Forum Announcement - URL Change

Recently Proboards (the people who host the forum) have upgraded the forum's url by taking out the number

So instead of the old url with the number in it - lanotte.proboards102.com

It is now lanotte.proboards.com so if you have the forum bookmarked or are linked to it from your website/blog it would be best to upgrade it.

The old url should redirect you to the new one but it's best to update it just in case.


Raven

The Devil's Number In Posts

Today the Night Mistress (aka Raven aka the admin or that would be me) has put on her thinking, spontaneous, playing hat (I know, it's a lot of titles for one hat) and has come up with an idea!

When a member reaches 666 posts, if they can take a screen shot of it and then post it to the forum, they will get karma points!

Why do I want karma points for? I hear you ask.

Because you'll look super cool of course, why else?! Ok I'm sure I'll come up with something awesomer later on but for now being awesome and too cool for school is, well, awesome....

So get cracking, get posting and go play.

Thread linkage

Dead Space - Game Review

I don't usually play shooter games. I mainly play games that involve swords or blades of some type. Actually I think the last time I played an actual shooter game all the way through was Resident Evil when Playstation 2 wasn't even in existence yet. Other then that I've played a few here and there but only parts of it (when others are playing) and nothing I ever planned on playing. So this is a bit of a new experience for me in a way and it's an experience I'm enjoying thoroughly. Apart from giving me a headache Dead Space is an awesome game.

The basic story is you're part of a repair crew going into deep space to find a ship (The USG Ishimura) to repair because it has lost radio contact. Clarke (our character) is also on a personal mission after receiving a personal message from a member of the rogue ship. When the crew arrive there seems to be something a bit suss going on, especially seeing as there is no flood lights on and there is no radio contact at all. So your ship tries to dock in with Ishimura only for it all to go wrong and your own ship becomes damaged leaving you stranded on the Ishimura. You get separated from your crew mates and end up having to do a series of semi missions to get everything going again.

Being in the horror genre you'd expect a lot of dark ambience and it delivers. I think that's one of my favourite parts of the game. There is blood and gore all over the ship, smeared on floors where people have either crawled after being attacked or have been dragged. Words written in blood on the walls. Blood splatter and smears on the wall as well. Dismembered bodies strewn around and not always the whole body to put together. Cadavers in body bags with flies buzzing around (and you can hear them really well). Broken furniture, windows and basically the whole place has been trashed. Big holes ripped in the walls in some places which makes you wonder at the sheer size of whatever created it (I was grabbed by one and it was brilliant). Then you find people and can't always help them. It's like they don't know you're there and they partake in really odd behaviour which is so unexpected and disturbing.

Another thing that adds to the ambience is lights. The lights are on sometimes and then other times they flicker so you can hardly see anything. Other times still they aren't on at all or they go off all of a sudden and you can't see anything but you can hear things. With the combination of the music (which is excellent and greatly atmospheric), the odd creaks and groans from the ship, your movements and breathing, you also get noises from the odd creatures that have infested the ship. Sometimes you hear them breathing, sometimes you hear them running in the air vents and other times you get to hear just how squishy they are when they're dead and you kick or step on them.

I love the creatures. You find out pretty quickly that just shooting them will not kill them. You have to dismember them or else they keep coming for you and even then if you only shoot off their legs they will still keep coming for you. They have blade like appendages for their arms and they'll drag themselves to you all the while snarling and making horrible wet noises. Add to that your breathing can get ragged and if the lights are out it seems sometimes there might be more then one lurking in the dark but you can't always be sure. Those are just the main creatures. There are other ones that are smaller (like the babies) and bigger ones and ones you have to make sure you kill if you're in a room full of corpses.

To go with slaughtering the monsters you get some awesome weapons. I thought the line gun was cool but last night I got the Ripper which is a remote controlled chain saw sort of gun. It dispenses a chain saw disc and you not only cut off limbs but hack the shit out of those bastards.

There's other cool things but you can find out for yourself.

Now I know I react oddly to creative violence. Rather then squealing and screaming like an idiot (that's what chicks are meant to do right? Scream and hold someone's hand and then go home and have nightmares?) in pure terror. I giggle. I laugh. I exclaim how "f*cking awesome" a cool effect is or particular type of violent act is (like in a movie I watched years ago, one of the characters got sliced in half with glass and you got to see all the entrails). When I'm surprised of course I swear in surprise but it's not an upset sort of swearing but a "this is brilliant" swearing. I swear in glee.

So basically, with this whole game so far, I have laughed, giggled and sworn in pure delight. I highly recommend playing it.

Problems Accessing The Forum

I don't know how long this has been going on but I have noticed this isn't rare lately.

Earlier I tried to access the forum and rather then going directly to it I was shown an Invalid URL page. Something I thought was a tad odd seeing as I'd only been on the forum about an hour beforehand.

I've checked out the Proboards Support forum to see if anyone else had the same problem and apparently they have. I don't know if it has anything to do with updates to the servers etc but I found a solution.

If you ever have this problem try the address without the number. Have it as http://lanotte.proboards.com instead of with the 102. Works fine after that.


If at any time you have trouble accessing the forum please let me know by either leaving a message here or emailing me at lanotteforum@gmail.com

Otherwise if you have any questions and can access the forum there is a thread to post in.


Thank you
Raven

Supernatural Belief Higher Percentage Then Religion

UFOs, aliens and ghosts are believed in more than God

Believers in UFOs, aliens and ghosts outnumber those who follow mainstream religions, a survey has found.

While 54 per cent of people believe in God, 58 per cent believe in the supernatural.
Researchers found women were more likely to believe in the supernatural than men, and were more likely to visit a medium.
Nearly a quarter of the 3,000 questioned by researchers claimed they had an encounter with the paranormal.
Some 37 per cent said aliens and ghosts were the basis of their belief system.
The study, to mark the DVD release of X Files: I Want to Believe, conflicts with another report that showed 68.5 per cent of the general UK population described themselves as believers .
Files released in October revealed cases of passenger jets nearly colliding with UFOs and reports of alien abduction which have been logged by the Ministry of Defence.
The 19 files, disclosed by the National Archives which date from 1986 to 1992, show the extensive records of strange sightings by members of the public and unexplained radar images from air traffic control.
In the files, the military admitted the sighting in April 1991 could not be explained, having ruled out a British or American missile.
It concluded: "In the absence of any clear evidence which could be used to identify the object, it is our intention to treat this sighting like that of any other Unidentified Flying Object."

Source: Telegraph.co.uk
Alien picture from Beautiful Desktop Wallpapers

Member Of The Month For November

The Member of The Month for November is ObsidianTears.

*Miss World voice over* "Jacq is a qualified archaeologist currently working in IT (WTF! Don't worry, she hates it too and wants to get back to the skulls and bones), an Australian metal chick who is obsessed with books, art, film, her dog, friends, and wants to save the world."

10 Questions

1. Age: 24, 25 in late Dec.

2. Star Sign: Capricorn

3. Origin/Story Behind Username:
I was obsessed with LKH and Obsidian Butterfly was taken on yahoo (the title of my favourite book of hers – pure horror, blood and gore). "Obsidian Butterfly" sounds a bit wussy, but in the book, she is an Aztec vampire who is so powerful she thinks she is a goddess – she has the power over life and death, and her will alone can control hundreds of vampires – she also feeds on pure power – and is on the blacklist by the Vampiric council – which Anita is unaware of when she ventures into her territory to help solve some gruesome mutilating serial killings.. This is just the simplified English translation of her name, so the actual concept is a lot deeper than the English words.. I tried a couple of variations and gave up. Then I started thinking. I wanted "obsidian" because I am an archaeologist, and I have always been fascinated with its use in ritual practices throughout prehistory – it has a very sharp blade – so sharp in fact that they still use it in modern surgery. It was used in some of my favourite cultures, and some of the most early ones, including Çatalhöyük in Turkey which is the earliest city in our knowledge. It has been used for ritual sacrifice, scarification, trephinations, early surgery, for ritual or ancestral weapons, and decorations. It is a volcanic glass, and I have just always been fascinated with it. The second half of my name I wasn't sure on what I wanted… just knew it had to be obsidian something… I tried a lot of variations, and the one that spoke true was 'tears'. You can take that as emotion, as art, as culture, as reaction, as the gothic influence… of a profound sadness at the world, at humanity.. but at the same time I don't mean sentimental and cutesy… It was inspired by one of the sketches Luis Royo made for his Avalanche picture. It is one that has always spoken to me. I love his art normally, he is my favourite artist, along with Victoria Frances, but it just stuck out for me. I stopped using that image as my avatar, I have one by Frances I use now, but it still moves me. My personal quote I use is "she opens her blue eyes and sees a world of grey: a desolate landscape of pain, hunger and greed..." says a lot about me ;-p

4. Political Stance: Left. Bring on the radical change! Stop poverty, the destruction of our earth, promote freedom of thought and religion, and above all, embrace our diversity as a species. Lets face it – if there were a few billion people running around who were all identical, had all the same convictions, the same desires, the same backgrounds – it would not only be a very scary place, but society would be static. Where there is no difference there is no innovation, no free thinking, and without that there can be no new discoveries in science, etc, no new approaches to the next ecological disaster, no resources left when we finish raping the earth.

5. Pets: Akasha – a wolfhound/deerhound. She just turned one.

6. Dark interests: Death (cultural, philosophical, theological, ethnographical, physical); burial practices and artefacts; weaponry; gothic culture; horror, supernatural and dark fantasy movies and books; metal and industrial music; clothing; archaeology (my friends call me macabre because I have such a fascination for death, burials and skeletal material, as well as the indications of violence on the bones..); art; fetish photography; Luis Royo and Victoria Frances; I also find BDSM fascinating, although I have never experimented.

7. Light/Other interests: Books; archaeology; art (photography, painting, sketching, print making, textile, metal work, digital work etc); film; music (all the random lighter stuff I like); nature, conservation and environmentalism; the internet and Thai food.

8. Favourite Language Besides First: Anglo Saxon/Old English. I studied it at university, and became completely enamoured… My favourite texts to read in the Anglo Saxon are Beowulf, the Dream of the Rood and the Battle of Maldon. The language is so dynamic and there is so much meaning in the words… translations never quite achieve the same flow. I love Anglo Saxon poetry too.. its created to be chanted – the lines are broken in two, and made up of alliteration rather than rhyming. So half lines (caesuras) such as "Blode bestemed" (blood drenched/streaming) or "winter wunade" (wandered in winter) etc. And the words! I love the words… so illustrative.. so metaphoric… things like "the swan's road" or "the whale path" mean the sea; they also stitched words together so we ended up with words like "garlic" (gar=spear, lic=blade – its about the stems of the garlic plant), "geārdagum" (yore-days – days of yore). I need to stop lecturing now! Let's just put it down to the fact that I love the way Anglo Saxon sounds, the way the words fit together, the imagery, the poetry, the content – all of it… It's a very beautiful and guttural language… where every man was a poet… and the poetry was about battle, valour, weapons, life and death ;-p definitely up my alley!!

9. Weapon and Special Talent of Choice If You Were A Badarse Of Some Sort: My weapon would be some type of wicked blade. Probably not a board sword – those things are too bloody heavy to life, let alone wield. But I have a thing for blades… maybe twin daggers, a scimitar, a short sword or even an axe. But I would want it to be pattern-welded! And to have interesting design, and entirely unique to me, it would also need a guard on the hilt, so I could unarm my opponent.. Actually. I need to start working on my collection… So far I only have twin daggars.. Perfect birthday gift, people!

10. Favourite Quote: Just one?? But I have so many favourites!! How about two.. "I really feel like civilisation's already over. It's not ending but it's already done. We're all addicted to the concept that humanity equals civilisation and that's not the case. We need a global conversation to be able to decipher how we can live from this point forward. We have to redefine our relationship with our environment." ~ Serj Tankian (SOAD) "I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." ~ Marilyn Monroe.

For the rest of the Questions & Answers check out the forum.

Vampire Moth

October 27th

A previously unknown population of vampire moths has been found in Siberia. And in a twist worthy of a Halloween horror movie, entomologists say the bloodsuckers may have evolved from a purely fruit-eating species.

Rest of the article

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