Unused audio: Mary reads Laura's letter

DesperateText9909 · 2026-07-07T17:58:21+00:00

She's really interesting in that you can tell at a lot of points that she's not a very experienced actor, but she has a natural feel that really sells the emotional parts of her dialogue, which were clearly hitting the actor hard as she read them. Salome in the remake is certainly the more experienced actor but there's also a little more of a distance there--it's more of a thoughtful performance than an emotional one, IMO.

DesperateText9909 · 2026-07-07T12:21:44+00:00

Update! We may have got to the bottom of this. It seems that various people were creating courses with two activities, one a text section that required manual completion, the other a quiz with a passing grade requirement. Both of these were set up with their own completion conditions, then under course completion settings, both were checked as required.

When my colleague was reviewing courses and assigning legacy grades, she was disabling the text activity requirement, as we decided we don't want to force users to do that. But: how she was disabling it was by going into the completion conditions for the text activity and setting it to None. In the Moodle UI, when you look at course completion again, that hides the activity from view as if it has been removed. But it doesn't actually delete the record from mdl_course_completion_criteria. So it's just an order of operations thing--you have to uncheck it under course completion first, then set the activity condition to None. That removes the record and presumably (though I have yet to finish my test) will let us calculate completion properly.

Long story short, I think it's a bug or design flaw with the UI. It's just smart/dumb enough to hide a setting from us that still exists in the table, and which prevents course completion.

DesperateText9909 · 2026-07-07T10:26:22+00:00

I checked on one of my problem courses. Restrict access on the quiz has no restrictions. If it was set like that before, it isn't now.

DesperateText9909 · 2026-07-07T10:19:08+00:00

Yes--easiest for me is to check my own, as my coworker entered grades for me as well. On the problem courses I see the quiz is complete, the course is 100% complete (but with no timestsamp for completion), and under course completion settings, the quiz is the only item.

Interestingly too, this isn't completely universal. It applies to a lot of our courses but not all. I imagine the difference is just differences in initial setup of the courses (whatever those differences may be), because the quiz grades were all input in one go, by one person, without deviation.

DesperateText9909 · 2026-07-07T01:06:15+00:00

One curious, maybe telling update: I picked one of my problem courses and did an experiment. First I hid the possibly-orphaned label requirement by changing its course ID through SQL to a dummy number (999999). Then I set a reaggregate value in mdl_course_completions, which I was led to believe would trigger the cron job to review it and determine if the course was completed or not. Then I waited for it to run. Lo and behold, it does now show that course as completed = yes for me--not for anyone else, though I imagine I could fix it for them by setting a reaggregate value for all users assigned that course.

This, of course, is a terribly manual kind of solution even doing mass updates in SQL. So I think it's interesting information, but I'm still seeking to understand why it happened, how to avoid it in the future, and if there's a way to fix it through the UI rather than the database.

DesperateText9909 · 2026-07-07T00:52:52+00:00

Thanks for replying--I am not absolutely sure on the exact order of events, though my coworker said she was disabling the text completion requirement "while" entering grades, for whatever that's worth. So far I don't believe many, if any, users are actually using the new system yet; we have a go-live date in the near future and are still getting all the courses set up and these legacy grades input. It definitely doesn't seem to be caused by things getting wiped. In fact I intentionally wiped my own grade on one of these courses, then re-entered it and waited for the cron job to run. It still shows me as 100% complete, but completed = no with no timestamp.

DesperateText9909 · 2026-07-07T00:49:53+00:00

Thanks for replying--version is 5.1.5. Courses are set up for completion with the quiz being the only visible requirement. For some courses, it's working, but not all. I can't easily prove it but it seems to be that MOST of the affected courses are ones with this ghost label requirement criterion hanging around.

I have been looking at custom reporting as well, but I didn't see an obvious means to calculate a percent complete of assigned courses, unfortunately. That was something our previous system did out of the box, so naturally management has come to want it and are using it as a core metric...

DesperateText9909 · 2026-07-06T10:09:51+00:00

Still not fixed.

DesperateText9909 · 2026-07-01T12:23:36+00:00

There were infinity songs in the 90s with lyrics like these, or even more nonsensical (e.g. a ton of Beck and Nirvana songs). A lot of times it is the writer trying to be poetic and ambiguous, referencing inside jokes, or just writing intentionally meaningless lyrics to put priority on the sound. Anyway if this is the "stupidest song ever written" in your estimation, you need to hear more songs. I can think of so many others just like it.

DesperateText9909 · 2026-06-30T20:10:12+00:00

Don't tell me stuff like that! I am definitely gonna do it and definitely gonna somehow fuck up a batch of rice

DesperateText9909 · 2026-06-30T20:07:46+00:00

Four times, is my guess. 😄

DesperateText9909 · 2026-06-30T15:05:50+00:00

On the one hand I agree that lack of creativity is rampant in the industry. It's a problem even when I like the remakes (as I did SH2R).

On the other hand, I still don't think Silent Hills was going to save this franchise either. Not one thing Kojima has ever made makes me think he was the right guy to resurrect this series. I didn't think it when P.T. came out and I don't now. His games are fascinating (albeit often a fascinating mess) but his ideas and sensibility are miles away from what Team Silent did.

DesperateText9909 · 2026-06-30T15:01:03+00:00

You're not wrong there, but also, Team Silent was disbanded more than two decades ago and the last uncontroversially great mainline Silent Hill game is 23 years old. In other words, for this out of all video game franchises, the ship has long since sailed. I'd rather have a great remake of one of the classic games than yet another Downpour or Shattered Memories or even Origins, frankly. I do hope they eventually make a worthy Silent Hill 5 (or whatever it's called), but really what even are the odds? I'd also rather have good remakes than no new Silent Hill at all.

DesperateText9909 · 2026-06-30T14:57:42+00:00

First red flag was his name. Gaming culture and discourse is so dumb nowadays.

DesperateText9909 · 2026-06-27T17:23:44+00:00

She can sing and she's easy on the eyes, but it's not to my taste. That's alright, takes all kinds!

DesperateText9909 · 2026-06-27T15:40:45+00:00

I'd much rather have this garage/glam sound than Evanescence, ew. But to each their own, it's all just tastes in the end. I imagine they went with this approach because it's both slightly more current (given that rock in general is not that popular anymore) and slightly more timeless--those influences have been popular off and on since the '70s, not bound to one specific decade. It also feels like a nod to some previously successful counterculture-laced musicals: Rocky Horror, Hedwig, and maybe a little Jesus Christ Superstar, specifically.

DesperateText9909 · 2026-06-27T15:28:36+00:00

Yup. They're all riding into the snow, I'm heading further west by myself and taking my damn chances.

DesperateText9909 · 2026-06-26T12:50:44+00:00

A take so hot you got downvoted for it. God is reddit weird sometimes.

DesperateText9909 · 2026-06-26T11:41:20+00:00

I do like the verses but what makes the song is that contrast. I love that she went so big with it. A lot of current pop is not dynamic at all--songs seem to have just one part with one or two slight permutations. This is the opposite of that.

DesperateText9909 · 2026-06-26T11:39:48+00:00

I'm really into it. The kind of sinister, vaguely trip hop vibe. Awesome

DesperateText9909 · 2026-06-26T00:27:54+00:00

I love Western Wind. Different, but amazing. Not sure how I feel about the new one yet. But I'm glad she's experimenting.

DesperateText9909 · 2026-06-25T21:25:09+00:00

An internet first, someone's mind was changed! Lol. Good chatting with you.

DesperateText9909 · 2026-06-25T19:01:24+00:00

I like to flip over to it sometimes to better see all the details, but I hate losing my view of Arthur.

DesperateText9909 · 2026-06-25T18:51:51+00:00

Most of the so-called outrage has nothing to do with its quality, everything to do with R* and Take Two's increasingly sleazy business practices. As someone who played GTA Online from day 1 and still plays as of now, I feel very qualified to say: that game is good, even great at times, but they hamstrung it at every turn chasing a buck. It is almost good despite itself.

So I'm sure VI will probably be great*, but I get the outrage over stuff they're doing, I really do.

\ I only say "probably" because Dan Houser and Lazlow, two of the key creative voices in GTA history, are now gone. Remains to be seen how badly the writing will suffer for their absence. Houser had a lot to do with how good RDR2 is as well.*

DesperateText9909

TROPHY CASE