Recently in Miscellany Category
The Princess here. Doing my part to uphold the principles of free speech upon which this country was founded (or something), I am pleased to provide airtime today to C-Man. In my post How is this not cheating? I basically called him a cheater, so it seems only fair that he should be allowed to respond publicly to these accusations.
I do take exception to the use of the word "deigned" in the following, since he was originally going to respond in a comment and I encouraged him to post instead so that he would have the greatest possible opportunity to remove the stain from his reputation. I also take exception to his erratic capitalization and how he types his ellipses. My guess is he learned both of those behaviors in law school.
Now onto his defense.
So the princess deigned to give me the opportunity to defend my "cheating" ways in a guest post.
I'm a programmer by trade.
Copying someone else's code without their permission. . . that's cheating.
Reading the API documentation, even if the manufacturer didn't see fit to provide the documentation and left it up to enthusiasts to write it themselves . . . not cheating.
This pretty clearly falls into the latter category:
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES Fusion Database
It's all about what the rules of the game are, not how to exploit them. Coming up with your own exploits, in this case deciding what persona to create to counter a given boss, is the fun part. Pressing X and O 65,280 times in order to write down every possible combination of personae, not so much fun.
(great game by the way, highly recommend Persona 3 to anyone who likes RPGs)
The Princess again: I feel it's only fair to include that while he was writing this out, I said "I clearly remember a time when you were playing Final Fantasy XII and you went over the the computer to find out exactly how to get out of this clearing because you couldn't figure it out, how does that fit in? That's more what I was thinking about when I was writing the post." and he was like "Oh yeah that."
You know how there are people who play video games? Like, oh, my husband? And they play some of the game, then they look some stuff up online to figure out how to beat the demon who keeps kicking their ass or unlock the puzzle or save the prince or whatever?
How is that not cheating?
Is it not cheating because everyone does it? Do the game designers figure that everyone's going to and build the games accordingly? And if the system is set up that way and everyone does it, does that mean that the user-generated content outside of the game is basically part of the game, which the game designers essentially outsourced for no payment to the players?
This is not the weightiest topic ever discussed here in the Flooded Lizard Kingdom, but I am continually bemused by C-Man's insistence that it isn't cheating to look up how to solve a problem in the game he's playing instead of just playing the game until he figures it out.
Someone please explain. C-Man is a member of the Texas bar in good standing, if that helps.
- Learning how to use Photoshop well.
- Caring that I don't know how to use Photoshop well.
Shut down by Flickr user Florin Hatmanu, reproduced here under a Creative Commons license
If my handwriting were as interesting as this and I could take decent photographs, I might have done otherwise.
Love #171 by Flickr user ashley rose, reproduced here under a Creative Commons license
From our mailbag:
Why aren't there any books about the Khans (as in the Mongols) for kids? Why doesn't somebody blog about that? [...] there's plenty of other books for kids about scary historical figures that killed a bunch of people (I have almost 5 on the first "emperor" of China.)
And this is why I will never homeschool. I think strange enough thoughts as it is, I don't need to add "analyzing lack of bloodthirst in children's literature" to the list.
Lead Type by Flickr user jm3, reproduced here under a Creative Commons license
An acquaintance of mine who shall remain nameless has given me permission to share this snippet of an email with you:
He always (always or maybe once) qualifies any discussion of the cat with "Well, that's the high end..." which causes me to wonder if there's a difference between a high end Siberian cat and a low end.
So tell me, what extras would one expect with the high end model?
I just saw someone described as a "diet advisor, socialite, and internationally recognized hostess."
Seriously?
Regular readers will no doubt recall that last week I embarked on a rigorous scientific study of mail delivery timetables across the United States.
I am now pleased to present the results.
The reason I get my mail at 4 o'clock in the afternoon is that the mail route goes like this:
10:30am - Twin Cities, MN
11:00 am - Ft. Worth and Dallas, TX
11:05 am - Round Rock, TX
11:30 am - St. Louis, MO
2:00 pm - Canada
4:00 pm - my house in Austin, TX
4:01 pm - the last house on the route, which is in San Carlos, CA
That swing through Missouri and Canada eats up a lot of time, doesn't it? But then ZOOM.
