Journal Entries
After two long years
Posted Dec 1, 2012
I'm home. I'm finally home once more. 
After the terrible heartbreak in being told that, because I'd failed to make the account conversion in 2011, I could never access my old account *ever* again - I got my keys back. And it was all thanks to a friend who'd kicked me in the rear.
There's so much dust and debris in here due to my appalling negligence, and I don't know when, if ever, I'll pick up my pen again, but for now -
[dusts off old armchair and lowers self into it.]
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Latest reply: Dec 1, 2012
Hiatus
Posted Mar 7, 2006
Greetings to all. I'm not dead; at least, I'm sure I'm not.
It seems like forever since I last logged on, and even longer since I last wrote anything for the Guide. (And I used to write almost every month). [sighs] I miss this place. I wish I had more time to write (I have material for at least three new articles, and a couple more are in various stages of completion), but my time and attention are currently split between far too many things. I'm hoping things will change soon... 
Later,
Far.
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Latest reply: Mar 7, 2006
Too much mango juice
Posted Dec 28, 2005
Well, Merry Christmas everybody! 
... Um, okay, it's December 28 and I'm four days late... but there are 12 Days of Christmas, right? Whatever. It's got to be the thought that counts.
Anyway, family came up north for the hols; had a great time, in spite of the fact that the big holiday stampedes almost reduced me to buckwheat pancake (damn my pitiful height!!!), and I wound up having more meat than I normally eat in two weeks. But life is now returning to normalcy, and I'm back in my apartment with enough food to open a convenience store.
Holiday stories to share, anyone?
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Latest reply: Dec 28, 2005
Vote-Rigging
Posted Oct 24, 2005
I'm annoyed. For two weeks now the voting for our game box art contest at HF has been going on. Thirty-odd submissions, but it's been clear for the past week which artwork people think of as the best (although it's a race to see if art #1 or #2 will win because they're separated by no more than one or two votes at any given time), especially because all the people who voted for them have sung praises for the submissions.
And then this morning, for the hell of it, I check the poll results (I know I'm not going to win anytime soon; I'm in 4th place, but I'm happy enough about it)... and I find that this one boxart called 'Logo', which no more than two people have voted for in the past week and a half, has suddenly acquired a grand total of *44* votes (which is more than 20% of the total number of votes). WTF??? Of course I know - and I suppose anybody who's been following the poll would as well - that there's been some kind of vote- rigging going on. I checked the members directory and bingo, there's a whole slew of new members on the board, who have not posted so much as a single message at the forum; what's more, they all have short usernames that make absolutely no sense (like 'abc', 'zxz' and 'rul'), which infers that the person or persons (I'm very sure it's 'person') who created the names wasn't bothered to choose a decent one .... because the account would only serve ONE PURPOSE. Namely - to boost the number of votes for that particular submission. Sure, I'd suspend my disbelief and allow for people who have been holding back until the eleventh hour and who have only just made up their minds to make last minute votes... but that submission, while not exactly a complete piece of horse excrement (well, actually I think it was; very little effort had certainly gone into it), was *far* from being one of the best. And certainly nobody had commented positively on it for the past week.
So. Vote-rigging. Of course, our administrators are smarter than that, and an IP check would reveal that all the accounts were spawned by one, or only a couple of people; even if the person had been smart enough to use different computers at different locations, well... it's still obvious that his?her? work was in no way popular, and had mysteriously acquired over 40 votes overnight, which just about screams, 'I'm cheating!!!'. The question is why anybody would attempt something so stupid that (1) is a blatantly obvious attempt to cheat one's way into winning, (2) screams, 'I want attention!' and (3) is only going to make him/her vastly unpopular (or very likely result in suspension or a ban) the minute their identity is revealed after the voting ends. FFS, is winning that limited Japanese edition of the last game all that important? or is it just winning for the sake of winning? Does he really think that his work is so great, even in the absence of votes to support this, that he feels justified in rallying for support or voting for his own submission? or is this some kind of twisted compensation for an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy?
Down to vote-riggers! 
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Latest reply: Oct 24, 2005
The horror of math
Posted Oct 20, 2005
I honestly don't know whether to laugh or cry:
I was at this game forum I frequent (hey, I'm a gamer geek), and one of our regulars posted his homework in the off-topic forum, asking for help. It was the formula for a curve; he wanted to know the x and y values and turning point: y= -2x² -7x+5.
And this guy who replied to that post wrote, and I QUOTE:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
X = 5/3
and Y = 5
That is, if I'm not completely retarded, which I probably am. You've gotta substitue 0's in the Y spot, to solve for X, or in the X spot to solve for Y.
Doing shit like centriods currently in math, lucky for you it entails alot of (X, Y).
X-
Y = -2x2 -7x+5
0 = 4x-7x+5
0 = -3x+5
3x = 5
x = 5/3
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
!!!!!!!
Since when was it taught in school that 2x²=4x? [buries head in hands]
Anyway, after setting the guy straight, I worked out the values of x as 0.6085 and -4.1085 (to 4 decimal places) using the quadratic formula. Because I'm never confident of my answers even when I know I'm right, I got Ham to do it as well... and I got the second shock of the day when he told me I was dead wrong, and that x was 2.5 and 1. Which, when I replaced the values in the formula, didn't make sense. The whole thing utterly deflated me... until I realised that he'd mistaken the formula for 2x² -7x+5! whereupon he arrived at the same answers as I did.
But anyway.... 2x²=4x!!!! I despair at the modern American education system. 
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Latest reply: Oct 20, 2005
Farlander
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