A week ago from last Thursday I took the Eurostar over to Paris for some sight-seeing and the Paris half-marathon.
I arrived several hours earlier than my friends travelling with me. I took this free time to check-in at the hotel and start wander around a little bit, one of my favorite travelling activities. The wander started with heading toward the Eiffel Tower and grabbing the above picture. After that, I’m less certain of my exact direction, but I took a good 3 hours and thoroughly enjoyed seeing the city on foot.
Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category
This is what happens when people have too much time on their hands. To be fair more than a million people have watched him do this.
First off…song is Dat New New by Kid Cudi (Viking Remix). Second off…never listen to the unremixed version of this song. Third off…listen to more Kid Cudi.
Okay, I found an auto-tune plugin for FL Studio:
I should have known better. As many of you know, I have been working on my server project for some time now. I took an extended break for finals from work. I’ve been having two road blocks as of late. The first, as the last post mentions, is Synergy. The second, has been getting phpmyadmin to work, which is a web-based interface to manage mysql databases. Databases are essential for many modern web applications, like Wordpress.
In Linux, the web address for phpmyadmin kept displaying code in Firefox. It has been frustrating me for the past few days. Then, I sat down today on my laptop and the login came up! I’m surprised and a bit troubled, but at least I can move on!
One thing that worries me in Linux is that many commands can be easily issued to solve a problem. Sometimes those commands don’t solve the problem. In 99% of those cases, I’m less certain how to undo the command. Oh well.
To: Dan
December 16, 2000
“Diablo II, despite its great success, is a mockery of a game. Blizzard’s record until its release was essentially flawless — their other games are almost entirely bug free, very well balanced, and of extremely high quality.
Diablo II Is Buggy
* Until recently, several high level items didn’t even drop, due to a typo in the data files. Players of the game had already identified, and fixed (through mods) this bug months ago.
* Damage mods on bows do not work.
* Bugged Barbarian Skills:
o Bash: +Damage does not affect unarmed attacks.
o Leap Attack: Resistances are applied twice. Earlier versions listed a range limit on Leap Attack… this was “fixed” in 1.0.3 by removing the text, not by applying the limit.
o Berserk: This skill is supposed to do magic-type damage, for use against physically resistant monsters. It does not do magic-type damage. It also may INCREASE defense rating significantly if a high level of shout and iron skin are in effect.
o Frenzy: Frenzy ignores attack speed, meaning it does not speed itself up.
o Throwing Mastery: The other five masteries add a critical strike chance at 2 * skill level, throwing mastery does not.
o Iron Skin and Natural Resistance: These skills do not update correctly in the character screen when the character is wearing +skills items.
o Taunt: Taunt experiences display errors.
o Grim Ward: Some grim wards have no effect.
* Bugged Amazon Skills:
o Guided Arrow: This skill’s +damage is not applied. Shots at all levels do 95% damage.
o Strafe: This skill’s damage is applied on top of all other bonuses.
o Evade: “Evade Lock” can occur when attacked by Diablo’s LBOD.
o Penetrate: Penetrate applies strangely to non-bow weaponry.
* Bugged Necromancer Skills:
o Blood Golem: The blood golem absorbs a percentage of any monster it attacks’ TOTAL hitpoints, not the damage done by the attack. This makes necromancers more or less invincible.
o Revive: Sometimes revives die but are not removed from the count of active revives.
o All Poison Attacks: Poison damage is dealt oddly, and is essentially completely ineffective.
o Bone Wall and Bone Prison: Bone structures’ hitpoints increase in nightmare and hell difficulties, but this is not noted in the description.
* Bugged Paladin Skills:
o Zeal: Zeal has serious targeting problems that result in its missing monsters frequently.
o Vengeance: Vengeance applies each element’s damage twice, resulting in six times the damage the skill description shows.
o Conversion: Converted monsters can often rendered “invincible” with a sliver of health left when they unconvert.
o Blessed Hammer: Blessed Hammer is affected by Concentration.
* Bugged Sorceress Skills:
o Blizzard: Blizzard does not hit monsters standing in certain positions.
o Fire Mastery: Fire Mastery does not affect Hydra, despite the skill text.
o Hydra: If Hydra kills a Flayer Shaman, it will fail to target the normal flayer produced.
o Thunder Storm: Thunder Storm often misses, or appears to hit targets but does no damage.
* Many effects, especially the sorceress’ attacks, are drawn twice to everyone but whoever cast them. Even in single player, attacks like the Vampire class monsters’ meteors are drawn twice. The result is huge framerate slowdown.
* Monsters have four times the AR they are listed to have in the data files. This wouldn’t be a problem, but the character screen calculates your defense based on the data file values, not the real values. The result is a number that basically does not correlate to your actual chance to be hit.
* Many unique items list “increased attack speed” among their attributes, but about half of these increase attack speed by 1% rather than the 10% – 30% they should.
* Spell effects radiate out from the player in a four-pointed star shape, not a circle. The result is that most area effect skills actually cover an area three times larger than they should, and extend very far to the N, S, E, and W, but only ‘normal’ distances to the NE, NW, SE, and SW. Static Field and Auras are examples.
* Certain monsters that are supposed to be vulnerable to attacks from a specific element are actually very resistant to those attacks.
* The character screen does not correctly display resistances above 75% (that are achievable through certain items.)
* The “freezes enemies” special effect does not work on bows. It is present on a Set that includes a bow, so it is clearly SUPPOSED to.
* Items beyond character level/attribute requirements can be equipped through a simple process, allowing low level characters to run around with godly equipment.
This is by no means a complete list. I doubt I’ve cataloged a tenth of the known bugs. It’s just off the top of my head.
Diablo II Is Unbalanced
Look at the ladders. Barbarians outnumber every other class easily 10 to 1. Why is this? Because they are disgustingly overpowered. Whirlwind is the game’s most powerful attack. Add onto that combat masteries, which apply to the TOTAL damage, not just the weapon damage like every other skill. To top it off, they add a large chance for critical hit, and barbarians get passives to boost their resistances and Defense Rating. No other class can even begin to approach the raw power of barbarians.
Diablo II introduced skill trees, which supposedly allowed you to customize your character. Unfortunately, for that to work, there would have to be multiple, viable skill plans. There aren’t. There is one “good” skill plan for each character (WW, BG + IM & Revives, FO, Strafe, BH + Conc), a cookie cutter template that everyone uses. Sure, you can make characters using the generally “unused” skills, but they’re basically crippled.
For that matter, most of the skills aren’t even worth investing a point into. Take Fist of the Heavens for example – it is utterly useless. I challenge anyone to come up with a legitimate FotH strat that allows you to do something you can’t do better and faster with another skill.
At least half the skills are either totally useless or completely eclipsed by a later skill, like Ice Bolt -> Ice Blast -> Glacial Spike. Or Leap and Leap Attack… one point in leap attack gets you everything 20 points in leap would, AND the ability to attack rather than just jump around.
Diablo II Is Of Low Quality
Many areas of Diablo II show evidence of extremely poor game planning. The game uses an “active load” system in which areas are loaded “on the fly”. This supposedly means that you don’t have to look at any load screens — what it actually means is that unless you have extremely recent hardware, far above the game’s “minimum requirements”, you get a black screen just like a load screen, except that monsters can hit you!. Being beaten down while waiting for the game to load a waypoint, or, especially, Duriel (an extremely powerful boss who gets to attack you while you’re loading his room), has killed more characters than anything else. The whole system is really, really stupid.
Other features that were touted as major new features, like gems and set items, play a very minimal role in the game. The fact is that they suck, like many of the skills.
Diablo II was put through a hurried beta process. This is obvious – if anyone had ever taken five minutes to USE Frenzy, they would notice it did not work properly. In the original release, WW was several orders of magnitude more powerful than it is now. Blizzard has also failed to respond reasonably to being notified of the existance of bugs. It took them months to resolve the item drop bug, despite the availability of SPECIFIC instructions on EXACTLY how to fix it. The exact reasons other skills don’t work, even to the point of what is happening in the code (they aren’t passing a pointer in the Berserk skill’s function, for instance), is known, and yet Blizzard fails to fix them.
This is Why Diablo II Sucks.”
When we found out the U.S. economy lost about the same number of jobs in January, Obama chided Republican congressmen for not passing stimulus legislation faster. Now, with little fanfare the Obama administration has downgraded their estimate of the stimulus bill’s ability to generate jobs. In fact, it moved form 4 million jobs down to 3.5 million jobs. Of course, the people in January who lost their job are real, not fictional estimates about a ill-planned and rushed bill. They have families, needs and concerns. Futhermore, many Americans have worries about what the future holds.
Republicans chided Obama and House Democrats for not thinking about the opportunity cost of this bill. In other words, if we spend $1, what opportunities do we give up in the future. Put one more way, by spending $1 on ‘the arts’, we give up $1 toward aiding the credit markets or $1 for preventing a home from foreclosing, or from giving up $1 by cutting the taxes of businesses or individuals.
The federal deficit could balloon up to as much as 14% of GDP that is huge. Many economists and politicians (as well as myself) agreed that budget deficits and the national debt should not be a huge concern, especially considering the amazing reputation of government-issued debt from the Treasury (how we finance the debt). If we have a suitable means to finance the debt and the money we are spending seems to be necessary, then we should do it without a concern for debts and deficits. That equation changes when the yearly deficit is predicted to be 14% of GDP. That means the government is spending more than it is taking to the point of being 14% of our entire economy. The world’s largest mind you. That is a dangerous precedent and we have to think about coming back from that.
In 2004 and after, politicians and military advisers warned not to go on a military junket with out an exit plan. Do we have an exit plan for the stimulus bill and the crisis? It does not appear so. The new Treasury Secretary gave us a new proposal that was nearly as vague as Henry Paulson’s. That makes me believe we have just authorized Congress and the President to throw the kitchen sink at the list of solutions to fix the economy. If the Treasury Secretary, hand-picked to deal with this crisis, doesn’t have a specific solution, why are we authorizing Congress to pass a hodge podge bill with different pet projects and Keynesian rhetoric?
We should really think about this crisis…and given a $1 trillion dollars (less than spending a million dollars everyday since Christ’s birth), we should be able to fix this. Throw a $1 trillion against the wall, maybe it’ll stick, but it won’t solve the crisis. Target a $1 trillion solution at the root(s) of the problem and I suspect we’ll get something done.
NWA lyrics modified by a slickdealer:
Straight outta Black Friday crazy slickdeala named CheapBastage
From the gang called Slickdealaz With Attitudes
When I’m called off I got a sawed off
Swipe the Visa and dealz are hauled off
You too boy if ya deal with me
Deal police are gonna hafta come and get me
Off yo net that’s how I’m goin out
For the punk slickdealers that’s showin out
Dealaz start to mumble, they wanna thumb down
Mix em and cook em in a pot like gumbo
Goin off on a slickdealer like that
with a mouse that’s pointed at yo site
So give it up smooth
No tellin when I’m down for a coupon move
Here’s a price-match rap to keep yo dancin
with a rebate record like Charles Manson
MS cash-back is the tool
Don’t make me act the slickdealin fool
Me you can go toe to toe, no maybe
I’m knockin dealz out tha box, daily
yo weekly, monthly and yearly
until them cheap slickdealers see clearly
that I’m down with the Y-M-M-V
Boy you can’t deal with me
So when I’m in your neighborhood, you better deal
Coz CheapBastage is cheap as hell
As I leave, believe I’ll pay retail, No Way
but when I come back, I’m comin straight outta Cyber Monday
Happy holidays everyone! The blogging hiatus continues as I am enjoying the holidays. I’ve been from Minocqua, WI to Whitewater, WI and back to Chicago. Today, we head up to Whistler and I am really excited!
I’ll try to post more regularly up there and give you a snow report!
I was unsure how to phrase the title of this post, but it is interesting the number of prominent elected officials that have received appointments to the Obama administration. Taking another look at the title, it is way more negative than I intended to be. It sounds like Obama is going to issue executive orders this January to remove people from office. Clearly, that is not the case.
I’m not sure that I am politically astute enough to understand the motivation behind this yet. Maybe it is just a coincidence. Certainly, one can tell from this list that Obama is drawing from his contenders from the Democratic primary. If they had a shot at president, I suppose they might make a decent Secretary of State. On the other hand, there are plenty of qualified individuals to fill roles like that, potential great Secretaries of State don’t run around running for president usually.
What does everyone else think?
A quick look at some elected official entering the Obama administration:
Former-Senator Obama, himself
Senator Biden
Senator Clinton
Representative Emanuel
Governor Napolitano
Governor Richardson
If I’m missing anyone, let me know. Of course there are other appointments, I think this is all of the elected officials who will become Obama cabinet members. Should be an interesting 4 years.
I consider myself a pretty friendly guy, but I’m the cash register-dude at Panera is not my buddy. Yes, for some reason this bothers me.
Honestly, I’m not even sure why I’m blogging about it, but it seemed worth mentioning. What does everyone else thing? Do you call random people buddy? I guess the thing is that I have people in my life that I would consider my ‘buddies’, he’s just not one of them. Maybe he will be some day, but he’s not right now.
Wow. This post sounds kind of arrogant, but a lot of times when people…say something like “hey buddy” or “hey friend” they mean it to be sarcastic and degrading or to make you uncomfortable. In the case of Panera-dude…mission accomplished.
For the record – Panera’s iced chai tea lattes are gross…don’t buy them. But the turkey artichoke panini is delicious.
Recent Comments