Nightly Open Thread
ICANN approves the .XXX TLD for porn sites
The Internet finally catches up to Amsterdam and adds a dedicated red light district. Though by all accounts, extant porn sites won’t be forced to move to the new TLD, nor does it seem that new porn sites will be forced to make use of it.
The Associated Press has kicked the hyphen right in the teeth. The new AP stylebook removes the hyphen from ‘e-mail’ (which means it’s now just ’email’), and has furthermore removed the space from phrases like ‘cell phone’ and ‘smart phone’.
Because, um, they’re the AP, and that’s how they roll.
Ancient architecture, rendered in glorious 3D
Pergamon is cool:
Still in the process of being restored...
The Hobbit FINALLY begins production
Peter Jackson’s next treatment of a Tolkien classic is underway!
Was a movie filmed in your home town?
Thanks to Edmund Helmer’s custom Google Map, you can (maybe) find out!
EDI the AI will return in Mass Effect 3
Spoilerrific!
Tonight’s post brought to you by Snoop and Vader:
I don’t remember EDI at all.
Seriously?
How can you not remember the glowing blue orb-on-a-stick that was always teasing/flirting with Joker?
Oooooh. It took me a moment to even remember who Joker was. I think I tend to forget all the characters that don’t come with me on missions. Or whose names aren’t Talia.
Which is funny, Handshakes, because there isn’t a character in Mass Effect named Talia.
Tali, I presume, is whom you meant.
Fine, Tali, whatever. Mideasternish alien babe. I call her what I want, when I want it.
Apparantly the characterization in Mass Effect isn’t as good as I thought.
Is Tali intended to be Middle Eastern?
She always struck me as being more of a gypsy.
Thanks for the link to the ‘Movies in your Home Town’–I got National Treasure, Book of Secrets in TWO places near my house…AND my place of work!
There was some rom-com on the list for me…which is actually how I know the list is incomplete, given that pretty much all of Snow Day was filmed here as well.
Between the nomadic influences and the headscarf (well, kind of like a headscarf) she always gave me a Middle Eastern vibe. Gypsy makes sense too, though.
I finally got around to watching that GG hour long Richard Garriot interview. It was a great watch, definitely worth the time. Richard Garriot seems like he is full of awesome anecdotes and analysis.
He even talks about one of my favorite subjects, virtual ecosystems in games. Between what RG said and what Raph Koster has written about it, they ended up cutting it from UO because it was eating up performance and the players never really even noticed it.
That said, they took pains to make the ecosystems fully functioning, IE: they didn’t go through boom and bust cycles naturally. I think maybe that is where they went wrong. For the players to notice, you need something dramatic to happen. What if your virtual ecosystem naturally boomed and busted out over and over? Rather than having nature work in perfect balance, what if nature was always on the brink of apocalyptic collapse? That way, when marauding players decimate the rabbit population, things get dramatically crazy, quickly.
I always got the middle eastern vibe too.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0013037/
That’s the imdb page for one of the Admirals of the quarians. She’s iranian, and tends to play those parts in things she is in (such as 24).
And Tali is awesome. I so left the stupid squid-head for Tali in Mass Effect 2 (that’s what she gets for not paying attention to me)
I usually played a female shephard, because her voice actor (same as Bastila’s IIRC) is MUCH more bearable than the male shephards. So I never legitimately got the Tali option. Which is a shame, because honestly, she comes across as crushing on femshep bigtime.
I’m not sure that Tali so much crushes on FemShep as looks up to her and is inspired by her. The vibe I get isn’t so much lesbian in nature as it is hero worship.
Totally agree on Jennifer Hale’s voice acting, though; I can’t stand Mark Meer.
Ah, that Iranian lady who plays the Admiral is an awesome actress, I’ve seen her in loads of stuff. I don’t think I realized it was her in ME2 at the time.
Who is the squid head? How do I remember so little of this game? lol
That would be Liara. Dr. Liara T’Soni.
Edit: Ducking autocorrect.
Yes. Stupid squid-head. Sitting behind her desk. Not paying attention to me. Not like I was waiting years to get back to her or anything…
*grumbles and goes back to bed with Tali*
I had a similar experience with the blondie from the first game when seeing her in ME2.
ShakesShepherd: I vaguely remember you! You were the love interest from ME1, I think.
Her: RAWR!
ShakesShepherd: Whatevs. Tali is better anyway.
Not to put too fine a point on it, Handshakes, but you were spot on when you asked “How do I remember so little of this game?”
Because as far as I can recall, none of the potential romance partners from Mass Effect were blonde. Ashley and Kaidan both had dark brown hair, Liara had no hair to speak of. And since I only play as FemShep and have thus never romanced Ashley, I really can’t speak to how she reacts after the Horizon mission…though I suppose “not well” would be the natural assumption.
The one with the pink armor! She wasn’t blonde? She acted blonde, anyway.
To be fair, I only played about half way through ME the first, and I never took her on missions if I didn’t have to. I guess that made it all the more bizarre when suddenly in ME2 she starts jumping down my throat and I have almost zero context as to why.
Well, the jumping down your throat was nothing to do with ME1. It was the fact she thought you were dead, and then finds out you’re working for a bunch of criminals. Your friends don’t take that very well.
Some friends they are!
Yeah. I would have liked a “Shepherd! You’re alive!” followed by much hardy hugging and laughter.
True, but from Ash’s perspective, it was more like “Shepard, you’re alive…but…wait…what? You disappear for two years and now you’re selling drugs out of the back of your van? Dude, we used to volunteer for DARE!”
Or, y’know, something like that.