Rehearsal of Schumann's 4th Sympony with Herbert von Karajan

The Kraken

"Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die."
-- Alfred Tennyson (1830)

'nuff said.

"Please don't go. The Drones need you. They look up to you."

Light Entertainment Police, Comedy Division, Special Flying Squad.

Just brilliant!

Best of Both Worlds: Quast and Crowe

Stars (from "Les Miserables") sung by Philip Quast and acted by Russell Crowe.

Beyond Earth: Extended Trade Route Duration

One of the more annoying features in Beyond Earth is that you have to "renew" your trade routes every 25 turns. What sounds reasonable in the first place, becomes very, very tedious when your number of cities and trade routes are growing in the mid- and endgame. To help with this situation you can modify the length of trade routes via the configuration that comes with Beyond Earth:

• Editing .xml file 
• Go to the installation folder of Beyond Earth, e.g. SteamApps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth
• Open subfolder assets\Gameplay\XML
• Locate the GlobalDefines.xml with a text editor.
• Find the string TRADE_ROUTE_BASE_TURN_DURATION and replace the value by one that suits your needs, e.g.
•         <!--International Trade-->
          <Row Name="TRADE_ROUTE_BASE_TURN_DURATION">
              <Value>40</Value>
          </Row>
• Save the file and close the text editor.

Afterwards you can start the game, and you'll see any new trade routes will have that extended duration.

Games -- Ten

My ten favourite games, ordered by publication date ..

• 1991+ -- Civilization -- all of the them
• 1997+ -- Fallout -- all of them
• 1998 -- HalfLife -- the original
• 1998 -- StarCraft
• 1999 -- Alpha Centauri
• 1999 -- Homeworld -- original game & "Cataclysm"
• 1999 -- System Shock II
• 2001 -- Operation Flashpoint -- the first two
• 2005 -- Battlefield 2
• 2011 -- Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

Many, many more honorable mentions are ...

• 1993 -- Day of the Tentacle
• 1996 -- Warhammer: Dark Omen
• 2000 -- Diablo 2
• 2000+ -- Total War series
• 2000 -- Deus Ex
• 2002 -- Elder Scrolls: Morrowind
• 2004 -- Far Cry
• 2007 -- Crysis
• 2009+ -- Borderlands -- all of them

I dare you!

This is an initiative (not really a new one, but still) to raise awareness what privacy means and that users of social media (and I mean that's not only Facebook) should be ware what they post, and what information they share.

Look at the original website Take This Lollipop for the full experience.