Salacious Snake

It'll probably become clear when I listen to the podcast, but I can't wait to find out: what is that header image from?

-Use sports analogies more, especially regarding the concept of "playmaking." --"What's our play?" --"What's the play?" --"Here's the play." -When assigning blame, speak in terms of a nebulous "it" which is referred to as being "on" someone. --"This isn't on you; it's on me." --"If you do this, it'll be on you." I don't think I've ever encountered these phrases in real life, but they show up in TV and stuff constantly. The playmaking thing even happens in period pieces where sports don't really exist.

This doesn't really add anything to the discussion, but I feel the same way about Generations. It's not great, but I don't hate it either. It's a pretty average Star Trek movie. I also agree with your sentiment about how the films generally miss the point.

I feel corny saying it, but this is a great community, and it seems to be continually getting better with new arrivals. If we keep stayin' true and doin' thangs we'll stay on top of the world. (I purchase all my trackballs and handheld scanners from rapper Mac Mall.)

That is, sadly, the case. I hope they do a remaster someday, but who knows. If they act on fan feedback, they'll probably do Voyager before DS9, because it's more popular (which is insane).

Thanks. The beeping you hear is from the TV in the background. The flashing light is from her remote training collar, which can vibrate or deliver mild electrical stimulation at the touch of a button. It helps her pay attention to commands. Disclaimer: I wouldn't recommend them for everyone, it would be easy to misuse and overcorrect for the wrong things. We worked with a couple of serious trainers to learn how to employ it properly.

Maybe I have a darker imagination, but I expected more of a gross circus. Jenner hit some solid points that showed a decent cultural awareness beyond his (using the male pronoun as he still was as of the interview) own personal experiences, which was cool, like specifically calling out the disproportionate targeting of trans women of color. Sawyer's questions weren't the greatest, but I get it. She was giving voice to the kinds of ignorant questions most people would have. It's not going to change the world, but it could have been truly atrocious, and I don't think it was.

Only so if you count the Expanded Universe, which has now been struck from continuity and rebranded. So, canonically, still Sleazebaggano. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Elan_Sleazebaggano (Not exactly set in stone, but I want to believe.)

More dog videos!!

God, I love the Spectre-esque look of that title screen. I can't wait to try this out.

They also justify (or at least acknowledge) the player dying and coming back over and over, and I'd want to retain that. So, Paranoia Souls, in which everyone is rapidly cloned over and over? There are probably a ton of good sci-fi ways to do that, actually, like having your consciousness downloaded into a new robot body every time you die, etc. edit: I like using robots in general, or you could justify a lot of Soulsy mechanics in a Matrix-esque virtual world.

I was kind of assuming it was a frozen alcoholic beverage, such as a pina colada. I like those sorts of drinks, but they always give me a stomach ache.

Also, the best McCoy and Spock interactions are those when there's an underlying sense of friendship. It falls down when he's just being a total jerk, like in "The Tholian Web." (Which, as nifty as the Tholians are, is a bad episode.)

I also went with Kaiden, followed by a double helping of Garrus. Garrus's vulnerable awkwardness is so endearing. It just felt so right, because he was already my go-to companion. I liked his attitude and his combat abilities, and I almost always had him with me. By the time it became an option to romance him, it felt pretty natural, and the relevant scenes were so well written. It fit with the characters as I saw them. It felt way less forced than is the norm for these things.

Gosh, I remember well the feeling of invincibility that came with getting a fast broadband internet connection before they were common. Being an LPB was fun. Combine that with the performance benefits of a Voodoo Graphics card (plus possibly being able to see enemies through water if the server was using "vis'ed" maps) and woof. It's neat to me how the whole LPB/HPB thing means something different depending on the type of game you're talking about. With a peer-to-peer situation like Starcraft, where things need to be in lockstep across all players, the HPB was the one to be feared, because it meant you were all going to have a stuttery, slow game experience. In an asymmetric server-client deal like Quake, the LPBs were Neo and the HPBs were drunk toddlers in the same arena where time is constant. Current console shooters are in a weird middle ground that generally works out, but can be abused in weird ways.

New stock of Consulting Detective! http://www.coolstuffinc.com/p/183130 I'll put my copy right next to Die Weinhändler!

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective appears to be entering the wild again! http://www.coolstuffinc.com/p/183130 I snapped one up, and I figured people here could be interested thanks to Idle Thumbs 180: Wars and Pieces.

I can totally see why the narrower set of play styles is a bummer for people, but god I love it. In Demon's and Dark Souls, I just always felt like I was making the worst choices. Whenever I would start specializing in some direction, I'd feel sick thinking about all the other doors I was closing.

Does anyone know if there's an easy way to do simple interactive music/audio ambiance within or on top of any of the popular IF tools? I don't need anything as involved as iMuse, but just being able to either add and remove layers of audio when moving from scene to scene would be good, or to switch from one audio loop to another smoothly on the downbeat (or at least without introducing any weird pauses or popping). In what little dabbling I've done with kinda "indie" game creation software in the past, the tools for dealing with audio have always seemed super shitty, even in stuff like Unity. How scary is FMOD? Have I mentioned that I have like zero programming knowledge? (I studied FORTRAN 77 in college, but that's about it.) Thanks for reading my dumb questions.

Not exactly what you're looking for, but an IT Second Life hangout would be fun.

I love the visual design of Demon's Souls. It stuck out to me when I first played it (imported Asian region disc!), because of its lack of videogaminess. That drab medieval world, but done with so much care and detail looked great to me, and it made the more outrageous monsters seem that much more frightening. I had similar feelings about Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. I know that "restraint" is not high on the list of words that come to mind when thinking about MGS, but at a time when everything else was greebled to fuck and covered in layers upon layers of post-process shaders and other trickery, MGS 4 looked great because it had high-polygon models with high-resolution textures, and meticulous animation. That's true of the whole series, but it stood out especially in 4 because of the direction of other games of the time. Not that it didn't use current graphical techniques, but the foundation was so good that they could be subtle about it.

Anyone want to see a video of my dog drooling? (Music made in the Tenori-On iPad app.)

Patrick R, I like your sample-based stuff. It's neat. Also your album art rules. I haven't done much lately, but I keep meaning to get back on that music horse. Here's a pile of crap: https://soundcloud.com/eotf-seork I mostly end up with short sketches, because I'll find a loop I like, and then I stop when it gets boring. One fun thing was submitting stuff to Overclocked Remix back in the day. My contributions sound pretty horrible to me now, but it was a cool and very welcoming community thing. I should do more video game stuff. http://ocremix.org/artist/4300/mr-44 God damn it, I need to twiddle some knobs. Maybe this weekend!

toke discreetly, my notorious weedlord I was never a big weed guy, but I do have good memories of playing Soul Calibur with friends while we all did huge bong rips and drank 40s. Saturn Bomberman is also good for a group of up to 10 wasted people. I had less success combining the two great passions of my teenage years: heroin and Quake (the original, primarily in multiplayer). The nausea, lethargy and general lack of focus just didn't accommodate the demands of the game. I did have wicked Quake dreams when I'd finally nod out, though.