ozoneocean wrote:

Roighty. I've steeled myself to undertake another DD soap scripting. I find those quite daunting now. But I shall press on ahead regardless! For Queen and country!
Tally-HO!!!!!!

Yeah, I want to find out what that whole 12:15 “Operation Magna Carta” thing is. Maybe Malcolm McDowell will show up on a rooftop with a Bren light machine gun ala If…

It's probably part of some sort of garbled code and it turns out it was supposed to refer to Magnum PI!!! And suddenly Bravo1102 transforms into that very fellow, complete with baseball cap, Hawaiian shirt, and short-shorts. Then proceeds to narrate for a little bit before getting mysteriously shot at, rescuing a hot blonde and leaping into his red convertible Ferrari to try and get away from some bad dudes in a black Mercedes.

Man I loved that show… :(

This latest episode of the Quackcast will be a musical one. Not a very log musical though because turning those writing into rhyming verses is REALLY hard and involves adding and subtracting a lotta text. But it's fun at least :D

I constantly see ads for corsets.

Apparently, I'm in the corset demographic. wouldn't have figured that…

bravo1102 wrote:
Never have those smiley ads because I'm not in that target demographic.

The smiley ads have very little to do with target demographics. Google ads rent out those slots to the highest bidder. People see different ads, depending on which network provider they're connected through, meaning that a New York based firm can buy banner ad slots that are seen from users connecting through New York servers.

If that were the case, then yes, there would be a target demographic where the New York firm is trying to make his ads available via New York web users and as such, they'd be willing to overbid any other offers for those banner ads.

However, I have a sneaky suspicion that not many US sites think about Icelandic servers as a fertile ground to bombard with ads and thus they tend to get ignored. In those cases, I'm getting bombarded with the lowest bidders, buying ad spaces on a global scale. You don't see these because they're being out-trumped by a firm that's outbidding the ad space on a local level. There's no target demographic in those cases. They're just trying to pander their shit to as many people as possible, for as little money as possible. Usually these things only last for few weeks but the smiley ads have persisted for months, even years. I remember seeing them before in other places, annoying the heck out of me back then but it was a god awful experience to discover them over here.

At least I'm now starting to see an occasional Icelandic ad, meaning that some local business are now looking into investing on google ads. So far it seems to be only Dominos Pizza, atm.

As always with the amazing explanations, good to see you here Einar. Oh yeah, this jerk is back. It's your friendly neighborhood Judas! Yeppers, thats the nickname I've chosen, my “title” as you will. Mr.Iscariot. Well, I suppose I should rant on something…Cadbury Eggs are getting smaller? Still, it's good to see some of the old crew still around. Miss me, no?
Well, I'm thinking of starting a proper comic, is the comic stuff here still alive and good for another entry?
Oh, and is Fightsplosion over? And Mafia Games? Is that over too?

Had that weird dream again. Where the animal rights people win their fight and it's illegal to eat animals and animal products. The the plant rights people win and now it's illegal to eat fruits, vegetables, and other plant stuff. We end up eating synthetic food made from rocks and minerals. Then the “all natural” movement wins, so we can't eat synthetic foods either, only natural food. But since eating all natural food is also illegal, the only humans who will survive will be people with common sense who are now labeled “criminals”.

I should have my brain examined…

Mettaur wrote:
Oh, and is Fightsplosion over? And Mafia Games? Is that over too?

With forum activity at such minimum levels and the posting tools being so un-userfriendly, it's pretty hard to maintain them. I'd like to see them start again but the forum needs to be fixed first.

Oh, and regarding the Cadbury eggs…

@Lonnehart: That sounds like kind of a put-down to animal rights people. >: (

—

Misunderstandings are fun, except when you're hungry. I made a bowl of greek salad for my dad and myself. I was working on a scholarship application when he came home so I was late coming out to eat. When I got to the table my dad had eaten ALL the salad(clearly a two-person serving), apparently assuming that I had already taken my share. So I had to make more. What a butt.

—

I got a tamagotchi for easter. I had forgotten how much work and how little fun they really are. : P

Hippie Van wrote:
@Lonnehart: That sounds like kind of a put-down to animal rights people. >: (

Sorry if it seems like that. I get dreams like that when I doze off at work for five minutes or so. It was kinda like a fast forward cinematic movie dream sequence. I'm pretty sure it's coming from underlying feelings in my subconcious about groups that want to force people to follow their beliefs because they believe they're the only ones who are right. I do respect most animal rights groups, especially the SPCA and others like them. Just that one group that frustrates me whose actions have hurt that cause instead by causing lots of controversy…

And yes… I'm pretty sure there's a small plants rights group as well out there and there's a group that's against us eating anything but natural food (as in grown or gathered from the land as opposed to being manufactured from stuff we don't usually eat… like rocks). They're just waiting for the chance to rise up and be heard…

And I think I'll do what I said in a post years ago… create an underground city so that we can all escape the madness when it covers the world. :)

Product Placement wrote:
bravo1102 wrote:
Never have those smiley ads because I'm not in that target demographic.
The smiley ads have very little to do with target demographics.

Target demographics also has to do with geographical location as you indicated and what you look at online. Since Google has records of my wife searching for airline and cruise fares I get those ads. Since Google has records of my wife and I searching for our credit reports we get ads for that. Then there are all those career and continuing education ads. And since I'm in the north east I often get ads in Spanish.

Targetted demographics. If you search for it you're probably interesting in seeing ads about it. Certain key words in the site you're looking at also give you certain directed ads.

The corset ads only show up when I'm looking at certain comics. What corsets have to do with topless female warrior robots… right lingerie and nudity of course…

Have you ever searched for food? Dominos delivers even in Iceland but have you ever taken a sea cruise? No? Then you don't get the ad because you're not the targetted demographic.

Bravo and PP- you're BOTH right!
The fact is that while Google ads ARE targeted, that only happens where they think there IS a viable target to aim for.
The shitty, crappy, moronic smiley ads are the very lowest of the low spam crap that pays almost nothing for the cheapest slots available, the ones no one else can be bothered with.

PP- run adblock. What browser do you use? I'm sure there's a version available for most out there… Except default crap like Internet explorer… I only ever use that one for bug checking websites because sure as hell IE gets every one of them.

My sister has been having a bad time of it recently. Something has been going on, but no one really told me anything, as usual. My family is pointlessly stupidly secret about everything…

My mum flew up to sort things out for her and now she's just emailed me to give me an inkling of what was ACTUALLY going on-
The guy she was living with was drunken, violent and abused her. So she moved into a house shared with another guy to be away from that situation, but he turned out to be exactly the same (she's attracted to big meathead F**king cretins). So now she's moved back temporarily onto a property of a place owned by the first guy while she finds somewhere new.

Right now I want nothing more than to fly up there and make sure those tards never abuse anyone ever again. I don't think there is any such thing as “domestic” abuse. Violence is exactly the same weather it happens in a pub, in a robbery, or in a brawl.

When I find out more about these guys I'll at least make sure the entire world knows their pathetic little identities and the people that they really are. I can at least do that.

ozoneocean wrote:
Bravo and PP- you're BOTH right!
The fact is that while Google ads ARE targeted, that only happens where they think there IS a viable target to aim for.
The shitty, crappy, moronic smiley ads are the very lowest of the low spam crap that pays almost nothing for the cheapest slots available, the ones no one else can be bothered with.

Thank you for acknowledging that better than I could. He is completely right. And now I'm getting adopt a teen foster parent ads. I don't get the cheapest ads anymore. :( Google has pidgeon holed me and I get targetted ads.

By some miracle I finished the next page of my comic so there will be an update Monday. I did all these cool pictures on a goof and didn't leave myself any notes for smart captions thinking I'd remember them.

ozoneocean wrote:
Bravo and PP- you're BOTH right!

I sure as heck hope I'd be right. Otherwise I'd have to deal with a very dissapointed teacher; a former Google employee who explained to me in detail how google ads work.

ozoneocean wrote:
PP- run adblock.

I actually prefer not running adblock. I like seeing something other than grey spots on the top and to the sides and I'm one of those silly people who think that it would hurt the revenue of sites if too many people put up adblocks. At the moment, the only site where I have a problem with any ads is here. When I visit local sites I get considerably better quality ads, to the point where some are downright entertaining.

Roku? Remember that bunny that never got a chance to eat his carrot?

Run ad-block you crazy man!
It doesn't automatically block all ads everywhere. You can set it to block nothing at all and then only have it enabled on one or two specific sites. It's extremely surgical and customisable if you want it to be- NOT a general catch-all blacket ad destructo bomb (although it can do that too if you want).

——

Still extremely angry about the situation with my sister. I have drunk a couple of glasses of wine and had some chocolate to try and mellow out. …and finished up the cheap stuff in the process.
The only stuff I have left is an expansive bottle I won in a university quiz years and years ago with my dream team of an old grey bearded book-seller, my debonair, intellectual and arrogant Serbian ladies-man friend, his crazy schizophrenic Polish buddy, the Polish guy's nurse, two very butch, very young lesbian girls, and the old, old bi-sexual jazz loving lady one of them lived with…
The competition were doctorate students, lecturers, professors etc and we whipped them all soundly.
So that bottle has a special memory for me of how us odd-balls thrashed the big guns.

Now I'm felling a little better about things… That wine helped just through its associated memories, didn't even need to drink it ^_^

Now finally bough Mass Effect 3 to make myself feel better and as an early self birthday present. The best kind.
So I will join the rest of the absent DDers in that hell.

Add me to your friends list if you've got one please. I like friendly faces. :)
My name is Ozoneocean as always. But I only play the PC version if that makes a difference… You guys prolly all do Xbox or something.

Got the deluxe edition and it seems all the DLC content is “free” with that so that's something. I hat niglling about getting that crap seperately.

I used to be able to connect to a PC with my xbox at least on an LAN. I don't know about global though.

And speaking of xbox's, one of the guys I know/work with is working on a way to weaponize nerdrage by trying to develop software for a “drone pilot” simulator he's been tinkering with by modifying some flight simulator game. So shortly in the future, you too will be able to launch surface to air missiles with an xbox controller, albeit of the fictional variety. I think he has plans on trying to get it into the Steam marketplace when he's done, but it's only in it's roughest stages. Last I checked he's only managed to get to the point where you can fly around a map looking at things. I think he wants to program in strike missions and eventually air-to-air stuff.

I wish him good luck with it!

OK, it's all installed and I imported my Mass Effect character that I've played for every game: Pinky Shepard.
Originally I played a male character when I first got ME2 (got it before ME1), but after SKoolmunkee's exuberant selling of the first game to me and her insistence that the Feme-shep was the superior choice I went with that in the first game, played her through into the second, and now here she is in number 3.

Her face has been imported too… her narrow, sharp, slightly hooked nose, short cropped blonde hair, wide full mouth, cheekbones like rock shelves…
With that face she was always still feminine but sort of military/regal looking before, like some famous general from an old statue or painting, but still quite feminine. However, in this third and final series she basically looks a bit “manly”.
…Which is ok. I suppose that's realistic. Without make-up and being a bit older that happens to ladies. She's still dignified.

Interesting process nevertheless.

Now it's bed time for me! I have an interview with Banes and Gunwallace tomorrow! And a comic page to finish (DD play), so no gaming for me for a while!

Gonna be interesting to see how you'll react to that ending.

As far as Mass Effect 3 goes, am I too humancentric? I always color my armor yellow and white in multiplayer, I absolutely REFUSE to play any other characters besides humans, and I tend to be more aggressive when taking on Reaper or Geth forces, but almost can't bring myself to shoot at Cerberus…

With Reaper and Geth forces, I go for bodyshots. But when it's Cerberus, I always go for headshots…

And I finally got that Harpoon gun… er… a sniper rifle that fires lances that cause a target to bleed out…

Product Placement wrote:
Roku? Remember that bunny that never got a chance to eat his carrot?

i do, that poor bunny… he always waited too long

Whoo. I've been awake for about 36 hours and my body just does not seem to give a crap. I feel about as energetic as if I'd just woken up about 4 hours ago. This is the good kind of insomnia I get, where it's like I'm on some sort of weird natural version of a meth high. Normally I just get the garden-variety achey, sore, itchy eyes kind of insomnia where you just lie in bed begging your body to crash, but every so often around this time of year I go into this hyperkinetic version of it and bounce off the walls making things.

Finally beat my creative funk. Hate when that happens. Just haven't been able to focus and being randomly nasty because the shit has been piling up and things are not going well right now. Just have not felt right and was isolating myself for long periods. Time to pull the head out of my ass and make some adjustments.

I unscrewed my head and got the threads seated right this time.

When we had our nice wooden porch steps installed some years ago I knew there would be trouble eventually because I noticed the steps were nailed and not screwed. Now half of them are loose and buckling. So I'll have to screw them down with some nice long wood screws. The contractors didn't even use zinc headed nails so they rusted within a month of installation. Since we are getting a back door installed after four years of my lobbying for it I can finally repaint the steps too.

Every time I go to work the resemblance of one of my co-workers to a woman I knew in college grows more and more uncanny. The chronology could work out that this young lady is the other's daughter which would make so much sense. But I'm tripping over how to ask her what her mother's name is or whether she went to Rutgers back in the day. Just have not been able to bring it up in conversation you know “Hey you remind me of an old girlfriend, so your mom have red hair and a great set of… um yeah you act just like a crazy girl I banged in… um”

Tact. Right just ask and ask politely. I think I remember how to do that.

bravo1102 wrote:
When we had our nice wooden porch steps installed some years ago I knew
there would be trouble eventually because I noticed the steps were
nailed and not screwed. Now half of them are loose and buckling. So
I'll have to screw them down with some nice long wood screws. The
contractors didn't even use zinc headed nails so they rusted within a
month of installation. Since we are getting a back door installed after
four years of my lobbying for it I can finally repaint the steps too.

Ha! That reminds me of something I saw a while ago: These people had a new wooden gate made for their house. I noticed it when walking past, I also noticed the kinds of nails they used on it…

I've been making stuff for years and years, long enough to know instinctively how certain things will go in real world conditions. Just looking at that gate for a few seconds I could see in my mind's eye that the boards would swell in the rain and pop the heads off of the nails that would have corroded by then and drop off onto the ground.

Sure enough, by winter that gate only had a couple of boards left. So the idiots tried to fix it next with a big staplegun… Guess how long steel staples lasted? ^_^
In the end they replaced the whole thing.

On that subject- for a lot of things that're going anywhere near wet stuff in situations where here's no other solution but a metal screw, I like to use brass ones because they corrode a lot slower than zinc coated steel. But the hardware shops here sometimes sell fake “brass” which is basically just cheap steel crap with a coloured coating. I'm thinking that next time that happens I'm going to try and sue them or something because that's a pretty serious bit of fraud and could possibly lead to a life threatening accident if those screws failed in a situation they normally wouldn't have. At least their Supplier should be sued…
The Chinese are great at making stuff but they have a MASSIVE issue with conmen making fake stuff.

I seem to keep attracting a small crowd… everytime I draw MAG-ISA in the public library. lol :)

I had a nice dinner last night with my friend Bianka, then we saw Spirited Away in the nice old fashion art house cinema across the road- one of my fave movies.
Unfortunately I got a migraine headache afterwards and have been suffering excruciating pain all night and day with lots of vomiting.
So at least I don't have to worry about expensive food and movie popcorn making me fat…

Finally better now.

Ugh… that had to suck pretty badly, Ozone. With you having so many migranes, I would have a doctor look at you at least so you can alleviate the problem…

Ugh… ME3… I had the top spot in the local XB360leaderboards for ME3Mlast week. Looks like I won't be able to recover it as the player who's now up there somehow gained 100 levels (the total characterlevels that you've gainedare what make up your N7 rating). Oh, well… it was nice to be a winner for once…

heh…. and finall unlocked the lights option for my Soldier. Now he's got white armor with yellow stripes, yellow sidepacks and belt, and glowy red eyes. :)

I'm slowly working through mass effect 3, it's giving me plenty of inspiration for BASO, I just wish I could spend more time on it. The weather has finally turned into typical british stuff, rain rain and more rain, strangely there is still talk of there being a drought this year.

I only just had a glimpse of the very first bit of ME3, because I'm so fricken busy with other stuff I have no time to play it at all, even though I want to.

I have to say though, what I've seen so far didn't grab me very much-
Ashley is now too glammy to be convincing in that role and that new muscle guy is horrible. He even has that pointy head hairstyle I HATE so much. whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy???? T_T

Then there's the scene with all the big Reapers in the distance as you run over the building roof (this isn't spoilers because it's all in the beginning). It looks bad. There's no fading into the distance, it's all too clear so these massive spaceships look too sharply focussed, flat and small. It would've been so basic and simple to add some atmospheric perspective, not even an intensive graphical effect, but it would've improved that scene a 1000%.

Ah well. And from all the moaning and groaning I can guess exactly what the ending will be. So at least I won't be disappointed when it happens :)

One thing I don't get is all the winging about having to pay for the extras to to get the full game. I paid for the so-called “deluxe” edition that apparently comes with everything. That cost me about $99 Australian (includes $9 sales tax), and seeing the Aussie dollar is pretty high right now that's a LOT more than the US price.
But the thing is that in years gone by, full games ALWAYS cost about that much here, so by paying for a cheaper version without the addons seems a pretty good deal to me. And on top of the game WITH the addons I get all the music, an art book and some other stuff, so I'm really getting more for my money than I would've been 2 or 3 years ago.

…And yet I'm not even playing it, hahaha, I'll have to wait till I've finished a heap of stuff. :(

heh… it's gotta be bad when life piles heaps of work onto you, Ozone. I can remember a time when I didn't have time to play. Funny thing is… it was duing my childhood. Either too many chores or a ton of homework from school and an overbearing mother who thought playtime wasn't good for me (but good for my younger siblings).

I guess that's why I try to make time for recreation now… though by myself (my mother did what she could to keep me out of social situations as well)…