DastardlyVandal's feed

  • 9 years ago
    Comment DastardlyVandal

    Another thing to consider with that, coming from someone who has a Google Play subscription, is that the bandwidth use can be murder on a cellular plan. It's a problematic endeavor when you have a limit amount of space on the phone, a wide taste in music. and a small amount of data available to you. That's without considering having spotty coverage in some areas, which can also be a plague for some people. So, in many cases, downloading your music onto an external hard drive while at a friends place is more suitable for some people versus being subscribed to a service that they might only get a limited use out of it.

    In general, the streaming capabilities of phones suits a lot of people. But there are going to be those edge cases where someone lives between two hills in the middle of nowhere, leaving them to try and stream with either spotty cell service or over the phone lines. If there can be a method to help support those people as well, I'd be all for it.

    show moreshow less
  • 9 years ago
    Comment DastardlyVandal

    Holy crap I haven't heard this soundtrack since... 2010 maybe was the last time I played it?

    I absolutely loved the theme and environment in this game. I wish I hadn't gotten stuck at a point in it from not leveling up all my party and then suffering from some memory card corruption issues. This and FF7 ended up taking up a solid place in my heart when I was younger. As a side note, Vivi was easily my favorite character in that game. The art style really spoke levels just through that character alone, I felt.

    Definitely one of the better games in the series, even if it doesn't get the same level of recognition as others in the series.

  • 9 years ago
    Comment DastardlyVandal

    That system seems like something that would adapt well over here, actually. It might be worth for the devs to cherry pick some ideas from Stack Overflow and apply it here, in hopes of curbing some of the old Reddit habits that are going on.

    Blacking out different opinions (outside of blatant racism/hate speech) is something that shouldn't be followed, just because it doesn't fit in the mold of things here.

    This community is largely about discussion, not a house of perpetually repeated jokes and memes for the sake of quick upvotes. Maybe we could also add some popup dialogues with the upvote and downvote buttons that go something along the lines of "Insightful post!"/"Doesn't contribute to discussion.", to push things in the right way a bit more?

  • 9 years ago
    Level Up DastardlyVandal

    Level 5

    DastardlyVandal is now level 5 with 10,045 XP.

     View Unlocks  
    • Image Submission The maximum amount of images you can submit to a unique social gallery has been raised by 1 to a total of 6.
    • Custom Banner You now have the ability to upload your own custom profile banner.
    • Following The maximum amount of users you can follow has been raised by 20 to a total of 140.
  • 9 years ago
    Comment DastardlyVandal

    I kinda like the juxtaposition of a high-res Mario in some settings that are more akin to a AAA FPS. Mostly because it's kinda quirky when done that way.

    A friend of mine shared this with me, and when he said he felt that making a Mario game with level textures that detailed would never be necessary, so I just dropped this idea in his lap:

    Super Mario Galaxy on Unreal Engine 4.

    That is something that would be amazing to see with a more powerful engine and system.

  • 9 years ago
    Comment DastardlyVandal

    Having a bit of experience and second hand experience with a brother teaching overseas, the basic breakdown for Chine, Japanese, and Korean is generally as follows:

    - Chinese has tones and tons of characters. If you can hear the tones, speaking it isn't that hard from my experience. The grammar is relatively similar to English, in that it follows the Subject/Verb/Object format, which makes it easier to get started. Afterwards, it's just learning the newer syntax for some of the sentence structure, and that doesn't take too much time to learn. As for writing... Lots and lots of repetition. They learn the characters by sitting down and writing them over and over and over again, which between that and flashcards, is the easiest way to learn the characters to read the language.

    - Japanese is relatively easy to start out with, given that it has an alphabet system. Well... Two, actually. The sounds are very similar to what we use in English overall, but get some nuances that you have to take a lot more time learning and are often time really subtle (The difference between saying pants and panties in Japanese is dependent on how you say the last vowel in the words, for example.) The grammar is all backasswards in comparison to English, following a Subject/Object/Verb syntax, which anyone who's taken French or Spanish will have some experience with. For me, the grammar was the hardest part when I studied it briefly before, which ended up leading me to Chinese instead. And let's not get started on honorific forms and whatnot.

    - Korean is very, very different from English. Whereas in Japanese you have a sound system that's very similar to English, and Chinese you have a grammar system that nearly mirrors English in many cases, in Korean you have neither of those. Like Japanese it's S/O/V, and they make frequent use of sounds that are never used in English, which further complicates trying to learn it when you don't have anything to compare it to. While it isn't a tonal language, the unfamiliar sounds that are hard for a native English speaker to pronounce will be a tripping point for a lot of people.

    Hope someone out there finds these tidbits useful!

    show moreshow less
  • 9 years ago
    Comment DastardlyVandal

    Stormfront style factoids

    I think those should be challenged, not banned.

    I'm going to raise the point that challenging their stance leads nowhere, citing personal experience. When it comes to the Stormfront "facts" they cite, in many cases they're ignoring huge swaths of the sources they cite, because it has a relevant statistic to their point, but disregard the entire premise of the paper as "excuse making." The stretch they go to present a fake group bias on the issue as well as in general spreading disinformation leads to toxicity when left unchecked. The downvoting system at Reddit wasn't able to handle the surge of Stormfront users, resulting in a large swath of Reddit looking racist. In reality, it was just a very vocal minority spurred on by the new users who thought that was the norm. They got exactly what they wanted, a fake group bias and a few misinformed facts leading people on the road to sharing that same Stormfront dribble elsewhere. It's toxic, unintelligent, and overall a blight that needs to be taken care of instead of allowing it to fester.

    I understand your point on the basis of principle, but in practice it leads things open for growing a toxic and misinformed community, that takes people giving up on replying as a sign of victory versus someone being tired of wasting their time arguing with a brick wall.

    You honestly end up having to treat it like trolling to make it go away, by ignoring and downvoting it instead of challenging it. It's a lot harder for them to spread misinformation when the community can silently disregard them all together.

    That's at least my feeling on it.

    show moreshow less
  • 9 years ago
    Comment DastardlyVandal

    I'm caught up on how to feel about downvoting those kinds of posts. I mean, it doesn't add to the discussion, and it's bringing in some of the old reddit-isms that in reality didn't offer much that was constructive to discussion. At the same time, I'm also not sure if that alone entirely elicits a downvote or not. Kinda want some of the more seasoned users to give some input on that, but I'll just wait and see what comes of it.

  • 9 years ago
    Unspecified DastardlyVandal

    GGC 2015: "Games Are Not Movies" by George Weidman

  • 9 years ago
    Achievement DastardlyVandal

    Chatter Box

    Posted a total of 10/10 comments! Congratulations DastardlyVandal on this achievement!

    +1320 XP
  • 9 years ago
    Comment DastardlyVandal

    Smaller communities tend to help with the direction of a website a lot more than having a larger userbase. Once the userbase gets big, you end up playing with the bottom of the barrel types. When you have a smaller community that tends to take the time to write out and explain thoughts more clearly than a handful of punchlines, you end up setting the bar a lot higher for them to get involved. Once upon a time, Reddit would crucify you for making a simple typo, or for posting things without giving a well thought out process and possibly even a source or two. That ended up changing once the site grew larger and the community diversified. Where Reddit was once overall pretty liberal, it ended up leaning in a more libertarian direction, once what was just a small minority ended up getting more members and became less afraid to share idea that would disagree strongly from the old school Reddit.

    The site has changed a lot over the 4-5ish years I've used it, and it progressively was losing everything that I had liked about it from before. Now I'm finding what I liked in Reddit, community wise, here at Snapzu. Just maybe.. At an earlier point in it's life cycle, anyways. :)

    show moreshow less
  • 9 years ago
    Comment DastardlyVandal

    I'm hoping to see him get to that point. The media ended up going pretty silent on Ron Paul when he was running, even though a lot of people could stand behind what he had to say. While I personally wasn't that endeared by Ron Paul, at least not to the same level as I feel towards Sanders, it was still weird to see so much of the mainstream media turn a blind eye to him.

    Sanders stands for a lot of things I do agree with, while having a pretty solid history with his stance on issues (from what I have gathered anyways.) So either he is a really good politician that keeps his public image in check while not flip flopping, is sincerely an honest person, or is literally the antichrist. ( /s ).

    Here's to hoping he gets a bit more public attention, outside of the net.

    Posted in: Feel the god damn bern

     
  • 9 years ago
    Achievement DastardlyVandal

    Red Eye Jedi

    Viewed 50/50 snaps! Congratulations DastardlyVandal on this achievement!

    +1310 XP
  • 9 years ago
    Level Up DastardlyVandal

    Level 4

    DastardlyVandal is now level 4 with 6,140 XP.

     View Unlocks  
    • Tribe Membership The maximum amount of tribes you can join has been raised by 5 to a total of 60.
    • Pattern Banner You now have the ability to select a pattern for the banner of any of your tribes.
    • Snapzine The maximum amount of snapzine editions you can create has been raised by 1 to a total of 6.
  • 9 years ago
    Comment DastardlyVandal

    I put all the details in the descriptions, but it's not exactly organized neatly, haha. I'm currently using the Papertheme, available here.

    A cool thing about this theme, though it doesn't really show in my post, is that different GTK themes will get a different window border colour. It seems to be based off of the name much of the time, but I haven't taken the time to look into how it is done. You can see it at the project's homepage though. :)

    It's a really cool theme though, and I'm looking forward to seeing the final outcome of the icon theme.

    Thanks for asking!

    Posted in: Desktop Debian Sid

     
  • 9 years ago
    Achievement DastardlyVandal

    Hat Trick

    Maintained a 3 day login streak 2/2 times! Congratulations DastardlyVandal on this achievement!

    +1310 XP
  • 9 years ago
    Comment DastardlyVandal

    I've been using Sid for a bit over 2 weeks now, so take it with a grain of salt. But thus far, the experience has been great. It's been really stable, with no issues to report of thus far. I switched over mostly for the purpose of playing Dota 2 Reborn and building the Unreal Engine/Editor in Linux, so I'd have less reason to boot back into Windows. (I had been running Fedora prior to this, which didn't like the latest Dota client. Cue distro hop, haha)

    As for the wallpaper, here it is!

    Posted in: Desktop Debian Sid

     
  • 9 years ago
    Comment DastardlyVandal

    Just a heads up, the link you posted is broken on Snapzu. You just end up with a broken picture icon. You might want to rehost it someplace else.

  • 9 years ago
    Text Post DastardlyVandal

    t/desktops, come here to share you desktop screenshots!

    discuss in posted into

     
  • 9 years ago
    Level Up DastardlyVandal

    Level 3

    DastardlyVandal is now level 3 with 3,740 XP.

     View Unlocks  
    • Pattern Banner You now have the ability to select a pattern for your profile banner.
    • Following The maximum amount of users you can follow has been raised by 20 to a total of 120.
  • 9 years ago
    Achievement DastardlyVandal

    Worth a thousand words

    Published 2/2 image snaps! Congratulations DastardlyVandal on this achievement!

    +1310 XP
  • 9 years ago

    Desktop Debian Sid

    DE: Gnome 3.16.2 GTK Theme: Paper Icons: Flattr Shell Theme: Paper

  • 9 years ago
    Current Event DastardlyVandal

    Samsung sued for loading devices with unremovable crapware (in China)

    "Unwanted" apps can't be removed and eat into data plans, lawsuit alleges.

  • 9 years ago
    Comment DastardlyVandal

    Downvotes, or as they called them "burying a post." Basically, in v4, they redid a large portion of the site, with many many bugs present, a UI that the majority of the users hated, and made it a better platform for advertising instead of making improvements to help the community. It was a problem that came about in part from them working towards making it something profitable (ala advertising) versus something the community built.

    Here is a link on reddit that discusses it a bit more in depth than what I'm able to, since it's all second hand on my part.

  • 9 years ago
    Comment DastardlyVandal

    I was part of this one forum at one point in time. These guys wanted to make the forum the "next big thing", with their only offering being that you could express yourself and use the site as a platform of free speech, without being censored (barring illegal content). What it ended up being was a group of power-abusing mods and admins trolling the very small user base very early on, driving people out before it even got the chance to grow into anything. From there, a few database mishaps and the entire forums getting lost on more than on occasion lead to everyone leaving except for the mods and admins themselves. Anybody who was friends with them didn't remake their accounts after everything had been lost.

    Moderators can make or break a system, and it really comes down to whether they're lax about thing and intervene appropriately, or if they're in it for a power trip.

    show moreshow less