Jesse

Great sleuthing! Sad to have discovered I misremembered it to make Bray look worse, but glad to discover Astro getting props from the big man.

Someone correct me here, but when Bray first debuted on NXT I have a memory of someone (Astro?) putting together a blog post covering all the different references and influences on the character, only to have Bray respond on Twitter that he was overthinking it. I feel like that one interaction has outlined the rest of his career. Wyatt doing spooky shit on-screen because he's spooky and then fans bringing as much to it themselves as they can.

6 hours ago, David said:

...

On second thought I find the discussion tedious and I regret contributing to it.

I'm not sure how much I believe in this being an intentional wrecking, rather that they've been raised and surrounded by a Thatcher 2.0 ideology (that everyone with an ounce of common sense has told them would fuck up immediately), a media class designed to enable and encourage that so they've got 'think tanks' telling them they're right and the people will support it, they're reading papers and online editorials tell them they're right and they just have to have the power of will or some other gobshite to 'make the hard decisions' and we're now so far down the list of possible PM's we've gone past the ones who do it a bit but are savvy enough to land at least a bit closer to the political centre and we've got to the real, bought-in ideologues who thought they had it all figured out and were about to be hailed as heroes, all until about 20s after they did it when it fucked everything up in an instant and the support structures turned against them for exposing the lie.

Jonah is (formerly) NXT's Bronson Reed. Hefty Australian fella who does a big splash, he's good value for money.

Can't imagine there's many people in those credits list that give a shit whether you stay for the credits or not. Surely they care about their credit as a way to prove they worked on a thing so they can get more jobs, doubt the Best Boy is dying to make sure John Filmwanker sees his name scroll past.

That was really good for something you turned around in 48 hours! Nicely unsettling at points too.

I believe that's Chasyn Rance, who was convicted in 2011 of lewd or lascivious battery of a minor between the ages of 12 and 15 years old but still operates and trains people at Team Vision Dojo near the Performance Center.

Similar feelings to you, but against such a high profile opponent I feel like there's as much chance that Chimaev doesn't go full bore from the off - either just being cagey about making 100% sure he wins the fight, or from having too much fun and wanting to show off. I'm not as deep into UFC as I used to be though so have largely only seen his highlights, may have a skewed opinion on him from that

5 hours ago, RedRooster said:

@Mr_Danger - thanks for this! To be honest, I’m stuck very early on, on Margit. Summoning doesn’t help much, I get pummelled over, and over. 

I haven't played since I beat it around launch, but from memory Margit is set up to be a wall you run into early on to suggest to you that you should explore and level up doing other shit for a bit.

I'm not great at these games, so on launch day me and a friend spent the entire night just banging our heads against Margit and getting frustrated, then the next morning I just buggered off to do other dungeons & areas then came back 15 levels higher and battered him.

I don't know if this has been shared before, but I've spent the morning watching Fighting in the Age of Loneliness, a two-hour documentary about the history of MMA put together by Join Bois (whose work I love in general) and Felix Biederman.

I came to the UFC around the first series of the Ultimate Fighter, so it was fascinating learning about the early history of the sport, but it also ties the growth of the UFC to cultural changes at the time that's really fascinating to look back on. It's the kind of documentary I feel like even people who don't care about MMA could watch and enjoy.
 

31 minutes ago, simonworden said:

Out of interest what's the best way to play all these wonderful games again? Are there any emulation handhelds that run PS1 games well? I did have it all set up on an old laptop but I don't get much time with the littleun to set it up these days. 

One that would do up to PS2 level would be perfect for me and an ideal Christmas pressie to press gang the wife into buying. 

Heard good things about running emulation on Steamdeck (that Valve handheld) and some decent guides out there on how to easily get it up and running too

34 minutes ago, Fatty Facesitter said:

I need a free screen-recording solution and some audio setting suggestions. There's a few different ways of using Quicktime player, but I specifically need a solution that does the below - 

- Records the screen (of course)
- Records the audio
- Whilst recording, I can still hear the audio coming from the computer. 
- I may also need to be able to be hear via a microphone, and the compute still records my audio in addition to those other bits and pieces. 

I'm taking part in some lectures and we have permission to record them, but we're not able to physically record them via Zoom, which to be honest would solve all the issues straight away. So I'm looking at backup options. 

I'll genuinely buy a chippy tea for anyone that helps me resolve this successfully (first come, first serve). 

OBS is free screen-recording/streaming software that is lightweight and a really simple setup imo. https://obsproject.com/

Their wiki has a quickstart guide here: https://obsproject.com/wiki/OBS-Studio-Quickstart
and there's a million video and written guides because almost every streamer/gaming YouTuber uses it.

I'm turning 35 this week and since we're going away I unwrapped my present from my wife today because she didn't want to wait until we're back. She got me a chunky silver PS2, so now I can live all my backwards compatibility dreams and play my PS1 games on hardware instead of emulating them on PC!

Damn, I love Sam Barlow! Straying way off topic but I just saw that EDGE gave his new game IMMORTALITY a 10, so I've gotta check that out.

6 hours ago, Carbomb said:

The PS and PS2 contain one of my favourite game series of all time: Legacy of Kain. Blood Omen was clearly designed for older PCs, but it fit the console very well, and it was the first game I'd seen that had places and things you could only access at certain times of day, like caves which had stone doors that would only open on a full moon, or at noon. Soul Reaver was also ground-breaking, with the main character, Raziel, shifting in real time between the material world and the spectral one - the landscape shifting and changing before your very eyes, and certain paths only open to you via one or the other.

Still holds up pretty well now. My favourite of the entire series is Soul Reaver 2 on the PS2, but I do like to sometimes play the whole series over (excluding Blood Omen 2, which was not good).

Can't believe I never mentioned Soul Reaver! That game more than any other is the reason I decided as a kid I wanted to work in games and set me on the path I'm still on now I'm turning 35. Even forgetting how great the gameplay concept still is - its the cutscenes filled with a sense of Shakespearean drama and delivered by some world class actors that suckered me into wanting to become a games writer. Didn't quite make it into narrative but I got pretty close and some of that credit has to go to Amy Hennig's writing on Soul Reaver

I loved playing games since my first Commodore64 but the PS1 is the one most firmly burned into my brain from being a kid.

Some of them are real highs for the console in my memory, like playing Vandal Hearts for the first time and being blown away by all the possibilities for character progression, 
competitive games of Command & Conquer with my cousin where we'd sit opposite each other and agree to not attack for the first 20 minutes, and only playing indoor mode on FIFA '97 because me and my brother hated free throws and corners.

But I also have some strong memories that do not hold up - the strongest of which is playing cartoonish 3D platformer Jersey Devil while listening to that one Cleopatra album on loop because it was the only new CD I'd been able to buy in months. Becoming obsessed with Croc: Legend of the Gobbos, which is worse than Spyro in every single respect but because I had it first seemed so amazing compared to everything else.

Last year I made it a mission to play all the PS1 games I thought looked amazing at a kid but I never got the chance to play. Played my way through Parasite Eve 1 & 2, Dino Crisis, Wild Arms, Vagrant Story, and a few more I'm definitely forgetting and they all still hold up. The PS2 is my favourite console of all time just for the sheer number of amazing games it had, but the best times with the PS1 stick out the most in my memory

Mick entering backstage "Would anyone like the honour of paying for Mr. Foley's Twitter account?"

Tried to follow in scratch's footsteps by downloading MotoGP22 from Game Pass and bugger me that's rough. I've got most of the settings turned on to make it easy apart from auto-braking and after winning my first Moto3 race (after two and a half hours of trying to put 6 good laps together) it's now raining and I just cannot stay on the bike at all. Credit to anyone who can do anything even approaching sim racers, arcade all the way for me from here I think

I had the same feeling with Xenoblade. I normally like these hybrid systems, and have even been able to find the joy in the Tales Of.. system now I'm playing Arise but Xenoblade left me cold and confused at basically every turn. A shame, because I liked the world and it seemed to be doing some fun stuff, but every major fight became a roadblock and I know I'm not even a third of the way through.

30 minutes ago, jazzygeofferz said:

Isn't there legislation where you can't work if the temperature goes above 38? Although I could see the Tories rolling that back, or increasing the threshold. 

https://www.gov.uk/workplace-temperatures

There's no law for minimum or maximum temperatures, though places of work are supposed to be kept at a 'reasonable temperature' there's no guidance for that that is for the maximum. And for those that work from home it's "best of luck".

My place is all WFH and I don't know as we've had any official guidance but I've canned all meeting for my team on the hottest days and convincing them to take time off if they can or if not to move their hours around so they can avoid working during the worst of it and get anything needed done when it's a bit cooler and maybe more bearable to be sat at a PC.

Congrats Bacon, that's amazing news!

5 minutes ago, adjarrell said:

Strange question. But can't find out and wondering if anyone knew the answer... 

What is said at the very top of John Cena's music? Just before the main tune begins, the only way I can describe it is that it sounds like 

'hurrrrrr rackabum'.... What on earth is it that's said? 

I can't tell you why, but apparently it's "Amadou" and is sampled from M.O.P's song Ante Up. My best guess after some googling is it's a tribute to Ligue 1 footballer Ibrahim Amadou

Considering how crap the build-up to this was, and how generally bad AEW are at introducing wrestlers, especially overseas ones. Maybe they should have started with Forbidden Door, promote it as a big crossover event, show some New Japan highlight reels for the lads, but otherwise have it start off on a stronger foot by being a big fun supershow and if you want to involve the NJPW lot more after that you have more audience buy-in and a bunch of PPV footage of them interacting with your big stars and looking impressive.

Obviously there's a bunch of business reasons why that's terrifying and probably not the best tack to take but given the injuries and the lackluster build on AEW itself I can't imagine they were shifting tickets based on what was happening each week on tv

Downing half a can of Pepsi Max immediately after is fine though, right?