Nachimir

It's Friday afternoon, so I'm working *very* hard. I just found this and it's genius (There's much more of it at the link):

I don't have a PSP, but keep hearing about Patapon. Worth pestering PSP owning friends for a go?

ARrghGhhgh Sorry, I am double booked, for it is Festivus on Tuesday. There is no way I can miss the feats of strength, especially as our host is moving to London shortly after new year.

I see what you mean, but this is not the sole definition of faith. It's not a purely religious thing, it can mean confidence or loyalty. I'm confident there isn't a god. I can't prove it, but I don't see any atheist as having to, I think it's a likely reality. While I openly mock the most extreme forms of religious belief, there are some I leave alone as not all religious faiths are unreasonable or based in indoctrination. I came from an extreme religious background and it took me quite a few years after leaving to see that religion isn't entirely harmful. I have secular beliefs because they, often in opposition to orthodox religion, have led to us being able to feed billions of people and put machines on other planets. At the same time, every era has had its fictions, its secular faiths, and naivety only visible in hindsight. For all that's been achieved in our lifetime, I don't think we'll look that different to our descendants.

I only just got around to posting my photos. Eljay, Alex and Marek recording part of the podcast: Spaff trying out a Lionhead yoyo: We were excited until it stopped lighting up and stuck at the bottom. Once again, we realised Peter Molyneux had filled our hearts with hope and excitement and dreams, only to cruelly dash them on release day. Way more here.

I've met a few fundie Christians who seem to think belief in god is the only thing that stops us from wantonly killing and raping, and I think they're full of . Moral behaviour arises with or without religion, but religion can both reinforce and warp it, as can any codified cultural practice enacted by a majority of peers. I suspect not being a bastard is ultimately in everyone's self interest. Most of the bad people I've known have ended up disconnected from and reviled by others, and in contrast, having good connections with peers, even regardless of status/hierarchy, confers some strong advantages in terms of cooperation and having one's needs met. As an atheist, I believe my life and my general state of mind are both far better for trying to be good to others I also see my atheism as a form of faith. It's based on a lot of considered thought and my ultimate conclusion that there probably isn't a god. Ultimately that faith reaches back past the big bang to things I can never observe or otherwise obtain proof of, but I'm convinced enough to not label myself agnostic. I'm intrigued by religious people now, since everything they believe in from how the universe came to be to how a person should behave in terms of ethics is part of a single great big and often inflexible blob of faith. I can kind of understand how atheism panics some Christians so badly, since it appears to them to break morality away from our origins. I'm now pretty convinced that certain universal needs and capacities arise from our genes, in turn leading us as a species to certain behavioural patterns. It doesn't matter where you are in the world, what cultural differences there are or whether or not there's a language barrier, there are certain things that everyone needs and wants. What we are implies morality and always has, though as a cognitive/genetic stack it's malleable.

True, but it's unusual that it's rooted in a gender.

Yeah, that's what I was referring to, the nun part was fine. The action seemed very toned down compared to what I've seen before too. I guess it was just politically expedient to avoid showing too much gore.

Religious beliefs are generally an inbred cesspool of ideology turned into chinese whispers over the course of millennia. I was once taught that the Roman Catholic Church was only able to spread so well in Europe by absorbing local customs, so there seems to be plenty of pagan influence around. Added to that, rival faiths are always looking for ways to discredit each other. A lot of the laws the Israelites/Jews followed initially seem very odd, but since they were a very new nation at the time they were probably designed to militantly keep them seperate from surrounding cultures. For instance: "You must have beards and not shave your heads" (Note: not vebatim ) makes little sense as a law, but it made them distinct from the Egyptians and would have helped to create a sense of cultural identity. Later on they repeatedly turned to the gods of surrounding nations and, if the bible is to be belived, there were occasional murderous and maybe even genocidal purges to stop this happening. All of the images in your post are still chock-full of sexy failure.

I was underwhelmed by the new trailer since it seemed like they were trying far too hard to show off Jack Black. Every single (brief) shot had at least a noise from him, which seemed a little insecure and the kind of thing a publisher would demand.

Oh man, the dudeage becomes just incredible after 8:20, and again just before 15:30. Also:

I noticed when I was working in a bar once that "guys" seemed to be becoming a collective noun for groups of either or mixed gender.

Yeah, I think I just want to believe that.

Lord British, IIRC. Not an official title though

Likewise. It was suddenly much much easier to make kills when hosting, i.e. I could go into a tangle of players and massacre them all; with three players ended up with 44 v 0 v 0 within the first few minutes. Not hosting, there would often be tangles of three or four players like the trails in the attached screenshot (Hard to tell, but they're all concentrated on the same spot), with everyone spamming attack and noone getting kills. Hosting or not, I also often see attack trails going past me to where I'm not heading and haven't been, even when I'm not jumping and just running along the ground. Animations and movement of other bots also very jerky. I can't tell if this is largely down to my connection. It might be, as I'm on Virgin Media and sometimes they're total ass, but the score disparities seemed to be similar in all the games I joined or hosted but never favour the same player. Still, good fun though, and it runs very smoothly on my desktop PC (Athon XP 3000+, 2GB RAM, and a Geforce 6600, which are notoriously unstable with everything and currently dropping off the bottom of the absolute minimum spec listed for new PC games). Can't wait to see later versions.

I think there might be something a bit wrong with the netcode (How's that for a bug report, eh? ); it's easier to make kills playing instagib on dialup. I can hit attack and pile straight into a player 6, 7 times without getting the kill. I'm also getting random deaths when there appear to be no players or attack trails near me.

The lag is absolutely incredible; it's practically impossible to make kills compared to the LAN at the EG Expo.

Likewise. Got to disappear for a little while, but I'll be back in 15 minutes.

I'm not sure if Yahtzee was just doing his trademark thing, or if his general air of disdain was genuine. Wouldn't be surprised at the latter.

IN!

I've seen "hir" used in fiction before. The problem with e is that some regional English accents drop the letter H from the start of words, so anyone saying it out loud will just sound like they've got a really thick Nottingham or Yorkshire accent

There is, but not yet in the US. It's out in the UK though.

Thanks. Getting an excellent download speed here

Because I'm prone to addiction and foolishly expect things to improve. With games I'm often convinced that I "just don't get it". For instance, things like Wipeout and Ouendan throw an insane seeming difficulty curve at you and reward persistence with a massive sense of achievement. FC2 just kept throwing the same generic baddies at me, but I was thinking "Maybe if I try a lot of weapons and find a loadout I'm happy with. Maybe if I save up for a stealth suit it'll become more fun...". If a game doesn't start rewarding persistence, it makes my opinion harsher. I really enjoyed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and was talking about it with a fellow mod at Black Cat. He hated it, but really enjoyed FC2. We're still not sure what the important difference is between them. I think there are a lot. The journey towards Pripyat and Chernobyl creates a sense of progress, which I find lacking in the wide open maps of FC2. A lot of the places in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. were very distinct while keeping to the theme, whereas FC2 seems generative and bland (Shacks, grass and soldiers). The Zone and the characters in it were implicitly hostile, so I think I accepted that many things there were hassle. I also found it easier to avoid enemies yet still follow fairly straightforward routes to where I was going. FC2 tries to be very friendly in the way of most modern games, yet certain things really aren't intuitive, like which slot a weapon you're about to buy will occupy, for instance. I found that really intensely annoying.

Is there a direct MP3 link? The site doesn't seem to have been updated with #10