Humanoid

Getting a bit annoyed with Enemy Within's mission design, where it seems the only real challenge to the new style mission, be it Exalt, Progeny, or erm, whale, is just to spawn enemies over and over. It kind of just encourages metagaming where you are more or less drilled into anticipating the spawn points and camping them, lest one appear out of sight and ambush you. It's interesting to do new stuff, or at least newly painted stuff, but has any of it really made the game fundamentally better? Other than the new maps, I'd argue not really.

It creates a secondary dilemma for me though. The other machine that I want is, as stated previously, a ~12-13" convertible. The brand-new Thinkpad Yoga is available on sale, $200 off, but only on the anemic base model: from $1300 to $1100. That's with a non-turbo CPU (fine with me), 768p display (unacceptable, but at least it's IPS still), 4GB RAM (ehh) and a 500GB spindle drive (ridiculous). Speccing it up to acceptable levels would cost an extra $500, or $400 should I opt to go without the factory SSD and install one myself from a third party (and end up with a spare 2.5" HDD to use for ...something). The result would be a machine that costs about the same as the $1550 mid-spec, but with 4GB more RAM and a doubling of SSD space to 256GB. I could forgo the turbo CPU upgrade and save $100, but I think it's probably worth it. Proposed spec: i5-4200, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 1080p IPS display. ~$1600. Nowhere near a straightforward decision. One competitor is Lenovo's own IdeaPad Yoga 2 Pro, which is not yet available locally but comes with an interesting 13.3" 3k display and should be marginally cheaper though less solidly built. The other is Dell's XPS 12, which happens to be on sale now, for the same price and essentially the same or slightly better spec: i7-4500U as compared to the i5-4200U, same 12.5" display (likely literally the same), same RAM, same SSD capacity. Based on the machines themselves, I'd probably go the Thinkpad as the more robust device, plus it has a WACOM digitiser. But besides the CPU bump, the Dell also has in support of it a better support experience (Lenovo's support is notoriously iffy here). Dell's keyboard is inferior, but is hidden away in tablet mode, which makes it a bit of a wash in that regard. And on a personal note, it's probably sensible not to put all my eggs in one basket and opt for alternative vendors for my two machines. Gaaa, this is confusing. Same price, $1600 each, which to get? Thinkpad Yoga + Better build quality + Better keyboard feel (plus Trackpoint) + Wacom digitiser stylus - 360-degree hinge means keyboard exposed at back of machine when in tablet mode, though keys are locked and immobile - I might prefer the larger and higher-res Yoga 2 Pro display if it ever gets a local release Dell XPS 12 + Upgraded CPU + Screen hinge hides keyboard internally in tablet mode + Better local warranty support + Different vendor to my other machine - I might prefer the larger and higher-res Yoga 2 Pro display if it ever gets a local release

So here in Australia, some vendors have banded together and tried to create a sort of lame version of the US's Black Friday sales. Generally there's nothing too interesting on, but Lenovo have joined in the fun, with an impressive 35% off the newly released T440s, which I'd been looking desirously for a while. Unfortunately the discount only applies to their top-spec version, which no doubt has higher margins, but it nonetheless takes that top spec to a full $200 cheaper than the entry level spec. Obviously I couldn't resist, so I've just placed an order for: i7-4600U, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 1080p IPS display, for $1800 (down from $2450); as opposed to: i5-4300U, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, 900p TN display, for $2000. (I know that's a ridiculously inflated price for those specs, but this is Australia we're talking about) Yeah, no brainer. Even with the pointless CPU upgrade, which is normally a $300+ option which I wouldn't even pretend to consider (Indeed I'd downgrade immediately to the 4300U for a $200 cut if it were possible). Added a few things to the former spec which bumped the price a little - digitiser, backlit keyboard, wireless-ac; but it still comes under the 2k mark. That and they also have a $1 Android tablet promo (which I will be giving away). It's a pretty ordinary dual-core tablet, but hey, it's one buck. The only competition to the machine I was considering was the Dell XPS15, but that's had mixed early feedback and while Dell are participating in this sale event, the model is not included. Happy to not have to think about it in the end.

I'm not there yet, but I intend to RP it a bit by only augmenting soldiers who have been gravely wounded. At which point I'll go all David Sarif on them even if technically they've just made a full recovery... I'm still waiting for the Toolboks to start my 'serious' playthrough, but I've just started and restarted some CI games a few times with different Second Wave options (and then terminating those games as soon as one trooper dies), trying to find the right balance between meld acquisition and my normal defensive play.

Second mission in Enemy Within, Bradford tells me the UFO went down in a densely populated area. Happy happy happy happy time. On the other hand, the Toolboks mod hasn't been updated, which makes the overwatch crawl an exercise in patience. Hopefully it comes soon, too used to just spamming the 'Y' key every turn, EDIT: Blah, only just noticed the Not Created Equally option makes the troops have different movement range. Me no likey, restarting. EDIT2: At which point I go from recovering ALL the meld to recovering NONE of it. Indeed it was all gone before I spotted even a single alien, such is the force of habit making me crawl along the edge of the map. EDIT3: Screw it, I'm waiting for the Toolboks update.

I'd look at the new Bay Trail Atom-based ones, they're a significant improvement over the last gen efforts. Asus' T100 Book comes to mind. Or for something technically not a netbook, the Kabini-based subnotebooks look to be interesting, such as the Lenovo E145. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Lenovo-ThinkPad-Edge-E145-Notebook.103235.0.html And something I've only recently noticed, the Dell Inspiron 3000 11" looks promising too with a Haswell-derived Pentium CPU.

I kind of missed the point I was trying to make there. My original plan was to buy something a bit more serious - and by that I mean larger and bulkier. Something like a Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro, Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga, or a Dell XPS 12 (in about that order). They're 13.3", 12.5" and 12.5" respectively and are more 'traditional' convertibles in the sense that they're notebooks first and foremost - the opposite of the machine I'm typing this on. Each is a traditional chassis with the guts in the lower half, and none have any detachable bits. (The Lenovo machines feature 360-degree hinges, while the Dell has a flippable screen. This means the former two will have the keyboard exposed on the flip-side when in tablet mode, whereas the Dell will have the keys hidden away. The Thinkpad Yoga at least locks the keys rigid when in tablet mode, however.) Anyway, now armed with some idea of what a more tablet-skewed device is like, I'm probably going to press ahead with my original plan sometime early next year. This device I will likely relegate as a toy I can leave at the office, or I might give it to my sister. A tangential dilemma is that I'm also in the market for a traditional 14-15" notebook, but I want to try to avoid buying the same brand as the convertible. Which is tricky because I rather like the look of the Thinkpad T440s (or even T440/p and T540p). The alternative here would probably be the Dell XPS 15 with its interesting 3k display.

Today I bought myself a (rather stupidly named) Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro XE700T1C-A01AU. I.... don't really like it, but am perhaps surprisingly okay with that. Why? Well I guess I could say that from the outset that it was an experiment. It's a device I neither particularly wanted, nor really needed. But for $599, it's a fully-fledged ULV Ivy Bridge machine, Windows 8 of course (which I've never used before today). Convertible 11.6" tablet-slash-ultrabook in that it comes with a 'dumb' keyboard dock. The good: - Lovely 1080p PLS display, at 11.6" this resolution obviously looks very sharp indeed. And of course, the usual perks of PLS/IPS in superior colour reproduction and viewing angles. - Didn't expect to get one at this price point, but there is indeed an included stylus. I have no idea how to use it properly, but still, it'll be interesting to experiment with it in the coming days. The bad: - With keyboard dock attached in notebook mode, the device only opens to about 120 degrees, somewhat squandering the wider viewing angles of the display. - Being a PC essentially fully enclosed behind the screen, it's ridiculously top-heavy in notebook mode, and will tip over backwards at the slightest provocation. I guess this partly explains the restriction in the previous point. - A 64GB eMMC device is the primary storage on this version (there's an upgraded version with a 128GB mSATA SSD as primary available). I came into this eyes open so I'm fully aware of the limitations this imposes, but if it isn't obvious: with Windows and system software fully updated, there's about, oh, 10GB available at best for user data. At least there's a microSD slot available for some breathing room. It is upgradable at least, though apparently the process is pretty finicky. Neutral: - RAM is unsurprisingly soldered in, so the 4GB you get is all you'll ever get. But I'm fine with that. - The somewhat plasticky build shows the machine has been built to a price. A fine decision for the price I got it for, but for the $1300 RRP, it'd have been a big disappointment. - Connectivity is moderate, one USB port on the tablet section, and attaching the keyboard dock adds a further two. No adaptor for the mini-HDMI output means sourcing a third-party one, which isn't easy given the standard is far from common. - Front and rear cameras. A common tablet thing, I guess it makes it a bonus in terms of notebooks. But it's a feature I ignore. - Keyboard is a typical chiclet type thing with flat keys and obviously limited travel. I despise chiclet type keyboards, but given that it's standard on 95%+ of current notebooks, it's just one of those things.

I picked up Papers, Please from the Humble Store yesterday for $6. Unfortunately it seems they're rotating the sales daily so it's off sale now. On the other hand, I missed out on Rogue Legacy on the Humble Store for $7.50 and ended up getting it from GOG for $5, so that was a win. And Rogue Legacy was the single game I wanted out of the entire list there, so I'm done with the sale.

For reference purposes, blatantly ninjaed off the GOG forums, the master list of games that's on shuffle during the sale: Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic $2.49 Alpha Centauri $1.49 Anodyne $2.49 Anvil of Dawn $1.49 Aquanox $1.49 Aquanox 2: Revelation $1.49 Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut $4.99 Baldur's Gate: The Original Saga $1.99 Baldur's Gate 2 Complete $1.99 Beyond Good and Evil $2.49 Blackwell Bundle $2.99 Blood (One Unit Whole Blood) $1.49 Book of Unwritten Tales $4.99 Brutal Legend $3.74 Chaos Engine $3.29 Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena $2.99 Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller $10.09 Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav $3.99 Defender's Quest $2.99 Deus Ex GOTY $1.99 Divinity: Dragon Commander Imperial Ed. $22.49 Don't Starve $4.99 Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Ed $1.49 Eador: Masters of the Broken World $5.99 Evoland $2.49 Expeditions: Conquistador $4.99 FEZ $2.99 Geneforge 1-5 $2.99 Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams $2.99 Heroes of Might & Magic 3: Complete Ed $2.49 Heroes of Might & Magic 5 bundle $4.99 Hotline Miami $2.49 I have No Mouth And I Must Scream $1.93 Icewind Dale Complete $1.99 Inquisitor $3.74 Jack Keane 2: The Fire Within $11.99 Jade Empire: Special Ed $2.99 King of Dragon Pass $1.49 King's Bounty: Crossworlds GOTY $4.99 La Mulana $2.99 Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver $1.49 Leisure Suit Larry $2.49 Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded $7.99 Lords of Midnight $1.93 Lucius $3.99 Magrunner: Dark Pulse $9.99 Master of Magic $1.19 Master of Orion 1+2 $1.49 Megabyte Punch $4.99 Miasmata $2.99 Might & Magic 6-pack: Limited Ed. $2.49 Myst: Masterpiece Ed $1.49 Neverwinter Nights: Diamond Ed. $1.99 Neverwinter Nights 2: Complete $3.99 Nexus: The Jupiter Incident $1.99 Omerta: City of Gangsters + all DLC $7.99 Planescape: Torment $1.99 Populous: The Beginning $1.49 Postal 2 Complete $2.49 Primordia $2.49 Psychonauts $2.49 Puddle $1.99 Rayman Origins $4.99 Resonance $2.49 Retro City Rampage $3.74 Reus $2.49 Rise of the Triad $7.49 Rogue Legacy $4.99 Rollercoaster Tycoon 3: Platinum $5.99 Sacred Gold $1.99 Septerra Core: Legacy of the Creator $1.49 Shadow Man $2.39 Shelter $3.99 Sniper Elite: Berlin 1945 $1.99 Space Colony HD $2.49 Spellforce Platinum $2.49 Startopia $1.49 Strike Suit Zero $4.99 Sword of the Stars: The Pit $2.09 Syberia $1.99 System Shock 2 $1.99 Tales of Monkey Island $5.24 Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon $2.49 The Real Texas $2.99 Theme Hospital $1.49 Thief Gold $1.99 Thief 2: Metal Age $1.99 Thief 3: Deadly Shadows $1.99 Thunderscape $2.39 Tomb Raider 1+2+3 $2.49 Torchlight $2.99 Total Annihilation: Commander Pack $1.49 Total Annihilation: Kingdoms $1.49 Tropico 3 Gold Ed. $2.99 Two Worlds 2: Epic Ed. $3.99 Ultima 7 The Complete Ed. $1.49 Ultima Underworld 1+2 $1.49 Wargame: European Escalation $6.69 Wing Commander 4 $1.49 Wing Commander: Privateer $1.49 Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings $5.99

I gave most of my characters conventional (though 'foreign', as in Italian or Spanish, etcetera) real world names, so it's not surprising that I couldn't get them here (or in any other MMO that's not been freshly launched). So I've got seven characters just sitting there on the character select screen for Harbinger, none of which are playable because they need renames. If I needed to I'd be happy deleting all but two or three though. Just made a placeholder on Dalborra with the same look as my old primary character (level 43 smuggler, all the others are sub-20), but there's no chance of me suffering through that painful time levelling it ever again. Characterisation was good, but the scoundrel playstyle was excruciating to me. And that's from someone who's levelled a pre-Mutilate daggers rogue through to max level in WoW. (And I'm not giving them any money to transfer me either)

Somewhat of a right thread-wrong forum, but boutique UK studio Arrow Films is crowdfunding a restoration of Walerian Borowczyk's Goto, l'île d'amour. Do it, Terry Gilliam commands you.

130 stars! I guess it's probably a good movie?

Couldn't get any of my names back onto any of my transferred characters back. Ah well, might log back on in a year or whenever they have the next name purge to try again. P.S. Windows gained the ability to put spaces in filenames in 1995. Catch up dammit, EA! I can stomach giving my characters middle names, but no way am I hyphenating them or, god-forbid, throw arbitrary apostrophes in them. EDIT: Hmm, available on Begeren Colony though. One perk of being the less popular playstyle I guess. In hindsight it would have been smart to opt for a manual transfer instead of ignoring the information and letting them do the auto-transfer.

There's no police as such, so no GTA-style rampages through Europe, but there are speed camera fines, plus other fines which get magically applied for things like causing crashes and driving on the wrong side of the road.

4GB to fix the non-functioning hotkey for hunker down, perhaps. :D

And because of Steamworks, buying an overseas copy can't circumvent that. At least I get to save a fair bit by doing so anyway. Local price, whether retail or Steam or GMG, is $50. Purchased from the UK for $24.

I ended up paying ~$150 for the game in total - bought the digital copy from GOG while waiting for my import CE to arrive. Irrational? Yes. But totally would do it again.

Well, not so much a language as a (non-relational!) database management system with its own proprietary user language attached - the rather prosaically monikered "Model 204 User Language". Model 204.

The department I work in has a disproportionately high number of Saffer ex-pats working for it. Apparently it's because it's because we share an obscure programming language with very few other institutions, one of which is apparently Woolworths of Seth Efrica.

I have recently learned that I used to live a mere 15 minutes away from the second most notorious hotbed of piracy IN THE WORLD. In the humble outer south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Man, all the cool things I missed out on as a kid.

Good to know the support team will at least have played the game then. That said, perhaps the only decent thing to do would then be to advise callers to play something else.

When you said "Obsidian characters" I totally thought you were going to make a Volourn character.

It's something those in long-term guilds may not come to realise for a good while. By late 2005 I'd joined a raiding guild and more or less left the public channels forever. In early 2007 I accidentally ended up co-leading a new guild and became even more isolated from the 'outside', apart from recruiting exercises. It wasn't until about 2011, near the point where I quit for good, that, as an experiment, I started up a new character on a 'local' (i.e. Oceanic) server and went 1-85, somehow never communicating with a single other person. Granted, I didn't even try to talk to anyone myself, but when last in that sort of situation, more than half a decade prior, there'd be no shortage of people initiating some sort of contact (random pop-ups to join someone's random guild don't count). I did more or less zero PvP in my last four years of playing so I can't say anything about that.

So XCOM. I've been meaning to play it a bit before the expansion launches - an intent I've had for some time. Now less than one week out from that date, I finally get around to it. Nothing fancy, standard-settings Classic Ironman, trying to get back into the swing of things - a given since I've not played the game in any real way since December. Things are going well, 100% success, no casualties, through about three months of gametime over about four hours. Then I decide to call it a night, at which point the game terminates abnormally and I find my savegame is nowhere to be found. Ah well, achieved my goals at least, wasn't as rusty as I thought I'd be.