emoteen134 : Granted, but you're forced to instantly burn all the calories you ate before your next meal, or you're never eating anything again and probably die from starvation. Also good to see my favorite thread is still alive and kickin' after all these years.

I wish my country were actually explored by Britain rather than Portugal, just to see if it would be any different from the mess we're in right now.

Pretty much everything I did in 2010 when I was a newbie here. Especially that time I made a thread asking people "when was the last time you were rick rolled".

God what have I done...

Well I'm no audio expert but I played a bit with the audio file... quality's still a bit bad even after removing the buzzing, but it's way more audible. I used the Noise Reduction plugin in Audacity:

- Select a part of the audio that has only the buzzing (like that big buzz right at the start, sitting at the first 300 milliseconds before the talk)

- Go to Effects > Noise Reduction > Click on "Get Noise Profile". This will let Audacity know how the buzzing noise is so it can be filtered

- Then, select the whole audio and go again to Effects > Noise Reduction.

- The parameters I used were: "48" on the Noise Reduction slider (dB), "6,00" on the Sensitivity one and "3" on the Frequency Smoothing slider (bands). Not sure if it's the same as yours, as I use Linux, and I know there are more sliders like attack and decay, I don't have those. If you wish you can play around with the settings

- Lastly, I amplified the audio (I amplified by 6 dB but you can use a bit less if you want to)

That's the best I could do to remove all the buzzing, you can still hear a bit of "vinyl crackle" but it's almost unnoticeable. Even with this though, the audio quality's still a bit bad, I can barely make anything out of this, but at least the buzzing is gone.

Hope this helps, if you need anything else, feel free to ask and I'll try to help to the best of my abilities. I have a copy of the edited audio (made following the steps above) in case you need it. Best of luck.

Continuing with my childhood memories, here's one of the best I've had: Crash Team Racing. What. A. Game. At least for me, apparently everyone in that epoch just wanted to know about Mario Kart, God knows why. I've always been fan of the more "obscure" titles, although CTR ain't that obscure, just somewhat underrated in my humble opinion. It did what most thought it was just possible to Mario: a platform character in a racing game. Yeah, many thought "oh, this is gonna flop, Crash isn't really suited for racing games, he's way better as a platformer". Surprisingly enough (at least for those kind of people), Naughty Dog managed to keep the very essence of Crash while changing the gameplay formula. Yes, it's a Crash racing game spin-off, but it's a Crash game all the way through.


[GRAPHICS] - 9/10

As usual with most PS1 games, CTR had gorgeous graphics, at least in my humble child eyes. Well, still up to today, but nowadays I do recognize some goofy things like... Crash's expression. I mean, yeah, it's Crash, but... I never noticed how "blocky" everyone was (which is understandable, due to the PS1 being pushed to its limits by these kind of games). So much for being a child back then. But it's good either way, the lush landscapes and tracks manage to compensate this. It feels like a Crash game nonetheless.


[SOUND] - 10/10

Ah the songs... there really isn't a song I don't like in this game, seriously. Some more, some less, but I like them all. Especially the world hub themes. I find it amazing how all of them are essentially "the same base song" but with different thematics, and they blend superbly while you change worlds, which is the best part IMO. Not even the PS1's audio compression can take the awesome away from Crash music. Among my favorites, Tiger Temple, Dragon Mines, Sewer Speedway (ooh boy that Crash 2 vibe) and the oh-so-wacky boss theme.


[ADDICTIVENESS] - 8/10

I'd pretty much love to replay CTR as much as the other PS1 Crash games, if it wasn't for my sudden laziness when I think "gee I'll end up wanting to collect all those Relics again, and probably the Platinum ones...". Aside from that, once you finish the singleplayer Adventure mode, there's still a lot of things to do, like collecting the rest of those Relics, Gems and CTR Tokens (which I don't really know why they were invented in the first place. Probably lack of collectibles since everything that appeared in the other games was used here - even crystals, though inside arena tracks, not as a world hub collectible), unless you're a first-time completionist, in that case, good job brother! You also have time trials if you wanna brag about being too fast. Multiplayer is also awesome, like your usual racing games, you have cups to compete, arenas to battle with your friends and such. If you had a Multitap and a bunch of friends back in the day, you were such a happy child.


[STORY] - 7/10

Although I find it a bit "generic", CTR's story is still good enough. Nitrous Oxide, self-proclaimed "fastest racer in the galaxy", comes to Earth and challenges the best racer on the planet to a racing contest. If he loses, he goes back to his home planet Gasmoxia, if he wins, apparently he'll "turn the globe into a concrete parking lot and enslave everyone". Well now that's wacky enough for a Crash plot, I gotta agree. And we all know what happens in the end.


[DEPTH] - 8/10

Like I said above, you have the Adventure mode, lots of things to collect, Time Trials to beat - which if you happen to be fast enough, you'll be able to race against N. Tropy's, or even N. Oxide's ghost itself (I used to spend so much time on this when I was a child)  - , you have Multiplayer with races, cups and arenas, pretty much the basic to be expected of a casual racing game. About the character roster, you initially have 8 racers to choose from, but Adventure mode lets you unlock the bosses you race with by winning Gem Cups, and N. Tropy if you manage to beat all of his time trial records. I always thought N. Oxide was playable if you tried hard enough to perfect the game, suffice to say I got pretty sad when I found out it was only via Gameshark, and I didn't even knew what that was back then. Still, I could dream, right?


[DIFFICULTY] - 7/10

I dunno, even as a child I never found CTR to be that difficult. Sure, it had a bit of hard times, but nothing that I couldn't battle for. Adventure mode, in my view, was pretty much medium: not too hard, but not a piece of cake, especially against cheesy N. Oxide (I still do not forgive him for burning the start line). What was indeed hard - and I say that with certainty - were the Time Trials. I discovered so many useful shortcuts I didn't even knew of beforehand while racing against N. Tropy and especially N. Oxide (one of the best was when I found out about the upper part of Sewer Speedway, I used to trying get up there every lap, ended up with a 50% ratio of success due to my inability to understand the concept of air boosting at the time). Good times, man.


[OVERALL] - 9/10

Despite its little flaws, Crash Team Racing managed to be (and it still is) a great game. Naughty Dog did a great job maintaining the feeling of a Crash Bandicoot game with a different genre of gameplay, thus making it my favorite spin-off in the franchise. Impressive graphics (as with the other games), a generic but acceptable plot, lots of racing tracks, very well themed - bonus points to the fact that most of the tracks, if not almost all of them, refer to an in-game character, be it through the track's name or the track itself (like those huge boss faces printed throughout the whole track, I like that), accessible enough for the casual but demanding enough for the serious. A true classic, may it be remembered and (re)played for generations.

Well that wasn't so bad, me being a first timer at this and everything. Congrats to the winners

Alrighty-o, my childhood system! Lots of jewels here :3

(Content hidden until thread is closed!)

Kalawanji, by Kromestar and Cessman,

Seriously if there's any music that puts me in the best of vibes for pretty much EVERY situation, this is the one, along with Rusko's Cockney Thug for more energetic settings.

Brazil. Well, where should I start...

Bad things: we're known as the "most hated people on the Internet", the "Land of Hue Monkeys and all that s***", "Operation Car Wash", corruption and scandals everywhere, absurdly high taxes (in specific areas already recognized publicly as the most abusive in the whole world), we're in plain 2017 and some people still think we speak Spanish. Brazilians just don't know how to think in long terms, they just want everything working ASAP, be it through the usual "jeitinho brasileiro" or by - pardon my French - f***ing everything up even more. We're at a really, really bad moral crisis here, which is also causing the economic crisis and, to some extent, all the other crisis we're having right now, all because most of us just don't let go of our "laid-back, uneducated, completely amateur culture". Pardon my French again, but we're just f***ing cavemen compared to most of the civilized world. It's a cultural thing, unfortunately, and it'll take generations for it to vanquish, if at all.

"Meh" things: in the eyes of a tourist we have "beautiful beaches, beautiful women, beautiful landscapes, beautiful everything". I pity for them though, that's completely subjective. We're known to be a pretty hot country (on all sides), which I particularly am neutral to this but I just prefer cold climates. We also don't have snow, but we have lots of rain, especially in the North and some specific states such as mine (São Paulo, it really rains a lot here, no wonder our nickname is "Drizzling Land" - "Terra da Garoa").

Apparently good things: we created the damn airplane and USA loves to not recognize that, even though the whole world recognizes that. Their reaction at the Rio Olympics was just priceless. Santos Dumont ftw. We are also (I still hope this is true) the biggest orange juice exporter, and USA depends a lot on us for their sugar supplies, so if they f*** up with us, I think they're also f***ed, win-win. We're also advancing a lot in medicine, things such as the "soon-to-be cure for cancer" - phosphoethanolamine - we've discovered that and what makes me even more proud of that, even though I'm not patriotic in any way whatsoever, is that we did it even when the government just don't even raise a finger to help us, just like we do pretty much everything here. We're on our own.

Biased things: no, Brazil is not only "samba, carnaval and Rio de Janeiro".

It's actually summer where I live so I'm getting through the usual "Hell on Earth" period the best I can.

Wish we had snow here, I prefer cold to hot. Sometimes we get strong cool gushing winds from the south to make things better for a day or two.

jerry.ferguson : Egyptian Gorilla Belly Dancing Forever

I didn't know gorillas could belly dance though... I'm loving this thread as much as I love Corrupt-A-Wish.

R J C O S

thing1 : I don't use Twitch much but a quick search gave me two bots: LoyaltyBot and DeepBot. DeepBot is paid though, so I guess you don't want to have a look at it.

LoyaltyBot: https://github.com/Encelar/LoyaltyBot
It seems to have the first two points of what you want (giving points to viewers and double their points if they subscribe), but I'm not sure about the rest. It seems to have mod commands though, but they seem to be semi-functional. In case you want to get your hands a bit dirty, you could try giving it a shot.

Hope I could be of assistance

I don't have any tattoos and never really thought about having one. I would try one though, if they were removable. I know it sounds crazy since tattoos are permanent but I would surely pick some interest if they weren't.

Probably we'll get to a point where tattoos will start being made in a way they can be removable, or at least not requiring to actually fill your inner skin with ink. At least that's what I hope, I would try a lot of different ones without fearing they'll be there for the rest of my life.

I don't use Windows, so no. I'm 90% "free" of Microsoft's clutches. During that horrible "one-year period of free Windows 10" I did my best to not even think about accessing my second HD which had W7, as I believed any boot could lead up to that poor thing upgrading itself and - sorry about the choice of words - f***ing me up.

I thank myself every day for making the move of switching to Linux.

I currently use VMWare with a Windows 7 installation due to WINE not being able to run the current version of Sony Vegas I use because it is 64-bit, as WINE doesn't support 64-bit as well as it supports 32-bit.

I'm planning on taking a look at QEMU/KVM once I get a new PC, so I can have two GPUs - one of them being passed to the virtual machine directly (they call this GPU Passthrough).

DeltaPlayz : In my case it depends on the action. For writing I am exclusively a lefty, but I do literally everything else with my right hand. Maybe it's due to the fact I find myself more comfortable with (or am just used to) focusing my strength in the right side of the body, thus making myself more secure and balanced when doing tasks that require brute force/dexterity, like carrying things made of glass or swinging a stick.

Yeah I'm a weirdo but I'm proud of it

Abdullahboys : Titties Make Porn Actually Legal

Wish I knew about this thread sooner.

U E F G T

OmegaVenomous : Quoting something you said: "Now, while typing this, I am using a Chromebook, and I have downloaded some stuff, no viruses.". Let's reflect on that for a bit.

Of course, using a Chromebook makes you immune to viruses... Windows viruses. Not wanting to play the devil's advocate, as I use Linux as well (Chrome OS is a Linux distro, I just can't recall if it's based on top of another distro or if it's built from scratch), but no OS is 100% safe. Of course, Linux has way less chance of being infected by a virus, but that's due to three main points:

1. Lack of market share (Windows has a whopping 90%, which I hope will change in the future as more and more people will get fed up with Windows 10),

2. Windows viruses literally don't work at all on Linux due to binaries, it's like writing a letter in Greek and asking for a Japanese person to read it (I'll get a bit "nerdy" here - suppose you have a virus which deletes your "C:Program Files" in Windows. It won't work on Linux since it has a completely different filesystem from Windows, there's not a "Program Files" in there, and also because the commands written are specific to the Windows kernel, or "infrastructure" if you prefer. Same thing if you write a virus for Linux and try to run it in Windows), and

3. Linux is already, in a certain point-of-view, kid-proof: everything you install from the repositories is tested and safe, and even if you downloaded something which isn't in the repositories, it always asks you your password, so you have complete control of what you're doing. It's just hard to find a program that might actually have a virus, and if someone finds one, they'll just remove it pronto, due to Linux's (and most of its programs') open-source nature.

Then, again, devil's advocate: Linux is not 100% safe, it's just not being targeted as Windows is. Yet I doubt it would succumb to the same problems if it was targeted like that, especially due to reason number 3.

By the way, another quote: "The reason is the virus protection is bad and most people that use Windows are idiots.". I agree with the latter but disagree with the former. There are good Windows anti-viruses out there, I used to use Avast! back in the day, but there are others such as AVG, Norton, BitDefender, Malwarebytes, HitmanPRO, etc., but I just can't recommend Windows Defender. Stock features are generally "biased" IMO.

I also don't really count Mac since I never met one single person using a Mac where I live (these things are expensive as hell, although there's a lot of people who use iPhones here), but modern Macs are based in the same architecture Linux has - UNIX, which also makes it, theoretically, invulnerable to viruses. I said theoretically because, in the past, there was an episode where several Macs got infected with a trojan named Flashback.

But that doesn't mean there aren't anti-viruses for both. I think Mac has Norton, and Linux has ClamAV, which also scans for Windows viruses (in case you need to run something via WINE/PlayOnLinux). It all boils down to preventing your kiddos from downloading pirated Minecraft copies

Either way, I feel your rant, man. That was one of the reasons I got fed up with Microsoft and went to Linux (actually that wasn't even a big one, it was just an annoyance long forgotten after I changed OS).

Desktop, custom-built, kinda old but still gets the job done:

CPU - Intel Celeron G1610 @ 2.60GHz
GPU - MSI Geforce GTX 650 TI
MOBO - GIGABYTE GA-B75M-D3H
RAM - 8GB DDR3/1333MHz - four 2 GB sticks (most of them are Kingston, there's one which isn't but I don't recall the brand)
HDD - Seagate Barracuda 1 TB + external 1 TB for backups + a 320 GB one which had Windows 7 and is now put away for God knows what reason
PSU - EVGA 600W
OS - Xubuntu 16.10 as of the time of this post

My only concern is that I can't upgrade that old Celeron, I didn't had enough money at the time (nor do I have today). Also I didn't knew it was weak and that cache memory was that important at the time, I'd think twice before buying one of those again.

Woah boy, my Crash 3 review actually got voted as the best? Aw you're making me blush, I didn't even knew there was something like this since I came back only recently, thanks everyone

Congrats to all the winners and voters and everyone else, now I remember why I came back here. Vizzed is a very united community and I feel proud of coming back. Happy 12th anniversary!

goodboy : I can't say for sure as I never traveled to other countries, but I believe a good start is to simply "observe how things are in that country". Ever since I started to understand English better (on the listening subject), I've been watching lots of English-related content. I can even say with absolute certainty that I've been laughing a lot more at English videos than videos in my own language (Portuguese), e.g. Family Feud. I wish I knew about Steve Harvey way before, I'm starting to love the show because of him, and even though USA has a lot of different accents (just like in Brazil), I'm starting to understand it all better, like unconsciously. And I feel great knowing that I'm being entertained in another language, that opens up endless possibilities. And, most importantly, I did all of this without even stepping outside home (let's just say my childhood was filled with English - videogames, videogames, videogames ).

The second thing that comes to my mind after "getting used to your country of desire's culture" is to "properly study it". I haven't had enough time for this but I plan on studying everything about Canada or Australia (unsure on which to choose), as I plan on - hopefully - giving a shot at living there for good. The "language wall" is already crumbling like crazy, I just need enough conversation and listening training (not due to the language per se, but due to me "zoning out" a bit whether I'm talking with someone, no matter the language), but, as we all fear in a moment of our lives, "what if we don't manage to branch ourselves fully"? As in, "will people someday stop thinking I'm just a foreign guy trying to integrate", even when you travel to a place that speaks the same language as you, although with different accents (say, Portugal in my case)? Or, well, maybe I don't really know about this since I never traveled abroad, so I'm not sure as to how people up there in the North Hemisphere live and act - being a Brazilian makes you pretty attached to the "warm greetings" and the general "friendly companions" cultural thing, while things up there in the US/UK/Canada are completely different, people are "colder", not in a bad way but I think you get what I mean...?

Ergo, pretty much what you said: study other countries, get to learn how people live and about their culture, in other words, plan yourself. That, however, can be only around 50~75% of the road, the rest is up to you actually going there and adapting yourself slowly. Probably the more friends you find there (and the more friendly and understanding they turn out to be), the quicker you'll adapt, but that will depend on how much of an introvert you are (I would be pretty unlucky in that subject ). That's how I see this whole thing but I might be wrong on some aspects.