pictoben

Profoundly sorry for your loss. Very young, and a more unfortunate timing I would struggle to think of.

I genuinely think Ryan was my single favorite presenter in any medium.

I think his art was in the fact that while obviously being a very capable anchor for any forum I ever saw him in, he always made it look like it was all just effortless banter between friends. That ability to make anything an occasion without any feeling that he was actively trying to be entertaining. Tracy Chapman with a beard basically.

As other's have mentioned it's an odd sensation - podcasting is such an intimate media, I'm feeling a genuine loss.I happened across Ryan hosting Gamespot's 'On The Spot' only about a month or two before Ryan left to come on board with Giant Bomb (Or Arrow Pointing Down for those that remember). I certainly followed him over across the sites - like you say, he had

I think his real trick was to convince the audience that he was trying to entertain himself first if you know what I mean.

Thoughts to you guys, and particularly his wife. Madness, and very sad.

I'm going to very much miss miss my one way window into his stupid furry brain.

That sucks - feeling that pain too. I just went through the same pain with Last of Us.

Bought 7am day one on way to work. Put disc in ps3 on the evening, wasn't being recognised. Tried other discs I had lying around they were fine. Took LoU back, and tried to get another copy (day 2 of it's release) and everywhere was sold out.

Had to wait to Monday, managed to get the last copy from the drawer in my local Asda (Wallmart to you guys over the pond). Took that home same thing.

I then noticed it seemed to be just dual layer blue rays my ps3 couldn't recognize, which is signs of the lazer crapping out.

Ended up looking at various options including a gumtree (uk ghetto-ass ebay / craigs list kind of site) dude who wanted to swap a ps3 super slim for a 360 (desperate times), but ended up with a used 500gb from a local retailer who happened to have a sale on.

Still hurts to lay out 50% of the next gen on a replacement 6months of it arriving, but there's no way I'd miss out on Last of Us, or Beyond, or GTA V.

Ni No Kuni is an awesome experience as well - there's plenty of content in there, and if you're any fan of Ghibli anime, then you'll enjoy the ride, another difficult game to miss.

On if you have a way of getting old and new console side by side, the data transfer utility is a bitch to get going, but once it works it'll take all your saves, game installs and DLC and restore it into the same folder structures as you already had.

To save you looking there are several non-intuitive steps to get you through that:

Before you start:

1) with both ps3s turned off connect the two directly with a LAN cable (otherwise the systems can't recognise the link)

2) Check for / carry out any firmware updates needed - seems to have a baked in requirement for the transfer to work.

On your Existing / Old PS3:

2) Sign in to PSN, then under Account Management, De-Authorise your exisiting / old ps3 for games / video as needed.

3) Disable the internet and media server functions.

On your Replacement / New PS3:

4) Disable Internet and Media Server connections

Back on your old ps3:

5) Under the system menu, start the Data Transfer Utility, it will first prompt you to switch off / connect LAN cable but you will have already done that in step 1 above. It will then give you two options 1 = send data, 2 = receive data. You need option 1 to send from the old ps3.

New PS3 again:

6) Under system menu select Data Transfer Utility. Ok on that same message about LAN connection. Select option 2 from the list (receive data).

...no seriously, WAIT:

I can't stress this point too strongly - I tried several times over before I realised I'd connected the LAN cable with the units turned on. It would hang with a message saying something like "waiting to start data transfer", then error out saying no cable connected or other PS3 is not turned on.

The time I got it to work it hung at the "waiting..." stage - I was sat there on my laptop trawling forums for anything else I might have missed, when after just shy of 5mins it suddenly sprang to life and started to do the transfer. I had am 120gb drive pretty much full, and it took almost 3hrs.

On the plus side once the data is over all your file's are there, in the original folder structure you had set up. Final step would be to authorise the new console to play your content and you will be fine after that.

One thing I've read incorrect advice about is the use of the content on the old ps3 following the transfer - if you have much in the way of DLC you would still use via the old machine then you can simply re-authorise the old ps3 for use (so long as you're not already at the 'X playstation systems' limit for your licences I suppose).

I ended up giving my old ps3 to my daughter for her room (spoiled!), to be fair that was more about me - she still regularly plays Lego Indiana Jones 2, and Toy Story 3, and it takes those away from my main tv.

Sorry - hadn't planned to spill into full on how to, but figured it might be useful information for you that I could offer while it was fresh in my mind.

Hope you get sorted out one way or another.

@daneian: Yeah - fair deal. To be honest, I could easily see me coming to this game on another day, and seeing things exactly the way you did - I've had a could out of the last few games I've played and wanted to enjoy spoiled by clunky plot devices.

Having finished the game at the weekend and just started the process of talking it over with the guys at work, I muddled into a question and an angle, without really any fact to support it - didn't get all of the voxophones so don't know if any facts rule this out, but:

I see two key pivotal decision points in the branching realities of the various universes - the baptism of DeWitt (Comstock-Dewitt was baptised, while DeWitt-DeWitt was not), and the decision to give up the child Anna.

When the Columbia Elizabeths meet at the baptism, the only choice the game is giving you is to agree to be baptised, which in my mind means this is the Comstock creating version of events - they drown this Booker, which means Columbia never happens.

This means that none of those Elizabeth's then exist, which is why we see them disappear in the scene.

The second reality branching decision - whether or not DeWitt gives up Anna - therefore never comes to pass, since the Columbia reality then never occurs, this I took to be the post credits scene, where the Booker who did not get baptised, and who did not give up his baby has a future.

I have also a question on the causality - can Elizabeth create the tears because of the Lutese science, or is it because she inherently has the ability?

Could Elizabeth be an analogue for the little sisters in the original Bioshock?

The Lutese's talk about the three constants, the man, the lighthouse and the city - does the apparently random trip to Rapture signify that, that is just another (later) iteration of this cycle, or is it truly unconnected?

I'm starting to think it's more plausible that Anna/Elizabeth has the ability within her, and as much as needing an heir, Comstock needs Elizabeth for that power - basically is the syphon harvesting Elizabeth's power, and is this somehow tied to Columbia - is it a facilitator for the Lutese science and the quantum particles the city is based on? Is the syphon using Elizabeth to manufacture the salts (this is where Elizabeth becomes the Little Sister equivalent, with salt equalling plasmids right?).

If the ability is within Elizabeth its it also posessed by DeWitt to some extent? It would explain why DeWitt is able to see all the tears himself - i.e. the ghosting of objects you can see before Elizabeth pulls things into the combat scenarios, or the fact that DeWitt still sees all the tears in the back section of the game when the two are separated.

This would be true of Comstock also of course, and this might have been the catalyst for the Lutese science, which culminated in the finding of Elizabeth.

To push that right out on a silly limb, reference is made at one point that Lady Comstock looks like Elizabeth, though they are not related. When Elizabeth speaks to the ghost, the pair argue and it's resolved when the Elizabeth points out that she was Comstocks priosoner as well - could they even both be instances of an adult Elizabeth? Did comstock find 'our' elizabeth when an older Elizabeth was made ill from the some of the Lutese experiments?

Anyway, assuming the link between Elizabeth and Comstock/DeWitt for the powers, and being subject to the constants I'm starting to think that the Rapture reference, and Booker's ability to operate the bathysphere potentially means there is a link - do we come full circle, and is the endgame Anna-with-a future an ancestor of Bioshock's Andrew Ryan?

In this way another constant can be seen to be that industrial progress made via the exploitation of others will always dissatisfaction, resentment, anger and finally uprising - that suddenly becomes a core common tenet of Bioshock morality for me.

Sorry - this is terribly long, and probably not even coherrent!

In summary, this game made my brain fizz - it's has actually re-ignited the deep seeded excitement that I haven't got from games in a long while - Looking to Last Of Us, and Beyond: Two Souls to come along and do similar things for me later in the year.

@daneian: For my part I figured that at these stages of the story you are still firmly a gun for hire, doing whatever you need to do to get the girl out of the city.

It all felt fairly natural to me, and in hindsight of the end game, the museum segment explains the anger expressed by DeWitt that he was there and the events did not occur as being described. It also explains why the guy you get the choice to kill off or not (name escapes me) knows DeWitt.

Apologies if this is old hat to the stateside masses, but otherwise get your rap-shizzle on with this free to download mashup album courtesy of a guy called 2 Mello:

http://scrubclubrecords.com/free-music-albums/2-mello-chrono-jigga/

It's working for me after a quick skim.

Computer wizz geek girl hacks this website:

http://www.flightradar24.com/

Little does she suspect...

Your life these days moves pretty fast...

Day's spin by in a psychedelic blur...

Dolly Parton tells us it can be hard to be a woman, yes - but it can also be hard to know if it's Tuesday.

When I find myself this quandary I'm always glad to have the good folks at Studentology.net to steer me right:

http://www.studentology.net/tuesday/

They're my go to gurus of Tuesday, isn't it time you made them yours?

p.s.

Ok, so it's a niche, niche, but god damn it folks: Mystery solved!

So is it true that the wii-u controllers are built from the re-purposed shells on unsold YouDraw tablets?

Hairy, with black and white stripes.

Actually, I'm almost thinking black with white stripes. The nose and 'feet' in that snap are black.

I'll not be the one to check, but if someone was to look at a zebras anus, and that was black too I'd be sure.