ProfMonnitoff

ok grandpa

Playing Snatcher for Mega CD right now, just finished the first act. The gameplay mechanics feel very clunky by today's standard obviously, but there is so much story and atmosphere in this game. Definitely a must play. It's making me very excited to see what Kojima will come up with now that he doesn't have to keep churning out Metal Gear games.

 

 

- get better at waking up early and starting work early... i often lose 2 hours in the morning just "getting ready" to work on my own stuff

- get a job with a big belgian or french house over the summer (i have a few specific ones in mind)

- learn more patterncutting on my own so i dont use school projects as an excuse to do that

- get better at staying in touch with friends in other cities, especially vienna

- rebuilding family relationships is something that takes a lot of time so keep doing that

i think its a pretty reasonable/attainable list

did these

 

- be diligent about biking to work/school instead of taking the train just because its cold or a few raindrops or whatever

- dont waste time on the computer while eating meals

- take my health stuff to the next level (i was healther this year than ever before, but it was a circle of doing well, plateauing, then slacking, and then working my way back to the same plateau again)

- ive become a bit complacent with my current social circle so i wanna meet new people, even if it means going to events alone and starting conversations

slipped on these (did meet some cool people, but all of them well within my comfort zone) 

extra stuff i did this year:

read more than any other year ever by far and got a lot out of it

got a lot better at independent/self motivated learning

traveled a bit, and always with something real to do in each place

for next year:

figure out where i want to work from may/june on

work there

get as much as possible out of it for myself

scheme on some self employment plans on the side

get better at not losing money to dumb stuff like burying bills under a pile of other papers and then having to pay fines

dont fuck up the health thing this time

the book reselling market has gotten really bad (for buyers) in the last few years

bu i think you can get this one here? http://catalog.andpress.com/product/test-product-3

at least they're being honest

elcap is easily the best osx version since snow leopard. for a long time it was going downhill steeply, especially mountain lion was a joke, but i feel like now they're back to where they should have been the whole time. even safari isn't a piece of shit for once which is pretty important because chrome seems to be getting worse with every new version. i'm having absolutely no issues on this 5+ year old laptop.

also btw having stuff fail early is the best thing you can have happen (other than not failing at all but this is tech we're talking about here), because in the first few months you pretty much get no questions asked replacements even without applecare.

The display on the Air is terrible compared to any other >$1000 laptop released in the last 5 years and I'm typing this comment from one. But if that doesn't bother you then it's still the best all-round laptop choice.

Also save some money by getting the i5 instead, the difference doesn't matter.

What blows my mind is how every professional reviewer said the game was perfect... I loved MGS4, and I literally hate MGS5. 

 

 

The gameplay is amazing but who cares when you don't know about the story... I had no clue why I was doing anything in the game and after each mission the only thing that seemed to progress was that I have completed more missions. Except who gives a shit when there's no tangible effect in terms of plot development, or talking with characters, etc...

 

Fuck that game!!!

What also annoys me so much is how much you have to wait before you get to do any mission. Go to mother base which takes like 2 minutes because your helicopter flies around forever, pat the dog, shower, go into the mother base menu, do a bunch of farmville shit in there, select a new mission, do your loadout, wait for the helicopter to arrive, get in, spend a minute flying out of mother base, loading screen, spend 2 minutes flying to the landing zone, get out of the helicopter, then spend another 2 minutes running through the desert where either nothing happens or you get killed by a bear out of nowhere. 

Before every mission.

MGS always had fun new things happening all the time. This game just feels like the same routine over and over. I paid full retail instead of ordering a half price copy online because I had a free afternoon and didn't want to wait for shipping. What a waste of money.

On another note Forsaken for N64 is very fun, one of the best single player Descent clones out there, really fun ship movement and great soundtrack. Some of the timed missions are a bit trial and error, other than that nothing to complain about.

Played another 5 hours of MGS5. Gave up on the story which is so much worse than any previous MGS but I'm warming up to the gameplay a bit as I get more familiar with the mechanics. Nonetheless doubt I'll play much longer or finish the game.

Most importantly, how the hell do you release a game that favors a slow approach where missions often take over an hour to complete, and then have no type of saving or checkpoints whatsoever. I was playing mission 5 (the second prisoner rescue mission), managed to sneak up the mountain into the camp and into the prison basement all without getting seen once, this took three day/night cycles and ages of marking everyone with the binoculars and figuring their patterns out. Then as I'm carrying the guy out of the prison I get that white flash of some guy spotting me from the other side of the map and all the sudden the mission is impossible to win.

Where does the game respawn me? At the foot of the mountain. 45 minutes of progress completely lost. Did nobody playtest this game and point out to the developers how much that sucks? If this isn't enjoyable to someone like me who wants to love this franchise and is willing to look past a lot of mistakes, how is any normal person having fun with this game?

I was willing to slog through MGS4 which had some really awful gameplay for most of the game, linear hallway type maps in a sneaking game, shit on-rails sections, difficulty curve was more of a zig zag, poorly thought out mechanics like pretty much unlimited money and unlimited ammo for all the tranq guns, but at least the story was fun.

This was probably my last AAA game ever or at least for a long time. I've been having lots of fun this year playing Earth Defense Force 2025 on PS3 and Virtual Console games on the Wii. All of these SNES/N64 games, or even PS2 games, have one or two absolutely perfect gameplay mechanics that make the basic interaction very fun, and then build a game around that. I wonder how that idea got lost in modern games.

finally got mgs5, i'm 5 hours in and its not very fun so far? i loved the MGS story, especially in 2 and 4, all the criticism of it feeling like a movie never seemed like a negative to me. in 5's story i just don't find anything very interesting, it seems like it was written by a completely different team that doesnt understand what made the previous games compelling. the gameplay is ok, it feels similar to 4 in that it really discourages doing a stealth/nonlethal run which is my favourite way to play these games. a lot of the missions play in fairly empty areas and its really hard to guess how far the vision of other guards goes. fultoning everyone works, but that feels cheap. i get that you need to play very slowly and cautiously, but it's just not very fun to spend an hour on a mission just to get spotted and lose all progress. If this game had quicksave it would be a lot more enjoyable. i would give it a 6 or 7 so far maybe.

then again i also thought gta 5, human revolution, starcraft 2 were all mediocre. watched my brother play farcry 4 and witcher 3 and that seemed boring too.

who are these video game reviewers that are getting so enthusiastic about these games? all these AAA titles are really boring. its hard to find anything fun anymore. maybe i'm just getting too old for this?

The 3 sim has 4GB/month of tethering which i believe is included in feel at home (but I looked at the country list just now and some pretty important ones like Germany and France aren't included on it). I use it in the UK and I'm pretty sure I've tethered off it before while visiting family in Austria. Anyway tethering isn't as important as it used to be I think. Just about every hotel and airbnb has unlimited free internet now, as does every restaurant and coffee place. so you're never too far from a wifi connection, in fact it's pretty hard these days to sit somewhere and not have free internet available. So all you really need is a bit of 4G for emails maps etc on the phone.

Oh getting back to actual travel tips, always see if a city you're going to is available in Citymapper. It's so much better for directions than Google/Apple maps, and has much better offline features as well.

i was starting to write an email, starting with hello andrus, etc etc

but when i looked back at the beginning i realized the o never took and the email started with hell andrus.

I had to write a very harsh email to someone whose last name is ____fried once. Spelled her name as "fired" instead and only realized after sending it off. Hope she didn't notice 

1. Airmiles are a sucker's game. Sure get the ones for whatever flight you take and redeem them where possible, but if you're flying connect just to get 10% of a free upgrade worth of miles you need to get your head examined. You save much more by taking whatever airline has the best offer for your route that day than by sticking with one just to get more miles. All this money and time you're investing into "free" upgrades just isn't worth it. It was different 5-10 years ago maybe, but now traveler's perks are useless for all but the most high-frequency flyers (ie long distance at least once a week).

2. For phone stuff in Europe it's getting really easy now, for example 3 UK has a £20/month prepaid thing that gets you unlimited 4g in many European countries. Worst case Lycamobile is in pretty much every country by now so you can get your 2GB data for €10 or whatever, and if you need to use a bunch of data one day it's not difficult to find free cafe/restaurant wifi just about anywhere.

I always travel with a pair of iPhones, my current one and an old one. In one I have my home SIM and in the other a local one, it's very nice to have both. Also if you ever get your wallet and cards etc stolen, an old iPhone 5 or whatever can be traded in for 100-150 Euros cash in no time, which should be enough to get you through until you get your documents back. 

Please don't buy carrier locked phones.

3. If you use AirBNB, always have a backup plan. If you use it often enough, you will sooner or later get a host that cancels on you, forgets to have the keys waiting, something like that.

4. Invest time in finding the best place to stay in your budget. Also maybe try staying in a place that's under your budget? There are often wonderful places that aren't very expensive, and if you only look at the ones on the top end of your budget you'll never find the gems. I'm amazed by all the people who spend ages obsessing over perks and then stay in mediocre, way overpriced accommodation. A bit of research there can save you more money than any perks etc ever could.

5. Always consider all travel options. For example it's common knowledge to take the Eurostar or Thalys where possible, but flying can actually be cheaper quite often.

6. Avoid staying in places without a real kitchen for more than a few days. Eating out three times a day for several weeks is a great way to get fat.

I tried on a lot of pieces from the collection today. The standout item for me is the MA-1, which is the nicest MA-1 I've ever handled bar none. Everything about this jacket feels leaps and bounds better than what anyone else is doing. I'm saying this as someone who doesn't care much for Visvim usually.

But not for nearly £2k lol

Is it worth picking up Ground Zeroes from the bargain bin before playing MGSV or not?

norse have always been great and once upon a time used to let non-EU customers pick which currency they wanted to pay in.

somewhat OT but...

a lot of stores (or maybe payment processors, not sure) do this but its always a ripoff

when paying by card, always pay in local currency and let your bank take care of the conversion, if you're with any major bank you'll get pretty close to the real exchange rate that way

if you pay in your own currency, you'll pay at whatever exchange rate the shop decides to give you, which will never be as good as your bank's, often the shop exchange rate will be worse by as much as 10%

How does MGS5 look/perform on PS3? I'm not really interested in any other games from the PS4/XB1 generation so kinda expensive to buy a PS4 just for one game.

medium or hot depending on which restaurant but a lot of places use salsa verde as their mild one now and thats usually also quite nice so all three have their merits really, hope that helps

can someone post the video of the pinoy girl holding her boyfriends hand through the door while hes pooping or maybe it was the other way around

Manchester and Bristol are good places to live and reasonably affordable, dont know much about Leeds. Definitely better for students than London.

But why UK at all? Highest tuition fees in all of Europe and not much to show for it in my opinion.

http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/40370283/

I've replaced most of my other Ikea things with nicer stuff at this point, but I own several of these and don't see a reason to ever 'upgrade'. The way they attach to the back of the desk is great and makes them more stable, they are very easy to adjust, and they come at a 'sure, why not get two more' price.

My first desk lamp when I moved out was an Artemide Tizio that I picked up from an insolvency sale, but it was difficult to adjust, got hot, used hard to find bulbs, and had a weird weighting that meant you had to be careful not to have it fall over when the arm was fully extended lengthwise. I like these dirt cheap Ikea lamps a lot more than the Artemide, which normally sells for hundreds of Euros for a new one.

cant believe bl*ck people let clothes reach 70% discount

double post ._.

Saw these irl, construction quality on 95s is usually on point but these were terrible, even worse than TNs, midsole glue leaking out all over the place. Kind of ridiculous considering they're €20 more than regular 95s. Also the toebox shape is slimmer somehow than on regular 95s and it messes up look IMO.

A real shame, I was super hyped for these.

The reflective photo of those 3Ms is sick, it would even be a cool colorway to just have those parts white.