I note that Kingdom of Loathing has added a Pair of Ragged Claws and a crab familiar in the past week. And if you do not care, the dolphins mermaids will not sing to you.
Have you used the secret crab emote in Gmail chat? Whee!
: Zubon
Archive for the 'General' CategoryPage 4 of 102
For those of us fond of allusions, “hope springs eternal” is always a winner. It sounds positive, but it is one of the darkest sentiments you will find. The full quote is:
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest
In other words, (vain) hope is all you have; the blessing is never coming, always in the promised future. It gets better: this entire section of the Essay on Man is about how bleak the future is. The lamb frolics in the morning before going to the butcher in the afternoon, licking the hand that raises the knife. This is the kindness of a God who cares no more about the death of a hero or a sparrow, the bursting of a bubble or a world: at least you have fruitless hope and are too ignorant or stupid to see doom coming. This is, by the way, intended as an optimistic argument, because hey, you have that hope, and it will be worse if you ask for more.
Continue reading ‘Never Is, But Always To Be’
It’s birthday time again I see;
Another year’s gone by.
We’re older than we used to be;
The thought could make me cry.
For getting older is not such fun,
When there’s hurting in your back,
And it’s agony if you have to run,
And a pleasure to lie in the sack.
Yes getting older is quite a bore,
But to not get old is worse.
So “Happy Birthday!” let’s shout once more,
And to heck with our ride in the hearse!
- Karl Fuchs
Yes, a pathetic attempt to garner birthday wishes for myself. Sad isn’t it?
- Ethic
I don’t know where /dance started, but I am guessing Everquest. Regardless, dancing in MMOs has become such a critical feature that if an MMO developer decides not to add the emote command they have to proactively defend their decision. It is a big deal to dance in MMOs. Continue reading ‘The /dance Function’
The flash game challenge of the week at Kongregate is Rage 3. Adventure map 4 exhibits two large, very common problems. First, successive keys are at opposite ends of a large map, so go all the way to the bottom to get the key to open the gate at the top to open the gate at the bottom to open the gate at the top to open the gate at the bottom to open the spring at the top. Second, after doing so, you discover that you must be level 6 to enter the last boss’s room. There is not enough experience in the entire adventure game to bring you to level 6. You must either grind the map a few times or play the arcade mode to build up experience. Grinding, in a platformer. Also, mention the level requirement before sending someone all the way to the bottom to get the key to open the gate at the top to open the gate…
: Zubon
I really like Warhammer Online. Sure, it has its problems, but Mythic seems truly dedicated to the game (unlike some other newer MMOs). It has some level of PvE, but I have Lord of the Rings Online for PvE. Public Quests, I hope, will shape the future of MMO PvE content, but Mythic has laid down the charge that its focus is RvR. So, I really only use the game for MMO PvP. And, that’s the problem. I am subscribing to a PvP MMO. Continue reading ‘A PvP MMO Subscription’
Guess what game I bought myself for an early holiday gift? The title should give it away, more than likely. It’s making my MMORPG vacation due to traveling on work so much less painful.
Much geek love for this finally coming to portable. This, Secret of Mana, and Earthbound were my all-time favorite SNES games growing up. I’ve very nearly bought one of those emulator kits for my DS simply so I could play these games. With this release, I see the possibility for Secret to follow (Children of Mana was horribly disappointing) and perhaps, dare I dream, Earthbound. Ness, Randi, and Crono are the three kings of RPG history…
Arnold Zwicky blogs at Language Log (and if you read only one linguistics blog, it should probably be Language Log). Earlier this year, he wrote about caring for his late partner Jacques. Jacques had brain cancer, and the best treatment available only moved him from impending death to inevitable dementia, an Alzheimer’s-like decline a decade down the line. Arnold spent twelve years caring for him.
This appeared on a linguistics blog because of Jacques’s particular problem: avoidance of evidence that he was in California. I encourage you to read the whole thing. He could read normally, but he could not consciously process the word “California” if it implied that Jacques himself was in California. For him, license plates were blocked, news reports were garbled, and postcards were illegible, but only the parts implying that he was in California. National news that mentioned California would have been fine; you could see those anywhere. His brain was effectively reading ahead, recognizing the word and the context, blocking it from his conscious awareness, and then rationalizing why the word was not there.
Prof. Zwicky has some comments about similar dementias. Others in the comments share their stories about caring for family members and their cases of implicit and explicit awareness. The dialogue draws out more details. It is a heart-rending account of loss.
And then one commenter tossed in, “TL;DR” Five characters, and I wanted to track the IP to put a brick through someone’s window or skull.
: Zubon