Persistent, Niggling Questions

[MaverickZer0]

I believe Howl's Moving Castle was originally written by Diana Wynne Jones, and it's an anime movie now too.

[Nate the Great]

So I'm reviewing my old college textbooks, and I keep getting annoyed by expressions like this:

(variable)=(equation) (less than or equal to) (constant)

That is, if if the equation yields a value greater than the constant, you're supposed to use the constant instead of the value from the equation.

PNQ: Why can't the books simply use

(variable)=min (equation, constant)

Isn't this an easier way and less confusing?

[Nate the Great]

So if you hadn't heard yet, Disney bought LucasFilm and is planning a sequel Star Wars trilogy...

PNQ: Am I the only one that's more interested in the fact that Industrial Light and Magic was part of the deal?

I mean, Star Wars 7-9 will happen and I probably won't watch them. Maybe Indiana Jones 5 will happen, maybe it won't. But consider what will happen when Pixar and Industrial Light and Magic can exchange ideas and team up where required. Magic, that's what'll happen.

[Nate the Great]

I've just finished reading an old book that has hundreds of different solitaire games in it...

PNQ: What's the most obscure solitaire game you've ever played more than one game of (one game experimentation doesn't count)?

I guess Grandfather's Clock is the most obscure variant I've ever played.

[Nate the Great]

I'm contemplating Kirk's split into good and evil versions in "The Enemy Within"...

PNQ: Doesn't this episode render all arguments of "the transporter carries your original molecules to the destination, so you aren't killed and cloned" rather moot?

[NAHTMMM]

There are a lot of solitaire games out there. I couldn't say which are more obscure than others. Aces Up, Poker Solitaire, and Grandfather's Patience come to mind as ones I've played.

[Nate the Great]

Prelude: I have not seen The Amazing Spider-Man, nor do I intend to.

PNQ: Why didn't Uncle Ben use the "Great Responsibility" line?

Seriously. This isn't hard to mess up. It's only the single defining moral of Spider-Man's universe after all.

In an interview the director said that they couldn't find a way to fit it in. Well, that seems to call for a little more effort, doesn't it?

[Nate the Great]

I'm watching a Let's Play of Ocarina of Time: Master Quest, and the guy is confused as to whether "Deku" is pronounced "Deh-coo" or "Dee-coo."

PNQ: How do you pronounce it?

Personally, I've always gone with "Deh-coo". It just sounds better.

[NAHTMMM]

I would probably pronounce it as Deh-coo as well.

[Nate the Great]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=0TJbFoCTVOs

CR of Channel Awesome reviewing a tabletop game called Pirates at Ocean's Edge. It sounds very complicated to me, and requires a cheat sheet to keep track of what's going on.

But then again, I've never played it. And I used to play Yu-gi-oh, another insanely complicated game that has entire pages of errata for most cards.

PNQ: Are all games (MMORPGs, tournament fighters, etc.) like this? I mean, do they all look more complicated than they really are?

[NAHTMMM]

I imagine it depends on how well-designed they are. Some games, the complications all matter at some point. Other games, you just focus on one or two winning strategies.

Then there's power creep over time, like in Kingdom of Loathing, where there may be thousands of items but only a few dozen currently have any relevance for the serious power gamers. A new item gets introduced and there are a dozen forum posts debating, among other things, whether it saves 0.7 of a turn compared with a similar item from a year ago, and under what circumstances.

It's really a question of a learning curve. You just learn a little more the more you play, until you know the relevant details inside and out. Then it doesn't seem so complicated.

I used to play Yu-gi-oh, another insanely complicated game that has entire pages of errata for most cards.

Hah, that just sounds badly constructed. Maybe you mean exceptions or something rather than errata?

[Nate the Great]

Most Yu-gi-oh errata consists of "If you play this card against another card, which wins or what would happen?"

[Nate the Great]

PNQ: How many five-year missions do you think the original crew went on?

Most indications tend to lead to a guess of three: the original, the one between the first and second movies, and the one between the fifth and sixth movies. But I suppose it's a matter of opinion.

[Nate the Great]

PNQ: What's the deal with Mr. Bill?

I've seen both Spoony and Paw mention him in videos. I vaguely knew of his existence. I don't watch Saturday Night Live, so I had to look up his origin.

Really, is it simply "claymation is funny" combined with "funny voice"? Is it really as simple as that? Why is this guy so memetic?

[NAHTMMM]

Seems to me that the simplest things are often the most memetic.

Really, though, I have no idea about Mr. Bill. I've seen him in a commercial once and referred to once and have no knowledge of him beyond that.

Somehow I shouldn't be surprised that he started in SNL. SNL seems to have started a lot of little cultural things.

[Nate the Great]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJpBYByNiAg

So Stuart Ashens (if you're not following his YouTube channel, etc. etc. plug plug) got a floppy disk at a convention as a promo item. It contains one jpeg. He had to dig out a USB external floppy drive to use it.

PNQ: When's the last time you used a floppy disk?

I want more interesting stories than "I used a reboot disk to recover my corrupted hard drive", so reboot disks are banned.

[NAHTMMM]

I just retrieved the Win '95 and XP machines from my parents' place, so yeah. I'm gonna be retrieving some stuff off of floppies in the near future, and possibly saving stuff as well. When your hard drive has ~100 MB free space, you appreciate being able to save an ~800KB game file elsewhere.

[Nate the Great]

Yeah, there are places where floppies are far superior. That's why I'm one of the (relatively) few people to use a Zip Drive back in the day. Exactly like floppies, only they can hold 100 MB? What's not to love?

Okay, the Click of Death. But thankfully I've never encountered that.

[Nate the Great]

So once again I stumble across a discussion of whether paper or plastic bags are better for the environment. And in almost every store I go to they're more than willing to sell you cloth bags to carry your stuff in so you don't have to use either. But...

PNQ1: Have you ever been worried and afraid that if you carry a Store X bag into the same Store X that you purchased before, you'll be accused of shoplifting, if only the bag?
PNQ2: Have you ever worried that by showing a Store X bag at their competitor, Store Y, that you'll be treated differently?
PNQ3: Why can't the city or some nonprofit organization sell these bags that explicitly have the name of said city/nonprofit organization on them that you can use everywhere? Obviously you didn't steal that bag, right?

[NAHTMMM]

1: Not really.
2: I got ribbed a bit once by the cashier, that's all that's happened.
3: I'm sure there are such bags. I'm sure I've seen them sold in stores, which kind of negates your hoped-for benefit here. We have a few bags from city and from church, but they were given away free at events.