"On A Beach", by Hayden featuring Feist

Lyrics

Pretty obvious from the lyrics what this does: puts anybody in the area of effect into a hypnotic trance, with a secondary effect of Doug and the song's subject becoming well-disposed toward each other because the lyric "and you’re fond of me" is traded off between two singers. (In most cases, Doug had better play "I'll Play for You" first... although ending a melee by having the fighters suddenly like each other does have a certain appeal.)

Power: rubberriness and stretching l;ike Reed Richards or Luffy D. Monkey, though whether that's a side effect of being as bouncy as Chuck Taine or the other way around is debatable. Quite a versatile power with some imagination, and with a 9m31s run time it'll last through situations where something that might be more directly applicable would run out too soon.

My first thought was just to shift him into a female form, but that seems rather tame for the kind of powers Doug's magegift usually expresses, and if it was going to do something like that it would probably be using Ivor Biggun's Bra Size 45 anyway

Ugh. Not even two weeks into the new year, and we get this in the forecast:

Quote:Valid: 1:00 PM EST Tuesday 9 January 2024 - 1:00 AM EST Thursday 11 January 2024
A strong low pressure system is expected to bring snow, blowing snow and strong winds. Travel is expected to be hazardous at times. Consider postponing non-essential travel.

CBC News: Liberals pick byelection candidate who first tried running for Tories

Rough equivalent for folks in the USA:

Candidate: "I love the GOP platform! Can I be on the GOP candidate list in the primaries?"
Party brass: "Nope, you didn't get your paperwork in on time."
Candidate: "Oh. I don't love the GOP platform any more! Can I be on the Dem candidate list in the primaries?"
Other party brass: "Sure! Oh, and the party members picked you."

Yeah. That's pretty much what just happened in Durham for the upcoming byelection.

RIP Niklaus Wirth, creator of (amongst other things) the Pascal programming language.

The Homecoming servers for CoH have acquired a limited license to host and develop the game from NCsoft.  An FAQ and what details they can release are on their announcement forums here:
https://forums.homecomingservers.com/top...ouncement/

One tidbit of note: the development of the Homecoming launcher was spurred by this agreement. As such, support for Tequila and other third party launchers will be discontinued, although I saw no mention of a time frame on that.

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(lyrics listed in the video comments)

Power: Doug can retroactively have done something within the last 24 hours that lasts up to the song's duration (3:33 without the intro screen on the video if I timed it right) that wouldn't have required using a song or combat actions, playing the song for as long as it would have taken. Basically the way players can retroactively do something to prepare for snags encountered while playing ... dammit, I can't remember the name of the RPG; the one designed for doing heist movie plots, basically.

Maybe just set the restriction to no songs? But Doug can do a hell of a lot with his bare hands in three and a half minutes even without songs - the idea is to prevent something like "I took a couple minutes to slip into the guard shack and knock them all out," while still allowing for "I went through that knocked out guard's pockets carefully and took the innocuously disguised RFID key to open this door," having stepped into a convenience store along the way and bought something, having stuck a tracking device on the target's car in case everything went wahoonie-shaped and they got away, or having paid special attention to some tricky security feature while doing the prep work.

As I post this, it's a few minutes after midnight GMT on 2024-01-01. Happy New Year, everyone!

Amazing what one can find on the Merriam-Webster website: 10 Uncommon Words for 'Drunkard'

Imagine if Doug sees a book titled "Tosspot's Travels" or "Shicker's Saunter" and ignores it, not realizing that it's about his journey...

... not video games, but tabletop games. Not just RPGs (so DriveThruRPG is out), but board games and wargames. Searching at random I've found a couple, like Tabletop Game and Hobby and The Philly Game Shop, but before I settle on one (for a gift card to belatedly give a now-distant nephew I just learned I won't be seeing at the end of next week), I wanted to find out if anyone here had any places they've done business with in the past and would like to give more business.

Thanks!