Raithe

Felt fairly cruddy through most of yesterday. Skipped a bonfire and drinks session with friends since I wasn't feeling so brilliant. Actually ended up in bed about 5 or 6 hours earlier then I normally am. Still woke up this morning feeling fairly shattered but that seems to be passing. Broke out the old technical drawing board, I suddenly had the urge to solidify a few sketches and doodles I'd had circling around.. so I started working up some starship deckplans for the geeky fantasy aspect. Of course, hunched over a drawing board tends to make the shoulders ache, and I realised just how I was sat had deadened one leg.. so I've just spent 10 minutes half hopping around to get feeling back in it...

I think Wals point lays in the idea that if it proliferates that you have an inalienable right to education up to x point, regardless of the effort you're willing to put into it... then that starts to get into certain dodgy grounds. What would be the point of people bothering to push themselves to achieve scholarships or aim to produce actual abilities.. if you know you can get access regardless? If you know everyone is getting in regardless of what you do, how many people really start flexing themselves? Maybe I'm just cynical about human nature, but self-motivated and disciplined people (especially teenagers) aren't exactly common on the ground..

As in.. "it's speak like a pirate day!" "but i don't know any somalian..."

I'm damned if I'm writing this script. That's why I thought I'd kick it across to the forum! That's what I mean, if you can't get someone to write a full script, do you know any budding sketch/comic type artists who might be capable of storybording it? If you've got a series of storyboards of the general flow, helps you explain key points of it, and convey some of the image of the whole thing....

Hm, and Peter Falk's obituary is out.. the aging actor passed away on Thursday..

It also reaches that point of holding people back to make room for people who don't have the abilities... How long before we're hearing "it's not fair because my child doesn't have the same opportunities just because he's stupid/lazy/feckless!" and then we're all in a world of hurt.... Part of the issue is laying out what constitutes a proper "basic" education...

Hm, and out of the blue Lucasarts and Sony have announced that they'll be ending Star Wars Galaxies this December.. I hadn't even realised that was still running...

Human Rights is a nice fuzzy area to throw potentially related things in.. Plus it means that if the HM Government win, the people making the complaint can then run to Belgium and the EU, make the "Human Rights Abuses" complaint, and get the EU trying to force the fairly broke UK government into spending even more money it doesn't have to "level the playing field"...

I guess we need to send them a copy of that BBC documentary, the study that shows that video games have actually decreased crime levels in the U.S.

The thing was.. I recognised several of these as relevant to house rules/traditions we evolved.. Makes me wonder just how many people had the same.

It's easily recognisable

You're getting a lot of strange load crashes (you had them with DA2, too, right?). Anything strange with your hardware? Hm, no didn't have anything odd with DA2. I haven't changed any hardware in awhile, and I've run through ME2 and all of the dlc before without having this happen.. Although this was the first time I started from the beginning with all the dlc added in. So I'm half wondering if it's some freakish bug because I'm trying to do it before finishing off the main storyline. But it's literally.. kill the shadowbroker, have that cutscene and the conversation.. get the ME2 loading screen (the normandy diagram) and then right when it should be opening up with you on the Normandy post mission it just crashes to windows. If I reload a save from before running Shadowbroker, I can go off and carry on with the main storyline, do sidequests..and no problems. At the moment it appears to be that single point.

A selection of important RPG rules for any campaign...

Saints Row the Third - Developer Walkthrough Just a bit of the developers showing off the new world and some of the tweaks they've added..

I woke from weird alien conspiracy and being hunted dreams. That started my paranoia off fine this morning.. Now I'm trying to mellow the day along after yesterdays anger.

I returned to Lair of the Shadowbroker on ME2... That's still a very nicely developed dlc, with some nice soundtrack, good visuals and amusing lines. The Shadowbroker is a bit of a bastard on insane I'll say that. And then the frigging thing crashes on the loading screen before returning me to the Normandy.. And I can't find a bloody thing explaining why I get that. Maybe I'll have to try reinstalling it all.

What, you're forgetting Georgian? (the country, not the state...)

Between lying company reps trying to take advantage of the disabled parent, and crappy banks that have one teller open who carries on chatty conversations that last 15 minutes with the person paying in money while the queue grows bigger and more impatient... This has not been the most happy-making of days.

I'm still keeping my eye out for the garbage powered nuclear reactor sized to fit to the buggy..

After much pondering, I considered the balance of what Fox and many others say..and thought I'd stick this in the funny things thread.. New Study Says Games are to Blame for the Decrease in US Crime Edit: And on a seperate note .. It could happen.. The I-Evolution

Having that general pissiness over companies that try to take advantage of the elderly and disabled. The new batteries for my mother's mobility buggy arrived and were the wrong sort..after we'd queried, double-checked and told them not to deliver if they were lead-acid. So they outright lied by email and phone, then delivered them, lied again when we complained, told us gel-based batteries were no longer in production after having told us they were sending gel-based to us..then lied some more... Spent half an hour trying to get us to accept them.. Only when we pointed out just where they were lying did they finally accept that we weren't happy and agree to collect the batteries back and refund us. Of course, now it's the wait and see to check if they actually do that before having to kick up more fuss

Green Lantern. Not too bad actually. The effects were nice, although I think Asgard looked a lot more impressive then Ooa so they lost out on that cgi battle... Reynolds pulled his part of with aplomb. Interesting the way they slid Sinestro's character in and kept the "good" lantern side of him active. They're definitely doing the spadework for the sequels. They didn't really put out the stops for what the ring can do..but the stuff they did was well-done.

Eh, where there's a valid point to it, or a purpose that would be one thing. Even if I disagree with someone about their choices, if they honestly believe them there can be some sort of respect. But when it turns out to be some teens or twentysomethings doing it just "cuz" it's the thing to do... I don't really see the romanticism behind those beliefs. "I did it because they're 'The MAN!' No other reason, I don't actually have anything against them or a viewpoint about it.. but They Are the Establishment! So I can screw with them and it's a good thing! Because it shows I have MAD SKILLZ!" If there had been something like "governmant law being passed which makes them more big brotherish and so I'm going to show them how independent we are by screwing with them" .. That would have been more understandable. But with a lot of these most recent hacks.... They just seem very fuzzy beyond "Woo, Look at me! Under this Pseudonym! Causing Trouble!"

Was it 200 million? Ah, that does sound more likely, although it is still an insane number. It is going to be difficult to break even with that type of budget, I'd imagine. At the price of cinema tickets today? Especially for 3d films? Hm, that pre-summer Big Comic-Adaption Action film.. eh, I don't think it'll take too much to get them out of the red.. Edit: Hm, cinema ticket for 3d film was about

Eh, stores actually having a selection of physical pc games to buy has been limited for years over here. Even before steam kicked into high gear, pc gamers were lucky to find a couple of shelves with games on compared to the hordes of console related material. Hell, I think it's been about 8 years since I picked up a game via a real brick and mortar store - mostly because it's simpler and usually cheaper to buy via Amazon or the like. (And Amazon actually class as a retail store, even if they sell via the interweb). Although what I find interesting about the quote from 1C.. is that "if a game is sold by a retail store for