So, Thursday my long serving old man of a desktop died of irrcoverable brain seizure (at least, given the symptoms, it looked as though the CPU went). This forced me to finally upgrade to a new desktop.

This is not that story.

What really caused me problems was that fact that I apparently hadn't been doing my backups as regually as I though I had, with that latest one I found being ~9 months old.
Fortunately the old man had been fairly high spec when I'd got it all those years ago, so I had SATA drives in it.

Which is where http://dynamode.net/english/pages/produ ... HDK-E.html]THIS came in really handy. And the good thing is I can re-use the drives for backup purposes.

So besides the moral of doing regular backups, the other moral of this story is there are all sorts of useful things if you know where to look.
(Yes, there are ones which will do IDE drives as well)

For those of you with Steam, today is the last day of the Summer Camp Sale. Most things in the store are at least partially discounted, but today's daily deals are a collection of the most popular items in the past week or so. If there's a game you've been jonesing for, take a look.

Highlights include:

Shogun 2: Total War for $29.99

Just Cause 2 for $4.99

Borderlands GOTY Edition for $7.50

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 for $5.00*

Portal 2 for $24.99

The Witcher 2 for $33.49

Fable III for $24.99

Fallout: New Vegas for $14.99

*If you get BC2 or already have it, look me up ingame!

A 'School Battle Action' anime by Sunrise, slated for 12 episodes.

The story of Arma Tandouji, a surly loner with a heart of gold and a terrible power that makes him terrified to be around other people... for reasons that I won't spoil.  It is also the story of Ruri Aiba, a wealthy heiress, her mecha piloting butler and her small army of elite, commando maids.

- Wait what?

The first episode is up on Hulu and Crunchyroll (for subscribers).  The first episode has everything set up as being a fairly standard (but rare these days) heroic action story about a man with a magical suit of armor and a hand that turns into a gun.  Considering that the writer for this show wrote about half of Speed Grapher, though, I can almost smell a twist coming somewhere.

Come for the gunfist, stay for HELLBRICK.
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

...in Shadowjack's current Sailor Moon thread over on RPG.net. In the context of Sailor Moon vs. a character from The Wire, http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?578 ... st14118253]Post #176 was made:

Quote:Hey, it's probably not as weird as the image in mine (i.e., dumping Douglas Sangnoir into Baltimore and contriving some reason to get him involved).

Breaking off from the Globalization thread...
I'm considering ordering some Weiss Schwarz singles from one or another Japanese shop (probably orenoturn), but of course there are difficulties. Not just the language, but the post system and the payment methods expected are... a bit different. I was wondering if anyone here might be interested in a joint order of some sort, with the support of an intermediary acting on our behalf there in Japan... BlackAeronaut, lookin' at you, and hopin'...
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

Assuming all goes according to plan, tomorrow will be the last launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis and the end of the Space Shuttle program as a whole. The launch is scheduled for 11:26am EST, and will be able to be viewed at http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/135_splash/index.html]NASA's official website. I for one will be watching it live; I'm glad it falls on one of my days off.

I'm sorry.  That popped into my head and wouldn't leave until I shared it with someone else.
MonkeyFist put his fingers in his ears and is still going "la la la la!" in the kitchen.

Anyone playing RIFT? Not Rifts, the tabletop RPG, but the relatively new fantasy MMORPG. I picked it up last month and it's entertaining enough at the moment. I'm over on Epoch server currently, and was wondering if anyone else was.
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

There's a fellow over on the SJGames Forums who's doing conversions of the old V&V characters to GURPS, and posting the conversions in http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?p=1203980]a thread there.

Think we should show him Doug's V&V character sheet?
--
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

http://goingrogue.cityofheroes.com/en/n ... stand.html
but what I find most interesting?:

Quote:And that is the story behind the comic book featured in our new City of Heroes
opening tutorial. You can look forward to seeing this new feature
expanded upon in the future with the upcoming Signature Story Arcs that
will feature comic book covers as loading screens.