Nachimir

This needs to be a real game.

For all the people complaining about the amount of killing in the latest series of Doctor Who: lzmnPs64K74

Has anyone else tried Professor Layton and The Curious Village yet? It came out around February in the US and is expected to be released here later this year. Most of the people I know with DSes either picked it up while at GDC or couldn't wait and downloaded it. It's basically a collection of lots and lots of puzzles, but connected by a story, which makes it way more interesting than things like Brain training. The art is really nicely done, the style is like a lot of 80's european animation (think Mysterious Cities of Gold, etc).

Consider me schooled. No idea if he actually has asperger's or not, but the things people have described seem like intense spergy traits.

I'm similarly bothered by phone screens, especially at the local multiplex that has banked seats. Phone screens below just beam straight up at you. Jamming equipment is illegal (but possible); it's probably not illegal to put a faraday cage around an auditorium to block signal though.

I think we're pretty lucky on Nottingham to have the Broadway. They make a point of showing interesting films, doing alright food, having nice bars, and also some very good projectionists and technicians for events.

Don't leave your cart sitting on the tracks?

For those who've been watching the Adam Curtis series Machines of Loving Grace, I've been putting together a Spotify playlist of the soundtrack, which has been ace: http://is.gd/CQvFxa Still songs missing, but a lot of it's in there.

I read he might have done that because he wanted to snipe a player that hadn't placed so highly, and possibly get another two to take each other on before he had to face either. If so, nice strategic thinking The only support for the idea was that he apparently didn't look annoyed when he quit and was smiling instead.

wrt the art, I don't just like the geometric aliens, but also the contrast with 50's America. Really nice setting. As for aliens being possessed humans, I'd be very surprised if that's what the final game was like. There's just too much good stuff to use from past X-COM games. I'm not going to measure it against UFO or Terror from the Deep. I think we know enough by now to understand it's not going to be like them at all. Sure it was disappointing to realise that, but it doen't mean this will suck. Hoping and clutching for similar features is most probably a wild goose chase that will send you through the stages of grief all over again.

Because of the maximum tags, the forums won't let me actually get onto the edit tag screen. Just pops up a message saying maximum number of tags reached, and "You can't edit existing tags".

I just spent a weekend camping with the Systema crowd, and it was excellent. I learned new stuff, and did new stuff. Climbed and abseiled for the first time ever, and did a river crossing with a rope. We were told to take ready bags and keep them nearby, i.e. packs that give you a couple of days food, shelter, fire, clothing and water. Sure enough, we were told to hike into the woods and set up camp for the first night, with just the tarps we'd packed rather than the tents we pitched at the main site. Lovely night. Unexpectedly, I ended up helping a farmer get a head collar onto a young, unbroken stallion. There were about 8 of us in the stable with it, trying to calm down the stallion and stay calm ourselves. We'd been trying it for about five minutes when I ended up the only person between it and the door. It reared up, came back down, headbutted me, then pinned me in the corner with it's shoulder. No one could see me over the horse and they assumed I'd jumped over the stable door, but then saw my arms come around it's neck. I successfully put a horse in a headlock. I couldn't have held it for more than a second or two, but as soon as another guy realised what I'd done he did the same from the other side and it subdued it, then they could get the collar on. I'm not sure how I feel about my instincts telling me to do that, but it earned me some hearty congratulations from the farmers and a lot of backslaps

Watch his head at 42 seconds. Weird video. He's talking off camera as if there's an interviewer, but there isn't.

Quote from the most passionate open source advocates I've known: "My next phone is going to be an iPhone. I had one of those, and now I have an Android one, and I've decided I want a phone again instead of another fucking project". That said, rooting and flashing new ROMs got a lot simpler in the past six months. Ubuntu got impressive for a while, but I tried installing the netbook version recently and found the solution to one of the issues was "Buy different wifi adapter. Dismantle netbook. Replace wifi adapter. Then dick around with drivers".

Oooh! They're really beautiful.

Spectacular.

I don't plug shit much, but this is the best thing I've ever been involved with. For the past 14 months, I've been a part of Nottingham Hackspace. It started back then as three of us in the pub saying "Hey, wouldn't it be great to have a hackspace in Nottingham?". We went through meetings in a pub, to a private room above a pub, to having a store room near an event space, to having 250 sq. ft. of your own space. One month ago, we moved into a four thousand square foot workshop and studio. Our hand was kind of forced by notice being served on our landlords at the last place, and it was a huge risk, but it's gone very well so far. We had an open day today. We expected long quiet periods with busy spells, but it was busy throughout. People from Leeds, London, Manchester and Northampton hackspaces came over to visit and show projects. There were pedal powered setups powering a stereo playing funk, a bubble machine, and a blender making smoothies. We had a 3D printer making stuff all day. After 4 p.m. we kicked the public out (in a friendly way), then got drunk, rode bikes and unicycles, and shot nerf guns at each other. Throughout, this has entirely been supported by members fees, and whats more, the rpice is "Pay whatever you think is appropriate to your use of the space". No one has really tried to take the piss yet. Photos of most things here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nottinghack/sets/72157626706422487/with/5771457297/

You can play it here. Or vol 1 here, vol 2 here.

I hope it's good. Trying to avoid stuff, but this from Dan Marshall is too good:

I was talking about this with a friend last night. After watching the first video, he said "I'm surprised it's all orks, early stuff I saw suggested it would be mainly chaos". I hadn't thought of this before, but immediately: "Oh, there'll be loads of chaos stuff. He mentioned betrayal, and Games Workshop don't do complex betrayal, they need a simple and obvious antagonists to project it onto". I'm eternally unexcited about 40K, but Relic have done awesome games in it. Looking forward to this despite badly named cartoon characters in power armour.

Happy birthday Thunder! (and Ben!)

Happy birthday Ben! I notice Dan renamed the studio just after Mike Rose's "250 indie games you must play" got published, with Zombie Cow games in there

PiratePoo, that mill looks like an absolutely incredible location. I too love urbex, and living in a city built on caves, I've had a poke around in quite a few of them. Probably the most dramatic were these (never used or finished) catacombs: I also went to explore an abandoned power station a few weeks back, and a few of the cooling towers had their innards completely stripped out. The acoustics in the centre were incredible: 4UwjlGhd7j8

I think there are plenty of motives other than religion behind the atrocities of history. Blaming religion for all of it is a pretty unsophisticated view, and I say that as someone who really doesn't like religion. Also: Clever bastard.

I've enjoyed Mad Men all the way through to the end of series 4, looking forward to five. It does have a continuous storyline, but doesn't seem to do the same kind of things as BSG and Lost. It also never seems to feel like it's just meandering in the middle of a series.