Gwardinen

Yeah what troubles me about it is it sort of penalises my play style. I tend to run through a given area a few times before actually finishing it. Both because I die and because I'm trying to explore the place and collect everything. Often I will do an area first as a phantom rather than myself, so that I can have a no-risk explore about the place while helping someone else. Frankly the fact that I'm de-incentivised to put down a white sign by this system bothers me in general, because it's one of my favourite parts of the game. When you heroically defend someone from an invader or take down a difficult enemy with them, it feels great. A friend of mine played Dark Souls 1 on PS3 and helped a guy beat Ornstein and Smough. The person sent him a PSN friend request (not easy) and a text message through it (not easy), just to thank him for his help and say he'd been stuck on that boss for days because of limited play time. That's awesome! I want to do that more, not less! Currently I'm either trying to pick my way through Huntsman's Copse or I'm told there's a belfry area I can also get to right now, but apparently it's a bit of a PvP clusterfuck?

I'm on PC. I'm now at 330k though. It goes up quick!

Ah. I am at 280k. Plz send hlep.

My whatnow?

To my dismay, I'm rapidly nearing the end of the Next Generation episodes SAM recommended. I'm thinking I'll move on to Gormongous' DS9 suggestions, but something occurred to me - there's no remaster available for DS9, is there? I'll probably have to watch it in the crappy quality Netflix has.

I was up and down on the first season, but it was good enough for the time because nothing else I liked was on at the time. King of the Hill not being on Netflix is definitely a tragedy, though.

It's atrociously beautiful. So good and so sad.

This was the man I had to impersonate a police officer with.

Elite Dangerous LOOKS really cool, but I've heard some not so great things about the general completeness of the actual gameplay, so I'm a little hesitant.

I wish you'd help me through SotFS instead, Bjorn! In some areas I'm kind of struggling to find phantoms.

Funny how it can sneak up on you like that. I haven't really enjoyed a job for a while, but I definitely remember one in particular that I didn't really have any long-range goals for at first, but when I left I realised how much the people and the work had come to mean to me. Still, moving on with your life is good! Look forwards and you can still enjoy your memories. It being over is not the same as it having never happened, and I'm sure many of your coworkers will remember you as fondly as you do them.

But where were the pushbikes.

Whoops, I'm part way through watching Secret Asian Man's recommended season 7 episodes of the Next Generation and I've just realised I missed the new additions to season five. It's a good job continuity is pretty loose in this show, because I'm now going to jump back two seasons. For the record I've been very much enjoying the episodes in SAM's guide to TNG, and heartily recommend it to others. I may well move on to Gormongous' list of DS9 episodes afterwards, but... I dunno, I think in some way TNG will always be my favourite. I still feel like it might be the one that defines Star Trek the most to me. My conception of what a show dealing with ethics and philosophy and odd hypotheticals through science fiction should be is still mostly informed by how the Next Generation did it. It's been a joy to rediscover some of the key moments that made that impression on me, and even some new ones I apparently never saw the first time around.

Third buddy appears in season four and becomes main cast in five. Becoming more comfortable with its own cheesiness is a more gradual process. You just end up having more and more "fluff" episodes that are either funny or outright silly. Later on they become so meta that you have sequences referencing CSI, Knight Rider and even an episode in which the actors play themselves in the real world from the characters' perspective. Frankly I think the non-plot-relevant episodes of Supernatural are probably better than the plot episodes. That's fair, Winter Soldier was surprisingly good. But that's just it, for me it was a surprise. The Avengers was great and I was shocked, and then Thor 2 sucked and I immediately reverted back to thinking it was a one-off. That Winter Soldier ended up being good was genuinely surprising to me once again, and at that point I retained my scepticism. This is not unlike how when Iron Man came out and was good I was surprised, but then when Iron Man 2 came out and was not nearly as good I was not. The good Marvel films are the exception in my mind, not the rule. All that said, I still think most of the films are decent. They are technically well made and are enjoyable as thrill rides. The acting is usually not bad, and the plot, while almost never anything to write home about (hell the plot in the Avengers is kind of flat if you actually just read it), generally provides enough excuses for the action scenes you want and resolves itself thereafter. The superhero films that I actually expect good things out of at this point are the X-Men films. X2 was a little shaky at times and X-Men: The Last Stand was outright bad for much of its running time, but since the reboot I've enjoyed both First Class and Days of Future Past. As a result, my expectations have flipped and if the next film is bad I will be surprised, rather than the opposite.

Bwahaha. I actually laughed out loud at this, so I think you may be the better Joker here.

I've seen others espousing this opinion and I must admit to being slightly surprised. I wasn't exactly blown away IGN.com by the film but I didn't have any problems with it, other than that it wasn't the first Avengers. I don't think I ever imagined it would be, though, that was such lightning in a bottle. I'm not sure whether I'm the one off base with my reaction or whether everyone else just had much higher expectations.

Literally both these things happen, so yeah, you may well enjoy it a lot later down the line. What I will say, though, is that my personal enjoyment of Supernatural definitely fell after season... five? I think? There are still good episodes here and there thereafter but the arcs didn't interest me (never the show's strong suit anyway) and it all felt a bit worn out. Basically I think it has a very good middle of its run, but it takes a while to find itself and then later on it becomes a little tired and full of retreading of the same ground. I don't often recommend this for modern TV, but I think Supernatural is definitely one of those shows that you could get everything you want out of just watching a "best of" list. As long as you either saw or were told about major continuity points along the way. Disclaimer: I haven't seen the most recent one or two seasons so if they've suddenly gotten great again I wouldn't know it.

Due to having German citizenship rather than British (I think about trying for dual every few years but it's expensive and time consuming) I can't vote in the general election. However, being as my vote power is only 0.02 above Mington's, I guess it's somewhat irrelevant anyway. I don't think this seat has changed hands in my lifetime. By the way, you can use this quiz to see how much your values match up with STATED policies of major UK parties: https://uk.isidewith.com/political-quiz Of course, what that means should they come into power is anyone's guess.

For a while I was using the Chrome extension Hola to access the US version of Netflix, as they have some of the TV shows streaming there whereas the UK version doesn't. As far as I'm aware this is entirely legal since you still require a legitimate Netflix account, but it may or may not be against their TOS if that bothers you. I imagine other methods of spoofing your IP would work just as well as Hola, and once the playback of a particular episode has started you can switch it off so that you have your full bandwidth available.

Enjoying the TNG episodes greatly, though I am noticing a melancholy tinge to the best episodes. Especially the endings tend to lave me a little sad and contemplative, so my mood is all over the place while making my way through them.

Other people tend to be better at reading those sorts of signals than the recipient, so friends are actually usually a good barometer in this situation.

I think this is fairly common - I've certainly experienced it a few times. On the first date you're really just looking for surface level compatibility, as long as you don't hate each other and aren't totally bored it's a good first date. It's the second and third during which you tend to find out whether you could be more than acquaintances.

While I have the game, I am in the midst of moving right now and don't have internet until Tuesday. Also I have the Rockstar Social Club version rather than the Steam version, so I'm guessing I need to add people via that service in order to play with them. I'm Gwardinen there in case anyone knows how to add me.

Me too, actually. I also include Aveline's romance in Dragon Age II (if you manage to help her get it started). For my part, I didn't romance anyone in 1, got together with Miranda in 2 and stayed loyal to her in 3. Mostly that all came about through just sticking to my hard-but-smart Renegade male Shepard persona.

Thanks guys, especially SAM. I'm moving tomorrow and am only going to have patchy internet for the next week so I'm going to try to find some copies of the new Blurays to give me something to do. Also I'm definitely not going to watch Menage a Troi but I really did enjoy that YouTube clip.