Danze

Building a mek is always a nice way to give a squishy support a bit more survivability, especially if there aren't any other good mek carriers on your team. Or picking up bracers to build into drums later. Still though, he is rather unfortunately squishy. I've played a bit of naga siren support recently, which is really nice. Pick up a stout shield for laning and you can trade hits pretty effectively with most heroes. Great base armor and movement speed. The minus armor from riptide is amazing as well. Her ultimate can be game changing, but hard to use in pub games where you might not have good communication with your team (such as them not understanding any English xD). At the very least, it's a great "get out of jail free card" for your team. She's also got the flexibility to build into a semi carry if the game goes late, which is nice. My favorite hero this past week has been lone druid. Surprisingly fun hero, despite his lack of flashy active abilities. The bear is just a total beast. If you can manage to farm a quick 15 minute radiance and then pick up an AC/mjolnir, his pushing power is just ridiculous. Split pushing is also really easy to do with your bear once you've got the radiance.

Cool stuff. There's a couple parts where I think it could be helpful to go in and touch up the velocity and length of certain notes, as some parts sound off where a note is unusually accented or gets cut off early (0:35-1:00 on Zelda vs. Kagura and 0:40 to 0:43 on vs Red for example). Overall really dig the sound though.

Outfit/Weapon: Samus's Power Suit. It's kind of cheating since this is a weapon, multiple powers, and and outfit rolled up into one. Blaster beam with multiple modes, grapple hook, morph ball, double jump, screw attack, move freely through water, stay cool in the heat. It's got it all, plus it looks badass. If I didn't cheat and just had to pick one game mechanic from video games, though - would probably have to go with the rewind ability from Braid. I don't know, maybe it would be a terrible power to actually have, and maybe it would end up just messing with your head and your perception of what reality is if you had the ability to rewind any mistake in some twisted attempt at a "perfect" life (a major theme of the game). But... the temptation and potential of that power could be extraordinary. It could also ruin your life and make you lose sight of what's real after years of being able to rewind anything you like. So much power, so much potential for it to go wrong... hmm. "We're all sons of bitches now." Braid Spoilers:

It's that time of the year for Dota 2, the International 3! Prelim Stuff: With TI3 prelims wrapping up, really excited for this year's tournament. Alliance coming out undefeated from group stages... I was expecting them to rock house, but I didn't expect them to go undefeated so far (sad face compendium predictions). Na'vi also looking very strong, only losing 2 games, both to Fnatic. I was worried for the Chinese teams, because in the first couple days of prelims it was looking like iG might be going to the losers bracket despite being the champs last year. They did manage to turn it around a bit though. I'm not a big iG fan, but I was happy to see both LGD and DK make it to the winner's bracket. LGD probably my personal favorite of the Chinese teams, but DK the strongest of the China teams coming out of the group stage. On the downside, it was a bummer that Liquid is in loser's bracket. With complexity dropping out so early last year, would be nice to see some USA love. Granted, they still might do very well in the loser's bracket. Also, I'd like to see mouz win some games, as I really like them as an underdog team. Overall: Na'vi and Alliance are the two teams to beat right now. When these two teams face off in the tournament, there better be epic plays. Fantasy Teams! So I thought this whole fantasy team thing on the compendium was pretty cool, here's my lineup: C: Loda (Alliance) C: Sylar (LGD.cn) SO: Dendi (Na'vi) S: Kuroky (Na'vi) S: EGM (Alliance) I'm wishing I had put Xboct as a possible sub for Sylar, as his performance in prelims was off the charts, but sadly I didn't pick him and opted to make a little room for China with Sylar on my Na'vi/Alliance dominated roster. So far my total is 268.8 points for the prelims. As far as I know, I think Xboct has the highest scores of any carry so far, but I'm not certain about that. I don't really know what supports have been leading the boards, I'd like to see if anyone is keeping track of who's gotten the most points in each category.

Twilight should almost certainly be an INTJ, not an INTP! I can't think of anyone who exhibits "J" anymore than Twilight! Just read the Kersey Temperament profile for INTJ "Mastermind"- it screams Twilight! http://www.keirsey.com/4temps/mastermind.asp Anyways, I'm between an INFP and an ENFP depending on the day, so Pinkie Pie and Princess Luna. Pinkie Pie is mah favorite. Also, as far as the test goes, it serves much more as a rough guideline. The best way to go about it is to take the test and then make your own decisions about how accurate your type is. Despite the small number of questions though, the test does fairly well. I did this for a class once back in High School and we made a game out of predicting other people's personality types, and we could guess it correctly around 80% of the time. It just takes a little intuition, or in the case of judging your own personality type, some self awareness. One thing that did interest me about the test though, was sometimes I would answer a fair number of questions differently on a whim depending on the day, but I would still end up with the same type overall almost every time.

Playing some older games at the moment: Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask Mega Man X Super Mario Sunshine Resident Evil 4 Rayman 2 (N64) Also played a bit of Dishonored since I got it off the steam sale. Mainly just playing a bunch of classics, and finishing games I loved playing but never actually beat. I finally finished OoT for the first time last week, and that felt absolutely fantastic. Most satisfying end to a game I've had in a while, considering it's been about a decade between when I first got it and now. To be played at some later date after I finish these: Metroid Prime 2 Super Metroid Okami Sonic Generations Mega Man 2 Dark Souls Chrono Trigger It's a lot of games, but I have a lot of free time over the next month or so. My job for the summer is over and I finished classes last week. Classes and my next job don't start until later in August - so I've got a few weeks to just kick back and burn through some great games.

People hate Super Mario Sunshine? O = How could someone hate something so colorful? I wasn't big on it when I played it originally, but I've been jonesing to play it again for a few years now for whatever reason. I don't have my GC disk for it anymore, but I recently got a GC controller adapter for PC, so I'm gonna play it with an emulator. Same thing with Starfox Adventure and a bunch of other games. There's so many games I played growing up (like Ocarina of Time) that I really liked but just never finished for whatever reason - so it's a bunch of fun to start playing them all again. Hardly bought anything in the steam sale so far because I'm so busy with past gamecube/N64 titles. I can't think of many games I like that are especially hated or obscure. I guess EVE Online is hated by some people, but it's the only MMO I've actually got into and enjoyed for an extended period of time. Antichamber is a game I love that was kind of a hidden gem for a while, but I think more people are picking up on it.

I recently looked up To the Moon because I've been wanting to get it for a while and it's on sale for 3 bucks. It might pop up in an indie package latter, but decided to just get game. I have too many games too play right now anyways (not a bad problem to have).

Anthichamber is 66% off - anyone who likes portal or puzzle games should check it out. Short game but really excellent. Also if Dishonored goes on sale down to ten bucks... it will be really difficult for me to resist buying that game.

Gen 1: Charmander Eevee or Abra Gen 2: Cyndaquil Sudowoodo I haven't played any of the games since gen 2 - maybe I should give them a go sometime sometime.

I put unsure, interesting to see there were a decent handful of others there as well. I've never been really attracted to a specific man in particular- so I've never been even remotely interested in a long term homosexual relationship. But I do feel I have some bisexual tendencies. Overall- strong preference towards heterosexuality for long term relationships, weak preference towards heterosexuality in physical relationships. Probably a 2 on the Kersey scale. This development was interesting to me because I would have considered myself a strong 1 up until the past year or two.

Here's my in-game info: Estebanzo Rufius Killboard: http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/combat_record.php?type=player&name=Estebanzo+Rufius I live in Liekuri, a few jumps out of Jita. Please come and attack me or my corp = D. Will follow to null sec if candy is offered.

I think I would choose the future just out of curiosity. I could go back and learn about what it was like to live in the past - maybe I wouldn't be able to experience it myself, but it's not some great mystery. Although meeting my ancestors could be a very interesting experience. But depending on how far back exactly - we might not even speak the same language, or be able to communicate. However, while we may know some things about the past - the future is completely uncertain. What will the world be like way in the future? Will the Earth even exist as we know it today? Will I arrive at some post-apocalyptic wasteland, or a surrealist high-tech utopia? The possibilities could be endless. Also, going to the future just seems like it would be less likely to create some sort of crazy paradox on my own timeline. Maybe this will be the distant future: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiq-9G3jiB4

Despite them being generally regarded as a rip-off for the price compared to lesser known brands, I do really like my bose AE2 headphones. I have noticed some trouble mixing some low end bass sounds with them, since I don't own any near half-decent speakers that I could use for mixing, but in terms of regular listening the sound is really great. The bass sound is still really great, but just falls short for mixing. The main reason I like the bose though is just that fact that I find them so damn comfortable. I wear glasses and sometimes with other headphones it really starts to bother my ears after a while if I'm wearing glasses under my headphones. With these I could practically live and sleep with them on and never notice a thing. So really even though I could probably get the same sounds quality for a lot cheaper, I'm fairly happy with the bose. Past that - as far as really high end quality stuff, I don't think I have a keen enough ear to hear the difference. I enjoy good sound but I probably wouldn't call myself an audiophile. A pair of thousand-dollar headphones would be a waste on me. That, and a lot of music I'm into tends towards more of a low-fi sound anyways, so really high quality headphones doesn't really add much.

I love Full-Life Consequences = D. I had completely forgotten about that video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS0x72_nflU

I was super into Dota for a while, but haven't played much over the past month. I only randomed in all pick or did single draft for quite a while. I had tried out most of the heroes in co-op bot games before I started randoming though, but every once and a while I'd get a hero I was clueless on. Later on I switched to just picking whatever my team needed, because occasionally you random a carry, and then your team procedes to pick 4 more carries. And that's always shitty. In lieu of the "what heroes do you like to play?" discussion: I still enjoy wex/exort Invoker despite the nerfs. He has some limitations, primarily his lack of rune control and the fact that unlike a lot of other mids that become very effective gankers at lv 6, he doesn't really start to shine until he gets more levels. However, despite that, there's nothing quite like the joy of doing a Eul's scepter sun strike/ meteor/ deafening blast combo and watching your opponent just completely melt in the mid game. And cold snap + forge spirit is pretty powerful in the early game. Overall he's just a fun character to play, and I like how his play style shifts dramatically from the early game to late game. He may not be a top tier pick, but I don't really play in a high enough skill bracket for that to matter. Besides that, I primarily play either offlane or support. Windrunner and dark seer are probably my favorite offlane heroes (Clockwerk as well when playing on Radiant, but I'm not so sure now since the cogs nerf in the last patch?). Rubick, shadow demon, and veno are my favorite supports. And you can never go wrong with batrider mid. I rarely play carry, but occasionally when my team needed a hard carry I did enjoy Gyro and Naix a lot. I haven't played naix since the open wounds nerf, though. EDIT: Also, I forgot to mention CHEN! One of my absolute favorites. I usually don't pick him in pub games because I'm afraid I'll screw up the micro, and sometimes it can be hard to get someone to pick an offlane hero in pubs. But he's one of my favorite heroes to play just for fun.

So I recently got into playing Super Smash Bros again, and I was wondering what y'all's favorite characters were. It's been a while since I played the N64 smash bros, but I think Link was my favorite character in that game, just because I was a big Zelda fan mainly. For Super Smash Bros Melee, Sheik is my favorite hands down. I love her speed and move set, she's quick and can apply a lot of pressure but has some hard hitting smash moves great for K.O.'s. I haven't played Brawl as much, but I think my favorite brawl character would be Falco. I love his look and move set aesthetically, and he's fast and fun to play. I especially like the changes they made to his down B and how it acts like a short range projectile, it just looks quite awesome. Honorary mention overall - I never played Mr. Game and Watch much, but I loved his look and wacky/comical move set, as well as his ridiculous and unpredictable RNG hammer attack. I would usually only play him if I wanted to troll though. What about you guys?