Hermie

Pulled the trigger on Saint's Row the Third and Marky Mark and the Ninja Bunch. I was gonna go look for a physical copy of Dishonored this weekend, but now I'm good for a while.

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Saw these guys in Gothenburg last weekend, great fun! Sprinkling some Norwegian rock in there. Gluecifer - Put Me On A Plate Kitchie Kitchie Ki Me O - Let It Slide Madrugada - Majesty Bigbang - Girl in Oslo Kaizers Orchestra - Ompa Til Du Dør Datarock - Fa Fa Fa My Midnight Creeps - Don't Let Them Bring You Down

Cannot unhear "Daisy =/= Day Z".

So I'm in Stockholm, primarily to catch Jonathan Coulton in concert, and also attending the SCII EU championship finals. I'm mainly posting this in order to provoke jealousy.

I was so confused last year and through this one when podcasts like Giant Bombcast would either mention Dust: An Elysian Tail, Dust 514 or From Dust.

All this web magic is cool and all, but what really impresses me is that you guys tracked down a high-res image of the end of SimAnt for that episode. I tried myself in order to make some kind of photoshop of it after hearing the episode, but ultimately had to admit defeat.

That would probably be the old old Cafepress store, where the Thumbs say explicitly that they get no money from, it just disappears into the ether. But then again, the text there says to "buy everything".

There aren't a lot of games I outright quit. In fact, most of them fade out, like if they are being too frustrating, or just not fun to play. I don't think I've ever just said "nope, that's it, I will not do it anymore", but instead pick it up with less and less frequency, until suddenly I realized I haven't touched it in months. This has happened with Bioshock a couple of times, but so early that I don't think I've ever gotten to the so called "good part".

I burned through the episodes last week, ending with ep. 3 in the weekend. I'm marveled by how this is the first game that has made me feel such a complex emotion such as tenseness through a story, rather than the mechanics. Sometimes I couldn't turn of the analytical part of my brain ( ) but this has happened way less than with any other game, and it's so refreshing to actually be caught up in real, deep characters, in situations I'm genuinely conflicted about it. Loving it. Also fun to see Shammack in the credits. Go Shammack, living the dream!

http://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8064-apple-event-september-12th/#entry204202

Ah, it's a retailer chain, but the two sister companies have their own brand, that basically buys cheap things from China and sells them with a new brand, thus the need for packaging designer. But I'm on the retail end of things. (*Makes a note to look up Toblix to see if he bought anything*)

So. Life then? Okay. You might (or might not) remember this, in which I had to make a grand, binary decision that usually only happens in video games, except the only achievement that popped up was called "Consequences", and it didn't even give me any GamerPoints. I went with option B:, pursue the girl. Since then I have finished my bachelors degree (barely), packed my bags, and moved my entire life across the border from Norway to Sweden. My girlfriend had gotten a job as a packaging designer for an electronics retailer, in a small-to-medium sized town a little away from Gothenburg. I had applied for a Norwegian language customer service job at the same company, but when I followed up they hadn't gotten my application, and then it was too late. But after my girlfriend had started, she mentioned this to the secretary, who realized they're looking for a Norwegian in the mother company of this one, that also have their customer service hosted in the same offices. So, they call me up, and the day after I arrive in Sweden with my bags, I go to the interview, and they call me a couple of hours later to tell me that I got it. So now I take calls and answer emails from Norwegian people complaining about their laptops not working. It's not the best job, but not the worst either, and I seem to have impressed my boss by how quickly I mastered it, and took on more and more challenges. The worst part is doing a Norwegian job for a Swedish salary (I earn less working 80% in an office here, than I did at 18 working 60% in Burger King). Actually, scratch that, the worst part is people yelling at me for things other people did wrong, and then expecting me to fix it, when my only tool for that is "call someone else that hopefully can fix it". But, the people are cool, and I feel like I can move up the chain if I play my cards right. We've been through a lot of worries (getting an apartment, making sure her visa/green card is okay, fixing the apartment once we got it, all kinds of bureaucracy), but the pieces seem to have fallen into place, one by one. There's still a million little things to get in order, but I guess that's what adult life is all about? So now I'm sitting here, with my laptop on a brand new Ikea desk, with a new job, a new life, in a new town, in a new country, and watching the life I left behind start again after summer through everyone's Facebook updates. It's a strange feeling, but hearing her behind me on our new Karlstad two-seat couch, tapping on her keyboard, it's a soothing, reassuring sound. I think I made the right choice.

Fuck everything.

Relevant reading about the male gaze. I was always annoyed when reading feminist film theory due to all the sweeping generalizations it makes, which makes it x% more annoying when people like this guy confirm such generalizations.

Great timing, as I've almost beaten Tiny Tower (yes).

Man, that music is so great.

Apple is one of those companies that seems to trigger the Internet Superlative Dichotomy, it's either the best or the worst, it's awesome or it's horrible, they're god or satan. I guess it comes from the so-called Cult of Apple and the counter-reaction to that, but it's weird that when someone asks my opinion, it's never "What do you think of Apple products?", but "Are you an Apple person?", as if that is a yes/no question. I found that new MacBook Pro looked pretty cool, and I would love to test Final Cut on one, but ultimately, it's too far out of my price range for doing the same thing I can get done adequately on other devices.

I've been using Tweetdeck for a long time, because of the column layout, but I miss from the official twitter stuff being able to click on a tweet to see the previous conversation.

Yeah, the reason I asked wasn't because I want to be Mr. Best, it was because I wanted a different perspective, since I've mostly stuck to my same spells so far, and I know there are so many possibilities. In fact, I was feeling The Fun draining the more I was throwing myself against the wall. I'm also not a numbers guy, I have no idea what my DPS is or supposed to be, but I find it fascinating to hear the different approaches people are taking to character building. Other than the bosses, I find that Blizzard have done a phenomenal job of always making you feel like a badass. I feel clever for discovering a good spell combination (even though they're probably all thouroughly tested to make sure they complement each other), and the enemies are usually intimidating enough that I feel good about blasting them to pieces. On normal, anyways.

Where do people actually go to read about stats and builds and such? I'm at Diablo on normal now, doing trial and error on what is effective and not with my wizard. Like the fact that Hydra is a secondary damage source that allows you to run around, I hadn't even considered that. Due to the game's popularity, every google search just leads to fake SEO-optimized pages that wants you to buy "the ultimate strategy that Blizzard doesn't want you to know about". So, how are people here building up their wizards (and other characters)? I'm based around the passive ability that gives 20% extra damage to chilled and frozen targets, so blizzard + ray of frost + frost nova + ice armor means I can tear through groups really quickly without them reaching me, and with the rune that increases ray of frost damage over time, bigger targets go down fast too, and then I keep diamond armor as a panic button.