Agiel

Decided I hated myself, gritted my teeth, and am now trying for the third time to complete Dragon Age 2 once and for all (the first time I failed to do so because I tired of the banality of the parachuting enemies, the second time because the main story bits in the third chapter that consisted wholly of people making the worst possible decisions sapped my will to continue). I think my stomach is going to hold out to the end this time since from my previous two playthroughs, and the aide of the wiki, I've discovered the gamebreaking stuff that lets me power through encounters, and also because this is the first playthrough in which I tried the Legacy DLC that I genuinely had a good time with. Just one observation; I've always loathed Anders in this iteration of the series, but I finally realised that listening to his party banter was a bit like John Malkovich inside his own head, as in all of dialogue can be summed up in: "Mage mage mage, mage mage mage mage mage." I play mostly pro-mage (given that my Hawke is a mage), but now I'm beginning to think Anders was written as such so as to make that path in the game less appealing.

Madness - Project Nexus 2 Kickstarter has a week to go with $10,000 left remaining for its goal. http://youtu.be/JNrpICfj4BA For those unfamiliar with the Madness series: http://youtu.be/hkYRmCKMCLo

Oh geez, that was actually a thing? I thought the proposed adaptation would go the way of many live-action adaptations of classic anime of development hell as has been the case with NGE, Battle Angel Alita, and Bubblegum Crisis.

In my time playing MMOs of late, I'd say that ratio has grown to 1/3rd of a given guild, though admittedly global chats give the impression that it's not the case.

For something called "Journey to the West," the trailer dedicates astoundingly little camera time to the Monkey King.

In honour of the release of Destiny, Tom Chick writes a piece on Halo: Combat Evolved espousing his belief that "The Library" was one of the greatest FPS levels of all time... which I actually think is bang on: http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2014/09/09/defense-halos-library/ For me, I actually really enjoyed the level since playing it co-op, it was the experience of playing Left 4 Dead an entire seven years before Left 4 Dead came out, and Chick hit the nail on the head about the shotgun.

Picked up the two volumes of <<Lune d'Argent sur Providence>> ("Silver Moon over Providence"), a <Western fantastique>> (fantasy western) about cowboys and girls fight werewolves, which for reasons that escape me takes place presumably in Rhode Island (that I was under the impression was the most un-cowboy place in the United States at the time it took place in). In any case, the art is superb and the writing (as far as my admittedly diminishing command of French can tell) keeps me engaged.

Stardock boss Brad Wardell's take on the recent debacle: http://forums.galciv3.com/457616

A coder friend relayed this story to me.

That's as paranoid and as nonsensical as if I were to say "Russia is sabotaging the USA by funding the KKK and Westboro Baptist Church." Actually, not too far off the mark as it is.

Played a Kuril Islands scenario in Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations wherein my Japanese Amphibious Group of destroyers (including two Kongo Aegis guided-missile destroyers) must traverse to Akula*-infested waters of the Sea of Japan, brave missileering Naval Aviation bombers, and confront a Russian KUG (Surface Striking Force) including one Slava guided-missile cruiser, a Sovremenny guided-missile destroyer, and two Udaloy anti-submarine destroyers, to make it to Sakhalin/Karafuto island. Thankfully, with the assistance of the submarines Soryu and Arashio, and P-3 Orions out of Hachinoche the sub threat was greatly diminished. F-15Js out of Chitose, and Mitsubishi F-2As (popularly referred to as the Viper Zero due to its more-than-passing resemblance to the F-16 that is nicknamed the "Viper", and its astounding manueverability harkening back to the famed Mitsubishi Zero of old) out of Misawa and Matsushima kept maritime patrol and ASW aircraft at bay as well as splashing their share of pestering Su-27s and MiG-31s. As a result of my surface forces observing strict EMCON, they were never located by the Russians until they were off the coast of Sakhalin. As for the Russian KUG it was crippled by two dozen F-2As flying below the radar horizon firing IIR-guided ASM-2 anti-ship missiles before finally being sent to the briney deep by the Soryu. Final tallies of losses and expenditures: *Russian for "shark," but in US naval parlance, a Russian class of nuclear attack subs.

...and meet the PLA's elite team of... architects:

Grand Ayatollah of Iran issues Fatwa against high-speed internet: http://www.iranhumanrights.org/2014/08/makarem-internet/ Khamenei: "No HD porn streaming for you! Come back one year!"

Camo patterns of the world as shown on a world map:

A sanctioned reveal video of the Dragon's Keep has been released, check it out:

Something I found to be quite funny today was discovering how many followers Zbigniew Brzezinski has on Twitter. Given how the service skews young, it's surprising to me how many users have even heard of the man.

http://www.straight.com/news/717061/gwynne-dyer-its-not-yet-all-out-war-between-russia-and-ukraine-its-close Last few paragraphs reminded me of a passage from Herman Kahn's On Escalation. I still read Dyer's articles with his voice from his narration of his documentary series, War. If you haven't seen it before, I highly recommend it; the third part won an Oscar for best documentary.

I seem to recall it only bumping that "Victory" bar by a sliver. If it was significant, then other decisions in the single-player game could more than make up for it (unless the player went out of his or her way to make the most absolutely horrible save for ME3 and continued their prosecution of the Reaper War in the same fashion).

God, I hope they don't force me into playing it, like they did with ME3. Tell me that's sarcasm, given that the multiplayer of ME3 (which I actually kind of enjoyed) was practically inconsequential in deciding events in the main singleplayer campaign.

MAY 4TH, 1942. 22:57 ZULU S 11° 07' 19" E 162° 50' 56" Care to guess what I'm about to do?

"Everything you read, swallowed, sucked, admired, proclaimed, refuted, defended was made up of hate-ridden myths and grinning masquerades, phony to the hilt." -Louis Ferdinand Celine, Journey to the End of the Night.

In my readings I've generally found the Anglo-American approaches of feminism takes more after the moral guardian tradition as opposed to the continental European post-modern, sex-positive approach. I think if Anita was more committed to constructively breaking perceived barriers rather than finger-wagging then more people would be far more amiable to her cause.

The thing I'm most curious about in Dragon's Keep is how in-depth the customisation features are for the dispositions for your previous characters in the series. For instance, if there was an option to set your Warden from DA:O as a scrappy city elf or a stoic mage, and whether or not that will be reflected if and when you meet him or her in DA:I proper. If it turns out that the Warden/Warden Commander has no insignificant amount of screentime in Inquisition, the amount of lines Bioware would have to record to account for all the different combinations would be quite impressive.

The US would also most certainly feel it if Iran decided to close the Strait of Hormuz and if pirates and rogue state navies ran rampant, causing insurance rates on merchant shipping to skyrocket and drive up the costs of goods, to name just two good examples of how the US suddenly seceding from the rest of the world would be counter-productive to American interests.