I'm so glad the AVC did a piece on Evo, but not The (pretentiously-named) International. I'm not so glad that the prize pool will make the winners of The International more or less independently wealthy, whereas USFIV gives the winners chump change in comparison.

I'm also glad that Smash Bros. is going to make online play a little less ridiculous. In Brawl, you could only play custom matches with friend-code-friends, and the only anonymous online mode was a 2-minute 4-person timed brawl with all items on and on a random stage. (Who plays Smash Bros like this?)

There's a lot of Akumas, Ryus (Evil or vanilla), Kens, and Goukens around (especially once we're in the top 16 or so), but (at least during last Evo) you'll also see a lot of Rufus, C. Viper, Seth, Chun Li, Balrog, and a smattering of the rest of the characters here and there.

I've managed to get through the first two tiers of bosses in Shovel Knight. It is amazing and so well-designed. I love pogoing fools with my trusty spade-blade. I also love how many secrets are jam packed into every level. Just playing through and opening up secret paths every other screen makes me feel so smart. And…

Why not start a Final Fantasy V Four Job Fiesta?

So far I've got the Slingshot DLC for XCOM, Shadowrun Returns (which I completely forgot I bought), and Shovel Knight (not actually on sale since it just came out yesterday).

It's a mod that fixes a lot of the bad port problems of the original version. So you can get better resolutions, depth of field effects, play in a borderless window, skip the developer title cards on startup, hide the mouse cursor while playing, etc.

That's something that always kind of bugged me about Genesis games, but I don't think I've completely realized it until just now. Why did they have their sprites take up so much screen real-estate? It's like every game for the Genesis was made as a Gameboy port of an NES/SNES game (see: how big the sprites are…

The funny thing is, it's one of those rare games where the Japanese version was easier than the US version. Enemies went down in like 1/3rd the hits in the Japanese version.

But then you get to read all the stories about how those $3,000 ships in EVE get suicide bombed into oblivion by trolls.

Shae wasn't really much of a sympathetic character in the books. They didn't have that overblown love story from the 2nd season. It would be more of a shock and a departure than in the books if Tyrion treated killing her as he did in the books.

Did your book reader friends complain about all the stupid adaptations in the last episode as well? That episode ruined my immersion much more than not showing some minor event from the books.

I just figure it was a casting decision primarily. Throwing her in along with Beric and Thoros (presumably), along with Anguy the other named Brotherhood members (RIP Lem) would just be a bunch of actors they'd have to get for one scene in one episode.

The scenes were nice, but I felt like the shock of seeing Theon in full Reek mode at the beginning of ADWD when the last time we saw him was at Winterfell at the end of book 2 was incredibly shocking and entertaining. Showing that transformation on screen softened the blow significantly.

Yeah, it serves no narrative purpose to announce that he died, an event that really doesn't inform any character's actions until the coming Iron Islands stuff, until it becomes relevant. If we don't see something happen through a character's eyes and it doesn't change the story at large, I'm perfectly OK with them…

I'm too old for the shhhhhhhh sound that's coming out of these pipes!

Here's a whistle that can only be heard by people over 40! *blows*

It's farting! Farting like a Turk!

I have the same response to things like the bitcoin.txt twitter account that cuts off before a ridiculous sentence is complete, like "I use 3 points. First, explain that money is memory. That sounds a bit strange. I'll explain. If you hire me to paint your house, I will, an".

I just hope that the half a hundred wolves in the sanctuary get to lope to their heart's content.