The Tavern

Let's tell each other about the nice things you found while surfing the Web, walking around in real life or perhaps even making something with your own hands.
And boast about the achievements you did recently.

The rules are simple:
1) Post here the things which, you think, will help the others in some way. Something which might make them happy, give them a reason to laugh, or, instead, to become more serious and perceptive.
2) Follow the forum rules: no offensive material, no harassing or insulting, no spamming.
4) Make Xom happy - be original!

Why reposting a lame demotivator or another photoshopped picture when you can share something nobody else here knows about?

Alright, let's start!

There is a nice game called VVVVVV.
It's commercial, and so is its soundtrack, but you can listen to it for free online - over here.
It's fun, it's chiptune-ish, it's as catchy as Castlevania music. Do check it out.

http://souleyedigitalmusic.bandcamp.com/

Here is a nice picture you might enjoy.

A nice set of smileys by Hatch^Pixeljoint.
It's not yet finished, but it looks way cool. Do support his work and comment the preview. =)

And an amazing pixelwork by vierbit.

The VVVVVV soundtrack is literally the best thing ever (also the game is pretty awesome).

Here is a true story someone found regarding exams at Cambridge University. It seems that during an examination one day a bright young student popped up and asked the proctor to bring him Cakes and Ale. The following dialog ensued:

Proctor: I beg your pardon?

Student: Sir, I request that you bring me Cakes and Ale.

Proctor: Sorry, no.

Student: Sir, I really must insist. I request and require that you bring me Cakes and Ale.

At this point, the student produced a copy of the four hundred year old Laws of Cambridge, written in Latin and still nominally in effect, and pointed to the section which read (rough translation from the Latin):

"Gentlemen sitting examinations may request and require Cakes and Ale.''

Pepsi and hamburgers were judged the modern equivalent, and the student sat there, writing his examination and happily slurping away.

Three weeks later the student was fined five pounds for not wearing a sword to the examination.

MyOtheHedgeFox wrote:
Here is a true story someone found regarding exams at Cambridge University. It seems that during an examination one day a bright young student popped up and asked the proctor to bring him Cakes and Ale. The following dialog ensued:

Proctor: I beg your pardon?

Student: Sir, I request that you bring me Cakes and Ale.

Proctor: Sorry, no.

Student: Sir, I really must insist. I request and require that you bring me Cakes and Ale.

At this point, the student produced a copy of the four hundred year old Laws of Cambridge, written in Latin and still nominally in effect, and pointed to the section which read (rough translation from the Latin):

"Gentlemen sitting examinations may request and require Cakes and Ale.''

Pepsi and hamburgers were judged the modern equivalent, and the student sat there, writing his examination and happily slurping away.

Three weeks later the student was fined five pounds for not wearing a sword to the examination.

It is conceivable that this is an urban myth: http://www.snopes.com/college/admin/cakesale.asp

Hee hee, Snopes was the first place I went too :lol:

Sandra and Woo is a nice webcomic about a young girl and her pet raccoon. It is drawn really well and has nice story. Sometimes it is funny, sometimes it is serious.

In a thread on the forum of a game I play, a guy (I assume) posts stuff he finds interesting. You might enjoy it:

http://tinyurl.com/44nm529

Hhahhahaaaaa! Grimm, you made my morning more enjoyable. :lol:

Humble Indie Bundle 3 is in!

In short, it's like this: you pay a small sum of money and get 5 games at once, with their versions for Windows, Linux and Macintosh!

The games in this Bundle are:

Crayon Physics Deluxe
Cogs
VVVVVV
Hammerfight
And Yet It Moves

And, perhaps, you will get a chance to download the previously Humbly Bundled games, including Braid and Aquaria! Who knows?

The Bundle offer ends in in fourteen days, so hurry up and support indie developers. And get some nice games in return!

When Google Experiments first opened, these pixel paintings were among the few showcased. My favorite scenes are |Seascape - Sunset|,|Mirror Pond - Morning|, and |Deep Swamp - Day|.

Some of these pictures by Mark Ferrari are from an old program called "Seize The Day".
It's a nice and quite well-designed daily journal, with quotations, birthdays and death dates for each day, with alarms and on and on and so on. I would make a really good use of this program in the present if it had modern looks and were available both for Windows and Linux.
A nice quirk of this program is the Living Worlds, those pictures animated by pallette tricks. Canvas Cycle has the extended versions of these pictures, but perhaps some of you would enjoy the originals.

It works in Windows 3.1, and the full version was lost and gone until recently.
(To moderators: this program is an abandonware and is no longer sold, and one of the developers, Ian Gilman, is controlling the Get Satisfaction section I'm linking to, and he actually allowed the program's distribution in its current abandonware status. If you think this link violates any of the forum rules, please remove the link to the Get Satisfaction page but keep the link to the Ian Gilman's site. Thank you for reading this.)

Another good program by Ian Gilman is Heaven and Earth.
It's a beautiful puzzle compilation, which includes tricky Illusions, calm Pendulum and patience-like Cardgame.
It is for DOS and classic Mac, and works quite fine in DOSBox.

More than that, I would recommend playing this game to anyone who reads this topic. =) It is calm, and trying to find the solution to most Illusions (except Cursor Warping, perhaps) wakes up your mind.
Pendulum is nice when you need to calm down, and Card Game is simply beautiful and a bit unusual.
If you want more challenge, click on the monastery which you can see from the Gateway. The Pilgrimage is as addictive as crawling the dungeons, but it is more creative.

It is one of the few games I really love, and I really would like you to check it. There is too much destruction in modern games, and such gems are truly rare.

If you want the sound to work, install the game with setup -s instead of setup.

A few pixelart drawings. =)

Starr Knarr! (Mrmo Tarius)

Space Invaders - HD (Jinn)

Seaside Community (dpixel)

Guardian of the Woods (Reo)

Adcrusher v524 (miascugh)

Dedicated to all people who own cats.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ffwDYo00Q

Found a nice wallpaper set a few days ago.

Here's a screenshot of my desktop with it:

The wallpaper set is really nice, especially the blue and green variants, but huge: the ZIP file occupies 37 MiB on your hard drive, which is quite a space for six images.

By the way, is there a plural form for the word "wallpaper"?

It's "wallspaperen".

Please don't cast Confuse on me, Grimm: your Hexes skill is not that well-exercised to affect me without a working wand.

New class proposal: Jester. Featuring the new Jokes skill, he defeats monsters with his wit, either winning them to his side or making them collapse in a storm of guffawing.

Actually, it's Octopode Enchanter of Xom with no Stabbing who relies on Enslavement.

Just because an enemy is confused, it doesn't mean it won't hit you.

If your spell is at "Great", you will miscast it at a bad time. If it's at "Excellent", you will miscast it at the worst possible time.

Not all cursed items are bad and vice versa.

If you want to stay at "Thirsty" as the vampire for the nice balance between undead bonuses and regeneration, drink blood when you're "Near Bloodless".

This thread is for telling the other crawlers about various nice non-Crawl things. =)

If you learnt a lesson you didn't want to forget, than this forum thread is a better choice.
Thanks for posting them, though - the cursed items hint is quite new for me. =)

Grimm wrote:New class proposal: Jester. Featuring the new Jokes skill, he defeats monsters with his wit, either winning them to his side or making them collapse in a storm of guffawing.

But you could be in big trouble if your Badinage level isn't high enough.

See, for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnPfgX82GmM

I didn't know Alexei Sayle had ever been funny.

MyOtheHedgeFox wrote:This thread is for telling the other crawlers about various nice non-Crawl things. =)

If you learnt a lesson you didn't want to forget, than this forum thread is a better choice.
Thanks for posting them, though - the cursed items hint is quite new for me. =)

Sorry, I am stupid. Chances are, I've learned half of those things from that particular thread in the first place. :roll:

So, I've found something worth checking out today: don't post on forums with temperature over 39 C unless you want to look stupid.

Grimm wrote:I didn't know Alexei Sayle had ever been funny.

I think he was always hit and miss, and mostly miss. Rather like me playing Crawl.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1eoE3wkPLQ
A man from England Let's-Playing a few levels from Jamestown, a steampunk "danmaku"-scrollshooter.
A nice and enterntaining way to learn -- or at least to learn to recognize -- true English pronunciation. =)

"True English pronunciation" is dubious concept these days. This guy has a slight northern accent.

Thanks for the details, Grimm! =)
I liked it regardless of its accent: it's a bit hard to pronounce all the sounds like that, but it's almost like trying to retell a story in scientific or diplomatic terms: quite hard, and yet possible and funny to do.

When I was learning Polish I enjoyed very much the effort to simulate the native sound of the language as precisely as I could. My mouth would ache for a while after extended periods of practice.

Guess what, it was almost the same when I tried to learn the extremes of pronunciation by repeating phrases from Worms: Armageddon (which is quite famous for well-designed speech packs). My mouth didn't ache though (since English pronunciation is quite relaxed in its basic form for me).

These are the Chmmr from Star Control 2.
This race was created when the Chenjesu, a race of sentient crystals, and Mmrnmhrm, the half-sentient mechanical beings unable to reproduce, decided to merge in order to form a new strong race capable of defeating an Ur-Quan armada.
I guess this is the best and yet the least expected voiceover for such a race.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u1Ss0h4GbM

Speaking about the Ur-Quan, here is a voiceover for one of the branches of this race, the Ur-Quan Korr-Ah. The builders, the doers, the killers.
A great voiceover, too. The story they tell you is easy to remember because of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjJOu-VyDY8

Holy damn, Erol Otus.

Hm, by the way, I didn't know he is famous for his artwork. 0.o

The Noob Comic is the funniest one of all I've ever seen. Puns are based on various MMORPGs, varying from early MUDs and up to World of Warcraft, features cliche quotes like "Can I have your stuff?", item descriptions, often throwing light behind the scene on a developer corner.

Enjoy!

It is quite old, but it still looks nice.

It is a video clip for a Georgian song (not the American Georgia).
The song itself is worth listening, but that's not all: the sound is accompanied by excellent "sand paintings" which are made right when the song plays.
I'm glad that somebody still makes such video clips for such songs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGmNRN0E8dw

I found about the famous "sbemails" only a few weeks ago.
Quite a bizarre collection. =)

Somewhy, I like these sbemails.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail61.html (monster truck)
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail127.html (long pants)

I remember this roguelike parody song back from a while ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlPgy0ysoJk

Perhaps a democoder will enjoy this little demonstration. =)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCRPUv8V22o

I heard this song on the radio a few times at like 2 in the morning. It's like relaxing metal kind of. I don't normally listen to this sort of thing but the song is worth hearing, if not just for the new experience. I've never heard anything like it. My girlfriend is a music major and she told me the "relaxing" effect comes from the instrumental part being deeply rooted in classical music and even almost "classic rock-like." That and the vocals are not projected way above the music and act more as an instrument than anything. Definitely going to give the rest of this album a listen.

Wolves in the Throne Room: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4ibBdXJ3Jg

I found this series http://www.mangatraders.com/manga/series/118/page/1/ its truly amazing and thought-provoking especially when the character starts developing, worth a read even if you don't like comics.

Do you like dancing chipmunks?

A melody from LocoRoco, unusually happy to listen to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHHqkQw_1x4

Now my brain is burning. Thanks man.

You're welcome. =) I can also give you a link to a Naruto game of some kind to affix chaos brand to your behaviour.

hayenne wrote:The Noob Comic is the funniest one of all I've ever seen. Puns are based on various MMORPGs, varying from early MUDs and up to World of Warcraft, features cliche quotes like "Can I have your stuff?", item descriptions, often throwing light behind the scene on a developer corner.

Enjoy!

Thx hayenne, just checked it out...
Watch this one, folks:

: noob.jpg (43.93 KiB) Viewed 27654 times

What's that little bearded character supposed to be?

Grimm wrote:What's that little bearded character supposed to be?

Looks strangely familiar...

Must be a demonspawn with some extra mutations like deformed body and some form of spines that are just restricted to the face.

This beautiful melody is less than a single megabyte in size, and yet it sounds great.
It was made not for profit, and yet it is good.

Jeroen "Wave" Tel of Maniacs of Noise -- In my life, my mind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YTBAKUsgQw

Okay not very "cool" but definately worth noting is another massive steam sale

Got VVVVVVV... for like 1.25 yesterday lol.

The Tavern

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