Randox

Had a bit of a stupid moment yesterday morning. Woke up 2 or 3 hours before class with some congestion, and in a moment of total brilliance, I got up and had some NyQuil Cold & Flu, which among other things contains an antihistamine. Like a fair few people, my reaction to taking an antihistamine is to wake up very confused several hours later, which is fine if I take it before going to bed, and less desirable if I take it in the morning and then go back to bed to wait until my usual get up time. Next thing I know, I'm very confused about why my room is totally dark, only to discover it's now 2am on Friday, because of course it is. The brilliant things I think up when I first wake up in the morning. Of course, I've been up since 2am now, and I'm starting to get a little bit tired. So all I've actually managed to achieve is making an entire day of life just up and vanish :lol:

Started getting into Robocraft. The game has gotten a lot better since I last played it, and I've gotten better at the game, and it's just a lot more fun now. The game can get a bit freemium, especially to speed up advancement (on the other hand, membership is very cheap. I think even cheaper than RuneScape if you buy it by the month, which really surprised me when I looked), but there is no pay to win element. Just pay to advance faster. The community also seems to have gotten to a nice place gameplay wise. People seem to be using their heads and trying to be tactical, especially in higher tiers, but there is still plenty of room to have fun with your designs and no one is going to chew you out for it, at least in my experience (though if you are playing a healer, people do sometimes get upset that you don't magically teleport around the map to heal them whenever they want). Certainly a game I would suggest trying out if you have any interest in designing your own battle robot and testing it out against other players online. It's free on steam.

I've lived in London for a little over 7 years. Factoring in wind chill, -30°C isn't common, but -20 is. There are quite a few warmer days (-5°C or warmer) thrown in there, too. I've also witnessed a few thunder-snows in my time here, which I never saw in my pre-London days. Warm winter clothes is always a good idea, especially if you don't like the cold. Personally, I thrive in it, so I haven't even worn a winter coat since high school, which I finished before moving to London. I've been warned about extreme winters now multiple times from lots of people. I don't even know what -20 feels like but I'm terrified. We complain about the weather everyday in the UK. I think we complain about nothing but I'm used to it. A little late again, but... -20 feels a lot like -5 really. You'll get colder faster, but the feeling moment to moment isn't much difference. It's just cold. You'll have to do a polar bear dip or something. That should make everything else feel pretty warm by comparison for at least a couple weeks :P If you don't mind flying by the seat of your pants a little bit, I'm sure you can find a place renting out to students. You'll probably end up living with other students, and ideally you meet some other exchange students and you all get a place together. I'm assuming things work about the same in London as they do here in Halifax, so your best bet looking for a place to stay would be kijiji, which is a very popular online classified site in this country. Here's the page for London: http://www.kijiji.ca/h-london/1700214 Just look under room rentals and roommates. If you don't want to go that route, there are usually options for a single room in residence, or at least the university will probably try to pair you up with other exchange students from the UK.

Every MMORPG should have one npc who knows he's in a game, like the bartender in the blue moon inn in Varrock. Glad to know ESO has one of these guys too. I wonder if WoW does.

Where in Ontario? Some informaiton on the Ontario climate here, and you can search for information for particular locations: http://www.ontarioimmigration.ca/en/about/OI_ABOUT_WEATHER.html You'll get used to the cold, or stop going outside I guess. On the upside, the change in perspective will benefit you when you return home. Most people get used to it I find. I know a couple people who are in Canada for their first winter (Nova Scotia, which tends to be a little warmer and a little more windy), and they seem to be doing alright. I'm under the impression that France is a much warmer place though :lol: Your clue about Winnepeg should be the nickname Winterpeg. No ones trying to hide it. The area around Calgary is breathtaking if you go to the right spot. Alberta is not someplace I would want to live though. Actually, I don't really want to leave the east coast. Life is just more laid back out here. You go visiting in Ontario, or Alberta, and it's all rush rush rush. Things are a bit more relaxed out here, and I like it.

My city plows the sidewalks as part of municipal taxes. I think they started doing that for everyone last year, and it was pretty popular. I don't think everyone gets it on day one, though where my house is, we've only had it happen once that we had to wait a night (there was just too much snow, and it slowed them down). It's a pretty awesome service. As I understand it, if someone slips and falls in front of a house, the homeowner is liable, so there is some incentive to do things like salt. This is of course in addition to any innate desire to be able to walk out your own front door without dying yourself.

Red Alert 2 is fantastic. I remember the first time I played it not being able to figure out how to deploy the MCV. Good times. I will always love the chrono troopers (or better yet, chrono IFV's), though the Grand Cannon also has a special place in my heart. I think Star Trek Armada is still my favourite RTS though. Medieval Engineers has a pre early access release tomorrow for 24 hours off the keenhouse site. You lose out on the "I own space engineers" discount if you bought SE through steam though. I feel like I might go for it though. It's not a huge difference, and I don't want to wait another week. I would like to know what the state of the game is though. If it's just the castle building blocks, then I'm happy to wait a week or two if it means things like windmills and winches will be back in the game.

What is DCS? It's Digital Combat Simulator, basically flight simulator but entirely combat aircraft (helicopters, fighters, and jet fighters). One of the DLC packages seems to be some sort of armoured division commander as well, but I've never seen that in action. For free, the game comes with the P-51 trainer (no guns) and the SU-25T, basically the Russian Warthog.

I tried playing that game again sometime in the last year...it didn't go so well. I didn't bother with that game, but something I do for older games like Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith is make a profile for the game in my graphics control panel, and basically just throw all the anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering at the game that you can. It's far from a perfect solution, but it does make the graphics look a couple years newer, and significantly less painful to look at in general. For Nvidia users, make sure you select a whole screen AA mode, not something that only works on edges. I don't think it will work on battle grounds though. AA and AS only work on 3D graphics, and I think everything in galactic (and any other isometric view rts from that era) is 2D sprites. I've gotten better at DCS, and it truly is a wonderful experience (that is making me wish I had trackIR. Going to buy a cheap webcam so I can use a software variant I think). I can land now, and operate all my weapons systems. I'm still terrible at the game (I keep getting shot at by things that don't have the decency to paint me with radar so I know they're there), but I've destroyed some enemies and evaded some missiles, so it's all good for now.

Finally decided to give DCS. After watching a couple hours worth of tutorials on youtube (got to part 4 of 10!), I have established that I can start the jet the game comes with, and I can take off and fly it too. Landings however are a little iffy. I made three attempts. On the first and last I slammed into the ground 500m from the runway. On the second attempt I hit the runway itself, while attempting to convert stray carbon into diamonds with my landing gear. I and my plane survived this landing, however I did blow out both rear tires and I'm pretty sure I broke the landing struts for good measure (this landing would have been considered a 'tad rough' in microsoft flight simulator X I think). I've also learned that you have to avoid the "I'm in a jet fighter, look at all the crazy stunts I can do!" mentality. It's one thing to watch someone fly a jet fighter, and another thing altogether to realize just how on the edge of control something like a simple banking turn at 30 degrees and slow speed can be riding the edge between gracefully turning around and performing the aerial version of a spinout. The Su25T does recover like a dream, but it can't turn super tight. The level of simulation is fantastic, as in, this is a proper simulation with little to no compromise made for the sake of making the game more playable (like allowing hard landings). The planes are complex, the flight model is I presume pretty top notch. If you have a joystick or controller, and some spare time to watch youtube tutorials, it's totally worth taking a look at (and it's free, with the option to buy other planes).

All of them? I've met some of the mods from back then, and yeah, I'm pretty sure it was all of them.

Been following most of Jingles coverage of Arena Commander and Star Citizen. Both games look interesting, though I don't know when, or if, I'll bite. I probably wait until both games are fleshed out and I know which one would be more my style. Alternately, I know I'm not great with 3D combat, and for games like this, I tend to prefer things I am good at, so I may stick to my tank and ship based combat. I got a little crazy and bough construction simulator 2015 a little while ago. It's not a great game, but it's a lot better than much of the [whatever] simulator [year] genre. Perhaps about as polished as Farming Simulator 2013 (because I just know everyone here has played that). Physics are about on par with that game as well. More importantly, the game is quite fun, and very addicting, and while there are some bugs, they seem to be easily avoided once you know what they are, and easily fixed. My only gripe is that pallets tend to float around on flat beds when loading many pallets (once you are done you can fasten everything down), leading to a workaround that is a bit more complicated than it should be (to avoid a bug). Some of the missions do tend to turn into pallet stacking extreme though. I am reasonably encouraged by the developer. I think this is their second game, and first on the PC (first game was tablet), and they seem to be making an honest effort. It's an interesting branching out since they aren't new to software development, just to making games.

Sometimes I enjoy listening to conversations on the bus. Just as long as no one tries to talk to me. I fixed a tap today. Nothing major, just the nut holding the whole thing down to the sink was lose. I have discovered the joys of pipe wrench pliers when working in tight spaces (never had cause to use them before). I don't think I've ever worked in such an inconvenient spot before (the nut is right up against the sink, and the space under the sink is occupied by an RO filtration system that leaves previous little space for the person fixing the sink. Also, all the hoses going into the tap are right up against the nut too, hence the need for special tools). Fixing things in my own house feels like victory, and victory feels good!

That's the other problem with long nose mods. European roads simply aren't meant for them. As I understand it, there are also tight restrictions on length (because of the roads), so a long nose would mean a shorter cargo trailer. Over here though, they don't make any sense since the trucks spend most of their time on long, relatively straight highways, and the longer wheelbase makes them more comfortable to drive. I wonder if American Truck Simulator will allow road trains... SCS does have a blog, which can be found here on the right side of the page (linking to the trucks site because it's worth knowing about). Their blog does have some coverage on their progress of the American Version. As for driving on the wrong side of the road, Britain is the opposite of everyone else in the UK (they drive on the left), so you might enjoy that more. Also, I see that SCS have just released the 64 bit version of their game. I'm constantly impressed with SCS.

How can you be so sure? Maybe you have an old raisin or something in one of your walls with a few colonies swarmed around it. I can't be sure it's attracted absolutely all of them, but I've been seeing maybe 10 at a time tops, and it had more than that just crawling all over it. In less than half a day, I'd say there are maybe 60-70 dead flies in the trap now, and only a couple hanging around. They're pretty much under control now (one or two flying around), and I figure that by the end of the month they'll almost all be gone (adulthood in 8-10 days. I figure it's going to take 3 or 4 complete generations to wipe them out, so I'll have traps set up for some time yet).

Made a nice little apple cider trap for some fruit flies today. I watched them go at it for a bit, and honestly, they're almost too stupid for the trap to work. They all swarm to it well enough, but then they crawl around on the outside of the jar and around the lip, totally unable to actually find their way down the funnel and into the jar where they can drown in cider. It does work though over time. A little surprised at how many fruit flies we apparently have, but it seems to be killing them off pretty effectively as long as no one goes near the trap and disturbed them during their 20 minute ordeal of finding the hole that's a whole inch away. I almost feel like I could just leave the jar open and it would work better. They don't seem to be able to fly once they hit the liquid anyway, so it's not like they can escape. Maybe I'll wrap some tape around the spot they gather on on the outside of the jar, sticky side out. It's like watching wasps try to get outside. It doesn't matter how many windows you open for them, they always try to get through the closed ones. Particularly irritating when they are inside your car.

You hear the same thing over and over from people. I find it to be a very relaxing game myself, and I enjoy driving. I can' wait until they finish up American Truck Simulator, since I prefer the long nose style to the flat fronts. I should probably look at mods to hold me over in the mean time, but I got turned off by some that had a seam where the truck would normally end (between cap and engine).

I stopped following this since school is keeping me busy, but an idle thought hit me when I read this. It occurs to me that the act of depicting the prophet mohammed could become a symbol of resistance. Part of me really likes the irony if this becomes the case. I'll sympathise with those who would be legitimately offended since such use would almost certainly be gratuitous instead of 'legitimate' (such as in satire), but it could also be quite fitting. I think that within reason, actions conveying the message that the world won't back down are a good thing. I would draw the line however at actions that force a group of people to act in self defence instead of malicious intent.

Why should religion be exempt? What is special about religion that should make it a taboo subject for Satire? As for non Islamic acts of terror, a cursory google search landing in Wikipedia would suggest that some of militias in Africa and India are Christian, so it's a safe bet they've probably been in the news at some point or another, even if their faith was never highlighted. I also feel like while it may not be during your lifetime, Ireland is worth considering as a reasonably recent example of Christian terrorism (the IRA). For a current example working in a different way to the IRA (who very much operated like the contemporary terrorists), consider the fighting in Ukraine. I also feel obliged to point out that any mainstream form of Islam preaches peace and tolerance, perhaps more so (at least on some subjects) than some of the mainstream Christian sects. Using terrorists as a representation of Islam is really no different than considering the Westboro Baptist Church a fair representation of Christians. They're groups of crazy hate filled people who have perverted their faith into a justification for making the world a worse place.

That just sounds evil.

Yeah, loving the Nemesis system. I didn't realize that the Captains don't always die. I think I've had one captain come back to fight me twice, though I cut off his head on the third kill, so I think I finally settled that one (and he had killed me at least once before I killed him a bunch of times). It also adds some pressure on me to not pull a stupid and get myself killed, since time undoes the damage I am doing to the army. But yeah, I have some serious grudge matches going on, especially with one dude with a crossbow. I'll have to remember the name. Was one of the first Captains to kill me, and got himself promoted a couple times now, and has killed a few captains himself. I've tried to take him down a couple times, and it's never panned out. I screw up and end up fighting the lesser captains that seem to flock to him instead until I finally get swamped and die.

Skyrim was one of the first games I ever modded. I think most of the modding I did previously were conversion mods for Star Trek: Armada (the Star Trek vs Star Wars mod, which is even more epic than it sounds). Even if you believe that if you don't enjoy the base game, there is no point, you should consider graphical mods. This is how I started. I liked the base game, and frankly, I still do. It's a good game in it's own right. But I wanted to take what were already pretty good graphics and make it better. I kept to my policy of not having any mods that altered gameplay for a long time. What changed my mind was Gopher, and high level combat. I realized that eventually I had gotten to a point where I saw combat as a tedious obstacle to playing the game instead of a crucial part of the game. This happened when I fought the ash spawn, who take forever to die, in the Dragonborn DLC (which I have never completed. I started a new game with new mods and am working my way back around to that DLC). I also go to see the SkyRe overhaul mod in action on Gopher's channel, and I ultimately decided to restart the game with SkyRe and other mods installed. Skyrim was designed to be modified. They knew it would happen, so they (a) made it easy, and (b) focused development to accommodate it. Bethesda focused their polishing efforts on building a solid foundation game. Now, it can stand on it's own two feet as a good game to be sure, but I think they also focused their extra time and energy on the things that would be hard to modify, and created a solid framework that modders would be able to work with. They only had so much time and money, so they did the stuff that needed to be done on their end and left other things that would be relatively easy to mod up to the community to polish. The overhaul mods like SkyRe and Requiem can totally transform the Skyrim experience. But there are also mods out there like Falskaar that are essentially free DLC. Falskaar adds an entirely new area to the map, new lore, and a new completely voice acted quest line. If you want to see it, Gopher did a playthrough, and you'll get to see a lot of graphical and gameplay mods in action at the same time (SkyRe, Frostfall, and Deadly Dragons to name a few). The man is a mod maker himself, and has a totally sexy British Norwegian accent (I don't think he gets to the new land the mod adds until episode 3 or 4, if you want to jump ahead and see that): Of course, the beauty of a game like Skyrim is the freedom to play your own way. If you want the vanilla experience, then fine. If you want the game to look better, you can do that, but there is also a whole slew of mods that alter gameplay. Some of them are very minor, and some of them are major overhauls that border on being a new game. There is some magnificent stuff out there. Some nice pics in there Poppet. Thought I'd share some of my own, which can be found here here. I'll include a couple of my favourites here: [hide] [/hide] Because Skyrim was built to be modded, and because it has such a large modding community, it's fairly easy to do, and there are lots of resources to help you (such as the guy I linked above, who has videos on things like using the Nexus mod manager, and Skyrim Script Extender, and shows how to install all the mods he covers). I've reinstalled the game once, for my latest set, and I did that purely to simplify my own life and ensure that I knew everything I was adding to the game and wouldn't have any problems. I have never had to reinstall because I broke the game, and it's not likely I ever will. I have 56 esm and esp files added to the game, corresponding to all the DLC and 45 mods (some mods have multiple files).

For me, my opinion of offensive content in the real world is that, as long as you have a legitimate purpose, I don't really care. Taking the example of the prophet mohammed, if the only reason you are depicting him in print is because you know it offends people, then you're just being an ass. But if your purpose is to explore a subject, as in satire, then I believe that any subject should be open to exploration and criticism provided that what you are doing isn't harassment, libel, or inciting panic (I think I covered the bases there, I might have forgotten something). I don't believe that totally unlimited free speech is a good thing. Clearly, I believe there are exceptions that should be made that do put limits on freedom of expression as I just cited above. I'll also take the stance that people who abuse the concept just to annoy people are in the wrong. Just because you can say something, doesn't mean you shouldn't. I can't speak to what category Charlie Hebdo might have fallen into because I've never seen their work (and my French is extremely basic anyway). Given that they are a full on satirical news organization, I am inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt that their purpose extended beyond self gratification from making some people angry. In perhaps an ironic twist given my position on these forums, I am a pretty firm believer that political correctness should suck it and go away forever. I am by no means a supporter of being gratuitously rude, or unsympathetic, but am concerned that society does itself a great disservice by tiptoeing around certain subjects because someone might get their feelings hurt. I can't be sure, but I feel like the world would probably be a better place in a society where everyone is more open about how they really feel, instead of bottling certain thoughts up inside themselves for fear they alienate themselves from their own community, and that in such a society, there are problems that wouldn't be flying under the radar for so long simply because no one wants to be the first one to say something.

Mod Post: I have split off the discussion surrounding Charlie Hebdo into it's own thread here.

A lot of people get death threats and never get killed. Far more people threaten others with death with no means or intention of carrying them out. The situation in France goes well beyond mass shootings not being common in Europe. France is not exactly a paragon of racial harmony (worse than much of Europe I think, which as a whole isn't doing so well on this front), with race riots being much more common than shooters already. Their political landscape is also worth consideration, since if people become afraid, it opens the door for their extreme right (much the same as you would expect in the US). Political cartoons could get pretty interesting for the next couple of weeks. For the right reasons or not (spite and anger being the wrong reasons), I expect that a lot of the reluctance over depicting the prophet Muhammad in print will disappear in a show of solidarity from media around the globe, and perhaps to antagonize extremists.