Category: media

Doubt

Interesting two days. I got in the mood to take pictures again, although these really aren’t as great as they could be – if I had a clue what I was doing with the camera I could probably make these a bit more accessible, but as is, they’re best viewed in a dark room, and the thumbnails don’t even come close to doing justice.

South Hill:

A kind of bizarre tree/street light shot:

My favorite, just the road and some lights:

A tree against the night sky:

Another road shot, the house at the end is mine:

The moon, obscured by trees:

Student housing, obscured by chain-link:

The moon, obscured by clouds:

An apartment complex sidewalk:

Mmmm. I should really invest in some better equipment for this, very few of those shots came out like I wanted them to.

SK, Revisited

Interesting article on Slashdot at the moment concerning game addiction. The comments in particular are quite insightful. I’ll paste some of my favorites here, because I know most of you are lazy.

Where are the parents in all of this?

“Seriously.

His parents were frightened of him because, weighing more than 130kg, he was too strong for them to confront. Eventually they threatened to kick him out unless he enrolled for a month of therapy.

You’re the parents, you make the rules. Pull the plug, take the computer away, do something, anything. You’d probably hit the roof if you caught your kid with a joint, but when he wants to wrap himself up in computer games you just fucking sit there and let it happen. That shit pisses me off. I hope this clinic is working with parents too to make sure they can control their child’s behavior.”

Re: Where are the parents in all of this?

“Maybe when someone is deciding how to handle a problem with their own child, doing anything isn’t good enough? Maybe they want to do the right thing

It’s odd to me that some Slashdotters take “the parents should be responsible” to mean “the parents should do all parenting alone”. Parents are responsible for the behavior of their children, but if the behavior surpasses the parents ability to moderate/fix/heal, then why on earth should we mock the parents for seeking specialist help? Are we going to make fun of all youth counselors and child psychologists now because “You’re the parent, you make the rule?” Part of holding parents responsible for their own children should be allowing them access to the tools they need to do that job right.”

Re: wha?

“Most people hooked on, say, heroin are forced to keep taking it for more reasons than mere lack of willpower. Chemical addiction carries signifigant withdrawl side effects, some of which can be life threatening. Trust me, if you’ve ever known a real addict, you wouldn’t just sum up their addiction as “lack of willpower”.

People hooked on things that don’t carry an external chemical componant, or are only very mildly chemically addictive, don’t have that problem. Yes, addiction can be purely neurochemical, with nothing added to the system, but that isn’t anywhere near as signifigant. People can get hooked on gaming, gambling, sex, religion, TV, violence or minimally addictive food or drugs like caffine or marjuana. Their problem is lack of willpower. Other addicts have the far more serious issue of major chemical dependancy, breaking away from which really does require a detox clinic, or support groups, or any number of other external sources of intervention.

I’m not saying that psychological addiction isn’t real. It is. It’s just not on par with what a serious addict has to deal with. Saying “Real addiction is all about lack of willpower” lumps cokeheads into the same category as people hooked on poker. And the people running this clinic are essentially lumping game addiction into the same category as drug addiction; this isn’t fair to either the hooked gamers or the drug addicts.”

[on a side note, I love this guy’s sig – “Erotic is when you use a feather, exotic is when you use the whole chicken.”]

Re: wha?

“Eight years ago, my father had a brain aneurysm and stroke and I am his sole caregiver. I was 21 when it happened. I’ve mostly been stuck at home taking care of him for my entire 20s while I watched friends finish school, get married, have kids, etc. Between the area where I live and the limited ability I have to go out to enjoy life with my friends, I really started losing touch with society and became depressed.

In 2003, my best friend bought EQ at the urging of one of his co-workers. After two months of him nagging me incessantly to try it, against my better judgement, I did. Everything started out fine, him and I would log on for 2-3 hours a night to play together and that was it. About two months into it, him and I were asked to become officers in our guild. At the point you become an officer, you suddenly feel a whole lot more responsibility and you feel like you’re important – everyone in your guild counts on you. Not long after, I became our raid leader and, given the absence of the guild leader for a long period of time, people began to see me as the guild leader as well. Eight months in, I was tagged with the guild leadership officially. I now had seven officers and in the neighborhood of 120 guild members counting on me to be there. By now, I wasn’t playing 2-3 hours a day, I was playing 8-12 hours a day. It wasn’t reality, but it felt real enough – I was important to people and interacting with “society.” Along the way, I met a girl from the other side of the US and we had a fairly turbulent relationship(mostly due to her being bipolar), but we were in love and planned to get married. I knew that EQ was taking up my entire life, but my girlfriend was there and that’s how we spent time together from 3k miles apart and I was the engine the drove hundreds of cogs. At our peak, we had 1039 tagged toons.

This spring, my relationship of two years ended with her and at the same time, the officers staged a coup as the pressures from EQ’s death throes were mounting (yeah, EQ is dying, netcraft, server consolidations and mmogchart confirm it). About a month after I left the girl and my guild, I realized that I no longer had a reason to play and I simply logged off one night never to return again. That was three months ago last weekend.

For me, it wasn’t a game I was addicted to, it was all the social interaction, feeling important and spending time with my gf. After years of being depressed, it was nice to be somebody even if it didn’t mean anything in real life. After the way things ended, my biggest regret is that the things that helped me break that addiction didn’t happen earlier. Oddly enough, despite becoming “nothing” again, I haven’t been depressed and I find myself enjoying the mundane things in life that I neglected for 2.5 years. I still frequently think about EQ and some of the fun times I had in it, but I have no urge to play it anymore… and I deliberately avoid anything that might suck me into a similar situation again. In the meantime, I’m trying to rebuild my life even though I feel that I’m fighting an uphill struggle now at 29.

Our brains are an electro-chemical system and I would argue that the stimuli that make you feel important and good about yourself can be just as addicting as putting that cigarette up to your lips, especially when you and the rest of the world appear to have given up on each other. At 21, when you still have pretty much everything going for you and life hasn’t completely knocked every one of your plans for the future out of whack, it’s pretty easy to think idealistically about how everyone should be able to feel/be/do exactly like you.”

Why is your experience not ‘real life’?

“Why do people think it’s ‘not real’ if it’s conducted primarily on a computer?

Before Everquest existed, I ‘was somebody’ online – ran a guild on a MUD (although not as big as yours), and eventually even ended up running the MUD itself. There were definitely some stretches where I’d often spend 16 hours a day on the computer.

But I’ve also ‘been somebody’ in real life too. I have a real job with real responsibilities and most of the people I work with I have met once, or no times at all, and interact with almost entirely via computer. I’m also the president of one national non-profit organization with a few thousand members I never see, and run another business with 30,000 customers I don’t see either.

And I find that I often spend 16 hours a day on the computer.

Now, most people would consider my job, my non-profit, and my business to be ‘real life’, and I enjoy them. So why are people who enjoy spending 16 hours a day doing something else on the computer not doing ‘real life’? I really can’t think of anything that’s much different between the 16 hours a day I spend playing networked computer games and the 16 hours a day I spend doing various forms of (enjoyable) work. And while you may have felt compelled to play more everquest because people were depending on you, how is that any different than me feeling compelled to go to work for the same reason?

Computer games are certainly no less productive than the time I’ve spent shooting pool at the bar. But somehow going out and shooting pool at the bar is OK while playing games at home is not – why? Also, why is someone who spends 16 hours a day reading books and/or watching TV considered to be doing ‘real life’? All you’re trading is a networked screen with a non-networked screen or page.

Playing on the computer a lot, in and of itself, isn’t an addiction. It’s only natural that you’re going to do the things you enjoy doing as much as you can, and playing computer games isn’t any different than reading or anything else, except people who do those other activities want to pretend their life is more meaningful than computer gamers I guess.

People need to understand what an addiction really is. If you are COMPELLED to do something so much that it interferes with your ability to pay your rent, feed yourself, or maintain relationships that are important to you, that’s an addiction. If it consumes all of your free time, that’s just recreation. And I think it’s a tragedy to try and label someone an ‘addict’ just because of their prefered form of recreation.

Anyway, the time you spend on EQ was real life. And it wasn’t because you were ‘addicted’, it’s because you enjoyed it. Not playing anymore wasn’t an addiction-ending event; you just stopped enjoying playing so you stopped playing. Simple as that.”

Overreactive Parents

“I think for the most part it’s a result of overreactive parents, combined with what I like to call “baby sitter syndrome” (“Why won’t the public school teach my kids morals?!?! Why won’t the gov’t baby sit my kids?!?! Oh my, my kids are playing video games all the time, and I can’t turn it off because they cry and scream and make a scene! I need a Gaming Clinic/Baby sitter to fix my kids for me!”)

Disclaimer: I don’t have kids of my own so the above is probably warped by views of other people who don’t have kids of their own, not to mention stereotypes are rarely all-encompassing. Don’t take it too personally. I was, however, at one point a kid, and I did have parents (who restricted my video gaming and computer time) so I think I still have some things to say on the matter.

Gaming for me was a phase. I always have enjoyed a good game, but it’s not the same as it was when I was a kid. I would play games for hours on end, but now it seems my standards are higher or my attention span lower, because games don’t tend to “hook” me as often as they used to.

I still enjoy a good game of course, but I think I’m still largely “gamed out” from when I was a kid.”

Being a normal teenager is not a crime or a…

“Medical condition. Before the self obsessed BabyBoomers started raising children the majority of young boys didn’t have A.D.D.. This is all just one more “What about me!” from the BabyBoomer generation. “My kids aren’t perfect! Fix them!” This is coming from the people who invented, “Turn on. Tune in. Drop out.” “Free love” and your classic 1960’s 1970’s do it if it feels good self absorbed generation. As my hero George Carlin put it, “From cocaine to rogain”. “”These are perfectly decent kids whose lives have been taken over by an addiction,” said Mr Bakker, a former drug addict. “Some have given up school so they can play games. They have no friends. They don’t speak to their parents.”” Giving up school? Normal. No friends? Normal. Who didn’t feel isolated in high school? Not speaking to parents? Normal. Sounds like the kids aren’t watching TV all hours of the day and night and the new technology is frightening mummy.”

Game Addiction?

“We used to call this neurosis. The actual neurotic behavior isn’t really all that important. What is important is addressing the underlying causes, which often have little or nothing to do with the resulting behavior. This guy obviously has a problem, but obsessive gaming is just the symptom. He could equally well be compulsively plucking his eyebrows or watching TV.”

Mmmm…

You’ll Disagree

No, really, you will.

BOONDOCK SAINTS SUCKED!

AHH!

Rantzor! Why does everyone think this movie is good? Even people with good taste in movies have fallen prey to this load of crap! I’m not alone in my feelings here; my brothers are with me on this. It’s insane. The straw that broke the matephorical camel’s back was Paul and Karen. Technically two straws. Shut that face of yours.

On track here. I could go on and on about how disgustingly self-righteous and vaguely blasphemous the movie was. It’s like X3, though; the movie sucks, but it appeals directly to 90% of the movie-watching populations, and that’s all that matters. It has the goods – violence, Irish accents (or in X3’s case, Hugh Jackman), and pseudo-reflective quotes involving God and guns. Heck, the movie has a freakin 20% on Rotten Tomatoes, this SAYS something! That’s not stopping them from making a sequel, though.

Life continues on in its general stride. I managed to get to Judo for the first time in two months, and I feel so utterly hardcore. No, really. I ran a mile (okay, maybe 3/4..) with my gi in tow (in a backpack, not wearing it) to Barton Hall, did that Judo thang, ran home, ate, ran another three miles, and here we are. Can you tell I feel like showing off? HAH! I can’t tell whether it’s the running I enjoy, or the running to techno. I’d do it more often if it weren’t for that, you know, muscle damage thing, being human and all. I feel great as is, though, I think I’m gonna try and do this a few times a day. It’s not as if I’ve got better things to be doing.

I suppose the only other piece of news is that my house will be entirely empty by Friday. Hayden, Ana, Jonathan, Mom, and Dad are all gonna be gone. Hayden and Ana back to El Paso, Jonathan to California, and Mom and Dad to….honestly, I’ve not a clue. I’ve never really been home alone for several (I believe I’m alone for three full days) days in a row before (never more than 2 full days), and I’m excited. No, I’m not holding a sexy party (queue Stewie clip), it’s just the thought of going out and buying my own food, and then cooking it, and then nobody else will eat it but me, and it’ll be up to me to stick it in the fridge. And when I wake up the next morning none will be gone, because no one else will be there to eat it. Ahem.

Hope you’re all enjoying teh summar. I sure am.

Good Times

It’s times like this that I absolutely love the internet. I knew the very second I saw Zidane flat-out own Materazzi that it would become an instantaneous meme, and it is! Not that this is a hard prediction to make, but it’s insanely fun to watch stuff like this evolve.

For those of you losers that didn’t watch the World Cup Final, Zidane, one of the best soccer players of our time, used his massive bald head and headbutted a notoriously retarded Italian player, Materazzi, in the chest. Materazzi is reknowned for being a general piece of crap, and in this instance, he most certainly groped Zidane’s nipple (and that’s about the most eloquent way I could put it), and rumor mills say Materazzi used a racial slur concerning Zidane’s sister.

Zidane probably lost the World Cup for France, seeing as the ensuing red card took him out of the final shootuout. Sheer morale and the loss of France’s greatest player could most certainly be attributed here, although whats-his-face may still have hit the crossbar. We’ll never know now, will we Zidane? I’m positive France would have won if it had gone to Sudden Death, especially based on how Italy was playing, even while Zidane was out.

The truly great thing here is the immortality Zidane has reached via the interwabs. YTMND is, of course, the first out of the gate with the hilarity here. One, Two, Three, Four, Five!

I shall update with new hilarity as it is found. Also, the videos of Zidane headbutting may become harder to find, some of the better ones are being removed for copyright infringement.

Stage One: Complete

The attic has completed its first stage of awesome. I’ve attempted to capture the results.

The main area of attraction:
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DSCF2193

I’m planning on putting a quilt over the window to keep bugs out and provide ever greater privacy. It’s the same thing that’s on the opposite window, seen momentarily. Note the fridge in the bottom left (barely visible).

The stuff:
DSCF2195

The fridge is off the screen to the left. On the left is the subwoofer, then I’ve got about ~800 CDs of music in those booklets. To the right I’ve got all my N64 and SNES games. The baskets contain the various game systems and peripherals. To the right of the TV you can see my MP3 player and the jack – I’ve set it up so you can put whatever audio device with a headphone output up to the system, although it only outputs to 3.1 speakers. I also brought up my brother’s collection of DVDs (after taking the picture), so there’s a decent selection of movies up there as well. This is where bigger TVs are needed.

Oh, and that big black thing is a VCR. You wouldn’t believe how many people asked what that was.

The other side:
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That’s where I need more rugs/carpeting.

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The stairwell:
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I switched out the single rung of colored lights with white lights, as well as the hanging lights. This works a lot better – those lights are good for (a) finding the lightswitch when the lights are off and (b) finding/navigating the stairs when the lights are off, so it’s better to go with the more simplistic colored ones. But, fear not, the colored lights are not out of the picture.

The whole room:
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The roof:
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I would have preferred the disco ball over the blacklight, but the disco ball decided that it no longer wants to provide its disco-tastic light anymore, which may or may not be fixable. All of these lights and the fridge came from Ben, and a few new posters came from Zach (most notably the Ocarina of Time poster, visible in the first picture). So, basically all we need now is more posters, more TVs, more rugs, and then it’s truly where I want it to be. I’m gonna see if I can get my old computer up there (Christopher has it right now, I don’t think he’s using it), and then hopefully I’ll be able to connect to our wireless network, or drag this 50ft ethernet cable from the house to the attic to get connectivity. That would be beyond hot.

My hopes are high.

Pseudo-Picture Post

I’ve been out and about taking pictures. Here are my results so far, placed onto Flickr. Not all of my shots would fit onto Flickr, and they have, of course, been massively downsized, so I’ve got the originals and the extras. Pre-warning: other people are seeing the Flickr too. Relatives, parents, people that you would do well not leave…shall we say, questionable comments around. Keep comments clean, for my sake.

Flickr, ftw.

The ones that aren’t on Flickr, raw form.

All pictures, raw form.

This stuff is fun.

The Otaku Alliance

I bring you a dual-media post, containing both a podcast as well as a post! This is Paul-style, with music and even a rip-off of his introduction! I tried to add some crazy effects to the introduction, but all I could do was make it echo, or change the pitch. Neither were what I wanted. Anyways, I had to chop this one up a lot, so there are some obvious changes in tone and inflection occasionally. Not intended (except for in the beginning).

#6 – “X3 Sucked”

Muzak – “Answers” by Vigilante, “The Price is Right Techno Remix” by a guy on YTMND.

As noted within the podcast, #5 was fully produced, but came out with large technical issues. If you’re so inclined, you can listen to it, but it’s pretty messed up. I reused some (a lot) of the content from #5 for #6, so that will make it even less interesting. I actually liked #5 a lot more than #6, but you can’t reproduce this stuff at will. Anyways, I can see you’re all desperate to procastinate, so, here you go.

#5 – “Super Deciding Banana Antics”

Anyways. I suppose I enjoyed my weekend – I have something of a tan from all the mowing. Speaking of which, I now have 6 customers, resulting in 80 bucks for every round of mowing I do. Not bad, although with all this mowing I’m gonna have to pay for the blade sharpening and the gas (I haven’t had to before). Non-taxable, though. I’m still gonna apply at Greenstar, since I don’t want to rely on such a varied resource for my income. It’s nice having money again, though. Nothing makes me feel more out of place than having people pay for me. It’s also nice to be able to get people presents on their birthdays.

Speaking of which, I went and saw X3 with Christopher on Saturday, as a pseudo-birthday present for him. I’m assuming most of you now realize that the title for Podcast #6 was a complete lie – I just wanted to proudly state that it sucked hard. Way, way hard. They completely overused Wolverine/Hugh Jackman, and gave him the worst dialogue heard in a movie since Star Wars (“It’s a trap!”). Motivational speeches, TWO references to the title of the movie, and one-liners abound, attached to one of the most disorganized and improbable plots I’ve seen in a while, with mediocre production qualities (did they really need a 1/3 scale model of the golden gate bridge?), and total abandonment of the X-Men canon (Jean never killed any essential characters), combined for a truly terrible move. Christopher and I laughed about it the whole way home.

Soon after, Paul and Karen rescued me from certain doom, and we went to see Thank You For Smoking, which was still quite good the second time. Afterwards we realized that no Chinese places were open at 11:30 PM, so we went to Wegman’s. Now, I was way confused – I thought we were actually looking for food, but we ended up in the candy section, and somehow, I ended up with 1.5 lbs of gummy bears and 3 boxes of Pocky (note this for later). Likewise, Paul was assailed by dozens of feet of licorice, and we managed to escape with our lives, and even a little money.

In all honesty, though, I was confused as to why we were strolling the empty deli section, as well as to why Karen was buying some of the nastiest salmon I’ve ever tasted, until I realized that I was actually buying my dinner. I remained confused when we just sat down and ate it in the car – perhaps I’m just silly, but the car seemed awfully lacking in convenience and an atmosphere conducive to eating. But hey, I shouldn’t be complaining.

In other news, I think I’m turning into an otaku or japanophile or something. I’ve started searching for more anime, and I’m patiently waiting as 6 more download (ever so slowly). I’ve been thinking about taking up learning Japanese, too – I don’t know exactly where I could learn around here, but I think it’d be totally sweet. I don’t want to turn into Steven Segal or something, but Japan in general just fascinates me. Four large alphabets sounds somewhat scary, though. Although, I suppose I already know the romaji, so it’s more like three. Except, you know, the kanji has like 2000 characters worth knowing.

I also found the the ultimate get-rich-quick scheme that I developed while mowing today.

  1. Wait for a controversial or “anti-Christian” film, book, or song/album to come out. The target must be fairly popular.
  2. Write a book addressing this piece of media. The title must include the name of the said media. In this book, “prove” that the media’s focus is wrong. Place images from the said media onto the cover of the book.
  3. ?????
  4. Profit!

Seriously, there’s like half a dozen or more books on Amazon focused on “debunking” The Da Vinci code. It’s insanity. Who cares? Is boycotting or disproving the movie doing anything for the cause of Christ? Why not take the 30 bucks you spent buying that book, and give it to someone who actually needs it? These authors are literally living off of the laziness of those who are unwilling to go research this stuff on their own. You don’t need super awesome laser technology with your lollornets and roflcology, you need common sense.

The movie apparantly sucks anyways.

Oblivion

[geek]

I’m finally taking the effort to talk about Oblivion. Yes, shoxxorz and awezorz.

Oblivion is a really, really weird game, in that it there are many comparisons that can be made with Fable. Not in the actual gameplay, but in the realm of it not exactly living up to expectations. What makes this weird is the fact that in all reality, Bethesda never lied and didn’t drop features left and right – Oblivion is what they said it would be. Yet, it still isn’t what they pumped it up to be.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Oblivion is a great game. However, contrary to my original thoughts, this really isn’t the best game ever made. It would almost certainly at first appear that way, until you really start to break the 50 and 60-hour barrier in terms of gameplay. Around that point, you start realizing that even though there’s gobs more to do, you don’t want to do it.

My favorite example is the environment. When we first saw Oblivion, we saw pictures of lush forests that truly are beautiful and well-made. Then we saw more. And more. By the time I started playing the game, I was already familiar with almost 90% of the game’s environment. Everything outside of the cities (and technically inside, too) is just green forest. Exploration simply isn’t fun – everything looks the same! Strangely enough, the dungeons and cities do not suffer the same fate, which is nice, however the entirity of the outside world (with very, very few exceptions) is just green, green, green.

On the note of exploration, Bethesda made an interesting trade-off with the ability to traverse the land – the cities themselves are insular, totally separated from the outside world. You cannot freely travel between the cities and the world, because of the required loading time, which is only triggered by entering through the gates. With several cities, I found obscure ways to scale the walls and jump outside of the city, at which point I found a totally untextured and decisively ugly world, devoid of buildings or people. I love exploiting games and all, but Oblivion was supposed to be about free-form playing, uninhibited action and exploration. That just don’t flow right. This is also probably why they removed the massive jumping and running spells that made Morrowind so fun to explore. You can’t jump 10,000 feet into the air. You can’t levitate. You’re stuck.

Beyond these issues, the another main problem lay in the myriad of quests you could do. Many of the quests, in general, were quite the same. With some very cool exceptions (entering a mage’s mind and solving puzzles, jumping into an artist’s painting to kill paint trolls), all of the guilds were just different variations of eachother, with minor exceptions. I didn’t do all of the quests, but, I did go quite far into the Fighter’s Guild, the Dark Brotherhood, the Blades, and finished all of the Thieve’s Guild quests. The Thieve’s Guild had an absolutely spectacular final mission that required you to sneak past veritable legions of powerful enemies at once, but such espionage was not to be found in many of the other quests.

My final complaint lies with the enemies. Variation was a strong issue here, as well as balance. I often avoided dungeons completely because most of them contained really creepy undead that I didn’t want to fight. I just don’t want to fight undead all the time. Outside the dungeons was a little better, but in general, I found myself meeting the same enemies regularly. Strength was a universal problem – later in the game, if you do not turn the difficulty down, you will not be strong enough to kill anything. This may have been fixed within the 1.1 patch, but, I do not believe so.

All that said, Oblivion is a great game. The leveling system is wonderful, as is the character creation all around. The world is totally immersive and responsive. The game improves upon tons of the issues of Morrowind and so much more – plus, the game is just really good looking. That’s all I can really put it at – Oblivion is just great.

For the Love of E3

Notable stuff from E3 (if you haven’t noticed, there haven’t been geek tags on stuff, there’s just too much geek stuff to label):

  • Halo 3. The trailer itself is fairly standard stuff – I thought the music was especially well done, the graphics were noteworthy, and the plot might actually be interesting this time. I’ve got a lot of brewing anger from Halo 2 that Halo 3 has to resolve, so I’m expecting the world from this.
  • Sony’s Press Conference. It sucked. It sucked hard. It was definitely the most disjointed of the three – they would jump from talking about the PSP to talking about PS3 games, back to more stuff on the PSP, then about their stupid song service, and back to PS3 games. I exaggerate not. I noticed a fundamental difference in speech – where Microsoft and Nintendo called the users “players” and “gamers”, Sony called them “consumers”. Sony obviously doesn’t care – especially in the fact that their console is essentially going to cost $600 bucks. I couldn’t really care less about their assimilation of the 360 and Wii controllers, though. That’s just smart tactics.
  • Nintendo’s Press Conference. The best of the three. Not a lot of specs or details, but they’ve proven the ability of the controller, which is exactly what they needed to do. The Zelda demo looked freaking awesome, freaking awesome enough for me to buy it at launch come this November.
  • Microsoft’s Press Conference. Surprisingly good, aside from Peter Moore’s incessant clapping and complete failure to maintain dignity as he got a tattoo for freaking GTA4. Who cares? It was cool for Halo 2, so why go through the trouble? Beyond that, there were a handful of possibly nifty games, but nothing spectacular. The whole idea of connexting the 360 and the PC, though, was cool. It’s definitely part of their anti-Mac and anti-Linux campaign, by setting down a “games for Windows” tagline, but, so long as they keep it otherwise open, it’s just gravy. I’m still not sure how I feel about Vista, but, we’ll see.

That’s pretty much it for the moment. Today may bring some interesting things, or it may not.

Hot Coffee v2.0

As many of you should know, yet another video game scandal has boiled over, before even the mighty Jack Thompson trounced upon it (although we’ve only got, at best, a week or so before someone puts him on TV again). Oblivion has been modded to include teh nudities and was subsequently rerated to mature, at the protest of Bethesda.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. The last scandal was pretty ridiculous – there’s no reason a game should be re-rated based on material not intended for inclusion within the game, but really, San Andreas should have been rated AO off the bat, with or without the Hot Coffee mod. In the end, though, it wasn’t Rockstar’s or Take Two’s fault that someone uncommented some code. They shouldn’t be blamed for that.

I don’t feel so generous with Bethesda. Maybe their whole “pay us two bucks for a model of a horse with armor” deal put me off but, it seems that this is entirely preventable. Oblivion is an extremely well made game (and yes, I will eventually do that review thing I was talking about ages ago), and it also happens to have an engine comparable to that of the Source engine in terms of flexibility. They made it to be modded, and because their game contains female characters with an obvious need for breasts in order to maintain realism, they should expect someone to go out and do this. No, it’s not their fault if someone does, but, whose fault is it if someone steals your car because you forgot to lock the door? Not yours, but you certainly aren’t getting much pity from me.

What I mean to say is, why didn’t Bethesda take some preventative measures? I see two options here. One involves making it harder to toy with the skins on the models – this would be the lesser solution, as it would be punishing all modders for the possible actions of one modder. The other would just be to ask any and all Oblivion mod databases to not host any nudity mods. Honestly, I’m positive every one of them would comply. It’s totally reasonable. But, Oblivion didn’t do that, and now Jack Thompson’s got fresh meat.

A minor point of speculation on my part begins here. The degree of complexity to the nudity mod seems to be disputed – many people are under the impression that it requires some complex retexturing of the basic models, but that does not seem to be the case. Equally many people have described a much simpler process, one possible within the Construction Set (the editing program for Oblivion). I should stress the fact that when I was cruising through the thousands of available mods, I saw at least five mods claiming to add nudity (ironic wording there – “add” nudity). It’s one thing if the mod is mildly complex, but I don’t think this is the case.

As for the rerating of the game to Mature, I think it’s stupid that it was rerated over a mod. It’s kind of like (using the car analogy again) blaming the car manufacturer for car theft (there are obvious cases in which this is reasonable, but, stick with me here). Oblivion probably should have been rated M anyways, though. As many have pointed out, you’re gonna find rotting corpses, on fire, hanging from the ceiling, with knocked over chairs below them. And once you get close enough, you can take the gold and meat out, complete with a squishing noise as you open and close the inventory! I’m no proponent of the idea that we should ban anyone below 18 from buying such horrid filth, but really, there’s stuff in the game that makes me cringe occasionally. Are breasts really worse than decapitated corpses and festering zombies?

I think the ESRB generally does an okay job of rating games, but I just hate to see them become pawns of the lesser forces in our country. It is an inevitability, of course, but one that I hate to see nonetheless.

Controlled Explosions

Sticking with the two-word titles, I’ve some interesting things to report. Apparantly wireless keyboards are, in fact, inferior. I’m typing on a different keyboard at the moment, so, any errors are obviously not my fault.

I hadn’t really noticed before, but when the gang came over (we dress in blue shirts and white khakis! we’re white! we make potato guns!), Nolan played some Stepmania. For those of you that do not know, Stepmania is akin to Guitar Hero or DDR, but on a keyboard, on a computer (any OS). I know all of you know what those are, so basically it’s just hitting arrows in time to music. The songs on SM are infinitely harder (and cooler) than anything you’ll find in DDR or Guitar Hero. To get an idea of how fast we’re talking, Nolan played songs at around 150-300 BPM (beats per minute). That’s not keystrokes, that’s beats. The notes come in time with the beats, so you’ll end up with anything between 1-20 keystrokes per second. I haven’t gotten near that good yet, so I hadn’t noticed that there was a cap to how many keys I could be pressing at any given second. When the game wasn’t keeping up with Nolan’s playing, we switched the keyboard out for a crappy corded one, and voila, things return to normal. While I was aware that wireless peripherals were indeed inferior in speed and precision, I had no idea that it was to such an extent.

I went to the farmer’s market for the first time on Saturday, and I think it’s enough to say that it wasn’t bad. If I had money, I’d have bought a loaf of cinnamon bread or something, but no, I had no such thing. Mowing has officially started, so, that shouldn’t be such a problem. Now I just need a job – I’m hoping Christopher will have room for two people. One can hope, right?

Fine Science

As I sat reviewing for the upcoming Computer Science exam (so far 10 questions have contained iterative loops in which you just have to add things up, it’s silly), I realized that I should go find out random facts about the Power Rangers to quip during the day tomorrow. Jumping to Wikipedia, I expected a half-written article with some helpful references. NO.

THAT IS NOT WHAT I FOUND.

Look at it. That’s the parent article. I challenge you to look at the articles for each season. All of them are complete articles, detailed and organized. Even worse, there’s information about the upcoming PowerMorphiCon (for those that don’t know, Cons are conventions for specific things). Never have I been so fatally put off by what people do in their spare time. Society has reached a new low. Rape of Nanjing? Tianenmen Square? (the choosing of two Chinese incidents is pretty much the result of a loss for good catastrophes) They haven’t got a THING on this, my friends.

Even still, I found it interesting that half of the show was adapted from the Japanese show Super Sentai(literally, super group or super task force, specifically used for air squadrons in WWII). It explained why it seemed so weird. Most hilariously, though, was the formula that Wikipedia gives for each episode. Never have I seen such a thing given for a TV show, making it that much funnier. For those too lazy to go check, I shall leave it here for you to awe upon.

  1. Rangers are seen in everyday life with a dispute to resolve.
  2. Rangers are attacked by an evil foe’s minions/footsoldiers.
  3. Rangers fight minions/footsoldiers.
  4. Rangers morph.
  5. Rangers defeat minions/footsoldiers.
  6. Optional: Evil enemy revives minion and makes minion grow to gigantic proportions, followed by Rangers summoning giant machines known as Zords and/or their combined form, the Megazord.
  7. Optional: Rangers find that their current powers are insufficient to defeat monster and discover a new power, such as a Battlizer armor for the Red Ranger, a sixth Ranger, or a new Megazord.
  8. Optional: Rangers fight and defeat said giant minion.
  9. Rangers are shown back in everyday life, having learned a life lesson which solves the earlier dispute.

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS SANE AND HOLY, who would watch enough episodes to know this? No self-respecting human being should know this beyond the age of ten. Not a single one.

Who Saves Daylight?

I hate Daylight Savings. Not because I dislike the extra hour of sunlight, but because of how it forces me to adjust my aural sense for time. My sense of time generally relies on the color of my wall as seen through the top left corner of my left eye, but that is no longer a reliable source, forcing me to turn all the way around to my clock, which is occasionally obfuscated by various objects.

Daylight Savings royally screwed me over last night, too. I was exiting Oblivion expecting the clock to read 2:00 AM, providing for a full 7 hours of sleep prior to Church. Nay, it was 3:00 AM, forcing me to sit down and watch cartoons that had been dubbed with fart sounds most hilariously (it was an April Fools thing).

As for April Fools? I’ve taken a liking to the internet version of this holiday. Generally I hate April Fools, but this year, it did not fall upon a school day, and waking up to a world of bizarre news was rather exciting, until I realized it was indeed April 1st. What I find more amusing about April Fools is what is unintentionally interpreted as a joke. But then again, Snakes on a Plane is quickly coming.

Speaking of movies, I saw Slither last night, as a sort of birthday doodad with Christopher and Jonathan. Akin to movies such as Army of Darkness or Bubba Ho-Tep, this movie, whether because it really was hilarious, or because I was just in the mood, had me laughing the whole way through. It was really, really gross, through. I’m no fan of gore, especially the visceral, intestiny kind that Slither had, but I still managed to find it really hilarious.

I won’t bore you with Oblivion details right now, but rest assured, it’s coming.

Along with a gig of RAM (should be here Monday or Tuesday).

Oblivion, lol

[geek]

I am now taking a short break to give you some preliminary (after 30 or 40 hours of playing) thoughts on Oblivion. Eventually, I’d like to do a nice, extensive review with some of my personal favorite screenshots and whatnot, but for now, I just want to jot down some interesting things.

The first being, the graphics, and my computer’s rendering capability. I am ever so close to being able to max out the settings in every category. My main limitation lies in the speed and capacity of RAM. PC3200 is standard, but contains no capacity for overclocking, and combined with the mere 512MB (hopefully being rectified tomorrow), my computer is unhappy with Oblivion’s extensive use of textures.

I’ve been running the game at 1024×768, with HDR enabled, and all other settings set to maximum. Because Oblivion uses floating-point HDR (Half Life 2 and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory use an “interlaced” version that is much closer to Bloom than true HDR), anti-aliasing is off by default. I have not yet tried forcing AA on, but judging from the performance I got with Bloom and 4xAA, I do not expect a strong display of computing prowess.

For those of you that do not know, HDR is a lighting system that attempts to simulate the intricacies of the eye – moving from dark areas to light areas results in greater brightness for a period of time, which is inversely true for the reverse situation (that is, moving from light to dark results in a very dark environment). However, the lack of native AA almost makes Bloom (what is generally referred to as the “cheap knockoff” of HDR) more preferable. I took some comparison shots which you can see here.

Anti-aliasing becomes a serious issue when I’m faced with large patches of grass. Much of Oblivion is covered with truly spectacular fields of grass that will make your computer commit seppuku if you are not properly prepared. I have not sufficiently played with the settings to rectify this situation, but that will come soon. Playing with the settings can be rather frustrating when you have to restard Oblivion for any kind of major settings changes.

As for the game, I can safely say this is the best game I’ve played in years. Is it the best game I’ve ever played? I don’t know, but it just might be. More to come later.

[/geek]

Prelude to the Epilogue

Today’s Onion Day Calender reads:

Gay TV
Gay themed televeision series like Bravo’s Queer Eye for the Staight Guy and Boy Meets Boyare popular with mainstream audiences. What’s the Appeal?

  • Better than Oxygen’s Lesbian OshKosh B’Gosh Outlet-Store Shopping Spree
  • 90% of Americans are latent homosexuals
  • Fans can live fun-filled life vicariously through gay characters before having methodical sex with wife in Mobile, Alabama
  • Explode myth that gay people are human beings like the rest of us
  • Homosexuals not so intimidating when they’re 22″ tall
  • Lost remote, accepting alternate sexuality easier than getting up and crossing room
  • The Mexicans already had a network, why not the fruits?
  • Crocodile-huntersexuals, Osbournosexuals, and antiques-roadshowsexuals are old hat.

In other news, I may have a soft spot for orchestral power metal. What is that, you ask? I sort of stumbled upon it while watching this video (which, by the way, I’m pretty sure isn’t fake). I really liked the music to it, and the description mentions “Trans-Siberan Orchestra”. I found this name to be super awesome, so I did some poking on Last.fm, and lo and behold, there they are. The only trouble is, half their music has some form of singing in it, which is not okay. I’m now on the quest to find what is possible the most obscure genre: Instrumental Orchestral/Symphonic Power Metal.

If anyone could, you know, help me with this, that’d be super.

STARCRAFT LAN INFORMATION

Some of you know I’m doing a LAN party of sorts on the 31st, my birthday. I have some “official” details involving this, so listen up, y’all:

It’s gonna be on March 31st, which is a Friday, 19 days from now. Required items:

  • $5 dollars (I’ll need all of it)
  • Your Computer (please don’t bring anything less than 500 mhz, this isn’t a Smithsonian exhibit)
  • CAT5, ~20 ft length (NECESSARY)
  • Large blanket (explained later)

Other helpful but not necessary items:

  • A large hub/switch. Larger is MUCH better. Karel said he might have this covered, but, just in case, please bring one, if possible.
  • Starcraft (we can burn copies, but…)

I’m having issues with the limit of people that will be here. I had originally wanted to keep it at 8, but I will have to go to 10 for various reasons. 10 is pretty much the max, for a lot of reasons. Various information involving this:

  • Starcraft, the main game, only supports 8 people. This in itself is okay, as I’m willing to sit back and let other poeple play, but we obviously can’t go much higher than that.
  • Starcraft will be a mix of melee and custom games. I know a lot of the people coming aren’t good at melee, but a few of the people that are much prefer melee (I enjoy it a lot too), so I’ll do my best to make a balance.
  • Other games that are up in the air are Tribes 2, Warcraft III, and Quake 3, these are all possibilities. If you have ideas, LET ME KNOW SOON. Games must be at least 8 player, and fairly low performance.
  • We’ll be playing in my basement, not the attic, so space will be slightly tighter than in the attic, but I’m confident there will be room. This means that if it’s between bringing a laptop and a desktop, you really, really should bring a laptop.
  • I am not entirely sure how sleeping arrangements will work. I have one extra bed and one couch in the basement – most of the basement is unfurnished, so a lot of the space is no-go. We may have to stretch to the living room, which has three couches (let’s see, that’s 5 people covered thus far). This means a few people (assuming all 10 sleep over, which isn’t going to happen) will have to sleep on the floor. I have blankets and such, but, BE PREPARED. Bring a large blanket or something.

If you want to come, let me know, maybe we can work something out. Some of you may have noticed that this coincides with my birthday; please DON’T get me presents. PLEASE. It’s not a birthday party, it’s an excuse to have a LAN. If you really, really, really want to, fine, but there won’t be a ceremony or anything. You have your warning.

NO WAI!

Many things to report! The first of which, are my grades. They are good enough (I don’t know the GPA) to justify coming back, but I still have work to do. In fact, I have a programming project that’s now 3 days late that I need to finish for Monday.

So, the grades are like this:

English: B+ (one bad quiz and poor attendance)
US History: Pass
Math: Pass (bad homework, that’s because i have no calculator still, so i can’t do it)
APCS: A- (gonna fall with this next project)
Physics: B (i keep forgetting the homework! argh!)
CIM: B (poor attendance)
Digital: Pass (one bad test, keep forgetting homework, terrible attendence – it’s my first period class)
PE: A

Funny story with Digital – I walked in 30 minutes late one day and they had actually taken bets as to what time I’d get there. Mike was the winner with 8:20. When I say they took bets, Mr. Peters actually wrote down the bets on the board. The worst part is that the only scolding I got was from Mr. Briegle (read: he’s not even the teacher of that class). Digital has improved since like three people dropped the class a few weeks ago, though. Much, much improved.

I’ve basically been getting NO sleep. Generally around ten hours for every five days of school – this isn’t really because I’m playing games or whatever, it’s because I fall asleep when I get home for an hour or two (I’ve been walking home recently, so I get home at 4:00), and somewhere between two and three days a week I now have Judo. Keep in mind, this isn’t me complaining. I’m actually thoroughly enjoying finally taking on school and doing something with my time. I’ve pretty much adjusted to the sleep thing, and I’ve found I actually feel much better with 3 hours of sleep over 5 or 6. Moving on, though.

[semi-geek]

Several things have changed about my computer recently, which I think concerns each and every one of you. Firstly and most earth-shatteringly, I’ve switched to Opera. Opera, you ask? Opera was once the ad-laden alternative to Firefox, but has recently been purged of such foul inventions. Opera is, in general, significantly faster and less laden with “memory leaks” (I don’t care what you call them, Mozilla Foundation, if it sucks up 100 MB of my memory, it’s a memory leak). It’s, in general, just more awesome. It has some issues with AJAX/Flash, but it works just fine in general. The biggest selling point for me was that it played about 50% more YTMNDs natively than Firefox did.

The only unfortunate part is that the widget support (AKA extensions) isn’t as large as Firefox’s was. I’m using the 9.0 beta, which is the only version that supports widgets. The widgets themselves are more akin to the Konfabulator I once used, which is now called something else under Yahoo’s ownership.

[/semi-geek]

Other things I’ve gotten into? Last.fm is in there, which I had previously ignored for lack of knowledge of its radio-doodle. I’m now frantically trying to catch up with Zach and Paul in their track counts, which, considering my current Winamp stats, won’t take too long, but it will certainly take time. I cheated last night and left music on overnight (with the volume off, silly), but I probably won’t do that again. Note “probably”. Ahem.

[geek]

Most importantly, is the fact that the world will collapse in on itself with the arrival of Oblivion in a SINGLE WEEK! A SINGLE WEEK! AHAHA! I’ve not been this excited since the arrival of Halo 2! I scoured the internet for scans of the March 2006 OXM review of it (9.5 out of 10!), to no avail. Luckily, we get an early dismissal on the Thursday of that week, as well as a day off Friday. Truly, the heavens are aligning to accomodate the arrival of this magnificent piece of game.

Exquisite Taste

Music a really strange thing. More for me than most, I’ve realized, because I don’t listen to what’s good, I listen to what I feel like. Most of the time, that’s techno, but it took me about an hour to figure out what to listen to just now.

Music is one of those things that can really boost my mood. I’ve come to kind of depend on it while at home, but it’s a big distraction if I don’t make the right choice. I can’t focus while I’m reading if I enjoy the music too much, or if it’s too varied in tone. Like just now, I’ve been reading Catcher in the Rye. Music for the mood? Classical. I don’t often pick up the classical stream, but it’s pretty nice for times like this. Soothing.

And, in honor of the sign above my monitor that states “I SHALL NOT BE LAZY. 🙂“, I return to my reading.

EDIT:

New pair of glasses: ~$200.
New copy of Starcraft: ~$10.
This:

LazyAmy77: at least you didn’t have OWL glasses for six years
LazyAmy77: erg
salandarin: i did, actually
salandarin: but you’ll never know that
LazyAmy77: sure I won’t
salandarin: dude
salandarin: those pictures
salandarin: top secret
LazyAmy77: mine are in yearbooks all over Ithaca
LazyAmy77: and embarassing
LazyAmy77: ugh
salandarin: mine…aren’t!
salandarin: haha
LazyAmy77: rawr
LazyAmy77: i look like a librarian midget on crack
salandarin: right, but what did you look like THEN?
LazyAmy77: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
salandarin: OH NO HE DIDN’T!
LazyAmy77: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Totally, totally priceless. I found that super amusing, anyways.

To Cough, or to Sneeze.

That is the question.

I have spent the last three days in utter misery, with some kind of viral agent coursing through my veins. I cough so much that I can now no longer play Ninja Gaiden Black, because it excites me too much; I start coughing too much and subsequently can’t concentrate. The only time I’m not coughing is when I’m eating, and that’s right now. To think I’m missing Ski Club and Robotics for this.

I fear my return to school, with the piles of work I’ll surely have to do. More importantly is the ferocious and possibly hurtful words I will receive from teachers, concerning being absent for three days. You can take this to mean I will not be there tomorrow.

A few various things you should all know, via a bulleted list:

  • Robotics seasons started Monday, meaning I have to be there from 5-9 every weekday, and 9-5 on Saturdays. I will probably not go home in between the time school ends and Robotics begins. Wohoo for 13 hours in that blasted school.
  • I traded in Spartan for Mario Kart: Double Dash and Ninja Gaiden Black. The former is not as good as either of its predecessors, with the multiplayer being especially disappointing. The latter is absolutely amazing, and much more than I had hoped for. That’s all I’ll say about these for now.
  • I discovered these “Reese’s Pieces Peanut Butter Candies” that are basically Reese’s in M&M form. Highly delicious, although I haven’t really been able to enjoy them due to my non-stop sneezing and coughing.
  • I finished Season 4 of the Sopranos. I have also realized that absolutely none of you have even watched this show, ever, so I’ve decided to stop mentioning this fact.
  • Apparantly sleep inertia induces a state that is worse than being drunk. Sleep inertia, for those who don’t know, is the feeling you have in the morning, that most people rid themselves of with coffee or hot showers.

If this thing doesn’t get any better tomorrow, I’m seeing the doctor on Saturday. Ugh.

Yo! Banana Boy

I was gonna write something more than a paragraph, but I have to start the Physics soon to finish before midnight, and I want to get some F.E.A.R. in. Shut it.

I got home today and JonAthan (he’s back!) was downstairs with Brian. I wanted to play F.E.A.R., but the hockey would disturb my focus, so I pulled out the headphones, but when I handed them to JonAthan, he rebroke them (i glued the ears back to the frame, they’re so bootleg), and my already very tired mood was kind of sent further down. After giving him a “…” look, I went upstairs to find the superglue. I come back down, and Brian is doing his absolute best to break the headphones in more pieces, and was mostly succesful in doing so. I start glaring at him, but JonAthan starts prodding me with a wrapped present.

I now have a brand new pair of Altec Lansing (read: not Sony) headphones, very sturdy, with a mic (although at the moment I can’t get it to talk at any reasonable noise level). That kind of brought my day around. I have had an otherwise not good day.

Where should I work? I haven’t checked with Ian yet, ’cause I’m not sure I want a desk job (even if it’s better pay) after being in school for 6 or 7 hours. I mean, if nothing else comes around, I’ll go for it, but I was really up on the idea of being a busboy for Joe’s. Any ideas?

EDIT: I hear the school delay got approved. Hooray! Too bad I’ll only experience a year of it.

EDIT: Snap, today’s getting better. Pennsylvania judge owns ID!

Estuans Interius

I have never been more scared to play a game, ever. F.E.A.R. is just so scary. I’m not one for horror movies or games, ever. In fact, I really don’t like them (mostly because I don’t discount the existence of the unholy supernatural), not that I can’t sit through one without crying, but really. It probably stems from me picking up a copy of Resident Evil 2 my brother had brought home, and subsequently having nightmares for two weeks straight. I was seven years old, give me a break. It’s also why I won’t ordain my gamecube with a copy of Resident Evil 4.

[geek]

Like I was saying, F.E.A.R. is just insane. It’s scarier than Doom 3, but then again, Doom 3 wasn’t scary after an hour of playing it. I withstand the sheer fright that is this game because it’s just really fun and really cool. The gameplay is really good, it’s so satisfying, well balanced, plenty challenging, it’s just awesome. The literal pools of blood, exploding corpses, intermittent flashes of dead people and such are really scary, but the incredibly well done AI is so worth it. The AI, man. They run around you, they know the map, they hide behind stuff, they roll, they jump, they ambush, just so well designed. Wort.

Anyways. As some of you know, I discovered Ruby on Rails the other day, and got all excited by their demos, thinking I could easily start running this here blog completely on my server without using WordPress. I spent three hours ripping my hair out trying to just figure out what the documentation wanted from me, then realizing it was five years out of date, and nothing they told me to do would work. Beyond that, I learned that Ruby is really not a good language anyways – it doesn’t do anything that Perl or PHP can’t easily do alone. I was displeased. I’m trying to learn another language in addition to Java – C++ is the obvious first choice, but I don’t want to run it through Cygwin, and the Eclipse plugin is finnicky, but we’ll see. I’m thinking Perl or Python would be good to learn, but it’s not real important.

[/geek]

That snow day was indeed a blessing. I used it well, I think. Ben, Zach, and I went downtown (with some intermittent snowball fights, and falling down stairs) to go present shopping with money I didn’t have, which was fun in its own right. That wasn’t before playing a rousing game of Rise of Nations in which I reasserted my authority over Paul (after a shameful loss). This also wasn’t after an interesting birthday party at Paul house, which there are pictures for.

In important news, the Patriot Act got owned! I am pleased about this. Something I’ve kind of noticed, is that the media spins everything into party politics. The loss of the Patriot Act is somehow a loss for Republicans. I don’t get it. It means people didn’t like it, and that the majority has won, nothing else. Then again, I don’t care about politics enough to sit down and try and reason through why there’s always been two parties in our political system, and I’m not getting a degree in Political Science to find out. At least the act got shot down.

You Are SO Not Invited.

I’m surprised that up to this point, not a single person has noted the lack of explanation of the asterisk lying in wait in the header. Once upon a time, before what I dub the “Great Harddrive Failure of 2005” and the resulting “Dark Age of the Internet”, I had utilized this asterisk to note something of extreme importance. The issue here is that I have absolutely no idea what I had noted. I had originally planned to make a footer (the things that go below everything, thus why they are called footers, unless you’re a CommuNazi). Nonetheless, I am nauseated and disgusted by your skills of examination. So much so that both my eyes are filled with angst, also known as blood.

So, I woke up this morning to my eyes telling me “we hate you”. The meaning of this I didn’t understand until I started experiencing exponentially increasing aches in the area of my head, and by third period, I had been informed that both of my eyes were completely bloodshot. After confirming this fact via a quick run to the mirror, I took my first visit to the nurse’s office of the year, and slept rather peacefully for thirty minutes until my dad got me. The ride home was rather painful as the sun was out, and light to my head was the equivelant of mating in the manner of moose and rams (that is, to repeatedly bash your head against a hard object…not…the other things rams do…). After decorating the house a bit (i now have my silly mini tree in my room, it emits about 25 or 30W of happy), I again went to sleep, but not before playing a rousing game of Age of Empires II, which I’m sure most of you are familiar with. For those of you who aren’t, skip this next part.

[geek]

It’s amazing how poorly memory serves to accurately define a staple of my youth. The game is ridiculously easy – I remember finding the computer insanely hard to beat even on the moderate setting, but using the Goths (whose special unit is the Huskarl, that has like 15 piercing armor, costs like nothing, and can be created in less than 3 seconds) I’ve managed to completely own without even a question of my authority. I generally just create my entire army of 100 in less than two minutes, and sweep the entire map in one or two runs. Before I have the resources for the massive recruitment, I create only enough to defend my base as well as my ally’s. Whether this strategy would work in a real game, I don’t know.

I now have the yearning to play Starcraft again – if I get any minor amounts of money this Christmas, I’ll be certain to get the combo. It’s probably down to ten bucks these days.

[/geek]

Various things (no bulleted list here, i’m afraid):

My parents somehow miraculously got me signed up for Ski Club, past the deadline. This is a highly good thing, as such a proliforous amount of people were going this year (as opposed to last year), missing out on the fun would just be no good.

I’ve finally, after like three months, gotten back in touch with a few of the people from camp. Christina and I have sent a few back and forth, and I got in touch with Zach, although I have still left the entirity of Ohio behind. With time, I’ll get there, but for now, I’m a bum.

Things of humor (sorry, no bulleted list again):

If you check out Colette’s Xanga, you’ll see a post concerncing some silly face recognition software that compares your face (hur, hur) to that of a bunch of celebrities. I am proof that this thing is entirely broken. Just look. (grumble)

Two or three posts ago, I gave a little plug for Facebook, encouraging people to sign up. So, they did. I friended these people. And you know what happens? A pentagram, apparantly. My network of friends is one step away from symbolizing the devil. Ryan is the only thing stopping this. Insert fear here.

And finally, let’s have some good times. The next gen is here, and everybody is celebrating. If you don’t get that, I suggest you go watch four hours of press conferences from E3. Like me! I’ve been listening to the song from that thing for at least an hour now, it’s so good.

Now, because cliches are in, I am creating a new status: the conventions of standard English in the titles. As long as cliches are in, there will be a conventions status monitor, which I will create for your pleasure tomorrow. Images shall be included! As soon as cliches are out, however, the status of the conventions will be neither in, nor out. As you can see, the conventions are obviously in (read: capitalization, grammar, punctuation). Dance Katuragi, DANCE!

Lawyerizing

This calls for an entirely separate post. I’ve often wondered how Uwe Boll puts food on the table, but now there’s an answer.

Read this.

Here’s what I’m gathering from what comments on the article. It’s a huge financial fiasco, that Hollywood pulls on almost every movie, through Germany. Basically, investors turn a huge profit by investing in doomed ventures (Uwe Boll’s movies). How does this work?

Say you’re a rich dude, and your net income (profit) is 10 million dollars per year. According to German law, you are taxed on that 10 million, not the rest of your income. You may make 50 million, but if 40 million of that is losses, you are only taxed for 10 million. So, you put this extra 10 million into a movie like Alone in the Dark.

Now say you’re the company producing this piece of crap. You now have 10 million dollars invested into your movie. If you’re doing the movie 100% legitimately, this basically means that at the end of the process, you’ll give the investors a certain percentage of their investment back, based on how much money the movie makes. But if you’re Hollywood, you aren’t doing this legitimately. What do you do? You set up a tax shelter in Germany, where German investors give you money, before your movie has even begun. The advantage of this is that the investors can put their money into something completely tax-deductable, meaning instead of taking 15% hits in income taxes, they will take 5%, which ends up being in the millions as far as how much is saved.

There are dozens of other spins to add to the ball here, such as filming in several locations throughout the world to utilize other tax flaws, selling distribution rights, and all that jazz. However, the end product is a huge profit for every party involved. Take Tomb Raider. Ever hear that the budget for that piece of crap was $90 million? Did you know that the actual money required to make the movie was somewhere between $7-9 million? This, my friends, is why Peter Jackson feels compelled to sue New Line Cinema, for this very process of ‘cooking the books’. Brought to you by your friendly neighborhood team of lawyers.

I can’t sleep.

The Donut Inequality

[geek]

Today, my friends, is November 9. 11/9/04, a day that will live in infamy. One year ago, Halo 2 came out. I was there. At midnight. You all remember now, don’t you? Today, I recall the hype that I spewed over that single disc of C++. We’ll look back at the poem I wrote. Everything. It’s just going to be great, you know?

O Halo Two, how I love you,
you give me so many things to do!

With just a single DVD,
you unleash a world of glee!

Never straining the Front Side Bus,
for you were coded in C++!

Such an arsenal to explore,
with which to make war!

So many maps to inhabit,
awesome is what you emit!

Powered by a large Xbox,
you clearly rock my socks!

Halo Two, I kindly request of thee,
thy hand in marriage to me!

I remember Sam Miller getting up in front of my English class and reading that to everybody. I was too bashful to read it. Sadly enough, I admit that Halo 2 is not the best ever. It is not as good as Halo 1. Many of you out there agree, many don’t. But it was fun while it lasted.

Moving on, here’s a quick synopsis of what my time has been wasted upon the last week or so. Ben and Matt introduced me to a silly French game by the name of Dofus (doh foos, not do fuss, i think…anyone taking French out there?), which has been quite enjoyable. I won’t provide you with linkage, as a quick Google will provide you with the information you need. You need the exercise anyways.

[/geek]

My grades, dare I say, have reached a new level of suck. I’m desperately avoiding having the first ever D, or worst yet, F on my quarterly grade. Blast my foolishness, being late to school over 10 times. Ho ho.

I also feel that I need to address the accusation that this blog is closely related to slash. The official response is that this is not slash. You may quote me on that. Please do.

Lots of things are happening, more on what that means for your weekend, at 10.

EDIT: Irony. I was all pumped that Sam was gonna be here tomorrow, and was gonna edit this to say that. Not so.