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256 responses to “Talk Amongst Yourselves”
Mornin’ everyone.
G’morning. Have a good weekend?
T’was alright. Started in a new department at work on Saturday night, the online homeshop part of Woolworths. I kinda liked it. It’s amusing what some customers buy. Had one order for a click & collect for Sunday where all they bought was chocolate, about 100 blocks of cadbury of varying sorts lol. Another person all they bought was a packet of MiGoreng noodles lol.
Funny in terms of quantity but at the same time that is a good way on how a physical store can adapt in this online world.
One of the main irritations of going to the store is not finding everything one needs; especially for my mother who is allergic to wheat.
To Click and Collect is only natural; have the satisfaction of the goods being there while still keeping the traditional routine of being exposed to UV rays so one doesn’t die of Vitamin D deficiency caused by our online world, 😛
Yeah, I think that one was like they bought one grocery item along with say alcohol & ciggarettes or some fozen/chilled food. Like i’d be certain they were not just buying a 5 pack of noodles lol. But yeah it’s hella convenient for a lot of people, have someone else pick your shopping. Most annoying is produce though imo. Most people were asking for green bananas, which is kinda hard when what is available is pretty ripe lol.
A friend of mine once ordered 2kg of beef mince and got 2kg of sausages. Not sure how that “substitute” was supposed to work…
Uh.. That’s a good fuck up there.
A pair of scissors.
Not to say your friend should have immediately accepted the substitute but in certain recipes it can work, I’ve often used sausage mince to make pastas instead of plain mince for a different flavour.
I agree, nothing wrong with sausages, but they’re not a substitute for mince when you’ve had your groceries delivered.
@cookingmama since the thread is full, my bad. I misread the thread thinking it was some kind of in store pickup, a delivery is a whole different kettle of fish.
No worries @zimmy – there’s really not much difference between click&collect or homeshop. In both cases someone else does the picking and you get to check when you get home. I got burned a several years ago with woolies homeshop (sorry @virus__ I’m sure it’s better now) when I had an order with at least 4 things missing or badly substituted, and one item so damaged I had to take it back for a refund – a plastic lunchbox that looked like it had been dragged across the carpark and was completely scratched up.
I have, however, had some really great experiences with Coles home delivery – even ordering and having stuff delivered interstate!
You’ll sometimes get workers who don’t give a shit what they pick for a customer. We have a rule at our store if we wouldn’t buy it, we won’t pick it for the customer. So we wouldn’t pick mince that is oxidising and going brown, or bananas that have a million brown spots, tins with dents in them etc.. Common logic, but yet this prevails some people heh.
Is there a minimum order for click and collect? I’m guessing there isn’t if someone is just buying noodles.
Honestly I doubt it, since we just started doing it in BWS & you can order a single item from us.
I really like the Dan Murphy’s Click & Collect, if you’re in a metro area, you can order within 2 hours and even have it all chilled.
I should do click and collect more often for groceries, much easier than dragging a cranky child around the store, and less chance to fall prey to impulse buys.
Yeah my local Dans does that too. I had to laugh I saw the other week Liquorland announced click & collect, only 30 minute wait. That was amusing 😛
In theory you should save money! 😀
Morning
We have heat and rain so I’m really not sure what is going on
How was your weekend?
Weekend was good, played soem GTA V started a fresh game on the new PC runs at high settings on my current GPU at 60 fps which is impressive, also worked. It was also very hot here, and rained, it sucked, so much humidity x.x
let me know next time you are on for some sandbox shenanigans… tried it for the first time since i got my acer predator monitor, and seems to run great in 4k. been meaning to jump back into it here and there…
im still addicted to Rocket League even though i have tons of new games to play… (Overwatch, Last Guardian, Watchdogs 2, Titanfall 2, etc…)
I haven’t touched GTA Online since I first got it on PS3 almost 4 years ago lol. I just cruise around in single player, i’ve only finished it 6 or 7 times. Still enjoy it every time lol.
Good morning!
It’s monday, I brought home-made banana bread in to share at work, my son went to back to school with all his lunch and all his uniform. The week is off to a good start!
That sounds tasty! What year is he in?
Year 1. He’s one of the big kids now
Next you know he’ll be in high school!
One of the guys I work with asked me to build him a cheap PC for browsing the web & downloading movies/music, after seeing the few PC’s i’ve built in the last 6 months. Came up with this for $529 including a copy of Windows 10 Home 64-bit & delivery for parts from Umart.
It’s got a120GB SSD, 8GB ram, 2TB HDD, CPU should be fine for what he is doing, the case is nice too look at & has sound dampening foam & i’ll include one of my spare blu-ray drives for free cause he’s a pretty good mate & calls me up for shifts first over anyone else.
Well, my weekend turned out to be interesting. Like the two or three others here, I backed HD-DVD back in the day.
After leaving my disks and drive in a box for four years I decided to give Dragonheart a spin. Imagine my surprise when I found the disk wouldn’t work.
At first I though the drive finally died so I got out the spare. That didn’t work either.
I seen found that my disk was unreadable. And check online that in their later life, HD-DVDs easily suffered from Bit-Rot; where the materials fail and the data can no longer be read.
Somehow, I missed this back in the day.
The upshot; of the 22 movies and two boxsets (Blade Runner and The Ultimate Matrix Collection), only four single movies still work and all but the Workprint version of Blade Runner works. Even the DVD side of my Matrix disks no longer work.
So for the two or three here who still have HD-DVDs, now might be time to see which disks still work.
For me, I still don’t intend to replace them with Blu-Ray. I’m going to hold out to see if a proper 4K version emerges for the movies I really liked (such as Dragonheart).
Is Bluray also affected by the same issues? I don’t think I’ve had any bit rot problems with my collection.
Incidentally Blade Runner was the first thing I ever bought on Bluray.
First up, sorry I had the wrong term. It’s actually called disk rot but the idea is the same as bit rot.
Bit-rot means age cause the binary representation to change thus corrupting data. Disk rot is where the materials fail thus making regions and even the whole disk unreadable.
Look up the term on Wikipedia and there is even a section aptly called HD-DVD rot. It’s a problem with disks manufactured from 2006 to 2008 (the year the format died).
The most common disks to fail (according to Internet posts) was often Warner Bros. disks. Which might explain why they took Sony’s money; they were trying to save themselves from poor quality control of their own disks.
BluRay though I think is fine. No doubt Sony has strict quality controls given that royalties have to be paid to Sony to use the format. I’m sure they too can suffer disk rot but hopefully the media’s life can be measured in decades while HD-DVD sadly seems to have failures within a few years.
One final tidbit; I even looked at the back of some of my failed disks. Some have turned cloudy while my copy of Happy Feet has turned copper yellow.
Same problem as early CD-R and DVD-R then? The particular chemicals they used in the plastic degrade over time and you can’t read the data layer any more, or the data layer degrades and is destroyed by the slow decay of the chemicals.
Sadly all optical media will go this way eventually. As well as most of our magnetic media too. This is why it’s so important to have digital backups of everything and to keep the backups fresh.
Couldn’t tell ya, mate.
Older CDs for me seemed indestructable. Never had issue with them. They only stopped working when I put them through a shredder after copying them to a hard disk.
If anything, due to Hollywood constantly whining about piracy I think newer media is more likely to fail because they are rigged to fail.
Doesn’t matter if the disks have family photos; fearing Hollywood, manufacturers basically put a Blade Runner style lifespan on the disks.
If Tyrell was real, he’d be smiling.
Disc rot was and is a big issue with certain CD-Rs and DVD-R/RW. Depended on the manufacturer. I’ve never seen a failed officially pressed CD but I think we’ll start seeing them soon, as a CD lifespan is projected to be between 20 and 100 years and we’ve been making them since the 80s
So RE7 is pretty great, after the first hour or so.
It transforms from Outlast-style horror, to ammo-conservation-heavy survival horror with RE-style puzzles, to straight up F.E.A.R. Only real complaint I have with it is thatReally cool plot, neat (and amazingly ridiculous) twist at the end that’s telegraphed just enough to make you start guessing at it from the beginning (but never really believing it until it happens), some instances of amazingly grotesque enemy design… loved it.
Okay, so, I’m thinking of creating speedpainting videos of some of my shirt designs. I’m planning on starting a new lot that will be available on Viral style, so people may purchase them. Would Taybies be interested in watch me stuff up a lot sped right up?
Also, can anyone recommend free video editing software?
I’m torn about watching sped up videos. On one hand, I loved the Benny Hill-esq novelty of it all, but then realise it’s normally of stuff I can’t do, so just makes me feel inadequate, faster…
I was going to speed it up, otherwise it’d be like a 4 hour long video. Maybe more
Of the top of my head, I can only think of AviDemux but I don’t know if that will fit the bill for your.
Heck, I dunno if it is even maintained anymore.
So, a giant shrug then?
Your best best would be just find out what other YouTubers are using. Maybe they can point you to some AV software; in the very least a cheap/free product they themselves may have had to use before they gained the views needed to make a living.
AviDemux was something I used to use before using a better tool called Project-X. But that was when I used to copy my PlayTV recordings to cut out the ads and keep the end result.
:-D.
I will ask Dr. Google
I’m a huge fan of Cinelerra, it is production level stuff, runs on anything and is free.
http://cinelerra.org
I ended up grabbing a youtube based one. You can see the result below
Looks really good. And really sums up the last month!
I’m sorry to hear that
Went to the Aus Open final last night.
Entered a competition at Grill’d to win 2 Ground Passes about two weeks ago, checked my email on Friday night, and found out that I’d won the competition.
In the outside grass area with the big screen?
Did that a couple of years ago, was quite good. Fantastic game to watch there and crowd would have been bonkers
Yep, and they ended up opening Margaret Court Arena and showing the final on the screens inside.
Trying to find a new pair of boots for work that I can wear out as well, so naturally I need something with out a steel toe & want something with a zip sides & laces. Turns out that is harder than I expected. The boots I have now, whilst great, they’re steel toe and means I can’t go to a lot of places wearing them, it sucks. Since I have found boots give me better support and less fatigue than any other type of closed footwear i’ve worn.
Managed to find a pair of Steelblue brand ones, only $200… Might have to bite the bullet & get those. Well first off find out if any local workwear places stock that particular one or can order them in..
Preferred boots in HS for similar reasons, plus they lasted a hell of a lot longer than any pair of runners I’ve had since. Got very confused when I wasn’t allowed to wear them for Uni… Never even considered before that there could be rules against steel-toe boots – sure they can be dangerous when used maliciously… but so can a pen.
Yeah, I used to wear steel toe joggers in high school, heh. Like I made the mistake when I was down in Tassie a few years back took my boots, got denied entry to several places cause of them. Even though when I was in Melbourne the previous day I bought a pair of shoes, but was lazy and didn’t wanna wear them because it involved doing up laces lol.
Ahh… I miss having no laces…
After finishing Twilight Princess on Saturday, I went straight onto Skyward Sword.
I figure I must be about halfway through now, beaten the first three surface temple thingos and just gone on to find out about the three sacred fires or whatever they are. But damn I am loving this game at the moment, I can’t imagine why everyone seems to hate on it so much. There’s a few irritating features here and there (worst of which I think is the “force you to stop and read item descriptions on every new boot of the game” thing), but it’s fantastic in so many areas. I especially love the writing, there’s so much personality to these characters. Ghirahim is great. And the presence of so many smartarse dialogue options really speaks to me 😛
I liked Skyward sword. I just got very sick of fighting the black thing very quickly.
Racist.
I can’t remember it’s name!
Reasons why everyone hates on it:
– The stamina meter is a fucking daft addition that adds nothing to gameplay and gets in the way because Link’s running speed is too slow
– Even with MotionPlus, the waggle is still very flaky and often doesn’t do what you expect it to do, especially if you’re wanting to just relax and enjoy the game. The waggle adds nothing to the enjoyment of the game, but a lot to the frustration of playing it.
– The overworld where you fly the bird thing is utterly empty. It makes the open seas in Wind Waker looked packed with content.
– Backtracking through the same temples repeatedly is boring.
– The game is super fucking chatty and constantly wants to explain everything and hold your hand as if you’re a 50-year-old grandma that’s touching this new-fangled gaming system for the first time ever. Constantly interupts the flow of the game with these messages.
– The shield only can absorb four hits before it breaks, meaning you have to dodge or parry every attack or keep buying new ones. This was a personal issue I had with the game, found it incredibly hard to deal with some of the enemies because of this.
– Link is not left-handed.
I think I pretty much don’t feel that way about any of that.
Except link is not left-handed. That I can wholly agree with 😛
I mean, if the game works for you then more power to you I guess. I hated every second I spent in it personally. I was possibly a bit spoiled though because IIRC I’d just finished Darksiders and that was by far the better Zelda game.
http://mikatan.goodsmile.info/en/2017/01/30/nendoroid-link-breath-of-the-wild-ver-dx-edition-the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/
Gaaaah!
Horsey!
Horsey!
Guess what I just ordered? 🙁
Oh wow that’s nowhere near as expensive as I thought it’d be.
RIP Good Game :`(
That was surprising news. Sad news. But at least Spawn Point & the other GG spin offs are staying.
Pocket’s gone.
Yeah I saw that, a great shame!
Welp, just handed in my notice at work…
Look’s like Operation: Morkai’s Moving To Melbourne is officially underway!
Good choice. Melbourne is The Place That Has PAX.
And ME. And possibly some other people. Possibly.
*dance*
I have heard of these fabled “people who live in Melbourne” before… Rare, sometimes skittish creatures I hear, frequently drunk and/or hopped up on hard to source coffee varieties, yelling variations of “CAAAAARNN DEEEEEEEEEES!” and the like.
What is a “DEEEEEEEEEES”? I is a “BLUUUUUUUUUUUES”. 🙂
Can also be found at Victory and Rebels games… and yes, beer. Craft, preferably. Ping when you have an arrival date, we should get a TAY meat sorted. Its been a while.
We really need to do another meat soon, say a few taybies last week but a proper meat would be good
I used to organise them, once upon a time.
FWIW, I’ll probably be aiming to be back in Melbourne for a week or two in March/April (renewing my Visa unless that gets Trumped). We should do a meat for that.
Count me in
We’re looking at Brunswick temporarily while we get settled into jobs, and I notice there’s somewhere called The Alehouse Project there that looks interesting 😀
There are many good purveyors of ale in this area. I’m in Coburg North, just a bit further up. Coburg’s a little cheaper than Brunswick and just as convenient.
Didn’t we discuss this a few months back? 🙂 It’s ringing bells.
Yeah we did, staying in Brunswick will likely be a share house of some sort while we get settled into jobs and get grounded. I’ve got a cousin in Ascot Vale, and a bunch of friends scattered around, some in Box Hill and Balwyn, others in St Kilda, you’re in Coburg, Scree is in Maribyrnong from memory, so who knows where we’ll end up.
@morkai
Anywhere within 10ish km of the CBD is easy to get around as you’ll have trams/trains/buses/bikes as realistic options. 🙂 Brunnie’s a good place to start out.
I just bought a replica ‘bad motherfucker’ wallet that Jules sports in Pulp Fiction, officially licensed from Miramax too! Only $35 AUD with free shipping, can’t complain. I needed a new wallet since my old one has worn away on the spine. I’m pretty harsh on wallets, go through one every year or 2 :/
I made an art thing
It’s not amazing, but if you want more, let me know.
Please let me know, my ego needs vindication =P
This is a random question but I’ve kind of got stuck in my Googling.
Was trying to sort out the Andromeda preorders, I love ME and was going to make an exception with preordering. I don’t need a car, model or RC but was thinking I’d get the Deluxe version. I’m also leaning towards PC.
Is there just no Physical copies of that version coming to Australia? Is my only option the Bioware store for a console copy or Origin store for the pc? If not where can I get these preordered in Aus?
Cheers for the help guys.
Possibly all sold out on PC. Bloody pre-orders. 🙁
To be honest i’m not seeing any physical copies of the deluxe for PC, plenty for xbone & PS4, but none for PC.
Edit: Doesn’t look like there’s physical PC copies in New Zealand either. Matter of fact Gamestop in the US don’t have it listed for PC at all & Canada EB Games only have the regular version. So i’m gonna Origin is your best bet..
I believe there just straight up is no physical deluxe version for PC. Only digital. Deluxe is console only.
I WANT TO DOWNVOTE THIS BUT I CAN’T DO THAT TO YOU.
I shall just cry instead.
Sidevote.
I ordered the PS4 Deluxe edition because of this but I might cave and buy on Origin in the end because PC is just more comfortable for me to play longer games on. Wonder if it’ll work with Steam Link.
I had a rant all written up to post on the good game article, but I just can’t bring myself to post it because trolls.
I like rants!
Go for it!
*wanders off to find popcorn*
Post it here
I just read the comments on the “Channel 7” article.
Jesus christ.
Not sure I want to go there. 🙁
I’ll post it here, only because I don’t want to waste all the words on asshats. Also, spoilers for Wall of Text:
I’d like to take a moment to talk about some of the comments I’ve read lately regarding the hosts of Good Game, in particular the negative comments towards Hex.
1. The persistent belief that her presence on the show was “pandering” to “someone” and that she somehow was personally responsible for Junglist leaving the show. By all accounts at the time, Junglist had some serious disagreements/personality clashes with the producers and was fired/asked to resign. It was not a happy decision for him or viewers, but the simple fact is that he was replaced. Hex would have auditioned for the role with many others, and was chosen for her abilities to work with the team, her passion for gaming, and her screen skills – just like any other job. To hold her responsible for management decisions when all she did was put in a successful job application is incredibly unfair.
And as for “pandering”? Having a female presenter supports other female gamers, female game developers, and spawnling girls. Representation is important! I don’t have to agree with her every opinion or every review, but I really appreciate her presence.
2. She has pink/black/braided hair, wears too much/not enough makeup, wears weird/boring clothes. This one is easy. Stop judging a woman’s ability to do her job by how she looks. If a woman comes to work without makeup, she hasn’t “let herself go”. If she’s wearing comfortable clothes, she hasn’t “let her standards slip”. If she’s wearing makeup and had her hair coloured, she’s not trying to prove anything – that’s just her choice. If her employer has no problem with her appearance, then it’s not a problem. Do you judge your co worker if he comes to work with stubble, the same jeans he wore last week or if he gets a haircut? Did anyone threaten to stop watching the show when Bajo coloured his hair?
3. Hex was too political, and expressed “controversial” opinions instead of just “talking about the game”. I can’t think of anything more dull than two presenters who agree with each other on everything. Imagine if Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton had agreed on every movie they reviewed! Hex’s opinions are her own, and if you disagree, that’s ok. Don’t become a sexist idiot by taking it a step further and insisting that a woman with an opinion is part of some convoluted conspiracy to ruin gaming. We’re right here guys, we have brains with thoughts and feelings. Just listen. Please.
This is an outstanding comment that would have been utterly, utterly wasted in that comment section.
Thank you 🙂
I really wish you had put it on that page, it is exactly my feelings, but expressed way better than I can usually manage.
I still may. Thanks for the feedback 🙂
Hey Brisbane TAYbies, i’m off to see Green Day’s Broadway production of American Idiot the Musical (me going to a musical right? My excuse is Chris Cheney of The Living End is in it ha) with a couple of friends from Melbourne, it’s at QPAC & we’re staying on Elizabeth street. So what’s some recommendations for places to eat in that sorta area that’s good?
G’day all.
I’ve been up and down for a while, went through the wringer for a couple of months, but kind of emerging out the other side now.
Apologies to everyone I lost contact with for a while, but I was really underwater.
Glad to hear things are getting better =D
Welcome back. No need to apologise for not posting, this is here to be fun and supportive and if you you aren’t getting that or need something else then you do it
Any interesting gaming stuff while you were gone?
Erm, I think I played Mario Kart once with my kids 🙂
I have gone back to working on restoring Empire Strikes Back from 35mm, I’d really love to have one of those old Vector based Atari Star Wars cockpit games.
So Kitchen Reno is at a standstill. We ran out of money, so we’re without an Oven until we can afford to get more cupboards. Our rates have been really expensive this year, so we’ve been struggling a bit. Luckily, our Microwave has convection, but at the same time, we still don’t have a dishwasher.
In other news, there’s a gastro bug going around in Melbourne. Mum caught it, so be careful.
Ugh. Rates. I bargained with the local council to pay them every week cause it was about the only way that made it affordable for us. Considering how little we now get for our rates, it pisses me off they’re so much >_>
Sucks about the kitchen reno 🙁 How much has it cost so far if you don’t mind me asking? I’m wanting to re-do our kitchen this year, since it’s only like 45 years old lol..
We’re paying our rates on the credit card as the credit card has 6 months interest free on purchases over $250.
I think we spent about $800 on 3 cabinets and a sink. It was $800 for the plumbing to be fixed, which was cheap for the pipe fixing that was required. The pantry was $600 too.
I’m tempted to make a goFundMe to get enough to finish the cabinets
Sounds like you got yourself some good deals there! I was looking at stuff in Bunnings today, god sinks are expensive.. I’ve thought it would probably be cheaper to get something fabricated from my mate who works with stainless 😐
It was the cheapest sink money could buy =P
Oddly, Ikea had the cheapest sinks last time I had to buy one, and they were pretty good too.
I feel like I’m barely ever on TAY any more. Part of the reason is that it disappears for about two hours between around 11am and 2pm when Alex takes it down to repost it each day, but not much I can do about that since it’s a timezone thing.
I’ve been playing a lot of Tales of Berseria since it released. The PC version’s not a great port, with a lot of bugs. Runs like utter arse on my laptop, but I suspect my laptop is the problem there (it seems like I’ve burned out a RAM module 🙁 ). Had some random performance bugs where it locks down to 25fps until you reboot your PC and stuff.
But that aside, it’s a great game so far. Doesn’t fuck around for hours upon hours establishing the plot – you’re introduced to the main character and her Epic Personal Quest within the first half an hour. Plot starts hot, doesn’t need to heat up. I really appreciate that. Velvet herself is a fucking great protagonist too, a proper anti-hero with a lot of layers. I’d say getting pretty close to giving Yuri a run for the best protagonist in the franchise. The rest of the cast is really good too. They’re maybe a little stereotypical but they immediately bounce off each other in good ways. Magilou is probably the stand-out, with the constant scheming and the weird way she speaks (at least in Japanese – she talks in an archaic feudal-era style, drawn-out speech patterns like a character from a Noh play).
Combat-wise we’ve gone from famine to feast. Zestiria’s combat was godawful thanks to that horrible Armatization system among other things. Berseria throws it all away for a free-flowing system that’s very reminiscent of Tales of Graces, though instead of CC, they have a ‘soul gauge’ which initially starts at 3, can go as low as 1 and as high as 5. You gain them by killing enemies and inflicting status ailments, and can pass one into a target in order to pull out Velvet’s demon hand abilities which buff her and enable extra attacks as well as re-filling the gauge. It works really nicely, the only real issue is that there are times when you can be stuck on 1-2 waiting for RNG to let you land a stun so you can keep things moving. Like with Zestiria, encounters happen on the map itself rather than in an arena you’re transported to, though they’ve gone back to having a proper transitional wipe etc. so it feels more like older Tales.
My biggest criticism is the character advancement system. It’s basically just not there. You get tons and tons and tons of gear, and need to ‘enhance’ said gear by breaking stuff into components then using the components to build it up. This means most stuff you get from chests isn’t an actual upgrade, you never have enough materials to keep everyone in up-to-date gear, and it’s all very confusing. You unlock skills on the gear but the skills are only active when wearing the gear I think? It’s just not well explained. You also sometimes get items from bosses and hunts (there’s a hunting system where you have extra-strong optional bosses to fight on the way through areas) and those items seem to give a permanent bonus ability, like added burn or poison effects or showing the number of unopened chests on the map or the like, so you really want to do all the optional bosses as you play. I find I’m really missing the more interesting character building systems we had in, for example, Xillia.
The other interesting thing with the game is that it’s a prequel to Zestiria. You’re going to enjoy it a lot more I think if you already suffered through that game (it’s not bad, but mediocre and disappointing) or watched the anime. There’s obvious connections (Eizen is Edna’s brother for example, and Zavied pops up a few times) but there’s a lot more that’s hinted at. The more interesting hinting, though, is that Berseria and Zestiria’s world may actually Derris-Kharlan from Phantasia and Symphonia. It’s not overt, but there’s a lot of hinting. People are familiar with the Goddess Martel (who was a major character in Phantasia and Symphonia) and mention both her and Yggdrasil, but as mythological figures. Also Eizen carries a coin with him that has Dhaos on one side. It’s supposedly an ancient coin from Kharlan. This would make Berseria potentially a sequel to Phantasia. Symphonia and Phantasia take place in two worlds that orbit each other (Derris-Kharlan and Aselia) and Derris-Kharlan was the planet where Dhaos came from so it all seems to check out and I think this is really interesting if it’s true.
Glad you are enjoying it, seems like it has been a while since something you were looking forward to turned out to meet expectations
Does TAY not exist at all for those couple of hours, I would have though that links from your profile would still work no matter what
Nope, when it’s taken down everything disappears, even the notifications and comment links.
EDIT: Also, I’d say that FFXV exceeded my expectations and The Last Guardian was amazing too, so had a good run recently. Hoping that continues too – Horizon: Zero Dawn looks really good and that’s out soon, as is Nier.
Dickmen.
Who’s this guy?
ELITE DANGEROUS
I’m scanning alien ruins. It’s all full of lore and mad shit. @os42 you need to do this…. 🙂
Jeez… I don’t even remember what system I’m in, let alone which dock – but I’m pretty sure I’m abusing the heck out of their ‘free parking’ policy. 😛 Might pop on sometime, see what’s new… been looking for something to play after finishing RE7 on Sunday, and giving up on a dagger that Diablo3 just refuses to drop for me.
I’ve only been hopping onto Destiny for Nightfalls and a chance at Icebreaker, which dropped on Monday… even hopped back onto Warframe the last couple of nights, but it’s changed so much and been so long that I’ve got no idea what I should even be doing (it took me half an hour to figure out the controls :P). I’m kinda concerned E:D will be similar, considering I stopped because I didn’t really understand what I should be aiming to achieve, let alone how.
Did my back in a week about so Destiny’s been a no-no (sofa bad, lumbar chair goooood). Still need Icebreaker. Been all about Elite this last couple of weeks of my holiday too.
I will nurture you and be your guide. 😉 I haven’t been to the alien crash site yet, or been hyperdicted by the Guardian flower ship, but I’m having mucho fun scanning obelisks and reading lore and hints and stuff. It’s like Grimoire Cards… but actually in-game! \o/
Also been really active in the
In the…? In the…?!
😛 Okay, logged in and was at Fisher station in AZ Cancri… I seem to remember I was trading rares. I also seem to remember it wasn’t hostile when I was here last, tho that was a while ago… Booked it the 120Ly to the capitol of the faction I’d apparently pledged at some point, followed some basic missions, made 300k plus rep/influence and ended up parking at Couper Hub in Kamadhenu for tonight. Hmm… will probably need to look into who I’m apparently supporting……in the various community goals. including attempting to get a station for Mobius out at Colonia. 🙂
You’ll need to friend request Trike About as I’m playing in my second account at the moment. 🙂
FR sent to your alter ego.
I’m original, huh? 😀
Yeah, you too Gooky and Pixel. 🙂
But it’s all so far awaaaaay…
so far away from me.
so far i just can’t see…
Ooh ooh ooh multicrew! You can be our tourguide 😛
I really should fire up Elite, I haven’t played it since about 3 months after release. I have no idea where to start.
Planetary landings are great (although you’ll need the Horizons expansion for that). There’s bounty hunting, mining, trading, exploration, combat, joining one of 2 major factions (Empire or Federation) and working up towards certain military ships. You can sign up with one of several “power play” factions and influence their growth. Passenger missions are excellent for making money too.
I’m generally an explorer and spending time investigating the alien ruins, but I’m also pretty active in the Kunti and Azrael systems helping the ED ANZ and Order of Mobius minor factions maintain their systems.
If you decide to fire it up, feel free to friend request me and I’ll wing up with you, provide some cover as you do missions or work things out. Bounty hunting in wings is much fun.
Aaaand beaten Skyward Sword, woo! I really liked that, and the final battle(s) were super satisfying. Credits roll was great too, showing the other side of the story and giving the orchestral eargasms.
All prepped for Breath of the Wild now. Mad hype 😛
I should probably actually finish it.
Or I can just keep playing pokemon
I am struggling to want to even try to get back to pokemon. Regretful purchase.
I’m rather enjoying it.
I dunno if it’s just the start of the game but it was all so stop-start-stop-start with all the dialoguey bits it just felt like such a hard slog to make any progress.
Also there’s not even any 3D 😛
It’s also railroaded like nobodies business
Hello.
Morning Freeze
Have you lost the battle and started yelling obscenities at the MP across from you yet
She was there for literally half an hour before mixing with the common people disgusted her too much and she took off.
Ugh, peasants?
Does anyone know a $100-$200 range camera that does auto-backup via WiFi? My dad broke my work camera and apparently Samsung don’t make that model any more.
I have played about two hours of until dawn, here are my impressions.
Why is every character a jerk?
The run button does barely anything.
Walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, interact, walk, walk walk, walk, cut scene, choice, cut scene, rinse and repeat.
I get that I’m fairly early in the game (I spent an hour looking for the goddamn can of deodorant), but there are glimpses of a story there, and that’s what really interests me.
You are old and they are accurate representations of teenagers?
Entirely possible. Also, they could just be jerks
Every character’s a jerk so that you don’t feel bad about seeing them die. Except one of them, who you’ll dislike less than the others… maybe even start to like them… and then accidentally get them murdered minutes from the end of the game. ;_;
It’s like the complete opposite of design fundementals in a horror game. You’re supposed to care about the characters, not hope they get what’s coming to them.
Well, stress does change them if they survive long enough… I’d guess that ‘everyone starts a jerk’ was a way to make losing someone early on less punishing, and as people start to break down and you start sympathising, you realise you don’t dislike them enough to want to see them hanging from a meat-hook.
Besides, there’s something oddly satisfying about preventing walking cliches from dying to horror tropes. Don’t know about you, but it was oddly vindicating to prove to myself that people can actually survive a horror movie by not being complete idiots, regardless of how I felt about most of the characters.
I’m hoping it changes as I continue playing.
Can’t help comparing it to Project Zero though.
One more post and then nap.
What dishwashers do people own? Are they good? Is there any brands I must absolutely stay away from? Mum and I have never had a dishwasher before
In general, dishwashers tend to be similar to washing machines. You’re better off saving up and getting the largest capacity and most energy/water efficient model you can afford, than going with a smaller and cheaper model that you have to use three times as often and costs more to run.
Compare things like how long a cycle takes, and how cutlery is loaded. Take along a dinner plate and make sure it fits! Some modern dinner sets have such large plates they don’t fit in smaller dishwashers.The arms should be able to spin freely with plates loaded.
As for using one, some things to keep in mind:
1. Plastic items will always come out wet. The plastic doesn’t store enough heat during the dry cycle for the water to evaporate. You’ll always need to dry off plastic items.
2. Make sure you’ve scraped or rinsed off items before they go in to get the best clean. Residue is fine but big bits need to go in the bin.
3. Use Rinse Aid always. It helps with the rinsing and drying cycle.
4. At least once a month, clean out the filters and run the empty Dishwasher on its pot cycle with a dishwasher cleaner (you can get these at the supermarket). It will keep the dishwasher smelling clean, remove any build up and any water scale.
EDIT: I don’t have a dishwasher at the moment (AND I WANT ONE) but I’ve owned a tiny benchtop one, used a giant commercial one, and used plenty of others over the years.
Amazing advice! Thank you so much, I will keep it all in mind.
Fisher and Paykel (however it is spelled) are really good, as is Bosch.
Omega are terrible, drawers fall apart, make obnoxiously loud beeping sounds that can’t be stopped and had the heater fail twice.
Basically cheap ones are crappy unfortunately.
So don’t bother with anything cheap. Got it
I just looked at mine to see what brand it is and I couldn’t believe that all these years they’d been spelling it Paykel. I thought it must have been a knock-off. How have I not noticed that before?
Ours is basically the cheapest money can buy and it is not great
We have to run it on pots (the strongest option) just to get anything clean and even then it struggles with things.
Do you regret not saving up?
Rental so didn’t get a choice. We had made suggestions and they totally ignored them and just bought the cheapest possible. After having it I would never buy a super cheap one, well worth saving up for a better one
I asked because I was considering getting a cheaper one as we could get it sooner, but hearing this, it sounds like you’re better off saving up
I would recommend waiting if it isn’t going to be a huge amount of time.
My stupid little one annoys me regularly and is annoying to stack and occasionally will get a load of dishes that isn’t washed well.
It’ll probably be a while, as I mentioned in another post, our rates are quite expensive this year
Having had two cheap ones and two good ones (rental lottery), I would honestly wait and get a better one. A cheap one ends up adding a little bit of extra frustration and annoyance to your life, every single day.
Like a crappy pillow.
I didn’t have my first dishwasher until a few years ago, never owned one before that and neither did my family, but I’d now rather do without than go back to a shitty one.
Alright, thanks. We’re looking at Bosch ones over $1100 because they’re made in Germany. Anything under is made in Turkey
Don’t currently own one, but we’ve been in a rental for two years.
I used my mum’s last weekend, and was amazed that a standard cycle is two hours, and it still didn’t work properly, requiring a bunch of items to go back in a second time…
Personally I’d rather take 20 minutes to hand wash stuff, but I imagine that opinion would change if there were more people in the house.
Mum currently does the dishes as It’s a chore I really hate and my brother doesn’t do anything
I have a Fisher & Pykel and the only use it gets is as a dish rack. Granted it’s just me and sometimes my girlfriend, and I’m not much for cooking big meals, so doing them as they come isn’t hard. For me using the washer is about as much hassle preparing the dishes as it is to wash them by hand. I’ve never really known anyone to get a consistently satisfying clean from their dishwasher. That said I’m sure there’s an art to the perfect wash you could learn.
If you do get one make sure it’s deep enough. Mine is in ‘apartment sized’ one and standard plates are almost too tall standing on their side.
Oh, and make sure you get it installed properly. You don’t want an idiot installing a power socket under your sink.
…
I was going to install it XD
Unfortuantely, where the power cable is, it has to run under the sink’s cabinet. Not under the sink, but the cabinet. I may be able to put some 3M cable stickers under the cabinet so it’s off the floor.
Anyone use Ebooks as uni textbooks? If so did you have any issues with it?
I have noticed a massive price difference between the two and that is a good thing but not sure if i could do a full uni course with ebooks.
I found I still ended up printing some chapters, so I could read in the bath, make notes etc.
If you have a current iPad or reasonable sized tablet with a really bright screen and high PPI, then you can certainly get by. Certainly some of the books that other people were lugging that weighed a ton and wouldn’t sit flat to read them made the Ebook seem the better choice. You do miss being able to stick a finger in a page and flick back to it quickly, and some other tactile stuff, but overall, if you are willing to print some pages sometimes, it works pretty well.
I would print them off and get Officeworks to make it into a book for me. Still cheaper then text books
Cheers for advice guys, I think the ebook and print option could be the best and cheapest way in the end.
Saving on the extra baggage of books will be better for my back long term as well no doubt.
Friend went the digital route and used a tablet for bookmarks and note-taking. Worked a charm.
I’ve always found tablets bad for reference material. All the eBook readers I’ve used seem to be designed with linear stories in mind. Page 1, 2, 3, etc rather than flipping back and forth.
That said if you’re buying a ton of books at a massive discount the price difference overall might be worth the inconvenience.
My parents have decided to pay for them instead of me so they just bought all of the books, I wanted to save money for them but they were happy to.
Would have liked to have had a combo of both ebook and paperback just to see which is better.
On the plus side you get the proven method to start out with, and you can suss out the digital route later. I’m sure at least one person there is going to go all digital.
I hope so, If not next years books will probably be all digital.
“Final reminder to update Skype: your desktop version ends soon”
Also the first reminder. Sucks though, might finally stop bothering to use Skype any more. Pretty much only talk to Wingman on there these days anyway.
Uh.. So what is going to happen to it then?
Well, it’s two things. They’re killing off all the p2p stuff and switching to cloud-only, which is the main reason for the update. Also the version after what I currently have is where they started with the godawful bubble interface full of even more wasted space and other flat design BS that I hate.
Nasty. Skype can go jump. I haven’t used it in a few years & last time I did it was on the iPad anyway lol.
The main problem is that there’s not really that much in the way of alternatives, everything else is pretty rubbish too. Seems to be the case with most things.
Another question for the Trekkies here (relax, @weresmurf, I’m not stitching you up ….. this time).
Like anyone new, I’m slowly working through the franchise but there are two episodes that have me curious.
For want of a better term, they are out of place in terms of Trek lore but still keep popping up in most popular lists.
And yes, I’m talking about The Trouble with Tribbles and Trials and Tribble-ations.
It’s not surprise given my love of good comedy and cartoons I like these episodes but I am curious. What is it about these episodes that keeps them in the most popular list?
Not hating on them or anything. It just seems strange that a a series that takes a serious view to science, interstellar politics and society has these two piss-takes in most popular lists.
I do wonder at times, but I think with Trial and Tribble-ations it was the technical achievement at the time, how seamlessly they integrated the DS9 crew into the actual episode. For the time period it was an outstanding achievement in and of itself, they did some great work there. The original, it was a fun episode, small scale due to the episode being shot on a smaller budget than the others, thus having to be more creative in its limitations. Plus, you know, furballs lol.
Is it? The commentary track of that episode indicated it had the same budget as other Season 2 episodes but still came in under.
Cannot argue with that. At the same time though it also highlights why there will not be a HD version.
In the Season 2 BluRay (I call disk 4 the Tribble disk because that’s all it has!), it contains a HD version of that DS9 episode.
However, it suffers from footage being upscaled so while one or two scenes look better (mostly the past portion because it was filmed the same way as TOS) the rest look worse than the DVD version.
Interesting, I read somewhere once it had a smaller budget due to other episodes impacting on the season prior to it O_o. If it’s on the bluray it’s obviously correct, interesting the misinformation that floats around about the series.
Probably not as strange how I have avoided Star Trek for all my life yet I’m fitting in so fast one would think I’ve been lying the whole time.
😛
Wait til you get into Star Wars (unless you have been the whole time) and then realise there’s now two entirely seperate realities… lol
Despite what my past posts imply I had not watched the original trilogy until January of 2016.
This is where Star Wars and Star Trek differ all four films have had every nano-second extensively parodied and even hour long documentaries on the creation of said parodies. It is physically possible to actually know of the films without actually having seen them thanks the volume of parodies.
But you are right about there being two realities. The one we are in there is only Episode 4 and onwards. There is fabled another where they start with Episode 1 but that is yet to be proven.
Not saying I’m mean but if you hint otherwise, I’m having Chief O’Brian teleport you to the Klingon home world with a box of Tribbles.
😛
Tut tut, Rebels onwards… Rogue One was brilliant and Rebels is damn good…
@weresmurf; Will try to keep them in mind. I do plan to see Rogue One once it’s on BluRay (theatres in my area almost require a Tetanus shot before entry, and I’m not being hyperbolic).
As for the Star Wars series, maybe next year. I have enough Star Trek to catch up on.
And truth be told, I’ve been taking a slight break by watching shows by Gerry Anderson besides Thunderbirds.
Finally hit Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath on Thursday night… have force myself to not read it unless I can set aside an hour for it – it’s very dense writing. And I’m not entirely sure if Lovecraft’s taking the piss or not, sometimes it almost seems self-parody;
In one scene, the protagonist is kidnapped by semi-human horned traders that take him to the dark side of the moon, where he’s imprisoned by white, eyeless, amorphous toad-things… whereupon he’s rescued by an army of cats… who then flee the approach of cats from Saturn (with whom they’re apparently at war). Which kinda ruins the latent horror of Cats of Ulthar by humanising the cats… and he does something very similar to the ghouls of Pickman’s Model.I am enjoying the references, tho – familiar faces and places make it a little easier to read.
So, we didn’t get a dishwasher, but we got a Pyrolytic oven for $800, from $2799.
We have no cupboard to put it in yet though. Oh well =P
Holy shit. That’s an awesome bargain. How did you get that?!
David Jones is getting rid of their whitegood section. Almost all the stuff was gone except for the two ovens that were hidden near the back.
You can sometimes get a decent deal on GraysOnline auctions when people are doing that sort of clearance. Just make sure you know what you’re getting.
Have you considered getting a free standing dishwasher that fits into a little enclosure like a fridge? That way you can leave a space for it, then grab one later down the track when money is better or when you see a really good deal like the oven.
I need to free the time and energy and do something like this for my mum. Her oven is the worst. There’s one entire wall of stuff in the kitchen that’s ridiculously impractical and old.
I have a gap for the dishwasher already. Just gotta get one
For some reason I assumed you going with an integrated dishwasher. No idea why.
Sorry
Foiled again. Sister and her bf came around for dinner last night and we got TMNT all set up to play, then the moment we were about to start he got called up to come in to work. Blast 😛
I did another thing
Nice!
Though because of my OCD I kept trying to move the properties window out of the way in photoshop. 😀
Ha, as I was leaving climbing the girl at the desk remembered something she’d been meaning to ask me. “Do you know the show First Dates…?”
Spotted 😛
Famous
That’s what she said, actually.
Huh. Picked up Advance Wars 2 again, and not only was I surprised to find that both my SP and Micro were on green battery/turned on at all, but I’ve gone and gotten S-rankings on the two missions I’ve now played – the last one getting a perfect score. I don’t get it, I thought I sucked at this game.
I was the worst at Advance Wars. I’m not bad at Battalion Wars but I think that’s just because it lets me brute force it a little. Great series though.
I got addicted to AWDS, it’s all I played for months. Would love to see a new one again one day…
I got up to the last mission on 1, then maybe one or two missions from the end in Dual Strike, then got given Dark Conflict for my 21st and never opened it til Club Nintendo was closing and I needed the card from it. Then at some point decided to grab 23 off eBay and finally try and finish off the first one’s final mission, took many attempts to not just get wiped out but got there eventually 😛 Back in the saddle…
Hey everyone! I made a Growlithe shirt design. I also made a video of the drawing.
I’m not really getting any feedback on the videos though, so I have no idea if it’s worth continuing.
There are links to the shirts on Viral style via the youtube link. If 50 people agree to buy them, they’ll actually get produced!
I really, really liked the Anxiety Video. The first growlithe video, I personally would have sped up a bit more, but I have been impatient lately, so take that with a grain of salt.
The second Growlithe video was a bit jumpy for me, but I was watching it on very large screen, so that might have made it feel weird.
It was great seeing your reference images and how you tackled the drawing. I’d like to see more videos.
I sped up the second Growlithe one by 20x. That’s probably why it was jumpy. I have a 5 minute limit because I’m using a freeware version and I figured it makes the most sense. No one wants to be watching someone draw for 20 minutes
Hello musical TAYbies! (@mrtaco ?)
I’d like to get Batboy learning music this year. He’s got a good ear for it, so I think it’ll be good for him.
Any tips on buying a first keyboard/digital piano – we need something compact for our little house, is a keyboard ok for practising on? There seem to be plenty on Gumtree.
@blaghman @sernobulus @greenius
I think a key board is fine. JB has one with light up keys for $129. I would suggest not buying something too expensive in case they don’t like it
Yeah, it’s probably fine just getting a cheapie for starting out. We had this little keyboard that me and my sister used to bang around on when we were little, didn’t even have fullsize keys but it got the job done. And then I guess if he takes to it well enough and is looking to continue then you can look at getting something fancier and more long-term.
Would smaller keys be better for his smaller hands? Or is it one of those things where moving from a small keyboard to a regular size is like learning a new instrument?
It’s hard to say, we had Mum’s old piano here which I also used to play on since I was little and then started getting lessons on, so there was never any clear cut jump to be made for me. But kids’ minds are pretty elastic, I’m sure they can adapt to the full size easily enough 😛 Probably have less muscle memory to deal too.
It is mostly muscle memory, get full size keys, and weighted ones if possible.
I have a Casio Privia which is wonderful for learning on. We bought a 2nd one for school, and are about to sell it. They go pretty reasonable 2nd hand and are fantastic keyboards and compact for having weighted, full sized keys.
The only real advice I would give is make sure whatever you get sounds right
Having off key ‘toy’ ones can hamper musical ability
Agreed, would definitely be looking at a second hand Yamaha (or similar) keyboard, not a toy one. Seem to be quite a few around the $3-400 mark with the stand included.
Okay, so it’s a little iffy if you’re not sure how well it’ll stick, but the factor my sister (who used to teach piano) always recommended people pay attention to is the feel of the keys. And the downside there is that the cheaper keyboards tend to feel pretty rough. You probably won’t want to look for a full or partially weighted set of keys (they make a big difference to feel, but you’re hitting RRPs well over a thousand dollars at that point), but definitely look for something with a feature like “graded soft touch” (which is the Yamaha term, in at least a few things) to make sure you’re getting something with an appropriate ability to be played either soft or loud (rather important in a pianoforte, at least).
Number of keys makes a difference, most lower end keyboards are 61 keyed, which I think is a little too restrictive, but again, for something to test the water and last for at least a few years, it should be fine, and obviously they’re a lot easier spacewise at that size.
In terms of sound, most keyboards today are a lot better than they used to be, if you can find a mention of pure or true piano sound, that’s a nice bonus, should mean the piano “voice” was generated off a real piano, instead of just being a midi that saw a piano through the shop window one time.
Great advice, thanks!
Edit: Uh… TAY wtf are you doing that was clearly going to be a reply. And then wouldn’t let me edit either til full cache refresh.
I love my tiny Bluetooth keyboard
It’s been like a year or something but one of my chilli plants finally has a chilli on it! 😮
Hooray! I have an excellent chilli crop this year. Just have to keep the plants alive over the next few days.
@welbot how’s your NBN service been with My Republic? I’m getting a lot of NBN propaganda from Telstra so i’m guessing it won’t be long until it is switched on here, and was wanting to jump to My Republic for internet & home phone.
Well, I’d like to tell you, but due to NBN Co, my installation has been delayed until March 2nd. 😐
That said, my experience with MyRepublic so far has been reasonably positive. Only complaint so far is longer than usual wait times to talk to someone (most has been about 20 mins so far) but the help on the other end is all Australian, and seem quite competent at what they do. I was sent my modem etc within a week of signing up, and haven’t been billed for it yet (apart from the $1,) so they seem to be living up to their word. They said I won’t be charged my monthly fee until my service is active, and I’ve seen no attempts to take my money yet, so that’s a positive.
They were very helpful when I rang up to find out what was happening with my installation too. Despite not being notified earlier than the day it was due, the guy on the phone put me on hold, and called NBN Co to find out details, and provide my mobile number so they could call me when the arrived (as I have no doorbell) and he was able to find out that they had a ‘lack of resources’ to do my installation at that date. Supposedly some kind of cable or some such shit, which is pretty piss poor considering I’d had it booked in a month before, but that’s not on MyRepublic at all. I’ve heard the same stories from people getting service through a multitude of ISP’s, and it always ends up being the fault of poor management on behalf of NBN Co or Telstra.
Ah NBNCo, delivering on the fact they’ve been screwed over severely by the government. Man that sucks it’s an ongoing saga like this. But good to hear that MyRepublic has been very helpful.
Sending everyone cool thoughts! Take care this weekend in the heat
I know i’ll be hiding in the cool room & walk in freezer this weekend at work lol.
This is my every day 😐 There’s no escaping it for me. From like Oct-March, it’s just all hot all the time :\
My only chance of escape, is going to work, but I’m not even allowed to do that atm 🙁
Over here in Trump’s America, it snowed on Sunday and Monday. About 3 inches all up. I had to work from home for two days because I was worried about ice on the roads.
I remember back in the ‘mainframe days’ I worked inside a computer room that was kept at 17C. It was freezing so I used to rug up with jacket, beanie etc.
The lunch place was directly across the road, so it wasn’t worth taking the gear off to go buy a sandwich, as you didn’t heat up in the small amount of time you were outside.
People used to look at me like I was an alien on 40 degree days, standing in the cafe line, rugged up like an Arctivcexplorer and clearly not at all hot or uncomfortable. I used to just smile and say hi, grab my food and head straight back, leaving them to their theories.
Disappointed to see a few articles posted from US Kotaku/Gizmodo recently just baiting Trump supporters (and, elsewhere, conservatives and the political right). I understand that there’s a commercial reality with these websites, and dumb clickbait drives ad revenue, but I have this huge fear that every time one of these articles is written, more people read this presupposed superiority of the authors and stop listening to anything the progressive side of politics have to say.
“Yes, in between the slurs on my character, intelligence and value as a human being, I see you make a very good point and I have changed my point of view and now agree with you” – said no one. Ever.
I regard most of the crew in the Australian offices pretty highly, but the standard coming out of the US office can sometimes be generously described as “almost as good as livejournal”.
Yeah. I find it very frustrating. It’s a huge part of how Trump got into office, and when he first won everyone agreed with a few articles pointing that out, but it seems like everyone fell right back into talking down to everyone in the most hostile ways possible. The left wing has an absolute nightmare of an image problem that nobody wants to acknowledge. We’re up there with Facebook vegans on the smug-o-meter.
I think about this a lot, to be fair. It’s a fine line and I take notice of the division and how everyone reacts to the articles, even if I’m not commenting. We’ve not run things in the past if I felt it just wasn’t appropriate, and I’m not averse to being more active in the future if I don’t think it’s right. But it’s also a case of seeing what people appreciate and what they don’t, and tailoring things piece by piece. It’s like a very slow QA session, if that analogy makes any sense. But I promise – please keep looping me in the feedback. It doesn’t go unheard.
Thanks Alex, you do good work here! As far as politics are concerned, it’s important and deserves discussion – even if the comments sections are always just full of people planting their flags and yelling at strawmen. It would be nice though, if the level of discussion coming from the authors were a step above that, for all the reasons that @dogman pointed out, and if that means putting a big red line through anything tagged “politics” from the US sites, then so be it. I would hope you’d generate the same level of views and clicks with a more moderate article, because people are so keen to yell at strangers on the internet anyway.
So looks like we’ll temporarily be living in Werribee in a share house while we get settled, get our bearings etc, and then look to move to Brunswick/Coburg later in the year!
Cripes, today has been utterly boring.
Can’t wait to get home and… be even more bored.
🙁
Once I get home I’ll be plugging in an old file server and destroying the RAID array on said server before selling the box on Monday.
Then I get to pull apart the $1000 video card I bought a few months back because EVGA skimped on the conductive materials, so I’ve got to stick down some thermal pads in the interior of the card to prevent it blowing up!
Hey! I’m finally having a holiday. @tegan_writes and I are at the airport and we’ll be in New Zealand until Tuesday. Serrels will run the ship until I get back on Wednesday, FYI.
I’M SO EXCITED GUYS
Perfect timing – you’ll miss the apocalypse! Here’s hoping NSW hasn’t spontaneously combusted before you get back.
I don’t know, can we trust that Serrels guy with the responsibility? Have you seen his opinions on Vegemite and Fairy Bread?
Enjoy the holiday! I’m so jealous =P
Tell about all the adventures when you come back =D
Anime!
Let’s look at what’s happening next season (starting April), since aside from a couple of shows this season’s kinda lousy. Here’s a chart:
http://anichart.net/spring
Highlights IMO:
– Little Witch Academia is apparently continuing into this season, meaning it should all be on Netflix by July or so if you want to wait and watch it legit (it’s great)
– Attack on Titan’s second season. Hope the pacing’s better, as it was the biggest thing that held me back from enjoying it (plus the constant grimdark)
– Granblue Fantasy. They actually put the first two episodes up on streaming sites as a preview and it’s pretty good. Just the game’s plot, but the game’s not bad. High budget animation, solid fantasy plot, really nice character art. Will want to sell the game to you, but nothing wrong with that.
– Boku no Hero Academia’s second season. The first one I really didn’t like at first (main character is v. irritating initially) but it grew on me heaps as it got going.
– Boruto. I guess Naruto Shippuuden is ending and this is replacing it? I don’t care but many will, I think.
– Clockwork Planet. I haven’t read the novels, but they’re written and illustrated by Yuu Kamiya, a Japanese-Brazilian guy who also wrote No Game, No Life which was massively entertaining.
– Danmachi: Sword Oratoria. It’s a spinoff of the mainline Danmachi (“Is it wrong to try and pick up girls in a dungeon”, yes that’s a real title) which was a pretty entertaining fantasy novel series and anime a couple of years ago. I’ve actually read the first novel and it was okay, focusing on the main character’s unrequited love interest. The first novel content wasn’t that good – re-tread of same material from another perspective – but it gave me the impression it had the potential to be like the Railgun spinoff from A Certain Magical Index, taking better characters and focusing on them and making something much more entertaining. Could go either way, will be interesting to see.
– Eromanga Sensei. I couldn’t care less about this, but I think it’ll be popular simply because the author’s previous work (Oreimo / My Little Sister Can’t Possibly Be This Cute) was really popular for some godforsaken reason. Anyway from what I can tell it’s basically the same plot (dude’s cute sister is secretly an anime nerd) but instead of her secret day job being a genius supermodel or whatever the shit was going on, she draws porn.
– Sakura Quest. It’s a PA Works original. Their original stuff tends to be extremely well written and has a particular style to it which is hard to describe, but usually involves a lot of situational character drama which has character reactions and so on that feel a lot more like a live-action show than typical anime. Can’t describe it well. PA Works alone means it’s worth a look – hopefully it’s a bit more Hanasaku Iroha and a lot less Glasslip.
– Zero Kara Hajimeru Mahou no Shou. Aka “Starting the Magical Book from Zero” is adapted from a really popular light novel series that started life as the 2013 Dengeki Bunko grand prize winner (non-professional writers submit works that if they win will be serialized in Dengeki, as well as winning a cash prize). Quite a few really good light novel writers and series got their start after winning that prize. I don’t know much about this beyond that it’s very popular and that the artist (Shizuma Yoshinari) is one of the main Kantai Collection artists, which probably helped it’s popularity. I recall seeing a lot of excitement around this, though the Re:Zero anime was announced at the same time and they have confusingly similar titles (Ri:Zero Kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu) so people might have been confusing the two. Worth a look at least.
So, i’ve decided against a GTX 1070 for my computer & just gonna get a GTX 1080. Can get an EVGA one for a little bit over $800 AUD from Newegg or Amazon, seems like a good price & EVGA *just* announced their new ICX cooler for their cards today, which is cool.
Look at this rich bastard =P
Haha. I wish 🙁 I’m doing jobs on the side fixing PC’s & selling off old parts to help pay for this 😛
Hey, everyone is a rich bastard to me =P
Haha, I hear you there 🙁
Glad you knew it was a joke though
Lifes too boring to be serious, right? 😛
Life can be crap and sometimes all you can do is laugh
Okay. So I had been feeling really tired and run down so I went to the doctors. Turns out my iron is critically low. Again.
So, now I’m on iron tablets for the next 3 months at least
If this is happening all the time, you should ask your GP to do some more tests to find out why – if it’s your diet, that’s easy enough to fix, but if you’re eating enough iron and still getting anaemic, it’s worth asking the question why (and there could be lots of other reasons, like really heavy periods for example).
The side-effects of the iron tablets aren’t pleasant, you don’t want to be regularly taking them or relying on them when there could be a different solution to an underlying problem. (I *hate* iron taking tablets, thankfully haven’t needed them too often)
Apparently I don’t absorb iron very well and it’s actually a common complaint in my family. It could also partially be diet as Mum and I can’t afford meat that often. I also eat pretty small meals too.
It happens at least once a year, I end up on iron tablets. I don’t get the side effects of constipation so I’m pretty lucky.
Meat is a good source of iron, but you don’t have to eat an expensive steak or massive portions of food to get enough iron. You just need to be mindful of which foods are good sources, and have something in most meals that will keep your iron levels topped up. There’s lots of foods that have good amounts of iron. Here is a pretty helpful list I had to learn all this stuff when I had a toddler who was essentially a vegetarian – turns out peanut butter is a great source of iron – hooray!
Yeah, I had Edamame for lunch. Turns out Soybeans are high in iron. I also got some nuts to eat. They may have sugar on them, but I figured it was better than eating chips
Putting Foxtel on just in time for the AFL season.
Should have it installed by Thursday.