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Vivi22

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Everything posted by Vivi22

  1. I actually find it quite interesting to know this. I know whenever I sit down to try and write some music I have absolutely nothing in my head as far as melody or even the rhythm. I always kind of wondered if that was common or not, or if it was just something that comes in time with more experience since my experience actually learning to play a melodic instrument is limited to about two years of piano lessons. Usually when I sit down I'll just mess about with some scales or chord structures until I start to hit on a sound or feel that I like and think I can build off of. From there I'm just really methodical and usually explore every avenue I can think of along the way. But I always wondered if it was common for many musicians/composers/artists to simply have something in mind before they started. It's nice to know an artist I enjoy listening to and have a lot of respect for is somewhat similar in that regard. I'm not really afraid of writing music though. Afraid of the time it takes maybe because I'm usually quite obsessive about not committing to an idea until I've tried every variation or permutation I can think of. And I can understand nervousness when showing people stuff. I'm generally a pretty shy person so putting myself out there at all is difficult for me, and opening oneself up to criticism, constructive or otherwise, is a hard thing to do for most people.
  2. Everyone seems to be hung up on GOMAD, despite the fact that I never actually said just go out and start drinking a gallon of milk a day. Seriously, I agree you don't need a gallon a day, especially if you're eating enough in addition to drinking the milk. All I'm saying is adding a few glasses a day is easy and effective. Hell, being Canadian I didn't even realize exactly how much a gallon was until I looked it up. I thought it was a bit less than half of what it actually is for some reason. So can we all take our panties out of a twist and move on?
  3. It's not like anyone was telling him to only drink milk. Adding more milk to your diet is just a fairly simple and easy way to make sure you get enough calories and protein to experience better muscle gain. Dairy lobbyists have been telling governments to get people to drink more milk for years anyway. It's no more a fad than drinking whey protein shakes if you're looking to gain mass. No, not everyone can. Simply eating the same amount of food as usual and working out isn't enough for some people. The reason people recommend milk is because it's easy to add into the diet without substantially increasing the amount of food you eat throughout the day. Even adding a glass with breakfast and after a workout (or mixing your whey with milk if you drink protein shakes) will probably make a difference for people who have trouble gaining. If you can find one of those then good on you. From what I understand a lot of doctors receive little if any nutritional training in med school. And my own experience with them tends to match that. Mind you, the same applies to asking your doctor before starting an exercise program. Unless they happen to specialize in sport medicine they probably don't have a sweet clue what is and isn't safe or effective.
  4. Ah the joys of doing Fran. As to the talk of bowel movements when doing GOMAD, I never really experienced any problems when I was drinking about 1.5L/day. Oddly enough I wasn't actively trying to gain weight, I just really like whole milk. Funny considering my sister, and my mom to a lesser extent, are lactose intolerant.
  5. Trust me, if drinking lot's of delicious whole milk won't do it then I don't think anything will. That said, I can speak from accidental experience that the stuff works.
  6. Changing up your workouts is a good idea like OA said, but you may also want to try eating more. An easy way to make sure you're getting enough protein and calories to gain weight while strength training is to try GOMAD. Drinking a gallon of milk a day. I probably wouldn't just start drinking that much on day one though. Start off by adding a glass of whole milk after your workouts if you aren't already, or at breakfast or some other meal if you prefer and already have a post-workout snack you enjoy. See how your body responds and gradually increase it from there. Once you're at your goal weight though you'll definitely want to cut back a bit on the milk though.
  7. Can't say I really like the sound of that since the only Justice Society I've ever read or cared about is the recent stuff. Honestly, I'm more likely to just leave the series where I am now than keep going with something that's likely going to involve some major continuity upheaval, or at least be separate from the DC Universe I cared to read about.
  8. I'll admit that I don't read a lot of DC, but I do try to keep up with what's happening in the major story arcs for the DC Universe. That said, I've been more put off by all of this than anything despite them touting it as the perfect place to jump into (or in my case back into) the DC Universe. I think this is partly because I haven't been able to figure out how much the continuity is being overhauled. What's gone, what's staying? From the descriptions of some of those titles like Superboy I feel like some things are being almost entirely re-written. Am I just out of the loop or something and this isn't really the case? I'm also a bit bothered that Superman seems to be receiving a massive overhaul and Justice Society is nowhere to be found. The recent Action Comics run focusing on Luthor and Justice Society trades are what I've been actively purchasing and reading the most from DC lately. With the latter nowhere to be found it seems and god knows what happening to Superman, and by extension Luthor, it really leaves me wondering where the hell I stand on all of this.
  9. Not to mention that if you're a Protoss or Terran player it's pretty easy to wall off early on. Terran especially being really good at it since depots can submerge to get out of the way. So yeah, definitely don't bother with practice league.
  10. Awesome video. I wasn't even aware of any attempts to date to make an MMORTS, and never really saw something like a Starcraft style MMORTS being a viable option for one for pretty much all of the reasons you went into. Now that I know some people are trying to make them though I'll probably keep more of an eye out. I'd be interested in actually playing one of those someday I think if anyone can get it right.
  11. For the record, the fund isn't really being set up for his personal gain. It states right on the Rockethub page that they aren't taking money from the fund, and all profit will go back into it to help kick start other gaming projects. You can read that here: http://www.rockethub.com/projects/2165-extra-credits/posts/740 To be fair, the goal was stated clearly on the page. Once they reached it people kept donating. In fact, people kept donating a lot of money, well after they had clearly reached their goal. Then they decided to use any extra that isn't required for Allison's recovery to support independent developers, something I don't think is totally unexpected for them to do. And people still kept donating once they announced that. In all fairness, I don't think the sort of people who love this show enough to donate to help Allison get better would mind any extra money going to another good cause that can help some new developers break into the industry. And once again, to be clear, they've stated that it's only the extra money left over after Allison is taken care of that will go into the fund. It's not like she's not going to have the help she needs to get better or anything, so I'm not sure why you have such an issue with them using anything left over towards an equally good cause.
  12. Although I generally make it a point not to care too much about hats in TF2 (a man could go crazy/broke getting sucked into that trap), this pleases me greatly. Makes me wonder if any of my other hats that would look hilarious on a robot carried over.
  13. Pretty sure everyone understood your point just fine, but it's hard to care when it basically boils down to a sense of entitlement on your part and complaining about something that will have no affect on enjoying Portal 2 aside from the possibility that you may be enjoying it sooner. Valve decided to do something that was pretty cool to not only help promote some smaller developers, but to also create some buzz for Portal 2. So what if there's an ARG that those who didn't buy the pack can't participate in (especially when it's already been established that you could buy just one of the games, and some of them are not only awesome but really cheap too), and to top it off, those who can't or don't participate in the ARG still get the benefit of Portal 2 releasing a bit early. Bottom line, you're not entitled to everything Portal related because you paid for Portal 2, Valve is awesome for supporting indie devs like this, and rewarding fans, and you need to get over yourself.
  14. Off topic, but anything sounds like it takes no skill when you oversimplify like that. So long as no one is actually getting hurt I'll go with neither of them being crazy just on the basis of liking violent entertainment. More to the point though, the issue is that a restricted category could end up being a death sentence for a game solely because of the fines involved. While the industry does pretty well at self regulating as it is, when you add in a $1,000 fine anytime one of your employees does sell to a minor, whether it be because they look older than 18 or are friends of said employee, stores then have to consider whether they want to risk the fines. Big stores like Wal-Mart may say screw it and remove the possibility of it happening altogether. Meanwhile, smaller stores may not be able to afford it if it does happen and they're caught. As the financial risk to themselves go up, they're more likely to think twice about selling them at all. Hell, an Adults only rating is already a death sentence for games since no store will stock them, so start adding fines when you sell M-rated titles and we may see a lowering of that bar so to speak. It's not something that can be compared to movies either because the movie industry self regulates as well in the US and you won't be fined under any law for selling an R-rated movie to a minor. If anything, the success of the movie rating system only adds weight to the argument that government regulation isn't needed for games either.
  15. Trade me a weapon for each and I'll give you every crate I have Brush. I'll also take name tags if you're low on weapons.
  16. Just my two cents on trading in game. If you can do it quickly then fine, go ahead. If you're going to sit there for a few minutes trading instead of helping your team though, then yeah, you should be kicked. If you need that long to trade then either do it during setup throughout the game or add the person (or persons) to your friends list and get it done outside of the game. But if you're just sitting there doing nothing in game for an extended period rather than helping your team then you're directly affecting the ability of other players to really enjoy the game, just as if you were going AFK for minutes at a time.
  17. Everything that I've read about the matchmaking system indicates that it is based only on your wins and losses (hence the need for ranking matches), and everything I've been reading even indicates that the bonus pool doesn't affect matchmaking either; just your displayed rank. And frankly, letting any stats other than wins/losses affect matchmaking, especially something like gamerscore from playing single player would be a stupid idea if it had been implemented as showing some degree of skill in single player has absolutely nothing to do with ones success in multiplayer.
  18. So your counter example to my not being able to remember another time someone got banned for hacking a single player game is hacking in a multiplayer game? The thing you're not getting is that I have no issue with banning people who hack in multiplayer even if they aren't hurting anyone elses experience. When it comes to online I have no problem with zero tolerance. But in a single player game where you hurt no one by doing whatever you want? It may be Blizzard's game, and they certainly have the right to do it if they choose, but it really shows that they don't give a crap about their audience at this point if they're pulling this (as though things like dropping LAN, region locked multiplayer weren't making that apparent already). How would fans of Oblivion have felt, after all, if Bethesda broke their game for installing some third party mods to alter their game experience? It honestly hurts no one, but Blizzard would rather treat their fans like they just cheated their way to the top of the leader boards.
  19. I can't think of any other instance in gaming history where a company denied players the ability to play their game because they used third party hacks or mods in single player, doing absolutely no harm to other players. And unless you can explain to me why "protecting the integrity of achievements" is important then it's in no way an argument for banning people over this. Because in the end, the achievements don't matter, and if someone wants to cheat to get them then it in no way detracts from any other players experience with the game. Ferret has it right with his third party mod example. This is no different than if Valve were to start banning Steam users for doing something like hacking the Portal gun into HL2: Episode 2 and using it to play through the game and get achievements.
  20. You might have a point if your achievement score had anything to do with the matchmaking process online. It doesn't though. In fact the only thing cheating in the single player would do is boost your achievement score, but if it doesn't harm matchmaking or your opponent then who cares? Sure, ban anyone hacking online, but in single player? Give me a break Blizzard. If someone wants to use hacks against the computer opponents then let them. They aren't hurting anyone by doing so.
  21. Well that makes me re-think ever wanting to play the game again just based on principle.
  22. Happy Birthday people who aren't me. Hope it was a good one. I myself made it through the day with my job intact so I already topped last year (even if I was working a 10 hour shift). Cake and presents sadly had to wait until later today though.
  23. You'd be right about the PS2 era, but the PSX came out before the N64, pretty much at the height of Nintendo's power. And he talks about things like FFVII selling the PSX but that they just got it because Nintendo were dicks and Square was mad at them, but it ignores a key thing they did that brought them all of the third party support that drove the PSX and later the PS2. Back when Nintendo were being a bunch of asshats throwing their weight around like they owned the place Sony came in and let people do pretty much whatever they wanted on their console, and do it with a non-proprietary media format. Whereas Nintendo would charge license fees out the ass and force people to play by their rules (it's fairly well known that they were heavy on the censorship, even towards the end of the SNES era), Sony just let people do whatever. That kind of freedom is pretty attractive to game developers and publishers, and despite a bit of a slow start, it just took a few good games to cement the fanbase and have more companies start to follow suit. Now part of that is right time, right place just like anything. Coming in now and offering that kind of freedom wouldn't make much of a difference since Nintendo and Microsoft pretty much followed suit. But it was a smart move that did come at just the right time to start attracting some third party interest which is essential to the success of any console in the long term.
  24. I take back what I said about hoping to play this week. I'm only able to make this post during the one time in two days my internet has decided to work, and even then it feels like it's going at about 5kb/s. And lucky me, I'll be the guy who gets to call my ISP after a ten hour shift tomorrow to get them to come fix it.
  25. I would be playing if it weren't for inconsistent internet last week and pulling ten hour shifts most of the week and being burned out the other days. Might be able to get on tomorrow or Thursday though if anyone wants to have a game.
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