English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

I used to carry a lighter around, just to play with. I modified it so that the flame was really really big. Scared the crap out of smokers when they asked for a light.

KitFox

I had the snap-light down to an art. Damn I was cool.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 You nasty...

@KitFox Yeah I suck at that.

And fail.

But! I can now make proper crème brûlée.

Last time I made it with cinnamon, lime, and vanilla.

It was OK, but a bit...what I would call "perfumed".

ctype.h

7:17 PM

@ShotgunNinja Thanks.

KitFox

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I wasn't really pro-smoking :p

Cerberus

@KitFox Ahh yes.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Haha was that what it was?

You carried a lighter only and exclusively to annoy smokers?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

heheh no.

I carried it to start fires.

Cerberus

Oh.

So you were a pyromaniac, big deal.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

7:20 PM

A nice side-effect was that sometimes a smoker would ask for a light, and I could surprise them.

Cerberus

Nice.

Were you ever caught?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

oh, I never burned things that were important. mainly I burned lighter fuel.

I am not a destructive person.

usually

KitFox

More like this one:

Cerberus

Ehh sure, of course, I would never question you. Please don't burn my stuff!

KitFox

It was coppery, not really brass.

Shotgun Ninja

7:22 PM

I had a friend who made thermite with materials he got from a science surplus store, then filled spent smoke bombs with it and lit them off at a drive-in theater between the two features.

Cerberus

Cool.

KitFox

Man, I miss smoking.

Cerberus

I'm sure you had to have one of those.

@ShotgunNinja eyes bulging

He would be arrested and taken straight to gaol these days!

Shotgun Ninja

Everyone thought they were cool sparklers, so no one ever questioned us until we demonstrated melting through a car-park stand with one.

Cerberus

Wow.

Shotgun Ninja

7:25 PM

Which, these car-park stands were an artifact of the time they used individual speakers to broadcast the movie audio to each vehicle, and were simply concrete poles wrapped in corrugated steel, with the remnants of some cables sticking out.

We never really got in trouble for it either, especially since we only melted out a very small bit of the top layer.

Cerberus

Right.

It still sounds potentially dangerous...must have been great fun for you guys.

My father made gunpowder as a kid.

KitFox

I remember making napalm in our backyard.

And setting the lawn on fire.

Cerberus

Haha napalm, even?

I was such a good kid!

KitFox

And trying to figure out how we were going to hide it/explain the scorchmarks.

Cerberus

Never did anything like that.

I presume you said a UFO had landed?

And abducted the cat, who was also missing?

Poor Mr Whiskers.

Robusto

7:29 PM

Wait, you were napalming kitty-cats? Bad doggy!

Cerberus

Not I, but the other cat, Kit.

Robusto

I stole metallic sodium from the chem lab in high school, and used it for entertainment. A gram or so in a 1,000 ml graduate full of distilled water makes a great Roman candle.

KitFox

Fulminated mercury.

I'm not a cat.

I think it is time for me to take myself home.

Robusto

* fulminate of mercury

KitFox

How do you think it got that way?

You have to fulminate it to get the fulminate.

Robusto

7:37 PM

Stop talking about your sex life.

KitFox

TO THE GROUND!

Shotgun Ninja

@Robusto But I like talking about sex.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Mahnax hey, haven't seen you around in a while

Mahnax

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Well, I was in last night, but yeah.

I have some free time for once.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yes but I haven't seen you.

Robusto

7:40 PM

Sydney Greenstreet

Sydney Hughes Greenstreet (27 December 1879 – 18 January 1954) was an English stage and film actor. He is most widely known for his Warner Bros. films with Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre, which include The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Casablanca (1942). Early life Greenstreet was born in Sandwich, Kent, England, the son of Ann (née Baker) and John Jack Greenstreet, a leather merchant, and had seven siblings. He left home at age 18 to make his fortune as a Ceylon tea planter, but drought forced him out of business and back to England. He managed a brewery and, to escape boredom, too...

Mahnax

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 How are you doing?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Mahnax good. trying to fix a problem where our database is missing info on 13000 zip codes.

Mahnax

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That sounds relatively serious.

Shotgun Ninja

@Robusto Oh man, speaking of, my girlfriend's name is Sydney.

Mahnax

That's around… 30% of American zip codes.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

7:42 PM

@Mahnax enh, it could be worse

Mahnax

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 How are you going to obtain the data?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Mahnax the same way I obtain all my data. download it from shady websites.

2

Mahnax

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 And use it for commercial purposes? Classy.

Robusto

Sydney Greenstreet

Sydney Hughes Greenstreet (27 December 1879 – 18 January 1954) was an English stage and film actor. He is most widely known for his Warner Bros. films with Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre, which include The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Casablanca (1942). Early life Greenstreet was born in Sandwich, Kent, England, the son of Ann (née Baker) and John Jack Greenstreet, a leather merchant, and had seven siblings. He left home at age 18 to make his fortune as a Ceylon tea planter, but drought forced him out of business and back to England. He managed a brewery and, to escape boredom, too...

I fucked that up somehow.

Shotgun Ninja

@Robusto That's not cool.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

7:43 PM

@Mahnax it's not like it's proprietary data. It just needs to be mostly correct.

Robusto

@ShotgunNinja You asked for it.

Shotgun Ninja

@Robusto You didn't have to change the original, though.

Mahnax

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Well, that's fair, I suppose.

Robusto

I know. But this way I've got you bracketed. Also it makes me look prescient.

Shotgun Ninja

@Robusto Prescient, eh?

Robusto

7:44 PM

Call it an adumbration.

Shotgun Ninja

adds to dictionary file

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@ShotgunNinja looks like you should read Dune.

Mahnax

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I've gotten mixed reviews on that one. Did you like it?

aedia λ

Afternoon, y'all.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Mahnax yes. It's not the be-all and end-all of sci-fi. But it's such an important classic that everyone should at least read the first book.

aedia λ

7:48 PM

@Mahnax Yay for free time!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Do not, under any circumstances, bother with any of the "Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson" dune books.

Mahnax

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I suppose I'll read it sometime then.

@aediaλ Indeed! I wish there were more to go around…

aedia λ

I have made the poor decision lately to spend my paltry free time catching up on videogames.

Well, and some of my time that should have been sleeping-time.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Mahnax I liked the whole series, even though at times I felt like shaking the author and saying "you should expand on this a bit further!". Also the last two books are parts 1 and 2 of 3; the author died and never wrote the final volume, and his son and KJA wrote it, but it was really terrible.

Robusto

@aediaλ how-dee

@aediaλ Depends on the game. Let's hope it wasn't Farmville.

Mahnax

7:50 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I hope nobody ruins Millennium like that.

Then again, seven books is a daunting task for any author.

aedia λ

@Robusto wrinkles nose in disgust

I finally played Mass Effect 3.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Here is my review for Hunters of Dune and here for Sandwords of Dune, the two last books written by BH and KJA.

Robusto

@aediaλ Did you finish?

aedia λ

@Robusto After trying to avoid everything on the interwebs about it for ages and ages so I wouldn't see spoilers, yes!

Robusto

OK, then keep it to yourself. I haven't finished.

I'm about to go onto the final rails, and I am trying to get my galactic readiness up to 100%. But so far I haven't done enough multiplayer, and there's a decay built in, so I'm kind of fucked.

aedia λ

7:53 PM

I skipped multiplayer entirely and it was ok.

Robusto

If you get your GR up you get more choices toward the end.

Plus everyone I talk to says they thought the ending was a gyp.

aedia λ

From what I read afterwards it may have changed a few things, obviously, but the grand overarching theme wasn't ruined for me.

Robusto

@aediaλ You mean the grand overarching theme of "let's piss away forty or fifty hours having fun"?

aedia λ

@Robusto I had heard that, but I didn't really think so; I kind of liked it. I finished the game and turned to my husband and asked "so why was everyone mad about that again?"

Robusto

@aediaλ The way I heard it, the problem is that all paths lead to the same ending.

aedia λ

8:01 PM

It seems like that might be a problem on subsequent playthroughs, but it didn't seem worse to me than the previous Mass Effect games where there's basically one ending with minor changes.

Robusto

@aediaλ So did you get the "paramour" achievement?

Shotgun Ninja

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Probably. I'm reading Stranger in a Strange Land and Diamond Age currently.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@ShotgunNinja Ah, yes, Diamond Age. The first of many Stephenson books where you learn to hate the author or else value the journey more than the destination.

Shotgun Ninja

8:17 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I don't really hate the author, if only because he's crafting an awesome character in the form of John Hackworth.

Of course, I'm not done with the book yet...

I'm fully prepared for a typical science-fiction style "Nothing is resolved" ending.

aedia λ

@Robusto Yeah. Femshep+Liara.

Robusto

@aediaλ Me too. But I fooled around and Liara ditched me.

Ah well ...

But you can't get the paramour achievement if you stay with the same paramour from the previous game. So they actually encourage infidelity.

aedia λ

I almost went for the new "Commander, you have new private messages at your terminal" girl but then it turned out my Kelly Chambers was still around and I decided against it.

Robusto

@aediaλ That would be Amanda Traynor, I think.

aedia λ

@Robusto Yeah, I had imported my ME2 save and turning down Garrus was a little sad. I feel like we're good besties though.

Robusto

8:26 PM

Yeah, Liara and I are still BFFs.

But it ain't the same.

Cerberus

8:58 PM

Is Mass Effect fun?

I heard it was good.

From the same people as Dragon Age, right?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

nobody asked me, but I'm playing "Rage" now. I'm like that XKCD comic where the guy always plays games that are 2-3 years old

I've been waiting for bioshock infinite. It's finally coming out, which means I can play it in 2016

aedia λ

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I just started Dragon Age now.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@aediaλ which one?

aedia λ

I sometimes play games right away and sometimes ages later. In this case, it's my husband's copy so I've seen bits and pieces, but never got around to playing it myself.

Dragon Age Origins.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I am also working my way through the original Quake, and a remake of Half-Life.

aedia λ

9:06 PM

How's Quake?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

time for me to get going. bye folks.

aedia λ

Hasta luego!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@aediaλ fun. graphics suck by today's standards. Gameplay is simple. But it's still fun after all these years.

Robusto

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I'm waiting for Bioshock Infinite too. The NEXT BIG THING.

aedia λ

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Cool. I mean to try it sometime, but still haven't made my way down the list to it. It seems like one of those classic things I should try, to be a Real Gamer, or something.

Cerberus

9:11 PM

Funny you should mention Bioshock!

dorkly.com/article/50759/simsimcity-the-simcity-simulator

Robusto

My all-time funnest gaming experiences were Marathon and the original Diablo. Those were great.

Cerberus

This comic is hilarious.

In case you haven't heard, the launch of the new Sim City is a fiasco.

The game requires always-on DRM stuff, and the servers are failing all the time, so you save games are lost, etc. etc.

So it scored about 1.5/5 stars on Amazon, and the same on Metacritic.

EA deserve it.

Shotgun Ninja

Fuck EA.

Robusto

@ShotgunNinja Word.

EA is the worst. And they're buying up everything.

Cerberus

Yeah.

As always, anti-trust agencies should intervene, and they don't.

Robusto

9:17 PM

You can't spell EAT SHIT without EA.

2

Cerberus

Or call them consumer-protection agencies.

Robusto

And what is up with Ubisoft's UPlay social media overlay? I say fuck that shit.

So you already have the Steam wrapper for your game, and now you have UPlay as well? Where does it end?

Cerberus

Yeah, Ubisoft is notorious.

I am ashamed to say I bought my first Steam game.

It was too cheap to pass up on (though still 30 % more expensive here than in America, and something like 200 % more expensive than in Russia!).

Shotgun Ninja

So, 3x the cost?

Robusto

@Cerberus It's amazing how cheap things get if you completely ignore copyright law.

Cerberus

9:25 PM

@ShotgunNinja I think it was € 4 in Russian, € 10 here.

@Robusto I know!

But in general I think computer games are worth the price, at least a couple years after launch, so I have never downloaded a game that I didn't already own.

The same does not apply to other software and videos.

As to music, I mainly torrent classical music, which is in the public domain.

Perhaps not all the performances though...screw it.

It's all on Youtube read for downloading anyway.

Shotgun Ninja

@Cerberus I think that's either because of different valuation of games in Russia (maybe to promote better sales for the distribution costs) or because of a greater demand for games, or something along those lines.

Cerberus

@ShotgunNinja How do you mean greater demand?

It is probably partly influenced by piracy, by purchasing power, and by arbitrariness.