David

I'm quite sure that some SF Bay Area thumbs will be representing.

It's been on the main page for awhile. Also I am about to link to it: A Letter To Edge.

Welcome, you're our worst friend.

Have you ever felt the need to visit the official website of the city where you live now, or where you grew up? Probably not, but I assure you that it exists, and it's probably a bit lame. This could mean it looks a bit shit, is really outdated, or just really hard to use. I've lived in a few different Californian cities in the past five or so years, so perhaps a brief rundown of those sites is in order to start things off. --- La Habra, California: http://www.ci.la-habra.ca.us At once, this website seems to reveal a problem that is somewhat common among municipal websites. They are absolutely determined to make every goddamn page accessible from the homepage, which isn't necessary if the site is organized logically. They do this through a confusing network of drop-down menus at the top of the page. These menus lead to other fly-out menus, which then can lead to further fly-out menus, and so on, all with no indication of which menu options will lead to a sub-menu. A simple misstep with the mouse will instantly hide the menu, and you'll need to start over. Once you actually visit a subpage, you'll find that the only link back to the homepage is in the footer, rather than the more obvious top corner of the site. Also, it's really ugly. Thankfully, I only lived here for about 8 months. Judgment: --- Fullerton, California: http://www.cityoffullerton.com While slightly more appealing visually, this site also tries to cram every link onto the top-level navigation. Mercifully, they have only gone to one sub-level beyond the initial drop-down, and these are indicated with little arrow graphics. This site is also "available" in Spanish and Korean, but they've chosen to indicate the language options through the use of tiny flags of Spain (wtf) and South Korea, rather than a potentially more helpful text link in each respective language (eg. "en español"). Perhaps that doesn't matter, though, since they merely link to Google-translated versions of the English site. Lame. At least they have the decency to include a prominent "home" link. Judgment: --- Irvine, California: http://www.ci.irvine.ca.us Ha, this site is just gross. "IrvineWeb" retains the multi-level menus from the previous two city sites. However, it adds in an eye-exploding layout, a menacingly-long graphical side menu, and the mysterious and prominent "e-Inform" feature, which links to a sign-up page that lacks any sort of real explanation on just what the hell an e-Inform is. Judgment: --- I also wanted to throw in an example that actually isn't bad. Let me introduce you to Bellingham, Washington, the town where I was born. http://cob.org/ The design is okay, but what I really like they have chosen to eschew any kind of drop-down or fly-out menu system, in favor of organizing their content under four categories at the top. The "services" page links to a well-organized topic list, and drilling down from there reveals another useful tool: Breadcrumb navigation. Judgment: --- So yeah, please post up your city homepages. I am strangely amused by them, and it's a great chance to show off your civic pride, of course.

Oof, that Nottingham site is epic. I especially like the mention of it being "The only homepage you'll ever need." Which, of course, is an excellent web philosophy that has only been proven unfeasible for about 11 years or so. Wait, that bird's clearly fleeing the municipality! Perhaps we should run the animation in reverse.

Get better. No, only kidding! If you're playing Infected like a shooter, you're doing it wrong, though. It's not just patience, but really getting the hang of each infected...'s strengths. Timing is probably a better watchword when it comes to playing as the zombie team. But TreesusJesus, you've gotta talk to your teammates, too. Synchronize your team's de-ghostification, and play off each others' attacks. To address that specific case, if the survivors seem determined to run for it, a Smoker should be able to pull a the guy at the end back and distract the team. If you have a hard time catching them, time your next big attack for the next big horde alert, i.e. when they flip some switch to open a gate/raise a platform/etc. Usually, though, you'll want the Boomer to run up ahead of the survivors in ghost mode to slow their pace from the front, with a Smoker hanging back behind the group to gobble up stragglers, and Hunters--assuming you have more than one at a time--pouncing once the survivors are otherwise distracted (barf, horde). The last few versus matches I've played, it seemed to be a back-and-forth of gruesome victories for the infected shortly after the start of each level, so maybe it just depends on who you're playing with/against.

Heh, I played with Spaff, Nick, and...a bonus friend I don't remember (sorry) on Expert last night. It was already impossibly difficult, but contained the added bonus of people crashing out of Steam. Great fun though, and made me want to play this game semi-regularly again. I am Superparty.

I'm still seeing some areas in need of pop. What if we were to do something more like this:

Any chance of a standalone song mp3?

I'm only about 7 minutes in...I love how it keeps going back to weird hop-a-long cowboy music.

Welcome!

Welcome to hell. I work in web, and have done a fair bit of design-related stuff professionally. Most of what I've done is more related to front-end development, though; taking the design and doing the necessary stuff to get it on the web (HTML, CSS, whatever). So, anyway, I work on the same team as graphic designers, and have heard a lot of the same types of stuff, especially at my last job. Ridiculous delays in the development pipeline are incurred by these types of excellent comments coming in at the last minute. Or worse, when it's after last-minute--e.g. An important person hasn't seen the design before we have to start slicing it up and coding it for the web, and when they do see it, they'll just need changes (after it's already prepped for deployment to the production servers)--which means double work for designers and everyone else on down the line. I now do work that is substantially less related directly to the design process, which means I avoid a lot of the potential awesomeness that comes with making things that must please the C-level bosses, but your post definitely brings back some painful memories. Edit: It seems like, if there's anything apart from cathartic bitching (sorry, guys!) to take away from this thread, it's that you should find satisfaction in what you do independently of your job--freelance work, or just fucking around in your spare time--and eventually you'll be able to find a much better gig if you are able to stick it out.

When I heard about this I immediately thought of . Perhaps you guys should talk about the unfolding EVE events on a future podcast.

Don't worry, it's just an acronym! An acronym for a horrible thing! USA PATRIOT Act = Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 Someone who was paid much better than I am now thought that was clever!

Hmm, my response sounds a lot meaner and super-serious when it's quoted. I was going for faux-dick, not the genuine article! This mix-up occurs quite often in games-related news updates, including recently in Wired. I didn't mean for the thread to shift focus, and I'm sorry. ()

Since I am not playing a ton of games these days, I will retroactively redefine my use of the word 'muppet' to include this definition: "A person who is ignorant and generally has no idea about anything." So anyway, how about those LEGO games? Pretty sweet, yeah?

Hey, I was mentioned this week! That's more attention than I need or deserve. Also I might sound like a muppet.

Okay, seriously, we did not make those games. TT Games is not Telltale Games. Frankly I expected better, Wrestle.

Dude whatever this game is terrifying http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/23024

I remember my friend owning Stunts. It seemed very, very easy to go into orbit inadvertently.

I don't like that my profile shows how shit and wildly inaccurate I am in this game.

Psst. Hey guys I'm in as Metallus. Also: This seems to work really well when it's up I never did get good at Quake 3 though, and now I'm bad and rusty. It's so fast!

I'd like an invite if any new ones come in. Edit: I'm sorted. Thanks!

I still have yet to play against someone else in this game. I'll try to make it to one (or several) of the PST sessions.

Hence, forums.