Monte Carlo

^ Ditto the BBC. I'd make it subscription only in a flash. It's another tax.

And even your retort proves my point. Badda-bing!

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/06/22/some-stalker-fallout-1c-proposes-a-nuclear-union/#more-113277 What do we think about this? Genius or utterly awful... I think it could be either.

It's Financial Suicide Simulator III. You play Greek hedge fund managers and score points, Angry Birds style, for jumping off of higher and higher office blocks belonging to financial institutions.

I'll let that go... Same ****, different name. Or what are these distinguished Canadian preferences you'd like to communicate to me? Wow you really are a bigot.

You live in a Scandie statist paradise and therefore your opinion is moot. The government takes my money and gives it to India, the feckless and to pay for schools that struggle to teach kids to read and write. I think the government has some gall asking me to pay for that.

Just finished the Sniper Elite V2 demo. Head-shotting Nazis at 200 metres with my Springfield is very good fun, especially with the physics engine taking into account heart-rate and windage. The anatomically correct and very gory bullet-cam is another gruesome addition. It looks nice, there's lots of stealth involved as well as hosing Fritz down with your MP40. Think I'll get the full version.

It was a tough movie to make. The book is too good. Xavier Bardem made the part his own and they nailed a lot of it. They just disappeared up their own arses at the end.

Mrs. MC and I often wistfully consider this. We spent almost ten years going on holiday to the states on road trips (in every flavour of hire car) but the classic RV trip always eluded us. When my son is older we might do it. I went to Oregon once, to a town called Alturas. It was great, we stayed in an old hotel and I half-expected Clint Eastwood in a poncho to enter the bar at any moment.

19K repair FFS? I'm in Hell and I find that the profit from beating a mob is 25% of my repair costs!

I'm not sure about Drive... the 80's styling / homage thing was a bit too contrived for me. And Ryan Gosling as an actor is a bit too cool for school. He was _much_ better in that politics movie with George Clooney. No Country for Old Men? 75% genius, 25% meh. The book was awesome, though. I haven't seen a History of Violence, but I think it has Viggo in it. I could watch him paint a wall and be interested, he's a great actor.

:: sighs :: I so badly want RV road trips. But I live in Britain. Which is laughably small.

Cool let me know what you thought. I read it many years ago when it first came out and was blown away by how horrible it was. I've never read Banks' sci-fi stuff, I always imagine him as a clever horror writer. But, of course, his horror isn't supernatural, it's very much rooted in the real world. Which makes it scarier IMO.

As a barbarian Jailer is doubly tough because it _seems_ to frustrate your ability to make Earthquake attacks. That attack has a jump animation and for some reason when you are trapped (and sometimes walled) it won't work.

I think that a Steam console might happen. Games 'consoles' will become small hubs that simply connect you to the cloud --- router / hard drive combos that simply hook you up with some bells and whistles. About the size of a tablet. Great for gaming on the go.

You could give it to me and then I will love you forever. That must be worth more than 1.8m imaginary gold pieces, right?

Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory. Freaky. Scary. Brilliant.

Most people are like this. I'm lucky, I suspect. I'm able to edit in tranches as I go. I suspect you aren't a big fan of tight plotting, which is why you lose focus as you write. It's perfectly normal --- we write the way we write but it's a craft and there are some rules. Warning bells are going off. There are two main schools of thought here... the Ray Bradbury (RIP) "let your characters fly" approach and the "plot and stick to it" approach. You appear to be doing neither. Try to make your mind up, even as a writing exercise, and stick with it for the first draft. The reader will know (actually, they won't as the book won't get published). Stop. Right. There. Writing as a hobby is fine, but wouldn't it be great if it was a hobby that paid for a car or a holiday? Get onto Amazon. Figure out WTF people are reading. Get that completely straight in your head. Write your synopsis and marketing blurb. This is a product. Now, of course I'm coming at this from a relatively hard-nosed commercial fiction perspective. Please feel free to completely ignore me if you want to write simply for fun or because you want to write a literary novel. Cheers MC

I can't help but think that D3 is carefully calibrated, like an MMO, to farm money via micro transactions. If the AH didn't exist it would be a better game.

First PC was a 333 Mhz HP with 256 MB RAM a bit like Gorgon's, think I bought it in 1996.

A ZX81. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81

Here in the UK there is a big debate going on about Tax Avoidance (legal tax avoidance, or as we call it here at the Schloss Monte, common-fricking-sense). A popular comedian called Jimmy Carr has been found to put his money in something called K2, so he pays less tax than the guy who cleans his windows. Behold! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18531008 Now, personally, I will agree to paying more tax once governments stop wasting it on small wars, the feckless, EU subsidies and overseas aid programs for countries with nukes. If you can afford nukes you can afford very basic welfare provision. Until then, making your tax affairs efficient seems perfectly reasonable to me. But yet... even the Ayn Rand fanboi in me gets leery of paying less tax than the guy who cleans my windows. My heart is flinty but not *that* flinty. Which is why I support a modified flat tax that would lift low-earners out of tax *completely* and encourage the rich the pay more (rather than avoid). The rich in the UK pay a shed-load of tax. For the record, I am a middle-earner. I am not rich. But one day I'd like to be and the politics of envy is always the ugliest. But by the same token I don't want to pay less than a poor guy. So for this call sign, a flat tax = win. What do you guys think?

I found ONE legendary (gloves) but have bought a legendary helmet, 2H axe and chest armour. My DPS is about 5.5K now but I'm sure that sucks for a level 58.

I'm now Level 58 on Act II Hell as a Barbarian. The only other 'proper' character is a level 15 DH on normal. I haven't got time to play the others, I like the monk but seeing as I never play Magic-Users think I might give the wizard-dude a try out for once.

And, btw, I've written a grand total of 700 words today. Having said that, I do tend to edit as I go so the other 7000 have been polished and burnished too.