James

I've always loved the shift key, but I try to remember that proper humans find it annoying.

I was more bothered by Miffmaff's wanton duplication. The man is a menace.

I have none. The Trocadero can be pretty fun, although it can get expensive if you get carried away. Or that might just be me being miserly. But yeah, I'm down with awkwardness in any combination of the suggested contexts, I guess. I also have no pub suggestions. This post is worthless. Actually, I do know a pub near Leicester Square that a friend of mine likes, but it's pretty small and often packed. No, yeah, this post is still worthless.

BY ME, YES, I AM THE AWESOME GUY WHO MADE IT. Actually it basically just spits out some basic PHP function crap. I did nothing clever. I didn't even format it nicely. BUT IT'S MY DOING SO I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT BECAUSE I AM VERY ARROGANT AND AWFUL. I really am the worst.

WHY IS EVERYONE IGNORING MY POST? Angryface etc.

I look forward to being tactfully told how shit I am. But yeah, all-talk is how we play GTA, and it keeps things relaxed.

I didn't find dying over and over a particularly good time, I'm afraid. It's funny, I find MW2 much easier to manage because people aren't zipping about and bouncing off the walls like maniacs. I can't seem to hit a bloody thing in TF2, and that makes me sad. I guess I should probably give it another chance, but I don't know.

I was interested until I died forever and hardly killed anyone. That wasn't much fun for me, I'm afraid. I AM NOT GOOD AT THIS.

Yeah, that bothers me too.

There wasn't much that irritated me as much as that (which did irritate me a lot), but the series as a whole kept bugging me with little things throughout. It was good, but there was always something preventing from me from adoring it like all my friends seem to. For one thing, I found a large portion of the characters variously annoying throughout the run, to the point of pretty much hating some of them a lot of the time. For example, there were points when I wouldn't mind if Starbuck got run down by a combine harvester. Also, for a lot of the time everyone seems to have magical thinking about "souls" and the nature of life: not only are mechanical parts inherently incapable of forming consciousness by their reasoning, but so too are beings made of organic materials but who were formed in an unfamiliar way that was at some point presumably set up by mechanical beings. I'm not saying that I claim to have any certainty about the nature of life or consciousness, but it seems rather arrogant and closed-minded that everyone in the series presumes to know (at first), and that they're all leaning the same way. The term "machine" is thrown around (even by the Cylons) as though it's an ethereal quality rather than simply a term for a mechanical system (which, when made organic, is basically indistinguishable from what we are). I get that those sorts of prejudices are one of the themes, but you'd think there'd be more breadth of opinion than that. I don't know. Not really spoilers, just my thoughts on the ending (without specifics), but if you're ultra-paranoid, whatever: I don't know, I'm not very good at proper criticism stuff. My thoughts: the series is good, but marred.

It crashes on my PC for some reason.

I saw them support Mogwai. Good stuff.

http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-ex-greed-corp/17-1898/

Rest assured, that's entirely our doing. The juxtaposition between the super-serious super-grim fiction and our awful and often child-like paint jobs is irresistible.

Hooray!

I had some difficulty getting my current computer working properly, so I had to install the ATI software several times. I liked how all it's installing for you is the LotRO installer, at a whopping 1 MB. You'll have to download the rest. But aren't you glad they saved you the effort of downloading that extra megabyte. That would be the straw that broke the camel's back. I find it weird how companies who have departments that focus so much on swish visual design can have such shitty software GUIs. Phone manufacturers put out these very stylish looking devices, but then the software is this horrible chunky and awful and looks like it's a child's toy made of brightly-coloured plastic. You know, like the default XP theme.

Yeah, I don't want to sound super anti-drinking or anything. I don't really drink at all myself, but if anything I think that's too far in the opposite direction. It's fine to have a good time and all that. Just, if you're not happy with how it's going, then that's a pretty good indicator that you should probably adjust. I am stating the obvious.

Groucho has played GTA with us before, and in doing so made no egregious transgressions and is therefore many furlongs less tragic than my dear friend Patters here, so he has nothing to worry about. JOIN US if you want.

Armchair General Practitioner? Now I feel a bit shitty for not being more supportive earlier on. Groucho, you are a cool and well-adjusted guy. I respect you for being bold and insightful enough to question your own behaviour, and confident enough to post about it here. I'm sure you will find a situation or approach or whatever that you feel comfortable with. Sorry I can't offer anything especially concrete or practical. I have fairly intimate experience of alcoholism (not myself, but someone close), but it's left me with nothing but a cautionary tale. The upshot is that, given time, alcoholism can interfere with your mental health in some pretty alarming ways. I'm not a medical professional, so I don't know if it actually causes psychosis or merely provokes and exacerbates existing conditions, but I've seen someone whose intellect and skepticism I'd respected start coming out with all sorts of paranoid supernatural nonsense. The intelligence is still there, as is the person I know, but now it has company, and that company is a stranger to me. I'm rambling unhelpfully. Bad stuff can happen, but I'm sure you're a million miles from that and walking the opposite direction. I hope I'm not bringing the thread down or dwelling too much or making anyone self-conscious or anything. In closing, I make awful posts when stone-cold-sober, so I wouldn't worry about that side of things. EDIT: That last post wasn't there when I wrote this. You should definitely join in stuff if self-consciousness is all that's holding you back. AS FAR AS I'M AWARE nobody's judging anyone or anything. A lot of us suck pretty bad at the games we play, or at least think we do, and some of us sound like godawful nerds over voice chat while doing so, so I wouldn't worry about any of that stuff. It's probably all part of the fun or something. The more the merrier and so on.

You're right, we should start referring to the Chaos Sorcerer as the Chaos Wizard.

Would such a suit afford one a speed boost? Could the suit therefore accurately be described a "boost suit"? Would this be amusing, or am I reaching pathetically?

In all the horribly clashing colours of the metallic rainbow.

Woah, I just started listening, and on doing so I realized that I had previously thought the name of the podcast had changed (again), and that this must have been a dream. I remember having felt slightly disappointed that you guys couldn't make your minds about it. I have the most mundane dreams. One time I dreamt about borrowing a friend's socks.

I played a few rounds on there last night. I did terribly, but it seemed good. It was quite busy, though, so we might have difficulty getting many Thumbs on there.

Does CS require specific A-levels? I would have thought most places would accept you on the basis of good overall grades and at least one maths-or-science subject. I don't remember the exact requirements when I applied, but it didn't seem super-strict (depending on the university, of course).