Why must you irk me so......

Well, they do. I mean since I've acquired a first-gen PSP, when I'm not playing Socom, Ridge Racer or Lumens. I can be found toiling away with Valkyrie Profile, Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy II or (a recent score for me) Sakura Taisen 1+2.
Now the FFs ain't bad as the only previous FF series experience I'd had was with the PC demo of FF7 eons ago. That and pretty much every non-D&D RPG I've played uses a knockoff FF UI. Also the PSP ports of FF let you mess with peeps by the not so hidden option of using Japaneses text instead of English.
But I think most of us would use the other latin character set based language built into the game instead. I think it's French.

Valkyrie Profile on the other hand, nice graphics, decent gameplay, great sound, Odin's a perv, nice pre-rendered cut scenes pity you can't skip any of them! The first thing anyone should once you start the game is put the PSP down rig up something to tap a button every so often and come back in an hour or less. That's how long it takes to just get at the meat of the game. Not fun when you must do that umpteen hundred times, at different difficulty levels just to unlock all the goodies.....

Then we come to Sakura Taisen 1+2, not a bad game. Pity there's no english port, cause it's all in japanese. At least there are some translations & walkthroughs on-line to help us nihongo deprived muddle through. However, besides the language grip, my biggest irk with the game is: why do they use the circle button for the enter key, instead of the cross button. I drives me bonkers for a bit after playing and I'm using the PSP for something else and each time I hit enter, I'm hitting escape/cancel/no instead.

Meh, I suppose when you get down to it, it almost as annoying as a PSP with a malfunctioning D-pad, of which mine is currently afflicted with (hit down and end up 50% chance of going right, 30% chance of going down, 20% chance of going left). But that's an easily rectified mechanical fault, everything else is down to the code.

--Rod.H
This has been another Rod.H stream of ramble

http://www.geostationarybananaovertexas.com/

A few days ago, I happened to see that there was a Dan Dare comic on the shelf of my local comic store. Flipped through it and it looked good, but issue #4 and
I don't like not seeing the beginning of a story. So I went off and checked online to see if the older issues were available and apparently they're
sold out. Ho hum. Went back to the store yesterday and noticed another Dan Dare cover among the older comics. Variant cover? No. Every issue was there.

It's damn good. Mekon's back - fearsome as ever. The Royal Navy needs a legend if they're going to win so the Prime Minister asks Dare to come out
of retirement to take command of the fleet. Space combat, superweapons, infantry forming a square against infantry hordes...

Dare: You have a problem you think I can help you with?

Prime Minister: Exactly.

Dare: Well, let's see what we can do: you've been having trouble resigning, haven't you?

Prime Minister: What?

Dare: You're on your - what, third or fourth attempt, right? You keep promising but you just can't seem to bring it off.

Dare: The thing to bear in mind regarding the Mekon, Ms Christian, is that the impossible means nothing to him at all. He's three hundred years old,
he's been accomplishing it on almost a daily basis.

Sublieutenant Christian: But... we're talking about the point of singularity at which existence itself implodes...

Dare: We're talking about a little green demon with a brain bigger than God's.

Mekon (on Dare): Willful. One of the qualties I look forward to excising from him.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

Creepy Russian story.

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Epsilon

The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29 ... uote_poll/]Vote now for your fave sci-fi movie quote

They've got 42 ("42? Well, if you have to ask, you're in the wrong place...") choices up, and more than a few of them are actually memorable quotes.

After you vote, you get to see the current standings. The quote I just voted for is at #8 in the rankings as of this posting...

 
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Threw this together in about 20 minutes while blocked on the fifty other Fenspace ideas I'm kicking around every other day. Not by any means my best work, but maybe eventually it'll make for a decent front page image.


Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

No, *don't* ask what color the phone booths out front are.

http://io9.com/361822/los-angeles-is-op ... l-business

If you hit the main link to 826la.com, it appears that this store is connected to the Spy Store in Chicago, and the Superhero Supply Store in NYC. They all
appear to be part of a writer's workshop of some kind.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go fix my flux capacitor and cram it back into the DeLorean -- I'm jonesing for a Hyper Slushee, and the machine
only works yesterday.

Just got this today, and just let me say it should make any long-time DC fan squeal in joy. I'm not so sure about the less-rabid fen, but...

And from the extras, JLU version of Killer Frost? Loads of fun.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

Sweet.

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Epsilon

In the spirit of the recent Buffy thread I present the Stargate fanfic recommendation thread. I recently started watching Stargate off and on (more off than
on) and decided I would like to kill some time reading fanfic about it. I'm pretty much caught up on continuity, I believe. I tend to prefer stories from
the TV show that focus on Jackson and Carter over those that focus on O'Neil and I find Teal'c (and everything associated with him) hopelessly boring
(wow, yet another honourable warrior race culture guy!).

So, any recommendations? Crossovers (provided they aren't with series that are too obscure) are okay, as are SIs and anything else you can think of.

-------------------

Epsilon