And what are you talking about, anyway? You're always putzing about with your TF2 Server, right?

@RavenDreamer Yes, I am, but the game market is... I don't really want to call it a niche market, but I can't think of a better way to put it.

@Powerlord Any dev work I've been employed to do is decidedly not game-related.

@Powerlord This being precisely the reason, as it were

@RavenDreamer You mean the stuff I do in my spare time? Not what I do for a living, and not what I studied in school.

@Powerlord - I'd like to develop games, however I'm getting a degree in Computer Science, not Game Design.

I had an internship working for a patent company summer before last.

@RavenDreamer Extremely wise stuff to do.

I found I'd be okay with not programming games for a living.

I did the same, and a lot of people in the industry have equally suggested likewise. You'll get further in life, both if you do and if you do not pursue game development, by picking up a Computer Science degree than a Game Design type degree.

You know, speaking of TF2 server stuff, it's mostly been stuff I've been complaining about lately rather than actually working on (whoops).

My Master in Engineering in Computer Science degree allows me to take a course in Game Design ♫

I know the teacher. He's well connected, too

Does he sound like a StarCraft Battleship pilot?

Officially, I'm going to graduate next spring with a BS in Computer Science, with a concentration in Game Development, with Minors in Creative Writing and Cognitive Science.

It's a very unique set of degrees, I think.

@RavenDreamer Shiny. I'm totally tempted to counter-boast but then it'd look like I'm counter-boasting.

(That said, yay creative writing!)

@GraceNote You can hear him talk at vimeo.com/4377940

I'm definitely not in the gamedev industry, and I'm a dev.

@badp Totally not a StarCraft Battleship pilot.

I figured

Battlekruiser, oper-ashonul.

I still need a hat in TF2.

@RavenDreamer My teacher didn't just have the accent, his voice was pretty much an exact match. Only, he was talking about Turing machines rather than about how operational the ship is.

I feel like I'll never catch up and have one of each of the available weapons again.

@Powerlor Tooring ma-sheen, oper-ay-shonal?

Pffft

Okay, what the flux, Papa Johns. I can order a Large Pizza for 8.99 on Monday, 10.00 on Tuesday, and 9.99 on Wednesday? Make up your damn minds!

Hmm, I wonder whether sites like GamerDNA have any kind of legal issues, by putting games in a database.

@CruelCow A good way to not get spoiled is to add the tag to your ignored tags. I did that with Portal 2 until I had the $$$ to pick it up and it worked out well.

Hiya, Anna!

@RavenDreamer Now that I think about it, the implication of this was that you live off-campus, isn't it?

And hence, "I'm on campus" isn't a "I can't play LoL for a while" excuse as much as a "I can't play LoL until the end of the day" excuse.

@RavenDreamer In fairness, $10 was probably rounding $9.99.

@GraceNote Technically, I think I live on campus, but it's the west edge of campus, and my classes are all on the south east. It's about a 30 minute walk from the engineering campus back to my apartment (about the same if you wait for a bus). Rather than spend half the day walking back and forth between campus and my residence, I just chill on campus and lurk on Gaming.SE in the downtime between classes.

@Powerlord 2 for $20, actually.

Bleah. Oracle needs better documentation for the oc4j OracleAppender log4j appender.

@RavenDreamer Heh, always a wise move. I always find places to camp, on the days I didn't just live in the Library

The only problem being the trek back to get food.

But that was the advantage in senior year! By having courses only twice a week, and all in a row, you didn't have to trek back for food!

@GraceNote I still think my most impressive work of creative writing to date is my 700+ word epic poem. That thing clocks in at 6 full pages, and maintained perfect trochaic tetrameter all the way through.

Yeah, can't say that I can top that.

I did a lot more non-creative writing courses than otherwise.

It also gained me the instant enmity of my poetry writing class.

Most of the feedback I got was very passive agressive.

Heh

Like the guy who circled the sixth line, and wrote in big bold letters: "STOPPED READING HERE".

Haaa, in high school there was a student who was infamous for the length of her essays and such.

To be honest, that class was a complete joke. The teacher was...

Well, let's just say, she's tone deaf, and likes to read poetry.

Ahha

My writing teachers were all pretty excellent, when I was in college. I was happy with each and every one of them.

Also, she maintained that iambic pentameter is the best meter, because that's how people speak in real life

And in one fateful class, "I really like the slant rhyme in this one line: Candle and Flame. What a great slant rhyme."

Candle and Flame do not rhyme.

Ever.

Well, maybe not rhyming rhyming but... yeah I got nothing

Great, now I'm going to be up all night trying to make Candle and Flame rhyme.

@ArdaXi Burning the midnight oil, as it were? ♪

@RavenDreamer Hey. :)

@GraceNote Elucubrating, indeed.

@ArdaXi Where the heck do you learn a word like that?

What can I say? I'm knowledgeable.

Holy crap. My game design class is going to be so much work.

(That's part 1 of 6, FYI)

@RavenDreamer We had to create 5 games from scratch in our introductory course. That kind of work level seems par for the course.

@RavenDreamer That makes me miss my CS classes. I'd do so much better in them now.

@GraceNote I'm not disagreeing. I just underestimated how much work we'd be doing.

(Let's disregard the part where the Platformer game assignment destroyed so many teams such that we ended up only making 4 games that semester...)

@AnnaLear Hindsight is 20/20, eh, Anna?

@RavenDreamer As long as you have the ambition, spirit, and ample amounts of fuel, then you should be able to take it. ♪

@GraceNote I believe in you who believes in me!

@RavenDreamer Heh

@RavenDreamer In so many ways.

@RavenDreamer Mind you, 4+ years of professional experience is bound to help one out on school assignments. =)

We've never really had assignments at uni so far

Three or four labs perhaps but that was it

I'm sorry :P

Blue party!

Does that mean I should leave?

The sad best kind of party!

It's okay; I'm leaving now

that means you can stay

But I'm not blue

(dabba dee dabba die)

That's just a façade

@RavenDreamer You should join our Happy Happy Cult, then.

@GraceNote You just had to give me flashbacks to Ren and Stimpy, didn't you?

@RavenDreamer The intent was Earthbound.

DO NOT JOIN THE HAPPY HAPPY CULT.

I have not played more than the first 5 minutes of earthbound.

You should play more of it when you get the time, then.

I sorta want to pin that, @Mana. :P

♫

@Mana Blue, blue, How can you say such a thing when you're so blue?

Who removed my message?

And then play Mother 3 and bawl your eyes out.

I will not be oppressed.

Some mod is power-happy, and I want to know who it is.

Not I

I blame @badp.

Then who?!

(since 'twas not I)

Yes it was me and it was done in jest. I broke your combo break combo, it was only fair!

♪ It's not easy being red green! ♪

Ok I guess that's fine then.

You know where to raise a stink, as I said I'm leaving

bbl

@RavenDreamer blue?

My gravatar is quite clearly red, thankyouverymuch!

@RavenDreamer I kind of confuse your gravatar with @Lazers because they have pretty much the same color scheme.

@StrixVaria Just look for the sharks.

So if we merge Raven and Lazers, we get sharks with laser beams on their heads?

CANNOT UNSEE THE SHARKS

I need to get wolves in there somehow too, I think.

And a moon.

And a red balloon!

99 Luftballons!

Is there a way I can see what my gravatar used to be before I changed it?

The default.

Go to Gravatar and deselect the current image for your address

Bah.

Actually there is a better method

I don't know where you'll have to go, though, so you might have to go see the Mountain Sage

♪ Neunundneunzig luftballoons... ♪

But if you bring the hash that is used for your email address to the right input, it will use the same tool that Gravatar uses for its default images.

Not worth the effort.

There are alternative image types that do the same (the most familiar of which is balpha's unicornify), I just don't recall the name of this particular one.

You know what, I think I'll write the plot for a TV show that makes cohesive sense, and then release a second series that is filled with plotholes for no obvious reason.

Tell you what, though, I'll keep your hash handy so that if I do ever run into someone who knows where to go, then I can provide it for you.

@GraceNote @Sjohnston rocks unicornify, I'm pretty sure.

My unicorn looks afflicted.

Also, I want to stab oc4j so very much right now.

@RavenDreamer Aye to that

I can't figure out how to get it to write to the application log, but NO PROBLEM logging to the server-wide diagnostics log!

Because everyone knows it's better to write to a server-wide log than to your own app's log!

@StrixVaria yes. Yes it does.

My unicorn is off frolicking in the distance.

Also, maybe tripping over its feet. Not sure.

Awlright, I need to get back to class. Au revoir, friends.

@StrixVaria Good heavens... that is a tiny nose

Peace man.

@GnomeSlice Good to know. Maybe I'll give it another try.

Grrr, I see why this application.log is empty. We use log4j, and Oracle apparently hates log4j and only makes java.util.logging log to application.log correctly.

Oracle hates a lot of stuff.

@StrixVaria It doesn't help that oc4j is Oracle's "old" Java servlet container.

I was under the impression that we were supposed to switch this project to a different servlet container, but of course that never materialized.

I wonder how hard it would be to submit parts of this app to the Daily WTF.

Notch is a member of Mensa?

At least he says he is.

ARAGSGHASGHASGHA STOP REMIXING ELLIE GOULDING

STOP. STOP IT.

What's wrong Mana?

Nothing.

This video totally epitomizes Minecraft.

@ThomasMcDonald Yeah, it's pretty good.

That drop was more hilarious than anything though

@ThomasMcDonald Hey, at least you're past ./configure

@ThomasMcDonald: It's bad enough Node.JS is involved, but they you go use CoffeeScript with it? Am I the only person who sees the hyprocrisy in this?

@ThomasMcDonald I suck at github; is it possible to add empty folders to your repo?

That explains it.

Anyway, I'm off to undo all the work I've done in the past hour, since it doesn't actually fix the problem it's supposed to.

@ThomasMcDonald Why wouldn't it be?

Speaking of GitHub, I should get started on that rec site.

I'll just write it first and worry about the creative stuff later.

Think about aesthetics on the back of your mind. That way, you can focus on the implementation and also shape the aesthetic more clearly.

@GraceNote I can't do aesthetics. At all.

So, wait. Wait wait wait. Do we have like five people working on different game rec sites right now?

I think it's a cooperative effort

I wasn't aware of anyone doing more than planning.

Just that @Arda's putting actual muscle to it after his chat with you.

@ThomasMcDonald I'd already started work on something like this long ago, but I forgot all about it.

I started working on my game-rec site before I was born. So.

@GraceNote I think we can't really work together if we can't decide on the language.

@ThomasMcDonald Hu?

@ArdaXi I don't recall anyone else deciding on a language other than you

Oh, just a feed notifier.

Game rec site?

I think it should be written in Node.js!

Nothing special.

@GraceNote @ThomasMcDonald wanted to use Ruby I think.

@ArdaXi Isn't Ruby like the devil, apparently?

@GraceNote It's hipster heaven.

It should CLEARLY be written in .NET MVC3

@Powerlord That's what I was planning actually.

@ThomasMcDonald Not really.

@ArdaXi In that case, I meant to say Java EE 6 with Spring and Hibernate.

Just that that's a characteristic specific of Ruby hipsters.

I like indie music...

And I meant netbooks/macbooks.

By the way, hipster heaven is so underground you might as well call it hell.

@ThomasMcDonald Yes, true hipsters use Macbooks.

But then there are hipsters who think coding on a Mac is too mainstream.

Coding on a Mac is also a particular characteristic of hipsters. So there.

But yeah, I've tried Ruby, and the language is okay, not really special. The community is what drove me away.

@ThomasMcDonald I've tried a Hackintosh. Couldn't work with it.

To each his own, I guess.

For now, I'm going to stick to using the best IDE I have ever used.