I did say we were going to make an excursion in order to explain where I nabbed the needed insight to make some of the design update for Frontier. I didn't tell you I was going to drag out an old debate that is, to some, deader than the animals and plants long ago turned into coal and loam and peat. I'm sorry. I'm going to do it though. You're going to wince, a lot of you.
It is a long detour, but it also just happens to be where I discovered how to make a better random mission generator. High irony from a game that has such a linear plot and can be described by some as "just another pretty shooter".
In the old four element scheme, we have earth, air, fire, and water. I’m the creative demipyromaniac, so I’m always a child of fire. That said, moderation and balance in all things. It isn’t just a trite saying. It keeps people from any number of ill fated early ends and stray disasters. Or at least from unintentionally making themselves miserable.
To this day I find it irritating that MS Access requires this syntax:
SELECT * FROM (SELECT FOO, BAR, BAZ FROM SNERVITZ WHERE FOO<>"TOTALWASTE") AS LIPSNERS INNER JOIN (SELECT BIZ, BAM, ZOO FROM BLERWHOT WHERE BIZ<>"JERKAZOIDAL") ON FOO=ZOO WHERE BAR>BAM;
...when writing a query but this syntax...
SELECT * FROM [SELECT FOO, BAR, BAZ FROM SNERVITZ WHERE FOO<>"TOTALWASTE"; ] AS LIPSNERS INNER JOIN [SELECT BIZ, BAM, ZOO FROM BLERWHOT WHERE BIZ<>"JERKAZOIDAL"; ] ON FOO=ZOO WHERE BAR>BAM;
I'm trying these two critters out with some good success.
For those not familiar, Orbot and Orweb are an implementation of the TOR client for Android. TOR is The Onion Router, a traceback hampering system designed to secure against eavesdropping and wiretapping of internet traffic for those that need such a thing. That includes, among others, dissidents and journalists operating within a hostile territory.
...but for me it’d come down to some hybrid between … “do I really need this?” and “am I really, no wait... do I even have time to cycle through all of these, … no, no, no, NO FEWER, this is TOO COMPLICATED, AUGH!”. You can see that somewhere between answering a spectrum of questions between those two quite a lot of stuff would actually get stuffed into garbage bags.
Some April Fool's Day of yore ThinkGeek jokes about an iCade gaming cabinet for your iPad. I didn't have an iPad at the time, so it was amusing but irrelevant. Later on they created this gadget, really did, because the internet let out a collective "WANT!" Now I have an iPad, and I've spent the last couple of weeks imagining getting one. I miss the old arcade experience and there would be some games that are a lot more fun on the iPad with a real joystick and some crisp buttons that respond well. It would be fun, a little nostalgic, and very very geeky. So I kept imagining.
