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Merlinus_Ambrosius
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Name: Steve
Location: California, United States
Birthday: 1/6/1984
Gender: Male
Interests: Gaming, Reading, Music, chilling with friends, and Writting.
Expertise: I'm studying to be a Computer Engineer...need I explain more?
Occupation: Student
Industry: Other
Message: message me
Member Since:
8/21/2003
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| Morons at Fox cancel Arrested Development
Seriously
though....No duh you're going to have bad ratings for the show when it
hasn't been one in at least a month because of baseball, and then
returns with little advertising.
I honestly don't know what Fox
was thinking this year, starting its shows up in September when it was
going to have to take them off becaose of baseball. Even the Simpsons,
which has usually premiered after Halloween started early, then wasn't
seen for over a month.
I'm honestly surprised Prison Break is
doing as well as it is, because despite being a pretty good show, its
had to deal with the same types of crap.
Whats annoying is that
this was the same thing that happened to Firefly when it started, at
least in my timezone anyways. It was constantly getting preempted after
its debute by baseball.
Maybe Arrested Development will get
picked up by somebody else. I mean, the show has won emmies and golden
globes.....it just shows you that the folks at Fox don't have a clue
what they're doing. | | |
| Wow, long time no post. Well, I have no real excuse, I guess, besides the fact that school is in full swing. But anyhoo....
Besides my continued playing of World of Warcraft (I'm about to hit
56), I picked up another game a couple of weeks ago called F.E.A.R.,
from Monolith. After a few weeks of playing, I finally completed it
yesterday. And I've got to say, this game was absolutely fantastic in
every way. Yes, its a pretty creepy game. I'm not talking Doom style
"Oh no a monster just popped up in front of you yelling very loud
noises!" No, I'm talking about a creepiness that gets inside your head
because of the forboding atmosphere in the game. Think Japanese horror
movie instead of American slasher flick.
The basic premise of the game is that you play a member of a coverate
squad of soldiers for the US government called First Encounter Assault
Recon (F.E.A.R.). You've been trained to take on paranormal activity
that threatens the security of the United States. In other words, for
all intents and purposes, you're the big guns behind the X-Files.
Anyways, the military hired out a company to do research into
telepathy. The end result is psychic commdander who can control the
thoughts of soldiers. So the government creates an army of clone
soldiers for this guy to command. Wave of the future type warfare,
right? Well, something goes wrong and the guy goes psycho, and takes
over the buildings belonging to this company. He's looking for
something, but you don't know what. Thats where your squad comes in: to
stop this guy. Along the way, your elite group of soldiers teams up
with Delta forces to try and locate this guy and eliminate the threat.
Unfortunately, your elite comrades really serve no other purpose then
to get shot, wounded and or killed at inconvenient times, leaving you
the player with no other recourse then to save the day all by your
one-some.
Standard FPS fare, right?
Not quite. What could have been a standard run of the mill "run 'n gun"
type of game turns into something more. See, as you play the game your
character starts to have hallucinations. You'll find yourself in
different rooms, long corridors...all sorts of places. And the effect
is incredibly disorienting because as the game progresses, you lose the
ability to discern in game what is supposed to be "real" and
"hallucinations". Along the way, your character is stalked by this
absolutely creepy little girl, who seems to be a product of these
hallucinations. Or is she?
The graphics are absolutely fantastic, and the game runs great on my
machine (a modest 2.8 Ghz P4, 1 GB RAM, and a 128 MB Geforce 6600 GT
graphics card). Not an uber machine by many comparisons, but its runs
the game nice. There are all sorts of nice things about the eye candy
in this game. Lights flicker and go out. You can see your character's
shadow when you pass a light.
Where the game really shines though is in its gun battles. The AI is
incredible. Enemy soldiers will dive for cover, call for reinfocements,
and lay down covering fire. They'll attempt to flank you, and generally
out manuever you. Monolith has something to really be proud of in this
enemy AI. The environments also feel very destructable. Fire a round of
bullets at an enemy as he ducks behind a marble collumn, and you'll
actually see bits of rock chip away. Throw a grenade into a room, and
the explosion will cause all sorts of dust to be thrown into the air.
Stray bullets will cause wood to splinter. Glass will shatter, either
from bullets or when enemy soldiesr actually dive through windows to
come after you.
Sure, there are some complaints you can level at the game. The
environments are all urban offices and warehouses which begin to feel
similar after a while. While its not quite to the annoying level of
Halo's rooms cut and pasted back to back, it still feels a bit
repetative. And theres only a limited number of enemies over the course
of the game. Which means by the time you've gotten a third of the way
through the game, you probably aren't going to be seeing a whole lot of
new stuff in terms of scenery and enemies. But the execution of these
locales, and the AI itself, is so good that you'll most likely forget
about the fact that you're running around yet another office lobby.
Besides, given the nature of the storyline, you shouldn't really expect
a huge variety of locales.
And on a side note, I noticed that the name of the town the game takes
place in is Auburn. Can't help but wonder if its just a randomly chosen
generic sounding name, or if the game is intended to take place in
Auburn, CA. Most likely its the former, but you never no.
And given the cliff-hanger ending of the game, I can't wait to see the sequel.
Definately worth picking up. I give it 4 out of 5.
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| Picked up the new Dave Matthews CD the other day. And while I have
enjoyed it thus far, I have a message for RCA Records and Sony BMG
Music Entertainment.
When I give the cashier my money and she gives the receipt for the CD I
have made a purchse. Any agreements or usage issues regarding that
purchase are to be disclosed prior to the transaction. Once the
transaction has occured, I am under no obligation to abide by any
agreements you may wish me to make after the fact. That includes any
agreements that you feel the need to force upon me in order to use the
CD in my computer.
Allow me to be frank. When I purchase a CD, I will extract the audio
from said legally purchased CD, placing a copy of the resulting files
on my Zen Micro mp3 player as well as leave a copy on my hard drive. If
I feel the need to make a backup copy of the CD, I will do so.
Any attempts at preventing me from doing so will prove pointless and
futile. Thus I laugh at your pathetic attempts at forcing me to
download your digital keys to play the CD on my computer and extract
the audio from it. Because as of this moment, the extracted audio has
been compressed into mp3 format on my hard drive. And your digital keys
remain abscent from my machine. Which is as it should be.
While my first attempt at extracting the audio resulted in garbled
files, my second attempt (once I realized what it was you were trying
to pull) was succesful. In the future, I would suggest that you leave
the managing of my computer to myself instead of wasting your time
hiring some n00b to write some easily bypassed encryption system. I
mean, did you really think your latest attempt at copy protection would
work? Please.
In truth, you'll be lucky if I purchase a CD from your label in the future.
Thank you, and have a nice day.
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| Now this is just wicked cool. Researchers at UC Berkley have devised a
method of recording computers typing on a computer, and analysing the
sounds to recover what the user typed. And they can do this with 96%
accuracy! Thats absolutely amazing. You can read the full article here. Pretty cool, if you ask me.
All your documents are belong to us.
(no, thats not a typo)
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| Maybe I'm being a little oversensative here. A little overreactionary.
Maybe I'm putting a little too much thought into this....overthinking
it or something. Maybe I'm just being a bigot and a jerk.
Or maybe I'm absolutely spot on.
The architectural design for the Flight 93 National Memorial has been
announced. Its a touching symbol of remembrance for those lives lost in
that Pennsylvania field. The memorial project homepage describes the
memorial in flowery detail, describing each aspect of the site. Of the
Gateway, it reads :
" Tall enough to be seen from the highway, the TOWER OF VOICES heroically
marks the entry to and exit from the Park. Set on a planted mound in a
clearing, within resonating rings of White Pines, the Tower houses
forty white aluminum wind chimes. The continuing songs of chimes in the
wind celebrate a living memory of those who are honored. The outside of
the curved concrete tower wall is finished with white glass mosaic
tiles to create a reflective, ephemeral quality, and blue plaster
inside to evoke the sky. At night, the Tower interior is evenly grazed
with light and the exterior illuminated as a beacon. Near the Tower
there is parking, public restrooms and an information/orientation kiosk."
Its touching, really. The site goes on to describe the "Bowl" section,
which is to be accentuated with red maple trees. Certain to be a
beautiful sight to behold.
"Through the gesture of embrace, a curving landform formally defines the
edge of the Bowl. The CRESCENT OF EMBRACE enhances the form and
monumental scale of the Bowl to commemorate the heroic actions of the
passengers and crew of Flight 93. An allee of Red Maple trees gently
descends around the Bowl, crossing the wetlands, to the focal point of
the Bowl, the Sacred Ground. Behind the walkway occur forty groves of
Sugar and Red Maples and a ring road that leads to parking near the
Sacred Ground. Visitors can formally start their walk along the
Crescent by ascending a ramp that allows views into the Visitor Center.
Pedestrian trails through the Bowl offer a variety of entrance and exit
routes to and from the Sacred Ground. Lighting at night supports the
Crescent through recessed lights in the radiating markers that face the
Bowl. Benches along the allee have a recessed source to illuminate the
path and each of their radiating extensions through the groves are
terminated at the ring road with a pole-mounted downlight."
How touching. There are various artist renderings of the site, which
all look really cool. But then I notice this picture of the design on a news site detailing the design.
Now, maybe its just me....but this bugs me a little bit. I mean, red
maples...a crescent....When I saw this picture, I immidiately thought
of another image.
This one:
The crescent moon is a symbol of the Ottoman Empire, the most powerful
Muslim empire in the history of the world. The golden age of Islamic
power and authority. The empire that Bin Laden and his kind seek to
have rebuilt.
So I have to question the appropriateness of having a symbol of Bin
Laden's goal being used as a memorial to the innocent lives lost as a
result of this man's actions. Granted, I'm sure many won't see the
connection here. And like I said, maybe I'm thinking about this too
hard. Maybe its not that big of a deal.
But it still doesn't sit right with me.
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