maisoul

Here.

I wonder if, like FaceBook, it's possible to have LiveJournal pick up posts from another blog and reproduce them...?

Motivation:
It's just easier (and lazier) to use WordPress. Most of my posts recently have been through ScribeFire, and that doesn't get along too well with LiveJournal; not with tags, or anything other than the basic editor.

Then again, with that as a reason, I might find myself liking one of the downloadable clients available and continuing to post here, anyway. We'll see how much I like WordPress after I've made more than a few posts.

Well, I've unsubscribed from LotRO. That doesn't necessarily mean I'll stop playing, as I've still got two weeks on the remaining free trial time left, but...
There was something odd about the survey they ask leavers to fill in, and I didn't really have much else to do, so...

It was all well and good until I hit question 6 ('Did your character own a house?'). No, my character didn't own a house, so naturally I did the good thing and indicated that. Skip ahead to question 14 ('You indicated that you're leaving for another game...').
The problem is, I didn't indicate that earlier. So I went to the last option ('Other'), and typed in the box there, 'No, I didn't.'.
Pressing next at that point then brought me straight back to question 6. A few loops later, I give up. So much for bettering the LotRO experience for future players, hm?

Mabinogi looks like a nice new MMO. It's recently (yesterday and today) on a pre-open beta weekend, meaning 'anyone' can play.
Except they can't, since it's only for North American peoples and they forgot to tell us.

Bother.

Probably everyone's heard about the protest by now, but I'm finding the variations in 'Anonymous' you get in the comments here interesting by itself.

I wonder how many of those were just created to comment on this story; how many were around previously; and how many of them are 'why not?'
The phenomenon reminds me of GitS Stand Alone Complex a bit, really.

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Okay, so I may have been a little dead for the past week or two. Maybe it should be 'revival', instead.
But last week had three deadlines for coursework, two of which had been set at the beginning of the week, or a few days beforehand and were groupwork.

Yeah, all that's done now. I still have coursework - naturally - but I can take the weekend off for a break, I believe. Back to normal for a while, at least.

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This is somewhat interesting.

Okay, I use Facebook. Constantly, people are sending me invites to use applications I'd rather not have cluttering my page; I may be messy in my bedroom, but it's easier to find stuff in the mess for me than it is to have to scroll down several pages to find what I want online.
You may also guess I'm not fond of the Wall applications there, either. Stuff I don't like or don't think I'll use or want around for long end up below all of those. Anyway...

Okay, so someone sent me an invite. Usually I just ignore these, but this time I was curious in the app. Silly me, forgetting that clicking the link you'd THINK would supply more information gives you this:



(Sorry, person-who-sent-me-this-whose-name-I'm-not-disclosing-because-I-think-it's-irrelevant, I'm really just not interested in 98% of Facebook's apps. If I don't put it on my page myself, I'm not resoundingly likely to listen when other people suggest it. The apps I use are relevant to me. I got over Neopets just under a decade ago, and I'm not really doing anything with the pet thing.)

Anyway. Yes. BIG button to 'Add ScoreMe'... and then there's the option to 'Cancel', underlined in the picture as my cursor was over it when I took the screenshot.
...but it's not really an option, as it just looks like a link. It's the right colour, and it reacts in the same fashion as links on Facebook do, but it's not actually a link - it leads nowhere. Given this is the default 'add this app' screen, it's not a long shot to say this behaviour is exactly the same for every other app on Facebook.  I know cancelling is really just a matter of hitting the back button, but... that 'option' there is just misleading.

Okay, who on my friendlist reads Discworld?
You remember the Clacks? The Discworld equivalent of something between the telegraph and the internet?

Turns out it was real.

...well, sorta.

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Yeah.
Merry XXVth.

So, my current MMO-fix is Dream of Mirror Online, another free-to-play cash-shop-supported MMORPG from the more-east-than-here. Obviously it's good enough that I didn't uninstall it immediately out of disgust, but for further details, here's the review.

( Read more... )

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...really quite fun, especially when you're competing with a sibling for score.
(I won - I currently hold first place on the scoreboard.)

The 'new' computer's gradually getting sorted out, though it's still oddly slow in places. I'm not sure at all what my brother did to it over the... uh... single year, I think, that he's had it. Definitely treats them worse than I do.
It runs Oblivion much better than the one up north, and it manages 40 frames on my current fortress in DF compared to the 20 frames the northern computer manages - not a huge difference, but respectable, still, as it's double what I had before.

...oh, yeah. I've remembered something else this computer doesn't have yet. ScribeFire. Easily fixed, though.

For some reason, I want to play it. Perhaps it's wanting to listen to the music again - maybe I'll do better this time, since I've been playing Morrowind and Oblivion.
Must remember to take Oblivion home, might actually run on the new computer.

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Stuff.
...and stuff.

Well, I'm still working on my coursework - only 2600~ words to go, and possibly a bit of editing to fit everything in. Should be done by tomorrow morning, even if I have to miss out on sleep for it. Just taking a break to talk about how I've avoided going insane whilst working on this and the other thing and resolutely kept off IM clients and the distraction they sometimes pose. Been drawing a bit, but that's also ground to a halt whilst I try not to fail a module. Tomorrow I'll paint Malco.

Aquaria is a very nicely-done game. Plays like Metroid meets Ecco the Dolphin meets some kind of top-down all-directions quasi-bullet-hell game-I've-never-played, and it's already derailed at least one plot-prediction of mine. Maybe.
Not entirely sure, yet. At any rate, the demo is very worth checking out, but it still doesn't really capture the entire game, as a number of features and elements only start to appear after the demo ends.

Twilight Heroes is an amusing KoL-esque browser-based RPG, but with an entirely different bent to setting and such. Rather than being an adventurer of somewhat-generic-yet-somehow-wrong-sounding class in a sort-of-fantasy world, you're an initally-pathetic ill-costumed superhero based in the City of Twilight. You become less pathetic, though not really any less ill-costumed, as time goes on and you gain experience and... you get the idea. Twilight Heroes has quite a few problems KoL doesn't have, such as a general lack of things to do after only a little exploration, but that's only to be expected in a game just shortly into beta. Mostly all that's keeping me in the game right now are the merit badges.

Lastly, Skyrates. Another browser-based game, but this one's designed with the players spending most of their time doing different things.
Skyrates is pirates and traders in airships, and claims inspiration by Eve Online, in part. You can choose to spend your time trading goods between floating islands in the sky, or you can choose to spend time hunting down pirates (or merchants? Not sure yet) and defeating them for bounties. The more novel element is that flights occur in real time - when the client says it's going to take an hour and a half to get to the next destination, it means it.
Naturally you can set up a flight plan, detailing where to fly to, what to sell and buy there, and where to head next - initially only four waypoints, but easily expandable. Both your avatar's skills and your aircraft are customisable, and there's a moderate selection of appearances available.
If you're having trouble visualising what this is like, think Porco Rosso.

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I'd actually be happier if it snowed. I'd get less wet, and probably stay warmer, too.

Also, why is it I feel all around more awake with around two hours' sleep than six?

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Once again the urge to play Guild Wars has attacked me and torn off a limb.

Anyone - and this applies to both LiveJournal and Facebook peoples - want to play (basic) Guild Wars with a Mesmer/Monk who wouldn't mind playing either class singularly, or as a hybrid? I enjoy healing as much as I enjoy baiting enemies into killing themselves through stupidity.

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I like my MP3 player. It has a very respectable amount of space on it for music, nice user-interface, and whilst the volume control is a little touchy, it works and you can lock it to avoid deafening yourself when you don't pay attention.
However, the playlist creator for the thing needs just one more feature before I'll accept it - the option to automatically order tracks numerically/alphabetically. Or by ANYTHING, really - currently, to reorder a playlist, you have to do it manually.
For small playlists, this isn't a problem. Naturally, if you've twenty tracks or so, it'd take about a minute to do by hand, at most.

It just gets a bit depressing when you have to reorder 143 tracks this way.

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Well, that was short. Good, but short.
Pity there isn't too much plot interaction with party members past the opening few areas - Atton, Kreia and Bao-dur led me to believe the entire game would have relevant dialogue with party members... and then it didn't. Most of the talking is through initiating chat with them during play.
Still good in spite of that, but I really, really wouldn't have minded if party members piped up with their own opinions more often.

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Well, last night I cancelled my WoW subscription. I haven't played in somewhere between a month and two, and I have a horrible inability to go back to places. It's fine trying again when a place is free to play - like Maple Story, or FlyFF - but to play at WoW costs a monthly fee.
I'd rather not be paying whilst I wait longer to see if I want to play again, or when I might lose interest again in another couple of weeks.
All in all, though, WoW was worth playing - overall, I met a lot of nice people, had fun, helped them have fun, and it just generally managed to occupy close to a year of my attention. I also still have close to a month in time left before the last month runs out, thanks to my poor timing coming up with something and deciding, so I'll see about saying bye to people who weren't online last night.

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I've been playing Knights of the Old Republic 2 recently, and naturally
I've gravitated towards the 'caster' type class - Jedi Master.



Now, on some level I'm aware all adequately-levelled classes in that game are going to be fatal for the opposing side.
I'm just remarkably surprised by how deadly Force Wave is. I mean, Destroy Droid is very nasty, too, but you're not always fighting droids, and the range isn't brilliant, either.
So. Force Wave. This hits all enemies within 15 meters, pushes them back 5 meters, and stuns them for 6 seconds. They also suffer 1.5 times the caster's level in damage. As a level... 24 character now, having gone from Jedi Sentinel to Jedi Master, I have somewhere over 400 Force Points. Combining that with the Force Affinity form in combat lets me spam the power until everything around me is dead.
Even Sith lords. Because even they get knocked down, even if they manage to save and take only half damage, and only repeated castings make even a dent in the FP bar.

Couple of things seem to be immune to it, though, so happily it's not a foolproof tactic. Wiping out entire rooms of enemies with just Force Wave is fun, but after a while the rippling effect starts to make you dizzy.

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Well, messing around in the new Dwarf Fortress is pretty fun, even though I've lost a few decent and not-so-decent fortresses to crashes.

I've got the hang of farming, so long as I settle an area with sand - lazy, aren't I?
But I've also got the hang of channelling magma into an aquiferous layer - I just haven't gotten around to working out a way of getting past one of those, yet. The fortress crashed before I could mess around further.

Other stuff, though? Well, I've caught another cold - I have a painfully sore throat, and an ear apparently directly connected to the roof of my mouth.
Also, Pac-Txt.