vile wrote:

I will go if I can actually find a ride. I live in San Leandro, 15 minutes from Oakland.

If you can get to a BART, you can take BART to any Amtrak station and Amtrak runs to Sacramento. I use it a fair amount.

http://blightgaming.com/2012/09/06/607/#.UEkod3-b6Sp

Fzero wrote:

Marxist wrote:

Well the point is just to have the power to run around, do the few quests that are worth doing (prolly around 15 in the whole game) because they have visually pleasing environments and decent writing. Otherwise it's just a rape train to kill Alduin and be done with it an off to better games.

I'm not a bethesda fan because everything just feels like recycled boringness. Why eat ramen when you can make something better for the same price.

What can you eat that's like 20 cents and better than Ramen?

Potatoes. I can get 20 lbs. for $4, easy.

Abramelin_ wrote:

This was nothing but a publicity stunt and an attempt to gain votes from the Internet crowd.

Someone tell him there's a town hall at goatse.

And you know what? It worked. Genius PR move.
Of course, it was completely devoid of any sort of content or substance, but we should be expecting that from political debates by now.

I've been thinking on this thread and some comments made during Seanbud's stream.
I have to say, I don't think the smack talk between the US and Europe lessens TF2's viability as an esport. Baseball rivalries are fierce enough that a number of men wearing Dodgers' gear savagely beat a Giants' fan into a coma a year back, but baseball is still seen as a legitimate, competitive enterprise. Now, that specific case may have been more gang related, but there has been a number of similar incidents throughout history.
What's more likely holding back TF2's status as a legitimate competitive e-sport is the rampant racism, sexism, and bigotry that is prevalent at nearly every level of the game. This is the internet, and so of course people are going to act like they do on the internet. But if we want to be seen as more than an internet community of teenagers playing a shooter, and get the sponsors to see us as a legitimate and influential market, we're going to need to take a long look at what values we hold and, more importantly, what values we represent to other people. Will cutting out racism alone make TF2 a popular e-sport? Assuredly not. Will it help? Likely.
I'd just like to point out that while my experience in competitive TF2 is limited to watching (hundreds of hours of) gameplay (over the course of ~4 years), I do have a little more training in business.
Anyways, this isn't pointed at anyone in particular, just my musings.

Scholar wrote:

Sure the EU vs NA games attracted plenty of viewers, from the 4 such matches played but how long did that last? 3-4 hours tops. That is not the purpose of the thread. How many north americans watch Prem? how many europeans watch Invite? almost none. Those are the numbers that matter.

When you look at a successful game like sc2, north american fans dont just watch north american starcraft. They follow nasl, ipl, dreamhack, gsl, etc. Hell, people even went as far as staying up until 3-5 am just to watch proleague. Thats what gives the big viewer numbers, and that is what TF2 needs in order to become a bit more than a circlejerk.

I'm an American and I try to watch Euro games but... they just don't do it for me. For the longest time, I thought the only two teams in Premier were Epsilon and Infused, because those were the only matches I was seeing casted. Maybe it's their metagame and I find their strategy dull compared to NA, maybe it's just that I don't know the ins and outs of their scene as well so it's not as compelling for me, but I tried and found it relatively unpalatable.

EWWV wrote:

uc berk

My roommate mentioned one of his old roommates played TF2 competitively, and went to ESEA LAN. He knows next to nothing about TF2, so I don't think he made it up, and I've wanted to track down the old roommate and figure out who he is for the longest time. But that'd be pretty creepy. (All of this happened at Berkeley, in case you were wondering about the relevance)

Fzero wrote:

A list of Authors to read

Richard Dawkins
Carl Sagan
Stephen Hawking
Neil Tyson
Bertrand Russell
Robert A. Heinlein
Orson Scott Card
Robert jordan
Orwell
Noam Chomsky
Kant
Forest Church
Hobbes
John Locke
Friedrich Nietzsche

I haven't read any of the sciencey folks, but I feel qualified to comment on the others.
Kant's immensely important to modern ethical and philosophical thought but his prose is incredibly dense, more so than his contemporaries I would say. Kierkegaard has the same problem. They have important content, but try to hide it and disguise it as much as possible.
Bertrand Russell is a must, Orwell is my second favourite author (read Homage to Catalonia, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, his short stories, his articles, really anything other than 1984 and Animal Farm), Hobbes and Locke are both influential and approachable. I'm still working on Nietzsche, but with him it seems important to go in without your preconceived notions about what he stands for and what he supports.
Now for the tough part. Chomsky is my favourite author overall, his works in linguistics are groundbreaking and his other books offer a powerful indictment of how global geopolitics function. His works are easily read by "laymen." But. If you don't agree with his political beliefs, it'll be a tough read.
If that's a turnoff to you, then I'll suggest Foucault. While Foucault has radical beliefs of his own, you can read his works without constantly being confronted by them. The trade-off is that Foucault is imminently less readable than Chomsky.

Now for some suggestions of my own. If most of your library is dominated by science fiction or fantasy authors and you want to expand into a more "literary" area, I suggest authors like Jules Vernes, HG Wells, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Isaac Asimov. While not considered part of "Western literary canon," they do an excellent job of bridging the gap and putting the reader in the right mood to hanker after something more.

For the parts of canon that are easier to approach and get into, I suggest the following:
Alexandre Dumas- The Three Musketeers has aged incredibly well, and it's a commonly used pop culture reference.
Jane Austen- I love her prose, but the content is tremendous as well. This might not be your taste, particularly if you don't like the romantic plots of her stories, but there is so much going on in her works that they're hard for me to put down.
Ernest Hemingway- Everything he wrote. Really.
John Steinbeck- Anything he wrote after Tortilla Flat and before East of Eden. The heart of his work is contained in Grapes of Wrath, In Dubious Battle, East of Eden, Tortilla Flat (or Cannery Row, they're remarkably similar), and Of Mice and Men. That may seem a long list, but most of those are relatively short and fast reads.
Albert Camus- Everything in his (tragically short) oeuvre deserves a reading. The Fall, The Stranger, The Plague, and his collection of short stories are all easy enough reads that pay enormous dividends. Top that off with The Rebel, his non-fiction philosophical piece, and you're golden. Do keep in mind that Camus was called "an author who tried to write philosophy." (and Sartre was called "a philosopher who tried to write novels.")
Oscar Wilde- Picture of Dorian Grey, The Importance of Being Earnest, maybe some of his nonfiction.

Once you're confident enough, Russian literature is some of the most beautiful and deeply moving on the planet. The Brothers Karamazov, some of Dostoevsky's shorter works, and Tolstoy's works as well have stood the tests of time. The problem with them is reader comprehension and the constant flood of Russian names.

"Modern Thinkers"
Slavoj Zizek, although I can't always tell when he's serious and when he's just trying to be provocative. Alan Badious. Edward Said. Arundhati Roy. Guy Debord. Terry Eagleton. Gore Vidal. Those thinkers provide a good mixture of criticism, original philosophical thought, and commentary on current events.

So yeah. I think I've bored you long enough.

Reading Burr by Gore Vidal right now. Historical fiction about Aaron Burr but Vidal did his homework and most everything that happens (or is said) in the book actually happened in real life. I'm loving it, and I know there are a few more history buffs here that might enjoy it as well.

They have a bunch of spin off channels now. International History, Military History, a few others maybe. I don't have a functioning television, but when I visit my family that and baseball are all I ever watch. History channel isn't as good as I remember it being (what ever is?) but it's serviceable.

DontTellDave wrote:

Here's the view from a 15 mile hike I did with my friend a couple weeks ago
That's the bay. In the picture you can't really see it, but San Francisco is on the right side, and Oakland is on the left.

I do a lot of hiking in the Bay Area, and especially the Berkeley hills. There's this one spot in the hills that I like to hike up to, if you get there at sunset you can see all of Berkeley and San Francisco laid out beneath you. You see the sun set on the Pacific Ocean behind the Marin headlands, and then the cities light up. It's like a mirror of the stars. I fucking love the Bay.

duder wrote:

Sure you can, pay $1 to play your free to play game and you can get in a Valve server.

I'm not a fan of this either, but to be fair, how many of you actually play on official Valve servers?

Edit: I heard Valve set up some official servers that require tickets and some that do not.

enoryt wrote:

Thanks for all the kind words! I rewatched a few of the streams and do agree that the audio quality of my mic can be a lot better. I'll play around with xsplit for the next few days or so. Also, I'd like to advertise on reddit/comp spuf or whatever, but will I get banned for promoting my stream? I think I may follow in Pyouur's footsteps and do an AMA at SPUF and than pimp my stream all over the place. Awwww snaps, I'm gettin all excited!

Streaming often, and on a semi-regular schedule is probably the most important thing you can do.

I've noticed that many people who self-identify as a brony also tend to hate Muslims. Not really sure what's going on there but if there are any sociologists out there looking for a thesis, that one's on me.

Edit: Forgive me, I didn't realize the conversation had moved on. Oh well.

3/5 Human- WW4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuRlTOLUDJk&feature=relmfu