JonCole

Yeah, Arrow is very much like that as well. Lots of weird one off characters or quick mentions of key words that are big in DC Universe but seemingly small or insignificant with respect to the plot at hand. Gotham, on the other hand, is on the nose in a much shittier way. Still watching it though because I have no self-respect.

I watched the season premiere of The Flash today and I have to say that I'm pretty excited. I'm a big fan of Arrow, so I guess it's not a big surprise but The Flash is pretty much my favorite DC superhero and the way that CW seems to be handling this stuff nowadays seems really solid. I don't really have a whole lot to say about it, only that the villain in the premiere is Weather Wizard so that's pretty cool.

I have a coworker that does the following in the bathroom - Plays a Nicaraguan radio station at full blast on his cell phone Keeps the door to his stall open for no apparent reason Chemical weapon war crimes My new office is located near the restrooms, so I've noticed that all the men in the building will actually not go into the bathroom if they hear his radio. They'll step through the door and step out within five seconds. Worst.

Every time I've broken down a Legendary item I've gotten Ascendant upgrade materials (granted, I've only done it like three times). As Korax said, a good use of marks you don't need is to buy legendaries from merchants to break down immediately. I still have the bounty for completing a weekly strike from two days ago, anyone want to do this week's tonight? I could be available after 8pm EDT, as seems to be the time we're most available.

A follow-up on Frozr technology in case anyone was curious, Zero Frozr - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0gTb8sAr24

I know the guy who produces the Joystiq Podcast and he said they only retain the last 100 episodes on their server, unfortunately. So there's no backend way to get it directly from them, as I was hoping there might be.

Shit, apparently the GC Controller adapter will actually emulate the Wii U Classic Controller - http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/07/wii-us-gamecube-controller-will-support-more-than-just-smash-bros/ That's actually super exciting, as the proud owner of two Wavebirds. This actually makes me want a Wii U that much more, a huge reversal from my original cynicism.

I actually did the 3DS Louvre Audio Tour - I actually thought it was super handy! It definitely took some technical thinking to use it well, however, as the UI wasn't designed particularly well (though I honestly feel the level of navigability + search was more or less equal to Nintendo's lackluster design elsewhere on the device). It worked very well for the guided tours, except in a couple situations where items were placed very close together so it had trouble discerning what it should be explaining. It also didn't dynamically adjust to what exhibits were closed, which was hard to figure out the very first time it was explaining a blank wall but then much easier to discern later. Here is an example of the setup, it shows what you should see in front of you on the top screen, a map on the bottom screen with the path you should take, and it explains things at each of the blue nodes. If you miss something, you can click the blue node to back it up to that point or click one ahead to skip to something you're more interested in - And here's a picture of my wife using it. She says "the Louvre is way easier to consume while using it. It wouldn't have been nearly as fun if we didn't have something to tell us about things at our own pace. I felt very in control of my experience, which is not how a guide usually makes you feel" -

It's kinda complicated, changing technology that I don't quite understand, that's why I don't personally bother with M.2. I believe that some of them will hog two SATA3 ports (as in, if you plug in an M.2 two designated ports will no longer work) while others basically use two PCI-E lanes. In either case, bandwidth is technically higher than a single SATA3 port and so transfer rates have a higher ceiling. As far as I know, nobody is really making screaming fast M.2's in a reasonable price range so I don't think it'll matter much anyways. To me, 550 mb/s read is plenty fast and even the relatively slower write rates of budget SSDs still beat the crap out of most HDDs, so I'll take just about any SSD I can get (from this generation, where most of the NAND controllers aren't garbage).

I feel like it'll be most valuable in Skirmish and Rumble pvp modes, where 9:10 engagements are close range. Did have an amusing time using it while grinding bounties yesterday, though I kept noticing how slow it is to reload.

I'm on the last step, so whenever you're online and you want to do it we should.

I've worked my way back to episode 2 of Daft Souls and they talk about the idea of having one person disarming a bomb while the other person explained how to do it. They... basically predicted the future? God this podcast is good.

You're brave for taking Pocket Infinity, I considered it as an alternative to Super Good Advice but the bounty seemed too daunting and the reports of how it performed were a little poor. I mostly took Super Good Advice because my exotic weapon pickings are so slim at the moment and I still don't have very many level 20 heavy weapons for some dumb reason. Incidentally, I just hit the next level of Dead Orbit and got a legendary rocket launcher so I don't even know how much I'll be using SGA. Is there really a big gap in efficacy between exotic and legendary weapons? There is a really tangible numerical difference between exotic and legendary armor, but weapons seem to just have a more special/gimmicky effect rather than actually being measurably better. Sure, the combination of weird attributes can result in a more effective weapon, but it's doesn't seem to be as directly beneficial as exotic armor.

Well, this weekend has been very productive for me. Hit rank 3 Vanguard, rank 12 Cryptarch, got two exotic bounties, completed one of those bounties, and got an exotic weapon drop. As I mentioned before, I got the exotic bounty for Thorn and have been working on it diligently. Right now I'm working on the 500 points into void damage Crucible kills, which is pretty interesting. Really shifts my play to using my void shotgun/sniper and rocket launcher way more than my primary. I looked that the Destiny DB page for Thorn and I'm not looking forward to the level 26 Summoning Pits Strike at the end there. I got another exotic bounty which I managed to complete it short order. I got the Super Good Advice machine gun, whose most grindy element was to kill a lot of guys with a machine gun with bonus points towards the progress bar for headshots. So, I bought a handful of heavy weapon ammo boosts, did an Explore in the Cosmodrome and on the Moon, shot one bullet at a time just for headshots, and farmed it in about an hour and a half. Best part is I have about 60+ helium filaments and spinmetal now, meaning less farming for them in the future. Anyways, here's the pretty cool gun - I got my second exotic of the weekend from a random drop at the Crucible, which I've been grinding seemingly forever for Crucible marks. I don't quite know what to make of it yet, odd thing is that it's a shotgun that is also a primary weapon. So, theoretically I could roll with two shotguns? Eager to try it out. It's called Universal Remote -

That level 28 strike was crazy hard. I was almost not enjoying it by the end, but it still did present a lot of situations where we really had to coordinate that felt quite different from the vanilla game. Also, not to be overly critical but man are you trigger-happy with that self-resurrect. I feel like at least one of the times where we team wiped we might have made it if you had let one of us revive you (sometimes we were RIGHT next to you) instead of self-resurrecting. Then again, it didn't help that I'm still kinda shit with the Defender class. I feel like I'm missing a critical component to how to use it effectively. Maybe when I have it fully leveled up and have access to the full suite of perks, I'll suddenly discover a build that works for me.

I actually stumbled upon Matt Lees re: #GG stuff and got into his YouTube stuff. I somehow managed to completely overlook your suggestions and arrive upon Daft Souls on my own.

I saw that MGSV: Ground Zeroes was on sale digitally on PSN for $13-ish with PS+ and almost grabbed it, but I'm glad I didn't because it's $9.99 w/ FS at Gamefly used - http://slickdeals.net/f/7241690-gamefly-9-99-used-game-sale-metal-gear-solid-v-ground-zeroes-ps4-or-xbox-one-batman-arkham-origins-ps3-or-360-need-for-speed-rivals-360-9-99-each-with-free-shipping?src=pdw&v=1

Speaking of TAL, Alex Blumberg of TAL and Planet Money recently broke off from the NPR pack to found his own podcasting company. Interestingly enough, he started off his new network with a show about the startup process of the network itself. He goes through the process of branding, securing funding, creating a business plan, etc. He also does a unique thing with his advertising where he actually interviews the advertisers as part of the ad, showing a little bit of the behind the scenes and providing some more context about each advertiser. Anyways, you can listen to it here - http://hearstartup.com/

I just wanted to mention the tip and your post reminded me of it. The farming of the more common materials is definitely much more grindy. I really just don't know how people have fully upgraded sets of stuff already, I don't mind going at it slow and steady but focusing just on farming that kinda stuff seems like a huge drag.

I've been catching up on South Park recently and I think they're still doing a remarkably good job of making that show relevant/timely and being hilarious most of the time. I've particularly enjoyed the gaming related episodes, like the one about Minecraft and the one about next-gen consoles.

Best way to farm those common upgrade materials seems to be checking practically every spawn point cave/thing for random chests while doing daily bounties. It maybe adds 10% more time to completing that stuff, but chests contain 1-3 of those things plus sometimes have green/blue items that you can break down for weapon parts. Just got my first exotic bounty and decided I'd take the one for Thorn. I heard it's hard, but I use hand cannon all the time and my blue cannon is not as effective in level 24+ as I'd like.

Fucking fuck, a trans game dev killed herself - https://twitter.com/ItsDamiya/status/517418479968735232 Depression is seriously such fucking shit.

Minor trick that I recently discovered and have been sharing as much as possible - if you raise the daily heroic mission to level 24 or 28, you get a guaranteed Ascendant upgrade item. It's a slow grind, but most missions at 24 are pretty effortless in the end-game even solo.

Vote in the Golden Joystick Awards, get a free copy of XCOM for PC - http://blog.playfire.com/2014/10/golden-joysticks-2014-vote-get-free-xcom.html While supplies last, of course. Sure most people have it, but unless 100% of people have it free is still a great deal.