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Comments
That's not good.
No big deal. I'm not working today. Probably.
Nothing like waking up to take a confused phone call from somebody. I even got my hopes up, thinking the place I applied to might be calling me.
Sleepdeprived and busy with assignment during seminar, and still I keep more of the discussion going most of the time. It might be childish, but the teacher should really just give turns.
So, three hundred pages after the last time I said it, The Name of the Wind continues to be excellent.
We need to do a sculpture. So I'll do a really simple one. The point of it? It will tell a story through touch. A simple ill defined one, granted, but it would have a beginning, middle, and end, a climax, etc.
Basically, I'm planning on making it start out calm and smooth with the occasional bump. Then a large ridge that gets larger and more ragged. Then, at the end, silence. It would then get noise again and start all over
Got Chloe's theme (imaginatively named Chloe) stuck in my head. 8luh 8luh, huge Noir.
Something from this article bothers me, although it's really just normal Paolini shenanigans.
Ah, yes.
This would be it.
Paolini's work has always been full of the implication that the sword makes the man. Little does he know that a good sword in the wrong hands is a bad sword anyway. If you look at the picture in the article (presuming that's the sword he's holding), there's a few things that can be told about Paolini's lack of knowledge or experience in wielding a sword. That should be obvious -- no-one who knows how to use a sword thinks magic swords are honestly that great, to begin with -- but damn.
> short blade length on a two-handed hilt
> wheel pommel on a two-handed hilt
> tiny crossguard
> using the term "Damascus steel" unironically
> that above point isn't even meant to be funny
Basically, it's of a size that's only really suited to single-sword techniques (not much binding for instance) but carries the extra weight and balance concerns of having a two-handed hilt and a wheel pommel. Wheel pommels are good for single-handed swords as they provide a counterweight to the blade, creating a sort of natural fulcrum, but get in the way when trying to use a two-handed sword to its fullest potential.
Basically, it's inefficient as a longsword and inefficient as a single sword. While some swords of that type existed, they were never widely used. His particular sword seems good for switching between one-handed and two-handed use at short notice, but the gain from that is less than the loss of efficiency elsewhere.
And seriously.
No-one who knows how to use a sword chooses a wheel pommel on a two-handed hilt after the mid-14th century or so. It is really really super dumb and reduces efficiency, control and the length of the two-handed fulcrum to such an extent that it could mean the difference between life and death. There's a reason wheel pommels pretty much disappear on two-handers shortly after their mass production.
I don't know much about swords, but isn't that the stuff that nobody's known how to forge for centuries, but is on the label of every useless prop sword ever to make it look valuable?
Honestly, this
bothered me far more
Shit, that's...that is even worse.
Though it's hardly news that Paolini is...not sure what the term is, but it's a term disparaging his merit as a writer.
We think we've untangled the secrets of this steel by now, but the second part of your query is correct. Every sword salesman will claim to have Damascus steel blades, irrespective of what that means.
Damascus steel has always essentially been a misunderstanding, though. It's really just pattern-welded steel made from Indian Wootz alloy. And that's really just steel that contained tungsten and other trace elements. Pattern-welding as a smithing technique was known to the Classical-era Celtic and Germanic tribes, and the same general technique (more or less) has been used in katana construction from the 13th century onwards.
There is nothing particularly notable about Damascus steel except that it represents advanced sword construction in the Middle East, which is otherwise not known for producing particularly exceptional swords.
I finished my Katherine McBride cosplaaaaay~ <3
A hack?
^^^Ah, I see. Good to know.
^Yes.
^o.o^
Now I need to get my Vincent cosplay together. But I haven't played it yet. I'll get it soon, though.
^ Nice.
@Paolini interview: Can't say I'm surprised, honestly.
Got an app that's meant to help me sleep better by waking me up when it detects I'm at my lightest.
Fuck if I know if it works, as I woke up on my own 15 minutes earlier than I usually do after going to sleep quite late. I wonder if I can get the day off...
Those apps shouldn't work, unless you can reliably predict exactly how long it'll take you to fall asleep.
I have a dilemma.
I have Mass Effect on Steam, and Mass Effect 2 on the 360. The problem with this is that I can't take as much advantage of the whole same-Shepard-over-three-games thing, and with ME3 on the horizon, I'm starting to regret this.
It's been long enough since I played them through that I could probably marathon my way through both games before I end up getting ME3 that the purchase of either game for continuity's sake would probably be worth it.
ijbm, what do
Do a definitive ME1 run, then get ME2 on PC.
The ME3 multiplayer on PC won't require you to subscribe to Xbox Live Gold, so it's probably cheaper overall that way.
Good idea.
I'm downloading the demo of 3 now to make sure that I can run it on high enough settings to look suitably awesome.
Making multiplayer almost mandatory doesn't sit well with me.
It's not. It lets you boost your "Galactic Readiness Meter," as do some other extra things, but you can apparently get the best ending without doing anything outside the main game.
More of a backup in case you screw up.
I thought that you could max out the galactic readiness (or whatever it was that the multiplayer helps with) just fine without it.
inuh, y u ninja me
I've started listening to Poets of the Fall, since their stuff in Alan Wake was so fuckawesome. The rock concert/the garage fight with War playing on the radio were some of my favorite gameplay moments in the game.
Also, this song should totally have been in there somewhere:
The only songs of theirs I got around to listening were War, Dreaming Wide Awake, Children of the Elder God and The Poet and the Muse (for those who haven't played Alan Wake, those last two are massive spoilers, and War's official video also has spoilers).
Almost is still a word.
Ignoring its existence will not make it go away.
Yes, and almost means "somewhere near," which doesn't describe the situation. If it weren't there at all, you could still get the best ending fine. ME2 didn't give you anything to fall back on if you screwed up.