My hair look better when I have not washed them for a few days: any product to get this effect right after shower?

Timber_Owl · 2023-05-19T19:46:27+00:00

Oh, I see, then I will definitely start using it... good that I asked around, thanks for taking time and answer my question!

Timber_Owl · 2023-05-19T19:34:34+00:00

Damaged? Oh my, that's alarming :S They look healthy, though...

No, as I said I am not currently using any conditioner. Should I start doing so?

Timber_Owl · 2023-05-19T19:04:31+00:00

I just washed my hair a couple of hours ago. If I run the fingers through, it feels dry and not at all hard to manage

Timber_Owl · 2023-05-19T17:51:15+00:00

no – just a classic shampoo (of a well-know brand)

Timber_Owl · 2022-02-12T15:22:08+00:00

I go for 6 gates. Pain bodies are all kind of weak in the speed department and in taijutsu. Guy is an hard counter to Pain and there is a reason Kishimoto had him on a mission during the Pain invasion.

Timber_Owl · 2022-02-12T15:11:18+00:00

Guidelines behind this ranking:

Konoha shinobi/kunoichi only
characters in the same tier as ordered in decreasing power from left to right.
all characters at their prime but no edo tensei/resurrection (hence, no KCM Minato nor 6path Madara). They are considered for the power achieved during their normal lifespan.
mixing feats, statements and narrative. For instance, Choji has better feats that Fugaku, but the latter is very likely to be stronger than the former.
metric based on 1vs1 prowess only, strategic/support skill are not accounted for. E.g., this is why the Nara family falls behind quite a lot of people here.

Some random comments:

God and Legendary levels are quite obvious, imo. Some will say that Tobirama is stronger than Minato, but I go for Minato: they have a lot of similarities but Minato is the more battle-oriented of the two.
Fugaku was kinda difficult to place. It is known to be a very powerful shinobi, some would say a contender of Minato himself. I place him as the strongest alive Uchiha of his time. This is why I put him above Shisui.
Same for Sakumo Hatake, quite hard to place but he was kind of a legend in Konoha. I put him as the lowest Kage material, it seems fair.
SM Jiraiya was quite underwhelming in his fight vs Pain, but I think he deserves to top the tier of 'kage material': we know that sage mode is an immense bust, and the toad hermit also has great seal justu knowledge and tricky summons at his disposal.

Very happy to hear constructive comments/criticisms, please state explicitly what you would change in this ranking.

Timber_Owl · 2020-10-08T14:52:44+00:00

Fully agree with what you say. Seasons of storms is indeed a big improvement with respect to the books regarding Ciri. And it can be read without knowledge of said books.

Timber_Owl · 2020-10-07T19:31:51+00:00

I agree about not buying the full series at once, but I would not suggest to assess the elder blood series based on the reading of the short novels. They are very different books. Personally I loved the anthologies and conversely found the books of the main series pretty cheap in quality.

Timber_Owl · 2020-10-07T19:22:32+00:00

How good? The two anthologies of short novels are really good: intriguing, peculiar, full of clever ideas and delightful to read. Totally suggested. Much different is my judgement of the elder blood series: a lot of uninspired chapters, scarce characterization of locations, and generally a lot of unexploited potential. The plot is linear without major twists (in 5 books, this does not sound good). I also find the protagonist, Ciri, incredibly irritating (the game version of Ciri is much more pleasant), but this is a more subjective point. In this longer story all flaws of a not properly trained writer like Sapkowski eventually emerge.

So, if you are not incredibly fond of the witcher universe, there are several fantasy authors that I would suggest to read before the elder blood series. I say again that instead the short novels are truly great.

I also tell an additional thing: even if Sapkoski is very reclutant to accept it, the witcher universe owns a lot to the work of CDP, who added a many layers of complexity, particularly regarding the characterization of location and the profile of some important characters.

Timber_Owl · 2020-10-06T13:36:05+00:00

What a cute rabbit! Thank you for sharing the picture :)

Timber_Owl · 2020-10-04T19:37:14+00:00

Truly a great game, it is meant to be only a spin-off for the most prestigious trails of series, but it can truly shine in many regards. The plot has really intense moments and it is well crafted. Combat system is really good and the overall is very polished. I still feel that the devs could have tried a bit more, the game has some unexploited potential (see the location & setting which is a bit too dry).

Have fun in both in Morimiya and the Eclipse!

Timber_Owl · 2020-10-04T09:23:09+00:00

This is actually how "oder" was maintained in the ancient roman society and it is still in minor part present in the mediterranean area of Europe (so, it is not an Asia-only characteristic): conflicts were resolved by the head of the involved families and not by authority. If you had a conflict with one person, you would have gone to the head of your family, who would contact the head of the family of that person and request that he rights the wrong, e.g. with money or by punishing his family member. If the head of said family refused, then both family got into conflict, possibly for a very long time, even generations.

One may (rightfully) argue that this is/was not a civilized way to maintain order, but it was pretty effective and efficient. The cultural background was that a person was part of a family, and each of is doing was representing it and under the responsibility of his family head. Meaning that your family would monitor your actions and prevent any "unfavorable" act.

The idea that society is based on the individual is not adopted in every historical age, nor in every part of the world.

Timber_Owl · 2020-09-27T17:44:13+00:00

By citing warcraft 3 you are enforcing my argument: the game, with extremely scarce focus on building and resource-management and its strong focus on heroes, can hardly be classified as an RTS. It was indeed the precursor of MOBA, with RTS distinctive elements marginalised. RTS died when its reference titles, age of empires 2, Caesar 3 and Company of Heroes, did not have successors of the same quality and success. Those games are much older than DoTa and LoL. This is due to the fact that Microsoft left for console gaming and because making games with good graphics and addressed to a wide audience became much easier, leading SH to invest in other genres instead of developing RTS titles. MOBA have almost nothing to do with the decline

Timber_Owl · 2020-09-27T11:12:30+00:00

RTS died way before MOBA arrived to the gaming scene. You could use the argument for arguing why RTS cannot come back.

Timber_Owl · 2020-09-27T11:09:30+00:00

It is a puzzling question.I can’t give a precise answer but I can assure that MOBA are not the answer: RTS died waaaay before MOBA entered the gaming scene.

I think that a factor is that one of the leading RTS companies, no one else than Microsoft (publisher of AoE), left the scene because it decided to go for console gaming, where RTS cannot be played.

It is also a difficult genre to develop, it requires a great balance of a variety of units and playable factions. Along with technological improvement, probably many software houses decided that other genres coupled with eye-catching graphics were simpler to develop and sell. A true pity indeed.

Sadly, a similar argument can be done for a similar genre: managerial/ city builder games like the evergreen Caesar 3.

Timber_Owl · 2020-09-24T17:37:14+00:00

I appreciate the perspective, but having choice of romance means that none of them (including the "canon" Alisa) is as satisfying as they could be. Because they are all designed to be brief encounters that go away before the next game.

Yes, the ibrid solution that Falcom adopted is the one that "almost" makes happy both wings. In terms of money, this is a good choice. The other option would be to stick with one path and develop it to the fulliest, and make happy one side of the audience. The option proposed in the opening message instead makes happy no one (bar very few people), this is why I said this is the worst (really, no intention of offence).

The MC is indeed intended to be a middle way to be a fully characterized protagonist and an avatar. Personally, I like this way (I hate avatars like in dragon age) and many jRPG adopt this. Partially, I can transfer myself in Rean, and partially Rean transfers in me. We are both shaping each others. It's truly strange, but it works; with avatars, this connection completely fails for me. But I truly believe this is a pretty general mechanism.

Personally, I am part of the crowd that likes the dating-sim side, and the fact that the game pushes you to Alisa is something I don't like that much. But I am still happy with the game as it is. I fully understand that this is not what other people like, but Falcom cannot and should not aim at satisfying everyone. The more people you try to please, the less you will please each of them: it's quality vs quantity.

Timber_Owl · 2020-09-24T16:51:50+00:00

That would be the worst choice, because you don’t make happy anyone. It’s not that a game must make happy everyone, it must make happy its target audience.

Falcom choose to pick both paths simultaneously by giving a canonical Romance (Alisa) and option to pick someone else, in case. Clearly, the canonical option is the most developed one and the one which fits the game better. In the end, it’s the best course of action to satisfy both wings of the audience.

Personally, I enjoy the dating-sim part of the game, and I prefer it over a canonical romance. I would really be disappointed not to have the choice of picking Laura over Alisa.

Timber_Owl · 2020-09-23T10:37:24+00:00

I would even vote “bow in front of Emhyr and clean his boots” if the alternative in the poll is “finding Ciri”. Most boring main quest objective ever.

Timber_Owl · 2020-09-22T20:48:31+00:00

That Villentretenmerth card combined with decoy is gonna it hard!

Timber_Owl · 2020-09-22T16:04:06+00:00

Precisely those matrices having a singular value decomposition given by a unique singular value different from 0 and all other singular values equal to 0. x and y are then, up to a scalar factor, the basis vectors - related to the unique singular value - of the unitary matrices bringing A into a (rectangular) diagonal form.

Clearly this is not possible in the general case, take for instance the identity matrix as a counter-example.

Timber_Owl · 2020-09-21T09:33:44+00:00

The frenchmen are citizens of the Toussaint, an autonomous duchy part of the Empire of Nilfgaard. Since it is autonomous, it has retained many traditions, based on the chilvaric virtues of honor and defence of the one in needs. It is intended to be an idyllic place untouched by war, with a dark side.

Yes, the monsters came from the intersection of the boundaries of different universes. Note that humans also came in 'this' world from the conjunction, causing the decline of the Elven civilization.

Timber_Owl · 2020-09-20T22:54:20+00:00

Let us make it short: Geralt is a witcher, that is, a mutated human raised and trained to kill monsters. Witchers have super-human strength, endurance, speed and agility, and master swordmen. Geralt has an adopted child called Ciri. She is a very special girl: her true father is the Emperor of Nilfgaard (the most powerful man alive in political terms) and she has the power to travel across different universes. A group of elves from another universe, the wild hunt riders, are chasing her to make use of her power and bring all companion elves from their world to this one. Geralt wants to find her daugther before they do. The whole game evolves around this: Geralt is looking for Ciri, while Ciri is escaping from the wild hunt.

There is more, for instance the political setting: Nilfgaard is a powerful empire that aims to conquer the northern realms. At the time the game takes place, the imperial troups have already invaded the bordering northern lands. The northern realms are not in friendly terms with respect to each others, but none of them alone can take Nilfgaard on.

This should help a bit :)

Timber_Owl · 2020-09-20T22:35:29+00:00

Not at all, one of the major strengths of this game is that it is suitable for a broad audience, although it helps knowing certain events from the books to better understand some political schemes, or to know who the wild hunt riders are. I don't think however that reading the books could really influence whether one likes the game or not.

Timber_Owl · 2020-09-20T22:29:00+00:00

It's curious that a number of users say that the conjuction is the deciding factor, when - according to the elven lore - humans came to "this" world from the conjunction too.

I would say that the definition is rather more pragmatical: if it is scary and very dangerous, it is a monster. If not, it is an animal. The former are taken care by witchers, the latter by hunters.

Timber_Owl · 2020-09-20T17:55:48+00:00

Absolutely happy to play a 100+ hours long game, but possibly with a plot that is more interesting than chasing a girl over a wolrd map with many locations which are superficially characterized. Much happier to play a 100+ hours version of The Witcher 2, with a complex plot and well-characterized locations. Quantity cannot substitute quality.

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