Goodbye, Leonard Nimoy.

...working on some things.

I can only say: You're an amazing individual and thank you for the years of insight, laughs, and logic.

James Randi retires from the JREF.

At 86 years of age, I feel that it’s now well time to officially retire, so I’m stepping down from my position with the JREF – the James Randi Educational Foundation.

This doesn’t mean that I’m retiring from my battle against the so-­called psychics, faith healers, paranormalists, and the assorted frauds I’ve encountered in my worldwide wanderings. I’ll in no way relax the critical attention I’ve given to them over the last busy 73 years, I promise you. I’ll still lecture and write, here and abroad – but now on my own time – not on the exhausting schedule that I’ve had these past few years.

I can celebrate the fact that there now exist so many very active, eager, and competent skeptical organizations – on an international scale – some of which may very well have come into being because of the example provided to them by the JREF.

GOG is keeping the hits coming - More Lucasarts games kicking out today.

Included are some really fun ones, like X-Wing Alliance and the original Dark Forces.

There's not really much more to say on this - Archive.org has put up an online DOS emulator with over 2,000 games available on it. It's a beta, but still a great resource.

What are you waiting for? Get playing!

Usually I try to write something when someone passes on. But I really have almost nothing to say for Ralph Baer's passing.

Well, except this.

Thank you.

For those into fan productions, Star Trek New Voyages / Phase II have their newest episode, "Mind Sifter", up for watching.

This is the first one NOT featuring James Cawley as Captain Kirk.

Episode link: http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/?page_id=5083.

Synopsis: When the crew of the Enterprise is forced to accept the death of Captain Kirk, Spock and McCoy must come to terms with their own grief, but when Spock discovers a plot by the Klingons to send Kirk back in time in order destroy the Federation, it will take all the courage and abilities of the crew of the Enterprise to rescue their beloved Captain in time before he succumbs to the horrific torture of the Mind-Sifter.

If you haven't seen it before more, the final version - 6.3 - of one of the most massive game re-works in some time has been released.

Fans of Deus Ex should definitely check out the GMDX mod. AI improvements, gameplay improvements, and a whole heck of a lot of bugfixes as well as changes based on what the developers might have done if they'd had the chance to fix some of the exploits or bugs found over the years.

Not that the original isn't awesome. It says something about a game when the fans love it enough to fix it up like this years later!

Just... check this out. The Archive.org Arcade.

It's really cool.

And as of this week, it now also includes arcade games. Yet another branch of the ever-expanding Internet Archive, the new Internet Arcade brings over 900 classic arcade cabinets to your browser.

Like the Console Living Room, the Internet Arcade is an effort to archive and present these games through JSMESS, a project to emulate various computer systems through JavaScript. The benefit? The games can run right in your browser and thus don't require any third-party software (like a standalone MAME emulator).

As I move on playing Destiny, a few thoughts I've compiled.

#1 - I can see why some reviewers panned the game's leveling system. Characters rush fast to level 20 and then the "armor-based leveling system", involving Light Points, turns the game into a maddening slow slog of desperately trying to get either random loot drops (more on that in a minute) or else grinding furiously to get the various currencies to buy higher-powered armor from the vendors. It's a novel concept but not what I necessarily call a FUN concept, and more often than not it's simply infuriating.

#2 - Related: the loot system is bollocks. Pure, unadulterated horse turds. It's so completely broken that Bungie have admitted they need to take it back to formula.

The underlying problem is this:

"They're not even rare socks."

About the third or fourth time after you turn in a set of blue engrams, desperately hoping for better gear, and wind up with a combination of green garbage and stuff you can't use? Yeah, you lose all hope for the loot system in the game.

#3 - The final point, honestly, is that there is far less content in the game than there should be. Most of the game's content involves grinding, grinding, grinding, and re-playing missions with "modifiers."

Re-doing the same strikes over and over again.
Re-doing the same storyline missions over and over again.
Re-doing the same repetitive tasks trying to grind for better gear.

Even the community event going through the end of this week - the "Queen's Wrath" event - just re-treads a bunch of storyline missions, sending players off to shoot and kill a horde of named enemies they've killed a hundred times before.

It's wearing thin, quickly.