DanJW

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Everything posted by DanJW

  1. Books, books, books...

    Ah cool. My favourite is Protector; let me know what you think of it when you reach it. I do think the more focussed Known Space books and short stories are better written than the crammed-full Ringworld novels, which are more akin to epic space opera. They are all good fun though. I am currently reading The Duck that Won the Lottery, one of the books I got given for Christmas. It is an easy-going primer into common fallacies and bad logic used in rhetoric, with examples from various politicians, journalists and famous people. It's an interesting and surprisingly easy read with each "chapter" only two or three pages long.
  2. Life

    One little bit at a time.
  3. Movie/TV recommendations

    I don't think so; that detail is revealed in the opening few minutes. But added by request.
  4. Movie/TV recommendations

    Yeah that was my one gripe; I was disappointed when she was introduced as a . It has become such a cliché whenever a writer wants a morally ambiguous, strong yet alluring woman or is both a love/sex interest and an antagonist. Obviously she has to be some kind of It is a bit troubling from feminist perspective, yes. However as the episode went on I felt that they justified it in term of the plot.
  5. Movie/TV recommendations

    I just watched it myself; and yes it bloody was!
  6. Happy Birthday!

    Get down with your big bad Tanukitsune self!
  7. Life

    Happy New Year my fellows!
  8. General Video Game Deals Thread

    Here's my pitiful haul. The Steam gift is Half Life: Episode 1 (with Lost Coast), if anyone doesn't have it already. I doubt I'll be able to earn any more achievements before it's over. Are there any easy ones for free or cheap games? Having given away Hoard, I might now buy it anyway for the achievement if it is simple to get.
  9. General Video Game Deals Thread

    Well, it's essentially a raffle, right? How many pieces of coal are in the system? A million maybe? How much coal do the cheaters have? A few hundred? more? In any case a few hundred or ten in a million isn't that big a difference in fraction. Even if you have one coal it is entirely feasible that your coal will be one of those picked out of the hat.
  10. General Video Game Deals Thread

    This whole thing with 'giving out discounts that are less than the current discounts' does seem a bit mean-spirited and not at all in keeping with the usual fostering of good-will that Valve usually tries to demonstrate.
  11. Unnecessary Comical Picture Thread

    This makes me laugh, every. single. time.
  12. General Video Game Deals Thread

    I tried to get the Team Fortress 2 achievement and discovered two things: 1) it is still pointless to try and get random-drop achievements in TF2. After playing most of the evening the only gift boxes I even saw were dropped by me, when I died. The same achievement in CS:S took me about 10 minutes. 2) it reminded me how much I missed the game that TF2 was when it first came out - a nicely paced game that required real teamwork and strategy, instead of this chaotic random-seeming UT-style war of dumb attrition. It made me sad.
  13. Life

    This is the most fascinating game news since Limbo of the Lost. Here's the best coverage I found. The Avenger Controller makers just put out a massive press release (finally). But even here some things are weird. The new PR consultant they have, Moisés Chiullan, says: Who talks like that in a press release? And the appeal for Christoforo's family seems a little non sequitur and more like something he himself would say. I am checking for updates far too many times a day. The guy is just so lacking in genuine remorse (as Krahulik said, there is a difference between being sorry and being sorry that you got caught) that the schadenfruede is almost totally guilt-free.
  14. General Video Game Deals Thread

    So lets see what today's deals are. What's that you say? 75% off Dead Space 1 & 2 and the same off Dungeon Defenders? Sigh. *opens wallet*
  15. General Video Game Deals Thread

    So I have to trade: Hoard 50% off VVVVVV (which is currently 75% off ) 33% off any Valve game. Also some coal, but I'm feeling lucky with my coal (punk).
  16. Movie/TV recommendations

    It started life as the prequel to Alien. However, during pre-production Ridley Scott decided that it had "become its own thing" and dropped the alien franchise part. It is probably set in the same 'universe' though. Will we see a xenomorph in it? No-one knows, although it is likely that it is about the 'navigator' race, the fossil of which was seen in Alien. Looks good either way.
  17. Obligatory comical YouTube thread

    Yay! I saw Tim Minchin live last week at the Uncaged Monkeys: Night Of 200 Billion Stars tour. The whole show is absolutely amazing, comedy and science blended perfectly. If anyone has a chance to see it next time they tour, do so without a second thought. Highlight of the show for me was this video put together by Adam Rutherford to commemorate the end of the NASA shuttle program. It works better on a massive screen in a theatre, but turn the lights down and music up loud. There were tears. II7QBLt36xo OK so that wasn't very comical. Show finished with Tim Minchin, being accompanied by Brian Cox on piana, singing this Christmas song which brought laughs as well as more tears. fCNvZqpa-7Q
  18. Happy Birthday!

    Happy Birthday Miffy and Patters! Two fine young thumbs. :tup:
  19. Unnecessary Comical Picture Thread

    That happened to me a lot when I played Summer Games on the PSX. It means you're pressing the square button too early.
  20. Obligatory comical YouTube thread

    Really? I... um. My brain can't accept that. I cannot believe anyone would say those things without irony, or get televised saying it. I'm not using hyperbole here, I actually cannot believe it. You might as well have just told me that you laid a golden (made of horrible fascist gold) egg. Even if I saw the egg and a video of it coming out of you I still couldn't accept it. Or this.
  21. Obligatory comical YouTube thread

    Pssst.. I think it's all parody.
  22. Starbreeze's Syndicate

    Ugh. What depresses me the most about the video is the lack of civilians or anything that looks like public space. It is all soldiers and military compounds. Yet another strike against the idea that they are "just changing the PoV". The thrilling thing about Syndicate was that the inter-corporation wars took place in public, with the potential for massive civilian casualties or at least disruption. Here we just have corridors.