O... kay...

Quote:The largest planet in our solar system is usually dominated by two dark bands in its atmosphere, with one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern hemisphere.

However, the most recent images taken by amateur astronomers have revealed the lower stripe known as the Southern Equatorial Belt has disappeared leaving the southern half of the planet looking unusually bare.

The band was present in at the end of last year before Jupiter ducked behind the Sun on its orbit. However, when it emerged three months later the belt had disappeared.

_____
DEATH is Certain. The hour, Uncertain...

Not what you might be thinking.
You have to stick with it to the end for the real gut punch.



I really have nothing else to say. There's nothing else I CAN say.

I'm not sure how many of the regulars have not heard about this. But I'm just trying to spread the joy.
Sorry if what follows comes across as a bit biased, but I honestly feel that this is one of the best things to happen to mac gaming in quite some time.

So without further ado:
Steam now has a mac client (direct link to .dmg)
And they are giving away Portal, for Free (as in beer). Offer good until the 24th.

If you already have a steam account, you probably already know. And if you don't this is very good reason to be sucked in.

And the coolest thing (at least in my opinion): If you own a copy of a game on the pc, and they are making it available on the mac, you get it on the mac. No extra charge.
Obviously not all games are going to be ported, but anything that is running on the source engine (portal, team fortress 2, half life 2, etc) is already ported or in the process of being done.

A word of warning though. They have sales most weekends that make it very hard not to separate money from wallet. (right now torchlight is $10, it will probably stay this way until sunday.)
-Terry
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"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

"One Girl Revolution", Superchick (link is to a Cat Returns AMV)

Quote:I wear a disguise
I'm just your Average Jane
The "Super" doesn't stand for "model"
But that doesn't mean I'm plain
If all you see is how I look
You miss the superchick within
And I christen you Titanic
Underestimate and swim
I've got the rifle gonna be myself (x4)
REFRAIN:
And I'll be everything that I wanna be
I am confidence and insecurity
I am a voice yet waiting to be heard
I'll shoot the shot, bang, that you hear 'round the world
And I'm a one-girl revolution
I'm a one-girl revolution (x2)
Some people see the revolution but most only see the girl

I can lose my hard earned freedom if my fear defines my world

I declare my independence from the critics and their stones

I can plant my revolution, I can learn to stand alone

REFRAIN
BRIDGE
FINAL REFRAIN:
And I'll be everything that I wanna be

I am confidence and insecurity

I am a voice yet waiting to be heard

I'll shoot the shot, bang, that you hear 'round the world
Everything that I wanna be
I am confidence and insecurity
I am a voice yet waiting to be heard
I'll shoot the shot, bang, that you hear 'round the world
And I'm a one-girl revolution
I'm a one-girl revolution

So, everything was running just fine yesterday. But I tried to log in this morning, and the whole client is in slow motion.

I don't just mean in-game. After entering my password and hitting the button to log in, the animation takes a few seconds. Switching between pages in character select takes a few seconds. The loading screen for logging in takes the same amount of time as usual, but then it takes a long time for the loading screen to fade out. And everything in game is slow enough to be unplayable.

Any idea what could be causing this?

-Morgan.

So I've been recently tooling around with my music software, mostly trying to get a feel for composing and mixing drum beats as an on-again, off-again project. Not too long ago this one particular rhythm got stuck in my head until I had no choice but to program it out. So I pull up Reason, drop in a drum machine and manually sequence the kick drum leaving everything else out for the time being. Now, the sequence grid defaults to 4/4 and after finishing the beat I realize that it doesn't line up with the grids. At all.

"The hell?" I thought. I'd been pretty sure that it wasn't in too weird a beat, but then I shrugged. The sequencer has a box to input the time signature for a given piece, so I navigated to that and tried 3/4.

Not even close.

7/8?

Closer, but still off by a bit.

5/8?

Way off.

2/3?

Uh-uh.

After several attempts with more and more esoteric and odd time signatures, the closest one that I had of the bunch was 7/8, so I pulled that back up and stared at the grid lines for a minute. On a lark, I doubled the numerator and that got me real close. After a little bit a fiddling I finally got to the true time signature of the piece.

15/8.

I believe my exact reaction was "Abuhwuhhuh?" and then I got a headache from trying to think about it too much.

Don't be alarmed. High above your heads, a zombie satellite is on the loose. OK, actually, it won't really be a bother to us earthlings. Or at least to most of us. (More on that later.) But the rogue communications satellite is wreaking havoc in Earth's orbit and does threaten to interfere with signals coming from other satellites. Here's the backstory...

The communications satellite named Galaxy 15 lost contact with ground control after a solar flare probably fried its brain. As a story from the Christian Science Monitor reports, attempts from Earth to contact the satellite have been unsuccessful. But instead of just dying and drifting off, the satellite has continued to orbit the Earth, even though it refuses to receive instructions from its owner, Intelsat.

For the science nerds out there: The satellite is still on, with its "C-band telecommunications payload still functioning even as it has left its assigned orbital slot of 133 degrees west longitude 36,000 kilometers over the equator." Translation: Not good.

What's confounding scientists is that even though the satellite is toast, it continues to operate at full power, but with nobody telling it what to do. Why on earth we should care: The "zombiesat" (as its known in space talk) could steal a working sat signal, and interrupt programming for its customers. Yes, that means our television programs. The horror. As the blog Boing Boing points out, Galaxy 15 was one of the satellites that carried the Syfy channel's signal. And now it's met an end good enough to be its own Syfy show.

The Galaxy 15 is on course to mess with an SES satellite that transmits to Luxembourg. If it's any consolation to the good people of Luxembourg, officials are calling the situation "unprecedented."

The undead satellite has caused searches for "galaxy 15 satellite" to rise an astronomical 10,300% in the last week. Searches were also out of this world for "nasa satellite imagery," "satellite photo," and "nasa satellites." It's also caused people to wonder "how many satellites are in space." Not enough to bump into each other. Yet.

(Rubbing hands together.... "Just as planned.")
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Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

http://kotaku.com/5531665/if-super-mari ... de-in-2010]Link for the half-dozen people who haven't seen this yet

He missed pointing out the opportunity to download user-created levels (for a fee, of course)...
--
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

So much Frustration. So little time.
Earlier today. I was running Crown of Glory with a friend of mine, then we decided since he didn't have much time on his hands I'd switch to Lighting blitz and farm some freaks for some xp So I quit the game then started the client again for a faster transition.i'm sure you've all done it at some point
Anyways. I type in my password it says i'm still logged on..but thats normal since I just quit instead of logging out. So whatever..I go 'ok' and log back in. Get to the server select screen. click on virtue then. Client freezes before it goes to char select.
so frustrating..I've been fighting this for the past 5 hours.
I can Play WoW. I can Play DDO. I haven't tried Sins of a Solar Empire..but I have this feelin it will work.
But I can't go from Server selection to Character Select without client freeze and crash.