-predatory practices. Edit: I looked into it a little more and some credit-unions offer "payday alternatie loans" and one that is branded as "q-cash" which offers small loans ( something like $1000 to be paid in a month) that only costs a $20 fee and a 28%apr for members. This is much better than higher fees, the average of 400% apr and having to pay it back in two weeks. So I'm still trying to figure out why people still use things like payday-lenders and car title-lenders (since it seems like credit-unions offer much more helpful services). Another addition: I just found this article which is kinda what I was looking for in tge first place. i had never heard of "community development credit unions" (CDCUs). http://inthesetimes.com/article/18457/nycs-credit-unions-give-mom-and-pop-stores-a-chance-despite-gentrification

Two former debt-collectors are using their knowledge of the practice to buy some debts at debt-as-commodity rates and pay them off with donations. I wonder if this could be a more common form of co-operatives. Debt-collection co-ops or maybe even payday-lending co-ops might really help a lot of people out.

The name-filtering liability part was interesting. I would think that companies wouldn't be liable for matches that are so general that the assumption of an actual match would be so unreasonable. I tried some names out on that U.S. Treasury Dept. website and it matches "John Arnold" and "Stephen Law". I also thought the part about computer languages being in English was surprising. I just assumed that you could program in Chinese characters or Japanese or whatever. Is that not a thing? Edit: So I found this list, but I don't know much about low-level computer language, so I don't know what it means when it says that there is a Chinese C++ Does that mean that the results can work on a machine that can run English C++? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English-based_programming_languages

Waiting a day made the decision to wait much easier since if I ordered one the day after, it wouldn't arrive til June anyway.