SecretAsianMan

Say you have a number. You can express that number as the sum of each digit times a power of ten. For example, 1234 = 1(1000) + 2(100) + 3(10) + 4(1) You can also express this as 1234 = 1(999 + 1) + 2(99 + 1) + 3(9 + 1) + 4(1) Which can be rewritten as 1234 = 1(999) + 2(99) + 3(9) + 1(1) + 2(1) + 3(1) + 4(1) If you add a number divisible by 3 to another number divisible by 3 then the sum is clearly divisible by 3. All the terms with 9s in them are obviously divisible by 3. This just leaves the individual digits of the number. And obviously this expands out to any number. I think the formal proof uses the modulus of the terms but the principle is the same.

I totally agree with Danielle about watching specific speedrunners instead of games. If I see a game I like being run, I might watch it. But if I see a runner I like, it almost doesn't matter what the game is. My personal favorite runner is PJ because he's really entertaining and he's famous for causing weird game behaviour in his runs, no matter what game he's playing. Witwix is another favorite of mine.

I remember learning once in a discrete math class the proof for why you can determine if a number is divisible by three by adding up the digits and seeing if that sum is divisible by three. That proof is probably still one of my favorites.

I use Google Voice, which keeps a record of that stuff in my Google account. It's probably too late now but maybe a thing to think about in the future.

A bunch of the names for tricks in the speedrunning community have some unfortunate nomenclature. Most of the time the move is named for either the inventor or more likely it's just the first thing someone said and the name stuck. It's most likely what happened with the ghetto jump and while it's a poor choice of words, I don't think there's any malicious intent behind it. Not that it's a good excuse or anything.

Carentan is a great level but my personal favorite was always Stalingrad. It's the moment that war stopped being glamorous for me, which is a pretty heavy realization for a kid. One of my favorite "levels" is a mission in Freespace 2, Into the Lion's Den. The first few seconds of the actual mission scared the crap out of me and to this day remains one of the most memorable gaming moments I've ever had. The rest of the mission is pretty cool too, but explaining why would require too much detail.

I've seen devs on Skype calls before but not physically there. That's kind of neat. The incentive for I wanna be the Boshy got met. Looking forward to that. I need to donate again toward Bionic Commando 2 100%

Oops, you're right. I don't know why I keep thinking his name is Sal.

It was filled with a lot of really unfortunate jokes and comments about suicide and a few other inappropriate topics. The particular strategy for that game utilizes lots of death abuse so it didn't come from nowhere, but still it was awkward to say the least. I'm not familiar with the runner so I don't know what he's normally like, but I got the impression he felt pressure to talk and no one really wanted to tell him to stop.

Also I'm digging that the top name for a bunch of character/file name bid wars is Iwata, even the non-Nintendo games.

The part I was referring to is when Sal locks you in the shed in the garage. It's not technically a cutscene but the effect was still very jarring to me.

A bunch of them are already up on various channels such as this one

It was on as I was going to bed and I just had to turn it off. It was so awful.

SGDQ is live!

I hate the practice of tipping. I think it's a terrible idea and it needs to stop. However I still do it because I feel for the plight of the people who work jobs that depend on tips. I don't blame them for being forced to work under such a horribly broken system. Food service personnel especially. All that said, what do you do with carry out food? It's always the standard receipt so it has a place to put a tip, but on the other hand I didn't really get any service to speak of. Again, I don't blame the person behind the counter for this, but I'm not sure if I'm supposed to tip them if they didn't really do anything. I usually end up putting a dollar or two on there, but having never worked in a food service position I really don't know what the protocol is here.

Quick reminder that SGDQ starts tomorrow!

I once made a custom map in StarCraft that was basically my own version of a tower defense game (before that was even really a thing). I'd play as the Terrans against several Zerg AI, use cheats to set up a huge base defense, then see how long I could hold out against the swarm. I designed the path to be a lot of long canyons that I could line with bunkers and siege tanks with goliaths and missile turrets for anti-air.

I have no relationship advice so instead I'm going to intrude and talk about myself instead. This whole month has been insanely busy for me. Most of the time has been spent preparing for a big visit by the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the US Government agency that oversees nuclear power plants. Anytime they're here it's a big deal because these are the guys who can shut you down or fine you). I can't go into detail, but the visit in general covers a lot of the projects going on here. There were several members of the NRC each covering a discipline instead of a specific project (ie electrical, mechanical, etc). The exception to that was my project, which had one guy specifically assigned to it. I was super nervous about it because unlike the other projects, I'm the only one who can answer his questions. But the whole thing went great and I ended up being the only person out of the group who closed all their items. It felt really good to be able to do that. I even got some management kudos. Next week I'm going to be out of the office attending a user's group conference, which stinks because it means I'm going to miss almost all of SGDQ.

I finished up Grim Fandango Remastered the other day. I even played with the tank controls. I didn't have a problem moving around with them for the most part, but in a few places it was infuriating because Manny would sometimes automatically start moving toward the screen exit no matter which direction I was actually facing. Overall the game is about as good and as hard as I remember. It's a good thing that I still remember a lot of the puzzle solutions otherwise I think I'd have become frustrated much quicker. I'm not really a fan of the "updated" look though. If everything had been updated it would have been fine but seeing high res characters against low res backgrounds was very jarring. The worst moment had to be when Sal is yelling at Manny during a cutscene. His head has the new updated graphics but his body retains the old look, resulting in a very ugly mismatch. I'm planning to go back and play it again with the commentary on.

Another thing to consider is running dual graphics cards (SLI for Nvidia and Crossfire for AMD). You won't get double the performance but the improvement can be substantial. You need to have two of the same card for SLI or two similar cards for Crossfire, but if it's an older model odds are you can get it pretty cheap. A quick check of the GTX 560 shows that it does support SLI. You'll need a motherboard that supports it too. Not all games support SLI or Crossfire and your power requirements will increase. You may also need to do some tweaking to get the best performance. Here's a good FAQ from Tom's Hardware about it.

In high school I was a teacher's aide to the school's computer class teacher and de facto IT guy. It basically meant for one period out of the day I was an IT tech because he would send me out to take care of things he didn't want to himself (which was everything). It also meant I had not only an IT login, but also the master password. I remember installing StarCraft and having some great LAN games thanks to spawn installs. I think we tried to get Tribes to work as well but the computers just couldn't run it well enough.

TF2 used to be my main go-to game for anything, but I haven't played it in a long time. At least 2 or so major updates ago. It's still my number one in terms of hours played (1318.9 hours according to Steam). I've been doing the Spelunky daily challenge more than a year now. I think I've missed about a week total in that whole time. My normal method of play tends to be to find a game, get obsessed with it for a while, then move on to something else. That game for me at the moment is probably Killing Floor 2.

First US Government approved drone delivery successfully completed

I spent most of my weekend working outside in the hot, humid weather. I must have taken half a dozen showers to prevent myself from getting heat stroke. Now I'm tired and sore, which in retrospect was probably a huge mistake as I have an extremely busy week ahead of me at work.