a Russian solo.

!!! Well played, sir!

!!! Well played, sir!

It was so very sweet. I started off trying to get long-term alliances with Italy to get rid of Turkey (with Austria's help) and then Austria, while preventing an EG alliance in the west. Instead, in the first year I attacked Turkey, Turkey attacked Austria, and Austria attacked me. And Italy took advantage of the confusion to get position against Austria. Meanwhile, an EG alliance started beating the crap out of France. For three years the Eastern countries were being run by the Three Stooges, as we invariably guessed wrong as to who was about to attack us and who was genuine.

Finally (after it was obvious that Austria was both impossible to work with and doomed, and Italy had sicced Turkey on me before stabbing him good and proper), the Turk and I agreed that our only hope lay in revving up the Juggernaut. But Italy had us bottled up, and was even making more headway against Turkey. I was most sympathetic that the only way to get my forces into the front line too was to take Bulgaria from my ally (with his agreement, after a year of trying it his way).

Meanwhile, the conversations with England finally paid off, and he stabbed Germany in '05. A very bad move for him, sorry to say, as France wasn't quite dead yet. Still, I'd promised to help him out, and we hit a stalemate (ERT vs IFG) that lasted until '07 - when in possibly my most brilliant move of the game, I slipped an A Tyr that had been fruitlessly battering on Venice northwards into Munich instead.

The game's second elimination didn't occur until '09 (Germany). I won the next year, having piled on 11 SCs in three years. It was a sweet, sweet win. (And, incidentally, Italy was royally pissed off.)

I have no flippin' clue what Billy just said, but it sounds FUN!

Hey Sean, I have a couple USB controllers. Look very much like Xbox ones (button/stick layout). Since getting the xbox, and ditching the windows machine, I rarely play games on the computer. You are more than welcome to them.

If you sign up on Gleemax (currently free)

Coolness: The company that did the character animations for GTA4 offers the ability to map your own facial expressions onto an avatar. [link]

And if you want it to LOOK like you, there's Big Stage.

Big Stage is a media company whose breakthrough technology allows users to easily create and integrate a life-like 3D avatar of themselves into everything from famous movie scenes, TV shows and video games, to music videos, short video clips, virtual worlds, still images, user-generated content, instant messages, emails, social networks and more - instantly. Big Stage will launch to consumers in the second quarter of 2008.

(Why yes, I am working on the metaverse, why?)

Ick. 3-D avatar space is way too uncanny valley for me already.

Coolness: The company that did the character animations for GTA4 offers the ability to map your own facial expressions onto an avatar.

Oh man, that's cool. Wow, I would like to play with that software.

One wonders if, 20 years from now, this tech will be so cheap & easy that people are making their own feature length animations. A cottage industry or just more noise to signal?

I'd guess closer to 5. And that, as with everything, 90% crap, a few % sheer brilliance.

Hey, it's been one of my wandering thoughts that someday, someone would figure out to lift the Buffy video game sets/models, and use them to create new fan episodes...

Or episodes of Willow and Spike having Big Vampire Sex!