Nappi

Awesome!

Thanks! Partly stylistic and partly dictated by the components. There is basically just the Nixie tube drivers, Arduino microcontroller, real time clock module and the ends of plugs and switches inside, so there is plenty of unused space. However, there is a 10+ mm spacer for the Nixie tubes (so that they wouldn't stick out too much) and a couple of long parts on the back panel, which means that it is hard to make the design significantly more compact without rethinking the plug, switch and microcontroller positioning.

Thanks! Yes, it only shows time in the proper format. It would be very easy to change that, though.

I made a thing! With my hands*! * In that I bought a box for tea bags online, designed a front panel and sent the sketch to a CNC company, did some soldering, and wrote some program code. Still, I'm pretty happy that I actually finished one of my projects for once. I may still try to polish that brass front panel a bit at some point. Who I am I kidding. I probably won't.

Hmm... Radiolab for science, etc. stuff. The Bugle for satire (though they seem to be on some sort of hiatus at the moment). Some episode of This American Life for some personal stories, e.g. The Super. The Mystery Show for something completely different.

Have Konami or the reviewers given any additional details about the music import feature? If the game supports creating casette mixtapes and force you to flip the casette halfway through the mixtape, I'm ready to call this GOTY2015.

I wonder how much of a difference that extra mother base staff makes. I can't wait to play Phantom Pain, but peculiarly I am not that keen on replaying Ground Zeroes.

Drew Scanlon. I wonder if that took many takes. I would have had a hard time keeping a straight face for that long, knowing what a ridiculous thing I was filming.

The first Metal Gear Solid game I played was MGS4 and I had absolutely no fucking idea what was going on any of the time. I was also painfully aware that I was supposed to be like "Holy shit, I know that name!" most of the time, while I in fact recognized none of the people, organizations and concepts that were discussed. As you can imagine, the 1+ hour long cutscenes were a bit much for a newcomer (and many veteran players too, I would imagine). So to me "pulling gameplay to the foreground and letting much of the exposition remain optional" sounds like a good move, unless they go way too far in the other direction. Then again, I will soon be a certified MGS Lore Master, having been watching Dan and Drew of Giant Bomb play through the Metal Gear Solid series in Metal Gear Scanlon. I'm halfway through MGS3 at this point, and at this rate I will finish the game by the time Phantom Pain hits. This was has already been posted in the Giant Bomb thread but look at this cool shit:

Yes!

That iPhone upload failure shot made me groan. I kept waiting for the season to "turn good" or "get its shit together" right till the end, and I felt that this never really happened. There were very nice touches throughout and I don't regret watching the season at all, but it is easy to see that with stronger direction or a bit more polish this could have been so much better. Oh man! If the final shot had been Ani wearing a poncho, chewing on an e-cigar stub, it would have changed everything.

Nick's GTA story was amazing! Thank you for sharing. Also thank you for actually posting a thing that you promised to post on the podcast!

The episode 7 podcast was released a week ago. Or am I missing something here? Edit: Nevermind. Edit2: Never mind Never mind I live the life I left behind

Haha, yeah, I don't. I learned that a time long ago. Dan and Drew just mentioned these comments during one of the videos.

I got excited about Phantom Pain after watching some gameplay videos. My previous experience with Metal Gear Solid is limited to the demo of the first game and first half of Metal Gear Solid IV (after which I got bored and stopped playing). After playing Ground Zeroes and realizing that I know nothing about the various organizations and characters - even though I clearly should - I figured that I might enjoy Phantom Pain more if I had at least a basic grasp of the overall storyline of the series. Because there is no way that I am going to play the older games myself and because I did not find the idea of reading through the wikia page of the series very entertaining, I decided to finally pay for Giant Bomb premium subscription and watch Metal Gear Scanlon. I have not regretted the decision. I have watched the first few of episodes, and so far it has been fantastically entertaining. Dan and Drew are a great duo, and the set-up with a novice player and expert advicer makes it easy to absorb both the story and the feeling of the game. I think they balance the "experiencing the game like a first-time player would" vs "giving enough advice so that the series will not be too frustrating to watch" very well, even though some of the commenters seem to think that Dan makes it too easy for Drew. I think I will watch at least MGS 1 through 3 before I boot up Phantom Pain. MGS 3 seems quite essential, while MGS 4 less so. Anyway, I'm so glad that I finally gave in and subscribed to the Premium content.

Yes I was, but it did not help me. I was always too far or panicked to hit the enemy that saw me. A couple of times I even reloaded a checkpoint before the timer run out because I was so mad about having fucked up. However, looking at the videos, the system actually seems quite useful, provided that the enemy is sufficiently isolated. I can see how it could make certain aspects of the stealth gameplay quite a bit less frustrating.

Watched some more gameplay videos. The mother base stuff seems cool, but I'm glad that FOB, i.e. the online infiltration stuff, is optional. I find that sort of stuff stressing as hell. Hopefully the economy is balanced in such a way that opting out of the PVP (and microtransactions, lol) will not make the rest of the game too hard or boring due to lack of resources. I also hope (and heavily suspect) that most of the missions end in a big shootout only because they want to demo the shooter element extensively, for some reason. Also, Sony Walkman and cassettes of period accurate music!!! Let me see that preorder chart again!

I played through Ground Zeroes (which I apparently bought during one of the Steam sales) and I have really mixed feelings about it. MGS4 is the only Metal Gear Solid game I have played, and so I had no idea what was going on story-wise, and I imagine I will have hard time caring about the plot of Phantom Pain after the ending of Ground Zeroes. The much-debated Paz scenes and allusions were indeed unnecessary and extremely gross. The gameplay, especially in terms of the detection system, felt pretty brutal and I was constantly loading checkpoints at first. I get easily frustrated if I have to play the same section again and again, and I would have hoped that there was some sort of a quick save system (although I know that would make the game seem way too easy for many people) or, even better, better tools for remedying the situation after you fuck up. I also wish there had been more interesting abilities at my disposal, because now I felt quite helpless in some situations. Based on the gameplay videos at least, this will be less of a problem in Phantom Pain because of all the gadgets and allies at your disposal. Moreover, I did not feel comfortable dealing with rapid changes in situations, e.g. when the guards noticed that Paz was missing and went into a search mode. I imagine that this will be a less of problem once I get used to the controls and the gameplay, but now I had enough trouble executing my plans even when the guards were moving predictably, let alone actively looking for me. That said, being able to rescue Paz without detection after the guards had been alerted to her escape in just two tries felt super good. If Phantom Pain is going to be that, but with more tools and "power", I might actually enjoy the gameplay a lot. However, I can also see how I get frustrated at some point, and resort to a walkthrough for the rest of the game. Finally, the game looked good and ran smoothly on my computer, so yay for that.

I have watched a bunch of gameplay videos where they emphasize your freedom in approaching the missions however you like, which is cool. I also liked the sandbox nature and relatively short length of the Spetsnaz elimination mission. Will this style extend to main story missions or is it more of a side mission thing*? I assume that main missions will be longer and more complicated, but hopefully they are not too linear. I played about half of Metal Gear Solid IV before I got bored, but I think I might be up for this if the gameplay was more in the vein of (a military version of) Hitman. Also, that special edition chart is pathetic. Basically just two editions. Once again, Ubisoft is way ahead of others: http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/90/908941/2915357-watch_dogs_editions-noscale.jpg * I haven't paid much attention to this game, so I don't know whether this has been discussed in other videos, interviews, or previews. I also don't know how or if the missions are categorized within the game.

Oops, missed that part. And agreed on the speed being uniform making sense.

Sounds like Deadpan does not want the speed to be random, so random r is not required, but in case anyone needs to generate uniformly distributed points inside the circle, the way to go is [x,y] = [r*sqrt(c1)sin(2pi*c2), r*sqrt(c1)cos(2pi*c2)] where c1 and c2 are uniformly distributed random numbers between (0,1). Without the square root, the center of the sphere will be more populated than the edge.

Yes! Hot Scoops! New Fallout Shelter theme song! Nick Breckon revelations!

I think Idle Thumbs Network should cash in on the opportunity and start selling a "Who is Stan?" t-shirts in their online store, in the vein of other iconic questions such as "Who is John Galt?" and "Who killed Laura Palmer?".

I recommend raising the difficulty in AI matches as soon as you get hang of the basics. Much less frustrating.

In case anyone is experiencing the same issue, the solution was to go to the Privacy settings and re-enable "Let apps access my calendar". Makes no sense, but there you go. I'm digging the Weather app and the performance monitor of Task Manager. Data!