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Harry and tsunami pimping the front and back of this years shirts, some billiards, and what's left of the shirtbox - we sold out, bitches. According to Adam, it's a first - I think a lot of it has to do with the fortunate production glitch - the sword/fist was supposed to be on the back. Turns out it works a hell of a lot better this way. :D
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L : bda with this year's pumpcon shirt. R : pete wielding ATC. Fo shizzle.
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| Aleph : Last of the V8 Interceptors
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Technically, last of the G5 Workstations. But Mad Max is cool, dammit.
The only major hurdle with the upgrade was getting my system configuration and user data pulled off of idoru's root disk. I figured I'd do what I usually do - yank the source drive, plug it into a spare bay in the target, and go nuts. Then I {realized|remembered} that idoru's a bitch - both 450g drives are seriously, pliers-and-clamps stuck in the drive bays. No way in hell were they coming out - and one of the JOYOUS bits of the first generation G5 design is that you have to pull the "b" drive in order to remove the "a" drive - something they've since fixed. What proceeded was a grossly inconvenient ghettohack.
SATA data line from idoru's / through a PCI slot in aleph into the "b" slot on aleph's motherboard. You'd think that's no big thing, until you realize that while the transfer is going on, idoru sounds like this (288k mp3).
Good thing my headphones are insulated.
The funky thing about a firewire or local disk transfer of user and system information is that some stuff doesn't move over for some reason, and some things get wonky - my monitors came up in reverse order (expected) and with a wallpaper I haven't used in a year (unexpected). Energy Saver was set for install defaults (blink and the machine sleeps, expected but still high on the "this is a BUG NOT A FEEJUR" list*), and for some reason Soundtrack barfs because it can't find G4 hardware. Odd, seeing as how I never installed it on one. Fireworks demanded to call home and Final Cut Studio wanted the serial number reinput. Photoshop forgot all of its palette layouts (it does that), and it turns out that the cute little CPU Monitor I've been hanging onto since Jaguar can only see two processors.
Aside from that, the hardware is a lot quieter than idoru.
Off the cuff observations on the new kit:
The third USB port on the back is a nice addition, or will be for one of my coworkers. The modem port is gone, and the ethernet port has moved to the top of the motherboard and cloned itself. I found this a little odd at first, but dual NICs out of the box has a few advantages - servers, routers, stuff like that. There's now a strip of plastic under the case latch, which I assume is part of the liquid cooling system. The video card is pretty sweet - it's an NVidia (bias - I have a preference for ATI) and handles the Doom 3 test nicely. Dual DVI means I finally don't have to worry about blowing the video card in the event of a power surge.** I haven't used the optical drive yet, but Toast 5 picks it up, for great justice. The mega mega happy is the tweaks to the drive cage - the A drive can now be pulled without having to remove the B drive first. <3.
Oh, and the Firewire 800? Finally using it, with a bigass LaCie drive. Well, four 500g drives in a hardware RAID 0. Not something to keep permanent data on, but more than enough space to work with on Big Video Projects.
* Nothing like having to babysit a workstation through a 180 gig file copy. You'd think you could just kick it loose, walk away and come back in a couple of hours, but nooooo. Hell, the OS X operating system installer fucking falls asleep during the install. To "make up" for this chronic narcolepsy, the power button on the front of the machine is now heavy-breathing degrees of hair trigger. It may well have been hair-trigger on first generation hardware - see above re: energy settings.
** This has happened three times. Two G4/733s and one G5. Two at work, one at home. At work, the mobos went kerplooey as well and the whole mess was replaced under Applecare. At home, the mobo survived and OWC replaced the video card for cost of shipping it back to them. |
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From one of the post-300 missions in Final Fantasy Tactics. There's also a Judge Reinhold.
Reason 12,938 why this game is full of Win. |
11:31 < mdxi> Bully is the most fun i've had with my PS2 since the dualshock controller accidentally got...nevermind that. it's hella fun.
11:32 < mdxi> it's more enjoyable and far funnier than the GTA games which birthed it
11:32 < y0shi> accidentally. i saw the ziploc bags and the lube
11:32 < mdxi> SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP
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23:45 < solios> man, Sword Of Mana is SO unfinished.
23:45 < solios> I just killed a bat.
23:45 < solios> it burst into feathers.
23:45 <@bda> Maybe it had just eaten a bird.
23:45 < solios> yeah, and the little marshmallow looking things just ate a yak.
23:47 < solios> man, this game is making me sad.
23:47 < solios> the original was !!!!
23:48 < solios> for the remake, they tried to crossbreed Secret of Mana with a mullet.
23:48 < solios> oh, and the Magic Rope (at the top level of your inventory) looks like a fossilized turd.
23:48 <@bda> I'm not a fan of mullets.
23:50 < solios> yeah, I'm used to my rpg characters having either odd blond or odd blue hair.
23:50 < solios> this is just horrendously bad 80s hair.
23:51 < solios> I loved the original but I just can't stomach the remake. I find it visually disagreeable, and the thing feels unfinished.
23:51 < solios> I hope to hell Children Of Mana doesn't suck as bad.
23:55 < solios> fagbot: doot Sword Of Mana being nowhere nearly as engaging as Final Fantasy Adventure
23:55 < fagbot> THAT'S NOT A MILK YOU IDIOT
Damned straight. Good thing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is so damned good, else I'd be seriously considering giving up my recently acquired video game habit in favor of a return to my old habit of masturbating while staring at the wall.
Final Fantasy Adventure was awesome. Sword Of Mana isn't, and it's so non-engaging that I can't even bear to bother levelgrinding the character into the more interesting weapons and armor - especially since I know they'll be changed - and if the game so far is anything to go by, they'll be Trying To Be Secret Of Mana And Failing bastardizations instead of Prettier Final Fantasy Adventure improvements, which is what I came into this expecting. I loved FFA - I still have it (box and everything), assuming it wasn't destroyed in the Great Septic Backwash Of 2006. Hours and hours of fun, with a play control very similar to The Legend Of Zelda - which this "remake" should have stuck to. Secret Of Mana was amazing, but this feels like a really bad knockoff with puffy, chunky, "americanized" graphics. After staring at the horrible little mulletoid sprite for an hour I was seriously starting to ache for the eye-raping awfulness of Akira Toriyama's Chrono Trigger sprites- a great game to play, but one I sold because I just couldn't stand to look at it.
Game control, menus that look and feel completely unfinished, the masturbaspanded story line... I could deal with - and probably eventually enjoy - these things if it weren't for that fucking hair.
<@bda> That is some awful hair.
Screencap swiped from France. Box art from the internet. This ain't Battlestar Galactica (1978) and I ain't playing Boxey, dangit. The analogy holds - I picked up a remake of an old game expecting gold, and I got a pile of Galactica 1980 instead.
I'm sure Sword Of Mana has some good in it somewhere, but so does Combat - at least the modern version of that is free, moderately amusing, and doesn't have the worst haircut in the history of action RPGs stuck on the screen all the time. Out of the seven games I've aquired for my Nintendo DS, I've enjoyed this one the least - probably because I've played it before. And even in passive-matrix greenscale, it was better back then.
Seriously. Sword Of Mana might be pretty on the surface, but it's gutwrenchingly ghastly when it comes to the day-to-day screen-by-screen character, menu, and combat bits that you'll be staring at for the entire game- and that includes that fucking hair.
Oh, and a technical point - in FFA you could save anywhere, anytime. This could be potentially annoying, as you could trap yourself or otherwise put yourself in a compromising situation... which is why the game has two save slots. Sword Of Mana is set up like Secret of Mana in that you can only save at specific points- and, at least early in the game - you need to use a "magic rope" - cunningly disguised as a milky grey fossilized dog turd - to evacuate out of the combat zone. Aside from the appealing visual of scooting to safety on a magic turd, dropping the save anywhere feature goes against the five minutes here five minutes there pick up and go mentality of a portable gaming system.
Final analysis : Bad hair. Combat control is sloppier than Secret Of Mana and way sloppier than Final Fantasy Adventure. Menus feel completely unfinished. Bats explode into feathers. Giggly little puffballs explode into giant horned skeletons. Fucking eighties hair. Would you play a game like this?
Seriously. Play Final Fantasy Adventure instead, and hope Square gives this development team - assuming they weren't summarily executed - an extra couple of months to spitshine their next assignment. |
12:42 <@ejp> "Russian and American scientists yesterday announced they'd "discovered" a new superheavy element - 118, aka ununoctium."
12:42 <@ejp> that's just *goofy*
12:43 <@rjbs> discovered it between their toes
12:43 < mdxi> (re)discovered it, after faking it the first time around (oops)
12:43 < mdxi> but what's the goofy part?
12:47 < solios> the quotes.
12:49 < mdxi> when i was in school, i used to think "surely, when they get around to 118 it'll be STABLE because it's in the NOBLE GASSES column"
12:49 < mdxi> so, you know, ultradense armor and all that. YAY GUNDANIUM.
12:49 < mdxi> but not so much, as it turns out
12:52 < mdxi> in reality, it appears that Uuo decays into Uuh and a He atom in 1.29 milliseconds
12:52 < mdxi> which then decays into Uuq and a He in 14.4 milliseconds
12:53 < mdxi> which then decays into Uub and a He after a relative eternity of 230 milliseconds
12:53 < mdxi> then the Uub spontaneously fissions
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Box of safety pins : ~$2.50 @ CVS.
New pants : $26.99 + shipping. |
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| Pumpcon 2006 shirt (front)
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AKA the "gonzo" shirt. White ink on maroon. |
10:17 * solios_ idly wonders if there's any Tesla/Edison slash out there.
10:17 <@ejp> ...
10:17 <@ejp> I hate you.
10:17 <@john> oh yeah
10:18 <@john> cause that'd be hawt
10:18 <@rjbs> can't find any
10:24 < solios_> damn.
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| Recent Listening : EP Edition
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Godflesh : Cold World (1992) 5.99$ @ Dave's.
[****.]
A four track EP containing Cold World and three versions of Nihil,
with the distiction of being one of those Godflesh things I've never been
able to track down on the seedy side of the internets. As neither track
appears anywhere else, this was a completely new listen for me. The tone
is reminiscent of Slavestate, though I think that has more to do
with the thematic and lyrical similarity the Nihil mixes share with
the versions of Slavestate. Cold World is the standout here,
unloading the brutal Godflesh aesthetic through what sounds like either
a synthesizer or a sample of one - a track that would feel out of place
on any other Godflesh release. Nihil, by comparison, would slip right
into Slavestate with ease. Cold World is an oldy, a goody,
and a welcome complement to my slowly growing Godflesh discography. |
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Front Line Assembly : Surface Patterns (1995) 5.99$ @ Dave's.
[****.]
A four track EP (single?) containing one new track (Internal Combustion)
and three mixes of Surface Patterns, which most FLA fans have
heard as the fifth track on the classic (to me, anyway) 1994 release, Millennium.
I thought Surface Patterns was a decent track and was surprised that
FLA thought it warranted remixes - but as the other options in the Dave's
Music Mine bin were Total Terror II and Mindphaser, I opted
for SP. Hey, I'm weak in the knees for Millennium-era FLA
- and it turned out to be a good choice. All three Surface Patterns remixes
are structurally simillar to the Millennium track, with variations
on pacing, intros, vocal filtering, etceteras - they're all pretty good,
with the Chemical Cauldron remix being my favorite of the three.
The big reason to pick this up, however, is Internal Combustion -
an FLA track I'd never heard before Tuesday night, and an excellent example
of their early to mid 90s guitar-and-programming heavy sound. Acoustically
similar to Plasma Springs from Millennium, Internal Combustion
features a groovy programming-and-guitar crunch, and functional lyrics
that are a notch above FLA's usual (read : remedial) style. It's no Dopamine,
but Dopamine came over ten years later, so. |
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09:34 <@_Lasar> I also hate how I have to carry my id card with me. Which is the size for a 3x5 index card.
09:34 <@_Lasar> Everything else is credit card sized.
09:34 <@solios> O_o
09:35 <@ejp> on average your women are hotter.
09:35 <@solios> what's that got to do with id card size?
09:36 <@ejp> .de vs .us
09:36 <@solios> the question stands.
09:37 <@ejp> would you put up with a 3x5 ID if you got to date the girls from your fillerup.jpg?
09:37 <@solios> yes.
09:37 <@ejp> well, there you go.
09:38 <@solios> ...
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