Plume & Akakak

So yea, I'm still exiled to the barren Land of Laptop, while my wife is playing The Witcher III on the desktop PC, sparkles of bliss swirling around her as she eviscerates drowners in the company of sesky Geralt. Killing time thread, with a subject combining two of my passions : moving images and sound. Titles says it all, share the music videos that you like. I'll start with two videos from the 90s directed by Anton Corbijn : I don't really listen to Mercury Rev, but I've always liked the video Corbijn made for "Opus 40" (1998). And here's one he made for Front 242's "Tragedy for You" (1991) :

Great. I have my waking-up earworm. Now I'm listening to a best of Simon & Garfunkel. Bye Pecan, happy soothings !

The use of the expression "casual gamer", mentioned in a few posts here, is something I have an aversion for. More often than not, it serves the same segregation purposes that others have pointed out. If these damn Bartle categories (that, I've been told, are still used within the game industry) have any relevance, then I observed that "casual gamer" has become a condescending term, generally used by some of the commonly-called "achievers" and "competitors" to describe people who have other interests in playing video games (like, but not limited to, the "socializers" and "explorers" of said Bartle categories). This expression is just dumb, completely out of touch with today's context, in which games are designed to allow so many kinds of experiences. The posts of regex, Camacha, cantab and r4pt0r summarize well my own opinion on the question.

(In case you never followed Gomez through his adventures...) Fez is neither an FPS nor a simulator, but it is fantastic. Good-spirited, fun, intelligent. And it has an wonderful soundtrack. One of the best, most coherent games I've ever played. around 10$.

Finished as in "finalized" : Not up to me to decide, and immeasurable. Also, it doesn't make much sense. Nowadays, many, if not most games are advertised and sold as being ongoing. Updates and content additions are here to expand their lifespan and profits. It is generally understood that a game may, or will keep on evolving. Finished as in "full, amusing and interesting gaming experience" : It is at every stage of the game history. Finished as in "washed-up" : Certainly not yet.

Nobody shouted at the heavens when Pitfall II was ported to ColecoVision.

It has its charms, from an external viewpoint.

Yea, absurd mini-vigilantism. The gnomish militias of Pixel-Land, the People's Liberation Army of Sandboxes, Battalions of self-proclaimed popes & ayatollahs of video games... as in :

This growing obsession of taking part in a product's governance is absurd, as is the sort of mini-vigilantism spirit it can come with. I love this game and I'm comfortable with being just a KSP user. This forum is mainly a showcase for Squad, and I'm all fine with that too. Like CloudlessEchoes, I'm here because I'm interested in seeing what people are building in this game, and to meet people with whom I share a common enthusiasm, certainly not to claim any right over the land. Squad can go on their merry way, I'll follow the show with affectionate curiosity.

This thread sure lacks some hip-hop. - Classic Beastie Boys' "Intergalactic", from Hello Nasty (1998). Kraken fight included in the music video : - Deltron 3030's old-school "3030" (2000) : - Beloved PuppetMastaz. "Mastaz of Ceremony", from Revolve and Stand Up! (2012) : Don't miss the Kerbal-approved speech at 1'25''. "I also was disappointed that just another human, - of black or white, I don't care -, has become president, and not an animal, a furniture or a puppet, as we have hoped." Try and too. Sadly they have no music video.- Not space-related, but I've enjoyed playing KSP while listening to cLOUDDEAD's psychedelic hip-hop. "The Velvet Ant", from Ten (2003) : - If I were looking for something teeth-clenching, I would turn to the Death Grips. "No Love" is an awesome, blustery track. Or fly to the tune of "Birds".

Zip. For days now. Recently had to stop playing KSP cold turkey. After numerous unfair attacks where she popped up beside me bearing a charming smile and waving the box of The Witcher III before my eyes, my wife eventually laid her hands on the PC. So here she is, surrounded in sparkles, blissfully gutting drowners and playing with her sesky Geralt doll, while I'm exiled to the barren Land of Laptop, ruled by Intelion "Gee-Pee-U" the Incontinent.

The primeval teleshopping naming system. So I have the Orbit-o-tron, the Clever-o-Lab 300, or the Super-Analyz'All 2000. Sometimes I use names of scientists and explorers, "adding 'K' to every word" option ON. I know some of you like it so much. The Van de Kraaff 6, the James Kook 1000... Lengthy variations on a single theme for asteroids : "an intriguing piece of gravel from outer space", "yet another enigmatic speck of sidereal dust". For flags, each celestial body has its own rules of the game. On Duna, I used names from Frank Herbert's... ...WorShip novel series (Flattery Chasma, Bickel Planitia, Ox Mount), while the regions of Minmus bear names of isometric viewpoint games I played as a kid. Molecule Man Island, Chimera Mesa, Bactron Hill... I also make sure all planets and moons have their caches. I have a set of "Bubo" probes that vaguely look like owls.

No one was physically harmed, that's the most important. I wish you and your family all the best in this difficult situation.

Very appeasing. Do you listen to earlier "space" music, like Deutsche Kosmische Musik from the 70s ? Tangerine Dream (Alpha Centauri, Phaedra, Rubycon...) or Klaus Schulze (Cyborg, Mirage...) ? It's different of course, less about taking a nap in weightless conditions, more about getting you dizzy with vertiginous arpeggios. There's one lesser-known musician from that period that me and my wife have an affection for, Adelbert Von Deyen. He was very productive in the late 70s and 80s, then settled in a small Dorf near the Baltic Sea and dedicated himself to painting. Has an old-school-HTML site where you can buy his records as well as his floral paintings and bucolic landscapes, or postcards and calendars. It's, humble. He's making music again, yet sporadically, since the mid-2000s. Anyway, go have a listen to "Atmosphere (Part I & II)", from the Atmosphere LP (1980). Cheers

Lol, we're sticking to old tracks, yet "The Whistleblowers" is such a galvanizing earworm. Leaves you with the impression that it's too short, which is quite an accomplishment. I just imagined its music video with kerbals replacing the diligent kids. This one is among my favorites, an old one too : .--- (EDIT) Switching to another track that always seems too short to me, the indefinite repeat kind. John Cale & Brian Eno's "Spinning Away", from their 1990 LP Wrong Way Up ("keep the pointy end towards space", eh). Sounds like a soundtrack to a kerbal's blissful smile :

Their version of "Across the Universe" or the cover of "The Final Countdown" ?

You have 15 seconds of concentration between the blips. Hey monstah, Cool indeed ! Pornography studies are now fairly well recognized as a transdisciplinary field of research. They weren't at the time I did my MA. I've always felt I was lucky to find a research director at the University I was already attending. A great man who had organized his own MA around the obscene abundance of figures of speech in James Joyce's Ulysses. I had some hard times, mostly and unsurprisingly during public/group discussions. There can be quite a contrast between what people say about pornography in front of an audience, and what they tell you, face-to-face. It's kinda sad, but the informal chats following my presentations were usually more enriching. But yes, pornography studies are accepted now. Still making some people ill-at-ease, but it's inevitable when such an intimate matter is tackled. They have even been hyped in the media over the past few years, like another field I've been interested in for a long time, game studies. I think these two subjects share common aspects. Here it is :B.A. in Plastic Arts, University of Strasbourg, Department of Visual Arts, Strasbourg, France (1998).

Hey adsii, It's a great idea you had with this thread. I have two master's degrees : - M.A. in Plastic Arts, University of Strasbourg, Department of Visual Arts, Strasbourg, France (2002). Research field : pornography studies. - M.F.A., Superior School of Fine Arts, Strasbourg, France (2005). Focus : Art (video).

Looks very interesting, though I'm a little scared by its PvP side. I think i would just enjoy rambling around. Hope there will be gaseous lifeforms. I've always wanted to inhale an intelligent being.

^ Haha, come on, it's a kid movie. I didn't even pay attention to the music (for once).

I've named songs whose female vocals I love in the "Favorite songs?" thread, and noticed I forgot to mention the gauche and sensual voice of Brigitte Bardot. Rectifying the shot with this amazing space-themed B.B. song written by Serge Gainsbourg. "Contact", B-side of the Harley Davidson 7'' (1967) : (and a rough translation of the lyrics) A meteorite pierced my heart. You, on the Earth, have doctors. Contact, Contact. I need a transfusion of mercury. I have lost so much of it from this wound. Contact, Contact. Take off my space suit. Remove this speck of sidereal dust. Contact, Contact. Hear me, I must at any cost Meet my lover, out there in the galaxy. Contact, Contact, Contact... Late answer again, sorry Woksaus. I still have to listen to Patashnik 2. Will do soon. Yes, I know Pete Namlook. I like what I've heard from Carbon Based Lifeforms, but I don't know the music of Jonn Serrie. Thanks, I'll give it a listen !

Today, and thanks to Xyphos who mentioned the movie *Batteries not Included here, I solved an old personal mystery, and learnt that its french title "Miracle sur la 8ème Rue" ("Miracle on 8th Street") is a reference to the 1947 Christmas movie Miracle on 34th Street. yay.

Haven't watched it since the 80s ! In France, its title was mysteriously translated to "Miracle sur la 8ème Rue", so "Miracle on 8th Street". :| EDIT : personal mystery solved. It was in reference to Miracle on 34th Street. --- Also, Dave's Puppy

Yep, I had a Skyrim comparison in mind when I wrote my previous post. Why we keep on running after experience points, gold, tech points or any other currency is simple, it's not even a question I ask myself. The sole purpose of accumulating any kind of resources or points in a video game is as valid as any other reason. That's why I don't like reading that science points in KSP become "useless" once the tech tree has been completed. For the chitchat, we -I played it with my wife- have never started a new game in Skyrim. A single storyline kept us occupied for long enough. We play slow. We left quests aside for weeks, spent hours hunting, blindly mixing alchemical ingredients, or just fooling around, like I've spent weeks in my KSP career mapping a ridiculous portion of Duna's surface, climbing up its tholi to plant flags. And once we had "finished" Skyrim, we felt it was unnecessary to try it differently (joining the few guilds we hadn't joined or making different choices in the main campaign). We didn't need to exhaust the game, feeling this would kinda belittle the experience. I'm always amazed when I read that some of you regularly start a new career in KSP, and do so much in a short time. I've started playing KSP a year ago, play it a lot, and haven't played any other "long-term" game since. I'm still on the same, single career game (that survived the 0.90 and 1.0 updates), and still have to visit half of the system's celestial bodies. Beside being unhurried/sluggish, it seems I'm doing in my career game what some of you do in a separate sandbox game. It can get costly, but I like it to be a one-piece, slow-paced experience. That's how I was playing Minecraft as well.

As I said previously, I'm all good with science points accumulation for plain high-scoring pleasure. In most games where you receive points serving as a medium of exchange, you sooner or later end up carrying much more of that currency than needed. Traditionally it's a purse containing trillions of gold coins, and nothing left to buy at the shop. It's nice that in KSP, in addition to the kerbits/kredits, you can accumulate a form of wealth representing knowledge. I find it more appealing than running for cash. For our achieving needs, and to keep us going, there is also the gratification of filling the "science archives" table.