Raithe

Yeah, I have to admit it's quite annoying when something kills your internet, and steam tells you "steam cannot connect to the internet, do you want to restart in offline mode?" then when you click yes, it chunders a minute before saying "cannot go offline because cannot connect to the internet.".. It's a very nice loop.

Which of the classes did you try for?

Pondering on some christmas shopping to be done. And had the joys of my broadband going dead for half an hour for no apparent reason. Guess the winter weather hit the exchange or some such... Pondering the amusement value of getting a bottle of that vodka sent to the Obsidian offices for christmas once I see how my budget this month breaks out....

Hm, for some reason I thought he had a couple more then that in the overall score.

Been listening to the soundtrack / complete score of The Cape by Bear McCreary. The whole thing is really well done, quite a sweeping orchestral style connecting it all. And the "Let's Just Pretend" that he devloped for that rather creepy valentine episode is darn haunting.

Mansell is great with that style of music. I have to say, he did do a damn fine job with the music throughout.

I do think it would have worked a lot better with Emily Wong on board. But I can understand why they used her for that "Alliance Twitter Feed". They needed a character reporting on it that people could be emotionally connected to from the get go. That pretty much meant one that we knew , and if it's a toss up between reporters just how many of the fans would have felt that bad over the death scene of el-punchy-face?

While I understood the whole point of Vega ( the character that can get all of the basic exposition/what has gone before questions and all of that) and he didn't have any egregiously bad dialogue or acting, he just didn't seem to have much beyond that. He had a kind of bland Mary-Sue/Mini-Shep vibe and no really standout feel beyond asking the questions if you hadn't played the previous games.

On movie related news.. IGN - Lucasfilm sued over crystal skull

For the seasonal impact.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YvZn1hgIvo

Rome lasted a fair while, in one form or another, but it didn't get as huge as some. The Mongols got nicely established and was the largest continguous land empire, but didn't last too long. The British Empire did hold roughly one-fifth of the world's population and about one-quarter of the total land area of the planet at one time.. getting it's start back around the 1500's.. The Ottoman dynasty did hold true for around 600 years, but wasn't quite as expansive.

While this might be better in the funny things thread, it is about some books.. Cracked - Twilight book Review, the Complete Series/ Including such gems as:

It's because the inescapable prison.. had a small problem. When they had that escape attempt where 3 prisoners disapeared? They found the cement that they built the place with had a bad reaction to the saltwater of the bay and was basically..extremely crumbly rather then rock hard. Thus.. unless they spent ridiculous amounts of money on it, it wasn't as secure as it was planned. Thus it was cheaper to close it down and build a new prison... At least, that's what my memory trivia seems to recall on the nature of it....

No. We built it by making friends with the local tribes. And then they sold us slaves from other nearby tribes that they normally went to genocidal war with. Although that does tend to get glossed over a lot of times for some reason.... I suppose that if you were being rather technical about it, we did start the anti-slavery patrols with the Royal Navy from the 1830's onwards.. That, and we also had the habit of bringing a few local kids back to Blighty for education, then sending them back out as part of the local bureaucracy. It actually helped cut down on a lot of ill-feeling when they find their dealing with "natives" as opposed to complete foreigners....

I think part of it was the sudden appearance of the Star Child figure with dialogue that really was a tad bizarre. Throw in the weirdness of the "reaper controlling AI was actually IN the citadel" made a chunk of ME1's story seem just.. mad. Add in the feel that b asically, after everything gearing up about "the choices you made would effect the finale".. you pretty much had no feeling that any choices you made had any real effect on your choice of light colours. There's pulling a deus ex machina, but there's doing so in a way that feels consistent with the story and the universe and what has gone on before.... Okay, maybe it's player expectations, but I have to admit, while I didn't think the ending would be amazingly responsive to the choices you made, I thought they'd have some recognisable element to it, and that there'd most likely be some form of epilogue that would provide some sense of closure to the universe at large and would reflect a larger portion of choices you'd made through the three games. As it was, all choices pretty much resolved to a visible numeric number that had very little to do with anything that happned in the last hour of the game. Unless you count potentially getting a 5 second shot of Shepard alive in rubble. Edit: Pondering on it further, maybe if they'd pushed more "your choices would effect your journey towards the ending", it would have felt more consistent. Because yes, you did get a lot of the journey was responsive to elements you'd decided earlier in the game(s). But , at the end of the day, none of those choices had any real meaning to how the finale of the story went down.

Enjoy that 21 feeling then ...

And isn't the calculations you do using math, and thus utilising the very subjects that are being railed against? Thus proving the very trollish nature of this entire post....

Hm., just saw a news article about the riots in Belfast. The city council working with Sinn Fein have just voted to remove the Union Jack from being flown every day in the city, which prompted some rioting. Also, one of the city councillors apparently received a variety of intimidating threats via facebook and a few other means. Said Councillor (who has been working hand in glove with Sinn Fein over this vote) went on record saying that And for some reason I find that kind of warpedly, bleakly humerous. Someone working with Sinn Fein, the reformed and political side of the IRA (to a certain extent), saying that terror and intimidation are wrong and anti-ethical to democracy.

So for general astro-related news articles.. the latest breaking out is this.. Yahoo News: Voyager discovers magnetic highway on the edge of the solar system Astronomy News: Voyager Cruising on a Magnetic Highway ScienceNews: Voyager Crossing Superhighway to Solar System Exit

So.. you missed the 17 page thread camouflaged with the title "Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition"? I can see how such a cunning disguise would work it's way past your perception.... Hm, for some reason I seem to be sliding into a somewhat melancholic mood this week with no specific thing that I can see causing it.

http://youtu.be/T7kkVYSbXVc

The warrior ending does provide a touch more satisfaction in regards to the final kill... Edit: I've trying to play some Civ V... and the damn thing keeps freezing on me or crashing out every 5-10 minutes. This is annoying and I can't find any particular reason for it.

After finishing up the Sith Warrior, I have to say I think both Sith classes have the most well-written and cohesive stories throughout of the five I've completed now. The Jedi Knight feels a bit more..bitty. Decent arcs, but they don't connect together quite as well.

Put the tree up yesterday, have to face going through all the christmas tree lights to find out what ones aren't working... Facing the day on about 4 hours of sleep and pondering what assorted things actually need doing and what things I can get away with not doing...

Having that odd waiting space going on at the moment. Hanging around waiting to hear back if a project is being picked up, which would mean I'd actually get paid this year if it does... Which would be a very useful thing. Primary carer's benefits and basic income support help pay some of the bills, but it still makes it somewhat fun around the christmas time. Trying to get things organised to get the christmas decorations down from the attic and out, but apart from my mother (the disabled one) no-one in the family is interested and is generally kind of passive aggressive over the whole thing. "Oh, lets wait a couple of weeks, no need to rush". "but then christmas will basically be over and there's no point to it" "oh. <wide-eyed look> "that would be a shame, why would we bother with it then." The winter weather is dropping some of the cold and being a bit more wet, so suddenly the dogs are tracking mud into the house which is so much fun. And the cat's good eye is starting to get a bit gunky, so trying to keep an eye on that to make sure it isn't anything serious....