Simo

Ok, I'm just going to start commentating on old episodes, I like the idea of having waves of new idlers adding their thoughts. On the topic of smaller games exploring the not-having-to-be-fun-niche: I think smaller games are a natural fit for them, and not just because big companies can't take the risk of making something that isn't entertaining. I just don't know how long you want to keep playing games that at a basic level are not fun to play. If a game wants to make you experience something or make a point, I think that after that has happened it loses a lot of replay-value, though this might be a failure of my imagination here. And if you look at movies that are interested in this, they rarely last more than 3 hours, which still counts as a very short game. This also seems like something best experienced in one playthrough, which naturally limits the "right" length. Relating to Rob's point about haute cuisine: I sometimes feel that parts of modern, abstract art have done the same thing, leaving behind a vast majority of people who can't understand it. Though I'm way out of my depth here. Also, some good Danielle bars from this episode: I have not dipped my toes/into either of those This weekend I also saw Creed/finally finally, it's ridiculous it took me so look to see it

Thanks! Also, heh, "covered all the bases". Thanks for the link, I'll go look at that thread. You're right about the swapping 3 for 9 part, the proof works for any divisor of [the base you're working in minus 1]. So if you're a masochist, and like working in base 31, the statement will be true for 2,3,5,6,10,15 and 30. I've always loved this trick, it's probably the first math-fact I learned and convinced myself of it was true (though my "proof" was not nearly as nice as yours; luckily, when I had to teach it someone showed yours to me before I was in class). It's just such a pretty but non-intuitive fact.

I've finally caught up with the 280 episodes that we celebrate today! With regards to Anno's resolutions, this is because of 2 things: resolutions are named after the number of pixels in the height of the resolution (for example, 720p stands for 1280x720 pixels), which is often a number divisible by 9; and the digits in a number divisible by 9 again add up to a number divisible by 9, which is often 9 itself. As for the first part, most screens have a 16:9 aspect ratio, which is the ratio between the width and the height of the screen: 1280 / 720 = 16 / 9. In particular, this means that 720 (and 360, 540, 1080, 1440 and 1800) are divisible by 9. Moreover, we apparently like these numbers to be divisible by a lot of numbers, probably because we want to be able to separate the screen in many equal parts and because we like "easy" numbers. In practice, this means that these numbers are only divisible by multiples and powers of 2, 3 and 5, and that they end in one or multiple zeroes. (Note: I know nothing about screens or resolutions, this is what I learned/guessed from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_display_resolution). With the second part I'm on firmer ground: the digits of any multiple of 9 (i.e. any number divisible by 9) again add up to 9. This is a quirk of our decimal system: in an octal system for example, 7 would be special like this. And because our number will end end a 0, there just isn't much room for numbers that add up to a larger multiple of 9, like 18 or 27; the first one would be 990, which is not that "easy" (because it's also divisible by 11). In the future, we might see more screens breaking the Anno-rule: 5K/UHD+ (5120x2880) exists, which is good enough for 2 Anno's! But it doesn't look that bleak: moving to 21:9 still keeps us divisible by 9, and 8K UHD (7680x4320) is still perfectly Annoable.