This week we spend nearly the entire podcast on a single topic. And then later this week my column is on the exact same thing. Sorry. This is going to be a rough couple of days if you don’t care about Skyrim mods, but this is apparently a topic dear to our hearts.
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Hosts: Shamus, Josh, Chris, Rutskarn, Mumbles.
Show notes:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #101: Paid Skyrim Mods, Cult of Gaben”
I’m getting a lot of complaints about this, so let me just acknowledge it publicly: The anti-spam plug-ins on this site are hosed. At least, one of them is. About a week ago, the system went crazy and began marking 1/3 of all valid comments as possible spam, meaning I have to manually approve them before they appear. This is time-consuming for me and really annoying for people trying to have a conversation and I’m not sure what to do about it.
The frustrating thing is that it’s not catching more spam, it’s just flagging more valid comments. It still lets a bunch of flagrantly obvious spam through. Like this one:
Please let me know if you're looking for a author for your weblog.
You have some really good articles and I believe I would be a good asset.
If you ever want to take some of the load off, I'd absolutely
love to write some content for your blog in exchange for a link back to mine.Please shoot me an email if interested. Regards!
But WordPress thought this comment was just fine and let it through. Then it turned around and flagged dozen and dozens of comments from:
This is some 1998 level spam filtering. I can’t believe it’s this bad. I can’t believe it worked a month ago and somehow all went sideways overnight.
I’m using a lot of spam filters. With NO filters, I’d get a dozen spam a minute and the blog would be crushed in an avalanche of nonsense. I’ve got a lot of spam filters in place to hold off the worst of it, and its clear that one of my filters has gone Airport Security on us and begun freaking out over trivialities. There aren’t any quick, obvious answers, so I’m going to need a big block of time to sort it out properly.
I’ll fix it when I get the time, but I’m currently re-installing Windows* and restoring files from backup so I can get back to work after I replaced a sketchy hard drive a few days ago.
* The actual Windows installation is quick. It’s the “everything else” that takes bloody days. Programming, source control, image editing, local WAMP server, disabling the annoying shit in Windows, audio editing, Steam, text editing, FTP, MP3 player, and a dozen other little programs and adjustments and tweaks. It actually takes a few days to get my computer back up to speed after a Windows re-install.
So I ask for patience. I know having so many comments put into moderation is maximally annoying. I’ll get to this as soon as I can.
Here are the show notes for part three of of this ordeal / episode. If you’re reading this in the archives, then the audio is here. I’m not going to embed it again because that seems to cause problems for RSS readers.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #100: MAILTIME!”
The title of this post is a search I’ve been doing for days. The question is usually along the lines of:
Hi, I bought a new hard drive and it shows up in BIOS, but when I go into Windows 8 it doesn’t show up in explorer, or disk management, or device manager. Doesn’t show up if I tell Windows to detect new hardware. I plugged the HDD into another machine and it works fine. I have other HDD on this machine that work fine. But Windows won’t recognize this new drive.
And then there will be a half-dozen replies from the usual Ass-butts of the internet:
xxXKillStealerXxx says:
Sounds like the drive is bad. Maybe replace it?
Kornholio says:
Go to my computer, open up control panel, and look for device manager. Use that to format the drive and it will show up.
DrDumbass says:
Are you still running XP? A lot of new drives aren't supported on older versions of windows.
TheIlliterateMan says:
Maybe the HDD controller is bad. Try using a different drive.
DingusKahn says:
You need to format the drive before you can use it.
After watching this little drama play out half a dozen different ways, I finally found the answer. So I’m putting it below, in the hopes that THIS post will rise above the advice of those non-helpful illiterate dingbats.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “HDD Shows up in BIOS but not in Windows”
Here are the show notes for part two of of this ordeal / episode.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #100: Alignment, Batman v. Superman, Star Wars, Mortal Kombat”
You know that moment in Mass Effect / Skyrim / Fallout / Deus Ex / The Witcher / Dragon Age / Assassins Creed / Grand Theft Auto where you’re doing a sidequest for that man / woman / kid / alien / robot and you suddenly realize, “This person is an asshole. I don’t want to do this quest for them. Actually, what I’d really like to do is bash their face in, but the game doesn’t offer me that choice!” That moment? Yeah. We’ve all been there.
May I suggest you try this game:
Link (YouTube) |
Will Fight For Food: Super Actual Sellout: Game of the Hour, is from Pyrodactyl games, the folks who are working on my videogame. Don’t think of this post as a conflict of interest, think of it as a brazen and unapologetic plug for people with whom I am in cahoots.
In case the trailer doesn’t make it completely clear, the story and dialog are by Rutskarn. In the game you play as Jared Casey Dent, a wrestler in a down-and-out bloodstained middle American town. He lost his own tournament in disgrace and vanished into the night. Now he's back, and he's going to set his life straight by sidequesting for random strangers.
The game launched all official-like yesterday, so now the team is 100% committed to working on Good Robot and getting paid for Will Fight For Food. But probably not in that order. People who are against videogame violence are encouraged to get WFF and then refuse to play it in protest. People who love videogame violence are encouraged to buy the game and then play through it using only dialog, as a sort of remedial corrective therapy for their violent tendencies. You psychos.
For our one hundredth episode, we’ve recorded an extra-long Diecast. Here we have three solid hours of whining, arguing, cross-talk, confusion, stupidity, and also the occasional mention of videogames.
For the purpose of the comments, I’m breaking the show notes into three posts. Below are the show notes for the first hour. You’re free to discuss any part of the show you like, but my hope is that we can discuss hour #1 today, and then cover the next two hours on Thursday and Friday.
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Hosts: Shamus, Josh, Chris, Rutskarn, Mumbles.
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #100: Elder Scrolls Online, Bloodborne, Life is Strange”
This series explores the troubled history of VR and the strange lawsuit between Zenimax publishing and Facebook.
The true story of three strange days in 1989, when the last months of my adolescence ran out and the first few sparks of adulthood appeared.
What's wrong with a game being "too videogameish"?
Is it real? Is PC gaming returning to its former glory? Sort of. It's complicated.
Denuvo videogame DRM didn't actually kill piracy, but it did stop it for several months. Here's what we learned from that.
Ever wondered what's in all those quest boxes you've never bothered to read? Get ready: They're more insane than you might expect.
An unhinged rant where I maybe slightly over-reacted to the water torture of Souls evangelism.
Here is how I'd conquer the game-publishing business. (Hint: NOT by copying EA, 2K, Activision, Take-Two, or Ubisoft.)
One of the highest-rated games of all time has some of the least interesting gameplay.
Would you have survived in the middle ages?
T w e n t y S i d e d
