osmosisch

- Freedom Force is awesome - Infinite is a great experience but I found playing as a rampaging murderbeast to be not fitting with the beauty of the surroundings, with shepherding a young girl around, or with my current personal tastes. - It's great that Infinite is fun for people who don't like to explore; however, their preferred playstyle (whoote verything) is basically imposed on me, while mine (peaceful exploration) isn't on theirs. This is a sensible choice from a developer's perspective but I can't help but be disappointed that the game isn't perfectly suited to me. Wtinessing Columbia's fall, rather than sifting through the remains of the wreckage of Rapture's society, turns out to cause too much dissonance for my tastes. Alternatively, this can be phrased as "I don't enjoy playing as an unavoidbly evil character".

Oh, sorry, I must have messed something up in the settings e: ah, fixed it.

I definitely prefer the collections that I read of Borges' over this collection, he's got infinitely more variety (but then this is a themed collection as I understand it). Great poetic language for sure, and a fantastic concept. Very happy this book got picked.

I definitely agree that . Playing through this game was a great experience marred by a lot of niggles like that. The violence and continuous popups were quite disturbing for example. Still, the gorgeous world and largely fascinating story more than made up for it. Also, the sequence near the end where was almost too much to bear for me. That really speaks for both the quality of the voice acting and the emotional bonds this game managed to create in me.

I cannot stress enough how much this vexes me. Similarly the super-far-apart checkpoints and lack of a save-and-exit option. Very irritating when you have small children / a spouse.

Mine didn't work?

It's basically a team-based version of Foursquare that includes PvP stuff. It's pretty fun. I'm lucky enough to live on top of a portal so I cna hack from my couch.

The easiest powerpoint fix is to run them through google docs, like so: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1iR1SOyMBfs1GqVn0SHjsYR4Ph_gWmQLJOnMBkyUESIY/edit?usp=sharing

Sorry to be so brief, I'm a bit frazzled lately. The main part that I found intriguing was that seeing a complex social process in a game actually affected your outlook on politics and life. It's sometimes fun to pretend that online/game stuff isn't "real" and this sort of thing is a bit of a wake-up call that, no, everything one does as a person is a real thing. Also it takes a bit of guts to admit to having been a randroid (or just being young ) I hope to get back to this later more coherently.

My dissertation was basically the papers I published/tried to get published during my PhD with an introduction and discussion bolted to either end. And of course the acknowledgements (the only part anyone will ever read). Amusingly, I'm proudest of the cover in the end which I also made.

I'm sorry to hear things are getting to you ThunderPeel. Posting this thread shows a lot of integrity and proper self-examination in my opinion, which I applaud. I hope you feel better soon and manage to develop a method of interaction that isn't so harmful to you (and possibly provocative to others, but hey).

Wow, what a post. That made me think!

This is bad form as far as I'm concerned. Private is private.

TerryPratchett has come to similar conclusions –or at least penned a very prescient witticism– attributing 'wizard' to a contraction of 'wys ars' or “wise-ass”.

So far the 3DS has mainly felt like a downgrade after the simple perfection and excellent battery life of the DS Lite. The bigger screen is nice but not worth it, the 3D is headache-inducing and best switched off immediately and the plethora of unnecessary buttons is irritating. Still, I'm a neophobe and things might turn out OK.

This is my wife's impression as well. I got her the game as a birthday gift without paying attention to the box, which meant she subsequently bought herself a 3DS as a second birthday gift. Ho-hum.

Being stuck in the EU as I am, if any of you happened to wander by the Riot booth and picked up a skin code for a League of Legends character I should be rather grateful if I coudl get my grubby mitts on it.

In reference to this: Riot also seems to have this as their main priority: http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/riot-knows-it-cant-change-toxic-behavior-in-league-of-legends-thats-why-its http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/24/4140968/league-of-legends-riot-games-player-behavior-pax-east-2013 Their social/player behaviour group has really been making strides lately. Interesting/notable might be that they are definitely against the 'island of assholes' system that Valve is trying, with the argument that it reinforces their bad behaviour rather than steering them away from it.

Done.

I loved frozen synapse but never was able to get into blood bowl and most sports games in general so this is sad news to me.

To answer the podcast question: I'm happy enough to read non-awesome books on the 'casts recommendation because more often than not it will lead to more interesting discussion, and I welcome any avenue into reading books that aren't lauded as classics/must-reads by everyone but are still interesting. Also if I'd known physically mailing you books would do the trick, I'm very close to sending you guys Kapuscinski's Imperium or maybe Another day of life because I am very sure you'll get a kick out of his work. Maybe once the queue gets shorter.

Due to an Amazon mixup I only just managed to get my hands on this book and read it, and haven't had the opportunity to listen to the cast yet. I'll just leave my thoughts on the book itself here and come back if anything in the cast triggers further thoughts/remarks. Overall, I wasn't very impressed. The WW2 stuff is a weaker version of Sophie's Choice, the seventies San Francisco has no interest to me (what does it matter that there's a gay bar district or that the economic/historical situation is in flux?) and the greatest subject of novelty/interest, ie. the mentally unbalanced narrator, is left as a cipher. The weirdest and most ludicrous scene has to be his visit to the lesbian bar where they play "the music that he knows is called disco" and he gets his feet stepped on before being ejected by a bulldyke. I don't know much about the author but it reads to me like the person who is ultimately receiving therapy is herself, via several layers of proxy. The beloved patient finds a great degree of closure. the person narrating his listening-in appears to at least improve his ability to keep his demons at bay, and one presumes the author at least was able to frame the issue of identity/belonging a bit more clearly for herself. This theme is also the part of the book that worked best to me. Finally, this book recalled Chabon's Yiddish Policeman's Union to me in its dealing with the problem of Israel's existence. It is good to be reminded of the incredible pressure that country and its people are under (without necessarily getting political). I'd definitely say the book was worth the time to read it, and it was gripping while I was going through it but definitely my least favourite of the cast books so far. Oh, perhaps of general interest: the spelling/nomenclature of both Polish names featured are misspelled or at least weird according to my wife.

Agreed. This would also make my project of head-binding my newborn into his shape more practical.

Haha, I love this.

Funny, I was considering posting about how not eating meat has been a great thing for my life, but couldn't figure out a way to phrase it that I didn't feel would come across as preachy or trollish. So good job guys and +1 to what you guys said,