jayseven

Work do is thursday 22nd, they've given us friday off paid. It's upstairs at a nice pub, with free food and free drinks all night! However it's also the only evening the 'Four Amigos' get together -- that's me and three long-standing mates. One's coming down from huddersfield for xmas but I'm going over to bournemouth for the same time. There's one circle of friends having a meal tonight but I've opted out as I don't feel 100%, and another circle are doing something... at some point... but I can't remember when. After work this saturday I'll be going straight to an xmas party, which'll be knackering but fun, I'm sure!

I reverse tracked diageo and got that he was targetted by cube and heroijan. Nobody else. He died. So one of these two did the killing. Pretty simple!

Then I think heroijan's explanation for last night is certainly the weakest. He claims to be able to, basically, protect people. He claims that he targetted diageo. He thinks that someone messed with this -- specifically dannyboy? I htink this is a nonsense defense. I think that heroijan is making shit up. I think that it makes sense to lynch heroijan. If it's wrong then cube did it. It's really straghtforward. Voting patterns will be noticed.

I targetted diageo to see who else would target him. I got cube and heroijan as others that targetted him. Having read other posts, I think jonnas makes one point that makes me wonder -- would yvonne still consider Heroijan's target as diageo even if his target had been changed by dannnyboy? Dannyboy has to clear this up. Either cube or heroijan killed diageo, that much is clear.

Ahyes I would've been thinking about the Hanger. Fairly sure I didn't play 1, and I couldn't remember the name of that level

It's one of you two. I'm sure of it.

Your parents aren't expecting to to pass with flying colours. Of course, they hope that their child is the best child in the universe, but they love you unconditionally and just want you to be happy. Once you start believing that you start working for yourself rather than trying to reach the potential goals of others, or stress about that. You're a smart guy, man. You'll be fine, mentally as well Take some time out maybe?

Wesley it's the middle of the day in the middle of the week... You alright

forgot to set tactiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiics played my weakest keeeperrrr nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I think it's more likely that one of the two in teh room already killed diageo, and the third man saw who was in the room, while the two in the room already did not necessarily see who else was tehre. Cube has admitted he was in the room and I'd like to identify who else was in the room before he gets persecuted. I also want to hear heroijan reply to my post when he's online. Double post. Ah! Good timing! Vote: heroicjanitor. Including myself, three people targetted diageo last night. I am the third man. I saw that diageo was targetted by cube and heroicjanitor. Cube was quick to come clean, heroijan's trying to shift focus onto the other death.

Dudes. THPS 1 and 2 were fab - basically platformers on a skateboard. Was it warehouse where you could just about do the whole level in one run if you were good enough? I'd love to get this - soundtrack would concern me, and whether they stick with the original gap checklists or go apeshit crazy and try to add too much. Skater list is far less important for me - but there needs to be spiderman in there somewhere... and the bail videos! Aaaah nostalgia attack!

You've endured a lot of mental stress in a relatively short period of time. It's fairly easy to overthink the situation and find yourself worrying about the minute detail. The more exams and the more essays you do, the more relaxed you'll be both about what you are capable of and what is expected of you. You're right about learning to deal with the stress, and you're right to type it out on here. You will gain perspective - if you go into every exam or essay thinking it's the most important in the world, you will suffer from the panic. If you realise that before you finish uni you'll have done probably a hundred essays/exams (or 50 or whatever), so was each individual one truly that important? You will fail something, you will excel at something else. Chin up!

From the video description alone I know I don't want to watch it. Added a spoiler tag, just for extra precaution.

What makes you say 4 people targetted diageo? One person enters a room with 3 people, including diageo's dead body = 4 people. Three targetted diageo. Where's teh 4th come into it? Who did you target last night? Roleblocker down. Ice-cream killer needs to chiiiilll!

Oh, man, yeah! For some reason I'd gotten all confused at some point and thought a pint was 360ml! Stupid post-midnight maths.

It's basically a pint of whiskey each, with a small shot on the side -- not exactly advisable! Timescale makes it doable (I've shared a ~750ml bottle of gin with a friend on a few occasions) ... hope you've learned some good things and had a chance to spout shit, and regret nothing in the morning. Just down some water before you go... And as you're in US timezones and perhaps you're still going... then stop now and thank me later.

I still need to learn how to do the whole dev thing. Fairly gutted (as always) at no double jumps and barely any visibles -- my team tends to play one or two bars above their skill week-in week-out they just care not to put it down on paper and make it official. BLEH.

I did indeed purchase the game, perhaps foolishly. I was enjoying it to a point -- the level with lava was great fun. I spent at least 30 mins just fucking about with it. But the problem is that there's no real learning curve as such - for instance, the very first part of the game it didn't tell me (or perhaps I missed it) how precisely to pick up earth. There's no real 'tutorial', instead each level so far seems to have an entirely different focus, and generally it's quite punishing. I think you're meant to have patience and just work through each one, but not having the ability to say exactly how the tribespeople get from a to b, for example, means sometimes a couple will go round the long way, and then drown because your tower power's run out. Bastion was so well put together that it's a bit of a shock to the system. I'm very surprised you only used one weapon (fang repeater? Slays like a boss!). I really thought I was going to do the same but I had maybe 4-6 weapons I'd switch about, routinely. I didn't use the bow or spear very much, though. The vigils mostly occur naturaly if you use all the weapons, and using the Who Knows Where you can quickly get them.

You gotta go back to it, man. Just did the run through on new game plus in about 3 hours to get the last two achievements. Joy of a game! The complaints to be had can be that the game was essentially too easy once you got the potions and weapons strong enough to just stroll through enemies, but the experience in general made it worth it. Sequel with co-op, plz. From Dust next!

Finally got round to getting Bastion thanks to @Shorty's points as an early xmas gift! I've basically played it loads all weekend, finished the story and found it was an absolute joy to play - the hack n' slash wasn't too tricky, and the whole presentation and story-telling was beautiful. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Started my new game plus, and racing through it like a badass. There were a couple of the proving grounds that I simply could not do -- the cael[something?] hammer, the pistols and the shield (I'm sure there was another), but there's no achievement to be attained for doing all of them. Checked a few people on my friends list and was surprised to see that not everyone seems to have completed it. Why not? I also have 1200ish points spare and don't know what xbla game to get next. Was considering the Prince of Persia HD thing as I remember playing the original a bit as a kid. Anyone tried it?

Don't let slip the cool! You are a child of the Pease shinobi village, ville, don't get all riled up now! She's clearly a crazy. Don't go. Count the bullets you dodged. That'll take you long enough that you'll meet someone else.

goodstuff/badstuff - decided to call in sick for work tomorrow. Been nursing a wee bit of man-flu this weekend, which has given me not-enough-sleep-itis and all that jazz. Basically got an annoying cough, so I figure a) I may be contageous and b) my job will actually be damn hard if I'm hacking and coughing everywhere. So of course I do the sensible thing and stay up 'til around 2am watching chess videos. I'll still need to set my alarm for relatively-early in order to phone in, but there's clearly a part of my brain that has decided to make sure I can't work tomorrow by staying up late, just in case I'm magically well enough to go to work tomorrow.

It's two games a week - tuesdays and fridays at midday (1pm Eurozone). Season lasts roughly 10 weeks, which sounds like a lot of time but it's all trivial stuff -- you can set your game tactics for the last game of the season on the first day of the season and sit back and let it ride -- of course, part of the trick is to adjust your tactics depending on who you play -- the basics are choosing your formation and choosing the squad, then the tactics at your disposal -- try to play the offside rule? Play with pressure (but be weaker at the end of halves) ... or even cheat? I typically spent about 30 minutes a week, total, on my team :P setting tactics takes a minute. It's all this basking in victory that takes up most of my time.

Sorry Dan, I'm playing Rising Phoenix both games this week for teh Tea Cup final! As an apology, have a rough explanation of a player and their numbered values... A player has a skill rating and a form rating aand a development value. Development value is earned generally by playing matches. Younger players get more dev value per match than older players (think of it as exp). At the end of a season, if a 19 year old with 4-skill has enough exp, they will 'level up' with their skill. Now, there's some uber-complicated fomula that x11 uses, but essentially you want to have 15 dev value for your players to ensure they will go up one skill (requiring 10 dev value, roughly) but with a chance for a double-jump. So a 19-4 (19 years old with skill of 4) will turn into a 20-5, if they've accrued the development, which they get from playing matches. As I said, younger players may get, for example, 4 development for one match, while an older one may get 1 or 2. That sort of thing. Form value... generally speaking I don't know much about this :P if it's low then I pay for the player to be trained - the higher it is, the better the player will perform in a match/closer to their actual skill they will perform. It's easy to flood new players with too much info on this, but yeah, any player you see of any age started as a youth (i.e. a teenager) with only a low amount of skill. Managing your squad to include enough older and stronger players to beat opponents whilst at the same time including enough youth for them to get better is the crux of the whole game. Something which fucks me over :P

Positive reinforcement slaps away the word 'only' :P Yes, the stick tends to be the quicker way to get the behaviour you want. Not trying to play it down, but in the pack animal behaviour will be shaped both positively and negatively as well. The issue we have, as you italicised, is the Human Guilt of meddling. It's like we got to be modest about being top dog (pun totes intended) - I respect and appreciate the efforts humankind has put into treating animals decently, but I really just think that we've just got a mowgli situation here albeit a lot more occurant, and reversed. The bit where the see-saw tips the other way is when I start thinking about how some behaviours are repressed, like the reason why dogs lick people (conditioned not to bite, but biting is a form of affection in the 'pack') and how their interactions with other dogs is limited. Buuuuuuuuuuut! Repressing behaviour does not immediately mean it's baaad or wrooong. If a dog doesn't shit on the sofa and because of which the owner pets the dog, then regardless of the dog knowing why it's being petted, it is being petted. You mentioned the relationship of causality with animals in terms of their cognition, so if it's just the end result that's important, and the end result with a pet is a secure, loving, safe environment, does it matter if they're being trained in the first place? Referring back to the human guilt, and the idea of anthropomorphising, the notions of morality and natural behavior are not things that animals think about the same way as us (as you said, they have their 'innocence'), so the whole moral standpoint of having a pet is completely a human problem. There's probably a fairly salient thought in here somewhere, just waiting to be expressed. I'm specifically not trying to say it's just right or wrong. I do appreciate that psychological issues exist with animals, but while I'm being mildly superfluous with my posts in general, ultimately I just think that the argument of having pets being a bad thing for the animal is largely ridiculous, and if anything should be entirely dependent on the quality of the owner; rather than the romantic notion that a wild, truly free life being at one with nature is by default than a domesticated, albeit partially repressed life. We've all seen David Attenborough's stuff. Whales eat seals eat penguins eat fish. Where animals don't have time to develop any mental disorders because their whole lives are one anxiety attack about staying alive tomorrow.