Nachimir

I don't know, but I've been plenty of other places where it doesn't seem to be a part of people's values (that could easily be some sort of selection bias on my part though). However widespread it is, it freaked me the fuck out and depressed me as a kid. I visited Edinburgh a few weeks ago, and remembered with some surprise that strangers are mostly just nicer to interact with up there.

Yeah, it's balls and the UK has been like it for decades. I think a lot of English people are fucking horrible, or at least, there's something deeply disturbed inside the English cultural mindset. I spent a lot of my youth baffled by the middle class adults surrounding me, competing over tiny status symbols while their community rotted away around them.

No, though I did look there. All of your trail centres look amazing. Where I'm looking is close to Hebden Bridge. Loads of good trails rideable without needing a car trip first (I can drive, but really like not having a car), and some people are building a bike park just out of town (I'm going to build one of these but nicer). Yeah, I've found the same, at least with the younger ones. A bunch of guys I've met who are doing MTB into their forties are much nicer, but the others, I end up having too many horrible conversations where they bring up immigration, some other Daily Mail issue, or (more trivially) "Why would you play videogames they're not real do a real thing outside". Calderdale seems a lot more relaxed in some respects. I figure if I'm going to have awkward conversations on things I don't agree about, I'd rather have them with hippies than bawbags

Face-rads. Gnars. Vireo Games.

Agreed, it's really nicely structured. I completed the two halves the other way around, and it worked just as well.

…and I was like: The game term thing is a bigger problem. Loads of things we make with related tech, that clearly fall into the same realm when it comes to criticism and journalism, chafe pretty badly under it. We just don't seem to have a better specific term for things made with games tech though.

I spent an evening last week with a friend looking at all of the weird OR stuff we could find, and we kind of talked about this. It's particularly good for little demos, flythroughs, and weird oddities. "Games" is an especially bad name for that kind of stuff though. "Rifts" has a stink of 90's cyberpunk about it, but so do any portmanteaus with video or game in them.

I became a tiny bit addicted to the Eric Andre Show last week. I normally hate things in which people act like assholes to others, but it treads a really weird line. The opening credits are always some variation on this: Sometimes they interview celebrities, and sometimes they just have ridiculous impersonators: They do some repellent public pranks, and (apparently) have subsequently said there's not a single one they don't regret. Such as "It's touch a stranger's hand day". They did at Comic Con too, in which the guy interviewer seems to be an asshole and the woman way out of her depth. At one point they ignore the interviewers entirely and just ask each other questions. I don't know why I find this funny. I think it's because they underpin the show and public stuff they do with fidgety existential angst, rather than douchey confidence.

I used to find that living in Nottingham (about 800,000 people), I'd notice the small town mentality of people I tended to bump into in Derby (about 200,000); i.e. more conservative, more frequently racist or homophobic, and much less tolerant of anyone who looks or dresses differently. Having lived in London for a couple of months, I feel sort of the same way in Nottingham now and it's been making me really unhappy (In London and Brighton, I really love that most people dress a bit younger and no one really cares what you're wearing). It occurred to me a few months back that my company doesn't tie me to any particular location in the UK. I can't afford London or Brighton this year, so fuck it: I might as well give up on dating and go somewhere I can pursue my interests. I'm contemplating moving to a much smaller town so I can do proper mountain biking more than once or twice a year. It has some of the best trails in the country in rideable distance, and someone is building a trail centre just outside of town too. There are interesting projects going on like this (they grow food in public planters and give it away to people who need it). Opinions from mountain bikers on various forums: "You might need a beard to fit in", "Loads of hippies", "Full of fucking Guardian readers". Sounds great

I think you're right. Similarly, on a recent run into the temple, I spotted an opportunity to try that cheap way of getting health from bile while hanging on a ledge. It got me up to around sixty health, but there were plenty of things that quickly killed me within a level or two while being incautious. The run I succeeded on, I spent the last few levels and Olmec with just 1 health.

Spork, we suffered *exactly* the same death. Those tiki traps plus the drop were a harsh combo. (pause at 4:30ish is a person walking into the room for a conversation) I'm also finding that the Kapala often gets me killed by tempting me into close proximity with enemies. On most runs, I focus on getting it early as possible and harvesting blood. The first time beating Olmec, I got it so late I forgot I had it, and carried on concentrating on getting through levels instead of making health.

Less than a day after saying this, I idly brought it up on the vita and beat Olmec for the first time. Including a dark temple level. Hopefully I can start doing it in the dailies.

No one seems to have found and executed on a good use case for them yet. I suspect they're just a weird design fad.

The only thing that excited me about touchpads on game controllers was less agonising text input (i.e. move cursor with pad, hit button to enter letter). Which no one seems to have used them for.

Up and down arrows slow and speed them up too

Uh, there was something but I oh so selfishly quit it to relaunch the game.

I got relatively far, but had almost no money then an embarrassing death in the black market: (The weird pause in the first minute is this mystery process I have that steals focus at some point whenever I play Spelunky, but only once and only in the first few minutes. I've checked it out and can't find anything obvious; it's driving me a little nuts). After about 1000 deaths total between Vita and PC, I seem to have hit a wall where I don't consistently get past the jungle at all

I love that the 4x sections make it look like Ray Harryhausen animation. In mannequin news, the classiest one was sighted by Richard Lemarchand a while back: https://vine.co/v/hHnEUQebZjz

It happened three or four times while playing through Shay's part too; game just bailed to desktop. Still enjoyed it despite that frustration, really excellent ending

If you're playing on Mac, make regular manual saves. Mine had some obvious graphical trouble in the final bit of Vella's story (one character only appearing as random polygons floating around, another showing parts of a texture that were supposed to be masked), then crashed just as I started Shay's bit, resetting all of my progress. It's not taking long to blast back through Vella's part now I know the puzzles, but still. Grr.

Started eating my fist during the "This is educational because the Bible is made of facts" testimonial. James got the raw deal in their team portrait, eh?

Arguing similarly, I once got a magnificently flip-minded "But that's just a smokescreen! They're deliberate leaks!" from a conspiracy cultist Ahhaha, I hadn't heard of this one. "Jay-Z is doing the hand thing again! It's the prelude to a one-world government!"

I've had one or two, and tried to talk to them about organisations being too dumb to execute on anything so elaborate without leaving a ton of actual evidence, and that large forces don't necessarily have intent or an agenda behind them, but they're utterly convinced of… whatever they read on the internet that feeds this thing they have. If you go to a jam and anyone is snooty about that, they are an asshole. Jams are where you get to try new stuff in an environment full of motivated and interested people. Just keep your ambitions and project scope low; the biggest mistake most people make at their first jam is thinking they'll get way more done in their weekend/day/four hours than is possible.

Drums! Get them tired enough on bashing drums and screaming, and they'll be better at everything else for the rest of the day.