Evilshy

Find a job, even if it's just doing yard work or odd jobs around your neighborhood. When you have ~$500, you can buy a decent computer of your own, especially if you buy the parts yourself.

Have you ever made a strategy game? The AI programming is arguably harder than in any other genre. Making the game primarily political only makes it worse. That being said, maybe it's mostly politics with some statistical based battles fought? I mean, the leader of a country at war doesn't actually command the troops and come up with the tactics or anything, he gives general plans like "takes these cities" and let's the generals take over. In game, perhaps you can allocate different kinds of troop divisions (infantry, artillery, armored, etc.) to different cities and regions. You could also set different officers over different battles, each one having their own strengths and weaknesses, and their own preferred tactics, that sort of thing. Same thing for the enemy side. Send all these numbers through some complicated algorithms, and it spits out the results of the battle. It'd be hard, but not as hard as programming micromanagement AI

It's a lot closer than I thought it'd be. I was expecting Metallica to be winning by a landslide. And my favorite DT album would be Train of Thought. It starts out with As I Am's great riffs and memorable chorus, enters the first part of the 12-Step Suite, which is awesome. Then we have a brief weak period (IMO) with Endless Sacrifice. But Honor Thy Father waaaay more than makes up for it, and it's followed by some awesome, deep, slow stuff. Then Stream of Consciousness comes and my ears have orgasms. In the Name of God takes the afterglow and turns into another round of earsex. And then I have to listen to Ayreon in the double afterglow, because anything else just sounds like a letdown. I think I'm fanboying a little too hard... I'm going to go to bed now.

I started with Still Life and fell in love with them. My favorite of their albums is probably Watershed. Anyway, go here and vote for Dream Theater, if only to see the reactions of butthurt Metallica fans: http://loudwire.com/dream-theater-vs-metallica-march-metal-madness-2013-championship-round/ As a prog lover, I'm used to a lot of metal heads not giving a shit about my genre of choice, but I remember the rage when Dream Theater got #2 in Rolling Stone's(I think it was Rolling Stone) Top 100 Metal Bands a few years back, and it was fucking priceless Here's the album the poll is talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPYPm4ny9UM It's up against Master of Puppets, which IMO is a good album, but terribly overrated :/ In other news, if Guitar Hero ever comes back, I demand Sunn O))) be featured. I can think of nothing better than Drone Metal on guitar hero: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0szuhkWgIpQ

I have Crwn Thy Frnicatr, and it's pretty good. You might like Genghis Tron. They're similar, but have more metal than electronic.

I love Sherlock! I can't wait for Season 3, which should be coming soon, thank God. I got a few of my friends at college into it, too. I've always liked battles of wits, and Sherlock is the examples of it in quite awhile.

Everything you just mentioned was recently added on Netflix, as was a lot of other old and current CN shows. I sometimes watch some old cartoons and PBS stuff for nostalgic purposes.

That's a good point, DeiStar. The Derpy scene certainly was much more than a nod, but the other ones still weren't that big.

Is it all text based, with a 24/7 persistent world? I used to play some games like that, but every time without fail, I'd be a few days in when some ass somewhere would come and destroy my entire nation while I was offline :/

Would've done this sooner, but it came out the night before my family and I went on vacation, so I barely had time to watch it. Now that we're here and I have time to relax, I watched it again so I could watch the details. As I've said in the past, this is not a review blog, but since Double Rainboom is pretty major in the fandom, I decided to break the rule again (last time I broke it was for the Season 3 finale). I'll probably continue to do so in the future, but only for highly polarizing episodes, or for ones where my opinion differs greatly from the majority and I feel a need to explain my reasoning. To start off, it had great animation and art. All the things we saw seemed like they could be (or already are) part of the show. The animation was smooth, and except for a few minor errors, was very well done. The music itself was also great, but I don't think it was used very well. For example, we had the music rapidly switching back and forth between RD and Twi's themes while they were talking, so much so that it started to clash together. On the flip side, we had parts where nothing was happening audibly, that could've definitely used music, but had none. The voice acting was about as good as any fan made project is likely to get. As for the plot... well, at least it was a good concept. I feel like Twi making performance enhancing drugs a talent potion and then RD stealing it to achieve even greater feats of flight, but going too far and fucking up tons of stuff would be a great story for a canon episode. I'd just like to see Studio B do it, because Double Rainboom had worse storytelling than the goddamn season 3 finale (and if you read my review of that, you'll know just how bad that is. For those who don't want to read it, I think it was the worst episode in the series so far). The dialogue was minimal and didn't flow at all. The best analogy I can think of for the characterization is to visualize Twi and RD's personalities as actual, 3 dimensional objects. Their personalities in Double Rainboom are like grainy, low resolution photographs of these objects; 2 dimensional, and low-quality. Most of the story was conveyed through implications. Nobody talked about the Double Rainboom, or how time and space were split, or how Samurai motherfucking Jack (fuck yeah) and other characters were floating around. They just were, and we had to figure it out for ourselves. Instead of an explanation of, you know, THE ENTIRE FUCKING STORY, we had 10 minutes of the PPG chasing RD around because... they want a pet pony? Okay, I can see Bubbles doing that, but the other two are mature enough to know you shouldn't just force something, especially an intelligent being, to be your pet (although I could be wrong, I haven't watched much PPG). This was probably an attempt to get out of actually writing enough story to fill 30 minutes, and while it was entertaining, it would've been much better as a standalone animation. One redeeming feature were all the little nods to the fandom; Scootaloo on the chicken billboard, Derpy and her muffin, and several of the most widely paired ponies being on screen together multiple times. The references to other shows were pretty nice too, if totally unnecessary. I think I'll make it a tradition to say what the best part of otherwise horrible episodes is whenever I review them. In the S3 finale, it was RD's pimp hat during the coronation at the end. This time, it was Pinkie saying "I can travel through time and space!" in her scary voice. Well, and Samurai motherfucking Jack.

I don't like the assertion that interactions over the internet are worthless. It's true that in person, you have body language, intonation and such, but it doesn't mean that people talking about serious things on Skype or a forum are having a worthless conversation. Also, I live on a mountain, far away from town. None of y friends are close enough that we can just hang out without arranging to meet somewhere first, and since most of us work and have school, doesn't happen often. A lot of our communication is through texting, on Facebook, or through Skype/Steam. Not to mention my friends who live in different states. When I think about it, very little of y computer time is spent gaming. And really, gaming is just a form of entertainment, which everybody needs.

Warning, lots of foul language: Most of those really bug me, but people using Y, U, R, 2, B4, and other such things instead of the actual words bug me the most. Even in chat, it bugs me, but other abbreviations (btw, iirc, etc.) don't.

Sea Salt and Black Pepper Kettle Chips. If I can't find them, I'll buy normal salted chips and pepper them myself, because pepper is awesome. *patiently waiting for Zoop to come in and say "VOODOO CHIPS ARE DOPE AS SHIT"*

We don't have clubs dedicated to board gaming, but we have plenty of hobby shops where you can usually find games to play. I live on the other coast, but I'm sure NY has plenty