Sledgstone

Were the big characters noticeably stonger to compensate for the slowness? Were they just easier to hit because of their size? I haven't had a chance to play this yet so I have no idea if size fits into the hit calculations.

I was talking to my brother about this possibility yesterday and he made a very valid point.. He thinks the Xbox One will sell out completely. Every available unit will sell. His reasoning is that because MS took off the region lock, everyone will buy the Xbox One and ebay the hell out of them to all those people in the delayed countries. As long as the people in those countries have the right power adapters, they can get an xbox one far earlier than whatever release date Microsoft has planned. And because there were plenty of countries in that delay list that speak english, I'd have to agree with him.. I think the Xbox will sell out. But its not going to go the way MS wants it.. the market will be deprived of Xbox Ones and the people profiting will be the ebay sellers marking up the price to whatever they can sell it for.

It is still unconfirmed for now, but all indications point to a November 8th release date for the new Xbox One console. There are some marketing company images going around the internet showing November 8th as the release date. If its true, then the Xbox One will release a full week earlier than the PS4. After checking Xbox's official site, it appears that November is the confirmed month, but no exact date is mentioned. Download attachment: XboxOne_releasedate.jpg Sources: Kotaku | Microsoftstore.com Click here to view the article

Yep. He looks like a nobody now. Lobo has always been a huge guy.. this new version is pathetic.

The Walking Dead Season 4 Sneak Peek: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUvpFAYGoWI Its a commercial for Low Winter Sun for the first half, then a rather pointless Sneak Peek of TWD showing Michonne dismounting her new horse and having some difficulties with a couple walkers. The new season premieres Sunday, October 13th. This post has been promoted to an article

Those were some good points. I'll give Ben Affleck a chance as Batman.. but if he portrays Batman from the Brave and the Bold, he will deserve to burn in hell fire. Now I'm a bit disappointed to hear that Ben Affleck won't direct "The Stand" because of this.. I think he would have done a great job directing it. http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/26580.html

I wonder if this game will get the new updated Lobo: http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/26571.html I can't believe the new Lobo is a scrawny looking guy.

Pompeii will be in theaters February 2014. Not much is shown in this trailer until the last 40 seconds, but from what I see, I'll keep my eye on this movie because it seems to have potential. Click here to view the article

LMAO! I love this cartoon. "Once you medpac, you never go back." lmao.

The first series movie, "Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa" was definitely movie quality compared to this one.. even though Shamballa takes place after the first series and is completely different from Brotherhood, I think it was a better movie than Milos.

That "What Will We Miss" video reminded me of an episode... and it was driving me nuts.. I just found it. lmao. On netflix.. Malcolm in the Middle season 3 episode 9, 8 minutes in... "I remember my own birth." ... "The worst was the diaper changing. It was the most degrading week of my life."

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/968523355/micro-phone-lens-cell-phone-based-microscope Wow. Now that is a simple idea. Its basically a sticker/lense that attaches to your camera on your phone. Way beyond macro pictures.. I can imagine some amazing shots being taken with this.

Anyone else see this? I watched it today because I noticed it on netflix. It came out a couple years ago but I never watched it until now. Half the movie was slow but it finished with a decent fight. Its not actually tied into either of the FMA series and its made more as a stand alone movie. The production quality makes it feel like this could have been presented as a 4 episode OVA rather than a movie. There were breaks of dialogue between every major scene which caused it to not flow as smoothly as what I'd expect from a movie. Its still decent to watch just to see the ending fight.. unfortunately there is no Roy Mustang fight scene.. just when you think you might see one, there he is walking away from his fried opponent. Damn.

Thats a big difference compared to the BOII RPG. So I remembered that episode of mythbusters did a speed test for RPGs.. I was looking online for it and Discovery has it taken offline just about everywhere and netflix still doesn't have that season. Its actually the very next season of it that is due for netflix release. So I did watch it again and I was astonished all over again. Even on their speed test, the RPG travels so damn fast they needed high speed footage just to see it. Here is the result of the speed test: Its going so damn fast that it reaches 80 feet in 161 milliseconds. Considering there are 1000 milliseconds in a second, that RPG shoots insanely fast.

I remember that video. I still can't believe how lucky some of those shots are. Whenever I try to do it I always miss. I've shot down quite a few helicopters with my main tank gun tho. I got a little bird just yesterday. It must have pissed that guy off. The tank cannon shoots way faster than the RPG so its easier to hit with. Have you seen how fast RPGs shoot in real life tho? These damn things are seriously nerfed compared to real world stats in terms of their speed. In BF3 the rocket is all slow.. and has noticeable bullet drop over distance.. in reality the damn things shoot insanely fast.

In my previous blog post I showed my new smoker: New Brinkmann Smoker (ECB) El Cheapo Brinkmann But the smoker didn't work out all that good right out of the box. These are the following modifications I've made to it: When I first got my smoker I put a grate at the bottom of the charcoal pan because I read that a grate will help in keeping ash buildup from blocking the air flow. This was not entirely correct. What I needed to do was have the grate about an inch off the bottom so that air flow can reach every piece of coal while allowing ash to sift down to the bottom. So my first modification was to use some pliers and bend the air fins open more to allow more airflow. Because I'll be able to control the airflow with another modification, I wanted to make sure the airflow would not get restricted by ash buildup. The second mod I did was to install three carriage bolts with nuts 1 inch from the bottom of the pan. This allows me to set the grate on the bolts and gets me the airflow I want. Before doing this, I attempted to use 3 equally sized rocks to lift the grate up.. Not a good idea. It worked but it didn't. The rocks change the flow of air and also absorb heat and break. Installing permanent bolts was the only real solution. Using a drill I made three holes 1 inch from the bottom and installed the bolts. I didn't want to use carriage bolts but they were the only ones I could find for the size and length I wanted to use at the local hardware store. These bolts worked out fine in the end because they didn't sit to far away from the pan's sides to affect how it sits in the base pan. The next modification was the most time consuming. I needed to control the airflow of this smoker. This smoker has two vents. The bottom vent which is a hole about 2 inches in diameter and the other is the gap where the lid sits on the body of the smoker. The lid does not go on with a solid seal and is designed that way so there is no need for an air vent on the top. I have seen other people modify their ECB lids by installing an oven gasket around the rim to make it have a solid seal and then installing an aftermarket weber charcoal damper on the lid. However, I did not do this.. I am more concerned about the airflow coming into the smoker at the bottom than restricting or increasing the airflow from the top. Here is what I did.. I drilled three holes into my base pan. One of those drill holes was a mistake which I'll explain in a bit. I used one bolt along with a washer, lock washer and lock nut to connect a pickle jar lid to the base of the pan. I needed to drill 2 holes into the jar lid. One to keep it connected to the base pan and the other to act as a slot for the metal control rod. Using a washer, lock washer and lock nut, the lid will stay connected without unscrewing the bolt due to repeated opening and closing. I drilled another hole into the side of the base pan to allow the metal rod to protrude out the side. This is where I messed up. I drilled the hole too high up. Once I had everything in place, I put the charcoal pan into the base pan and realized it was weighing down on the metal rod preventing me from using it correctly. So I drilled another hole right at the bottom of the side and then the pan fit perfectly. Of course this left me with a hole I had to plug up. Thankfully I the smoker came with some extra bolts and nuts and I simply used one of those to seal off the hole. The biggest problem with this was the metal rod I was using. I had an old metal sign holding post that I decided to use because it was tough and it already had one end of it bent into a crude loop from a previous project. This was some sturdy metal. After cutting it to the right shape, I was unable to bend it by hand. My bolt cutters have metal bending rods on it and I was able to use those to bend the metal into the angles I needed. This was a pain. I forgot to take a picture of the underneath of the base pan. Its basically a piece of metal bent in three places. Once at a 90 degree angle to fit through the jar lid hole, then another bend to keep the metal from scraping the ground, and then a third bend to keep the metal from scraping the bottom of the pan. In the end it worked out good because the piece of metal has just enough weight to it that it feels sturdy and it won't disconnect. With this done, I now an adjustable damper and I have full control over the airflow. A different angle: Now that I can open and close the damper to whatever amount of air flow I want to allow in, I need to be able to tell what the actual temperature of the smoker is. For this I needed to add a new thermometer. Adding a new thermometer was easier than I thought it would be. All I needed to do was drill one hole and then use a piece of simple lamp hardware found in my local hardware store's electricity aisle. Its a threaded feed-through with 2 nuts. I can't remember what the actual thing was called on the package in the store, but its basically a brass tube that is threaded for nuts to attach to it like a bolt. Its lamp hardware because electric cords usually go through the opening to the light bulb. But for me, the opening will be for my new thermometer. The hardware store only sold the things in a pack of 8 in varying sizes and the nuts were on the shelf just below them, also in a pack. I used either a 1 or 1 1/2 inch feed through with two nuts. Using a couple pliers I tightened the two nuts and kept the bulk of the feed through on the inside of the smoker to keep the thermometer level. I've seen some people recommend candy thermometers, but I chose instead to get a new Weber thermometer off amazon. Because the thermometer itself isn't installed, I can take it inside and clean it after every use. Outside look. I installed it right above the charcoal door: Inside look. Two nuts holding it in place. Pretty simple. I also bent this slightly downward to make sure the thermometer sits a bit more tight. This new thermometer is significantly better than the one that came with the smoker. I can now get the smoker up to 250 and using the damper on the bottom, I can make small adjustments to the airflow and maintain a constant cooking temperature. And here it is all completed: Resources I used for this project: http://home.comcast.net/~day_trippr/smoker_mods.htm http://brinkmannsmokermod.blogspot.com/2011/01/simple-modification-to-brinkmann.html

Back in May of this year I bought a new Smoker because I've been thinking about trying out smoking food for a couple years now. I've gotten pretty good with a standard grill, but I wanted to improve my slow cooking skills and try something new with different flavors. After watching numerous seasons of BBQ Pitmasters, I became inspired to finally try out charcoal smoking. Instead of buying something expensive, I shopped around, looked at reviews, different makes and models and I decided to go with a vertical charcoal water smoker. A vertical water smoker works by having a heat source at the bottom, a water pan in the middle of the smoker that provides hot moisture, and two cooking grates. One directly over the water pan and the second at the top of the smoker. Because the water pan is almost as wide as the smoker itself, it causes all the food in the smoker to be cooked with indirect moist heat. Vertical water smokers are also cheap. Some offsets are cheap also, but many of the low end vertical water smokers are under $60. After reading many reviews, I decided to get a Brinkmann Gourmet Charcoal Smoker. There is a large community of people that use this exact smoker and have shared numerous modifications they have done to improve it's performance. After reading about smoker modifications I was a bit concerned. Why would a new product need modifying? Well, I found out the answer.. If I wanted a smoker that would work amazing right out of the box, I'd have to pay $300 for a Weber Smokey Mountain. So, no.. I decided to go with something cheaper and modify it if needed, hence why these Brinkmann ones are nick named the ECB (El Cheapo Brinkmann). I'll only be using this smoker about 5 months out of the year and not even every week. For what I wanted to do, I figured $90 on amazon was good enough. For that price I also got the smoker cover, which turned out to be better material than I thought it would. Unfortunately, amazon shipped this smoker horribly. The box looked like it was kicked a few times and I had to hug the metal of the body and the lid back into a fully circular shape. As well as bending the door into a shape that would close correctly.. I also needed to use a rubber mallet and hammer out one ding in the body. I was not please with the condition, but after full assembly the smoker looked great. Here are some pictures of the Smoker new and in use for the first time: I never used charcoal before so I had to buy a new charcoal chimney starter and some charcoal. I decided to get the weber chimney and go right for the royal oak lump charcoal. After reading all the safety information about charcoal lighter fluid and how you need to let the charcoal burn out for at least 20 minutes, etc. I had no interest in using it.. thats why I got the chimney starter. Along with some newspaper I'm able to get any charcoal started burning safely. That and I have a friend that uses the same style of chimney to start his charcoal grill. Very simple to use. The bottom of the smoker is a charcoal pan with air vents on the bottom. Charcoal is controlled completely by air flow. I added a grate at the bottom because I read that burned charcoal ash will build up and block the air flow which would smother the remaining coals. Now that the coals are ready, I put the body of the smoker on top of the pan, then add water to the water pan, put on the grates and add the food. Put the lid on and its done. As you can see, this style of smoker is noticeably smaller than an offset charcoal smoker that can usually be about the size of a normal grill. For my first use, I went big. I put a pork shoulder on the bottom grate and a rack of ribs on the top. I figured I'd get a good feel for the smoker with two different things cooking at once. I also put a couple aluminum foil packets of soaked hickory and apple wood chips onto the charcoal.. Here is where the smoke starts rolling pretty good: About 4+ hours later here are the results: The end results were not what I was expecting. Because this smoker has no airflow controls, I could not regulate the temperature. Also the thermometer is horrible. It doesn't even have temperatures.. only "warm, ideal and hot". The ribs turned out ok, but overly smoked. The smoke flavor was so pronounced that I couldn't eat the smaller ribs. And the pork shoulder was not even cooked all the way through. I ended up finishing the pork shoulder on my propane grill because I already used 2 chimneys full of charcoal and I didn't feel like setting another to burn. The pork shoulder was not cooked correctly but the smoke flavor was good for it. Because it was thicker, the smoke didn't permeate as much into the meat. I'd say this smoker was a failure. But I didn't give up. I decided to make a few modifications, which I'll go over in another blog post. I can say that I would not recommend using this smoker without modifying it. Or if you do use this smoker without modifications do not use lump charcoal. It burns far hotter and faster than kingsford briquettes and with no airflow controls, the lump burned incredibly fast. Also, use almost boiling water in your water pan, and only fill it half way. The water I used was hot from the tap and because of the volume of water the pan holds, most of the heat that would have cooked the pork shoulder was absorbed by the water that was sitting directly under it. And for anyone wondering, was the smoker worth it? The answer is yes. Once I had the proper modifications done, I have been making some of the best barbeque I've ever eaten. Definitely worth it. It was quite a learning experience too. Practice makes perfect.

I can't remember how I have the controls set up. I've tried a variety of combos but I do remember I have all vehicles set for shooting their main weapons with the same button as my soldier's gun.. I don't know why the default is set to the left shoulder buttons. Whenever I got into a helicopter or jet, I kept shooting my flare every time I wanted to shoot.. It was one of the first things I changed. I have great control with choppers.. I can easily cap flags by flying around in their radius, land and repair, etc. Little birds definitely have much more maneuverability. I swear attack helicopters were severely nerfed while stingers have been buffed, and I've never been able to cope with the changes to it. It also doesn't help that whenever I'm on a map with jets, some expert jet pilots are always on the other team shooting everything down with just their main gun. Its as if flying is so damn easy most of these guys seem to handicap themselves by having only flares as a perk. I don't understand how the hell people can be that good in jets. I've maxed out my jet points even before air superiority was available and experts in jets basically rape me when I'm in any air vehicle. However, if I'm in a little bird with a teammate repairing, I can usually hold my own against jets and even take them down.

I just read that Michael Bay is going to be directing... j/k. For me, I'm more interested in if the characters are going to be portrayed correctly. Many many people liked Nolan's batman. I thought The Dark Knight was a good movie in terms of plot, direction, cinematography, The Joker, action, etc. But Bale's performance was still lacking to me and he didn't improve in the third movie. Bane was completely off from the comics I've read back in the day. The prison childhood thing is right, the guy is a genius, etc. But he had no real fighting strength like in the comics. I'd complain that the movies never followed the original plot lines or character designs from the comics, but with how DC keeps relaunching and making new incarnations of Batman over the years, there is no one source material. In my head I have a vision of batman and his enemies resembling those from the animated series / movies mentioned above. Until Batman is portrayed in that incarnation, I'll never see Batman as actually correct. I can say the same thing about Superman, but I haven't seen Man of Steel yet, but he definitely appears to be close to correct from the trailers and clips I've seen. When I heard there was going to be a Batman / Bane movie, all I could think about was "Batman: Knightfall". After seeing the trailers and reviews for the Dark Knight Rises, I was never interested in watching it.. In fact, I only watched it just a few months ago for the first time. This Bane was better than the Bane in "Batman & Robin", but nowhere near close enough.. and the plot wasn't anything compared to the Knightfall comics.

I watched 2-3 episodes a few years ago. It didn't seem to interest me. The quality of the acting was good, but the plot seemed slow paced. About a year ago I saw the first 3 or 4 eps of Hell on Wheels and it reminded me a lot of Deadwood.. good acting, but very slow plot. Both had great production quality, but neither kept my interest. Probably because of the time frame both series takes place in. Old west just doesn't do it for me. I'm more interested in scifi and futuristic or advanced technology scenarios. If you do like Deadwood, check out Hell on Wheels.