Presence

I was listening to some interview of a music production guy on NPR, and yes, that's basically a part of a larger tactic. You open a song with some intriguing hook and then you don't even try to make it have anything to do with the rest of the song. You can start off with about fifteen seconds of genuine beauty and then just stop trying. So if you've ever heard a few moments of intriguing keyboarding dissolve into generic thrash, that was on purpose and was probably added in post. Also radio stations really DO play music till you're sick of it.

It seemed like the only thing anyone was talking about. I'd prefer to talk about other stuff too, frankly. You wanna talk arcade games? What's your favorites? I like that a big part of them was simply good sound quality. I liked "Mad Planets", "Tempest" and good ol "Galaga". There was also this one game I saw on a cruise ship as a kid I have no idea how to even research because my memory of it is so dim. It was some kind of fast paced side scroller with a lot of running about, I think maybe you were a mouse or a cat or something. I always died in like 7 seconds.

I'm not sure I'm getting this, you think Ghandi's march to the sea represents a template for internet debate or something? If the modern "activist" on any side can't find something true to use, he'll just use something false, as will hundreds of his friends. As was talked about in the very soundcloud clip you posted. Their hearts are incapable of shame and their minds communicate only in image macros and pretentious memes. Search engines and social media actively block them from seeing things that would criticize them; kind of an ultimate realization of the first rule written in "How to win friends and influence people." They think enough upvotes mean they were factually correct and that the "ignore" button means "I got the last word in this argument. Forever." Your heart sounds like it's in the right place, but your approach is so terribly.....easy. Risk free. A child with a squirt gun pointed at the painting of a lynch mob.

I think I see a point of misunderstanding. I said in my quote I wished people who issue death threats and try to ruin peoples lives would die. I intended this as a declared creed or sentiment about the very worst people on the internet. You seem to have somehow heard me cozying up to those who send of death threats and those who try to ruin individual peoples lives if I agree with the cause. The cause being hatred towards those who send death threats and try to ruin people's lives. Maybe I'm misreading you and you're saying that I'm defining acceptable targets. Well...maybe you've somewhat right. But it's meant to be something you'd paste on your wall, not something you send to someone's inbox, for any reason, most especially not because the Internets said he was doing x,y, and z. I do admit I find the whole "Become as bad as him" philosophy utterly confusing. I've heard it on TV, but it's not something I can grasp. I can't get my fingers around the edges of the idea. Being peaceful towards the violent is a peaceful act? The words seem to align but the logic won't cling in my brain. I can agree with you in the sense that acting on such impulses is incredibly unhealthy, like, I COULD buy and eat an entire chocolate cake every day for a month, but I know it'd be bad so I never would. I guess some people could justify anger towards someone who did. "What about the people who love you, what about the starving, why not give asparagus another chance, you're being unfair to asparagus." I think that's how that works. I'm hungry.

I expect that many anti-GG people think that if you don't respond to harassers like that, you're being intolerably tolerant. My sentiment talked about those who've issued death threats and tried to ruin peoples lives. You can't cluck your tongue disapprovingly at death threats and claim you're a meaningful part of the solution.

FACEPUNCH IS ONE OF MY TRIGGER WORDS!!!! I think that the whole GG crowd would be helped a lot if their best actively ripped the throats out of their worst. When you agree with something like a cause, it's foolish to expect those who oppose it to judge it purely on its merits. Conversely, they WILL judge it by its worst elements. How you respond to garbage that claims the same banner matters a lot. Hashtags don't count. Saying you "don't condone their behavior" doesn't count. You gotta really go for the gusto. Here, let me try: "I don't like social justice warriors. But if you've sent death threats or tried to ruin the life of someone purely because you didn't like their fan-fiction or because they were a little too strident on some forum, I hope you die. I mean it. It would please me if you were found and beaten to death. Your only potential value on this earth is to become food for the grass." If enough people publicly say that then the anti-GG types might actually lose some credibility. Um, has anyone influential said anything like that? If it's been happening all along I guess I'd feel pretty silly.

I'd try to do some writing, but I'm afraid I'd run out of commas, For free video editing software I've been trying out Blender in spite of wanting to run screaming the first time I fired it up. I needed to watch some tutorials, but it seems pretty ok so far. I'm used to software that can be picked up just by running it and looking through menus for three minutes. Higher end content production stuff doesn't really work like that, plus there's a ton of terms and conventions to learn. It was all pretty intimidating, so that's why I was asking about any free ones, not because I don't know what google is. Now that I think about it, that's probably exactly why Ross wouldn't have an opinion about all the options out there. When you've got Premier there's no reason to invest five hours per program just to try them on for size.

I saw your request for MMO stories, and I kind of have one. I wanted to talk about it at least somewhat nicely and make a little video with footage. Thing is I have no editing software experience. I can capture losslessly in fraps at an acceptable framerate, and I know how to use handbrake well enough to compress the final footage, but do you know any free program or guide I can use to edit the clips together in a lossless way and put my voice in? I've got all the hard drive space I need. Sorry if you get this question all the time, I'm just having a terrible time googling anything useful. Professional software's a bit out of my means atm. I feel like you talked about it tangentially in your December update video, but could you go a little more in depth?

Asking attention craving fans for input is like asking the fire department for a drink of water.

I just completed Puzzle Agent 2, and you're exactly right about it. It's not stupid; obviously a puzzle fanatic wouldn't want to leave a case hanging like that, but they just couldn't keep from spoiling the tone of the first game. It also feels a lot more linear, since there's less times you can go back and talk to people about events that have happened or revisit previous sections. And I HATE number chunk puzzles. "Oh, it's just the digits of tau split into odd chunks. That's a cool puzzle, right?" NO, IT IS NOT A COOL PUZZLE.

Probably the biggest misconception I had about stereograms is I thought they'd be worth my time. So I spent two solid hours once to see a couple. And they just look like 3d models that have been textured in the same pattern as the background of the image. You want a quick stereogram, buy a Twilight Sparkle doll and paste ugly wallpaper all over her, then stick her in a shoebox that's lined with the same wallpaper. Oh look, what a valuable thing you have just done with your time. Stereograms are like that spinning ballerina optical illusion where you can learn to swap which way she's turning. It's an interesting effect and says a lot about how the brain works, but it'd be insane for it to be some kind of pop cultural phenomenon. Some can do it easy, others have a really hard time, and in the end, it's one of the most worthless skills imaginable to train. I suspect the whole reason people egg each other on with these is pure trolling. "What, you can't see the forest gnome? Just get real drunk, cross your eyes, and back away slowly from the poster."

Why is cryptozoology separate from Sasquatch research?

Now that was a very good episode, but please stop spoiling endings for story driven games. This is twice in a row now! It makes me have to pause watching and go buy and finish the game before I complete the episode. Which I did, but still. I have trouble with games that have a totally silly premise. I'll still play them, but they never quite click with me. I definitely like the self contained puzzles though. I recently said of "The Room", it's nice to have an adventureish game without all the constant faffing about from screen to screen.

I was enjoying the hell out of it till you told me to stop watching while you talked about the ending. I appreciate the spoiler warning, but in this day and age of thousand game long queues, it's an annoying choice to have to make. Also, when people put in content warnings, what I actually hear is someone telling me to turn down the volume because there'll be annoying screamer shots. Maybe you could be more specific in future warnings? Warning: This game dungeon contains images of graphic violence and death. In other words, it might make you.... (•_•) ( •_•)>⌐■-■ (⌐■_■) ...toss your cookies. YEEEEEAAAAAHHHHHHH!

I've paid credit card interest twice in twenty years, both times because I did something insanely stupid. Aside from those two times, no never. I understand the sentiment about debt though. Like I said, you can only use rewards cards if you don't need them. Basically makes it impossible for me to get excited about them. "Hey, so if you use this one for 50 years, a year of your life will have been paid for just by...oh...massive debt? Still paying it off? Your mom ruined your credit rating? How? Oh, I see. Well, uh, I'm going to get some junkfood, want anything from McDonalds? Yes I'll loan you the cash." True story. Kind of stopped trying after that. So, yep. Lentils. Canned Sardines. Good stuff. Edit: I hope I'm not coming across as nasty here. I know I've been lucky and I don't think less of those who have been unlucky. Also this prrrooobably should go in another thread.

There's not a lot of foods that are cheap, filling, healthy, and tasty. Try lentils if you don't care for beans. Mussels can be cheap IF you live near a coast. Canned sardines can be safely eaten long term if you like them. Nuts, especially peanuts and peanut butter can also be surprisingly cheap calories. Eggs are pricier but not terrible for you. This probably belongs in some other thread though, unless Ross wants to have a finance section in his chat. In which case, I'm definitely a fan of rewards credit cards. Problem is you can only get em if you don't need em. For what it's worth I get 2-6% back on everything via cards.

I asked him this during the last chat. His answer was basically "I'd prefer to not have to. It might break, and I want to cover things people don't need a specialized box for." Ross, I'd like to know if you have any feelings about Vectrex. The IP holder alone deserves some heavy praise, but I always thought it was a cool system in and of itself. It was a one trick pony, but kind of a neat one if you like vector graphics.

You may well be right, but we agree so rarely that you're almost endorsing them. I have little experience in this though. Closest I've come was I've had power filtering fix a problem with a laptop to television hdmi connection, and that for one made no sense to me.

Out of curiosity, I went looking for bus filters. There's actually devices that claim to do just that, although I don't know how credible they are. There's a usb filter: http://www.amazon.com/Audioquest-ADQ002-AudioQuest-Jitterbug-Filter/dp/B00YTA78FW/ There's even rather pretty devices that claim to be pci bus cleaner/filter: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00WWQ2Z6C None of which is really that relevant, but I thought it was interesting.

HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT PEWDIEPIE????????????????!!!!!!!!!!1111one The point of sites like Gorilla Gong is that actual people vet the videos. Then again, computer vetted videos would be just fine if Youtube didn't want to hack off long tail videos with a carving knife. I keep meaning to do a writeup on building legacy boxes. There's modern fixes for a lot of legacy woes that don't compromise the integrity of anything that matters.

I found a thread on tomsguide mentioning this, but it looks like you found it already and posted there. The only answer I've seen here that I know much about is disabling hardware acceleration in firefox; that's a common fix for a lot of very weird glitches. It's never bad to try. I'm leaning toward it being a flaw in the hardware, though I can't really justify that beyond gut feeling.

In THEORY there should be no big difference between motherboard and soundcard sound, but the thing is that soundcards can filter out ground loops and bus noise in a vastly better way. It's night and day in terms of hiss/hum reduction. I used to think just the opposite till I actually got a xonar for myself. Sound card manufacturers will often put that ability as a spec on their fact sheet. As a xonar dsx owner, I've never had any weird audio problems. I can suggest you physically inspect it and your motherboard for burst capacitors. If they're filtering the power with classic electrolytic capacitors, they can pop. Look for cracks/bulging tops/weird stains in the middle. If you can replicate the sound problem reliably, try different video drivers too. Video cards are notorious for introducing noise on the bus, especially when you move the mouse. Another classic thing to try is moving the video and sound cards further apart.

Sacrifice was ALMOST squad based in its gameplay. That's the closest I can think of, but I guess that's playing the summonables card.

Probably the first video that told me I didn't like something because I was playing it wrong and I agreed. I also certainly can't think of a game that had the medium sized squad mechanic combined with hacknslash. Kind of like Death of The Necromancer was the only book I ever read where the hero has henchmen who he pays to help him out. It's a concept I'd like to see more of. If memory serves, the level up system in Dungeon Siege was incredibly punitive if you had two different skills at different levels. Like, it was totally possible to level up all four abilities, but you HAD to keep them at exactly the same level.

Man, 10am is when I've hit snooze twice and my dreams start becoming really interesting.