Raithe

"If you are truly a pacifist, you can't call the cops. They are going to use force, restraint, and weapons to enforce your position." I did catch a bit of the NRA Vice-President's speech about it all earlier today, and while he made some valid points he then undermined it by saying that having our underage children play Grand Theft Auto is the problem because it teaches them murder is fun. My main problem with that is if he's letting his underage kids play the Grand Theft Auto games he's missing the whole "mature" labelling on them and it's his own damn fault for letting underage kids play the games...

Well my sister's new Alienware laptop arrived today, so she kept poking at me for help since it's all Windows 8 and she has no idea whats what on it. The weather has turned from chill to miserably wet, I cleared a bunch of stuff up into the attic, and I am attempting to get the usual christmas enthusiasm to wrap some presents up and slide them under the tree. Wanted to enjoy the sheer, decadent luxury of a long drawn out hot bath, but time got eaten away, so I'll have to settle for grabbing a quick shower. Pondering on bills and whether I should be rooting for the apocalypse...

Not to just grasp at straws here, but I think the whole Earth taking center stage for the Reapers is due to their whole byzantine plot thing. Aka, they pick one specific race each cycle that they're going to render down into a couple of new "Proper" Reapers, and the rest of the races get used for the itty bitty Reapers and general odds and ends. For various reasons, notably Humanity (in the form of Shepard) is the race that has posed the most problems for the Reaper Plan they get voted in as that key race. So a concentration of Reaper's is all about the Earth. With the other Citadel species, none of them are really attempting to organise anything together. Shepard comes across as the only one trying to get EVERYONE working on the same game plan. And because he's human, he's pretty much doing the "look, we need to do this together, I'm helping you here and here, you guys form up and help us defend Earth and we can go on to kick the reaper's arse out of our galaxy together." Shep has a certain amount of street cred, and once he gets the ball rolling, no-one really wants to jump up and insist that people aim in a different direction. Besides, they've already had him going this way and that to help out their races before they actually agree to do anything.

Sushi Girl. Starts off with a naked girl having sushi placed artfully across her body to the strains of "Diamonds are Forever"... Before a reunion of a heist crew consisting of Tony Todd as the machiavellian leader, Mark Hamill doing an almost real life joker, Andi Mackenzie as the psychotic pit bull, James Duval the team pot head, and the fresh from six years of prison Noah Hathaway have a reunion around said Sushi Girl to find out what actually happened on the last heist they worked together where the score went missing. Including some short appearances of Jeff Fahey, Michael Beihn, Sonny Chiba and Danny Trejo. Mainly consisting of the dark and brooding abandoned chinese restuarant with a single room done up as a japanese sushi bar and the principle characters, with flashbacks to the heist inbetween. Very grindhouse feel, but quite entertaining if you enjoy some of the Kurosawa / Tarantino styling. Although there are a couple of moments of almost Torture-Porn that hover on the edges.

Since there isn't really a good spot for it.. http://www.washingto...billion-pixels/ A rather good picture of Mount Everest.. in two billion pixels with some rotational aspects.

Some more details on the Rise of the Cartel Expansion (taken from Developer quotes from Bio on the DevTracker forums) http://www.darthhate...s-new-expansion

It's when you add in "Heroic Moment" and the various Legacy Powers that use it on one side-bar that things look really crowded. You don't need to use them most of the time..but when you do, you need to be able to click fast.. Besides, there's something fun about my Jedi Knight getting into trouble with some boss , and using Legacy Force Storm, Legacy Choke, Legacy Flame Thrower and then finishing him off with a Legacy Dirty Kick...

I have to admit, it's kind of hard to have a fully reasoned discussion on the subject when the majority of people who don't want easy access to guns generally don't know that much about gun safety/handling/the actual legal restrictions.. and the folks who do tend to know those details are the gun enthusiasts who well, tend to want access. We need a few people who are enthusiastic about guns but don't know the specifics, and people who want more gun control but actually know the details..

For a slight comparison of things, an article I found of interest : BBC News - Connecticut shootings: The lessons from Dunblane A look back on the effects of the Dunblane shootings in Scotland 16 years on and how that changed things in the UK.

Jade Empire does have a rather good "magnificent bastard" in it as well..

For a slightly odd set of statistics, I saw a listing of European crimes per 1,000,000 resisdents, and the UK topped the list of highest number of violent crimes BUT came 13th on list of actual homicides. And since we're talking statistics: http://www.gunpolicy...n/united-states Apparently this group which is hosted by the Sydney School of Public Health at Syden University has a slew of US related gun statistics. I haven't looked in-depth at it yet, but thought the really interested folk on this topic might enjoy it.

No matter what, Christensen was a level above the Manequin Skywalker from the Phantom Menace. Of all the kids they looked at, the "perfect" young anakin was the one who was incredibly obnoxious and atrociously wooden? What were they smoking??

Of course, now you can have , what, 6 quick slots set up if you want to crowd your screen?

Pootling around off and on with some TOR as distractions from various things. I have to admit, the group finder doesn't work too badly to hit some of the Flashpoints and Hard Mode Flashpoints...

Some people are talking as if its Act IV, so who knows just how much it lays the groundwork for it? After all, when we wrap up Act III, what you get at level 50 is "Interlude". So we can gather they're certainly planning on adding some further Act(s) to the storyline. Of course, the question would become would it mean Act IV for each class storyline, or are they going to combine them to specific Republic/Imperial storylines? I think I'd feel kind of cheated if they didn't make them expansions of the class storylines, but I can see that takes a heap more effort and money, which might not be a possible thing if it's not succeeding as they thought it would.

First we have to get people to agree on what an "assault rifle" actually is. After all, it's not hunting if you can't have an extended clip and easily scalable fully automatic weapons throwing hot copper enshrouded lead at x rounds per second..

This seems to be a really hard topic to have a conversation about without both sides running to extremes and/or bringing politics into it. Are there any moderate areas or compromise issues between the far sides on it?

Well they've announced the first expansion : http://www.swtor.com/rothc And if you're a subscriber, it costs half. Or, if you're not a subscriber it costs double. Depending on which way you look at it... Edit: Oh yes, and if you pre-order before Jan 7th, you get 5 days early access to the content...

Hm, one of those rare moments when I have the house to myself (well, if you don't include the dogs and cat). Decorations are all up and sorted. Mom's at a lengthy hospital/doctors appointment checkup. Having a bit of grr thoughts over the girl I can't seem to get over, and thinking that after a year of "work" as such, while I know that intellectually it's given me things like stuff on my cv, and references, it hasn't actually given me anything "solid". So all sorts of effort, but nothing to really show for it. Having that slightly odd head space, so trying to distract myself with various assorted random things.

Well, if the gun control laws are unlikely to be changed, would it be worthwhile to have all teachers go through a basic firearms awareness/handling course so they know the limits, the safety, and provide a more thorough grounding of knowledge regarding firearms then what you get through tv and movies? Also, would it be useful to run the kids through a mandatory "safety" lessons, and show examples of what happens when you shoot off a gun to reinforce that real life isn't like the movies?

The bit thats grating on me lately is if my connection gets disrupted while I'm playing. My server lag will slowly start climbing and exceed 200,000 ms .. I will have a nice shiny red x saying my connection is not in existence. And then it does nothing but leave me there. Unless I Alt-F4 and quit the game that way, I can't actually do anything.

Shuffling around today doing various pieces of shifting, carrying work for my mother, and dealing with the dogs. Can't seem to focus on other work at the moment, not sure whether it's seasonal thing, christmas mood, or complete procrastination for various reasons. Think I might just try running some TOR for an hour and see what my headspace is like then.

On the film news, potential Tron follow-up http://collider.com/...osinski/217942/

Its pretty much the earth landing, I think there were some minor tweaks to how it ran, but the big differences were when you hit the beam of light to go up to the citadel.

I guess one of those things thats kind of odd, is that Hollywood regularly produces films where the "odd kid" is the hero, and all the jocks and cheerleaders, and the popular kids who inflict on everyone else their own views and insistence of "being normal" are the bullies and villains.. That's accepted as the general view of high school by the media, and people watch these films and enjoy them... But then it's still the whole thing that in real life in high school that the "odd kid" is to be bullied and pressured, and generally given hell. So it's recognised that it happens, but the social encouragement is still to see the jocks and cheerleaders as the top dogs that everyone should respect and allow to pressure other kids. I'd say there's a definite gap in the social / culture aspect here. Or is that a slightly warped view from the distance?