Randox

I really enjoyed the Bartimaus Trilogy. A unique approach to 'magic', and I really like the way the books themselves are written, with different styles for the characters (or at least for Bartimaus). Part novel, part one of the charecters talking to you.

Awesome Tim. I really hope this works out for you!

xman, what mod do you have installed? Going from the picture, I want it. Here is the 3rd generation of my best design so far. It's first set of engines can get it up to about 150,000m and over 1000m/s, but its not easy to get it to orbit. The game also likes to re set the staging sequence on me so more than once I've gotten it up only to accidently jettison half of it when I try to dump empty fuel tanks. I almost got it to the moon once, but I messed up the time warp and somewhat overshot it, and ran out of fuel. Almost made it back but Mun pulled me off course so rather than get pulled back planet side, I lost my crew to the black of space. Trying to think of a way to give the first engines more fuel, without sacrificing my second stage or making the craft rediculously unstable once the fuel tanks start drying up (this is why the side boosters have one less tank. If I give it the whole four even autopilot can't hold it, though I might try more SAS) And the solution to my problem...the mark IV. Part of it is me getting better, but this one managed to make a crater on the moon (didn't start braking even close to soon enough, and impacted at a breezy 400m/s down from my 600m/s approach). And it did it even with a broken ejection sequence. Stage 1 and its 6 liquid fuel boosters achieve altitude (being careful not to snap the rocket with G force towards the end of the life of the boosters, since it can really put the hammer down with all 9 running full bore once the air resistance starts to vanish). Then stage 2 sets and breaks orbit, stage 3 for space controll (mostly braking so that I can wait for the moon), and ideally stage 4 has enough power and fuel for a controlled landing. Then my little Kerbal Nauts will freeze or asphyxiate (not sure what will run out of power first) because there won't be enough power to leave Mun, unless it has much lower gravity than I am expecting. EDIT: Found myself a lunar lander mod, which honestly made everything a bit harder by giving me less efficient engines and itty bitty gas tanks. But the pieces look nice. I advanced and played around with my design and ended up with what I am calling the Thor, and its Lunar Lander module, the Summoner. I did goof with the landing though by landing on the wrong part of the moon. If I had taken off with the decent engine and its double fuel tank (I didn't want to run out, and while the tanks may hold only prayers, they are super light), it probably would have had enough fuel to position me to a point where the accent engine could make it back to Kerb. Instead, it just kinda floated away. No issues breaking away from Mun though. I also noticed while sitting on Mun that re-landing would be an issue as the parachute can only hold up the command pot itself, but there is no seperation joint between that and the accent engine and fuel tank. Even with an ocean landing, it probably wouldn't have survived the victory landing. The Thor Rocket: 6 boosters - 3 engine stage 3 - 1 engine stage 2 (handles breakaway, trajectory control and primary Mun approach) - 1 gimbaled engine stage 1 (handles final approach and decent to Mun) - 1 decent engine for landing - 1 accent engine to try and hit Kerb with. We made it:

Girly name for a manly man Wait. Since when was Jude a girl's name? I mean, sure, Judy is, but not Jude! Jude Law aside, the only time I have ever encountered the name "Jude" is the song "Hey Jude". I assume the name is unisex.

After creating some truly asinine towers of insanity that involved a cobbled together 9-6-3-3 solid rocket launch (which doesn't get you very far and makes your rocket wobble like mad), I decided on using liquid rockets as my primary thrust stoart to finish, in a 3-1-1 configuration (the last one is a vectorable engine which has a lot more control once you leave the atmosphere), with two sets of triple solid rockets to help with additional thrust for takeoff (a nice extra 63% thrust). It doen't look like its going to snap in half, but its actually much harder to steer during the first 40 seconds. The first three launches involved dardevel ariel stunts and jetesoning the second set of solid rockets into the main rocket (destroying most of it) as a means to cause the whole thing to seperate so that I could get a chute out in time. Also, the first few designs were before I realized I needed additional SAS units, and involved reaching maybe 1000 feet before they lost all control and started spinning. I especially like the one where I had my 3 solid rockets going (a 3-1-liquid), with the rocket somehow nose up as it flies sideways over the launch pad all of 50m in the air after pulling out of a nose dive. I also had some trouble with my current rocket where I didn't have the stages set right, and the liquid rockets weren't firing (it had twice as many solids though). That one got about 50m up before its engines all exploded and it landed again. Everything was destroyed except for the command module. Anyway, I have a viable design for planetary orbit now, but I am looking at ways to get it up to orbit faster, and add some extra fuel for the last stage without causing it to fall out of the sky when it switches from 3 engines to 1 (it slows down for a minute at this point, and then picks back up and achieves orbit). It takes almost half a gas tank just to de-orbit, and the last time I tried for Mun I made the hilarious mistage of releasing the last engine when it ran out of fuel, which changed me from probably just landing back on the planet to flying right out of the solar system. And yeah, Jebediah is crazy. [spoiler=Current Orbiter design. Needs more POWER!] I think I might buy this game though. I want to try a real landing and takeoff from Mun.

I really don't see how someone can argue a matter of faith when they obviously don't have any of their own. While it might not be an emotion, we don't 'feel faith', it has some of the same qualities in that it can't really be quantified. The entire nature of faith defies logical or concrete explanation, because it is believing in something despite a lack of logic or evidence, or for some people, in spite of logic or evidence to the contrary. For me, faith is something that gives me comfort. It comforts me to believe that there is 'something' out there greater than 'us' (us being the world and its inhabitants), and it comforts me to believe that life does not end with death. Faith is a way to answer the questions that science either can't answer, or hasn't answered. For me, if and when science answers a question that was previously a matter of faith, then faith will remake itself to conform to the new knowledge, because there is no assumption that I am right. And I'm pretty sure that someone is going to point out that religion itself probably came about as a means to comfort and inspire people on matters such as life beyond death. It's nothing I haven't considered before, but my conclusion every time is that if I'm wrong, I'm not going to be in any state to know it, and until such a time as I die, I'll probably be a happier person if I believe that life goes on. I believe because I choose to. Faith does not require logic or reason, which is what can make it so dangerous. Some people put faith before reality, and that is dangerous because it can blind you to the real world. But I fail to see the harm in the many people who put science and the real world first and just use religion to fill in the blanks until science can give a better answer. And a lot of people blend the two. The idea of guided evolution, that evolution is true, but that it had help, is not all that uncommon, especially amongst those whose faith previously adhered to creationism. If nothing else, it demonstrates flexibility even among the less moderate religions.

There is a lot of confusion surronding this because there are two systems that seem to be able to give you that message, and Jagex will admit literally nothing about the second one, so trying to sort out which is which is a lot of fun. The first is what Tripsis said. Player moderator mutes are applied for 48 hours, and last either until they expire, or until the mute is reviewed by Jagex (most of the time, they are checked probably within 4-6 hours tops, unless there is a backlog which has resulted in them being checked after they expire on a few occasions). As soon as they are reviewed the player mods mute is removed. If the reviewing Jmod deems it appropriate, they may replace it with a formal offence which will include evidence (if applicable), an appeal option, and either a mute or ban of duration determined by the offence and the players history (I believe a 3 day of either is the normal for a first offence, at least ones that fall into ____ major, though in all honesty I have never heard of anyone getting the minor version of any offence that I can remember). If the reviewing Jmod feels no offence needs to be added, then the mute simply vanishes never to be heard from again. The seconds system is the new and improved spam filter, which had an automated mute system added to it a few months back to combat spam bots (while spam bots still exist, it has forced them to be so obscure or roundabout in their messages as to make them almost incomprehensible). The system would seem to be triggered based solely on particular word combinations. There was an incident a while ago where players would trick other players into saying the name of a gold selling site which would get them instantly muted. Now here is where it gets tricky. What is not known, and Jagex refuses to comment on even with their own moderator teams, is how the mutes work. There are reports of people getting 24 hour evidence free mutes instead of 48 hour ones, though its possible that they didn't log in for a whole day after they got it and one day is what showed up. Best guess is that both systems use 48 hour mutes, with the key difference being that the spam filter isn't reviewed. Its mutes would seem to always last for the full duration, though its hard to know for sure because you have to try and figure out if the pmod reports are backlogged or not. I also suspect that that spam filter would have to be audited, so that even if the mutes are never lifted early, they are at least being checked to make sure the system is muting for what its supposed to be muting. Jagex also refuses to publish a list of what gets you muted by it, presumably to make it a bit harder for the spam bot peeps to know what is and isn't safe to say. So at the end of the day, if that goes away and you get an actual offence, then it was a pmod. If it disappears early and you get nothing, it was a pmod. If it lasts the full 2 days, and you never hear anything about it again, then it was probably the spam filter, but it might have been a pmod.

I found out today that the Tower of Terror ride was based on the Twilight Zone in general, and no such episode of the show actually exists :( But they did make a movie based on the ride :) EDIT: Watched it. Good movie, though like Pirates of the Carribean (and I suspect every other movie based on one of their rides), it doesn't actually follow the rides own story line, but rather includes the setting and events. They also used the attraction itself in the movie, which is kind of neat seeing as I was there recently enough that I can actually recognize the stuff from the attraction. Also, I recognized one of the actresses as the girl from Jumanji, and apparently she is the same actress who played MJ in the spiderman trilogy (now that I know that, I can see the resemblance). They did two other attractions as movies (that I want to see, but they also did Country Bears). Mission Mars and the Haunted Mansion.

Wait, how can you not have access to your own bank account? Also, how the hell can your parents use cheques with your name on them? I would have thought that 16 was the point where they can't have any say over that kind of thing anymore (since that's also old enough to be paid a full wage). If you really wanted to, you could probably set up another account and have the employer do a direct deposit into it, though that might cause a whole lot more trouble than its worth.

:lol: It's ~20 cells thick. A wash cloth is way more than enough once your skin is wet. Even just water will do it once its hot enough, all you have to do is stand there. It's also the infections and skin damage that would have me worried (think tree without any bark). Anyway my point is that from a health perspective, ideally you would have less than 7 showers in a given week. And something that annoys me is that media files don't all have a universal volume setting, so sometimes you end up with files (especially anything from recorded TV) that have much different volume settings. Music tends to be pretty solid though at least. And yes, I did just [bleep] about having to change the volume ever 22/44 minutes (mostly because I like to fall asleep to the TV, and I have to find episodes that all match volume wise).

Umm.... Wut? Exactly what he said. Actually there is a point to that. Scrubbing (or just hot water or soap) in the shower will remove a good portion of the stratum corneum, which not only protects your living skin, but does quite a bit to keep you hydrated. Long story short, excessive showers are a really good way to dry out your skin, and increase your chance of infection. A cool shower the day after is good to re hydrate the stratum corneum, and the every other day showers give your body time to actually repair the damage that a normal shower inflicts. Obviously if your going to have sans douche (no shower) days, you should probably plan the schedule around your life so that you don't do things like heavy exercise on the wrong day, and you probably want to set up your dates for closer to the last time you showered than not.

Tbf to jagex the tree is the worst of a fairly decent bunch for click intensity. Mine is still a bit intensive but not so bad. Kiln and Smelter are both highly afkable you click and leave them for a while and chat. From what I hear Obelisk, Loom and Barbeque are also rather afkable To be sure, the tree and the mine are the real offenders (aside from a huge lack of motivation to do it beyond making the place look pretty, at least for our clan), but those are the ones that you need the most of. We never got past the smelter, which was actually really good. Problem was that was all anyone wanted to do, because it was the only one that didn't force us to be antisocial (kiln too maybe, never used it)

You could use a polygraph to test for anxiety/stress if you really wanted to, although how you would objectively compensate the scores would be a problem.

The one that has me nervous is the Citadel one. I won't believe that Jagex has fixed the fundamental problems with resource gathering there (to me, it was how things like the tree discouraged you from talking by needing you to click every couple seconds). If they only made the xp rates better, it still wont be worth it to me. I am looking forward to the armors the most. I don't care a whole lot for training anymore, but I do enjoy my quests and costumes. This year I will remember to plant my trees a bit earlier, and move myself to the right starting point for BXPW.

Yeah, even the armpits of the internet have some gems. Heck, I've found a few legitimate youtube comments before too (I know, I know, next thing I'll be saying I found a Unicorn in the bathroom and a leprechaun under the kitchen sink). Older works. I guess it was less popular with the next generation then (makes sense).

Wait, did the people on miniclip get smart or something? Last time I looked they were the armpit of the internet (like youtube commenters).

Someone just got a low score on an IQ test :P No, but seriously... Like any test, it measures your performance at certain tasks. If the test is testing the skills you need measured, then great. Maybe for some reason (just pulling one out of your examples) you need people who can answer questions really quickly. And before I forget, the point about children, IQ tests would be pointless before a certain age anyway, because there are certain skills that an adolecent mind simply doesn't have, mostly in the abstract reasoning department, which limits the math you can do, as well as problem solving and reasoning. It's been quite a while since I've taken an IQ test (something like a decade), so I'm not really familiar with what it actually asks you. My impression is general knowledge. I also don't feel that there is any one criteria that defines intelligence. People are smart in different ways. For example, I am a terrible strategic thinker, which is why I suck so badly at chess and checkers (that last time I beat someone in chess, I was 5 years older, and it wasn't a one sided game). I also had grade 11 reading comprehension when I was in grade 4 (my reading might be excellent, but my spelling was non-existent until the last couple years of high school). To really test for intelligence, you'd need to decide what skills constitute intelligence, and then make a test for each of them. An overall score would be useless, but scores for each aspect might be of some use. You also have to contend with the fact that this assumes people all have equal ease taking a given test, which isn't true. Like learning, some people do best written, some people do best on an oral exam, and some people really need to be tested by having them perform a practical application of their knowledge.

People who use big or fancy words to say really simple things. Since we have the "why police" here at the moment, I object to it for several reasons. The first is that it makes people smug, because they start to believe that they are smarter than other people just because they apparetnly read a thesaurus as a recreational activity, but I also find that some people make these really awkward sentences (grammatically), or they need to take artistic license with the actual meanings of words to make them fit (or just get it outright wrong). As an example, with some artistic liscense on my part as to some of the words proper definitions: Imagine if people actually talked like that :ohnoes:

I know its the processor that does speed, but I find that normally by the time you get 2GB in your graphics card, its probably a pretty decent card. Something on the high end of the GTX 400's or 500's. I just saw the specs on a GTX 590 and started drooling. That card would also consume more power than my entire computer, and cost nearly as much. I also hate trying to read GPU specs, because if I look at wikipedia I don't understand half the terminology, and if I look at the manufacturers, Nvidea and ATI don't use the same specs. I also have to deal with things like TFlops, which I assume is a teraflop. I like my speeds in Hertz, not flops. As a point of interest, I use an HD 6770, which as best as I can tell is around the lowest end of the gaming grade cards. My GPU will need replacing in a couple years I expect, along with a new PSU to feed it. CPU and RAM should be set though. It's started snowing again, because we haven't met our snow and rain quota yet. And I've had a cold going on a week now, which keeps trying to move back into my throat so that I can have the cogestion, sore throat and coughing trifecta. I think I need more sleep.

For me, craftable arrows brought archery from "This isn't worth my time" to "I'm only still using one handed because of healing". You go through arrows pretty quickly otherwise, and it's almost not worth using anything stronger than maybe Orcish because of how rare they are. I guess I just don't use the bow enough. I was originally trying to keep pace with once handed in the archery skill, but I gave up on that a while back. I also use an Ebony bow, which while superb for dealing devastating sneak attacks that, with a little luck, can drop many enemies with a single hit, has an exceptionally long draw time. I normally don't get in more than 2 or 3 shots (that is, when I bother to take one) before the sword and shield come out. Sometimes I use on of my shouts to speed it up though. Almost like using my forsworn bow again when I use that. Long story short, I don't normally use more arrows than I can find, so its normally not an issue for me. I'm also on the fence with ebony verses daedric. Daedric is obviously superior, but I like the look of ebony more. I think I liked my ebony sword more too, though I accidently got it stuck on my weapon rack (apparently small weapons can't be retrieved if placed on the outside racks, so goodbye ebony sword and weeping blade), so I made a new one in the daedric form. It will totally fit the more vicious theme though once I am finished making and upgrading my daedric set, which I plan to use at least until my heavy armor level is high enough that I can achieve maximum armor rating with either set. And who knows, maybe the "I'm going to eviscerate you" look will grow on me. That armor should totally give bonus points for intimidation.

THIS IS AMAZING. That's one hell of an upgrade. You just went from the relative dark ages to pretty much top of the line :thumbsup: I want a 2GB card :( (I have a 1 gig). The search function is your friend :wink: And now I go to bed because its late and I'm tired. Those seem like good reasons. And since when did we have a bunch of yu-gi-oh fans here?

I'm having fun with the workshop add ons that improve the game enviroment. So far I'm up to: RCRN 2.0 Realistic Colors and Real Nights (disabled this one. Nice as it is, for ease of gameplay I would rather have some light during the night). Piteå Better Dynamic Snow Enhanced Distant Terrain Kerplunk - Watery Rocks Lush Grass Lush Trees That's Ice Köttbullar Vibrant Auroras Terrain Bump [*]Detailed Cities [*]Detailed Outskirts [*]Realistic Lighting [*]Improved Interior Lighting (For Pluto's Realistic Lighting Mod) [*]Sounds of Skyrim - The Dungeons [*]Sounds of Skyrim - The Wilds Trying to refrain from anything that might alter the actual gameplay, though craftable arrows are a bit tempting.

I would like to submit todays update as evidence that 'stupid pills' not only exist, but a few people at Jagex are using them. The prizes are either soul crushing in their pointlessness (the soul crushing comes from giving you hope of cool prizes, and then giving you a steaming pile of manure instead), or allow you to bypass the mechanics of the game such as earning money to buy things, or having the skills to get stuff as loot yourself. Also, it allows you to bypass training with lamps (to be clear, I don't have an issue with xp rewards, only large ones that you don't have to do anything to get), which is like the whole point of the game for many people. It's like perfectly crafted to be a lose lose thing. As another point, it has no lore, and doesn't actually exist since it has no game location. I greatly dislike the idea of adding content that doesn't actually fit into the game itself. The fact that it doesn't actually fit into the game at all is my major objection to this. I can live with the other stuff, but its like someone got high, thought this would be a good idea, and thumb tacked a flash game onto RuneScape. Maybe next they can give us a log in game where we play one of those games where you have a car that has to dodge back and forth on the road to get around obstacles, and give out xp lamps based on how long till you crash.

I have to say I agree with the ghosts always being super natural. It's almost a word that just describes certain phenomenon that we don't understand. Once we know whats going on, it gets a new label. And yes, they are approximations of the truth. I guess my stance is a result of running into people who are absolutely sure that certain things are right. And that's great as long as all the evidence fits your understanding, but it leads to people excluding contradictory data because they can't fathom or accept that there current understanding of the world is incomplete. So wrong in so far as not the real truth; incomplete or simplified knowledge.

My plan will start off with checking the health of the best trees I can grow to get a nice burst of farming xp. After that, herblore and runecrafting I guess.