Magnus

You don't know the kind of weird stuff Danny is into.

Better check to see if the batteries in your smoke detector are working.

I like how the last photo is just a picture of the sidewalk. Not the actual bus stop with the surrounding area, or the people waiting for the bus, or a picture of you waiting for the bus... just... the ground.

But now who will he play co-op with? It's about time, Dyson. I just hope she's not stuffed in a trunk/buried underneath a tree somewhere, since you seem so sure that you're not going to get back together with her this time.

Any television channel that isn't CBS/ABC/FOX/NBC (and NBC can't afford to be too picky these days) generally has a lot lower expectations on ratings. If No Ordinary Family had averaged four million viewers on SyFy (but it wouldn't have, because not as many people have/watch SyFy), it would have been renewed. There was an episode of Studio 60 where one of the main characters tried to convince a new writer to sell his new show about the UN to NBC instead of HBO, and I found the whole thing really stupid, because a show like that would stand almost no chance on NBC, but would become a critical darling/moderate success on HBO. They were basically trying to convince the writer to let them cancel the show after four episodes. It's not really random, just... unfair sometimes. In the end it comes down to ratings, but it's not as simple as "this show has higher ratings than this other show, let's renew it". Stargate Universe saw a steady decline in ratings, while Being Human may have seen an increase (I'm guessing), so they may have seen potential in it. And there were probably higher expectations on a Stargate show, plus they may come from different production companies, the budgets were probably different, and so on. Sometimes it's cheaper to start over with a new show that has the potential to get higher ratings than it is to keep an old show that has already peaked around. Basically, being a fan of TV shows sucks sometimes.

Congratulations. The best years of your life are behind you. (Not really.)

SyFy is a cable channel, though, while No Ordinary Family aired on ABC, so you can't really compare the ratings. Four million viewers on network television is really terrible - especially with a decline like that.

Judging from the wording, probably this guy.

Um... I hate to break it to you, but Cing closed its doors over a year ago.

It'd be more fun to watch if Lisa Edelstein was returning. *Still bitter* There's an interview with David Shore about the finale here.

That seems to be how Russell T Davies writes Torchwood these days. My memories of Children of Earth are fuzzy, but I remember a lot of scenes with the main characters sitting around a television/laptop while the story went on without them. Of course, I only ended up watching Children of Earth because it was on late at night, so I wasn't a fan to begin with.

Happy birthday to one half of Pajairdriver.

Haha, awesome.

This may be a stupid question (and at this point I'm only asking because I'm curious), but how am I supposed to do the badge pursuit challenge if my copy of the game didn't include any photo negatives? Google has been very little help, and all I can seem to find are either walkthroughs or people discussing the negatives. I hear they're all in or around landmarks? Am I supposed to figure that out on my own, because as far as I can tell, there hasn't been a single hint in-game about how and where to find these elusive badges?

Everything looks pretty reddish in that photo, so it's kind of hard to see what your hair really looks like, but I'm going to assume it looks great. At least if you dress up as Tintin, you can pass as someone who just has a bad dress sense to non-fans. ... Though I suppose the same could be said for Harry Potter cosplayers.

Wait, we can pick who we want to be now? In that case, I want to be Ashley ReZ Jayseven actually, never mind. Happy birthday, Gavin. May it be a glorious day of cake-eating and getting one day older.

Haha, I'm liking the Tintin cosplay. Now you just need to convince your boyfriend to grow a beard for the next time you're in Australia and you're all set.

Does this mean you're not a spam bot? Welcome, friend of Daniel.

But he can't flaunt his penis in public. He's not ReZ.

He gave the game a low rating and explained why in the review. He found the gameplay repetitive, the story was terrible, the graphics were underwhelming, he didn't like the multiplayer... You could argue that, "oh, clearly he has a beef with the developer/the Wii/life in general", but those are just assumptions. Maybe he just really disliked the game? I occasionally review Tomb Raider levels for a website, and sometimes I play a level that is just so obviously bad that I have no choice but to write a scathing review of it, and then other people love the level. Last year, I reviewed thirty levels for a competition, and one of my least favorite levels ended up winning. So it's all very subjective. And anyway, the review really isn't the point here. Maybe the review is extremely biased - maybe T. Michael Murdock is just a terrible reviewer overall! But does that really make what High Voltage Software did any better? It's like if I was hurling insults at you and you could either be the bigger man and walk away, or go get your friends and beat me up. Is that really all we should expect from game developers? Just because this reviewer acted unprofessionally (maybe), that doesn't excuse what High Voltage Software did. Not to mention the fact that I'm sure the Conduit games have received high ratings from some reviewers just by virtue of being shooters on the Wii, and I'm betting no one had a problem with those reviews.

So now reviewers should be afraid to give low ratings not only because the websites they work for may lose ad revenue/may not get any more review copies, but because game developers may go after them personally? I haven't played Conduit 2, so I don't know if the Joystiq review is accurate or not (though reading it, I do think the reviewer justifies his rating), but sometimes games get bad reviews. Most people would just deal with it. They wouldn't encourage their employees to slam the reviewer's novel. It's really childish and unprofessional.

The guy reviewing Conduit 2 for Jostiq trashed the game and some of the children over at High Voltage Software decided to retaliate by giving his novel a bunch of one-star ratings on Amazon.com. Very classy.

Dan's ginger, so he probably can't be out in the sun.

This is the conduct of a respectable game developer.