#old geek

[rosielindy]

Borrowed from a friend 🤓

30+ years ago: In the Beginning....

1. In the beginning there was the word; and there were two bytes in the word; and nothing else existed.

2. And God separated the One from the Zero; and he saw that it was good.

3. And God said, "Let the Data be"; and it happened.

4. And God said, "Let the Data go to their proper places." And he created floppy discs and hard discs and compact discs.

5. And God said, Let the computers be so there will be a place to put floppy discs and hard discs and compact discs." And God created computers and called them hardware.

6. And there was no Software. But God created programs; small and big. And told them, "Go and multiply yourselves and fill all the Memory."

7. And God said, "I will create the Programmer; And the Programmer will create new programs and govern over the computers and programs and Data." And God created the Programmer; and put him at Data Center; And God showed the Programmer the Catalog Tree and said, "You can use all the volumes and subvolumes but DO NOT USE Windows."

8. And God said, "It is not Good for the programmer to be alone." He took a bone from the Programmer's body and created a creature that would look up at the Programmer; and admire the Programmer; and love the things the Programmer does; And God called the creature the User. And the Programmer and the User were left under the naked DOS and it was Good.

9. But Bill was smarter than all the other creatures of God. And Bill said to the User, "Did God really tell you not to run any programs?" And the User answered, "God told us that we can use every program and every piece of Data but He told us not to run Windows or we will die." And Bill said to the User, "How can you talk about something you did not even try? At the moment you run Windows you will become equal to God. You will be able to create anything you like by a simple click of your mouse." And the User saw that the fruits of the Windows were nicer and easier to use. And the User saw that any knowledge was useless - the Windows could replace it. So the User installed the Windows on his computer; and said to the Programmers that it was good. So the Programmer installed the Windows on his computer. And it was good.

10. And the Programmer immediately started to look for new drivers. And God asked him, "What are you looking for?" And the Programmer answered, "I am looking for new drivers because I cannot find them in the DOS." And God said, "Who told you you need drivers? Did you run Windows?" And the Programmer said, "It was Bill who told us to."

11. And God said to Bill, "Because of what you did you will be hated by all the creatures. And the User will always be unhappy with you. And you will always sell him Windows.

12. And God said to the User, "Because of what you did, the Windows will disappoint you and destroy all your Resources; and you will have to use lousy programs; and you will always rely on the Programmer's help."

13. And God said to the Programmer, "Because you listened to the User you will never be happy. All your programs will have errors and you will have to fix them and fix them to the end of the time."

14. And God threw them out of the Data Center and locked the door and secured it with a password.

15. General protection fault.

[korenlesthe]

Final Fantasy VII Remake is garbage

And here's why (7:57:47) Totally not inspired by Hbomberguy Note : this is a repost of my twitter post with a few fixes here and there.

Chapter 1: The Overdrive-Nomurism Cosmo Nevismitical.

Like every European who didn't bought games from Japan or the US, FF 7 was my very first step in the FF franchise. It is a very important game for me, a game that my best friend allowed me to play because he lent me his PS1 with most of his games.

First things first : I have 0 problems with the "timeline cross" thing, despite it being a very Nomura thing. I actually like it. I also like the visuals and the much improved writing of the characters (in most situations, sadly this too isn't great for reasons I'll tackle later).

FF 7 R is sadly a victim of what I call the Overdrive-Nomurism Cosmo Nevismitical. Or in human language, a "Tetsuya Nomura thing". Why is that, you ask ? Because he always, ALWAYS have to add overly complex terms, UI elements or game designs that goes off the rails. Oh you want to upgrade your weapon ? Open the menu, open the upgrade menu, open the character menu, open the weapon menu, then watch an unskippable cutscene -EVERY SINGLE TIME- to get to a useless 3D scene just to choose upgrades. And that's not all.

if you choose the wrong weapon by mistake, when you get out of the menu, there's another (short) unskippable animation. Then when you choose the right weapon, the animation shows up again because maybe you didn't saw it correctly the first time ! Then you want to upgrade your teammates weapons too ? You have to exit this menu (animation), exit your character weapon menu, go to your teammate weapon menu, open one of their weapon (animation), then you want to do it for their other weapon ? Guess what ? You watch this, every, single, time, for, every, single, weapon.

This is a "Nomurism" to me. Remember the Crystarium from FF XIII ? All this beautiful animations and crystals just for... an incredibly linear upgrade system you have 0 control in and 0 choices other than the one imposed to you. You can't upgrade how you want, follow the stupid line and look at the pretty colors !

It's the equivalent of the moving keys in front of childrens. The Bubsy 3D of UI design. I hear you tell me that UI design isn't Nomura, but he is the game director. He said yes to this (off course he did). Then the other Nomurism is the characters. While I'm ok with most of the main cast, we have to talk about Suchar. I mean Rochey Suchar. I mean Roch. Oh boi.

Side Quest In the french version, Roch is named "Rochey" (and yes, you pronounce it in Rochay), because Roch sounds like "Roche", a roc in french. Just like Torgal in FF 16 is renamed Talghor in the french version, but off course the subtitles keep his name "Torgal" because while they renamed him because of the french comic book "Thorgal", they couldn't be bothered to not butcher the subtitles. I guess it's forbidden to use "Thorgal" in french but it's ok in Japanese and English ? Side quest done, 100 Gils (it's a FF 16 side quest, so off course the rewards sucks)

Rochey (yes, I'll keep the french name, deal with it) is when FF 7 Remake jumped the shark, killed it, vomitted in every orifice of the poor beast, and then took a dump on his poor corpse. This is the moment Cloud shows that he can jump from a bike going full speed, then attack in midair while not losing his speed or air control, go back to his bike with 0 efforts. It's also the moment where Rochey do a 1080° with his bike for no reason aside for Tetsuya Nomura to make another Nomurism. I bet gravity murdered Nomura's family in the past.

I've stated at the start that this post was inspired by the Hbomberguy video essays "This X is Y and here's why" because I love his work and it helps me a lot with my writing (still needs to improve). I know that FF 7 Remake isn't an Immersive Sim game but in Hbomb's Deus Ex Human Revolution video, Warren Spector says "NPCs don't do the cool stuff, players do. You make the player do the cool stuff, NPCs watch the players doing it". It resonate with me everytime I see a character doing impossible things in a cutscene then being stuck in front of a wooden door when the player is given control back.

Chapter 2 : A game design 20 years late

Because of all the horrendous slow movement the player is forced to make in the entirety of the game while in every cutscenes possible, Cloud can jump 10 meters (I'm french), destroy a tank with his hair and fart missiles, but OFF COURSE, a fucking fence thinier than Nomura's braincells is what stops him everytime ! "Oh no, we must find another way, I surely can't slash this fence with the sword from Berserk. I have to find another way. Oh no, a 1 meter gap ! Surely I have to walk slowly over it, I can't jump at all ! What ?! The ground is made of wodden planks ?! QUICK, let's WALK VERY SLOWLY for no reason !

Oh no ! A pile of debris ! I can't jump over it despite the clearly visible space I could just jump over, I have to get on my knees and walk as SLOWLY as possible. To the "It's for loading purposes" crowd, yeah most of the time it is, but sometimes it's just one slow walk after the other ! Like, com'on, I know the visuals are pretty good but until the Shinra Tower, every place is pretty much a hallway with one straight line with a variation you will be forced to take at one point so it's not really "exploration", but just an alternative path you'll be forced to take later. The pacing is all over the place. Speaking of...

Chapter 3 : Pacing : you're doing. It wrong.

Remember how OG FF 7 MIdgar's segment was between 5 to 8 hours depending on how players tackled it ? Since the remake takes entirely place in Midgar, they had to stretch it. And oh boi, the streching is all over the place. The game even makes a FF XIII-ism by telling you that "Yeah, you should totally do the ALL the side quests because that will reward you and you'll gain XP and stuff ! Do it please !". Like, it's not even hiding how badly paced it is.

Doing all the sidequests in Wall Market is horrendous and forced ! It's not "SIDE QUESTS" when you are forced to do it ! A forced multi-part arena, interminable dialogue between the multiple useless "leads" of Wall Market, and having to move from A to B to A all the flippin' time while mostly walking very slow to listen to Aerith or just move in one of the most badly designed town ever saw in a modern Action RPG.

The way back to Sector 7 after Don Corneo is even worse. Every single segments of the game just goes to a stop everytime. OH DAMN MAYBE THE PILLAR IS IN DANGER but oh look ! Ghosts ! Let's have fun with them, the pillar isn't a big deal after all !

Part 2 coming soon after for readability sake.

EDIT : Here's part 2 !

[littlepikmins]

The comics never show us Bernard's home or room during high school, but based on these two panels, I am headcanoning that he collected Robin merch and had a ton of it in his room.

When he moved out of his parents' home, it was after an argument and he wanted to get away from them as quick as possible, so he wasnt able to take much of his stuff with him (hence the mostly empty apartment).

Now that he has a stable home with Tim in the houseboat, he's begun his Robin merch collection again. He always jokes with Tim that he's already collected the best Robin merch of all, which is Tim himself 😊

[moeblob]

Sweet lil prince...

[littledemo0n]

⚠️DEADPOOL&WOLVERINE SPOILERS⚠️

Never have i ever wanted to bingewatch Fox's X-Men movies more than in that moment right there...

[the-august-one]

Oh, I definitely know about DVD regions.

DVD regions have been making me weep and lament since the 90s.

Ohhhhh I’m invincible, I just bought a regionless dvd player and I ordered two movies that I’ve wanted to own for years but couldn’t because only the UK disc is still in print. Now I can buy anything 2nd hand off sketchy eBay listings and not have to worry about regions. Time to check the Eureka catalogue and spend all my money. Muahahahaha.

[sakanoshitameatbun]

I've been thinking a lot about Kageyama's mindset when he first meets Hinata and when they first start playing volleyball together.

Even at Kageyama's most demanding and unreasonable (playing on his middle school team), we really don't see him be as harsh with anyone else as he is with Hinata.

Caption: Kageyama is bluntly honest about his teammates not being good enough to make it off the bench, and he shouts instructions on the court - but he's not calling people names or antagonizing them in the same way he does with Hinata.

But, at the same time, Kageyama starts out, from day 1, taking Hinata more seriously than anyone else does.

So what's going on? What's with this attitude from Kageyama (that extends through the high school arc) that's so unique to how he views Hinata?

I think Kageyama has his hopes up about Hinata from the very beginning, and that really scares him.

Way down the road in chapter 387, we learn that Kageyama's childhood has been pretty lonely. He doesn't connect with his classmates at school, and even the other kids who like volleyball are so far behind him in skill that he has to intentionally throw games, just to stay on the court. His sister gives up volleyball, too.

At Kitagawa Dai, he's supposed to meet other kids on his level, but most of them still aren't as dedicated to volleyball as he is, and the ones who are (Oikawa) shun him.

Caption: Tobio Kageyama's never-ending parade of loneliness.

So, Kageyama, understandably, holds onto the words from his grandfather - an assurance that he will meet "someone better" one day; that he won't always be alone.

Kageyama holds onto that hope, but does he really trust that it'll come true?

Every time Kageyama has ever thought that he'd met people who could be that "someone better" or someone he could connect with, he's been let down.

Then he loses his grandfather, and he realizes just how alone he really is.

It's scary and isolating to get your hopes up over and over, so - by the time he meets Hinata - he must be wary of believing in someone else, yet again. Especially someone who sucks so bad at volleyball.

But Kageyama does believe in him.

He kind of can't help it, when Hinata is like this:

But, again, this is scary for Kageyama.

It's why he already feels cheated by the fact that Hinata isn't better - that Hinata hasn't been trying harder or practicing more.

Because Kageyama can already see how good Hinata could be.

(He could be, but will he?)

This is maybe clearest to me in chapter 2, where they meet again at Karasuno.

Hinata claims that he's improved a lot, and Kageyama is fully ready to believe him. He is visibly excited to see this new and improved version of Hinata.

I mean, look at Kageyama's face.

He's fired up.

Then Kageyama hits a nasty jump serve at him.

It's a vicious enough serve that Tanaka says to Suga that he probably couldn't have received the serve either.

So, it's not like Hinata failing to receive this serve means he really sucks. But, Kageyama looks surprised, disappointed, and angry that Hinata can't do it.

Did he really think that Hinata had improved enough that he might be able to receive that serve (one that even Tanaka couldn't have gotten)?

Tellingly, Kageyama gets mad because he feels stupid for believing in Hinata. He feels "like a dope" for believing Hinata when he said he'd gotten better.

Caption: Unless I'm wrong, this is also the first time Kageyama calls Hinata scrub (/boke). That feels significant to me.

And I think this is really the really illustrative moment for how Kageyama thinks about Hinata through the rest of the high school arc. He instinctively and reflexively believes in Hinata, but logically he knows that Hinata just isn't that good (yet). He knows that there's a risk Hinata might let him down, too.

It's scary and frustrating and disappointing each time Hinata shows how much he has left to learn, so Kageyama tries to make himself not believe in Hinata so much, while (at the same time) pushing Hinata to do better.

Because there's just something about Hinata that makes it impossible for Kageyama not to believe in him.

Kageyama has been let down over and over - every time he's wanted to find that person he can connect with, who's on his level, who's better.

I think that he wants that so much, but he doesn't want to be made a fool of again by getting his hopes up over something that won't pan out.

It's why he pushes Hinata so hard.

It's why, even when he's secretly impressed with Hinata, he doesn't want to to acknowledge it.

It's why he's "scared of change" (as Oikawa says) when Hinata wants to push their freak quick to be even better, and why he's "convinced himself that what they're doing good enough."

He thinks Hinata is his someone better. He wants Hinata to be his someone better. But he's scared that he's wrong.

[redfridge]

its really difficult to tell who my fave is i know

[atomra]

Atom meets Alucards Vlad form and is enraptured by the armour and craftsmanship of his outfit. Alucard doesn't take to it well to start— but he will eventually realize Atom is just admiring him 😌

[rosieandthemoon]

[cravinganescape]

Nokia 9000 Communicator (1996) | The first official 'smartphone' to hit the market with a laptop-like design, featuring LCD display screen of 640 x 200 pixels and full QWERTY keyboard.

[mirobraz]

Hugh Jackman | Wolverine: Old Man Logan

[doverstar]

was today years old when discovering that the eleventh doctor wears leather trousers. his trousers are made of black leather. Black leather with the ends rolled up and I. have no idea what to think-

[cardiohiphopgroovesitisthen]

You know what I mean?

[midnightsnuff]

Roberto Ferri - Il bacio.