LadyCrimson

It's fun, though it is harder than it looks. I always thought it looked pretty hard to begin with...but it'd be so cool to forge your own sword or something. :D My only real hobby is still photography ... doesn't even matter if I ever become 'great' at it - there's something just so addictive about looking at the world through a lens. I saw a documentary about a Nat. Geo. photographer - when he was shooting a rodeo event, he had some guy who followed him everywhere, holding on the to back of his shirt, to pull him out of danger in case he (the photographer) was getting too close to the kicking horses etc. Because when you're obsessed with looking through the camera, you tend to become oblivious to anything not in the frame of the photo. I love that sensation...although, since I have no one to hold the back of my shirt for me, I think I'll avoid rodeo photo-shoots....

I'm already there. Well, almost. Even us middle-aged fogies have to decompress and play.

Oh, look, it's a cat on my desktop! What a shocker!

Made some burgers, going to watch some CSI:NY on the braindrain device.

The whole Qtips are dangerous thing is over-rated. At least if you're an average adult with most of your fingers still attached and the brain to know not to push them too far in. I've swabbed the ear folds and poked them in my ears for 20+ years ... haven't harmed my eardrums or my hearing yet.

Wait, wait...wasn't that canceled? *Googles* *makes the "YES!" hand gesture* Awesome news, and hopefully it'll be at least as fun as the original, even if it is all 3D artsy and stuff.

Seems like we're still fairly balanced here age-wise. Altho I thought I remembered a few 45+ last times around that haven't voted this time.

Hook a PC into the TV. Then you have the best of both worlds.

I've disliked Windows Movie Maker and the .wmv extension for a decade - it's always seemed buggy to me - and have spent most of my time finding ways to avoid it. I guess I forget not everyone hates it that much, heh. I figured people would most likely upload game clips, if they uploaded any video at all, and that would likely mean they'd be using Fraps (avi) and something like Virtual Dub (avi - and free) or some $20-$30 commercial program to edit/convert. Maybe that's the presumptuous geek in me tho ... does anyone here still use .wmv with fair frequency?

It doesn't sound ethical to me, either, to use a device like that for public areas. Especially since I'd probably personally notice it ... maybe not as loudly as a teen might, but it'd still bug me. It is odd tho how I have that 'dead zone' that is, perhaps, normally fading out with age, but stuff much higher than that zone I can still hear perfectly. My dad had a favorite story about a friend of his who thought his new speakers sounded muffled, but much later learned that he had a lot of wax deep in his ear. Doctor cleaned it out and everything was fine. So I wonder how many older people would hear a little better if they had their ear canals thoroughly washed out...since that's not something people do very often, if ever. Q-tips now and then, but not actually flushed out.

Hmm, interesting topic. *ponders a while* I used to think similarly - that games have been lacking the last several years. I could point fingers at a lot of things, but they never feel satisfactory as an explanation for my increasing disinterest in the newer games. So I'll vote nostalgia as well...the emotional memory of certain games being so fantastic (to you) for whatever the reasons, with nothing ever quite duplicating that emotional sensation since. It's a lot easier - well, for me at least - to go back and play a game I know inside-out and still find moderately enjoyable than to spend hours to learn the mechanics of a new game that is essentially the same format as the older game. I've become jaded/too familiar with the way games 'work', so it's never going to feel 'new' and 'exciting' even with a new story or renamed skills or 1000 funny little side quests or items. The one thing I've noticed about more recent games is that most of them lack what I call the addictive factor - that thing that makes you want to replay them over and over. Now, even if the game is an utter blast the first time through, I feel like I've seen everything in the game already, even if I know I haven't, so the replay desire isn't there. Yet, I can/want to go back to older games, even tho I know every nook and cranny of those. Maybe for me, the more vicariously visual the environment becomes and the more important those visual cues are to the "emotion" of the game, the more it starts to fall victim to the 'wow that was a great movie, but it sure wouldn't be the same a 2nd time" syndrome. And I guess I still equate "great game" by the replay factor. I've never been into "the story", so I know that's not my issue. Beyond the obvious nostalgia and burn-out, I still can't put my finger on it. :/

Yes, I did it once. I had to use an override file in an override folder to make it work - there was a poster named stoffe-something that gave me the file when I asked about the same thing, here, many moons ago. That thread is lost to time, but....yeah. It was funny. I still have the file, if you want it. I think all you had to do was put in the folder and the option would show up under the right circumstances - which I think was when you first originally get him/can do all those convos that give you influence - but I don't remember 100% for sure. Edit: The file isn't a 'mod' in the sense of say, giving your chr. powers to choke anyone anytime. It's just a file that sorta restores the convo option (or part of it) that was taken out, or something.

Last time I played, 10-12 months ago, more or less (don't quote me) I was using p4 3.0 (single-core), XP, geforce/7800GS. I'd run the game in 1600x1200 with everything on, and the only issue I had was a bit of lag by those steam pipes in Peragus (sp?)... That's still what I use... We have a small game pc (still XP) for the living room, that's slightly more modern, with a dual-core, ATI card setup that runs newer games a lot better than my main 'working' pc, but I haven't tried Kotor2 on it. I should do that sometime.

Tried to finish the Caesar4 mission where I stopped last year, then remembered the city layout wasn't working and I'd have to start it over, so I tossed it in a drawer again. I need to get the somewhat faster PC hooked back up to the big TV so I can play some of the newer power-hungry games on it again.

Hubby made the gas oven work again, and didn't blow up the house, so that was good. And I still take a lot of cat pictures between chores. I've begun to realize Baby-kitty is actually pretty photogenic in the eyes, but occasionally he isn't in the mood and I end up with silly results like below.

I have above-average hearing for both low and high, except for a sort of 'dead zone' between 15-17khz - that range seems to have to be really loud for me to notice much. I'm probably not nearly as bad as it sounds like taks gets it, since if there's enough general noise in the background, I won't be bothered too much, but many things, both low and very high, drive me batty at far earlier volumes than average, or if it's there's not much surrounding noise. Fluorescent bulbs, electronics, diva-power-singers, low pitch vibrations or motors/fans, etc. My sense of smell might be even more sensitive. I'm not sure which is potentially more distracting. :D

Thanks, Tigranes. @walkerguy - I figured .avi was still the most common

According to the government, I'm 39, but I'm convinced they're wrong and I'm really still 25.

Ah...I missed that. Guess that's what happens when I'm not here every day anymore. Btw, Krezack, every time I see your sig pic out of the corner of my eye, I think there are gnats on my screen.

Heh, it's no problem. As it happens, I got a bug up my arse about the gallery software and had some spare time this week, so decided to finally install something else. Coppermine by default is a simpler program, but easier to deal with 'out of the box', which is good (for me). Instead of 10-20 hours mucking with codes & themes, I only had to spend 3-4. I like that in a program. New gallery, complete with all my 'test' files still in it is located here: http://oegallery.crimsonkeep.com/ I contacted a mod about editing the first post in the thread to reflect changes, hopefully they'll do that soon. It's been a long time and the place isn't/wasn't ever in high demand, so I figured this was a decent time to change it up. I suspect it'll stay in low demand, heheh - but for any OE forum member who ever wants the group-sharing space someday, there it is. *shrug* The potential upside: OE members can now create 'user albums' and choose to make any/all of "your" albums viewable by either everyone, only certain member groups, or even passworded. Plus more file formats accepted etc. The icky downside: if you already registered, you have to re-register/send me a PM and I'll have to give you upload permissions again. I'll keep the old gallery up for reference for a long while, but upload permissions will be discontinued there in a few days.

Fio already listed yours, walkerguy - so I assume they "count".

I think I figured it out. One of your custom thumbnails was a link to another site page - I deleted it, and the lag has gone away...at least it seems so for now. Now I just need to fix all the little things that were reverted/changed when I upgraded the program.

I did consider the possibility that there's something about the sound files you loaded up that were causing the lag (title names or whatever), and I deleted the duplicated uploads from your laggy session (heh) but far as I can tell, there's no problem w/the files. It is a little odd that the lag appeared the day you were uploading tho. I might try deleting your uploads and seeing what happens, but I really don't think that's the problem.

even if the 'net BW did not keep up with demand there would never be "busy" signals. it doesn't work that way. Yeah, I'm aware of that. Hence the quotation marks around 'busy signals.' I still use old world references to give emotional reaction examples. As far as I'm concerned, if you currently have a fast speed connection and it takes more than 30 seconds to load a page, the server is too busy or there's too many unnecessary or badly written ad/whatever scripts causing the delay, hence I hang up (leave the page) and try again later or never go back.

"We're sorry...the internet is currently busy, please try again." ... y'know, none of this would likely be a concern if people had stuck to text and tiny static images. And no, I'm not saying we should have. I dunno...I'm sure they'll solve the potential problems of the growing bandwidth usage, one way or another, before we all start getting 'busy signals' so often it'd impede our general ability to communicate/entertain over the 'net. I'd guess the implication was that the internet is one of the biggest tools to spread the word/educate about the problem areas of our society/environment etc.