Aran

I second that; grinding is the worst. For multiplayer games, replayability isn't driven by randomness but by player interaction. To that end, randomness should be predictable and not eclipse skill, and character progress (if any) should be dwarfed by player progress. That includes RTS and turn-based strategy games, but also some shooters. I have a small reference pool as a casual gamer, so my best examples are TF2, Wesnoth and some of the older AoE and Settlers installations. Strategy, of course, has no character progress at all, but even TF2's item drops only create variety rather than making characters significantly more powerful. For single-player or co-op games, the best kind of randomness is procedurally generated content - Minecraft, obviously, but I also enjoy rogue-likes like ADOM. And many games (basically Myst-like) don't need randomness or replayability at all to be enjoyable. Single-player RPGs (eg. Spiderweb games) aren't very replayable either, beyond some special challenges and player classes, and that's perfectly okay. Some games are like very long films that you enjoy once (for about 10-30 hours in total, maybe more) and then put away. You don't need to keep playing it indefinitely.

(i also heard of someone who didn't use punctuation and he died twice)

- I'm definitely on the one-space side, because typesetting should always be left to computers. There's no point in interfering with the justification and spacing algorithms. (HTML seems to agree, because without using special markup, multiple spaces are never displayed. ) - I consider "whom" and "I were" to be non-optional rules, and try to correct those whenever I slip up. - I may start my sentences with conjunctions when posting in forums (if I even use complete sentences), but mostly avoid them when composing texts. (Including texts for RPs, I guess.) - No Oxford comma normally, probably because it's not used in German either. Passive voice whenever it is appropriate to emphasize the object. - The rules on split infinitives and final prepositions seem kinda ridiculous, so I ignore them. - I consider "like" and "as" as synonyms in this context, but tend to prefer "as" when it's not an actual example or simile. Edit: Amusingly, the quote element is configured not to collapse spaces after all, unlike the poll options.

If the universe is deterministic, then I was predestined to not believe in a deterministic universe.

That is an ambiguous and mildly disconcerting mental image. But you seem to be happy, so okay I guess?

"My very educated mother just said, 'Uh-oh! No Pluto'." (From Colbert, I think.) Just Served Up Nine Pies, surely Saturn and Uranus are an astronomy hoax. In actuality, there's just one planet between Jupiter and Neptune, which is called Aturn. I mean, seriously... "Uranus"?

Heh, nice one. Edit: Wait are you serious.

Which would be heresy, since Nephils are clearly the superior species. [/nostalgia week]

It fires Aloraels. Edit: One might call it an Alo-Raelgun. One. Not me, of course. Do I look like a leporid?

I just ate a sandwich (no pun intended).

In other news, I just set my watch to correspond with the radio clock again. It gains about a quarter second per day, so I set it every 4-5 days or so. (don't judge me)

There are watches that can wirelessly interface with a phone now, by the way.

It hasn't happened yet in the picture - the spider's sitting just outside the window and staring hungrily. I know, I thought it was the sun at first too.

This isn't common knowledge, but I'm actually an AI Aran created shortly before passing away.

It's still arbitrary, of course, based on the coincidence that 9192631770 periods of this radiation just happen to be reasonably close to 1/86400 of a solar day. However, this does mean the value of the second is now based on fundamental physical laws, and won't change as the Earth's rotation slows down. As far as I know, though, the only SI unit that still has a "dirty" definition is the kilogram. (One of my favorite impractical time formats would be to use the PGP word list - basically a phonetic alphabet for bytes instead of letters - to spell out the Unix timestamp. While I was writing this, it was "dwelling businessman clamshell article". The last word changes every second; the third every 4:16 minutes, the second every 18:12:16 hours, and the first every 194 days. This format doesn't handle negative pre-1970 times though, and after 2036 it'll require five words.)

We're not getting it for another two weeks here in Europe. You can imagine how fun this makes calculating cross-Atlantic time differences. I'm personally fine with using UTC or even any other incrementing counter that has an 86400-second period and gets leap second adjustments. (China already operates on a single timezone despite spanning five of them geographically.) Using straight Unix timestamps - or even a timestamp without leap seconds - would be kind of cool but impractical since we operate on a daily rhythm. I can't do modulo arithmetic in my head in order to figure out that 1415001600 and 1415088000 are both 8AM, one day apart. Note, though, that it's really fun to get used to (approximately) converting time intervals into seconds in your head. 15:40 minutes is one Ks, 11.6 days is one Ms, 31.7 years is one Gs, etc.

Oh, okay, so I just have to wail on it a bit and damage it enough.

I've barely managed to escape the Shadow Beast in the woods, and have found this trapdoor in the southwest corner. From what Kasch said, I suppose this must be the tunnel that leads to the north part of the river, but I can't open it - it's being held shut or something. I'm not sure what to do next? (Do I have to actually kill the Beast at this point in the game? That seems almost impossible...)

Gödel's Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse. That bit threw me too before I remembered there are actually six. They've just always been published together in three volumes.

> some polishing Keep in mind that even after all that work (which was more than some polish) put into the BoE and BoA editors and their documentation, they were still pretty unwieldy and hard to get familiar with.

Oh noes! I was hoping to see how this ends.

Nope, it wasn't. In any case, I think the only people I associate with colors are those who frequent the calref chat, or those who have had an avatar with a prominent color in it for a long time. By that measure, I suppose I'd be dark blue.

Both together. Chocolate with salt and chili is incredible. Also: Fish fingers and custard!

> Jera 'Commander' Keen This one wins. I'm trying to remember the significance of kittens, but apparently I don't know even my own SW lore. Edit: Also, didn't Nikki have another nickname, from around the same era as "Frank"? ... I want to say "Brody", but archive trawl suggests that's Archmage Alex. Edit2: Mutey?

If I read it right, the bubble would expand at light speed, and we wouldn't even see it coming. It could already be happening. It could be reaching the edge of the solar system right now !