General Chat: Dawn of THE FIRST DAY (72 hours remain)

azumarill is nehema because this was the name i had left over at the end of guessing haha screw doing these in order
gulpin is boyd because its stomach is essentially a bottomless void
loudred is cornelius because cornelius sounds like a nice and quiet name that youd give to whismer and you just havent gotten around to renaming it since it evolved
magikarp is jacques because jacques is french and the french are stereotypically cheese eating surrender monkeys so if you get down to a magikarp youd better surrender
marshtomp is bluebell because its blue
mightyena is fabio because mightyena has fabulous hair so it deserves a male models name
ninjask is daniel and shedinja is murray because daniel murray sounds like a real name and if you get one you have to get the other so you probably named the nincada danielmurray so it could split
numel is pepper because peppers are spicy and spicy is fire
sableye is gummi because up until fairy was added sableye did not have a weakness to every type and in mystery dungeon games there are gummies of every flavor for each type
shroomish is physalia because physalia sounds like photosynthesis and even though mushrooms dont photosynthesize its still a grass type
tailow is alice and wurmple is celia because alice and celia are anagrams of each other so they are somewhat related and there was an episode of the anime eons ago where ash and co had to deal with the fight between a wurmple and a tailow and i think it was ashs wurmple and he ended up catching the tailow so there
tentacool is saharah because what could be more desertlike than a jellyfish so you are just trying to be ironic
zigzagoon is argyle because zigzags and argyle are both patterns

Um... congratulations! You managed to get literally every one wrong! I'll admit, that's definitely an accomplishment.

Wait, you mean Tentacool WASN'T Saharah?? Damn, I had money staked on that. Saharah is a great name for a Tentacool.

Mind you, I think Bob is a great name for a fish. And also a cat. And a horse. Providing it's a mare. So don't take my word for it...
You should maybe consider retroactively renaming your Pokemon :O

Pro tip: you would immediately know which name is Tentacool's if you happened to look up that name on a search engine. Gulpin's name is the same way.

Tip 2, the re-tippening: one of these pokémon is named after an MSPA Forums user. If you know the user in question, you'll know what 'mon the name corresponds to.

Let's see if y'all can spot a pattern in my cracked-out nicknaming habits:

Agitha
Argorok
Arthur
Asuna
Bananabeard
Bertha
Brock
Chantarelle
Deborah
Gabby
Gene
Halle
Jeanne
Karma
Kousuke
Kyubey
Leeron
Louise
Mag
Mothman
Neri
Nigel
Nyx
Rafflesia
Redips
Roller
Sargus Ruk
Saryn
Scruffy
Sephiroth
Storm
Swabbie
Twinklybutt
Vanessa
Vay Hek
Volga
Vor
Yggdrasil
Yoko
Zephyr

Absol
Azelf
Beautifly
Beldum
Camerupt
Cascoon
Castform
Clefairy
Deoxys
Eevee
Exploud
Glalie
Groudon
Kakuna
Kecleon
Larvesta
Latios
Mantine
Mightyena
Minun
Nincada
Oddish
Rayquaza
Sandile
Sharpedo
Shiftry
Shroomish
Skitty
Slakoth
Surskit
Swablu
Swampert
Swellow
Trapinch
Tropius
Volbeat
Voltorb
Weezing
Wingull
Zigzagoon

Okay, so maybe some of these will be easy to guess, but there's a few that will be hard, because I either don't remember the reason for the name or there was no real reason in the first place. Have fun!

Alright these are all PRETTY OBVIOUS. I'll only do a few 'cause I gotta leave SOME for you other guys to do.

- Rafflesia is Weezing, since Vileplume is based on a rafflesia and both Gloom and Weezing are known for smelling awful.
- Gabby is Exploud, since to gab is to talk and some people talk really loudly.
- Roller is Surskit 'cause it glides around on water in a similar way to how people ride on roller skates.
- Karma is Deoxys since Franziska von Karma carries a whip and Deoxs' arms are like whips when they're not busy having hands.
- Bananabeard is obviously Sharpedo since Mega Sharpedo has a banana-yellow, beard-like thing on its chin. Plus, Team Aqua uses Sharpedos, and they look like a buncha pirates, and [color]beard is a common thing to name a pirate.

I'm actually surprised you came up with a plausible justification for the Exploud being named Gabby. Unfortunately for you, the Exploud is male.

Darn, I knew I should've come up with a more tangential reasoning.




:mapsamsmapsa:

Holy fucking SHIT. Guys. Black Mirror. British TV series. Holy shit. Just saw the Christmas special. That is the DARKEST FUCKING THING I have EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE and I've seen SNUFF FILMS.
(I didn't like them or anything. Well, okay it. Gifs of it. Okay some images maybe. :/ Just for the record.)
So yeah 10/10 would watch again. I think they might be on netflix?


Anyway I have an xmas present for some of y'all. Got a hella load of Diancie from a guy on Smogon  And I have faaaaaar too many to use. All Timid Calm Minders to use as a Mega. So yeah, look forward to that in the future! Now, gotta study for my last exam.
Compiler theory yay  it's actually a lot of fun (and is totally pointless in the industry, but then my previous exam was "Ethics in software engineering...")

How many did you get?

Also, that compiler theory class does sound kind of interesting. Sadly, my college's comp sci department is too small to offer that kind of thing regularly. Then again, I will be taking a game programming class in the spring, so I guess it's possible. No clue what that ethics class would be about, though.

Mine's pretty broad. But also detailed. It's important to remember that colleges here don't do Major/Minors unless the course is *specifically* a combo (e.g. Business-and-French, or Law+, or general Science - and even then you can only do that one for a year before specialising.) With the exception of General Arts, though, nobody really does those.
EEEEEVERYBODY does General Arts.
As a STEM student, I say best of luck to them.
And I'm almost completely sure I really mean it.

Anyway, IIRC we've covered the following; each module covers a semester, 5 modules a semester until recently.

Imperative Programming 1 + 2 (introductory java; assigning, the idea of programming, basic functions, MATH library, teeny bit of recursion, loops and nested loops)
Comp Organisation 1 + 2 (1 was logic - circuits, logical expressions, binary, gates, basic logical math - 2 had more of this and introduced Assembly. That was a scary thing to show 1st years D: )
Comp Sci 1 + 2 (I don't remember much about this, maybe it was just one? Introduced Trees and Stacks and Queues [<3 homestuck] and lambda expressions, car/cdr whatever. Mathematical programming languages.)
Discrete maths 1 (lecturer was terrible. I distinctly remember not-learning about Vectors, Matrices, some Linear algebra, graph theory? He was really really terrible. Nice guy, terrible imparter of knowledge. I also faintly remember him discussing bowls on a graph at some point. But his accent was pretty strong, so it may have been balls. IDK.)
Computer Apps (not apps-apps, applications like where they're used. Cultural breakdown of Android, Linux, open-source, different kinds of background stuff. Retroactively terrible module, but good to know all the same.)
Computer Maths 2 (idk why it starts at 2) more logical stuff. Advanced predicate logic mostly, some other things too but this one was a lot of fun  Easy A. 
Modelling and Representation: Still not really sure what this was about? The conceptual difference between a model and a representation. For, umm, grasping the idea of systems design I guess? It wasn't at all about code. What an object is fundamentally, abstraction and that. I guess it was the idea behind object-oriented coding.

And that was first year!

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

This year:


Ethics is about *why* software engineers should learn about why software engineers should learn about ethics. Oh yeah.
Kantianism, Utilitarianism, Virtue Ethics, Social Contract. Responsibilities of a professional. Constructing a logical argument. Fallacies. The Digital Divide. Freedom of Information act. Law in I.T. Internet of Things. Surveillance. Case studies. Etc. Etc. Lecturer is a shithead and everybody hates him. Especially God. For Reasons.

Software Architecture + Design: Using UML, lots of stuff on Design and Architectural Patterns in Java, C, C++ and briefly C#. Some concurrency, and architecural design. Big project. Narrowly got an A2 in it ;_; And seriously fucked up the exam on Friday. Got nervous and forgot all the code ;_; Cried all night about it. It was my favourite subject and the guy is my FYP supervisor :'(

Data warehousing and mining: All the info, none of the code! Pretty sweet. Assumes we already know SQL and talks about different ways of looking at/displaying data, the uses of it, esp. in industry, and quite a few algorithms to use (as opposed to implement, thankfully). Decision Trees, One Rule, PRISM, K-Means, Nearest Neighbour. Etc.

Programming language tech: compiler theory. How a compiler parses language, how languages are built. Lookaheads, grammar types, parse trees, priority. Interesting stuff, the guy loves the topic, but very very very few people in the world have to deal with this stuff because it's already been long-done. I have an exam in this tomorrow. I should really study for it?

And that's it until next semester! So yeah, ours covers a lot of bases. Games do likewise, but they do more C code and less Net code. Pretty well balanced and we're highly hire-able... assuming companies get past the typically low QCAs graduates get because of the difficulty. We have about 30% of our starting students left ATM, and fewer still will graduate. We started with about 30?

And I have 7 Diancie, beside the one I'm keeping for myself.

Hmm. Because I've got a few friends who weren't able to get Diancies, but I don't want to claim nearly half of what you have. I'll try to get back to that comp sci stuff when I'm not in a hotel room and I can focus more.

If I'm giving out any, it'll almost certainly be single copies for people who could feasibly make use of Diancie in a competitive battle. Not that they will; just that they might. They get most use that way.

'Course, if someone could clone or had access to a cloner I'd give away as many as needed, the obvious catch being once someone's a cloner you don't need more than 1... The diancie is fully redistributable, too. Also got my Latias cloned (only 5 times) complete with Master Balls, yay saves me having to trade them from Y.

INTERIM REPORT AGOGO

Ehh, I'd ask for a Diancie but haven't really been in the competitive scene since college started, so if there are any left after everyone who's more invested has had their say I'd be happy to take one!

Going to try to get some Pokemon in during break and hopefully get back into the groove before second semester starts up.

God Fucking Dammit.

So I resumed SRing for Heatran today - it's now shortly after midnight, and I was getting bored and tired, so before on reset I said "eh, might as well check the lottery and go to bed." If it's a shit result, then I'll just reset and resume SRing Heatran tomorrow in the same place I was. And if I get something decent, great. Although it's a little inconvinient because then I've wasted an Escape Rope and have to get back to where I was. Plus I wasn't really thinking clearly, since I had like 7 Master Balls cloned yesterday and still have 5 from XY. Literally the ONLY thing I could use them for in a new game would be another recently un-evented mon like Deoxys, or a HA Landorus, which is unlikely. So yeah, all in all, pointless decision.

And you know what I did?
I won the bloody master ball.
And then, in a stupid stupor, saved the game so now I can't even get a picture of it.
Fffff. I HAS WORST LUCK GUYS

i have pretty shit luck
i'm on something like 1500 encounters for latios and no shiny yet

gee i wonder why that could be

have i run my obvious joke into the ground yet? im trying to see if i can get it to china

It's passed through China and broken free of the atmosphere.

On track to a gravity assist! Lets see if we can make it hit Mars, the Red Planet.

Shiny Mars is actually a dark grey colour. Trufax.



EDIT: Contrary Serperior is now legal! Gosh there's SO MUCH FUN STUFF that's at least a little bit viable this gen. Gen 6 is best gen. 
Umm, once they ban Greninja :/
*unpopular opinion puffin?*

Anyway, we're discussing sets on Smogon ATM. I personally think one of it's best niches is to reliably/speedily spread paralysis and can still paralyze mega Sceptile. Knock Off is nice, but Serp can actually already take out Chansey. And it can't afford the coverage loss in running two screens, whereas running one is kind of lame. And then you've to decide on the Hidden Power!

IMO:
Serperior @ Life Orb
Ability: Contrary
EVs: 12 Def / 252 SpA / 244 Spe
IVs: 29/30/31/30/31/30
Timid Nature
- Leaf Storm
- Dragon Pulse
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Giga Drain/Synthesis

Serperior @ Assault Vest
Ability: Contrary
EVs: 12 HP/ 252 SpA / 244 Spe
IVs: 31/30/31/30/31/30
Timid Nature
- Leaf Storm
- Giga Drain/Knock Off
- Hidden Power [Fire]/[Ground]
- Dragon Pulse/Knock Off


Man I'm never gonna have the time to reset and breed for all this awesome stuff.

I recently got a master ball, too. Except unlike you I'm not swimming in them.

I'd take a Diancie, but honestly, I probably won't use it, so I understand if you'd rather give it to someone else.

Contrary Serperior is about to be legal if you live in Japan. The rest of the world probably isn't getting that event.

That's really irritating, but that means Serperior is at least a little more viable??? contrary leaf storm. wow that's a thing thats happening o_o

Yup, serp is definitely more viable. By no means great, but it has a very strong niche/couple of niches for itself and will form part of quite a few cores, apparently. It's a more offensive variant of Klefki in regards to Dual Screens (with different typing), it's a way of getting through MSlowbro and MSableye easily on offensive teams, it's a fast paralyzer that isn't called Thundurus (that can get Sceptile), and it plays similarly to MSceptile for those who need that team slot but already have a mega. That's 3 more roles than Dragalge has. Definitely a 'Mon to watch! But the items and hidden powers to choose are really headwrecker. If serp runs Life Orb it wants 29 in HP and all sorts of weird stats for Hidden Power :/

And Contrary is breedable now so our Japanese friends will be quick to distribute it, I'm sure. I expect to have one by the 12th.


Hey OJ, off topic, but have you ever in your entire life heard of a company called Pilz?

I know Pilzner, which is usually called Pilz for short and I know it's our word for Mushroom, but besides that, nothing comes to mind at the moment, why?

One Google later, I now know you are probably talking about the automation technology company? Still, why do you ask?

:0

Oh, no reason~