Doug and the Slugs - Day by Day

as the thread title says, heard this song on the radio and thought it might make a good montage song.

...how he designed Paradox's weapons from scratch, particularly the innovative idea of a shield that was also a blade.

Well.

Turns out it wasn't so original an idea. The design is called a Hungarian shield or a Hungarian punch shield, and it was the big thing in shield design in 16th century eastern Europe.

Here's a YouTube short (which I can't embed because MyBB doesn't know how to handle them) about using one, by a guy who does a lot of videos about archery and medieval weapons.

Version 8.8.9 was just released yesterday to mitigate a hijacking of the Notepad++ updater that redirects it to malicious servers, and then tricks people into downloading malware, thinking they're downloading the latest software release.

For obvious reasons, it won't be on the Notepad++ updater if your installation has been hijacked, so you'll have to download and install it manually.

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/downloads/

(And if you're running Windows and aren't using Notepad++ as your plain-text editor, you should consider switching. It doesn't have any AI.)

Terr asked, so you all shall receive

... is the new Task Force as of the latest issue (page?) and boy howdy is it a hoot!  No spoilers, but: Length felt just about right, difficulty curve was chef's kiss, and the set pieces were really, really well done.  I absolutely love that Knockback has a legit purpose now.  And I didn't even know the ancient creaky CoH engine could DO that (and I've looked into the code!). 

In addition, we have finally discovered Terrence Knight's true weakness.  Poor Terr.

Anyway, point is I really like the new TF and while I know things have died down on the CoH front around here, if you're at all interested in getting your tights on, I for one would run this one over and over again.  Is it the new default for when we hate the WST, aka the Roman Punching Party?  Not quite.  But it's close!

Thought folks would want to know, since I only hear about it in relation to their 2025 Black Friday sale. (Coupon code for that is on the front page of their website, as I post this.)

They also stock some titles from Discotek Media and Media Blasters.

https://www.mediaocd.com/

This story is available on AO3.

I've just realized that my eclipse.net address hasn't received any mail at all -- not even spam caught by my provider's spam filter -- since the 19th. If anyone has sent me anything in the last few days, it's somewhere in hyperspace somewhere.

I've submitted a ticket with Netcarrier. Let's see how fast it gets resolved.