Xalder

You heard it here, folks, next episode probably in april. Teasing aside this was a fun one. Thanks for the fun as always, Ross!

I'd offer my voice but it's probably too masculine lol, unless you wanted a male voice for Chell's mind as part of the humor.

I vaguely recall Ross wanting to hire animators for Civil protection. He could never find anyone who stuck around long enough to actually get much of it done. And anyway I'd like to see someone try to animate the cartoon animated episode with the gravity gun. That would be a bit more impressive.

I've been having issues with changing user settings as well.

I'm downloading and plan to seed the "All The Freeman" torrent. If you're trying to download that and don't have any seeders, try hitting me up on skype @Xddash1, and I'll make sure my Deluge (torrent program that I use) is running. I had the set of everything up to 54 on my iPod, figured it would be nice to have the rest. I'm also planning on creating a separate list of files that include the full audio ripped from the videos (voice and sounds, the full audible Freeman's Mind experience). It's a great thing to have for if you can listen but not watch. Like having a podcast of awesomeness. I've never created a .torrent for others to download so I'd have to figure that out. First, of course, I'll need to do the audio extractions first (there are youtube conversions that usually work) since I lost the set of pure Freeman's Mind Audio files I used to have.

Do what I did, video first, then go through and read the comments, pausing every few moments to catch up on reading. :3

Congratulations on finally finishing this project, Ross! I'm glad to have been able to see it reach a conclusion. Looking forward to your future videos!

The way some people are talking about how it's depressing that the series would be ending and that HL2 would be a whole new series, blah, blah, blah, actually kind of confuses me. Sure you'll get through the first Half-Life by the end of the year and FM is up in the air, but if there was a return, how would it be a new series? It would be the exact same series, continuing. Hell, it wouldn't be "Freeman's Mind 2 Episode 1 (No... no, not HL2 Episode 1, that's something else, damn, guys.)" It would be "Freeman's Mind Episode [one episode number higher than the end of Half-Life 1]." Like geeze. Get a grip.

Even when you lose, everyone wins.

No, that's as it appears in-game. I didn't! Maybe it seems shorter because I went up there and started talking to the scientist instead of standing around. The only other thing I can think of is Half-Life Source shortens it compared to Half-Life original. If you guys want to be scientific about this, how about somebody load up Half-Life and clock it? I didn't modify the timing in this episode except small adjustments during the level loads (which occurs before you even enter the chamber), so you can use my video as a benchmark for HL:Source. Oh I can talk about Machinima, just that there's a few small things I can't discuss. All the huge stuff is public anyway. As for Blip, I made a post on it a while back, but my timing couldn't have been worse essentially. I joined blip.tv JUST before Maker Studios came in and bought them out, since then, the income from them fell dramatically. I'm not removing the old links, but it's simply not worth it compared to Youtube now. I'd been wondering about that, too. Good to know.

He's onto us!

They are not the only ones you know. This breed of humans is everywhere. Of course such people are everywhere, but you hardly ever notice them. That kind of legal theft and overall shittyness isn't talked about much, as far as I've seen.

Oh man, do they have a programed version of that? There should be a one-shot of Freeman's reaction to it, if so. I bet HLPrincess would enjoy that.

So I read up a little bit on the Koch Brothers. Holy fuck are those idiots a monument of misspending. Like, way worse than Black Mesa.

Hard to find good discussions on serious topics when one person is busy yelling at the idiot that doesn't know what he's talking about. The two of them end up taking over the discussion with really stupid crap. Like, seriously. The idiot is obviously determined to remain ignorant, fucking ignore him.

Makes me wonder how much it would cost to set up a website similar to youtube. Definitely loads. How much data they must have sitting on how many storage devices across their massive server. Just the storage space would take up a lot.

I had a banana milkshake. Bet Freeman would be jealous. On the other hand I'm jealous of his amazing conception of aliens...

He mentions drugs several times throughout the series. Also mentions booze a few times as well. The explanation for those was already given. They had to pad out their costs so that they spent a billion dollars the one year, that way they'd get a billion dollars the next year. Otherwise they'd have spend more money on lobbyists to get their billion dollars the year after that. And that would mean they'd have to compete with other lobbyists. And nobody wants that, they could get into a bidding war. You laugh at it, but it's a lot fasterand cheaper, to just build a giant nutcracker room, write it off, and be done with it. I wrote that before looking it up ( ) and find it impressive how well I remembered it.

Which you STILL have not provided. Oh my god who cares about some stupid paperwork that's not the point... where's the emote with the guy smashing his head into a brick wall?

I've just started a book called "That Used To Be Us," authored by Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum. Apparently both are experts in foreign affairs, but they came together to write this book on our domestic issues. It seems slow to the point, but I'm only two chapters into it so far. So far one of the things that sticks out to me is this idea of "Frustrated Optimism." These guys grew up during the Cold War era, they've seen the things this country has accomplished (granting the occasional mistake such as the Bay Of Pigs, Vietnam, or Korea) when it is able to come together to make great strides towards progress (going to the moon in response to Sputnik, the eventual conclusion of the Cuban Missile Crisis, etc). They are optimists because they know what this country is capable of, but they're also frustrated. "[Our ability to do great things] has to be a function of our will actually to do those things again. So many Americans are doing great things today, but on a small scale. Philanthropy, volunteerism, individual initiative: they're all impressive, but what the country needs is collective action on a large scale." That quote should also show what I do dislike about this book. They're trying to get a message out but they're dragging their own feet at getting to the point. This book is 350 pages and is certainly not light reading. The average person won't be willing to put the time into reading this and discovering the message. Already the book is over 2 years old, being completed at the end of 2011. We need collective action on a large scale? So you (the authors of the book) say, but what have you done yourselves to generate this collective? It's going to take something that will reach a much larger audience than a book to get us going on the right path. There's a saying about how everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame. What we really need is the right person to get their 15 soon. Someone who will set the course for this country, who will generate the so-desperately needed action on a large scale.

And once again BTG completely ignores the most valid points presented by Doom Shepherd. How difficult it is to continue a debate when the most informative part of the discussion isn't being discussed. Instead we see some petty argument about pointless paperwork.

Our memories make us who we are.

I'll just go ahead and say flat-out that I could never do this. I'm not big on machinima, the only machinimas I'll watch is content by Ross himself. I used to watch some let's plays and the ol' yogscast minecraft Shadow of Israphel thing, but now I just... don't. Heh. At any rate my best wishes to everyone who does apply for the reviewer position, and to Ross for getting some good ones on the team.

Damn, maybe you should write some short stories or something to make up for all the things you don't have time to animate. ><

Fixed. And please do.