Raithe

Amazon started off with massive discounts on Kindle, but when Apple moved in like that they had to raise the prices and actually appologised to customers for having to do it...

And in case anyone had missed it and was interested.. Several of the Bioware folks discuss Mass Effect 3 at Pax East Bioware discusses ME3 endings, dlc and tali's face

I have to admit, there's a certain level of awkwardness with Jimmy Vega. On the one hand, I can see why you need a new character like that - storywise it lets you have various explanations happen for people who hadn't played the previous games... But, eh, it didn't seem as smooth or natural as they could have made it. Although he didn't have any daddy/family issues to deal with...

And for the other part of the Legacy update..

And one that will probably amuse Hurl..

Heh, and if you check my comment in the Books thread.. Apple are currently facing lawsuit by the DoJ for allegedly price-fixing ebooks..

Well the Arrivial dlc had the whole "Shepard just blew up a solar system full of bataarians" and getting the whole "You realise you'll have to face the music for this?" speech from Hacket. This leads us to Shep willingly handing himself over to the Alliance to present his reasons and how it happened. I can understand Shep letting the Cerberus crew off, rather then casually hand them into Alliance custody as well. I mean, Kasumi - intergalactic thief, Mordin - ex salarian special task force super scientist, Miranda - former executive officer to Cerberus, etc... It kind of makes sense he does the whole "right, you lot get out here, so you're actually doing stuff in the Galaxy rather then facing the music with me." Although that gets a few holes poked in it by such as the Engineer's being in jail and needing you as Spectre to get them released (I do kind of wish they'd played t hat up more...). Joker was technically under arrest as well, but his expertise was needed to help the Alliance re-fit the new Normandy.. EDI, well, she was part of the ship and managed to conceal herself as just an advanced VI... Doctor Chakwa came along because she was former Alliance and hadn't technically joined Cerberus...

So among the list of things from the 1.2 update..

Quote of the day that kind of amuses me.. "As an officer, the job is to fullfill the mission objectives and kill as few of your command as possible. As an NCO, the job is to fullfill the mission objectives and keep the men alive. It's not so much semantics, as a shift in perspective."

In book related news.. Apple is apparently being hit by the American legal system over attempts to fix the price of ebooks Department of Justice hits Apple with e-book price fixing suit YahooNews - US accuses Apple and publishers over e-books

Not something I did, but something I nearly missed.. but today marks the 51st year since Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space.. And apparently last year the UN marks 12 April as "International Day of Human Space Flight"

Apparently it's not that unusual to do when you have a small group trying to get studios interest in a story. Edit together something like that so you can have a very visual hook of the "style/feel" of what the prospective film is to be like..

For the quirky interest route.. The "mood" trailer that's being shipped around studios to develop interest in adapting Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn books to film has been leaked and turned up on the internet. They've edited chunks from a whole bunch of films, then given the "movie text" to add story info and it's actually quite weird how well they've captured the whole feel of the story... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0TOVHEnfe0

Ah, and thus the benefits of working from home are brought into focus...

I'm still dabbling a bit on SW:TOR, and slipping in a mission here and there on a second ME3 playthrough.

10 year old Schoolgirl takes drug-dealer fathers cocaine stash to school for a show&tell session Something about this just amuses me.. Also, for the other Yet another show and tell session, this time in the US

Immortal Sayings: "It's not a half-baked idea! It's.. pretty mostly baked. Maybe a little soft in the middle...."

Well, Alien Ressurrection was written by Joss Whedon if I recall correctly... I think that's the thing about ME3, there were a lot of nice touches scattered around, bits and pieces that felt great or were perfectly suited to the background points... So it makes it feel even more bizarre when you have all those missing or skewed elements that just don't feel good.

And I'm realising I must have been really distracted this morning.. The lesson to be learnt is never to post when you have dogs jumping around your seat and pawing at you..

I have to admit, I did enjoy the part of the end sequence where Shep and Anderson are sat next to each other having that quiet talk with Earth in the background.. Also, the amount of in-jokes they threw in, the amount of "calibration" comments that came up, such as hearing Legion offer Garrus aid to calibrate the guns to .23 % and that was the most available.. Garrus doing a tweak and Legion being amazed that the guns improved by .47% and was all "how did you do that??" And the conversations between Liara and her "father" were mostly amusing if you listened to them all. I do kind of wonder how long before there's some form of "retake Omega" dlc.. that seemed something that had a few hooks hung up...

Just for the quirky more then the humerous.... A nice visual of depths of lakes and oceans... http://xkcd.com/1040/large/ And for the more outrightly amusing..

I started up regular running again.. and after about 3 weeks developed a really nice case of tendonitis that didn't settle down for about 3 months. I really should try to get back in the focus to start it up once more...

I just spent the last half hour troubleshooting some troubles my sister was having with the game. So I looked across and asked her "so, I take it you're still enjoying the game?" Her response was to narrow her eyes and bite out "it's like the freaking Tardis! It's sucking my life away because I sit down to play a little and suddenly hours have disapeared"

One of the ways they've tried balancing it is giving each class a different form of hm, "energy" or whathave you to actually use their attacks. It does tend to be more mood/atmospheric then really game system difference.. Every class has one basic attack that doesn't "cost" anything. But Jedi Knights and Sith Warriors need to build up "force" by using certain attacks, which then let them use more "impressive" abilities which use up that force. Sith Inquisitors and Jedi Consulars have a regenerating pool of Force points that get drained by their use. Bounty Hunters build up "heat" as they use their attacks, and then have to vent it off if it gets too high before they can use abilities again.. Smugglers have an energy pool that gets used up.. But I'd certainly say the atmosphere and playstyle of the class stories can feel quite different. Sure the world quests are the same, but the dialogue and style of responses from people during them are toned to recognise the classes and react a wee bit differently. Sith Assassin tends to be dark and surrounded by treachery , not so much happiness and joy... The Smuggler has that general light-hearted swashbuckleryness to it all (and is amazingly flirt-tastic)... The Jedi Knight tries for that ..zen Paladin adventurer approach (but I've only done a little of that storyline so far so I can't really say).. and the Bounty Hunter starts off with a competitive revenge streak going..

Hm, I saw a copy of Fable 3 going for about