HalcyonSpirit

1) She is going in as a "undecided", essentially. She says that graphic design is just one of the many things she's deciding between, so obviously she's not even sure she'll be going into the graphic design program. 2) No idea. I told her to call up the college tomorrow, since I can't find anything at all in reference to computer requirements for any majors on the website. Maybe it's hidden in some obscure corner of the site, but considering the site design is far from great as it is, I think finding that information would literally take accidentally stumbling onto it. 3) Yeah, she plays games on her PC right now. Outside of that, not much specifically. Again, because there's a lack of information on the college website, I don't know what programs she'd be using in any courses she might take. And... no, I don't think she'd be able to figure out how to run Windows software on a Mac OS. Not for a while, anyway. She's got intelligence, she just... doesn't use it all the time to figure things out for herself... 4) I know nothing about Macs, but I can fix a PC in a heartbeat. I'm also going to be 500 miles away during the year, though, and the rest of my family is computer-illiterate, so it doesn't make much difference in the end. 5) From what little information I can gather, the college actually uses PCs for their computer labs. They don't mention anything about computer requirements for individuals, though. Same goes for computer software for classes. Still, the fact that the college uses PCs makes me think a PC is the way to go. In addition... the college is really small. It's not even a state college, only a county one. I can't find any sort of campus computer store or shop or anything like that there. I don't think there is one, so I doubt there'd be any software discounts to be had from them. I'll keep looking, though.

Freeform is basically "anything that has words." Of course, there are a few exceptions, but stream of consciousness definitely isn't one of them. Regarding a piece started earlier but never finished, Imagery would have a conclusive answer, though I think we try to discourage pieces that are finished or mostly finished prior to the start of the current competition. We tend not to disqualify them, though (mostly because there's really no way of knowing what was and wasn't done in the competition timeframe).

Naturally, AnSo takes up the call. Again. You're so good to us. It's a shame to see the guy go, but we can all hope that he continues his work elsewhere, in whatever medium he chooses. It's the call of the wild... err, music.

My younger sister is entering the local county college this fall semester, and is thinking about pursuing a degree in some sort of graphic design. She's not sure what exactly. She's not even sure it's actually what she wants to do; she's dabbling, really, but is leaning towards GD. Anyway, she needs a laptop for college. Everyone she and my parents have talked to have told her to get a Mac laptop because she's leaning towards graphic design, and supposedly Macs have better applications for graphic design, both still and video. However, my family is also on a budget. They need to save as much money as they can, and Macs tend to cost more than PCs. So my question is this: given that she's just going into the first year of graphic design, and that we need to save money, should she be looking at a Mac or PC laptop?

The sword combat in the new Wii Sports looks promising (despite it seeming like the two people were just flailing around at the time). With a little refinement, I'm seeing viable lightsaber combat in our future. That'd make me happy beyond words.

Yeah, except for a few times when Imagery has either gotten confused or forgotten to update the first post, the first post has always had the up-to-date information on the competitions. I've just started writing my entry for this competition. It's going to be hard for me to write, though... I'm trying to base my entire entry around its title, and the title doesn't make much sense by itself as it is. Hopefully I'll be able to come up with something good.

Your work has always been top-notch, and it'd be absolutely horrible to lose you. No dying allowed! Best wishes, man.

If you're willing to shell out a little more money, I'd suggest something from Bose. I have these. They're $70 online usually, but if you can find a BJ's or Costco or someplace like that, you might be able to find them for $50-$60 instead. What's great about them (and the other kinds in this line) is that they don't need a separate sub; the speakers handle that just fine on their own, so no need to waste space with a big sub unless you really want huge lows. Anyway, great sound on all the ranges, I think, and at a good price. But if you are really wanting to stay in your range, I'll have to agree with the others; Logitech has some good ones, though most are a bit more than $30. You'll have to shop around to find ones you like.

I guess this is a good place to bring it up: The dark gray space is overwhelming in the album page. Seriously, look at it. 1440x900 resolution, by the way. Any way of doing something about that? It's been bugging me on the main page as well, but this is a bit ridiculous here on the album page. Otherwise, these changes sound good to me.

Since my external HD is over 2 GB, that's not going to work. I think you're confusing file system size limits and individual file size limits. FAT32 can be implemented on a volume up to 2 terabytes large, but the individual file sizes are limited to 4GB or smaller. So unless you plan on having lots of files larger than 4GB, you'd be fine with using FAT32. But like Phill said, that file system is crappy compared to the newer ones.

I love the Legends games. However, I can't say they were great because there were a few things that irked the hell out of me and took out some of the fun sometimes (and often replaced it with frustration). That's why I say they're only "really good", not "great". I reserve "great" for the select few games that don't do that to me. Other than that, yeah, I agree with your assessment.

Tell me, how long did it take to learn it and start enjoying it? Because I've tried playing it before a few times, and every time I find it to be extremely difficult to get the hang of; I never could. Especially the controls. I mean, damn! Did you use your mouse (and keyboard) for it, or something else?

You play Freespace 2 too? Cool. I've never tried the multiplayer on it, but I think I should now, sometime. As for the original topic... These I can beat in a sitting (or two, if I'm taking my time to do my very best): StarFox 64 Mario Kart 64 Super Smash Bros (any, but mostly Melee) Mega Man X Mischief Makers Star Wars: Rogue Squadron Star Wars: Rogue Leader Turtles in Time These I can't do in a sitting: Freespace 2 Chrono Trigger Perfect Dark Metroid Prime Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars Pokémon (and I'm not afraid to admit it, like others here apparently) Mega Man Zero series (yes, I mean I play them all straight from start to finish) The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask (which one depends on my mood at the time) Super Mario 64 SimCity 4 (considering there's no end to it, you can't really beat it, but I'm putting it here anyway) I'm sure there are some that I'm forgetting, but these are the ones I play most often.

Happy Birthday, Zircon! Remember, being 21 isn't the end of the world. You still have to remain sober enough to judge more OCR music! AUGUST 26th? OK THEN. WHAT? WHAT WAS THAT? AUGUST 28th? OK THEN!

Yeah. Of course, if you just so happen to still have a computer from those days, or a copy of, say, Windows 95/98 to run on your new machine (in my case, I have both), I'd say you're in pretty good shape if you can find the games themselves.

I haven't been able to play the games myself, but I've heard good things about the X-wing series of games. You might want to look into those, despite them being quite old.

OK, I am having way too much fun with this thing. I don't believe I've made anything particularly noteworthy yet, but I'm working on it. I just feel a bit limited (for good reason) with the trial version. Still, once I start getting the hang of it, maybe I'll post a few of my abominations.

They weren't great, but they were quite good. They had characters you could identify with a bit. Not to mention that it had a somewhat coherent storyline that was never concluded. The other series at that point were essentially standalone games; while they would follow a plot, they were self-contained for the most part. Legends wasn't like that, and the second game left us in a cliffhanger. Suffice to say, we want to know what happens. Ever had a book series you liked that you couldn't finish because the next book hasn't been released yet and you really want to know what happens next? Same idea.

This. Thank you so much. That worked for me, and now I can enjoy the game like everyone else! And yes... this is great. Now I'm looking forward to the full game even more than I was before.

Thanks. Incidentally, I managed to get it to stay running until it transitions to the EA logo (a whole two seconds longer! ) by forcing it to run in windowed mode, but it's still crashing every single time I run it. So... it seems like it could be a graphics issue. My graphics card is listed under the supported cards (GeForce 6800), but perhaps my problem is that it's the laptop version of it that's causing the problem? I've never heard of a game (or any other program, for that matter) being supported under the desktop version but completely fail to run under the laptop version of a card, though, so I'm skeptical here.

Argh, this is getting annoying. I really want to try this out, but I can't get past the ESRB screen. It just goes black and then crashes back to the desktop. I meet all the minimum system requirements, yet it won't work. The computer isn't even registering that the game is even crashing in the Event Viewer. I can't figure it out... Anyone else have/had this problem?

I'm 99% sure this is a hardware problem. Do you have another computer you can access, yours or a friend's? If so, you might want to try downloading a copy of Memtest86+ and running it on your computer. If there is a problem with the RAM (or a part of the motherboard dealing with the RAM), it'll likely catch it. You won't have to take anything apart or pay for anything to do this simple test, so I recommend doing this first. If that doesn't catch any problems, then we're probably looking at an issue with another part of the motherboard, the graphics card, or the power supply. It could be a hard drive issue as well, but that's a lot less likely. Like Katsurugi said, you can check the power supply by just swapping it out with a new one, which won't cost too much. The motherboard and graphics card, though... those will cost you quite a bit, because as far as I'm aware, there's no way of testing those short of buying a new one without special testing equipment. As for the hard drive (the unlikely possibility), you can try swapping in a new drive as well. I doubt it's a software issue, but it you want, you can try downloading a version of Linux (I recommend Ubuntu) and running it off of the CD. If it is a software issue (unlikely, since it's having problems with both partitions), rather than a hardware issue, it should run fine. A hardware issue, however, will cause problems (except if it's a hard drive issue, since it won't run off the hard drive).

I used to have all the OCR songs on my computer, and I know I listened to at least 95% of them at some point or another. Didn't like some, hated some, liked a lot, loved quite a few. However, my computer's a laptop, and at the time, it only had 80GB of hard drive space. Between OCR songs, VGMix songs, and other music, I had 30GB of space used just by music, space that I eventually needed to free up for college crap. So I had to delete the songs I didn't like. Sadness. I may not have liked them all, but I liked being able to have all of OCR's music history. Perhaps in the future, when I get an actual computer with a decent hard drive, I'll be able to do so again. I applaud you efforts to listen to all of OCR's songs. There's the good, there's the bad, and then there's the plain-and-simple ugly in that list, in my opinion. Good luck.

That... was strangely engrossing and, curiously, simple and complex at the same time. Truly a well-written work, but I think it goes beyond that. The people felt real. The situation felt real. Hell, the story, as others have mentioned, keeps you thinking well after it's over. Not many stories, not many writers, can do that, at least in my experience. Especially with stories on the shorter side, like this one. I can only dream of having such writing ability. I strive for it, but I don't think that I could every attain the skill seen here. I'm going to recommend this to everyone I know; this deserves to be read by a great many people.

RDTMBLLCKS "Attacks with RAD TIMBALE LICKS for massive damage." Something of a joke, I suppose. DJP's mentioned it a few times in write-ups following the one linked.