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  1. I found this (I assume) Russian site that has all the books available to read, in English. Norton Safe Web says it's OK, so no obvious danger of viruses. Cascade started on A Game of Thrones, and hasn't reported any foul play, in that it look like it's going to charge you money after you read to a certain point in a book.

    The site it self is here: http://www.litmir.net/
    It has plenty other books, if you search for them. I gave a go and found the Earthsea novels, and a couple Philip K. Dick books there as well.

    So yeah, the Game of Thrones books. Here they are:
    A Game of Thrones
    A Clash of Kings
    A Storm of Swords
    A Feast for Crows
    A Dance with Dragons
    If you fancy knowing how I found it, I just typed a random unimportant line from the page I had open in A Feast for Crows and it gave me the same page on the site. Magic.
  2. So i saw Amazing Spider-Man 2 tonight. This entry is going to be about me, not the movie, but I must caution you for spoilers up ahead. Don't care or have already seen the movie? Then lets jump in!

    So there is a scene fairly early into the movie when Electro (Jamie Foxx) first discovers his new powers. He stumbles into Time Square where he eventually confronts Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield). Now Electro is how you say.... bat shit insane. He's obsessed with Spider-Man and is a man of great paranoia and nearly crippling depression. A man occasionally I find myself like. So basically, Spider-Man and Electro are in Time Square with police and civilians at the sides. Spider-Man, being the hero that he is, tries to calm Electro down to talk about his problems, and help him with his new powers. The police have backed away and things are working out. But suddenly, a sniper (squat teamer?) shots at Electro and freaks him out. Spider-Man reacts accordingly. The civilian crowd, now watching from the side-lines, starts cheering. "Get that freak, Spidey!" stuff like that. That's it. Electro full on freaks out and as he does i am reminded of past panic attacks that I've had myself.

    Okay so the scene was probably really cheesy to anyone who cant relate, but to me? It was definitely the most accurate representation of a panic attack i've ever witnessed. At least how I experience them. Electro's heart starts racing, filling him with rage and angst. Voices start chiming in, saying stuff like "They betrayed me" "they think your'e worthless" "they need to pay" etc. all while playing to the beat of the music. It's like a song, actually, a song i knew all too well.

    When i freak out like this, as I have recently on new year's eve. My heart starts racing. I start thinking these awful thoughts and they come at intervals that match my heart beat. Its really like my body is singing evil intentions to me. Looking back on it, it's actually quite fascinating, but in the moment its absolutely terrifying. Where Electro and I are similar end here, obviously, because he can shoot electricity at people and i just ran into the employee restroom and broke down crying. But yeah, Im sure I was the only one in the theater crying at that scene. Not full on tears but you know, a little jerk in the heart, a drop of water in the eye.

    The moral of the story is, despite not being a perfect movie, the Amazing Spider-Man 2 was really fun! I recommend it.
    PS- I actually cry at almost every Marvel Flick i see in theaters. When the Avengers all lined up for the final battle. When Cap fought the Winter Soldier. puppy even when Tony summoned all of his Iron Man suits. It just gets me right here!

  3. Sweet Sixteen

    By Michael,

    Sixteen years ago, today, Hyrule.net came to life and sixteen years later is still around. While people have come and gone Hyrule.net has been a big part of a lot of our lives for the better or the worst, however in the end it has created a tight knit community who some may call their second family.
     

    Happy Birthday Hyrule.net!
  4. When I was young I was told that, being of simple mind and dull wit, the status quo would decide my role in life. However, I doubted her credibility, considering how foolish she appeared, using her finger and her thumb to form the shape of an L on her forehead.

    Time moves on at it's own pace; and, dropped into adulthood, I took to independence excitedly. I committed myself to living by my own philosophy that life is best spent having fun, and that, while academic pursuits are worthwhile, a strong character is more valuable.

    There is so much to take in and so many possibilities in the world; and so it doesn't seem unfitting to me to live outside of traditional values. Without first experiencing something, you can get no measure of it's worth. Without expressing the beauty of your soul, you can't expect others to appreciate it.

    Have faith in your passions, and express them by having fun and enjoying your life in whatever way you see fit. Take what you love, and find a compromise whereby you can live your own way, despite the constraints of society. Jump at every opportunity and follow your instincts, because to be something unique you have to push the boundaries.



  5. So I started typing this out in response to Cirt's about buying a new mouse in the Post Yourself thread, but it became more of a blog.

    I have been conditioned to do everything in my power to make my computer operations efficient by owning crappy computers. First, I couldn't right click things because doing so froze my computer. So I mastered a slew keyboard shortcuts and features. Then, I was frustrated at navigating menus in order to find things, so I mastered navigation techniques. Eventually I was just fed up with having to move my hands to my mouse, so I learned various text editing skills. In other words, keyboard shortcuts at all times. I also have made sure I have efficient computing by closing all my processes. At first manually, by going through my list of processes, hitting the Delete key, then hitting Enter, and then down arrow before it reset my cursor position to the top of the list, and rapid-firing this motion until all the processes I could close, closed. Then by the monument to convenience that is GameBooster. I use Windows Classic theme and my taskbar collapses to maximize screen space. This mentality pervades any routine that I do. Efficiency is important.

    One fateful day, my mouse fell out of my backpack while running to catch a train. It was promptly run over by cars, and I discovered its remains the next day. I didn't really use it all that much because of the keyboard shortcuts, but sometimes mice are good for something. So I've learned that having a trackpad is actually very useful when your hands are so close to it all the time, and I've trained myself to use it with brief thumbstrokes, as if it were a set of joysticks. Tapping is your friend in a case like this.

    This is my battle stance.





    My computer's G, H, ', Backspace, Print Screen, many of my function keys, Escape, and rarely, my O key, all malfunction. My Windows key flickers constantly between pressable and not pressable, so if I hold it down, the Start Menu flickers on and off, and it wrecks all my Win key shortcuts. It is living hell to type anything of length (most of what I type), and it's because my computer is in bad shape. Why, you ask? It fell to the ground once when my backpack's arm strap actually snapped, causing my backpack + laptop to fall. That splintered the guard on one of my hinges, but it didn't do too much damage. Later, it took a separate fall from about chair height onto my carpeted floor, and now it looks like this:





    The screen's hinges are mostly broken, so I have to lean my screen against something in order to keep it upright and angled. Another peeve I've always had about the screen is that it's not indented in at all, so there are many permanent scratches where the screen has come into contact with the other half of the laptop. But the keys malfunctioning is easily the most horrible thing about its degeneration. In order to combat the problem, I bought keyboards. The first was frustratingly hard to type on, the second is perfect in concept.





    It's a lightweight, waterproof, flexible silicone keyboard that rolls up and fits in a compact tube that I bought for cheap at Monoprice. This keyboard, in concept, is the best keyboard ever. It's supremely portable, its keys have good tactile feedback despite being easy on the fingers, it's probably the most silent keyboard in existence, and it's stupidly easy to clean. Monoprice sells top-notch stuff, mind you, but this thing has a few fatal flaws:

    1) It is too hard to type on; you need perfect accuracy and just the right force to get a keystroke across.
    2) Its key placement is atrocious.
    3) It absolutely needs a surface under it that is at least as flat and sturdy as a keyboard.

    What's one of the least desirable things to happen while backspacing? Hitting the Home key, probably. Where most keyboards have at least a sliver of difference in between Home and Backspace, this thing has Home right up next to it.





    Since the keys require force to press, and since the keys are flexible, I bump into other keys a lot. What's annoying is that I have to type relatively harder to get the keys to work normally, but a light bump when backspacing will activate the Home key, bringing my cursor back to the beginning of my line. Where there isn't anything to backspace. I thought my keyboard was malfunctioning at times, because I wasn't deleting anything when attempting to backspace, but no, it was because my cursor had left me after I bumped into the Home key. It's the same for most keys, actually. If I try to use the Arrow keys at all, I bump into EVERYTHING. Also, the Function keys (F1, F2, etc.) don't have any space in between either, and they're not particularly aligned, so I can't tell which function key I'm hitting unless I'm looking right at it. They're all so tiny, even for Function keys.

    Also, the Space Key. Not Space Bar. The Space Key. Where Alt should be. Right next to the Space Bar.





    Sigh... I keep hitting this thing trying to Alt + Tab. The only reasoning I've heard for why this even remotely makes sense is for gameplay that requires rapid Space pressing, but in order for the actual Space Bar to work, there are multiple buttons underneath it all arranged in a strip right next to each other anyway, so what the hell?

    So I use my laptop keyboard much more frequently, because when it works, it works well. But when it's being particularly horrible I break out my floppy keyboard. If you're wondering how I'm getting all this information to you with constantly malfunctioning keys that only work 20% of the time, it's because of the aforementioned efficiency-sticklerism. This is what my screen has looked like the whole time I typed this:





    So every time I need a certain character, I thumbstroke what I need with the trackpad, making sure to keep the cursor close to the keys I need on the on-screen keyboard. It's a tough life. I also don't Backspace much anymore. I have to Shift + Left Arrow to highlight over the last thing I typed that I need to erase, or if I decide that it's too far back, I just Ctrl + Shift + Left Arrow to highlight the whole thing to take it out and start over, because it's slightly faster than pinpointing the mistake.

    It's a good thing programming is mostly making tiny corrections and searching through lines of code for tiny mistakes, or my current practices would be totally awful.
  6. And this is what I found in the morning...

    With an blue and the rhythm and with an E a fifth and that's 1/2 and 1/2 and how the first half for how and how and how and how and how and how and how the second floor how and twists and how and her a ring-how high the how-how-how are are highest high as second highest-how and high how high her are high how high seconds left higher in high V hi how Huntley hunt and how and how second highest-how and how how-how-how and how are in how and how the high how the high how-how-how how-how-how and how how-how-how and and how how-how-how and how and how and how and how and how and how and how and how and how how-how-how highest-how second how-how-how how-how-how how-how-how how-how-how nine highest-how and 1/2 how-how-how and how and high and how and how hunt nine how-how-how and high and high and high and how and high and how and how and how the how how-how-how and how and how how-how-how and how and how and how and how and how and how and how and how the first and how how-how-how and 1/2 how-how-how and how how-how-how and how and and how 1/2 for how the first hunt and how how-how-how and how and how the and how-how-how and 1/2 1/2 and how and how and how and how the for-the first half and it's a hot a high and how and how I felt and how and how and how and how and how and how and how how-how and how how-how-how and how and how and how how-how-how how-how and how and how and how and how and how and how to a its a chance and high and high and high and high and high and high and high and high and how and high and high and how and high how-how and how how-how-how a how-how it's a high and high and high and high and high and high and high and and high and how how-how and how and how the for how and and how 1/2 for how and how how-how how-how-how and how how-how and how to end the and a th to a vote with the sonata of the

  7. More problems

    By Sahaqiel,

    So I've got problems and drama as I'm prone to have. Problems, things to update you guys on, and so forth; it's going to be long, but I'd appreciate it if I felt someone related to my experiences. This might be a multiple-trip read for you, I'm not sure how long I'm going to keep this going. I hope it's at least interesting for you. This is mostly stuff I've talked in chat about, but not here. There's a lot of stuff I'm leaving out.

    It's really late at night and I wanted to sleep a few hours ago, but I started messing around trying to polish up a track before I finally, but it ended up making it worse, Mediafire distorted the audio or something, so I posted the version I made last November?, it looks like. Five months then? Yeah. I didn't feel too mad about the lost time, because I guess I always found that version about as satisfactory as I felt I could make it at higher volumes or through better sound systems and I didn't add anything significant to the appended version.

    A lot of things have happened, some I'm too ashamed to detail to a general public, but I've been on a rollercoaster of emotions, ranging through existential dread to writhing anger. I can start with the more trivial aspects and detail my actual problems if it'll make it easier on you. But each of my stories contributes or detracts a little from my stress, and it's all coming together into something I can't control very well, which is why I made this for you. I'll summarize before the problem part, but if you'll oblige, I'm offering a deeper understanding of my misery.

    Trip to U of I




    My Remaining Friend




    Parental Stress




    Potential, Shortcomings, and Inability to Take Action





    Associate's Degree





    The Head of the Problem





    Anger




  8. Appeal for help

    By Teto,

    Nobody here has heard my voice in a long time. This is because, as of June 20th 2014, I have been held vocal hostage by a technospider. Not many people are aware of technospiders, or how many people are effected by them. Some even don't know that they are living with this parasite. My intention today is to spread awareness.

    On June 20th 2014, I briefly visited the social media site Reddit.com, and it was from there the technospider came, and crawled in my mouth. It made a technoweb in in vocal chords and connected to the internet. I no longer have the will of my own to speak, and whenever I try, I only speak in memes. I cannot stop the memes, and now the memes control my life. No matter where I am; the church, the morgue, the room full of grannies, the spider will find a subreddit full of relevant memes, and control what I say. I have lost many friends, and am no longer allowed near primary schools. This is troublesome because when I need medical care I cannot tell doctors my symptoms, and must communicate through writing.

    So this is the only medium left to me. I can't go through this hell any more. Until they find a fix for the technospider controlling my life, all I can do is ask this: Stop the bad memes. Everybody must stop doing memes as soon as possible. Rid the spider of his ammunition, and I will take back control. The memes must end. Please.

    I want my life back.

    Thank you.

  9. There are words here and there while reading that I'm not sure I understand properly, or don't know at all. Facial expressions and feelings, and words for places that I never knew before, or wasn't sure of. I would continuously keep having to take breaks to find definitions for things, and sometime into the book I felt like I'd begun repeating myself. I'd been looking up words, putting it into the scene in my head, and immediately forgotten what the word meant. I decided the best thing to do would be to write down words in a notebook as I read, along with their definitions. Since I started writing, however many pages ago, I've got 23 words. And here they all are, definitions included.

    *Noun
    **Adjective
    ***Verb
    Wry **1. Using or expressing dry, esp. mocking, humor.
    **2. (of a person's face or features) Twisted into an expression of disgust, disappointment, or annoyance.

    Niggard *A stingy or ungenerous person.

    Conjecture *An opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information.
    **Form an opinion or supposition about (something) on the basis of incomplete information.

    Trepidation *1. A feeling of fear or agitation about something that may happen.
    *2. Trembling motion.

    Nonplussed **1. (of a person) Surprised and confused so much that they are unsure how to react.
    **2. (of a person) Unperturbed.

    Perturb ***1. Make (someone) anxious or unsettled.
    ***2. Subject (a system, moving object, or process) to an influence tending to alter its normal or regular state or path.

    Slight *An insult caused by a failure to show someone proper respect or attention.
    **Small in degree; inconsiderable.
    ***Insult (someone) by treating or speaking of them without proper respect or attention.

    Contrite **Feeling or expressing remorse or penitence; affected by guilt.

    Quip *A witty remark.
    ***Make a witty remark.

    Sullen **1. Bad-tempered and sulky; gloomy.
    **2. (esp. of water) Slow-moving: "rivers in sullen flood".

    Admonition *An act or action of admonishing; authoritative counsel or warning.

    Insolent **Showing a rude or arrogant lack of respect.

    Rankle ***1. (of a wound or sore) Continue to be painful; fester.
    ***2. (of a comment, event, or fact) Cause annoyance or resentment that persists.

    Lecherous **Having or showing excessive or offensive sexual desire.

    Sardonic **Grimly mocking or cynical.

    Earnest *A sign or promise of what is to come: "an earnest of the world's desire not to see the conflict repeated elsewhere".
    **Resulting from or showing intense conviction: "an earnest student".

    Droll **Curious or unusual in a way that provokes dry amusement: "his unique brand of droll self-mockery".

    Reproach *The expression of disapproval or disappointment.
    ***Address (someone) in such a way as to express disapproval or disappointment.

    Curt **Rudely brief: "his reply was curt".

    Placid **(of a person or animal) Not easily upset or excited.
    **(esp. of a place or stretch of water) Calm and peaceful, with little movement or activity.

    Ford *A shallow place in a river or stream allowing one to walk or drive across.
    **(of a person or vehicle) Cross (a river or stream) at a shallow place.

    Petulant **(of a person or their manner) Childishly sulky or bad-tempered.

    Retinue *A group of advisers, assistants, or others accompanying an important person.


    And this concludes Teto's first vocabulary roundup.
  10. [Ash's] Primeape VA's
    J: Hiroshi Otake
    E: Michael Haigney
    ______

    King Boom Boo VA's
    J: ???
    E: ???
    ______

    Sonic Adventure 2: Battle VA's:
    *uncredited on info.sonicretro.org

    -Japanese VAs-
    Junichi Kanemaru - Sonic
    Kouji Yusa - Shadow
    Atsuki Murata - Tails
    Nobutoshi Kanna - Knuckles
    Taeko Kawata - Amy
    Rumi Ochiai - Rouge
    Etsuko Kozakura - Omochao
    Yuri Shiratori - Maria
    -Kinryu Arimoto - The President
    -Mami Horikoshi - Secretary
    -Tohru Okawa - Flying Dog Pilot -
    -Kouji Ochiai - Big Foot Pilot
    -Kaori Aso - Tikal
    Tomoko Sasaki - Chao
    Chikao Otsuka - Gerald Robotnik / Eggman
    -English VA's-
    Ryan Drummond - Sonic
    Scott Dreier - Knuckles
    David Humphrey - Shadow
    Conner Bringas - Tails
    Jenny Douillard - Amy
    Deem Bristow - Eggman
    Lani Minella - Rouge / Omachao
    Moriah Angeline - Maria
    Marc Biagi - Gerald Robotnik
    -Steve Broadie - The President -
    -Sue Wakefield - Secretary -
    -Elara Distler* - Tikal -
    -Shelly Fox - Menu voice



    Continued search yields no further success. I can find no connection between the voice of Primeape from Pokemon and the voice of King Boom Boo, the ghost boss from Sonic Adventure 2. Neither Hiroshi Otake or Michael Haigney appear to have been involved in Sonic Adventure 2, and so it's unlikely that they loaned their voices at any point. Given that King Boom Boo has no lines, and only grunts and gurgles, it's unlikely that he has any noted dedicated voice actor worth speaking of, and so I cannot come to any conclusion there either.


    Voice actor information for Ash's Primeape taken from here:
    http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Ash%27s_Primeape

    The lists of voice actors were taken from a reading of the Sonic Adventure 2 credits, and given characters by using the following sites:
    http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_Adventure_2_credits
    http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com
    http://www.imdb.com/

    Thus concludes my search. King Boom Boo shall forever remain an enigma.
  11. So more or less spontaneously I decided that I owed myself a purchase of a video game, so I ordered one that I'd been itching to buy probably since the time of its release in 2010. Really what prompted me to make the purchase was my boyfriend making me realize that the last game I bought was SSBB, and that was jointly with my brother back in...what, 2009 when it came out? Then, as I thought harder about it, I honestly don't know the last game I've purchased alone, since new games are a rare thing for me and they've always been gifts. I also like borrowing games, and I'm not a scummy friend that keeps them forever. Anyway, this game, Super Mario Galaxy 2, was kind of a rare thing for me to find someone to borrow from since I don't know many people here in college that have Wiis...well, about none actually.

    I guess I'll preface it with the difficulty I faced in finding this game. A few months ago, while I was either in Target or Walmart (could have possibly been late last year), I was shopping for whatever reason and decided to see if the price of this game had dropped since it was a few years old now. The answer was no. It is still a $50 game, new, and I suppose that's due to the positive ratings it has garnered. Used, I could probably find a little less (like at GameStop) but still quite an expensive game, when you think that Super Mario Galaxy (1) can be found for $20 and it was fantastic and is even like, a collector's edition or whatever. When I finally made the decision that I was going to purchase SMG2, it was no longer in stores like Walmart or Target. I ended up going to Amazon and buying it for a little less than $40 for a very good quality used game. Given the prior information, I think I actually made a smart move here.

    Now I'm gong to gush why I love Super Mario Galaxy.

    In all honesty, I 100%'d the first game just last year - After being stuck at 116 stars for about 4 years, I got all 120 stars, with ones like "Luigi's Purple Coins" taking me probably about 60-70 tries, Melty Molten Galaxy's Daredevil Run taking me possibly even more tries to get...while there are a lot of easy parts of this game (some would complain too easy, while I'm a mediocre skilled player) there were certainly some stars that made me want to scream (which I did) and rip my hair out (which I did not). The satisfaction of earning each one, though, in a nostalgic SM64 manner, is what really me drew in though. Then I found out that after earning 120, you could use Luigi to earn 240, and I snorted and shut off the Wii and went on with my life. Yeah, puppy that.

    It's a pretty game. It's a very bright game. While a game like Skyward Sword could also fall under that category, SS tries to make a play on a different art style, with its impressionistic backdrops and whatever. SMG (and SMG2, to some degree) feels like an updated SM64. Mario is not a blocky polygon. Stars are not yellow, but truly golden and shiny like you wanted them to be. It's "glowy" too - there are several instances of "cosmic" influences showing through. It's definitely Mario in space.

    Mario in space to the extent of really playing with some game physics. I mean, the gravity in these games is unbelievable sometimes. You can find a small planet, do a long jump, and make 2-3 orbits around the planet before it finally pulls you back in. You can even orbit around, get caught in the gravity of another planet, and start orbiting that one, then return to the original planet. I probably spent 20 minutes laughing at this (might have been drunk and found it extremely amusing) on the first level on SMG2. It is seriously a lot of fun.

    I could gush about the music for probably a really long time, but I'll leave it at this. This soundtrack (other than the Zelda series) is probably the most memorable for me. It is also puppying orchestrated and it's brilliant, legendary, and really plays on your heart strings. It's nostalgic and just wonderful. Even SMG2 somehow managed to BUILD upon some of the tracks from SMG, like made them better. I don't know how. But it is fantastic and I am going to shamelessly download all of it.

    I'm going to point out some things that I did and did not like about SMG2. Or maybe some contrasting things that I had hoped would be better.

    SMG2 has a lot of puppying Galaxies. If you're not familiar, they use this word kind of weirdly - I feel like it should be Planets<Worlds/Solar Systems lol<Galaxies. But instead it's Planets<Galaxies<Worlds. While SMG used different parts of the Comet Observatory to access different galaxies (and made it rewarding when you "restored power" to them, very much resembling the Castle in SM64), SMG2 visually looks like a Super Mario game with the "World Map." So SMG2 has 7 "Worlds", each with about 7 Galaxies. I thought this was okay. It did make returning to past Worlds easier, but it also made the Galaxies so much more...meh. Like they all started blending together because of how indistinct they were.

    You even start typing a word a lot and it starts looking weird to you? That's what's happening to "galaxy" right now lol.

    Anyway, my main point with the Galaxy thing - that there being a lot of them in SMG2 - meant that there are less stars to disperse among the Galaxies. Therefore, by logic, less of the Galaxy needs to be explored, and so the Galaxies are smaller. They're less of the mini-universes that you step into. Maybe one, two regular stars, a comet star, and you're done. Or maybe a hidden star, if you're lucky. I personally enjoyed having to find 5-7 stars in each Galaxy in SMG, and suddenly to be cut short like that...I don't know. I recognized and appreciated each Galaxy more in SMG because I saw a lot of it. SMG2, I knocked out 50-60 stars in one day and I don't really remember the process of me getting there. It went by too quickly.

    SMG2 does have redeeming qualities, though. For one, motherpuppying Yoshi being around on some levels. Luigi as well from the get-go, and eventually unlockable at the end of the game. There are some cute-as-shit characters in the game too - Jibberjays, adorable and excitable parrots; pink Bob-omb Buddies from SM64; and Whittles, cute wooden things that make very primitive but amusing statements. The new powerups are also surprisingly not half-assed - Cloud Mario is very fun, while Rock Mario can get a little irritating. I kind of missed Ice Mario (making ice platforms by jumping on water spouts was a super creative idea in the last game) and Flying Mario, but that's probably just more SM64 nostalgia talking. Speaking of which, my discovery of Throwback Galaxy (basically an updated Whomp's Fortress from SM64) got me so excited I spent quite some time examining every inch of the level.

    Furthermore, the utility of Coins - instead of Star Bits taking the role of the main currency, Coins are used for Luma-transforming instead of a "high score" for an individual star that no one cares about. Comet Medals are also a neat idea - in the previous game, Comet stars only appeared after the arrival of the Comet Luma, but now Comets will appear given if you find and collect and complete a Galaxy's star with the Comet Medal. Some of them are tricky to find and collect and it is very easy to go through a level normally without even seeing it.

    From what I've seen so far, and I'm at 104/120 stars for the moment, the Comet stars aren't nearly as difficult as the previous game. For example, there have been several instances where you need the 100 Purple Coins - but not every single one, as there are 110 total. It gives the player a little slack on those more unforgivable circumstances. Even the fact that the Co-Star Luma (aka Player 2) can pick up Purple Coins makes the Comet Stars significantly easier. Then again, I haven't raged over this game's version of Luigi's Purple Coins, so we'll see how I feel in a week.

    Since this review is getting kind of long lol, I'll sum it up a bit. SMG2 is sort of like the Majora's Mask to Ocarina of Time. Same game engine, sort of the same goal, but quite different on a lot of things. I've been enjoying myself so far and from what it looks like, I might be getting the 242 stars in this game (since it seems like part 2 isn't entirely a repeat of the first half). SMG/SMG2 are really really great games, if you're truly a Nintendo fan at heart - so much so that I don't think I can enjoy a sidescrolling Mario game again because it's not 3D. Not to say those game aren't good, but one you get used to the liberty of exploration of these games, it's hard to go back to that. I'm happy to say that SMG2 surprised me in ways that I wasn't expecting, and I'm glad it didn't turn out to be an extended version of its predecessor.

  12. "It's JIF, not GIF"

    By Teto,

    Short story. Warsaw is the capital of Poland, and through it runs a major river of Poland; the Vistula. We call them Warsaw and the Vistula, but in Poland they're, phonetically "Varshava" and the "Veeswa". That's what they call them. We don't, though; we anglicised it and made it our own. As far as we're concerned the Polish can call them whatever the hell they like, but we call them Warsaw and the Vistula, and that isn't changing.

    The founder of Warsaw stood on a hill somewhere near a trade village next to a large river, and said "This town will henceforth take on the name Varshava, until the end of days."
    But we call it Warsaw.
  13. I've been thinking about posting some of the stuff I write. Heres a thing, more or less unedited. All feedback welcome



    A storm of dead leaves and sticks shot up, illuminated by the fitful gleam of a flashlight. Legs, tired from nearly an hour of this frantic chase still fired like pistons carrying Eric Grier through a dead forest. What was chasing him he could not see, but most definitely could hear, and smell, the awful stench of sulphur filled his nostrils threatening to send him into a coughing fit at any moment. But that would be death. Eric did not intend to die. Being a lifelong runner, and one of the most enthusiastic cross country athletes at his school had certain benefits. All the same, every moment he could feel whatever was behind him gaining, could hear the beat of its hooves against the damp, matted leaf floor of the woods.

    A scratching sound, that he would decide later to be a horrible laugh or chortle nipped at his heels. He looked at his watch, glow in the dark, raising his flashlight, and then immediately realized the folly of this. Without his main source of light, the detritus of the forest took its toll at last on Eric’s progress. A vine, a stick, it didn’t really matter what it was. What did matter was his footing slipped and his long run came to an abrupt halt, sending him tumbling, tumbling down. His flashlight left his hand and rolled a few feet away from him. Luckily, or in the current case, unluckily, the light granted him illumination of the thing that pursued him. He crawled backwards, sprawled out on his back, never letting his eyes wander from the slowly approaching...thing that had finally caught up.

    From the light he could see its legs, a goats, and as they went up the fur was replaced by flesh, and towards its belly it looked all the more human. It sauntered, clearly enjoying the thick radiation of fear from Eric, and its hands, each finger tipped with razor sharp talons dripping the blood of a fresh kill popped one at a time. Eric understood then that each sickening snap was the sound of his life ticking away.

    And then there was a beeping. At first Eric did not register it, didn’t even really hear it. as the beeps became more frequent he understood what it was. The victory bell. He looked at the creature, flexing the legs of its muscles to pounce, and with disgust spat at it.

    Then, a storm of things all happened at once. The creature sprung forward, a rictus grin on its bizarre hybrid features, and the screaming tones of “Thriller” blared from Eric’s pocket. Eric’s eyes shut in abject terror hoping he made his deadline. It wasn’t until Vincent Price began guffawing that he realized the loud thump thump he heard was actually his heart, threatening to crash through his ribcage. He reached his hand to his chest and took a deep breath and felt in his grasp, a card.

    Eric grabbed his phone from his pocket and, noting the missed call, used the backlight to look at the card. It was one of the Tarot, it read The Devil, but the picture on the card was strange. It showed a man, wearing the skin of an animal, half his body reflecting that animal, and half a twisted caricature of a man. It was the very image of the thing that pursued him, and even looking at it made him shudder.

    His phone rang again. Breathing heavily still, he answered, “Yeah….Its uh, its done. I made it. It was a skinwalker. Guess it makes sense given the card. You..wait what? Oh christ. Okay. I’ll be right over.”

    Eric was not the only one who ran for his life that night, just the only one who got away.
  14. I've had a lot of things floating around in my head lately. I say lately, I actually mean in the last few months. this blog, as an example, I wrote about a month ago. I suppose I've just been floating a few things around in my head, letting them percolate until I thought I could express them in a way that accurately represents how I feel about something. First came clarifying in my head how in fact I do feel about it. And I think I know, or at least I know how to get the ball rolling

    The title of this first blog entry is The Protoculture. Besides being a Macross reference, I think its a solid term for the kind of things I'm talking about. Just to warn anyone off from this topic before I get rolling, this is about politics, feminism, and a lot of topics that are pretty divisive, especially on this website.

    I have trouble with my political identity these days. In high school I liked to tell myself I was fairly moderate, but after a fashion I realized I was on the liberal side of things on almost every hot button issue, so I identified, and still for the most part identify, as a left leaning individual. At the same time I try to play devil's advocate when I can, try to see debates from both sides. I do this because, if all you ever see or read are things from the same perspective as yourself its easy to get stuck in your beliefs. At that point all you're doing is participating in a big circlejerk. I don't want that. I don't ever want that, I want to be able to see things clearly, to cut to the truth of the matter, if such a black and white thing can be found. I get the feeling, and this is just a feeling, if I'm wrong please call me out on it, that LL is much the same on that. Like, he shows up and plays the devil's advocate on all of the political threads that pop up, but If I remember correctly, he's even more liberal than I am, just going by those tests a bunch of us took before. So I say all of that, I guess as a guidepost for what I'm going to talk about next

    For a long time, it was my point of view that feminism was an artifact of the past. That people like Susan B Anthony and other suffragette’s succeeded, women having the right to vote, Title IX being enacted. In school they teach feminism as something like that, or at least they did when I went to school. So, when confronted with the reality, that De Jure, there is Gender equality, but De facto, there are still a lot of problems. And I agree with that. There are. Culturally, there are still a lot of rigidly enforced gender roles, I don’t want to get into ALL of that, people have spent their entire lives talking about it, and I don’t have that long, its 1:00 in the morning and I have a trip tomorrow. Whenever I think about Gender inequalities, all I ever get back to is that in order to effect any change you would have to change culture in a lot of fundamental ways, and you can’t make people nice. You can’t force civility on people, or you wouldn’t be civil yourself. Its so easy to get lost in anger about these things, but when that happens you so often become worse than what you fight.

    A big scapegoat on the internet is lumping a lot of people and things into Tumblr, this new “Protoculture” and blaming it for everything. Maybe its not scapegoating, maybe Tumblr is the stereotype, but I generally try to assume the best of things. And I have it on good authority that Tumblr is 90% porn, and I can get behind that. Thought i’d throw a bit of humor into this rambling wall of text. Regardless, what i’m getting at is that there is a movement that I am witnessing and I don’t know where I stand anymore. A new kind of Liberalism I guess, and I can’t just chalk it up to radicals shouting loudly because I know reasonable people, some on this very site, that are as much a part of it. I keep looking at myself and my political identity and I always ask questions, I constantly question myself, check myself, to make sure i’m standing in the right place. I think I am, but I know people, have seen people, who KNOW that they are right. Sometimes that gives me pause. So, any civil discourse on where we sit in the pages of history is most welcome. This wasn’t nearly as solid as I thought it was when it was sitting in the percolator, but I think I needed to exorcise it, get it out there. Please feel free to engage in civil discourse in the comments, if anyone feels like getting through this wall of nonsense.
  15. While taking my mind off the struggles of life, I recessed into musics and programming rather than sociability. This started out as a post that had a kind-of sequence, but wasn't really in chronological order. So I'll try to make this as organized as possible, despite it being disjointed and pasted together. But as the title implies, it's pretty much all about music.

    After some tumultuous events, I picked up my guitar again so as to relieve stress. I named it Gitaa, after Yui's guitar, from K-ON!. Back in high school when I played it, I didn't practice enough to know even basic chords, and I never got calloused fingers. After about three days, I knew more than I ever had and had more to show for it.



    So that's been cool. I can play basic chords and I'm learning every so often. Somewhere along the way I just started buying things though. For awhile now, I've felt guilty for pirating music. I vowed to buy up all the music I stole one day, for multiple reasons. Some of the mp3s I've downloaded have shoddy quality, and I eventually got fed up with it, so I figured I'd cut out the middleman and buy vinyl, which has the capacity to have a nigh impossible-to-match audio quality compared to compressed computer formats. I was planning on buying Sebastien Leger's We Are EP first, because his French House track "We Are" is amazing, though my mp3 has horrible sounding quality.

    Though while browsing Facebook, I saw that a guy who famously used to do French House, Louis La Roche, had 300 leftover promo vinyls for his Supersoaker EP from an event back in 2010 that in the end, didn't need them. So he sold them off for about 15 USD, all hand-stamped and numbered. I couldn't resist how tempting that sounded so I bought one. He signed some, but when I got mine it didn't have a signature. ;< I got 45/300 though, so at least I got a record in the top 50 and stuff. It took literally a month to arrive at my house, so I thought something might have messed up, but it was just because it was shipping from Europe. While I was waiting I bought Sebastien Leger's We Are EP. It arrived well before Louis La Roche's record. We Are sounds amazing through a good sound system, but I think it was misprinted or something because there's a part where it always skips and it bugs me like the dickens.

    After I ordered the Supersoaker EP, I started wondering what I'd listen to it on, because I don't have a record player. I asked my dad about our broken turntable, and whether or not we could fix it, but it turned out to be unnecessarily because he coincidentally had a USB turntable, which I bought an RCA male to 1/8" TRS female adapter for. So, the red/white cables plug into the back of the turntable and allow me to plug in regular headphones, rather than listen through the crappy built-in speakers on the front of the device. Unfortunately, there was no preamp for using external speakers, so the weak signal didn't play very loudly through my headphones, and I couldn't adjust the volume. Coincidentally, my dad has a preamp as well. I didn't even think he was that serious about these things. There's some weird problem though, so all my House music gets turned into super-distorted Hardcore. Or maybe it's just the Make Your Move EP I bought. I haven't tried with any others. To put that into perspective, Hardcore music started out as House music playing really really loudly really really fast, with all the drums and percussion being extremely distorted from the high volume.

    Anyway, I bought four vinyls so far. Five including my preorder of Daft Punk's Random Access Memories. I'd been looking for a physical copy of Dave Armstrong's Make Your Move that I only knew through a Youtube video at 240p. (the one that used to be linked in my signature) The video was labeled the "original mix" but it was clearly not the original mix. I bought a record completely dedicated to four different remixes of Make Your Move because the timecodes on one of the tracks vaguely matched what I had and the remix on the record was likewise shrouded in mystery. There was literally no other way to tell, and the seller was just a distributor who couldn't open the product, so I bought it for like 12 dollars. (Vinyl is surprisingly cheap) It turned out to be the wrong record, but I later bought the original. I finally learned that the remix I'm looking for is the Chris S. remix, but it's even harder to find. It's labeled as the original mix on the album it comes on, supposedly, but I can't, for the life of me, find it. Not that it being called the original mix narrows it down very well. Still, I think it's kind of exciting and magical to have to actually hunt down the music you're looking for.

    Anyway, here are the records I bought:

    Louis La Roche - Supersoaker EP
    Sebastien Leger - We Are EP
    Dave Armstrong - Make Your Move EP, Euro Mixes
    Dave Armstrong - Make Your Move EP
    Daft Punk - Random Access Memories

    As some of you may know, I make little musical blips every once in awhile. I really want to do cool stuff wit music, so later, in the wee hours of the morning, I bought a MIDI keyboard. M-Audio's Oxygen-25, for 25 keys; there are Oxygen-49s for 49 keys and so on. It doesn't have its own synths; it's purely a controller for software that has its own synths. It has eight knobs and two modulators (the circular up/down things in the picture), with other various controls that I can mess with. One modulator defaults to the center, and has good tactile feedback when you push it up or down, and defaults in most software to pitch bend. In other words, when I press it up, the synth assigned at the moment gets higher pitched, and when I press it down, it gets lower pitched. It's neat. I inadvertently figured out how Skrillex probably produced one of the synth parts in Bangarang with it. I felt slight shame for only having that track to relate the instrumentation to.



    On the left, up to down: Dave Armstrong's Make Your Move Euro Mixes and his Make Your Move EP. On the right, up to down: Sebastien Leger's We Are EP, and Louis La Roche's Supersoaker EP. The top shelf has various informational books I have bought over the years, the middle shelf has the M-Audio Oxygen-25, and the bottom shelf has my Numark Mixtrack. For any of you that haven't seen it, the Mixtrack is a DJ software MIDI controller. It's essentially like turntables, but it's all digital. It is not what I use to play records. But back to the keyboard.

    The other modulator is loose to the point of feeling broken. Since I bought this thing used, I have no idea if it's supposed to be that way, but it probably is. All the controls are assignable. I got it for about 70 dollars. I have unfortunately not found much time to mess with it, but I have been wanting to learn piano and various swing/funk styles as always. But guys. No matter if you think it's repetitive or uninteresting or whatever, funk is so hard to play. ): Speaking of music production though, I have a circle of friends that is very music-based.

    A bit of background on this guy I hang out with. His name is Matt, and he's the chairman of the local anime convention (Natsucon) that I first did my Hero of Time panel at, and he's a pretty cool guy. Him and our mutual friend Tim are pretty deep into the electronic music scene. They both DJ, Tim to a greater extent, and they for the most part, listen to all the stuff they can. They respect me for my tastes and ability to find good tracks and they've even tried to recruit me because they want to make musics with me. *~* They both very sincerely liked I'm No Straner, despite the piss-poor mastering. They've asked if I want to throw down on a sampler so we can make coolio stuff together.

    Anyway, Matt took me out to the city to a bar after I told him I'd signed up for another Hero of Time panel since no one else would come with him. The bar has an interesting practice. For five days out of the week the back room manager guy charges like 5 dollars per person to go to the back room and listen to the local DJs that play there, and then on Fridays or Saturdays uses the money he gets to fly out someone who's of notoriety, who people then pay 8 dollars to see. Our city has had big name artists like Skrillex at this place called Club Europe, but that place is supposedly a little douchey, though it didn't seem bad when I went there for a techno night. Anyway, Matt paid me into the place to see the guy they'd flown out; this time it was B. Durazzo. I'd actually seen
    by him months before, so it was really cool to be that close in such an open atmosphere. He's a pro at using samplers called MPCs to and instrumentals live. He was there with a Californian rap group, and he did his stuff while they rapped, with the MPCs tilted towards us so we could see. My phone camera is horrible, especially in dimly lit conditions, but I took a picture of him with it since it was all I had on me:


    Unfortunately, including the bartender, only 12 people showed up. It was the weirdest thing. I wanted to talk to him since I'd probably never get the chance again, but I was a bit scared to talk to the guy while he was sitting at the bar with one of the guys he flew out with. I was literally like two meters away from him, and I was like "Matt, should I talk to him? I mean, he's just sitting there. I know he won't bite, but I feel so awkwarrrdddd. Do you think he'd be cool if I just called him Durazzo? That's what the doorman called him." and he was like yeah man go for it. Eventually I was like "Okay, I'm going to go talk to him. Remember, Matt... YOLO." and he laughed. I went over and was like "You're B. Durazzo right?" and he was like yeah, and he seemed pretty cool. I shook his hand and we talked about the video of the little girl. "Yeah man, she killed it." Supposedly her dad paid him to do a little summer camp thing, with that end result being a final project for her.

    After the local DJ played they did their schtick, and when they were done they started taking payments for their CDs. They're on the pay-anything bandwagon, and started talking about how harsh life is when they're constantly touring so much, trying to take the stress off themselves and stuff. So naturally they made marijuana references a lot and said "How about this. You can pay with anything that's green." Right after he said I could pay anything, however, I reached in my pocket and pulled out all the metal/paper objects I had, which Matt burst into laughter at. I had five Malaysian ringgits(?), six cents, and a screw. "A fuckin' screw, hahaha." I informed Mr. Durazzo of what I had, and I tried to give him all of it, but he didn't want the change and the screw, so I felt bad for trying to give them to him. But he took the ringgits, which seemed like a good enough use for the souvenir my mom got me from when she went to Malaysia. So now I have his Beats Vol. I CD that he personally handed me. So cool. *-* I really want to listen to it, but I'd rather not compromise its pretty packaging, as I don't have a CD drive, even though I have a turntable for vinyl records.



    Flash forward a week or so. I have a new friend from physics class that I gradually started connecting with pretty well, and we bonded a bit over some Modest Mouse songs in his car, and we talked about Franz Ferdinand, who he recalls liking, but he supposedly used to listen to them with his ex-girlfriend so they're unpleasant memories or something. I've had long talks with him about Daft Punk and other artists I respect, various sociological happenings, science news, philosophy, conceptual reasons for why we like music or art forms including video games, and we talked about personal life stuff. I introduced him to Daft Punk by talking about R.A.M., which he later encountered the teaser for on SNL and was legitimately, as he informs me, for the first time, enthralled by a television advertisement's music, being shocked when "Random Access Memories" came on the screen because I'd just talked to him about it. I lent him the Discovery album, as well as Bleu's Electro-Lyte (just to introduce him to more electronic music, even though Electro-Lyte isn't super great) and Franz Ferdinand's You Could Have Had It So Much Better album. So literally all the CDs I own minus Beats Vol. I. We're both pumped for R.A.M., and I've offered to let him borrow my records or even put some music on his flash drive.

    Anyway yeah, that's been my music-related for the past month or two. I've been back to programming recently, but I can't keep myself away from the stuff. I hope I can just stay focused and make something really cool. But I want to get a part time job so I can support myself financially to an extent as well as get money to buy computer or musical equipment. So yeah, hope you enjoyed this stroll through my recentry. (:

  16. Baba

    By Necropolis,

    I like this little writing thing. Lemme know what you think, its nice to put these things somewhere, even nicer to talk about them.

    We walked alongside the shore. Which shore I could not tell you, nor what waters went up and down in rhythmic motion along it. Each of us was young, younger than I am now at least. 12 or 13, just at the age where the world is changing for you but while your still powerless to do anything about it. There were probably 10 of us, and each one of us in the procession carried a large hiking bag. Naturally I was at the front.

    Leading our little group was a woman of about 55. Her face was long and there was something wicked about it. As I think about it now she was familiar. She was every teacher who ever found fun in cruelty to her students. Every crooked nosed, wicked librarian who takes a certain glee in SHUSHING those that visited her. Every witch who, perched in her legged home, threw spite through crooked teeth like acid. I knew that she was nothing less than pure evil, and that whatever her designs for us followed suit. I knew all this, and I suspect my compatriots did also, and yet we all followed her with nary the complaint.

    She commanded us without speaking to drop our packs as we walked, and we did, every one of us in the same place. Then a short while later, she told us all to sit. And we did. Every one of us were sitting with our legs crossed as she had them, and she spoke.

    “Close your eyes children. We’re going to tell scary stories.” She said.

    “This is the story of The Black Mansion, and Judgement day” she said. My eyes were closed, but I knew somehow that she was looking at me. She poked me in the stomach. “Have you heard that one?” She poked me again, harder “Huh?” She poked me again and again, each time it was harder, and it was punctuated by a “Huh?”

    A slow horror dawned on me. The pokes were starting to hurt, and I knew somehow that it would only stop when I opened my eyes. I also knew that when I opened my eyes, there would be something horrible to greet me. But despite this, I couldn’t stop myself. Trying as hard as I could to keep them shut my eyes slowly, painstakingly opened

    The woman, eyes wide open staring with evil glee sat 15 feet away from me, the waves lapping around her.
    And then I woke up. That was this morning. Its strange how much fear this dream provoked in me while it was going, when nothing to terribly frightening happened until the end, and the bit at the end was more subtle than nightmares tend to be.
  17. I've been wanting to start writing stuff, seriously or not, and Necro is inspiring me to just write stuff and blog it. Here's the first part of a mostly unplanned story. The first line will do as a working title.

    ------

    My dreams were filled with wonders. It was as if, in sleep, I entered a world running parallel to my own. The responsibilities were more demanding, the toil less satisfying, but my life I lived in dreams was far richer than the reality. My waking hours I spent wondering what was happening on the other side. There were roads that stretched for miles, like fingers knotted together, holding in its palm the world it connected. The forests there were old; a great history of nature rooted toward the centre of the earth that we all shared. People took on more variety, embodying aspects of nature I thought only a shadow image never seen in full light, opposing my views of how people should be. New dimensions, new colour, new life.

    I spent more time asleep than ever before. Some days I would spend a mere hour out of doors before escaping back to the dream, and before I became aware of it, I was spending whole days in bed. Days then turned to weeks, until I stopped taking note of my absence, and resigned myself to escapism.

    If my own world had been that much wider, perhaps I wouldn't have let it fall apart.

    An indeterminate length of time passed. My world pulsed back into view along with a low thumping on the door to my house. “Come out!” a voice called, “You've been holed up far too long! Everybody’s worried, and we need to know you’re okay!” The voice was frantic. Frantic? Fear and anxiety were never prevalent here before. It’s part of what made reality that bit more boring; that it lacked these features of human nature.

    I pushed myself out of bed in interest. I shambled down the stairs, a little disoriented from the shock of waking life. Peeking out the window, I saw naught but the ocean, and silence in between. The lawn and path were overgrown with tall reaching grasses and weeds, bent by the ocean breeze such that they seemed to reach toward my house.

    I pushed out the door, and a cold smoky air washed over me, sucked into my front room as if keen to escape inside. The air settled until it was unnervingly still. I’d never felt so uncomfortable stepping outside of my home. The world was quiet around me, but a sense lingered that I wasn't alone. The air in all its eerie stillness buzzed with a latent energy, ready to burst out.

    But it didn't. Nobody was there. In all my tiredness it hadn't registered who it was that called me, and now nobody stood in front of my house to answer the question. Still I felt tense, as familiarity met with a new unwelcoming atmosphere, putting me at unease. There was definitely something wrong, in a world that had always been right before.

    I struck out to fix my mind, wading through the heavy overgrowth, long left out of check by myself and, as it appeared, everybody else. It seemed the thick grasses covered everything, and the once youthful trees seemed greyer, older, though not too much time should have passed. How long can someone possibly sleep?
  19. I tend to be a bit philosophical and deep sometimes, so today I will share my words of wisdom with you. My words are a bit modern, so please bear with me.

    Today I have for you the following.

    "If you are bad, get good. If your good is not good enough, get gooder."

    What do you think?
  20. It happened again today. The vision. As I was lying in bed, waking from a warm slumber, it came to me. A premonition of sorts, or maybe just a fantasy- I suppose only time will tell me that. But either way, it happened once more. A vision of a great warrior.
    He carried this big ass sword made out of crystals or diamonds or something, and it’s guard was all clusterpuppyy. He wore a cloak that was black but super bright... like black light i guess. His ears were pointed and his eyes were black, which looked totally awesome. Long, cobalt hair ran down his pale blue face. Like a true warrior he was nasty strong. A body that could withstand bullets and arms that can crush skulls. But despite his ferocious and violent behavior, I knew he was kind. A hero, of sorts.
    But today was different. It happened again, the vision of him, but this vision was drastically different from any other vision I had previously had. For one, it happened after I woke up, in the morning, while the rest occurred at night before I fell asleep. But even more disturbing was what the vision foretold. Instead of a victorious fight ending in the hero’s victory, he was slain.
    Every time he fought, it was with someone new. And every time he fought, he won. But not this time. This time he fought a warrior even bigger than him. The enemy wore red armor made of the finest metals, and had a head encompassed in flames. He carried a massive black axe with a crimson eye encrusted in the blade. This guy was seriously evil.
    In my vision, the two warriors fought in a burning forest. It was probably burning cause of the bad guy’s head. I mean, lets be honest you don’t just run around with a fire head without burning a few trees in the process. Anyways, they fought for what seemed like hours before the bad guy raised his finger to the sky. I could see on the hero’s face that shit was about to hit the fan. The villain shot a red laser into the sky only for it to crash down on the hero seconds later. Huge explosion occurred, like wow man you had to see it. Once the dust settled, I saw that the hero was no more. Instead, a huge hole was in his place. I saw down the hole, and all i could see were clouds. The hero was gone....
  21. As mentioned in an earlier thread today (http://www.hyrule.net/forum/topic/19173-twitchtv/), I knew there was a few people here who streamed and I wanted to help them hopefully get some new viewers.
    You'll now find that there is a new widget in the sidebar that shows current live streamers, the game they are playing and their channel status.

    Clicking their picture or name will take you immediately to their twitch channel page. The little bubble on the right is the current viewer count. You then have the game they are playing as well as their channel status.
    If you are a frequent contributor to this community and you stream, feel free to post your twitch channel in http://www.hyrule.net/forum/topic/19173-twitchtv/ and I will add you.
  22. I've been talking to this guy for a few weeks. We meet online but he lives pretty close. We are gonna meet this Saturday. It'll be his birthday and his friends are throwing him a party. I'm super nervous. Not only does he havta like me, but so do his friends. Nobody wants to date someone when their friends hate him. But I also hope i like him. I mean you can only know somebody so well from text messages....

    Hmm, this is a pretty lame first part. Oh well, I hope you'll all continue to read this as more entries are entered.
  23. So FEZ is a game that's gotten a lot of controversy due to it's creator, Phil Fish. But we arent gonna talk about that. Instead, lets look at the game he's created.

    FEZ is a platforming game about a 2D being discovering that he lives in a 3D world. It's simple enough, collect 32 hyper-cubes (and an extra 32 anti-cubes) to restore order to his universe and keep it from imploding.... or something. The story is more of a charming prompt. Not too important, but satisfying non the less. The game play is also very simple. You always see the world in 2D, but as you rotate your perspective, the world rotates with it. Platforms that were unreachable from one view becoming easy stepping stones in the next. There is probably a metaphor in that as well, haha.

    But here is where the game gets really interesting, for me at least. It doesnt hold your hand. The game is very easy to play, but super difficult to master. Not because the game gets harder, but rather because it gets "deeper." Youll come across a room and have no idea what secrets it holds, you may find some weird scribbles on the wall. but what does it mean? Well, all the "codes" in the game can be found within the game. Ill give it away, there is a room that acts as a Rosetta stone, but even realizing that it is indeed a Rosetta is a puzzle in itself. Even without learning the new language, the game has so many secrets, its honestly amazing! Truly a work of art in its own right.

    And the game encourages you to figure it all out yourself! sure, there will be a few times when youll just HAVE to google it, but the game doesnt require you to at all. Its really a throw back to the golden age of gaming when there was no internet. You'd play a game, get stuck, and then ask your friend for advice. This game is complete homage to that. Im literally watching my friend play as I type this and he just asked me for paper and pen so he could figure out this puzzle.

    This game is not only beautiful, with it's minimalist pixel graphics and hauntingly ambient soundtrack, but its such a challenge! My first play session lasted 2 hours, but genuinely felt like 15 mins. I cant recommend this game enough! Please, despite all the controversy surrounding it's creator, look into this game for yourself. You owe yourself that much ;-)
  24. I was playing Ocarina of Time 3D during my lunch break and was completing the trading sidequest, trying like hell to get the Cucco behind the high fence and failing miserably. I must've beaten it a dozen Times in the past but for the life of me I couldn't remember how to get back there then like an angel from Heaven a coworker came up behind me and said "oh all you do is float back there with another Cucco".

    I literally slapped myself in the face, I felt so stupid.
  25. So on my way home my car started wonking out on me. Thankfully I was able to pull off to the side of the road and call a tow truck. I was at the garage for an hour when they told me my transmission was shot and I'm in need of a new one and it gets better, it'll cost me $5,000 and it won't be ready until Monday.