alanschu

Perhaps I'm just psychotic, but I enjoyed those car commercials.

I'll be cheering for the Oveckeein one! Too bad I'll be at school working on other assignments. Pretty much everything is due this week.

I certainly wouldn't consider myself socially advanced. In grades 7-12, I spent 99.9% of my free time playing basketball rather than conversing with people. At worst, try strutting around playing goofy upbeat music in your head

I could think of a few things that may not be too appropriate (and no, it's not sex related).

I see it as "supporting graphics first" school of design based on what those involved with the XBOX development have stated about how they see the future of videogaming progressing. It doesn't have anything really to do with the buyer's intentions or expectations from the system.

To be fair, I have seen relationships start out of friendships that have been very successful. Having the ability to skip over the stupid and awkward "getting to know you phase" can be an asset. There is also assurances that not seeing a facade that the other person is putting up. Chances are you've already farted in front of each other I would almost wager that, if you were to take a per capita analysis of relationships that started off with friendships vs relationships with acquaintances (or strangers), you'd probably have a higher success rate with the friendship category. I think it goes to the love vs infatuation thing. It seems like a bit of a bizarre concept to me to suddenly become infatuated with someone that you've been good friends with for a while. And even though I demolished some (not all) friendships by asking them out, I still think it's better than the alternative. In high school I was exceptionally shy, particularly around women I was attracted to (oddly enough the ones I considered friends I was quite comfortably around ). As a result, I had a friend that I had pretty much liked since like Grade 6. The more I hesitated, the higher up her pedastal became it seemed (I call it the Aphrodite complex...when you begin to idealize a woman so much that you couldn't possibly have anything to offer her). As I grew up, I considered our relationship and think now that there very likely was a mutual attraction there. We had an amiable relationships, similar interests and got along great. I just couldn't muster up the courage to ask..... To get to the point, I find the realization that a friend wasn't mutually interested and hurting my friendship with them was a better outcome than the "what if" syndrome. Plus, every time you ask someone out, it gets a little easier the next time. You get more experience dealing with the situation and since it's less foreign, you can't help but feel more comfortable (You also learn defense mechanisms allowing you to rationalize things in such a way that you don't even really feel hurt if she says "no"). And to make matters better, while it did take a couple of years, I think my friendship with one of the women in particular is actually pretty good again. With time, the friendships will come back. Back to relationship <-> friendship, I just have personally seen (and experienced) more relationships when there isn't a solid friendship. Though I am a bit of a believer that a relationship that does start off out of friendship probably has a greater chance of being a more meaningful one, if you get what I mean. And despite what I've just said, I can't really see myself just asking out an attractive girl that is a complete stranger to me. Maybe I've just outgrown the T&A stage of my life (don't get me wrong, I do like an attractive woman), but I don't like the idea of diving head first having no idea what I'm getting into. Just the type of person that I am. Though, again, it's probably because I have no experience with that sort of thing so it's just so foreign And this has been another edition of

Hehe

It's not an odd comment if you consider the focus that the console developers are making this year. MS forsees the future with tons of people essentially on an assembly line creating art content for many games. Talks I've had with the Games Group seminars at my University which have included John Buchanan from EA as well as one of the head programmers from Bioware anticipate disproportionate amount of the new resources available with the new consoles to go towards graphics. The Bioware chap anticipates that at least half of the memory for the XBOX 360 will be reserved for the graphics engine. Both the EA and Bioware expect a huge increase in total percentage of available resources being allocated to graphics over the current consoles, with a decrease in resource percentage for AI and physics and whatnot (though this will still be an increase in absolute resources, as 5% of 1000 > 10% of 100). Metadigital has made many references to I think it was the GDC where there was actually a big outcry against the focus of graphics driving the cost of development up way too fast. Part of the thing Will Wright was pimping about Spore was that the world is populated with user-made content from a central server, helping them to reduce the costs. He was also one of the vocal people at the conference concerned about escalating development costs. In my opinion, with every new console release there seems to be just a little bit more focus on the graphics than the previous version. Not to say previous consoles didn't hype up graphics, because they are a very easy thing to observe. I just get the impression that the focus is slowly shifting more and more towards graphics. PC's aren't necessarily an exception. Though I doubt it influences the market as much as the consoles do.

On a more serious note, for what it's worth I've absolutely demolished a few friendships by suddenly finding the person intriguing and asking them out. Most because it's such a "forbidden" type zone that my CPU (i.e brain) was tossing unhandled exceptions like crazy. It's tough because I wanted to remain friends, but you always get that impression that they're acting differently for whatever reason...I always assumed that they were just trying to make sure they didn't do anything to lead me on to thinking they were interested.... Or maybe they WERE interested! But that gets into the point of silly, bizarro mind games that I prefer not to take part in, in order to avoid the Fatal Exception that causes my brain to implode from overanalyzing the situation. Neurons will collide, atoms will fuse, and it'll basically destroy the planet. It's a big responsibility. Ironically, I became more confident around women once I started the whole "apathy" thing. Going through life with a bit of a "meh" attitude has made be a bit more outspoken. So boo on the women that turned me down. They missed out :D Double irony though, is that now that I'm more confident around women and would actually be able to play the "dating game" more effectively, I'm not really in the market. I'm hella busy with school, and I would totally be that boyfriend that doesn't spend enough time with his girlfriend (because he's up at 4:30 AM working on an AI assignment). My "preferences" became much more exclusive. Up there with the trustworthy, honest, caring, big boobies (I kid I kid!) and all those usual suspects for what I look for in a woman, independent fired it's way up there. Right now, it would have to be someone that was willing to accept that I'm crazy busy, and even though I'm not with her 100% of the time I do in fact still care. Anyways.....on to other things, in my experience most relationship that I've personally seen seem to evolve more from acquaintances than actual friendships. But I like to destroy those too! :D At the tender age of 24, my dating portfolio is likely quite bleak compared to most my age. However, as I've gotten older I've gotten less and less concerned with how my dating portfolio looked :D But enough about me.....

I've never known any girl ever being offended or who has felt oppressed to be referred to as someone's girlfriend and I wouldn't see it that way either If my boyfriend called me his "womanfriend" I'd think he was insane (he'd get this look from me: )... I've never heard of that term before... and if I felt I was too old to considered a "girlfriend" I'd rather he called me his "partner" even though that term makes me think of business suits <{POST_SNAPBACK}> "Old Lady" doesn't cut it?? I kid, I kid!

I wonder what the PC market is like compared to the GameCube market. Fair enough. But that time is still not now. Is it really much different than getting that uber-DX9 card when there is no games out that utilize it? I don't think it would be a stretch to claim that most people will not use these new consoles with an HDTV. Having said that, the support for it is never a bad thing. I just thought I'd mention it since I have had conversations with many people that tell me how expensive PC gaming is, yet they have a $2000 HDTV for their consoles.

An interesting thing I've noted is that to get the most out of these consoles seems to require a $1000+ TV to go along with it.

Yeah he had a seizure. Apparently his heart stopped and they performed CPR and there was also reports of a defibrilator being used. Last I heard he was in stable condition though. In other [better] news, Edmonton apparently won their game in ugly fashing. (Hey, a W is a W).

I suspect the XBOX 360 will eradicate the PC gaming industry about as effectively as the XBOX/PS2 did. Though a bit of me (perhaps the elitist caught in denial) does consider supporting the consoles to be a financial vote for the "Graphics first" school of game design

I do consider Fallout to be a shorter game. I replay many of my games, and among RPGs I can beat Fallout quite quickly.

Meta, when I finally acquire the game (I have to wait until Christmas since there's a chance I may get it for Christmas), I challenge thee to a game of Civ4. Darque can come too! Oh, and by challenge I don't necessarily mean bashing each other to pulp, but just playing the game and seeing where it goes EDIT: Now that I think about it, I should probably add in jags, as he was enjoyable to play with in Diplomacy. And probably Walshingham, as I continue to ignore his reminders about Close Combat 3 (I can't find the CD dude I'm keeping my eye out for it but it's looooow on the priority list at the moment). Anyone else feel terribly offended that I'm not mentioning. Can it support a 32 player game?

60-70 hours is "midrange?" How many "long" games are out there? I mean, not even BG2 took me 100 hours to beat. I wonder if it even took me 100 hours to beat it TWICE. I mean, a full playthrough of Fallout for me now (now meaning of course I know where to go and don't get stuck anywhere...but I still play through the game without just warping to the end; i.e. I still roleplay the game) can be beaten in a single sitting for me.

.... ....

Errr.... I doubt Sony Online Entertainment nor Blizzard would really have any interest in a game like KOTOR 3 anyways.

What the heck? Did he forget that he was playing defense? It doesn't look like a simple swing, but indeed an intentional shot. I think he even throws his arms up to celebrate for like a millisecond.

My roommate and I have been getting plenty

No one "takes his place" as he wasn't really on the active roster. Though I wouldn't be surprised to see Syvret stay up.

My favourite thing about Leafs' fans (not the mkreku kind...but "those" kind) is that they full on expect their team to win the cup, and are completely taken aback when they don't

Oh, I definitely wasn't passing judgement. I too have googled my own name :D

Fare thee well metadigital. We hardly knew ye...