Sméagol

The count intends to age with dignity: no need to cover that bald spot.

Anyone want to continue this? (Otherwise, who’s the winner, @Cube?)

There are just some situations where 1 + 1 + 1 doesn’t equal 3..

Your mouth is not open*, see pics above. * except the one picture, but not in the same way ReZ does.

Never (thoroughly) cleaned a keyboard, but I’m sure ther’s a tool for safely removing keys. That said, give it a proper shake and vacuum afterwards?

You’ll have to decide now if you’d still like to be friends with her Giz.. If you have to see her anyway, you can take the opportunity to talk and clear things up. Otherwise, the same advice that’s been given to Aneres probably applies, I don’t know if you can avoid seeing her. It’s not quite the same situation though, so I’d say at least have one talk, and decide how you 2 want to continue, don’t see eachother and move on, be friends, but move on etc.

There are just some situations where 1 + 1 doesn’t equal 2.. I like Kit Kats, I like M&Ms, but that thing above makes me lose my appetite :|

It’s when you want to focus on something in particular, with the rest being out of focus, caused by depth of field. Ik shamelesly stole a picture from @Twozzok in the photography thread to illustrate this: See how the plant in the foreground is in focus but the background isn’t. Depth of field isn’t a common feature in point & shoots, I know some of the high-end current ones can do it, but apart from that.. My Canon point & shoot can’t in any case, except in macro mode. So the above picture isn’t achievable for the snapshot photographers. I’ve been following this tech on Engadget, the concept is great, the technology promising, but this product isn't a serious photography tool. It’s a great (and expensive) toy, in my eyes. It’s great for Facebook pics and the like, they don't require a high resolution. This thing does its uses, it’s too bad image quality doesn’t seem to be to great (although to be honest, I haven’t seen any real user experiences and examples yet). But you have to realise, this thing is fast. If you want to capture things “in the moment”, this is great, you can make a snapshot in 3 seconds or so, and you can adjust focus afterwards to suit your needs. It would be very different with a real camera, where you at least have to check what the camera is focussing on, before you can take a picture. This camera removes all the need to “think” about your picture. That said, I think it’s too expensive at this point, for some sort of point & shoot.. If you don’t mind taking a bit more effort in taking pictures, I hear the Sony Cybershot DSC-HX9] (for example) is a great point & shoot, which is cheaper, and does a lot more with greater image quality. If I had the money to spare, I’d buy this thing just for the gadget factor (I love the form factor by the way, no it’s not ergonomic, but since it’s small it can get away with that). Also, it’ll be a while before this will be implemented in other (“more serious”) cameras. It requires a whole different sensor, and the sensor in this thing is quite big. I don’t know how fast they’ll make it small enough to be used in conventional cameras, whether point & shoots, milc’s or dslr’s. And then there’s still the matter of the known camera manufacturers willingness to license this stuff, unless they want to develop their own lightfield sensors. Edit: Had a look again at the site, it’s not the sensor which is big, but rather the image processor.

It’s too bad, there’s this Dutch datingsite which has a nice concept, so I was looking for the international version (since most Datingsites seem to be international, meetic is called lexa here for example), but this really seems to be a Dutch-only site. The concept is you don’t really make profiles.. You just anwser a lot of questions. Based on the anwsers, their matching service matches you directly to someone else, there’s no trawling through profiles to look for someone you like. There are pictures, you can’t see them directly, they’re blurred at first, if you talk enough with your match, the picture gradually unblurs. So this does exactly what a lot of people complain about: you get to know someone before you get to know what they look like, it somewhat avoids the “meat marketâ€. Not quite, since I hear a lot of reactions of people about matches dropping out once they find out what you look like, regardless of how all the conversations went.. I don’t think it’s ultimately something for me, since I’m very visually inclined. Still, I think it’s a very novel concept, and I think I’ll make use of it eventually just to develop my lacking social skills (I’m not a great conversationalist). So yeah, that doesn’t really help you, but I’ll let you know when / if they go international, or perhaps someone else knows an international equivalent. I haven’t done anything serious with dating (online or in the real world), need to get my act together first (step 1: get a job). I’m a.. Slow learner. I realise things after the fact. Like last Friday, at my volunteer job in the cinema, this girl who was quite a hottie (who was alone, on a Friday night) smiled to me on her way to the exit. I smiled back. That was it. So I realised afterwards if I had put more effort in getting a job, I may have gotten one by now, then I’d have some more confidence into asking her out or something. As it stands, I barely had the money to offer her a drink . Anyway, I have some sort of plan now, just need that job to kickstart things. Someone from monsterboard would call me tomorrow with regard to a job, but bla bla there are existing job threads.

If “generic FPS†only applies to 2 franchises, it’s actually not that astonishing.

Halloween update is live. Got a few Halloween thingies and achievements, and finally did something with my haunted metal from last year.. But I didn’t realise they’ve made some changes regarding that. There seem to be more skulls that you can craft with it. I got a newer version than the one I was expecting. Doesn’t look as nice but oh well. Also used the only paint I had to get some brown horns. My first crafted thingy yay! Anyway, you get some stuff for simply logging on (a gift cauldron). So far I’ve got: - seal mask (not tradable,; standard gift from the cauldron) - tin arms (halloween costume item for soldier; 2nd item from the cauldron) - goggles (halloween costume item for the medic) - haunted garlic & stake (halloween costume item for the sniper) I’ll be online next couple of days to try to get more halloween stuff before the event is over, expecially the haunted versions.

<experiences intense feelings of jealousy> Haha, nice mate! Thanks for sharing. I hope she comes along for the tour as well . (oh and, big racks are a bonus, but some (plenty) women don’t need them)

A, a real shame then, because they used to have various soundbites on the official site, but they no longer seem to be there. The problem you’re referring too, I came across it as well, but I don’t think it’s relevant in your case since the stereo mix does show up, you just can’t enable it. I’ve seen various solutions to unhide the stereo mix, to enable it, but that’s not applicable here. Have you succesfully recorded something (in stereo) before though? Ever updated the sound drivers? Unhinding the stereo mix was one issue I came across, but some onboard audio or specific drivers simply not being able to record the stereo mix was another. Might be you’re drivers are too new, too old, or your card simply can’t record “what you hear”.

I do care. I mean, I won’t buy it day 1 for the same reason I have a backlog of.. 20 games? No money. I loved the single player of MW 1 and 2, and played MW2 multiplayer to death. I’m very interested in the story of single player, end would love to have some fresh multiplayer experiences. Don’t get me wrong, I’m just as much interested in BF3 regarding multiplayer, but I have no reason to not look forward too this one as well.

Hmm, not a solution, but is the video available on the internet? Perhaps I can record the sound for you. Also, after a bit of googling, I really suggest you take another look at updated drivers. If you give me your motherboard details, I can have a look as well.

I’m now looking at my own realtek sound settings (control panel / realtek), but there doesn’t seem to be too many options.. But maybe you can take a look there and see if anything’s off. Otherwise, I’d suggest to have a look in device manager, to see if you have any yellow flags.. If so, then I’d take a look at you motherboard’s manufacturer’s site to see if they have any (updated) sound drivers.

I generally avoid anything with some variant of “defence” in its name. Last game I bought was Alpha Protocol for € 2,-. Felt like I was robbing the developpers. After everything I heard, the game was pretty good, wouldn’t have regretted it if I had paid full retail price for it.. Yeah, it wasn’t perfect, but can’t remember anything I found really annoying. I have games for which I paid more (like full retail price in some cases), which I enjoyed far and far less. In my other post about this game, when I was asking if it was worth € 7,50, the previous deal for this game, I said I’d wait, and perhaps buy it on disc when I have more money spend. Now I have it for € 2,-, I’ll definitely buy it on disc, like I said, € 2,- felt like a crime.

Hmm, had a look myself.. It’s been quite some time since I recorded something off the radio, wen looking in Windows and Audacity settings and I found my stereo mix to be “currently unavailable”. In Audacity however, I could choose it as a recording device. I was also able to set it as the default device in Windows (7 by the way). What’s weirder is that I have both a stereo mix and a wave as recording devices I can choose, and both work and seem to do the exact same thing. I recall only using the stereo mix, but it’s been a long time. Anyway, I also recall Audacity recording in mono by default. I don't know if you’ve actually already tried to record something in Audacity? Things you should check: - First of all, make sure you have the latest version of Audacity. In the last version, you can select your recording and playback devices right from the interface, something I really appreciated - In Audacity, in settings / devices, make sure you’re recording stereo and not mono - See if stereo mix is available as a device, and try to record some sound of it - If that doesn’t work, or it isn’t available, do you have a wave device you can choose? Try that. - Try setting stereo mix as your default recording device. Another thing, but.. Sound it general does work yes (is it stereo?)? In which case it can’t be a hardware thing.

Cute: http://www.antontang.com/search/label/Toys

Would go great with this thing posted in another thread: Seriously though, if it ever shows up in our stars catalogue, I’m going to get it.

A [thread on the Bioware forums] that’s of interest to those who want to know more about the multiplayer.

No, I can view the image outside of the forum when it’s missing. Anyway, like I said, must be a cache thing or something. Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s not, but it’s not a big problem.

I’ve added a fake skypename myself, in order to show it directly, but it doesn’t seem to show up (at all in this case), maybe it takes a while, or perhaps it is because it’s a fake name. Anyway, if it works it’ll be clear if it’s just me or something on your end. Edit 00: Hmm, weird. Magnus snuck in a post while I was posting.. But anyway, it also seems display correctly for me, in every case, even the one above. Edit 01: God dammit. I’ll be up all night finding out why it works now but didn’t initially! Edit 02: Although, usually you can blame these kind of things on the cashe. Stupid cashe.

Yeah. In short: The confirmation and the available info alleviates most of my worries. I indeed thought that, the only way to do multiplayer well is by having a seperate co-op campaign outside of the main campaign. I think drop-in / drop-out co-op in the main campaign could work as well, but it'd need some specific additions to cater for a smooth campaign*. The only fear I still have left is, that the co-op campaign will influence the main campaign too much. This is impossible to judge with the available details, but I wouldn’t like it, for example, if completing something in the co-op campaign would make things easier for commander Shepard in the main campaign. Say you do a mission on a planet, where you destroy a husk outpost or something. Then you do a mission in the main campaign on the same planet, and the enemy threat is reduced severely because of your actions in the co-op campaign. I don’t want that. But since it’s apparent it’ll be incorporated in the story of the main campaign, I’d do like the co-op campaign to influence the main campaign in minor ways, like NPC’s talking about some bad-ass gang who saved them earlier or something. To put it more precise: I don't want the game become easier (by reducing the threat level to easily), but I don’t mind minor recognitions or even some changes in the missions that may have you take a different path, but have you do just as much as you’d normally do in the end. I just want Shepard & crew to be the main gang of bad-asses to put the hurt on the Reapers, while there’s another crew just adding insult to injury. If that’s the case, I’d love to do the co-op campaign during my canon main campaign. Hmm, not that short in the end. *Basically, this is a fun opportunity for players to play some of the other cool characters, especially if they have exclusive powers. Think Kasumi. I’ll bet there are plenty of players who’d like to take Garrus or Legion for a spin for example, eventhough the story is told from Shepard’s perspective. I only have Resident Evil 5 as a base for comparision, it’s the only drop-in / drop-out co-op I’ve played so far, but say.. You look at the map. The missions for which there are other people available to play with (the hosts I guess, the players playing Shepard), will have “distress beacons” or something, making them stand out from the normal missions. You can then choose to join such a mission, looking at what characters are available (the host can opt to not care about which characters join him (as long as they’re available in his or her campaign), in which case the joining player can choose almost freely. Now here’s the thing. When playing the mission, everything is as you’d expect, except in cutscenes and any applicable npc dialogue. This will be different for every player in the session, letting each player still make their own choices as commander Shepard, while still having fun shooting husks or Cerberus soldiers with each other as any character of the crew.