Humanoid

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.

I haven't been subbed to WoW for a year-and-a-half now, but I don't really mind the concept of the new expansion. Time travel is cheesy sure, but it's following up on nine-plus years of cheese anyway. With Burning Crusade back in the day, they tried to incorporate some other design elements into their world, most notably cyberpunk, which they seem to have dropped like a hot potato, but I admit I was one who actually liked that direction - as opposed to the various degrees of conventional fantasy with varying levels of bleakness it's been since (despite a few tangents like Canadian lumberjacks or Indiana Jones). Not that it's any chance of bringing me back. Just that Blizzard is at its worst when trying to be dark, edgy, and well, serious.

Lots to comment on today, heh. On Torment combat - whatever, I want it to be the combatless RPG I've been craving for the past decade plus. Not in a literal sense, but in the sense it's something you need to actively pursue as your preferred approach to a particular issue, as opposed to it being foisted onto you by matter of course. Besides, I don't know anything about Numenera's mechanics (despite having received the sourcebooks as a backer reward), so I have no idea what's suitable. But if I were to generalise, I'd say I prefer turn-based for solo and small-party content, with that preference gradually drifting towards RTwP the larger the party gets. Mainly because I'm too lazy to micromanage large parties (say, 4-6).

It will be interesting to see what they do. All the articles I've read, the developers keep going on about "No Shepard" and about not even including anything about the events from the Shepard trilogy. The first part, I have no issue with. In fact, I think it would be stupid if they did bring Shepard back as a protagonist. The second part, I'm not sure how they can completely and totally ignore/gloss over the events that took place during the trilogy. Prequels are the hip thing now. Or was that reboots?

Looks like they're taking Apple's claim on rounded corners seriously.

Pricing at the usual halo card level, but yeah, disappointed that they didn't release a 6GB version. 3GB at $599 and 6GB for $100-150 more would have made some real options rather than preserving the status quo. I mean it's only $100 less than *two* 290s.

So yeah, it was a good thing that nVidia followed AMD's pricing down. But now they seem to be following AMD's noise levels up - at least if early numbers are to be believed. Still a little longer until the NDA officially lifts, but some publications (*cough* videocardz.com) not bound by NDA have released their numbers. The 780Ti performs as expected (winning at lower resolutions), but its fan runs 5db louder than the Titan and 780 non-Ti coolers. Or rather, it's the same cooler, but forced to run faster to keep the higher-clocked Ti in check. Megahertz wars? Nah, it's the decibel wars! Also, $699, probably. Blah, needed to be $599. EDIT2: $720 at Amazon EDIT: Power consumption figures too