Enoch

The most entertaining thing I've found while exploring uncharted ME worlds:

Interesting link. I'd be curious to see the actual calculations of their "misery-to-joy" rating system. The Steelers are a great modern team, but before the early 70s, they spent 40 years as, well, the Pittsburgh Pirates of the NFL. Frankly, I thought my Giants were a bit too high. The write-up talks about the franchise's consistency over 80+ years, but glosses over the awful period from 1964 to 1980 (which featured only 2 seasons with a winning record and not a single playoff appearance). Also, I'd have thought that their long tradition of crapping out in championship games (12 losses to only 6 wins) would've hurt them more.

Yesterday, I played in a 6-inning softball game-- the office team's season opener. I'm ridiculously out of practice at the plate (was rushing my swing way too much and got lucky reaching base twice on ground balls that weren't fielded very well), but I did a competent job in the field. Plus, our team won by a pretty wide margin.

On the southern tip of India, the full moon rises exactly after the sun sets, only twice a year, according to the people there it's one of the only places on Earth it happens.. Also I've never seen the moon rise in the same spot as the sun had set here in Denmark. Well, sure, I didn't mean to imply "at that very exact instant." I'm sure that is quite rare, given that all the bodies in question are constantly moving and lots of little variables can change things (e.g., only one longitude on earth will see the sun set at the moment that the moon is precisely at the most "full" stage of its cycle; lunar day and night are longer than solar day and night due the the moon's orbit, etc.). But, in general, it is true that the full moon rises sometime around sunset and sets sometime around sunrise.

Charles Mingus -- Pithecanthropus Erectus

IIRC, it's the "medium textures" option in the config. I went with what the game recommended to me (e6400C2D, 2 GB RAM, 8800GTS320, 1440X900 native res), except with dynamic shadows off, because that created some really stoopid-looking shadows on characters' faces. Performance has been very solid, so I could probably push some of the settings a bit if I cared to. Keep in mind that, for 95% of the game, you're not seeing faces that close-up. This was an unusually close-in dialog shot, listening to/responding to an audio transmission. Without a different character to share the screen or any accompanying body language (which, IMO, they did very well-- much better than the lip synching, which is consistently off by just enough to be annoying), the camera gets closer than it otherwise would.

Actually, now that I think about it, polar latitudes wouldn't be an exception. Since the moon's orbit is on the same plane as the earth's orbit, when the moon is full (i.e., when earth is directly between the sun and the moon), every place where the sun sets, the moon should be rising.

They do when the moon is full. (Exception: polar latitudes)

Yeah, that's probably true. If my time zone calculation is correct, his post was up around 9PM local time. Since the full moon rises at sunset and sets at dawn, and sunset is pretty late at Wals' latitude at this time of year, the moon was probably pretty low on the horizon, shining through the somewhat-less-than-pristine British skies. (I initially assumed that Wals' statement that he was "up late working" meant he was up significantly later, which would put the moon pretty high in the sky.) Still, it's a fun excuse to quote prophecies of doom.

Just fer fun, here's my ME character.

I apologize in advance for this. No subscription needed: Newsong -- The Christmas Shoes. (I strongly caution people who are not Wals from clicking the link.) This song actually gets mainstream radio play in the States in November and December. And they did a made-for-TV movie based on the song. Horrifying.

Head for the hills!!!!

Playing ME PC. About 20ish hours in, level 25 or so, as a mostly-Paragon female Infiltrator (I somehow picked both Renegade-leaning backgrounds for my character, though, because the other ones just seemed boring). Finished Therum and Noveria, and am currently plowing through a very boring Moonbase. It has its flaws, but I'm having fun. Also, although I'm not much of a shooter player, I'm finding the combat reasonably easy (on normal difficulty). Unless I get careless and a rocket (or somesuch) one-shots me, the fights haven't been particularly tough. The Rachni on Noveria were a challenge in that all my tech skills and excellent shield power are pretty much useless against them, but they just didn't hit hard enough or last long enough to be a serious threat.

How about a pound of swiss, boneless chicken breast sliced into strips, and a twelve pack of Coke Zero. Depends on what part of the Swiss' body you took the pound from.

Did some improvisational cooking last night that I feel like talking about, so I'm resurrecting this thread again. Thawed some boneless chicken breasts yesterday, but wasn't sure what to do with them. Ended up roasting them thusly: Made up a quick black bean salsa (1 can drained rinsed black beans, 1 can diced tomatoes (also drained), 3 cloves minced garlic, a little diced red bell pepper, a fistful of chopped fresh parsley, salt, pepper, cumin, olive oil, balsamic vinegar). Mixed up about 2 tsp. Cumin with 1 tsp. kosher salt, some pepper, and some of the parsley that didn't go in the above with enough olive oil to make a paste-ish consistency. Rubbed this all over the chicken breasts. The salsa went into the bottom of a pyrex baking dish, and I settled the coated chicken breasts (3 breast halves, although I probably could've fit 4) into it. Roasted at 450F for 20 minutes. Served over steamed rice with some steamed broccoli. I was quite happy with how this turned out. Some self-criticism: I probably over-seasoned the chicken. Less salt & cumin with more herbs (parsley was the only fresh herb I had on-hand) and more time for the flavor to soak in before cooking probably would've been better. Other things that I could've added to the salsa: sweet corn, pitted kalamata olives, diced red or green onion.

I'm about 6-7 hours in, and have had exactly 1 crash, while attempting to exit the casino game.

3 seems ideal to me. Generates quirkier parties than the F-W-C-R lineup that most people will default to with 4 chars, and gives us more room for interesting joinable NPCs.

Charlie Parker -- Blues for Alice. No matter how many times I've heard this track, I still find myself thinking how unbelievably fantastic it is every damn time. (And it's only 2:40 long!)

In my experience, non-romantic in-depth interaction with NPCs > romantic in-depth interaction with NPCs. (And it isn't close.) The former invokes actual curiosity in the player as to the character and how he/she/it fits into the gameworld as a whole. The latter invariably descends into a meta-gamey "quest for electronic nookie" with a character who has no reason to be attracted to you other than the fact that you have the big invisible "PROTAGONIST" sign floating above your head. I'm not saying it can't be done well-- just that, in my experience, it hasn't.

Today, I manned the grill at the office picnic. The bratwurst were excellent. Edit: By the way, this is an excellent tactic to get away with drinking beer at 11AM in front of your boss.

Exploration can be fun, provided that there is both a gamey way to bypass the tedium (a Fallout-style overland map works well for this), and something actually interesting out there for us to find (as counter-examples, see the ridiculously boring exploration done in BG1 and Mass Effect). As far as I'm concerned, NWN2 (like pretty much all D&D games) already had too many race/class options the day it shipped. With so many options, it becomes impractical for devs to make any interesting content that reacts to these player choices. I'd much much rather have fewer choices that are actually meaningful in gameplay than a bajillion choices that just shift some +1s around on my character sheet. On the other hand, the make-your-own party structure probably helps in this. It didn't make sense resource-wise to make class/race/religion-specific content because only a tiny % of players would end up seeing it. With a MYO party, it becomes more likely that a player is going to have a Dwarf, or a Druid, or a Malarite to trigger appropriate NPC reactions, which in turn makes designing that kind of content much more worthwhile. Also, trade-based factions/setting/story = win. And we need some industrial espionage solo missions for the rogue in the group.

OK, I can't top that. At the heat of the day, it was around 100F/38C with high relative humidity.

I wouldn't limit it to that. Both my character and 2 or 3 of the first NPCs I met had bizarre angular splotches on their face that went away when I turned dynamic shadows off.

The combination of the hottest day of the year (thus far) and a derailment in the subway line I normally ride home makes for a rather unpleasant afternoon.