Gorth

Current parts: Lian Li Black PC-D8000 (new) Antec TruePower Quatro 1200 PSU Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 Motherboard (water cooled) 12Gb (6x2GB) Corsair XMP DDR3 (running at 1600Mhz) Intel I7 960 (3.2GHz) with EK Waterblock Creative PCI EXPRESS X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series Samsung 30" SyncMaster 305T+ (same model as the 'dead' one) Koolance RP-1005 (Reservoir and pump) EVGA GeForce GTX 590 Classified Hydro Copper DAS Keyboard ('S' as in "silent") SteelSeries Sensei Professional Mouse (new) Saitek X52 Pro flight stick AVerTV CaptureHD True HD 1080i TV Tuner (new) (finally got something to use Windows Mediacenter for ) Corsair Force Series GS 240GB SSD as system drive (new) External EK Radiator External 4TB Hitachi HDD (USB3) Windows 7 Ultimate A mishmash of old and new HDD's. Trying to get stuff consolidated on fewer, larger SATA3 from numerous small/tiny SATA2 drives (installing several new Hitachi Ultrastar 3TB drives). To-do: Get external 7.1 amplifier plus subwoofer Get replacement 30" for crappy Samsung monitor (waiting for Dell '13 version)

Tomb Raider the sandbox CRPG of exploration and discovery is probably too much to hope for.

Gathering enough courage to take my PC apart completely over the weekend and finally move to it's new home (a larger case). Probably going to spend a bit of time with a screwdriver in one hand and coffee cup in the other

Cranium Rats? (those who've played PS:T might get the reference) The ultimate lie detector or welcome to the "hive mind"? Interesting and scary at the same time

I've had this game (f2p version) installed for months. I really should try it some day

I didn't ask for no &^%$# multi player in my game dammit!

A bit of Spider Solitaire and Mahjong Titans is all the last few weeks I think (except for a brief revisiting of Warlock - Master of the Arcane)

Hehe... Tale: "Nepenthe, grab the shadow guy and hold him while I cast fireball on him!" Nepenthe: "What? Wait!!!..." *Woosh* As for choices, I believe each of A, B and C provides some bone crunching, player chunking choices. The demon and golems in the planar sphere, the numerous regenerating trolls in the druid grove and the beholders everywhere level in the unseeing eye. The latter is easy with the shield of Balduran though. I think I've only ever tried siding with Bodhi once, so that would be nice to see again. It's not like we have a lot of thieves in our party anyway

Entirely anecdotal, but... it is entirely possible to suck badly at math and do well in a development capacity. Ok, maybe as long as you don't have to invent new math problem solving solutions

Honestly? I find it tasteless. Not the food, but the deliberate targeting and profiting of peoples misery. Ranks up there with payday loans. Other peoples mileage may vary, just my 0.25$

Hi Gorth I wondering where you have been, you have been quiet lately. Good to have you back "Gorthfucious" Thanks. It's good to be back again. Did sort of keep an eye on the place, but mostly just to check for reports, spam accounts and unapproved posts. Things you can do in 10 seconds without being conspicuous while in meetings. Spent my nights in the city rather than at the hotel

3013 you say? Hmm... I might just hold off a bit then. I've been living with the constant flickering for more than a month now, while it's driving my crazy(more crazy?), I might survive 1 or 2 more. Thanks for the heads up. Not that I have any idea what the 13 implies compared to the 11 Edit: Yeah, I'm still stuck with my old 42" plasma. I just can't justify investing more on TV, since I rarely watch it. Maybe once or twice a week, catching some news or foreign language movie.

Cheapie me was just looking at the Asus PB278Q, which as I understand is their version of IPS (they call it PLS?). Mostly because it's $700 instead of $1000+ and Fry's carries it (I still don't like online ordering...). Sigh. I have such a hard time making decisions sometimes. Similarly priced in OZ Thing is, once you've had 30" for a few years, you just can't live without it... Candidate 1 (Dell) Candidate 2 (HP) Sadly, neither comes cheap, but my current Samsung was 1600$ plus shipping, which is why I was dreading the outcome of my little test.

Speaking of monitors... it looks like I owe my gfx card an apology (sorry gfx card). Hooking up a second monitor on my card and swapping the cables around a bit, seems to indicate that the "flickering" is following the monitor. Sort of sucks since it costs twice as much as the gfx card. I guess I'm in the market for a new monitor too. Looks like Dell and HP are the two contenders so far (currently wouldn't touch a Samsung monitor with a fire poker, great image quality, crappy production values).

Spent last week working interstate. Had an interesting trip home, as a storm was bearing down on Sydney, almost preventing me from leaving on the Friday night. Plenty of delays and cancellations and a rather bumpy ride when finally getting off the ground. Sort of makes you appreciate that you are wearing those seat belts, to prevent lumps on your forehead when hitting the ceiling

heh, I remember the original two cows, they were around 30 years ago, but there seems to have been added a few contemporary ones

Two people go into a room. One is a smoker, one is a non-smoker. Which one is the tyrant, the one that want the non-smoker to suffer through passive smoking or the non-smoker because he wants the smoker to stop it? It doesn't matter what you do, you are going to force a decision on one of them. I for one favour the one that doesn't really have a choice.

Didn't you have a 590 card? I've yet to find anything that could bring it to its knees. Most games run in 2560x1600 resolution and maxed out in most settings without issues

1) All of them 2) We've had a shapeshifter. You do the math

North Korea nuclear test: No radiation detected I don't remember if I shared my suspicion here or elsewhere a few years ago, but I can't help but think that all the posturing and playing with explosives is "Smoke and Mirrors". Does anybody actually, honestly, believe North Korea was ever in possession of anything but a truck load of TNT and a long fuse? Look up articles about Messines Ridge in 1917 for similar effects (largest man made explosion at the time).

Yeah, did that on my previous PC (by accident, not design). Trying to find the two pins to shortcircuit on the ATX cable to boot it up without having everything in place yet. Ran for all of 3 seconds before CPU turned hot and shut down the system.

I could understand it if it had been the same rig, but just about everything was replaced at the same time. First few cards died on the old PC and the recent batch of cards on my current PC (the last card did last almost 2 years though). I have an old Leadtek FX5900 card which is still chugging away in my old Pentium 4 archeotech computer (it's AGP though, not PCI, so I can't use it elsewhere), getting close to its 10th year

Hmm... tricky one that one. Desktop computer? Does it start the POST (i.e. show BIOS information, hardware info etc.) or does it die even before showing anything on the screen? Has it been exposed to lots of G's or power surges? How old is it?

Hmm... with THQ being in hot water/thin ice, they may have been "gagged" and not allowed to talk about anything that could affect the future of the project. Looks like UBI are the ones that have to greenlight any interviews at the moment.

The (catastrophic) intro until Flemeth + the somewhat more entertaining Isabela recruiting mission spliced in. Mmm, Isabela... While I applaud the decision to make the demo, the intro level wasn't exactly the best one Bioware's ever designed (close to the contrary, I'd say), and probably succeeded in turning off a lot of people who might have been on the fence otherwise. The demo actually got me to buy the game. It convinced me that while the camera was horrid, combat would still be fun, and the new flashy maneuvers was kinda cool. Though I kinda wanted an excuse to get the game, since I liked the first so much. My instincts told me no though, and unfortunately in the end they turned out to be right. So yeah, demos are a double edged sword. Given their length, they can sometimes not show you enough, and sometimes not show you how tedious somethign will be after doing too much. but they're better than not having a demo regardless. One thing to make sure of when you release a demo is, what is your selling point? Are you doing yourself favours by being "honest" (in what you chose to show)? Entirely anecdotal, I know, but I was lined up for buying DA2 at release (since I liked DA:O) and dropped it like a hot potato after playing the demo. The "combat" and complete omission of anything even remotely resembling the game mechanics and skill system from the first was what killed it for me. Only much later, thanks to some persistent individuals here, did I pick it up on a bargain and gave it a serious playthrough (two actually). I still hate the game mechanics, but other parts, the characters in particular, to some degree made up for it. Ironically, none of those were shown in the demo