majestic

Past? Mineral oil cooling ist still alive and kicking. Relatively speaking, that is...

I must admit it would be really funny to go for the full kit and then simply stick an i9 with a stock fan on it. With the weight, it could double as leave blower, or whatever else you want. Not going to lie, I kinda like the analog gauges, but everything else? No thanks, and especially not for the price.

EVGA released a new bare bone, the E1 https://www.evga.com/products/E1-bare-bones/ 5k USD for the case, a water cooled RXT 3090, a 1200W PSU and a mainboard.

For a more serious post, I just love these DIF recordings: Not a DIF recording, but something uniquely local: Finland might have a reputation for having dour people, and Britain a reputation for black humor, but neither beats Viennese this sort of morbidity.

Yeah, you already made it clear that you are a tasteless heathen, no need to repeat it.

It was supposed to be a joke. Guess that did not work.

Infidel! Seize him! But if you want some more Scooter, here's one with a shuffle dance music video: Anyway, but I have something better for you. What could possibly be better than Euro Dance Trash from the 90ies? Indeed, 90ies Euro Dance trash combined with German Schlager music. See this once in a lifetime collaboration of Schlager sensation Andrea Berg and your own favorite Swiss DJ, songwriter and coreographer, DJ Bobo!

Writings of Bogdan the Fat. Erm, The Book of Boba Fett. I guess it's a good thing that there is such a thing as a breastplate stretcher in the Star Wars universe, because Temuera Morrison sure doesn't look like he's in prime shape any more. Not that it really matters so much. Warning, language and all that. For the .538 people on the planet, who have never watched Game of Thrones, which I know congregate here on the forum in great number. Just to explain the breastplate stretcher joke. Anyway, in what continues to be a bit mistifying, this series, just like the second season of The Boys got a bit of a bad reputation. Not just here, mind, but generally. None of my friends liked it either, and while I have to admit the colorful Vespa like speeder bikes and the fanservice were a bit much, the rest of the series was far better than any of the other Disney Star Wars stuff - and yes, I'm counting both seasons of The Mandalorian, even if the second season got entertaining at times. With the caveat that I have not watched Kenobi yet. Kinda unmarked spoilers from here on out. I'll keep them brief and general though. Admittedly, Luke's inverted training session and Grogu being Luke and running off saving his friends left me groaning hard, but that's the sort of Star Wars fanservice that probably will never go away, and certainly not as long as Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau create these series. The best part of the series was Boba Fett living with the Tusken raiders, which luckily makes up most of the first half of the series. Wonderfully atmospheric, very slow and with almost no real dialogue, it just shows off that acting works better without a helmet on. Granted, that's a bit rich coming from just Boba amongst the perpetually covered Tuskens, but Boba is the main character, after all. Anyway, the one pointless thing was the Mandalorian focus episode where he was visiting his old clan. He learned by now that this most certainly is "not" the way, but he accepts exile or whatever for removing his helmet and is told redemption can only be sought underneath the now destroyed mines of Mandalore. What a load of crock, coming from a fringe nutjub sect. But hey, we have to set up another uneeded season of the Mandalorian somehow, right? Dunno, I enjoyed watching it enough to binge it. Certainly beats anything in terms of live action Star Wars that came out after 1983. Yeah, Boba Fett isn't much of a crime lord in the series, but that wasn't really the intention, was it? His experience with the Tuskens changed him. Yeah, too bad about the series killing off Cad Bane. He was great.

I did indeed continue on to Bard's Tale 2, a decision many a gamer likely rued. Or potentially all of them, because that was the worst dungeon crawler I've ever had the misfortune of playing. Arcane riddles, sprawling maps that randomly kill your light, songs, or spells and severely grating fights againt hordes of spellcasters that take ages because fifty of the three hundred enemies you're facing decide to cast area of effect spells. The impact is lessened a little with some of the items that can be found and by simply running away, but in the end, for the final few dungeons, all I did was run from every single fight and re-cast buffs. It's so bad the developers realized it and eventually give you items that can cast buffs (with infinte charges) that are immune to the anti-magic zones, but those are too little, too late, usually, and they still don't work against darkness. Nothing more fun than half the map being dark. Walk walk, check map. Walk walk, check map. Walk. Check. Walk. *sigh* Yeah, not touching that. Like ever again.

Uhm...

The reason why many guides suggest alternative armor scaling is because the longer the game goes on, the higher the charisma bonuses you can stack are, but armors have a cap on being useful. Maybe not in the beginning, but double dipping the CHA to AC bonus will eventually pay off more than wearing any armor, espescially when you pick Archmage Armour as one of your mythic feats. Crafted Mage Armor potions are great (bought ones work too, of course), and drinking a potion proccs AA. There just isn't any armor in the game that beats the combination. That's not to say that there aren't useful armors in the game, just not as defense mechanism. When characters wear armor, that's usually for some other gain, like the Hide Armor of Elemental Carnage.

Good news everyone, Isreal about to unleash their most fearsome weapon on Russia. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Made in Abyss: Dawn of the Deep Soul Well, that escalated quickly. I liked Bondrewd, but everything else in this movie felt like watching Rebuild, and the story lost whatever preciously little grounding it had. I had a laugh out moment when Reg suddenly turned into the void creature that lurks inside the shell of the knight from Hollow Knight, although, assuming that this is in the manga too, it probably predates the game. Riko keeps being grating, and I switched to the English dub for a bit where her grating whine suddenly turned into a wailing shriek that pierced my eardrums and left me bleeding. Not sure what the voice direction for these scenes where she's crying was, but the result isn't very convincing, neither in the original, nor in the English dub. Decided to hop onto YouTube and look for a sample, but I found several short clips from season two, where scenes are depicted that - combined with the titles - are REALLY making me looking forwad to it. One was Riko makes a poo and another one is Riko has a tentacle fetish with something going into her mouth in the thumbnail. Highlight of the movie was when Prushka - a girl introduced in the film - was talking with Riko about Reg's penis and the errection he gets when he sees boobs or touches Nanachi. Prushka doesn't know the word penis, but after Riko doodles one, she calls it a papa pole. Papa is what she calls Bondrewd, the ever polite villain of the film. I better not think about the implication of why she would call that doodle a papa pole and pretend it was just the subtitles that were translated funnily. Also, here's an image of experiments done on Reg. Please take detailed note of the suction tube attached to his penis. The series is positively obsessed. Scenes like this one makes me glad for Riko's butthole examination yielding no appreciable results because Reg's sphincter broke all probes. Yeah, well...

My parents decided that it's time to catch the 'rona. They're both fine outside of regular flu symptoms. I've been feeling a little tired, but otherwise I'm fine, in spite of having had close contact. Third time (that I know of, at least) I'm directly exposed due to coworkers and family. Antigen test came back negative, so not sure. Might be tired from something else, but it sure feels a little like I'm a little under the weather.

Unlimited paid time off, i.e. no set amount of vacation days.

Nichelle Nichols

Problems with license plates. #balkanthings

So this is basically you right now: Don't worry about getting flamed.

Made in Abyss, season 1. Well, finished the part that's currently on Netflix here, which is the 13 episodes of the first season. The last episode is twice as long, so technically it has the runtime of a 14 episode show with 25 minute episodes. Not that it changes much. The pacing is all over the place, which is less of an issue than it might seem. Over the course of the first season, Reg's penis is talked about on three separate occasions. Once after Riko examines him, once after a grown up looks at it in curiosity and once more when Riko and Reg go skinny dipping in the Abyss, which has a very obvious consequence that Riko comments on by basically asking him: "What's going on with your willy?" Riko, on the other hand, hangs naked from the ceiling, gets undressed after some distress because Reg wants to 'check' her for any injuries, gets undressed after a serious injury, and of course while bathing (where she can't do it herself due to the aforementioned injury). She also, on three separate occasions, soils herself. While it does make sense that she would do that under extreme duress (once unconscious while poisoned, once while in terrible pain), the reason why it was necessary to comment and in one case show it is not entirely within the grasp of my understanding. The third one was an 'accident' at night because she was afraid to go to the loo. Well, all in all, it could have been worse, I suppose. Riko is, at least according to the subtitles, 12 years old, and the nudity doesn't carry funny undertones or is sexually charged, skinny dipping commentary aside, perhaps. As far as random cruelty against children goes, we have the naked hanging from the ceiling punishment that is not only popular in the orphanage, and the group of people who research and explore the Abyss who randomly scoop up unwanted children from all over the world to use them in disfiguring to lethal experiments. Because why not. That said, back to the pacing. Soft spoilers from here on out - but they should be safe for @Bartimaeus and his patented spoiler reading technique. Now that all reads rather negatively, and the question then becomes, why binge it? Because, surprisingly, while the emotional part of the series did not work for me at all, the mystery part does. Like I alwas maintain, give me a decent mystery to look at, and I'm game. The Abyss serves that function wonderfully, and the exploration part of the series is really nice. It is also, ah, a prelude to a disappointing ending, I suppose, if such an ending comes. Can't recall a decent mystery series where the mystery didn't end up being a letdown, or unexplained. But never mind that, the second season is only ongoing, and who knows if it even finishes the storyline. At the risk of sounding like @Bartimaeus after watching Madoka, if you want me to care about the abject terror that characters experience, make me care about them first. With the characters not really working for my Darth Vader, I suppose, they're not really going to work for @Bartimaeus' Palpatine. I do forgive much more easily, after all.

@Amentep @Fionavar move to Grounded tech support please, nobody's going to read it in here.

I liked Event Horizon, and as far as horror movies go I'd consider it a favorite of mine. For some reason it's really divisive, many people just hated the film, other consider it a cult classic. The one thing that's certainly odd watching the film nowadays is Cooper, the bumbling comic relief, constantly talking black guy on the crew with the sexist jokes (offering coffee with a quippy hey, want something hot and black in you? - yeah, that wouldn't be in the movie if it came out today, huh). I would also argue that Event Horizon and the first Alien vs. Predator film are far from terrible as far as movie crafting goes. Actually was surprised by AvP because I expected Mortal Kombat level action trash and got a decent actiony film out of it. As long as you can accept the kooky premise and the universe welding. Prometheus one-upped that by fusing Blade Runner into it.

Particularily true in IWD where playing on insane difficulty doubles the experience gain. Harder start, much easier rest of the game. Power creep is less problematic than in BG2 because regular mages are useless due to the limited scroll availibility, but if you play the EE and take a sorcerer with you, even that become moot. Mind, the game experience significantly improves when you can just fireball your way through Kresselack's tomb, but it doesn't make the game as such more interesting.

Well, in that case the point is kind of moot. It's not really required anyway, but if you artificially deflate experience values your DC experience will vary greatly. I'll freely admit to not being able to judge BG1 fairly insofar as it has way too many useless side areas that I can't ignore, so I waste significant amounts of time in the wilderness, and since I already finished the game once, I'm usually nope, I'm outta here either before Cloakwood or after entering Baldur's Gate. I also don't really enjoy the hands-off story telling of either IWD or BG1 and prefer the IWD2 and BG2 way of being more directly engaging. It's not as bad in BG1 as it is in IWD. I'd be more inclined to sit through IWD's dungeon slog if everything was a little more engaging, but you're directing a group of nondescript adventurers through a bunch of locations on a relatively small scale group of quests that sometimes tell stories about those locations - like Kresselack's Tomb and Kresselack's problem with the Priestess of Auril - but I always find myself not caring an iota for any of them. The nice visuals, the music, the mood and, indeed, the writing - nothing of it is in service of anything interesting. IWD2 on the other hand improved on these aspects. Yes, the characters are still a bunch of nondescript nobodies I don't care a fig about (in what is one of life's little ironies, building the characters is more fun in IWD2, so that helps too, even if I actually don't like 3E that much), but everything else is better. In IWD, you talk a bunch with the villagers of Easthaven, and are then off, and the game gracefully kills your only point of attachment, then gives you a new one (who is boring as hell) and kills him off quickly too. In IWD2, you spend some significant amount of time in Targos getting to know everybody, shore up defenses, then fight off the incoming attack and go on a counter offensive. It is much more engaging than trying to help Kuldahar with its bunch of numpties (except Oswald, but he's not doing much in IWD). It's combat is - for better or worse - equally sloggy, but it feels more dynamic and interesting due to the encounter design and some fresh ideas (war drums, exploding kegs, fortifications, etc.). Even if it makes no difference in the long run, I want to save that bridge and rush for the enemies wanting to destroy it. In IWD, by the time I reach Kresselack, I'm done with the game. Screw Kuldahar, who cares if they get snowed in. I don't really see where IWD's gameplay would rank significantly above IWD2's. They're both full of endless trash fights (funny how some of us expected something different from Pillars of Eternity, talk about not learning from experience) and IWD2 is just smoother in almost every way and isn't just "go to this dungeon, kill everything in it" all through the game. IWD2's Ice Temple and Dragon's Eye time loop might get old after going through them once, but IWD's Kresselack's Tomb gets old the first time you're there. Never mind Dragon's Eye and its five ginormous levels, and then there's still more and more and more to slog through. Ugh. Yeah, no, let me walk through empty wilderness please. We had that exact argument on this forum like seven years ago, and there were (are still, probably) posters who believe that any and all RtwP game would be significantly improved by simply slapping a turn based mode on the existing encounters. Baffling, really. Can you imagine going to rescue Dynaheir in BG1 with turn based combat before your party has any significant amount of area of effect capabiities? Fighting off 200 gnolls by taking turns where only like two of your party members have any realistic chance of hitting them? That would be awesome indeed!

PS:T > BG2 > IWD2 > BG > a rock > rusty nails in your scrotum > slow, agonizing death by necrotizing fasciitis > IWD. Willing to die on that hill. Come at me.