miffy495

We make up for it in quality.

As a teacher, sometimes you have to do dumb group costumes. As a teacher of 10 year olds, sometimes those costumes are for kids movies. (I'm Fear)

The school I teach at (grades 5 - 9) has an officer assigned to it and a few others in the area (Constable Payne, I swear to fucking god). I've only ever seen him during a lockdown drill though, so it's not like there's a huge presence.

It's that the engine pod on the left side is overlapping with the bridge while the pod on the right side has visible space between it and the bridge. This makes it look like it's coming out off-centre because we can't see the space that we would if we were looking at the ship from directly above. Not saying it's good design, but I can see WHY it looks bad and that it actually isn't.

Been online the whole time, never been invaded. I don't know what makes you a target, but now I'm kind of curious.

My riding went Liberal! The guy I was watching slowly catch up to the Conservative incumbent ended up winning by 1.5% of the vote. I now live in one of two Liberal ridings in Calgary, a city which has not had a Liberal representative since the mid 1960s. I'm an NDP guy at heart, but that's just not realistic in the heart of Canada's oil country. I'm super happy with what I got, despite being sad about how much of a hit my NDP had to take in order to make it happen.

There is one photo that's easy to miss.

UPDATE: As I go to bed (it's nearly midnight in Calgary and I still have to teach in the morning), the gap between the conservative incumbent and liberal has closed to 2%. Sleeping will be difficult. UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: The liberal is now leading by about 400 votes, or 0.7% of counted votes. 12 polls still need to respond. Fuck sleep.

Re: The Canadian Election. YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!!!!! (I would have rather NDP, but still, holy shit this is a big turnaround. I am a happy Canadian tonight. My riding isn't done reporting, but there is only a 4% gap right now between the Conservative incumbent and the Liberal candidate. In downtown Calgary, the Conservative stronghold of Canada, this is HUGE. 110 polls left to report here. I am hopeful.)

While the main Mario Maker thread has been a great way for people to share their original creations with one another, I've been watching the "Giant Bomb Makes Mario" videos and now have a bit of an itch to add an extra dimension to it. Here's what I'm thinking: Every week (or some other interval of time), the forum generates a list of ten concepts. Any thumb interested designs and enters a level on this thread. These ten concepts can be interpreted in any way the level maker chooses (for example: "a shitty wizard" could be a giant kamek, a kamek in a clown car, a kamek who spawns and dies immediately, etc), but MUST be included in the level. I'm thinking that with the spectrum of people on this forum, some fantastic stuff would emerge. We could either just enjoy the levels for what they are or, if people want to be more competitive, make a poll for "level of the week". Anyone interested in trying this out? If so, what would your suggestions be for things that should be included in the first level?

I got within 3 runs of finishing a C25K before the Calgary weather started cooling off and I couldn't run outside any more. That was about 2 and a half weeks ago. On Saturday it was nice again for a day, so I decided to see if I could pick it up again after two weeks off. No dice. I felt like death and had to slow it down again. I need to figure out a cold-weather fitness thing quick, especially considering I live in a frigid wasteland.

I want to try a thing.

I did all of the missions in GZ first and have no idea what I may be getting that's extra. I assume that everyone gets the "Wandering Mother Base Soldiers" side ops, which would be the one possible thing? I've seen some costumes. For beating GZ, I think I got a pretty decent early-game sneaking suit (which I've LONG since abandoned) and the ability to gold-plate my cyborg arm. You can also be a PS1 model Snake or Cyborg Ninja if you got all the XOF patches and finished GZ's secret mission on Normal and Hard, respectively. I didn't do that though, so I haven't noticed that. I liked GZ a lot. I didn't actually get all of the XOF patches for the bonus, so I may go back and play the Deja Vu and Jamais Vu missions sometime. Once I'm done with TPP, anyway. I have now done 117 Side Ops and up through mission 35. This shit is great. WAIT! There is that ONE prisoner side op... Is that available if you didn't rescue that prisoner in GZ?

I've felt like, after the first ending (which I got yesterday) I've seen more cutscene in the side ops and one story mission that I've done than I did for almost the entire main game. It's like they left the Metal Gear Solid parts for after most gamers have left.

So, at maximum, I can get maybe an hour or two to game in a 24 hour period, often no gaming. Lately, MGSV has been taking all of those hours, but all of this talk lately about The Taken King has me a bit tempted. Then Giant Bomb posted an 8 hour video series showing what the game can be like. Thing is, I still like the style, I like Bungie games, I like a lot about it. I put it to you folks: Is it possible to play this game casually, or if I'm going to do this do I need to be able to sit down and play for 8 hours at a time? This is not a luxury my life affords...

Ben, I love this. Never change.

Yeah, emulated bass is basically just easy mode for guitar. What makes bass fun is the actual playing of it. I was on emulated bass for a while until I borrowed by girlfriend's bass for a bit. As soon as I gave it back to her, I went out and bought a (relatively cheap) $300 Epiphone bass. Nothing fancy (I really want to save up and get myself a Gibson Thunderbird), but it feels so much better than trying to play bass stuff on a guitar.

In general, bass is simpler anyway. I used to think that bass was guitar's easy mode before I got one. Since actually getting into it, the general lack of complexity is made up for by just how much fucking effort it can take to get those strings to do what you want. It's a totally different feel, and super fun. After an extended guitar session, the fingers on my fretting hand hurt but my strumming/picking arm is fine. After an extended bass section, my left hand is fine but my right forearm is worn out from plucking the strings. Easier technically, but much more exertion.

I mostly play guitar, but sometimes plug in my bass as well. It's still really fun, if a lot simpler. Harder to find good, challenging tracks as the game's focus is more on guitar than bass, but there are definitely some really fun tracks (the Cake and Primus DLC packs are both great for very different reasons) and it works great.

In the specific instance you're thinking of (R U Mine by the Arctic Monkeys?), I'm pretty sure that it's a slide from low to high and then back to low in the song, so you do need to stay on the same string for that effect. It's not so much the notes, but the technique that matters there. I actually found moments like that to be really helpful in training myself just how far to move to get to certain positions quickly. Usually the game is basing itself on what the actual guitarist did to play the song, so sometimes it can be a little bit weird but it's almost always pretty intuitive. As for the difficulty jumps, if you're finding something too hard or too easy, you can reset levels manually to whatever you're comfortable with in the Riff Repeater.

Hoping that Canadian is "International" enough for y'all. We're in the middle of a federal election here, and things have gotten rough. After 8 years of having our national identity slowly worn away by a man who idolizes George W Bush as our Prime Minister, there has been a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. Last time around, he got himself up to a majority government, but the far-left New Democratic Party also made huge gains. Since, the man who lead them there has died of cancer, but they're still putting in a very good showing. The centrist Liberal party is also doing quite well, now being lead by Justin Trudeau, the son of much celebrated former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Harper, our current PM who has a track record of burying despicable clauses in 200+ page bills so they get passed without being fully read, being the only PM ever held in contempt of Parliament, 3 (!!) recessions, muzzling scientists who say anything bad about oil, and appointing senators who are (during the election!) currently being tried for corruption, was trailing by a fair amount in the polls. That is, until 2 weeks ago when he started talking shit about Muslims a lot. Somehow he's now competitive again after changing his campaign to mostly be talking about how women shouldn't be allowed to wear a Niqab during the citizenship process because they could be secret terrorists and starting a hotline where "real Canadians" can report "barbaric practices". What the actual fuck. I posted this to facebook tonight and will just leave it here:

So how often do the Skulls show up? I just finished Mission 20 and have done roughly half of the Side Ops, so I'd like to get as close to full completion as I can (maybe not getting all the animals), but those guys fucking suck. I'm playing as close to non-lethal as possible, but because of those guys I have to keep things in my loadouts I otherwise wouldn't consider taking. Right now I go in with distraction items, a silenced tranquilizer sniper rifle, tranq pistol, stun arm, C4 for taking out AA dishes, and a GIANT FUCKING GRENADE LAUNCHER IN CASE OF SKULLS. I'd rather not have that last thing, but the mission where they ambush you when you're jacking a truck got me close to throwing a controller through my TV until I walked away from the game for a night and then came back the next day to try again with that loadout. Now I take it everywhere just in case. Also came in handy last mission when Best emergent moment so far: Operation Raven. I wanted to see if I could shoot a raven out of the air from about 100m out with my tranq pistol. Nailed him, felt super proud of myself, and went to pick up the little unconscious bird as a trophy. As I crest a hill, I realize that he landed in the middle of a heavily guarded base that I had yet to enter in any missions (this happened when I was around mission 6). In order to retrieve a sleeping bird, I then had to infiltrate the base, extract the raven, and slip out as best I could. Things went pretty sideways. Tanks were involved. I got the bird, but about 13 men had to die for me to accomplish this. Good stuff.

Second for What We Do In Shadows. One of the funniest things I've seen this year easily. Having Murray from Flight of the Conchords leading a werewolf pack was brilliant.

I'll hold out and see if 4 is accepted as being significantly better than 3. Seasons 1 and 2 were amazing, but 3 really felt like a let down to me. The only exception to this was the sub-plots around "An American Tale", which I thought were hilarious.

I did the same thing a couple of months ago. It's a glorious difference.