Akinomori.com

I'm not really into To Heart, but DO WANT.

I just got rickrolled by the Finnish national radio.

Fuck. Shit. They mean business.

I'm such a lazy arse.

I do stuff.

I spent most of yesterday playing on my DS, which has a display where you can clearly see the different pixels from close enough (there are thin black lines between them).

Now, I've been having a "pixel vision" going on and off for 25 minutes since I woke up.

It's awesome (but freaky).

WTF?

I never win anything in lotteries and such. Anything.

Yesterday when I came home from a walk, there was a packet card left by the Postal Dude waiting. It was sent by the Finnish TV-channel Sub TV, and I had no idea what it would be because I hadn't bought anything from them and neither did I recall taking part in any lotteries.

Today I picked it up (a few weeks back they closed down the post office nearby, and until they get a new one opened in these parts I need to do all my postal stuff in downtown), and it was a pretty big box and not feather light either. I was even more perplexed, because I had thought that for some weird reason they had sent me some advertisement shit.

When I got back I teared it open, and found two and a half kilos of Smash. D: I had never tasted them before, and while not too bad, they're freaking salty. I guess that's a good thing, because you could easily get addicted to these, and the saltiness keeps you at bay a bit.

But, I finally won in a lottery.

In a lottery that I didn't even remember.

And what I won was candy. Yay.

Like smoking crack, running amok while making snarky remarks, and stuffing the barrels of various long firearms into feline rectums?

How did you let you get the package without going postal on you? :-p

I'm displeased to have seen no new posts in this thread for over 8 months.
Its clearly the greatest thread ever - its like constructive spam or organised crime! Although with that said, I'm referring to the pure spam parts which are pretty much beyond the thread's main purpose.

Anyway, here's one a little more on track.
I work for a retail company named Argos. Twice a year they release a new catalogue, one is referred to as the "summer" catalogue, the other "winter". Mainly because that's the area of time they cover.
Last year during the winter catalogue, we had loads of snowy days and customers asking if we had sledges - but we didn't, they weren't issued for the catalogue.
This year though, the summer catalogue contained winter Sledges, used to play in the snow....which summer has a distinct lack of. I guess they missed the mark with that one, huh?

Now then, the winter catalogue has just been released and guess what - no sledges! They were removed from the catalogue because they have a system where "if something doesn't sell well in the previous catalogue then it wont be issued for the next" . So, because sledges didn't sell well at all in summer, they're not going to be in this next catalogue.....the one designed for winter.

Clearly they're not looking at this properly.

Hey Kharn, thoughts on Salamence being declared uber?

Salamence is now uber? (I bet Smogon decided that).
Well I personally wouldn't say it should be considered uber, just heavily overused. Although with that said, I do fear meeting the beast when I play through the battle tower but I always get around it. Back in Diamond, I beat over 200 consecutive trainers and the only Pokemon I cringed at were Gyarados and Garchomp (Damn Garchomp!) But after I got Platinum, my lovely Metagross got Thunder punch, so Gyarados has since been removed from that list.
Nothing says "up yours" to a Gyarados more than a Pokemon that resists it's intimidate and then hits it back with a physical electric attack! Oh and my Metagross has a "perfect" attack stat.
It took a lot of breeding and training but I eventually got one that reached a flawless 405 attack stat at level 100! I would have not given any other Pokemon this kind of treatment, I usually just breed for a nature and that's that. But Metagross is just fantastic!
Oh and something unintended - when I got perfect IV's for it's attack stat, it also got 31 for it's special attack too! Ha!

Back to Salamence,
It may be stupidly quick, has amazing attack, can intimidate and has stats in ALL fields higher than most of the starters (Charizard is one of those), BUT it's not really anything more nastier then Dragonite, Tyranitar and the likes. A boosted Ice shard attack or any moderately powerful Ice attack from something faster instantly removes it from the game. Weavile is perfect for this (and for other Dragons) assuming it's not present at the time Salamence appears.

I suppose I'm just not for it to be uber because I don't have much problems fighting it. If I used different Pokemon then I may have better judgment. But for me, Tyranitar / Metagross / Garchomp handle the situation well, despite all my Pokemon being attack specialists!



*Edit*

Oh I see, I've just checked Smogon and apparently its uber mainly due to Salamence being great when paired with Rayquaza! I've never had to fight off Rayquaza in any form of competative battling so I've never been in the sort of situation that earnt Salamence his uber reputation.
It can certainly be harsh nturally but like I said above, to me it doesn't seem much worse than the other so called "titan" Pokemon.

Reading that just spoiled all of my innocent memories of playing Pokemon Blue/Red together with my nephew over a link cable years ago.

Well if it makes you feel any better, the newer Pokemon games are very different to the old ones. Competitive battling is hugely more complicated and websites like Smogon spend inhuman hours working out every last little, possible, detailed strat.

Anyway, here's the latest gen compared to the first: (because I've been wanting to list this for a while )

1. 342 more Pokemon (God knows how many more when the next games come out in September for Japan).
2. 2 more types (Steel and Dark).
3. Pokemon now have genders.
4. Increased IV's. (Giving Pokemon, larger maximum margins for their stats).
5. Shiny Pokemon! - Each time you see a new Pokemon, there's a stupidly, improbable chance it'll be different coloured.
6. You can now breed Pokemon, during which you can pass down stats and moves.
7. Countless more moves / attacks.
8. Pokemon can now hold items and use them in battle themselves.
9. Added natures which increase (and decrease) stat fields.
10. Pokemon now have abilities.
11. Double battles added!
12. Pokerus - a virus that boosts your Pokemon's EV growth, can be found on wild Pokemon. Although its as improbable as a shiny Pokemon appearing, it can spread to your other Pokemon once you have caught it.
13. Moves and now uniquely split into attack / sp.attack as apposed to entire types classed for the same field.
14. Crazy new evolution methods!
*coming soon*
15. Triple battles!
16. Possibly more.

Not to mention no longer having to settle for the monochrome display of Gameboy Pocket!!!



Well, I actually do have one of the Pokemon games for the DS, but I never got around playing it that much.

Well, I've just spent the last 2 days trying to sort out a pathing problem that's recently occurred on my Pokemon mod for Duke3D.

It was horrible, I tell you!

I've spent countless hours trying to perfect the pathing of my Pokemon so they can avoid obstacles before they bump into them and see where to appropriately move to. But the other day I noticed that they were acting docile. They would run into a wall and stay there running on the sport for 2 seconds or so before turning around. The worst was watching a Charmeleon pathetically run straight off a cliff without even twitching! He didn't even think about turning to avoid the edge.
To add insult to injury, I have a built in backup plan for when a Pokemon steps off into a sector seen invalid which instantly puts them back on the valid sector but facing the other way, but this too was not always saving the Pokemon, which must have meant the Pokemon had not recorded the sector in front of him during pathing. That means pathing must have been locked out which is only done when the Pokemon is turning around. So perhaps pathing was locked out because the Pokemon went to turn but the values needed to turn were reset, leaving the Pokemon to just walk in a striaght line?

However, most of the time they were working as intended but they should have been working ALL of the time but because of this, I'm guessing that something somewhere, under a certain, uncommon condition would somehow break pathing. Although I keep backups, and even a log of my progress to see what was done and when, this issue could have been present for a while since recently I was working on stances and testing these in a large flat room where moving around obstacles weren't seen. As such, I cannot tell when the issue started.

Well anyway, I could not locate and eliminate the source but have made many additions to my pathing that have actually counteracted against this bug. Although it doesn't completely cover it, the improvements to the pathing I made today are great enough for me to ignore this bug. Hopefully through time, I'll uncover the source and rid it for good.