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5 months ago
Omg this
is so exciting! Cant wait for next
ones! -
5 months ago
this is so awesome! Too excited for next
ones! -
Notes: 14 / 3 years ago
End of the Road?
Well the duration of required participation in this blogging experiment is coming to a close. For something that I was convinced I would have no use for, it has been interesting and fun. Hopefully those that have been following closely have been amused and enlightened to their satisfaction.
As for continuing after the fact, perhaps? Maybe not on tumblr, but I’m convinced now that I’m not done with blogging forever. Maybe not on something so random as the topics discussed. Maybe a little more inward looking, with some more personal insight into what is going on in my mind. Maybe with just some more focus on one thing, one interest.
Only time will tell…
As for today, I leave you with this interesting video.
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Notes: 9 / 3 years ago
Sci-Fi Fans Explained
If you were ever wondering about the various fan bases behind the multitude of science fiction franchises, here is a brief visual aid explaining some of them.
http://www.madatoms.com/uploads/content/images/backgrounds/large/article_SciFiFans.jpg
But I’m a little sad, because I’m a Stargate fan, and we get no mention…
In other news, if you have been reading my blog, you would know that my feelings on music is metal rocks, and if it isn’t metal, then make it metal…
I think I’ve made my point, also notice the totally metal banjo player.
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Notes: 2 / 3 years ago
Way of the Future
I figured I’d post this week about a subject that I have always had a deep interest in, and that is sustainability. Sustainability in energy, food production, fuel use, and biomass. Not only does the technology interest me, but also the social situations that cause it to be considered, or stand in its way. I love to see personal projects by people that buck the system and invest in ways to recycle the waste that our industrial consumerist society tends forget about, or individuals that generate there own energy using interesting or thoughtful methods. Recently I came across another video from www.ted.com, which really fascinated me.
The ramifications are immense if this sort of progress could be made all over the world, but one fear is is it realistic for other food industries, and if it is, do we have enough visionaries willing to attempt it.
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Notes: 2 / 3 years ago
Viral Video Film School
So I stumbled across a series of videos that are most definitely very appropriate for our class on Internet media, as well as rather relevant for our current book study.
I absolutely love this guy, and all the videos, and the clear irony of doing web videos making fun of YouTube. For more amusement, click the link below.
http://current.com/viral-video-film-school-im/
I implore you to sit down for about and hour and watch it all, I guarantee you will not be disappointed.
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Notes: 2 / 3 years ago
Sins of the Web…
This perhaps will be first blog more relevant then ever to the actual class this is for…
The more and more I read into the The Cult of the Amateur, the more hauntingly eyeopening it seems. I find myself looking more and more into my own internet habits are and perhaps what sort of reverberations they are having in the outside world in regards to other peoples lives. Some of my habits I’m having a hard time rationalizing when I read stories like that about the closing of Tower Records, and the loss of people with passion for music in favor of idiot trolls and flamers on message boards and comment sections. I can’t help but think how tragic this sort of thing really is.
I know that Keen comes off as a bit of an asshole, calling us all monkeys on the infinite typewriter to disaster, and that some of his points are very easy to disagree with and deconstruct, but he makes same really solid points in my mind.
In looking at my internet habits I find that some of his arguments don’t really seem to effect me. I’m not an avid YouTuber. I have a Facebook page but it is more for keeping track of event invitations and posting contact information for me. I read a few blogs about things like Tech, Geek culture, Gaming, Photography and Design. I do use Wikipedia a great deal for basic information on trivial subjects of passing interest.
Simply put most of my time online is spent gaming. I just don’t find reading personal blogs and watching every viral video out there interesting. I’d much rather be in game, playing with my guild mates. If I’m not playing or doing homework, I don’t use the computer.
So far Keen hasn’t really made a mention of gaming culture, and one of my main questions is what his viewpoint is on this phenomenon.
On another note, I figured I’d end this rant with a few interesting things that I have seen in my limited surfing.
One I thought is a rather strange creepy ad I saw for a show that might be very relevant to our class discussions.
The other is just awesome… and possibly cause a nerdgasm…
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3 years ago
Death rides a Pale Cat…?
Sorry this picture is damn priceless…
Anyway, back to why I’m really here, to murder you computer!!!
Blizzard just recently completed a mosaic made from the photos of 20,000 fans of World of Warcraft.
This being the source picture, and the following link to internet death.
Proceed at your own discretion.
Some people really need to learn how to use a camera.
My recent foray through my limited blogosphere has also come up with something that truly intrigues me, houses made from churches.
Kinda reminded me of that nightclub Confessions in Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.
I thought the idea of gutting a cathedral to make a club with red stain glass windows and cage dancers was such a wicked idea…
Anyhow, that’s enough randomness for now.
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Notes: 2 / 3 years ago
Beyond the Veil
I came upon an interesting article in my brief foray through my usual website haunts, this is it…
This has more or less been my take on violent video games for a very long time. Some background into just how much gaming I’ve actually been exposed to is perhaps warranted.
Basically I’ve been a gamer since I was 5 years old, my first to games being Doom and Super Mario World. The former I used to play cooperatively with my father, our household being one of the few with more then one home computer at the time, and at a very early age it was deeply ingrained that this was a “game” and that of course generally this sort of violent activity is more or less unacceptable in mainstream society.
According to most anti-video game moralists this was probably the worst thing that a child could be put through. Clearly I was being socialized to be a social disgrace with little to no self control and a bloodlust that would cause me later in life to engage in gratuitous amounts of violence against my common man.
Keep in mind Doom was only the beginning, I would soon move to games like Die by the Sword, a medieval melee combat simulator in which you used the mouse to swing your weapon and attempt to dismember and decapitate your enemy in various ways; and the Turok Series, a compendium of the most bloody and violent first person shooters ever imagined. Not only could you proceed to blow chunks out of your enemies with ease, but the pinnacle weapon was the most gruesome of all. Named the ‘Cerebral Bore’, it would fire a homing projectile that would lock onto your enemies head, drill a hole and proceed to remove his brain matter out in a stream to the floor, then to add insult to injury it would explode taking off his head completely.
Other notably violent games were Unreal Tournament, Soldier of Fortune and a plethora of others that make Modern Warfare look like your shooting paper dolls without a milliliter of boldly fluid.
Does all this make me unstable and murderous. I have a hard time believing that considering that in most games with moral freedom like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and GTA, I have a hard time justifying killing everyone I see. Its kinda nice to see games coming out with diplomacy options.
But maybe I do need a more visceral experience in general. The real world is filled with drugs, sex and rock and roll, why shouldn’t games be any different. If anything this exposure to the dark places in our soul might help us see how cruel actions are rewarded. You go around killing civilians, law enforcement puts you down… hard. You act cruelly to folks throughout the game, they might betray you. In some games is just about survival, shoot or be shot, those are the rules, and that doesn’t mean these rules suddenly apply to real life…
As for why I play them, I think it comes down to a bit of a hero complex to be honest. That’s the only thing I can think of. I play Jedi in Star Wars games, I play Paragon in Mass Effect, and If I have to play the punisheresque antihero then so be it, just assume that the situation has gotten that bad…
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Notes: 1 / 3 years ago
Oscarmageddon…
Another tidbit from the folks down at www.escapistmagazine.com, this one a video preveiw of one particularly bitter movie critic’s veiw of the Acadamy Awards. Despite the clear distaste, he does bring up some good points about how redundant the awards truely are.
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