HalcyonSpirit

This thread needs a big ol' bump in the form of "All hail prophet, builder of computers!" Been playing around with my new desktop he made for me, and it is niiiiice. Fallout 3 and X3: Terran Conflict play like a dream on it; I expect other games will as well. Naturally, since it's not a top-of-the-line graphics card in here, the highest graphics settings are a bit too much, but I'm not bothered at all by not being able to run on max settings at some absurd resolution. There's also plenty of room for me to keep all my stuff on here without using my slow USB external drive while still leaving room for more stuff and experiments with operating systems. The computer runs great, and I haven't even tested the full extent of its capabilities yet. I got this computer as a quad-core for doing some relatively rough flow analysis and CAD modeling (engineering work), so hopefully I'll be able to test those soon. It should make my design project this year much more manageable. Prophet, you are awesome. Thanks!

Voting has been extended to June 22nd, 11:59PM. Reminder PMs have been sent out.

Shouldn't you be able to get the updates off the Blizzard website? That's what I used to do. Don't need a key for that.

Final voting day! I'm severely lacking in votes right now! I'm sorry I disappeared and didn't send out reminder PMs or anything... I've been preoccupied by my new desktop since Tuesday, and not for good reasons. I was trying to figure out and fix the downloading problem it was having (long story short, it was the integrated network hardware). Does anyone want the voting period extended to compensate for the lack of temporal awareness on my part?

I'm baaaack! Did you miss me? This round's turnout of seven entries is the best I've seen for Poetry in recent memory (which, to be honest, isn't all that extensive for me). Looks like we got some quality works here, too, so I'm hoping to see a large voting turnout as well! Current Submissions for the May 2009 Poetry Competition: A Black Soul by DJ-Arthur Untitled Haiku by Native Jovian If Sperm Could Fly Away by SoulinEther Paintings by Random Hajile You are... by wouldntyouliketoknow Java by Washington Maverick re...(2) by M W

Clever, real clever. That is supposed to be an entry [y/n]

Well, looks like that makes four. No overtime this time, it seems. Oh, and while the voting stage will begin as scheduled on the 1st, I probably won't be able to change the thread title or announce it or anything for a day or two afterward. I'm moving into my new apartment on the 1st, and I probably won't have internet access for a few days after that. I'll see if I can get into the design lab at my college in the meantime.

Spoilers, I guess... Got to the end of the starting level... doesn't seem to have any possible way of winning against that enemy before you end up underwater. Where I subsequently found something, brought it to the light, then made it to the next "level", which was also underwater and seemed oddly similar to the first "level". Then I went up, up, up into the bright light and... game over? What?! tl;dr, I don't get it.

... Hmmmmm... whaaaaat...? ... You seem to have that under control anyway... One week until the end of the submission stage, everyone! Chop chop!

Agreed. Even if I don't play, I'd love to watch the matches. Speaking of which, I'd love to jump in on this. However, that depends on whether my new computer (thanks prophet!) will be more cooperative in running the game... my laptop won't run it properly at all. We'll see when I get the computer.

Linkage for the lazy.

Team Rocket, anyone?

I've been stuck not playing lately because of my design project and now exams, but I have been playing the game as of late. I must say, if you're going to play the game to its fullest, you need to go and find the tons of custom content available. It adds a whole new couple of dimensions to the game. Simtropolis is one such site, SC4 Devotion is another. Really good stuff on both sites. And hey, since this topic is here, may as well plug my City Journal while I'm at it.

I tried Songbird out about a month ago. Essentially, I think it has potential but also has some issues that are keeping me from using it as my main player instead of WinAMP. The first is that it eats system resources. Not as much as it used to, but still, my laptop is aging and it can't handle having it open all the time like I do with WinAMP. Second, it's response time to commands can be rather slow, and sometimes it skips the end portion of the song in question and moves right to the next. Third, hitting stop doesn't just stop the current song, it resets the playlist back to the beginning (speaking of playlists, that function seems to be a little screwy as well). Finally, the mini skin needs work. I like having WinAMP in mini-mode and set to "Always on Top" so I can see it all the time, and I can do that because the mini mode for the MMD3 WinAMP skin fits within the window title bar for programs, so it doesn't really take up any space! tl;dr -> Needs improvement and better support before I'll use it.

Welcome aboard! Also nice to have fresh faces in the competition. 1. Just one poem. If you can manage to string together a few and submit it as a single poem, that would be acceptable, but the issue will of course be that the quality will suffer if you can't make them work together as a single entity. 2. If it's poetry of any form, it is acceptable. 3. Allusion to other works is fine; just make sure you don't cross the line into fan-writing. Also, ripping something off of another person's work isn't welcomed (as in, really blatantly ripping something from someone else's work). The example you gave should be alright, just be careful when toeing that line.

Thread title says it all. EDIT: Thread title used to say it all. Now it doesn't.

Assuming I can ever get a job this summer, you'll be hearing from me soon. And I'm serious about the job thing; with this damn economic crunch, the only way I'd be able to afford getting a computer is to get a job. And unfortunately for me, not even my university is hiring for research positions. I'm a senior in college! I've headed a part of a design team! I should be able to get a job of some sort SOMEWHERE!!!

Andy McKee If you're looking for some good solo acoustic guitar music, this man is right up your alley. Some of you may have encountered him when his one video of his song "Drifting" was popular on sites like CollegeHumor. His music ranges from quite relaxing to more upbeat tunes. Did I mention that he's quite damn good? No? Well he is. Here's a few samples:

It's now May! Time for the Poetry round! On your marks, get set... WRITE!!!

I did mention the writing quality, right? Yeah, I did.

Not exactly what you're describing, but close enough to warrant me looking it up again: http://members.iinet.net.au/~aceywacey/pokemon.htm The writing's not horrible like a lot of fanfiction stuff, but it definitely needed work. Still, it was written back when most people writing fanfiction of Pokémon were 12 years old and could barely write a decent sentence, so I wasn't going to hold it against the author, then or now. (Dear lord it's been a while since I last saw that page. Looks exactly the same, too.)

I'm aware of that. I was just saying that I can relate to SirChadlyOC with those damn obsessive-compulsive tendencies. I've been wanting to play SC for quite a while. Unfortunately, for some reason it doesn't want to play properly on my laptop. It'll be fine for a minute into the game, and then the sound will start looping like it's frozen, but playing the game won't be affected. And then a minute later (or less) the game completely freezes. Every single time, even with reinstalls. I'm hoping I won't have the same problem once I get my new computer from prophet (which will happen whenever I pull together the money to pay for it).

I used to be like that with C&C: Tiberian Sun and StarCraft. With C&C I could never attack unless each type of unit had a multiple of 5 of them in the group, and in SC, regardless of how many control groups I had, the groups ALWAYS had to be at max capacity. I grew out of that habit after I got completely destroyed a few times because of it. I still have to have symmetric base defenses, though.

Yup, pretty much. I love that series, too. I just wish my current computer could handle them. X3:R and X3:TC are such CPU hogs, and with the addons that make the game worthwhile my computer can't handle all the necessary calculations every frame of the game. Hopefully a new rig from prophet is in my near future. Then I'll be having a grand ol' time with those games again!

Hey. Hey. The report is due by the 8th, so it won't be much longer until I can finally sit down and critique. Besides, summer is coming up. Surely that'll give me time to do such things. After all, it's not like any aerospace company wants to hire me for the summer!