I figured I'd get something in, and perhaps a few paragraphs more than a mention that I need to change the header text.
The really sad part is I never did end up using the SQL mess from last time.
Parsed about 30K images from Ajax, which leaves about 75K till I'm done, not really fast going but I've collected a preliminary ~2K to sort through for addition to Wallpapers and humor pictures. It's about time to get looking for New Year's pictures on some of the functional sites though.
No X-Mas wallpaper, my list consisted of 0 items so that's what I got. Didn't really feel the mood this year amid working (despite my vacation time) and everything, just took a lot of time to rest and recover from the year. Didn't want anything though, mind you, finalizing the list for the components I want to replace Asgard with and then I'll order up the new machine (while trying to figure out a name)
Came into work today (slightly late to open cause of Traffic Lights, fuckers going 25 under the limit, and just not wanting to get out of bed) with Star 94 on the Radio playing Panic: at the Disco's - I write sins not tragedies which is the "Haven't you people ever heard of closing the god-damn door" which sounds incredibly awkward for a work song, even if they just radio-silence the "damn".
At the War Room last night David passed me the source book for something called Cthulu Tech so I of course opened it up to see what it was like.
They claim
"Built on Framewerk
Gone are the days that hobbyists wanted intricate, complex mechanics in their games. Simple, intuitive systems like White Wolf’s Storyteller or Eden Studios’ Unisystem are now the order of the day. Even Wizards of the Coast's d20 has been streamlined from its more complicated days.
Framewerk, the proprietary system upon which CthulhuTech is built, is not only simple and intuitive, it is cinematic, exciting, and puts destiny back in the hands of the player. Its easy to grasp nature makes the game straightforward to learn and quick to start. Its clever dice mechanics make even the simplest of task resolutions exciting."
Ladies and gentlemen. The sytem calls for you to roll a number of D10's based on relevant skill expertise, the end value of which is computed via:
A) The Highest Value amongst the dice
B) The sum of any matching die rolls (ie: 4, 4, 6 can be computed as 4 + 4 = 8)
C) The sum of any "straight" of die rolls (ie: 4, 5, 6, 9 can be computed as 4 + 5 + 6 = 15)
Elegant and simple my ass.
There's roughly 20 non-combat skills and 8 combat skills each and the non-combats go all over the place including Crime, Larceny (yes, they're different), Seduction, Persuading, and many many others all of which have at least 5 specializations within them.
It uses a morphed variant of the Fallout system (which I'm sure has a different archetype as the true hier to power, but I don't dabble in anything aside from D&D and D20 Modern) which features 5 Attributes of 1-10 (allocate 35 total across them) and derives relevant abilities from these (Speed is a function of the average of Agility and Strength, etc). Couple in the requisite Min-Maxing of Flaws and Traits.
The oddity of it all though, is you gain generic EXP, which can in turn be used to buy anything: Attributes, Skills, Feats, Attribute-derived abilities.
Suffice to say I spent a good 45 minutes in recitation of this (to humorous effect) and still didn't even touch on the combat system.
Anime-side, not a ton to say since the dying sound card pisses me the hell off, but Macross Frontier is jaw-droppingly amazing. Year in retrospect coming later.
