Raithe

One of the things about the classes.. is that when you take the advance class options at 10th level or whatever.. it opens up a lot of variability (supposedly) with skill trees. So while a lot of people are saying the likes of Sith Inquisitor is the long-range mage equivalent.. you can turn them into a type of tanker, a dps close in melee, a healer type, or the long range dps type.. OldRepublic.Net - Class Guides This might be of some interest to folks..

Hm, trying to write out the summary of a report and listening to this... does that say anything?

This one is easy, Jedi aren't allowed to have sex. Sex is part of the dark side. Think the rules of religions against the debaucheries of hedonism. The New Jedi Order allowed marriage. Luke himself married. In the EU it pretty much bounces back and forth. After the Hyperspace War but before the Sith Wars of Qel-Droma and Exar Kun marriage and family were fine for Jedi, then they were forbidden.. Then some point before the time of KoTOR marriage was allowed again.. It's one of those things that comes and goes pretty much depending on the mood of the Jedi Councils at the time and how they feel about the dark side and the benefits of family stability vs potential emotional anxiety... So it's not as if it's something that's had much coherency over the millenia of story...

Picked up Darklands, WC3, and Dungeon Keeper 2 from Gog because that mood just hit me.. now I just have to find some time to sit down and actually play them...

It's always been a flaw to my mind.. the Dark side is all "if you're feeling certian emotions you're tapping into a 'bad' side of energy, or it's being twisted slightly" If you're at peace and serene and unemotional then it's all "good". Wouldn't that mean that sociopaths who have no emotions as such would make perfect jedi?

I'm curious on how they've been pushing the whole light/dark side for every class and making it fit into the storyline. Not that you can shift from Republic to Empire or such, but within the framework of your "side". The jedi that goes dark, but is all about ruthlessly defending the Republic and willing to make the hard choices really too easily.. that sort of thing. I'm tempted by the idea of running a Sith Inquisitor running along the "grey" line just to see how that will shape up.

Playing around with Universe Sandbox. Satisfying some of those God delusions..

You and everyone else. But you'll be unique among them, with that particular combination of chin depth and eyebrow distance that the character generator provides. Well, considering most of the various polls regarding class choices around on the collected TOR websites , it actually looks fairly balanced rather then everyone going for the two sith classes. Of course, that only takes into count the people paying attention to those sites and the official forums...

The game. In fact, I went and picked up the game.. and for the hellavit a copy of WC3 from Gog in between report re-writing..

Dang, that's tempting actually.

I found myself pulled into pre-ordering the CE edition as well Hurlshot... Although I haven't sat down for an mmo since I took a break from City of Heroes a year or two back. The stuff that I've seen makes the story elements look quite interesting, just how well that'll merge with the mmo is something that just has to be tested. The fact that you can now edit the appearance of companions (so people won't have to run into other folks with the exact same companions) is nice, but I'm curious how they'll actually stage that, since running into companions is integral to each class storyline..

I've heard from several friends who saw it that the acting was down right horrible... ? but that the tongue-in-cheek humour saved it. It's kind of obvious that no-ones taking themselves seriously in it. As long as you approach it in that manner.. and understand that they're doing a pseudo-partial-steampunk version rather then sticking to exactly what was in the book.. (Not that any film version has truly stuck to the book, but some have been closer then others) It's pretty much full of some decent actors just having a laugh rather then being serious. If you look at the actors in it, none of them are actually bad actors : Mathew Macfadyen, Luke Evans, Roy Stevenson, Mads Mikkelson, Christoph Waltz... The whole film has that, slightly campy, over-acted, non-serious attitude. So yeah, its not something thats got depth of acting.

The Three Musketeers. They might have hashed the story up, and given some quite.... fantastical... elements in it, but they've caught the heart of a good swashbuckler. Throw in some nice action sequences and decent acting, it's actually quite entertaining. A few smart lines interspersed in there and Orlando Bloom is really smarmily villainous as Buckingham. Milla Jovovich makes a very acrobatic/ninja style version of Milady rather then the purely seductive route. Athos, Porthos, and Aramis actually seem to click together quite well, although something does look very odd about D'Artagnan's hair (but that's just being a wee bit nitpicky). Mads Mikkelson does a brooding Rochefort, but doesn't really get fleshed out. I still find it amusing that Christopher Lee caused a trend in eyepatches for Rochefort. The eyepatch was never used till he added it back in the 70's version, and pretty much every version since then has had Rochefort wearing one... And of course, they've added a small sequence at the end that practically promises a sequel.

Well I just took half an hour to finish off Rage. Hm, its a fairly pleasing shooter, and the vehicle stuff isn't too bad once you get into it. The single-player story has a fair few quirky, memorable characters populating the world.. but there certainly seemed something a little missing. You get warned about not paying attention to the Authority propaganda..but you never actually hear any of it until long after you've ended up joining the resistance.. Then all the buildup towards the end just.. peters out. It doesn't feel like an end-game mission. And the way it has you hitting a series of buttons while fighting off several small waves of not-too-hard enemies.. and then goes into a 30 second or so cinema sequence that doesn't provide any real payoff. It feels like it's only half a story. So I'm guessing they're planning on a sequel or some extensive DLC to do something. They talk about the big bad guy..and you never encounter him. Ah well. Entertaining for what it was.

So the whole "Galaxy of War" thing which is going to be some mass-cross-platform assortment of secondary "games" which can have an effect on the SP campaign, but aren't needed to play the SP to a satisfactory conclusion... Why do I have a vision of them doing another Facebook game, some cellphone/android/iphone based game app, and a bunch of other rather silly "mini-games" that can all hook up to the actual ME3 game in some manner... Although Ubisoft already did something similar to that with their AC facebook game....

Condolences Enoch.

"Man in a suit. Take that armor away and what are you, huh?" "Um.. a genius billionare playboy philanthropist.."

Well the cat is feeling pretty damn miserable from whatever gave it the stomach troubles.. Although I'm now sporting assorted scratches up my forearms, on my chest, and he managed to slash my throat a tad. Trying to wash a cat's behind, when the cat is that resistant to running water is not an easy solo job. But, eh, onwards with the day. Edit: And to be technically accurate.. none of them are mine.. All three are actually my sister's pets..

And now to really strike home an enjoyable morning.. The cat has diarhea, got it all stuck around its fur..then wandered the house. So stains on the carpet, the furniture, the windowsills... all attempting to clean it.. and of course the bastich cat won't let you clean it. He's going all fur-n-fang-n-claw. So managed to stick him in the travel box for a moment while some of the cleaning elsewhere gets done..

Figuring out how to use paint.net while re-reading a report to figure out what pieces go where.... and with some yuki kajiura music in the background. Set to the occasional interruption from the dogs, the cat, and the one handed-mother. Actually had some of the general family stress last night which had my sister in a mood, and then she suddenly stopped and looked at me with wide-eyes and did the whole "hang on.. we've got six weeks of this till her hand is better.. thats.. going to lead us right up to christmas!" - Just the way she suddenly realised that, then did the whole..shoulder-hunch, inward cringe.. was quite amusing.

It's not new science.. but damn it, it deserves to be mentioned..

You know it's going to be a good monday when it starts off with you being woken from slumber by a cat caterwauling outside your bedroom at 0600....

Hm, thought I'd catch the "Charlie Sheen Roast" on tv out of curiousity. I thought there'd be some actual wit in the roasting of.. but the majority of it seems to be fairly crude insults said with a smile. .. And then the celebrity audience laughs. There have been a few smart and funny lines..but.. Ah well. Maybe it's just an american thing. Although it makes me wonder that if they find this funny, why did they so get stressed out at the Oscar's with the snarky general purpose roasting by Ricky Jervais... Which was actually fairly smart. Or is it part of the non-translation between England and America?

It's always fun when you're reading something..suddenly feel the need to blow your nose..then find out that it's actually blood.

Well they basically cut her hand open and removed some bone from her thumb joint. Or well, hammered out one of the small bones that make that up. In about two weeks they take they unbandage it and take the stiches out, then put it into a splint, then about another 3 or 4 weeks and they start her on phsyio for it. The fun is popping out her pain meds and such along with the plethora of "normal" meds. But mostly have her sat back with her laptop watching dvd's at the moment..