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SchizophrenicMC

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  1. SchizophrenicMC
    While it is a bit over-the-top, and I personally feel the duels (especially the one in RotS) should have been toned down a notch, the notion of lightsaber duels between skilled Force-sensitive fighters as a nauseating game of strategy, response, and timing as each fighter tries to use their own powers of precognition to outmaneuver their opponent's, makes sense to some degree. I certainly prefer the duel in TFA- it felt more raw and swordy-killy- but I don't think it's fair to look at a fight between two telekinetic, telepathic seers trained in wizardry, wielding laser swords from the perspective of normal swordplay. You can take that to a further degree if you want to get caught up in it. Actual sword fights aren't like fencing at all, and are decided within the first couple of seconds, when whoever gets the first move puts his sword through his opponent. That's not very cinematic though. The feeling I got from the lightsaber duel in TFA was
  2. SchizophrenicMC
    Seems to me it'd weigh less to pack a parachute than the literal tons of fuel needed to control a descent in that way. And man they are super bonerriffic for vertical landings. And everyone keeps going on about how it's a historical landing. Like, what, Blue Origin's landing wasn't? Or the 2006 Wirefly X-Prize for that matter?
  3. SchizophrenicMC
    Blue Origin's record so far is a fair bit less explode-y than SpaceX. Still I'm really not convinced about the whole vertical landing rocket thing. It's like its proponents haven't heard of the rocket equation.
  4. SchizophrenicMC
    Which I personally think was a great idea. Poe is one of my favorite characters. He really fits into this story.
  5. SchizophrenicMC
    I'll just come up with some hand waves:
  6. SchizophrenicMC
    Anything RWD is tail-happy if you want it to be, but if you're not being super ham-fisted with it, the stock setup is pretty neutral. And I guess that would seem tail-happy relative to much of its competition, which are all so heavy they generate tons of understeer before heading into power-induced oversteer. With the exception of the Miata, which is, again, a very neutral car that people like to pretend is tail-happy. If you want tail-happy, get a car with semi-trailing arms and something approaching a reasonable curb weight. Then put it on late 80s street compound tires. God what a mess. That'll make you forget any illusions you had about the FR-S being tail-happy. Not to mention all the car reviewers comparing it to the new Miata, saying you buy an FR-S for its precise, on-track handling, because the Miata just isn't that tight and neutral. But this is all just my view, coming out of a car that has a reputation for being tail-happy for 25 years, stemming mostly from the fact most of them were put on the wrong tires. Drive the car with the base model tires and you'll be afraid to go around reducing-radius overpasses. Slap on the modern equivalent of the SE Sport Package tires, and the car just grips around everything. In fact, on stock power, it's almost impossible to break both tires loose at the same time unless you're going at it way too hard. Just like the Toyobaru 200SX FRB-ZS86. To say nothing of the wimpy stock brakes.
  7. SchizophrenicMC
  8. SchizophrenicMC
    Oh yeah, back when there was still hype for the FR-S coming on Prius tires. Now, tires are the first thing anybody replaces on that car, because what a poor decision, Prius tires. Turns out the car wasn't as drifty as people wanted to believe, and it now spends all of its time on the street or at autocross events, where drifting is frowned upon. I still want to race an FR-S in the S13. It has more power, but mine has more torque, less weight, and a wider power band. I bet I could take one up to 80.
  9. SchizophrenicMC
    There are other advantages to applying a gloss coat before your final coat. It evens out the surface texture, like primer evens out the surface color. That gives you better control over your final finish. It also makes it easier to spot where you've missed areas in a matte or semi-gloss coat, which is important with these kits that can be posed and may rub over time. More coats is more protection from damage to the base coat. It's also the best way to start when making different areas of a kit have different finishes. Gloss coat it, mask off or remove the parts that you want to be gloss, then add a flat coat to the rest. The tape won't stick as well to gloss coat as flat coat, reducing the likelihood of coating damage when you pull the tape back up. Gloss coat is also easier to panel line, and generally easier to handle than raw paint or flat coat. Also, if you have to remove an errant decal or panel line, you have a sacrificial layer of gloss coat you can burn through before damaging the base coat, which has saved my life on at least one occasion. Every kit I paint gets at least one gloss coat for detail work, even if the intended finish is matte or semi gloss. It just makes life easier for me.
  10. SchizophrenicMC
    I'm totally cool with HGs not having waterslides, but MGs, RGs, and PGs really should have them. It's not like they're expensive to manufacture. I'd even pay a few extra dollars per kit to have whatever's on the sticker sheet included as a waterslide sheet. I owe my cousin back his RG Ver.GFT once I've completed it for him, but I don't want to turn it around with stickers and they don't make the aftermarket decal set anymore. Paying $30 for a secondhand 4x5" decal sheet doesn't sit right by me either.
  11. SchizophrenicMC
    See, I really think you're taking my concept of how Global's character could have been implemented a bit too far there. All I'm saying is, 37 episodes, and we never get to have much understanding of why the captain is who he is. The show is really bad about spending time on character development in that way. Max and Milia meet at the end of one episode and are married by the end of the next episode, and the only real backstory we get for anybody who isn't a part of the triangle is a brief silent flashback of Roy and Claudia. And, given the writing prowess available to them, I can't help but blame the animation budget being tied down to selling merchandise in the 80s for that. All the reused generic action sequences take up a lot of time at low cost, but it uses up time that could have been spent better establishing the world Macross takes place in, and the characters who live in it. There are really compelling aspects of the story that are barely touched upon in favor of saving on animation. The closest thing we get to character backstory exposition, really, is Misa's flashback about Karl Riber. Everything else is a sentence or two about the character's past and motivations. While they really pull that off well with Hikaru, who only holds onto one aspect of his past (his affinity for flight), we're left with a lot of blank space for everyone else. It's only been a month or so since I watched the show last, and all I can remember about Minmay's past is that she lived in Somewhere, Japan, with her parents and attended some kind of music lessons? I think that might have even been all of her backstory. The main characters really don't get a lot either, and while we spend more time with them, it's a really slow process to build on the weak foundations we get, and the result isn't very good in a lot of ways. A lot of what we know about these characters, we know because of accompanying media that came out later. Looking at Macross as a whole, we don't think about it, because they eventually did give many of these characters their backstories, and almost 35 years on, we're familiar with them now. But looking at SDFM in a vacuum, like it was when it came out, it's obviously a product of its time. SDFM really suffers, I think, only from being an early 80s mecha anime. It had to deal with founding this universe, and creating the kernel of a great story that people would rally around, because the budget could go at any time. It shares a lot of the same story weaknesses as Gundam, Yamato, and any other iconic title from its time. But, it shares their strengths. The story of Macross is ultimately compelling. It's something we relate with. We can understand the uncertainty the people on the Macross must feel, we relate with not understanding the culture of others, and with the need to experience our own culture. I, for one, think the Zentradi are the most compelling anime bad guys that whole decade. They're not evil, they don't fight wars for conquest and power, they've just only ever known fighting, and everything they do comes within that context. That's refreshing even today. I just think the story could have been even better if we understood the protagonists better. It's like, the show is good, but with a bit more polish in some areas, some clarity could have been added and it'd be even more of a timeless classic. The story of Macross is really good, but it's stuck trying to decide whether it wants to emphasize the story of the Macross and its journey, or the characters experiencing that journey. It wants to be the latter one, but it plays it safe too often and we get the former. And one or the other is fine, but we got the mishmash we got. And that's fine too. It was 1982, after all. This was genesis. I wouldn't change the show we got. I'd just like to see how the story could be told today, with the kind of writing and animation we can muster on a modern Macross budget. A chance to really get at what the writers wanted to make the show, without the restrictions of what was possible in '82 with a tight toy commercial budget.
  12. SchizophrenicMC
    Bit of a late response, but the point I'm making here is, Global isn't portrayed as the revered, decorated captain that he's thought of. He doesn't get much screen time, and the exposure he does get offers no exposition into his character or backstory, and he's only depicted having a moment of brilliance once or twice in the whole series. Which is odd, because I've always imagined Global as this really amazing captain who led the Macross to victory against the warmongering, powerful Zentradi. And then to watch the show again and have him not hold up to that, it shakes my view of him. I feel like that was a misstep Macross made in its original run, which is understandable, really. Limited funds had to be devoted to developing the main characters and garnering ratings to prove the show could be worth keeping on TV. Actually I feel like Yamato and Macross are largely comparable. And while I wouldn't try to compare them in terms of better or worse, they have a lot of similarities, and they share a lot of the same weaknesses in their initial runs- and a lot of the same strengths. I especially liked the way Okita was portrayed in 2199; I felt it fit the character he was said to be in a way that the original didn't have a chance to show because it needed to sell merchandise to kids more than it needed to tell its story and show off its characters. I feel like Global could stand to have a more in-depth portrayal. Obviously, he has to be a storied officer with a brilliant streak a mile wide, if the UN was willing to give him their flagship. SDFM just does a bad job showing that, resorting to simply telling us he's great, when every good thing that happens to the Macross is due to somebody else being brilliant (Daedalus Attack, for example) or the Zentradi holding back, unwilling to destroy the ship outright. For that matter, most of the really bad things that happen to the Macross are due to tactical mishaps on Global's part. And they may not be his fault, per se, but we really just do not see enough of Global being the brilliant commander he's made out to be. Coming back to the topic about a month later, I don't necessarily know if I still feel like Macross could use a remake, but I do think Global deserves a better portrayal. Give us the captain we deserve.
  13. SchizophrenicMC
    I saw a Huracan in the wild the other day. It was pretty neat.
  14. SchizophrenicMC
    I watch this trailer, and then I watch the Ace Combat Zero announcement trailer from E3 2006 and I can't help wondering why Project Aces is phoning it in so hard. Zero came a year off the heels of AC5, and its announcement trailer revealed a fleshed-out, voice-acted story with fairly complete gameplay. And sure, you can argue it was using the AC5 game engine, so all they had to do was make assets and a story, while AC7 is on a new system with a new engine. To that, I note Ace Combat 6's announcement, some 8 months after AC0 was launched- on a totally new system with a new engine, and yet the whole thing was shown in game physics and graphics, with the musical score and voice acting all there. Sure, the AC6 trailer isn't as good as AC0's, but it's a far cry better than this. I can only hope they pull a miracle out of their hats, because Ace Combat has a good amount of generic to recover from since Assault Horizon and Infinity. At least this one's back in Strangereal.
  15. SchizophrenicMC
    You're standing 30,000 feet up on the side of a massive target. A target which is, reasonably speaking, the only reason there's a battle going on around you. It's almost guaranteed to get hit by some kind of exploding thing. Even if it wasn't being targeted, it's fairly massive. And if it does get hit, there will be debris everywhere and you'll fall anyway. You, on the other hand, are 6 feet tall and have some kind of gear to survive the fall, presumably. You're a much smaller, far less valuable target who will quickly egress from the combat area (10,000-30,000 feet ASL) if you jump. Seems sensible to me.
  16. SchizophrenicMC
    Yeah that's a pretty sideways move. For your RAM, 8GB is often plenty, 16GB is usually tons. What clock speed is the RAM and what CAS latency, do you know? Even high performing DDR4 today isn't as good as modestly high-performance DDR3 for the same amount of cash. Not to mention, it can be a cheap upgrade that lets you keep most of your current setup. Unfortunately for us both, we just missed the train on good deals on 4790ks. (I saw them as cheap as $200) Otherwise I'd suggest nabbing a $150-ish Z97 chipset LGA 1150 board and a Devil's Canyon, just for the bit of cheap additional performance for the next year and a half or two. Though, at this rate, your best bet might be waiting on Skylake to get cheap. Broadwell performance with half the power consumption is mighty tempting, and the fact that it is just Broadwell performance will force the price down when the next architecture comes out, I'd bet. Most tasks aren't CPU intensive enough, or aren't programmed well enough to use multi-threading by a great enough extent, that the CPU is the bottleneck these days. For gaming, spend the extra cash on a GPU with a ton of VRAM (mine has 8GB) for maximum frame buffer capabilities, and an SSD for your main drive. Samsung 850 EVOs are getting cheaper all the time. I just bought a 120GB for $60, though that was a holiday special. Being able to shuffle large amounts of data from the drive to RAM in short time (especially if your board supports SATA III), and hold a bunch more data in the frame buffer, will do a lot more for your gaming experience than just about anything else. As for my recent GPU shenanigans, I did end up having to upgrade my power supply to install it, and I got a cheap SSD while I was out. The performance is pretty good - sometimes too good, as my monitor doesn't support framerate synchronization - but the irony is, I spent all that money to improve performance in Space Engineers, and that game crashes my whole system when I click any option from within the main menu now. Even "Exit to Windows". It's not a new bug (though it is for me) but the cause is unknown because there aren't any similarities between the setups people are running that cause this bug. Even my buddy, who has an R9 290X (ie the same GPU with different RAM), has no problems. On the upside, at least Skyrim looks nice. 8GB frame buffer. So many textures.
  17. SchizophrenicMC
    Speaking of X-47s, anyone see the new Ace Combat trailer?
  18. SchizophrenicMC
    I'm digging this more and more.
  19. SchizophrenicMC
    If Boeing thought they could make the same kind of money selling 757s, they would. But a big 737 is cheaper to make and has guaranteed demand. Plus the 787 fits in the 757's size class anyway, but with practically 777 range. (At least until the 777X meet production) Let's face it: Boeing overdiversified their airframe lineup. The big 737s are pretty close to the small 757s, the big 757s are pretty close to the 767s, the 787s kind of sit in there with all 3. The only well-defined Boeing products at this point are the 747, 777, and 737-400/800. The 75, 76, and 78 are all a bit more nebulous. That in mind, a 73 the size of a 75, with technology from the 78, sounds like a good mix of current production feasibilities and modern technologies, given that, you know, the 73 is still in production. And is the most produced airliner ever. But maybe I'm biased. My dad used to build 737-400 flight computers. I'm in love with the 73 and the 777.
  20. SchizophrenicMC
    Crews that have to loiter long enough to need it. So, in much more interesting news, the 737 MAX rolled out on schedule this week, and something something Honda Jet? How decidedly undramatic.
  21. SchizophrenicMC
    Very light, deliberate motion perpendicular to the panel line, with the cotton swab moistened in alcohol and then dabbed off onto a cloth or napkin. Start as easy as possible and work your way up in the toughness of your removal as needed. Use other methods as needed, such as your paper towel wipe. The thing to remember about model building is, while there is chemistry, there's not any real science to it. You work with generally correct methods and refine as needed for the application. I've had builds where I burn through a whole box of Q-tips, and I've had builds where I just about use none. Use every tool at your disposal.
  22. SchizophrenicMC
    I use isopropanol exclusively for killing things. No need to go less than 90%.
  23. SchizophrenicMC
    After 10 years we finally get a Gundam dub and they have to give us John Bosch. God dammit.
  24. SchizophrenicMC
    Make sure you get 90% isopropyl alcohol or a higher concentration if it's available locally. Use q-tips dampened in the alcohol to rub the paint off.
  25. SchizophrenicMC
    The S2000 thing is hearsay. And Honda would screw it up if they did. As for Ohio, those people only need to build one car to matter, and you and I both know what car that is.
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