Profile for Student of Trinity
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Displayed name | Student of Trinity |
| Member number | 3431 |
| Title | Electric Sheep One |
| Postcount | 3335 |
| Homepage | |
| Registered | Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
Recent posts
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| Author | Recent posts |
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| How did you guys begin? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, October 20 2007 10:34
Profile
I began posting with pretty much my current diction and persona right from the get-go. (Language like a thoroughbred should be cared for in the stable as if worth a thousand pounds, and ridden in the field as if it werent't worth half a crown. Edit for commas.) Minerva from the brow of Jove was never in it: just age. When you join a board at 36, you're learning that community, but not community as such. Between physics, Christianity, and the infantry, I was already adequately chummy with the lowest of the dead. Which those who are closer to thirty than twenty years younger should take entirely as encouragement: hang on, it gets easier. In particular, Master Iffy: everyone has juvenilia but not everyone has persistence, so relax, you're doing fine. This message brought to you by a bottle and a half of good Pfälzisch wine and the fact that my wife is back from a business trip. If half of it were liquor, blest be the vintage. I give after-dinner speeches at reasonable rates. [ Saturday, October 20, 2007 10:35: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What did you do today? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, October 20 2007 10:01
Profile
Welcome back, Jadewolf. I believe I remember when Jadewolf was a new member. I do recall gradually realizing that he was a serious new member. It is now surprisingly pleasant to see him here again. On the internet, you can reach mid-life crisis in about three years. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Geneforge IV Survey in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, October 20 2007 02:13
Profile
The claim of the more rational Shapers, at least by implication, is that their harsh measures are the only way to prevent things like Monarch from happening. This begs two questions: Is mad shaping really such a constant threat? And are the Shapers' methods actually helping to suppress it? Affirmative answers to both questions would go a long way towards justifying the Shaper regime. But neither question has yet been answered conclusively in the games, although some Shaper dialog lines in G4 do seem to confirm that shaping disasters are routine. What isn't yet clear is whether the problem is primarily just hypocritical recklessness among supposedly orthodox Shapers, or whether the main threat is rogue shapers who have sprung up on their own. Or whether Shaper unity isn't really all it's cracked up to be, and the Shaper struggle is partly within their own ranks. These are some of the questions which G5 should at least address, even if it doesn't fully settle them. How much of the whole tragedy is whose fault? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Sanity pile near door in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, October 19 2007 14:19
Profile
How do you know tentacles on shoes are a bad thing? At the rate they're going, I expect Nike to come out with a line of tentacle sneakers any day. [ Friday, October 19, 2007 14:20: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Episode 4: Spiderweb Reloaded. Something like that anyway. in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, October 18 2007 21:51
Profile
If Dikiyoba has foreknowledge of what my character is going to do, does that mean my character has no free will? -------------------- Listen carefully because some of your options may have changed. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What have you been reading lately? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, October 18 2007 21:48
Profile
quote:Guess I just pulled a Homer. -------------------- Listen carefully because some of your options may have changed. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| ...and again. in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, October 18 2007 21:46
Profile
You can be their Higher Power. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What have you been reading lately? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, October 18 2007 12:52
Profile
SPOILER! > > > > > > > > > > > Watch out for that horse. -------------------- Listen carefully because some of your options may have changed. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Just Another Poll in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, October 16 2007 21:32
Profile
Here's something odd. In G4 you get the Puresteel Soulblade as this great reward, and it has a couple of nice bonuses, but its damage is 15-75. That's not much more than the Guardian Claymore or Oozing Blade, and so the acid or the different bonuses of the Claymore may make these other weapons better for you. Acid in particular is good because it builds up over a long fight. But Guardian Koerner in Poryphra drops a plain Puresteel Blade that does 20-100 damage, or at least the game says it does. That's enough more damage that it can make a big difference. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Book or Movie? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, October 16 2007 10:42
Profile
But see my point is that a great work actually tilts the standards of quality in its favor, so that features that would be flaws in any lesser work cease to be flaws in its case. It's a bit like genre. It's not a flaw in a western for an important new character to ride into town, out of nowhere, in the last third of the book, because that's how things are in frontier towns, and it's accepted as part of the genre. But that would be a terrible flaw in a country house whodunit, where the closed set of suspects is a basic requirement. A great book in effect defines itself as a genre all its own, and this is what makes the quality gap: above a certain threshold, books leap directly to flawlessness. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Book or Movie? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, October 15 2007 23:48
Profile
I think the gap happens higher up than those examples. It's easy for decent books to be a bit better or a bit worse. But greatness is, according to my theory, a yes/no proposition. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| The Political Compass (Armed and Dangerous) in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, October 15 2007 23:42
Profile
Just give our global warming scheme some time to work. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| The Political Compass (Armed and Dangerous) in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, October 15 2007 23:04
Profile
I always took a detached, spectator view of American politics even when I was living in the country. Some canvasser on the street once urged me to get involved in helping the Democratic Party even after I explained I was Canadian. I said that Americans would have to make democracy work for themselves. I wasn't going to get involved in nation-building. But I have the impression there are several different things Americans generally tend to want in their presidents, and other things they generally don't want. If their last president let them down in some respect, they tend to vote next time for a candidate who looks unlikely to let them down in the same way. This is a big part of the explanation for G.W. Bush: Bill Clinton was smart and sophisticated, but Monicagate cemented his long-term shadow image as slick and sleazy. So a lot of people voted against slickness and sleaziness, and intellectuality and sophistication were guilty by association. Maybe this time there is a big bloc of votes to be gained for being an anti-Bush. Hillary would be that. Anyway, the internet is opening up isolated communities all over the world, and someday soon even the American south will join the 21st century. If that process is far enough along next year for a Clinton-Obama ticket to win, it will be a change with long-term consequences. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Goodbye! Goodbye for... a while! in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, October 15 2007 22:37
Profile
A German expression for total luxury is 'leben wie Gott in Frankreich' ('living like God in France'). So the Germans themselves aren't so sure. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Book or Movie? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, October 15 2007 12:50
Profile
Some live on the edge, some just visit. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Packhorse member? in Avernum 4 | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, October 15 2007 11:18
Profile
At some point you just have to decide that the inventory and encumbrance systems are merely symbolic representations of the game world's real mechanics — like turn-based combat, the replacement of anatomy with a health score, the simple graphics, etc. Your characters somehow carry a bunch of stuff and also find whatever they need in time to use it; the details of how this is represented are not to be taken seriously. The limits of their ability to carry stuff and accomplish things in battle are also represented symbolically, by the encumbrance and AP systems. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Sanity pile near door in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, October 15 2007 10:14
Profile
Ordering a Shirley Temple becomes ambiguous all of a sudden. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Book or Movie? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, October 15 2007 10:08
Profile
Well, in principle. And maybe even in practice. But I still wonder if it's really possible for any work of art to be almost great. There seems to me to be a sort of great divide in artistic merit. If a work doesn't reach threshold, even its best elements suffer from their lousy context, and don't really work. Past a certain point, though, even features that would otherwise be flaws become interesting and effective quirks. So I postulate a quality gap, within which no art is possible. Or at least, it must be very difficult to remain poised within this range. As a rule you're automatically either better than that level, or worse. So I seem to be denything the possibility of the 'flawed masterpiece'. Maybe it's just sour grapes: if it's flawed, I want to say it was never a masterpiece anyway. Hmmm. Anyway, I propose that taking a book from below the quality gap and turning it into a movie that rises above it isn't really making the book into a movie, but just making a movie that draws some inspiration from the book. You can draw some inspiration from anything at all if you like. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| ...and again. in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, October 15 2007 09:27
Profile
Not sure how the RCAC does it, but in the Canadian infantry the rank with the same insignium, Master Corporal, is the first NCO rank. Ordinary Corporal is really just a senior soldier, like the American PFC. So a new Flight Corporal has apparently just reached leadership. Congratulations. A bizarre piece of CF trivia: Master Corporal is technically not a rank but an appointment, like sergeant-major or adjutant rather than sergeant or captain, even though it has its separate insignium like all the true ranks. This sounds quite incredible, and absolutely senseless, but at least as of 1990 or so it was true. I looked it up myself in the Queen's Regulations and Orders, and found it there, to my astonishment, in plain black and white. That was a long time ago, but the status then was already about 30 years old, so it probably hasn't changed yet. In practice it makes no difference at all, of course. But if it hasn't been changed, you can win many free beers with a bet on this. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Sanity pile near door in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, October 15 2007 03:14
Profile
At vampire parties the snacks drink the booze. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| The Titan in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, October 14 2007 22:33
Profile
No, just a less ugly spelling of 'Ell-rah' reversed. This guy was supposed to be the rabid rebel servile who repudiated all the Awakened moderation. About AP: in G1-G3, having high AP totally breaks the game, because you can completely avoid enemy retaliation by shooting and then hiding behind something. If you judge your distances right, the enemy may chase you, but it won't get line of sight on you until it has too few AP left to attack. Since a lot of zones are littered with serviceable obstacles, this makes many amazing feats of destruction extremely easy, even on Torment. And that's if your sense of honor against pixels makes you eschew the even easier cheat of double-tapping 'f' as soon as you're out of sight of the enemy. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Book or Movie? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, October 14 2007 22:14
Profile
Interesting question. My first reaction is that making a good film out of a crappy book is as hard as making a good film out of nothing at all. But it must depend on how the book is bad. If it's got some good ideas that transfer well to the screen, but is somehow very badly executed as a book, that could be good; if it's a competent book but has bad cinematic elements, that would hurt. But one might ask how likely the first scenario really is. Isn't it actually quite a bit harder to come up with an effective plot, a cool setting, interesting characters, and a lot of arresting scenes, than to craft those good elements into a good novel? Isn't anyone who can come up with those ingredients pretty much guaranteed to have the skill to whip them together? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Geneforge 5 is its last... in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, October 14 2007 14:48
Profile
We'll always have Vakirri. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| The Titan in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, October 14 2007 14:19
Profile
I recently took up a G4 game that I had left for about a year after finishing chapter 4. It was a rebel servile on torment, with a build that favored melee, blessing, and mental magic. Somehow I never seemed to have enough essence pods for comfort, but I did have just enough essence and energy to buff up well in each zone, and still cast a few mind-mangling spells to take care of mobs. It's a potent mix. I just finished the Titan, taking several attempts to discover the critical slowing, shielding, cornering and charming strategy. After finally killing the creature, I was left with a sliver of health, 5 AP, and a hostile rotdhizon on either side. Two charmed but wounded Exploding Kyshakks were also beside me, but the rots were barely scratched and would act first anyway. I had no energy, essence pods, or healing items left. And since I had just attacked to kill the Titan, I couldn't even run. I survived by clicking on a nearby machine, which moved me away for 3 AP. Then I attacked a distant dazed Ur-Glaahk, which ran me a few steps further away from the rotdhizons, but didn't get me all the way to the target, so it stayed dazed. This put me far enough away that the rotdhizons killed the kyshakks instead of coming after me, and with 15 AP and a head start, I was safe. G4 is a good game. It's a tad odd to think of poor Harle, about to be cut down at the moment of victory because he was too mad with battle lust to move, being saved by his inner geek saying, "Hey, check out the cool machine!" -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Book or Movie? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, October 14 2007 13:56
Profile
Jurassic Park (the movie) drove me nuts because it was bleating that humans aren't smart enough to tamper with nature, but to make its case it had to present a particular bunch of humans who weren't smart enough to tie their shoes. Yet they could clone dinosaurs; right. According to a review I read once, the book was a good deal more intelligent than that. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |