bluejay

C'est vrais!

I believe it should be “vrai” no? I can’t find anything plural in what I said.

Or maybe I’m still rubbish at French and I’m missing something.

Oops!   Off the cuff response...Not been in a French class since '93 (?)...Merde!

Nintendo said they only last for rive years but they actually last for way longer...

I wonder what type of batteries they used?  Must be a very good brand.

Doesn't it depend on if you use it daily, or just passively let it rest? I seem to recall that the AA type batteries in my first Casio calculator also lasted for quite a while, mostly by not using it for years.

Perhaps, but in the opposite way from what you're thinking. Your calculator battery probably lasted many years because the battery was quite literally not being used when the calculator was off. The save battery is however perpetually wired to the save RAM circuitry so that, you know, it can keep the data alive. I'm thinking that maybe Nintendo could have wired it up so that it doesn't consume battery juice when the system is on (and therefore can keep the RAM chips alive by itself), but even so, it would mean that frequent use would extend the battery's life, not shorten it.

Congrats.  I've never read it.  It is often regarded as the finest piece of anti-war literature ever written.  I think they must have been working on the recent Netflix movie before the war in Ukraine and Germany's new increased spending on defense, but I find that the release of the film is particularly well timed.

I've read "A Farewell to Arms", but I'm not sure about "All Quiet on the Western Front".

Definitely go read Iron Coffins and The Forgotten Soldier. I have been meaning to read Das Boot as well; maybe I will do that next.

Have you read the books? Take the available amount of time, divide it up by the number of essays/reports, and set time limits to get each one done. If you have additional time after getting a first draft of each done, then divide that time up to go back and polish each one.

Does ChatGPT work in Korean, or are you doing it in English?

Thanks for the great (and also sneaky) advice, folks. I have nearly two months to get it all done, so I’ll work my way through all of it through winter break. I have a French friend whom I can consult should I feel it necessary to do so. ChatGPT is totally capable of speaking Korean, but it simply can’t generate enough text to be helpful in any significant way. 
 

Regarding the book reports, the two books need to be selected from a list of 20, my favorite two being All Quiet on the Western Front and Lord of the Flies. I’ll have to read them whenever I find the time, although I’m not yet entirely sure if I’d be able to generate five pages’ worth of text out of either. 

I just created my own stream so I can see your status!

If anyone needs me I'll be in the bathroom,  creating my own stream.

If only we all could be as good at driving as Walter Rohrl. 

It is a weird sport.  It's like they TRIED to invent a racing sport that included a way to create controversy.  I think that every 4 years when the Olympics rolls around.

Congrats!

if you're having fun save states don't matter, if they ruin the fun, then they're a problem

Wait until you see the final stage. No rings lol. Metropolis Zone has some awesome music, though. You're making me want to play this game again! Drop dash on Switch Sonic 1 and 2 is amazing, by the way. After Mania, I keep forgetting that drop dash didn't exist aside from in the Sonic 3 beta before it got cut, and I am very glad that they put it in Sonic 1 and 2 on Switch.

Oh, so those chimes and flashing Sonics were extra continues? I had no idea. I first thought they were extra lives, and was rather confused when I didn’t end up with any. I shall try to acquire as much of them as possible on my next attempt, thanks for the tip. 

The 1up sound is a loud fanfare, the continue sound is a chime.

I've only gotten as far as the final boss, and then, only once.

You know how the game's physics engine works? If you don't, take a look into it, as the way it works is really cool. Sonic's gameplay, in Sonic 1, 2, CD, 3&K, and Mania, is extremely heavily reliant on the physics engine, which was something perhaps revolutionary at the time in a home console game. Sonic is defined by slopes, and these are the most important parts of the level design, as they are what affect your jump height to a massive degree. With enough speed, which you get from practice, and an upwards slope, you can jump insanely high and far. This is how you master Sonic. Speed is your reward for being good, not something that is or should be given to the player without earning it, and this is why the 2D games have a relatively high skill ceiling for platformers.

I played with it as well a while back.  Fun game, but the time it would take to really figure it out was just more than I have available.

Then I turned it into, "build the least spaceworthy ship possible and see how long your Kerbals last."  The goal isn't to necessarily have it just blow up, but to fail in novel ways and with as great a casualty count as possible.  Bonus points if it actually makes it into space for a time.

Building spaceplanes now. I’ve managed to reach orbit then drop back down, but I don’t have fuel to go any further. Plane is heavy enough as is. I have no idea how people build interplanetary planes. 
 

In response to your challenge, I built a satellite covered in an ungodly amount of small solid fuel boosters and put it in orbit. I made a rocket with a crew of about 10 kerbals and put it in orbit, making sure the two have intersecting orbits. I sped the game up until the two finally collided. It took way too much time and effort, but I think it’s a pretty spectacular way to kill a dozen kerbies. 

Happy Birthday SlidellMan!

Thank you very much, it means a lot. Oh, I happen to be around 6'3", so the GTA-R is rather cramped.

@SlidellMan: Happy birthday!

Seeing that makes me regret ever selling my 1973 GTV.

Super jealous. I miss having 4~6 feet of snow on the ground in October. It only snows like once every 2 years in Tokyo, sadly.

I wish it would snow here!  Almost nothing's really added up this year!  We could use it badly...

I feel you guys, having lived in Southern California for 2 1/2 years. Very nice to see actual snow piling up on the streets for once. 

Once when I hosted a retro gaming expo, we had a for-fun Tetris competition (SNES). Out of the blue arrived a professional Tetris player from Israel who happened to be in the country, to show off his skills.

Also I read last week about that AI which had broken Tetris on NES or something like that.

I’ve seen the YouTube video. Tetris froze at 700 something thousand points iirc. 
 

Never played SNES Tetris actually, I should try it; see if I’m any good at it. 

Looks like in Korea,  Every car is white.

@GoldLeader My car is white as well Johnny. I would blend easy with the rest. 

They really aren’t kidding when they say every car in Korea is black, gray, silver, or black. Apart from taxis, Hyundai N line cars, and the occasional person who actually cares, everyone just buys grayscale cars cause they’re worth more in the used market.  

I've been sick lately and I got a COVID test today too.  I guess I'll have  a few days off while I wait for results.

They send a text to everyone who got the test on the following morning at 8AM showing the results. If I’m lucky I might make it to school tomorrow. 

Tested negative, went to school. 

I get the feeling that before long CAPTCHAs will have become countereffective.

Yeah, there’s even a video on YouTube of a robot completing a CAPTCHA (which I assume is totally a setup anyways). 
 

I was getting a CAPTCHA whenever accessing Atariage, but it appears that it’s gone now. 

Hmmm.   Never got one here.

(They know I'm a robot.)

There was some talk a few years ago about adding them as consoles in MAME, but I don't believe that it ever really went anywhere.  From what I remember of the (relatively brief) discussion, obstacles included:

• Obtaining the units, which were mostly on lease to the airlines and maintained under contract by the manufacturer
• Some may have worked on a VDI / thin client model, so could be relatively hardware-intensive to emulate
• Software would have to be extracted from units that weren't taken back by the manufacturer, which would make it as difficult to find in the wild as the hardware
• Potential for whole-disk encryption, security keys / dongles, etc.

It wasn't so much that there was any opposition to the idea or that they were considered unreasonable to emulate, but that the practicalities of obtaining a working setup to reverse-engineer and emulate were very significant.

Semi-related: What I would really love is some emulator of those 3D non-textured driving simulators that driving schools have been using for decades. I googled like crazy, but I had no luck. I remember being hypnotized by those machines as a kid. Computerized visual tests are interesting too.

It's sad that some programs/games/books are lost forever. And let's not talk about songs created thousands of years ago, as we only have the instruments for those.