Bjorn

One thing about Blighttown, for all the universal hatred it gets, no one will ever forget it.

Being hip is cool. Being insufferable is not. The problem is a lack of proper terms and definitions to clarify the two.

I realized I never reposted back in here after I finished the book. I think I felt quite conflicted about it, which I still do. Ultimately I think its well worth reading, but that last third of it or so left me pretty unsatisfied. Fuck, this is why I never came back and wrote anything. I really don't have anything interesting to say beyond general praise for the world and character building, contrasted with a general dissatisfaction with a few elements of it. I'll just see myself out.

After seeing The Heat, I saw an interview...with I think Bullock, about how there's a long history of successful movies with female leads. You can go back to things like Alien and Thelma and Louise and see that audiences will turn out for female heroes and anti-heroes. It's just that Hollywood pretends they don't exist, and insists that female movies aren't profitable when people pitch them movies. Things do seem to be getting a bit better though. The range of movies in the last few years that women have led seems to be significantly more than previous years.

A friend came by tonight to watch Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang (which was fantastic, can't believe I'd never seen it), and he had to show me a recent find that he discovered in his grandparents basement when visiting them recently. It's a Star Trek Fotonovel™! I figured if anyone around here would dig this, the people who frequent this thread would. See kids, before the internet, and video streaming, and DVDs (we won't even talk about tapes), people couldn't just rewatch classic TV shows whenever they wanted. So they turned great television shows into books! It was just like watching the show, but with pages, and reading! I had completely forgot that this was a thing, but it brought back a memory that I owned one of these for Disney's The Black Hole when I was a kid. I was obsessed with sci-fi stuff, so I probably read that thing a hundred times when I was 8. So this is the Fotonovel™ of City on the Edge of Forever. I'm spoilering the Fotos™, as there's quite a few of them and there decent sized.

I scanned the list, but missed Tokyo Jungle was in it. Fucking buying and playing that tomorrow!

It kind of is a spoiler, so I won't be super specific. He's linked to one of the covenants, and he's invading to further the purpose of that covenant. So he's really acting like some PC invaders might, if they were focused on ranking up in a covenant. Whereas a lot of the NPC invaders just seem to be random invasions to add some flavor. Once you've defeated him all 3 times, his armor set will appear near the covenant leader, which is what really makes it clear what he was doing.

Hipsters are out. Super Hipsters are where it's at. They're like hipsters, but super.

Couple of hours? I hope that's an exaggeration, and I didn't burn a couple of hours of playtime by mentioning that. He shouldn't be that hard to find, but he will only appear if the area boss is still alive. So if you killed the boss, then went looking for him, he wouldn't show up. He's actually one of the more interesting invasions, as he shows up in 3 separate locations and has an actual purpose, unlike many of the NPC invaders.

Well, at least we know what is beyond evil: uPlay.

And yet then they make things like Rayman Origins and Legends, both of which feel like games to me that are not going to depend on Day 1 sales, but are going to depend on a longer sales cycle than most games. That just highlights the dysfunctional nature of Ubi for me. Occasionally they make games/decisions that seem to buck the other AAA publisher trends, but it seems almost accidental rather than intentional.

Arguing morality/honor/whatever in regards to Dark Souls is pretty much as pointless as a discussion gets. You can only control your own behavior and tell funny or terrible stories about other people's behavior.

I wouldn't enjoy trolling hosts like this, it's too mean spirited for my tastes. But I can see how someone else would be entertained by it.

Apparently some hexes (at least Life Drain Patch) can hurt people while co-oping. This is Dark Souls, so of course no one would ever abuse this for their own amusement, and the delight/horror of the Internet.

Could have been someone cheating, though that seems unlikely. A cheater probably wouldn't have wasted time with the bow. Might have just been shitty lag. My PvP in DS1 was always a mixed bag. Either terrific, mystifying or insultingly frustrating because of shit like what you just described. That said, it was still one of my favorite parts of the game. You were pulling the slot machine of experience every time you got the invasion notification. Sewer was a fairly popular place for mid-level invaders. People farm rats for Humanity, and its not uncommon for someone to go Human because they suddenly have a ton. Its a long enough run to the boss that you have a chance to catch the host before they get there. There's an NPC phantom down there, somewhere, and if someone was bound and determined to hunt all those, then they would have to go hunting through the sewers as a human. Finally, the sewers are technically an optional area if you have the Master Key, so you can leave the boss alive for a long time if you want to.

That's because it is a kettlebell and I had a typing brain fart. Really tempted to fix those now, but then this exchange will just like like crazy talk.

WTF?!

Don't be down on just running, it's still great exercise, and it's more important to be doing something than trying to be totally optimal. And yes, you accurately described a kettleball (bell). It's just a ball of iron with a handle on it. The standard exercise is literally just swinging it between your legs, and up to head height. But it can be used for all sorts of other exercises as well. Very versatile and simple piece of equipment.

I'm in with a Thumbs crew, I'd even set aside a dedicated character for that. I'll have to figure out an appropriate theme and outfit for that character, of course. One does not simply pick random armor in Dark Souls. List of dieties if anyone is interested: DS2 also, surprisingly, includes an option for in game voice chat, though you can turn that off. I suppose on PC that really doesn't matter as much when playing with people you know. I have chosen to leave that off on PS3. I don't really want to hear the voices of the people I'm with. Also pantomiming is more fun to try and convey something.

Given the things I've heard about how it handles its female characters, seems appropriate here. But I haven't seen it. My wife did, she liked what it was trying to do, but ultimately wasn't "wowed" by it.

Surprisingly, it doesn't really feel that way. The whole thing takes around 40ish minutes. You control the intensity by deciding how much weight to use, so it's manageable for anyone regardless of how strong you are or how much stamina you have. And the in between exercises you can load with the things that are easier for you, and build slowly on the ones that are hard. Like I suck at pushups. Bad suck, 5 in a row is a victory for me. But I try to mix in some other, easier exercises that build up the muscles that are good for pushups. I like it because you're constantly changing what you're doing. I can't stand stationary exercise equipment, as 5 minutes feels like 30 minutes to me and I'm bored almost instantly. And I'm not some fitness guru. I'm probably 45 to 50 pounds overweight and I smoke. But I was pretty big into weight lifting in my teens and early 20s. I also like this workout because it includes good weight training, but is fast paced enough to also be a solid cardio workout.

For everyone eagerly awaiting the PC release, Durante (author of the original DSFix mod that unlocked resolution and framerate on DS1) has published his opinion on DS2 for PC Gamer. Overall he was quite positive. Its supposed to be a series of articles though, with future pieces giving his opinion on its modability and on using other tools to make it look/run even better.

Yeah, there was some discussion about this in the business thread, including someone explaining the whole "without cause" thing as a specific legal description used in some states depending on labor law.

Since March, I've been trying to get back to working out on a regular basis. I have a typical love/hate relationship with fitness. Part of me actually quite enjoys working out, but I tend to be horribly self-motivated. I liked the Crossfit classes, as they gave me a lot of good motivation, but ultimately were just too intense for my level of fitness. Now I'm doing a kettleball (bell) workout at home. 300 swings in sets of 50, and between each set do 50 reps of a combination of sit-ups, pushups, squats, various dumbbell exercises, and burpees.

I was thinking about posting something similar. Curious when people here talk about stretching, are they meaning the traditional type of stretching, or the more modern warm up? Since getting into Crossfit briefly about a year ago, that convinced me that even in working out by myself I needed to rethink stretching. I go with a general warmup now and do self muscle massage when done to work out soreness. I do some stretching, but it's not connected to working out, I just know I tend to be on the tight/rigid side and there are certain types of flexibility and mobility I want to maintain.