This beautiful word means shaped like an upsilon. I kid you not. I do love the English language.
Now that I've finished that painfully long review of a video game, I figured that I'd try and take a step towards the technical side of technology once more. I haven't gotten that sense of writing something worthwhile for the past two blog posts that I got from any posts before them, which somewhat negates the blog since I'm writing it for personal enjoyment.
Recently, what with my focus being almost non-existant and so forth, I've found myself procrastinating an awful lot. And because most of my work is online, it's mostly websites that form my procrastination, and I really want to stop my procrastination during hours that I dedicate to work. In order to do this, I am in the process of trying to write a piece of code to help with this. I'm only in the process of formulating what I want it to do right now, but I'm thinking of making its purpose to put some sort of delays in place, as opposed to just completely restricting my access. Pitting my want to procrastinate against my impatience as it were. For example, when I get bored I flip over to Facebook and refresh my News Feed (the main page that shows me all of my friends' updates). If, for example, when I wanted to load up Facebook, I had to load up a completely different browser and I set it so that to view updates, I'd have to close the browser and load it back up and log in again, I'd get impatient and stop doing it as often. This would then lead to higher productivity. I'll upload some flow-diagrams of what I want this code to do sometime tomorrow. Maybe.
On a different yet similar topic, Intel recently launched a new, high-speed method through which computers can connect to storage peripherals, or even any kind of peripheral for that matter. Similar to the way that USB 2.0 took over from FireWire and USB 1.1, and very recently, USB 3.0 took over from USB 2.0, the new project, codenamed Thunderbolt is looking promising for a takeover from USB 3.0.
I'm going to dip into a little history here for those of you who didn't already know this stuff. In 1986, Apple developed a system (called FireWire) via which data could be transferred between a computer and peripheral at either 12MB/s, 25MB/s or 49MB/s. At the time, this was fantastic. Computers barely had this much storage, so this was more than sufficient.
In 1998, USB 1.1 was released with a 12MBit/s transfer rate for data devices but a lower 1.5MBit/s transfer rate for peripherals such as joysticks, keyboards and mice. The main advantage to USB was that it utilised existing interfaces (USB slots already existed at this point) and simplified software configurations for devices.
These ran happily and sufficiently until music players and suchlike came along, and larger quantities of data were being transferred. A new data transfer protocol was required to handle such large amounts of data and reduce transfer times.
And so, along came USB 2.0. Not only did this new protocol increase data transfer by almost 40 times (USB 2.0 had transfer speeds of up to 480MBits/s) it also provided a 4-volt power supply for devices. Apple almost instantly began utilising this new feature fantastically. With their music players (the iPod), they no longer needed to provide both a mains charger and a USB data cable, as they could integrate the charger inside the data cable so that the iPod charged from the computer. And the new data transfer speeds meant that an awful lot of music (and miscellaneous files in the case of flash disks which were, at this point, becoming increasingly popular) could be copied to music players in a relatively short amount of time.
And so came the year 2010, moving ever closer to the heart of the Digital Age. With external hard drives reaching sizes of several terabytes, the need for an even higher transfer rate arose very quickly. Computer developers were ready for this incredible, exponential increase in digital storage, and had been developing USB 3.0. When the need began to seriously affect consumers, they began releasing the new USB 3.0 protocol. This new protocol pushed speeds to almost unheard-of highs. 5Gbit/s at the top end. This meant that a 4GB DVD-movie could be copied over to a local media server in less than a minute. USB 3.0 also decreased ppower consumption while simultaneously increasing power output.
And now, Intel have released "Thunderbolt". This new project has transfer speeds of up to 10GBit/s, double that of USB 3.0, but is limited by the materials used. Thunderbolt Copper uses, obviously, copper wiring inside it. Copper is a fantastic conductor for electrical signals which aids the high transfer speeds, but lately a better contender for data transfer has stood on tiptoes above the rest. Ever heard of Fibre Optic Broadband? This broadband allows for phenomenal speeds, because it uses fibre optics to transfer data in the form of light. If Thunderbolt Copper goes down well, they will be releasing Thunderbolt Optic. This form of Thunderbolt has speeds, theoretically, up to 100GBit/s.
Now, it might seem a bit silly investing so much money, just to save a few extra seconds transferring files, but with increased transfer speeds comes an incredible bonus. Memory.
For those of you running Vista or Windows 7, do you remember when USB Flash Memory Drives used to come with little stickers saying "ReadyBoost compatible"? (I know I'm going on a bit here, but I can't stop now)
Back in the day, when you had a lot of programs open and were running low on RAM (Random Access Memory, for those of you not in-the-know), your computer would allocate user-definable amount of physical hard-disk space as "Virtual RAM". This vRAM acted as normal RAM, but different in one way: its transfer speed was abysmal compared to standard RAM. With old-style hard disks (those with the magnetic disks that spun, with the clicky noise when it was accessing data), the data transfer rate was awful, but with the vRAM it allowed a little extra storage space to stop your computer from completely locking up and not doing anything at all due to having no free space to move data around.
Computers still do this, but with the invention of solid-state drives (similar to flash drives in that there are no moving parts) the transfer rate was higher, so the computer was (marginally) quicker when using the vRAM data cache.
ReadyBoost utilised the new, incredible transfer speeds by allowing a vRAM data cache to be created on USB flash drives with high enough access times. By utilising the new Thunderbolt Optic transfer speeds to develop external solid-state drives with high access times, massive vRAM caches could be created that run as quickly, if not quicker than normal RAM, resulting in cheap and easy methods of speeding up your computer massively. I should patent this idea; I'm not sure if developers have come up with it yet.
Anyways, I've written for far too long as it is, so I leave you with a somewhat related quote:
"There are three types of computer users: Novice users who are afraid that just pressing a button will break their computer; Intermediate users who don't know how to fix their computer after pressing the key that broke it; and Expert users who break other peoples' computers."
Thursday 24 February 2011
Wednesday 23 February 2011
Sacchariferous
Meaning sugar-bearing.
I believe that I left my last blog a little unfinished, so now is when I will be finishing it (my neck is absolutely dying since I've been turned at an awkward angle playing the rest of the game this evening, and my eyes hurt a lot, so forgive any mistakes or anything)
The boss for Oil Ocean Zone is rather like that of Hill Top Zone. Dr. Eggman emerges from the oil in a submarine-style machine for a few seconds before retreating back into the safe depths of the ocean. Your chance to hit him is while he is in the submarine. After he's retreated come two waves of attacks. The first is easy enough to dodge. It is merely a spike on a chain that you either jump over or duck under as it passes overhead. The second wave is in the form of a laser-gun on a chain. Again, fairly simple -- dodge the blasts from the gun by either jumping or ducking. Watch out if a shot is aimed at the platform that you are stood on though; it sends a shockwave along the platform that you'll have to jump over. And this cycle repeats until you've defeated Eggman and he's run away again, leaving you to save the animals.
The final Zone is Metropolis Zone. This zone is jam-packed full of mecha-goodness. Watch out for lava, mantis-bots (they launch a pair of blades at you that are quite difficult to dodge), starfish-spine things that explode (firing spines in all directions) and of course, spikes. There are, however, three Acts in this Zone to endure with a fittingly difficult boss at the end.
Eggman descends from the skies in his standard carrier, surrounded by eight balls orbiting quickly. In my experience, I've found that you can't be afraid to lose rings in this boss battle. Just keep jumping up and hitting him. Each time you hit him, a ball will break away and turn into an inflatable version of Eggman. Just jump on it to destroy it. After you've knocked all eight balls away and destroyed them, he'll move to the side and start firing lasers. Just hit him once more and you'll have defeated him. Yippee (I wish I hadn't left the last one unfinished -- I'm really not feeling this review tonight . . .).
Sky Chase is a standalone level. You don't play a particularly active role in this level, it's merely a level of self-preservation. You are stood atop The Tornado (Sonic and Tails' little plane) as it is flown, chasing Dr. Eggman's flying fortress. Just collect as many rings as you can, and jump attack the enemies, avoiding any projectiles they might fire. The level itself doesn't go on that long, so don't worry too much, and there isn't a boss.
Penultimately, is Wing Fortress. The Tornado is shot down, and you need to start the level by jumping from the plane onto the fortress. Main danger in this level is falling off the bottom, since it's an open level in the air. Just make your way through the fortress (it's somewhat of a labyrinth with many entrances and exits hidden behind walls, so just make sure you check every available wall before declaring defeat in an area). Once you find you way to the cockpit of the ship, you discover that Dr. Eggman has just one more surprise for you in this level.
You are trapped between two forcefields at each side of the screen as two peripherals appear on he ceiling of the room within which you currently reside. One of them stays in the centre, and fires out three moving platforms with spikes on the bottom, and the other moves back and forth. When the moving one stops moving, jump on one of the platforms and jump attack the exposed part. Don't get too carried away, this thing fires out quite a beefy laser after a second or two. Nonetheless, the biggest danger is probably the platforms. It's difficult to focus on all three at once, along with the laser. Still, once you've broken the laser, Eggman runs away, and you have to chase after him, by dropping down out of the bottom of the ship. Before you do, jump over to the other side and jump attack around a bit to discover a free life, and then drop down and let the cut-sequence take control.
Finally (I love that word right now) comes Death Egg. The evil Doctor's spaceship of destruction. There are no rings in this place, making this the most difficult and frustrating level of them all. Why? There are two bosses. Two incredibly difficult bosses. And no rings. One hit, and you're a goner.
Boss #1 - Mecha Sonic. For all kinds of functionality, this thing just has to be made out of razor blades with the damge it inflicts. Hit him with standard jump attacks only when he is standing still at the sides. Dodge any other attacks by jumping or ducking. His attacks include rolling along the floor in a ball, doing the same but jumping in a ball, jumping in a ball while firing spikes, and running back and forth at high speeds. Respectively, the evasive procedures are jump, duck, duck and dodge, and jump. A real tip here is to be patient. Don't get carried away hitting him too many times or you'll die. After eight hits, he'll blow up and you'll move onto the final boss. Eggman inside a metal . . . well, Eggman robot. Don't get stuck behind him or you will die, no question. Jump over his arms when he shoots them out. Finally, attack him just once when he lands after leaping into the air. I think it takes twelve hits to beat him, but don't quote me on that. If you've obtained all seven Chaos Emeralds, you will see the "good" ending (I'm not one for spoilers, so I won't be telling what happens in either of the endings) and if not, you'll view the "Not-So-Good" ending (it's referred to as the bad ending, but nothing inherently bad happens, so I refer to it as the "not-so-good" ending.).
Ta-da. That's my very in-depth review/walkthrough of Knuckles in Sonic 2. Great game, as is every other game of the Sonic Megadrive franchise. If any of you are wondering, I used Fusion 3.64 as my emulator of choice (since Gens+ screwed up my graphics) and just downloaded the ROM of Sonic 2 & Knuckles. It's fairly easy to find with a Google search, but if any of you are particularly unable to find it, I'll post a link to them both up here.
"Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other."
I believe that I left my last blog a little unfinished, so now is when I will be finishing it (my neck is absolutely dying since I've been turned at an awkward angle playing the rest of the game this evening, and my eyes hurt a lot, so forgive any mistakes or anything)
The boss for Oil Ocean Zone is rather like that of Hill Top Zone. Dr. Eggman emerges from the oil in a submarine-style machine for a few seconds before retreating back into the safe depths of the ocean. Your chance to hit him is while he is in the submarine. After he's retreated come two waves of attacks. The first is easy enough to dodge. It is merely a spike on a chain that you either jump over or duck under as it passes overhead. The second wave is in the form of a laser-gun on a chain. Again, fairly simple -- dodge the blasts from the gun by either jumping or ducking. Watch out if a shot is aimed at the platform that you are stood on though; it sends a shockwave along the platform that you'll have to jump over. And this cycle repeats until you've defeated Eggman and he's run away again, leaving you to save the animals.
The final Zone is Metropolis Zone. This zone is jam-packed full of mecha-goodness. Watch out for lava, mantis-bots (they launch a pair of blades at you that are quite difficult to dodge), starfish-spine things that explode (firing spines in all directions) and of course, spikes. There are, however, three Acts in this Zone to endure with a fittingly difficult boss at the end.
Eggman descends from the skies in his standard carrier, surrounded by eight balls orbiting quickly. In my experience, I've found that you can't be afraid to lose rings in this boss battle. Just keep jumping up and hitting him. Each time you hit him, a ball will break away and turn into an inflatable version of Eggman. Just jump on it to destroy it. After you've knocked all eight balls away and destroyed them, he'll move to the side and start firing lasers. Just hit him once more and you'll have defeated him. Yippee (I wish I hadn't left the last one unfinished -- I'm really not feeling this review tonight . . .).
Sky Chase is a standalone level. You don't play a particularly active role in this level, it's merely a level of self-preservation. You are stood atop The Tornado (Sonic and Tails' little plane) as it is flown, chasing Dr. Eggman's flying fortress. Just collect as many rings as you can, and jump attack the enemies, avoiding any projectiles they might fire. The level itself doesn't go on that long, so don't worry too much, and there isn't a boss.
Penultimately, is Wing Fortress. The Tornado is shot down, and you need to start the level by jumping from the plane onto the fortress. Main danger in this level is falling off the bottom, since it's an open level in the air. Just make your way through the fortress (it's somewhat of a labyrinth with many entrances and exits hidden behind walls, so just make sure you check every available wall before declaring defeat in an area). Once you find you way to the cockpit of the ship, you discover that Dr. Eggman has just one more surprise for you in this level.
You are trapped between two forcefields at each side of the screen as two peripherals appear on he ceiling of the room within which you currently reside. One of them stays in the centre, and fires out three moving platforms with spikes on the bottom, and the other moves back and forth. When the moving one stops moving, jump on one of the platforms and jump attack the exposed part. Don't get too carried away, this thing fires out quite a beefy laser after a second or two. Nonetheless, the biggest danger is probably the platforms. It's difficult to focus on all three at once, along with the laser. Still, once you've broken the laser, Eggman runs away, and you have to chase after him, by dropping down out of the bottom of the ship. Before you do, jump over to the other side and jump attack around a bit to discover a free life, and then drop down and let the cut-sequence take control.
Finally (I love that word right now) comes Death Egg. The evil Doctor's spaceship of destruction. There are no rings in this place, making this the most difficult and frustrating level of them all. Why? There are two bosses. Two incredibly difficult bosses. And no rings. One hit, and you're a goner.
Boss #1 - Mecha Sonic. For all kinds of functionality, this thing just has to be made out of razor blades with the damge it inflicts. Hit him with standard jump attacks only when he is standing still at the sides. Dodge any other attacks by jumping or ducking. His attacks include rolling along the floor in a ball, doing the same but jumping in a ball, jumping in a ball while firing spikes, and running back and forth at high speeds. Respectively, the evasive procedures are jump, duck, duck and dodge, and jump. A real tip here is to be patient. Don't get carried away hitting him too many times or you'll die. After eight hits, he'll blow up and you'll move onto the final boss. Eggman inside a metal . . . well, Eggman robot. Don't get stuck behind him or you will die, no question. Jump over his arms when he shoots them out. Finally, attack him just once when he lands after leaping into the air. I think it takes twelve hits to beat him, but don't quote me on that. If you've obtained all seven Chaos Emeralds, you will see the "good" ending (I'm not one for spoilers, so I won't be telling what happens in either of the endings) and if not, you'll view the "Not-So-Good" ending (it's referred to as the bad ending, but nothing inherently bad happens, so I refer to it as the "not-so-good" ending.).
Ta-da. That's my very in-depth review/walkthrough of Knuckles in Sonic 2. Great game, as is every other game of the Sonic Megadrive franchise. If any of you are wondering, I used Fusion 3.64 as my emulator of choice (since Gens+ screwed up my graphics) and just downloaded the ROM of Sonic 2 & Knuckles. It's fairly easy to find with a Google search, but if any of you are particularly unable to find it, I'll post a link to them both up here.
"Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other."
Sunday 20 February 2011
Mathematicaster
I saw this word and just had to use it. It doesn't mean a mathematical magician, it merely means a minor or inferior mathematician.
This post is a bit of a toughy. I'm not blessed with inspiration, like I was on Friday (I won't lie, I loved writing that post). I have, however, instilled a fear of the Internet in myself, so that was a little stupid of me, but hey, can't have everything.
I'm writing this on my train to Cambridge again. It's more cramped than I've yet experienced on my travels, so any typographical errors are going to be blamed on the fact that I can't type comfortably, or even really move my hands all that much. Don't ask how I managed to get this laptop out. To cut a long story short, it was with a great deal of difficulty.
But I'm going off on a tangent. Short of inspiration today, so I'm going to just start writing and hope that it ends up somewhere decent, or at least readable.
[[I'm running out of battery here because I'm a fool and I did not put my laptop on a proper charge today, so I may have more inspiration when I finish this. For now, however, my laptop will have a little rest and when I get chance, I'll finish it off later today. But may God have mercy on the guy sitting next to me with his legs opened wide, crunching peanuts with his mouth wide open, for I may kill him.]]
Ok, I've hit a little bit of inspiration while relaxing with a childhood game of mine. I recently mentioned that I'd downloaded a Sega Genesis (MegaDrive) emulator for my PC. I decided that, in a bid to kill some time, that I'd play Sonic 2 & Knuckles, so in today's blog, and possibly a few ones after if it takes a lot of time or space, I will be writing somewhat of a walkthrough-review combination. (Forgive me if this post seems disjointed; I'm not particularly focused right now, but I'm gonna give it a try)
Sonic is a blue hedgehog who has the unusual ability (other than being able to walk on two legs, wear red trainers and talk) to run very very fast. Knuckles is a red echidna whose unusual abilities (other than, again, being able to walk on two legs, and talk) include being able to glide, and be able to grip onto walls with his . . . well, knuckles.
Sonic and Knuckles was a unique Sega Genesis game cartridge in that it could be played as a standalone game cartridge, but it also contained a game slot that could be used to combine Sonic and Knuckles with any other game from the Sonic franchise, allowing Knuckles to be implemented as a playable character and allowing the player to reach new areas using Knuckles' climbing ability.
The game begins with the beautifully harmonised "Sega!" as the Sega logo is shown, before moving to the Sonic 2 and Knuckles title screen. Here, the player can choose whether to play a single-player game or a two-player split screen race. (I will, of course, be player a single-player game. I'm a skilled gamer, but unfortunately not skilled enough to play as two players at once). The game is split into nine "zones", usually with two "acts", and a boss at the end of the final Act of the Zone.. Each Act is a side-scrolling level, through which the player has to fight past robotic enemies, created by the nefarious Dr. Eggman to imprison the innocent animals of the land and attempt to defeat Sonic and his allies.
The first Zone is Emerald Hill Zone, a beautifully picturesque landscaped zone, where the main risks are wasp-bots that fire a fireball stinger from above, fish-bots that leap up from under most bridges the Knuckles passes over, and spikes. For each of these dangers, a mere touch will cause you to lose all rings in your possession, and fall backwards. If you are unfortunate enough to touch one with no rings in your possession, you will lose a life and start back from the last checkpoint that you touched. Emerald Hill has some happy background music played on, presumably a synthesised (all music for these games were synthesised on 8-bit synthesisers, because the games did not have space for MP3s or the like) marimba or metallophone of some kind, with a bouncy little bassline.
If you pass by a checkpoint with fifty rings or more, a ring of stars begins to open up above the checkpoint. If you jump into this rings of stars, you are instantly transported to a "Special Stage". In these so-called Special Stages, you have the opportunity to win a Chaos Emerald. Chaos Emeralds are, and have always been a crucial part of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Once the player has obtained all seven Chaos Emeralds, and obtained fifty rings, the on-screen character can transform into their Super form. For Sonic, Tails (Sonic's friend, a young two-tailed fox who uses his two tails as a propellor to fly with) and Knuckles, their Super forms, respectively, are Super Sonic, Super Tails and Super Knuckles. In their Super forms, they are largely invincible to anything other than falling off the bottom of the stage, and will turn a golden or silver colour. A disadvantage to transforming is that for every second that passes in Super form, a ring is used up. Once all rings are used up, the character reverts back into their standard and vulnerable form.
During a Special Stage, you are required to collect rings (an instruction is shown on screen "Collect X rings!" where X is the number you need to continue) three times. If you have the number required or more by the first "checkpoint", you get a thumbs-up (I know, I wish I got such praise too) and a higher number to collect. If not, you get a thumbs-down and you get transported out of the special stage. If you collect enough rings three times, you reach the Chaos Emerald and add it to your collection, along with a tasty little point score bonus, and get transported back to the level.
The boss at the end of Emerald Hill Act 2 takes the form of Dr. Eggman in a car with some sort of spiked drill on the front. He drives back and forth across the screen, trying to spear Knuckles with the the weapon. An easy boss, to say the least, being vulnerable to Knuckles just jumping on top of the car eight times. Once you have defeated him (he'll crumble into a series of explosions and fly off in his little ship) you'll be permitted to pass and release all of the imprisoned animals from the Emerald Hill Zone.
From here, you move onto Chemical Plant Zone, a Zone with a new set of dangers. There are, of course, the standard shooting enemies, this time taking the form of wall and floor-clingers. They look like little pods just sliding up and down walls and floors, and if you get too close, they'll open up and throw a little ball of . . . something at you. Jump on them to destroy them. Another danger is the chemical jumpers. They emerge from pipes on the ground, and jump to another pipe, and are invulnerable to any of Knuckles' attacks. Other than falling off the bottom of the stage (a danger found in almost every Zone), drowning is a big danger. In the second Act of this Zone comes a place where the water is rising around you and you have to rely on moving blocks to find your way up and above the water level before you drown. Knuckles can survive around fifteen to twenty seconds below water until he runs out of air. Of course, playing as Knuckles is easier than playing as Sonic since Knuckles has the ability to climb walls and thus doesn't necessarily have to rely on jumping on the moving blocks to reach air level. The music in this level is honestly one that you'll find yourself bouncing to. It's a techno-funk groove going on (I actually have it in my music library) and I love it.
The boss in this level is a little trickier than the last. Eggman, this time, has a suction machine that he uses to suck harmful chemical waste from the bottom of the plant into a bucket that, when full, he tries to tip onto Knuckles. The tip for this boss is to jump attack him while he's filling the bucket and then try and avoid the bucket when he's trying to tip it. Be careful, however, of the flipping platforms. If they turn upside down while Knuckles is stood on them, he will fall off the screen and die. Once defeated, he will again explode and fly away, leaving you free to free the animals. Why are there animals in a chemical plant anyway? Bad Dr. Eggman.
Next comes Aquatic Ruin Zone, a ruins-style Zone (obviously), where the biggest danger is drowning. There are arrow-firing stone pillars, pirhanas, and harmful flies, but the latter two can be defeated with a simple jump. Avoid the arrows, though. Drowning isn't an issue if you stay above the water as much as possible, or when in the water, you use every air bubble you can find. If, on the ground underwater, you see a little collection of bubbles, with an infrequent stream of bubbles coming from it, stay near it, and wait for a big bubble to be produced. Then, jump into it to receive its airy goodness and replenish Knuckles air supply. Incidentally, if you've never played any of the Sonic franchise before, you are notified when you only have five seconds left by a Jaws-style change in music and an on-screen countdown. Two quite difficult levels if you can't find any air bubbles.
Dr. Eggman takes the form of a flying, mallet-wielding robot this time, who is frustratingly just out of reach. He raises two totem poles out of the ground that he hits alternately. Each time he hits one, it fires an arrow that will bury itself in the other totem pole. Knuckles can use these to jump onto to provide a platform to perform a second jump attack from to hit Dr. Eggman. I should note here that each boss takes eight hits to defeat. After eight hits, he'll fly off and you can free the animals again, blah blah blah. See the pattern here?
Casino Night Zone follows with its swanky Vegas-style layout of flashing lights. In these two Acts are an incredibly fun little perk. There are useable slot machines. If you see a slot machine layout with a little container for Knuckles to jump into, you can use these to gain rings very quickly. The best result you can get is three "Jackpot"s, gaining you a juicy three-hundred ring payout. The worst, however, is three Eggmans. If you are unlucky enough to get one of these, it will steal around one-hundred rings from you. The only up-side to this result is that if it hits you with no rings, you won't die. Other enemies include bouncebots, robots that use a shield if you try and jump attack them (Spin-dashing from behind is a good method of defeat). Another groovy, bouncy little tune accompanies you through this Zone too.
A particularly tough boss this time, he flies above you, dropping cluster bombs (bombs that, when exploded, release small clusters that can also harm you). You, however, cannot attack him from beneath, since he has an electric shield beneath him. A good trick is to spin-dash up the walls and leap off to jump attack him from above. Tricky nonetheless. Defeat him, he'll fly off, you can release the animals and move on.
Not one of my favourite Zones, but Hill Top Zone follows. It's not a particularly tricky Zone, I just find it a little, you know, dull. A new danger in this Zone, however, resides in some of the caves. Occasionally, you'll find yourself trapped in a cave, with the exit way above you and a floor of lava rising beneath you, and you'll have to slowly work your way up through a maze of platforms as quickly as possible to avoid being harmed by the rapidly rising lava. Other than that, just work your way through. Some enemies return from earlier Zones, such as the Wasp-bots from Emerald Hill, just defeat as you usually would.
The boss in this is around as tricky as the last. Three platforms, and two pools of lava. Eggman emerges from each lava pool alternately, firing a fireball (in a straight line, so fairly easy to dodge) and then returning into the lava. While he is out of the lava is your opportunity to hit him as many times as possible, but move onto the other side of the screen when he returns to the lava. The reason for this? Splashback. When he returns to the lava, he splashes some onto the two platforms either side, igniting them for a few seconds. Eight hits, he's defeated, flies off, you free the animals. Bish bash bosh.
Mystic Cave is next. A strange level, I can't really describe its layout, since it doesn't really look like a cave. Nonetheless, beware of spikes. They can emerge from almost anywhere here. Don't stand too close to walls, since some have spikes that will slide out when you're in the vicinity. Give yourself ample space to jump too. The most annoying enemies are the fireflies. You can defeat them with a normal jump attack, but don't go anywhere near them when they start flickering. When flashing they will hurt you. And infuriate you, but foremost hurt you.
The boss is a little easier if you know what to avoid. He drills down from the ceiling, causing all sorts of shrapnel (I couldn't think of a better word) to rain down. Most of it is fairly harmless, but avoid the sharp bits that look like spines. He'll then lower his drill horizontally and race over to you, before drilling back upwards and causing the shrapnel to fall again. Jump on him as he races across with the drill horizontal. And the usual happens again, with the freeing of the animals and whatnot.
Oil Ocean Zone is the final two-Act Zone in the game. It's easier to not fall off the bottom of the screen due to its namesake ocean of oil which delays the death as you slowly sink into the oil, but it's still a labyrinth from start to finish. Avoid the oil-spouting floating seahorses (are they still seahorses if they're not in a sea?) and try not to get flattened by the lid-poppers (and don't touch the flames that are beneath the lid when it pops off). These levels are particularly long and tedious, but once you get to the end, what's waiting for you?
Find out on Wednesday. Though, I'm sure you already know, since the game follows a fairly obvious pattern. My back hurts and I think I've written way too much for a single blog post anyway. But it's alright, I don't really have much else to do anyway.
"So you're going to sacrifice your life, for a taste of the greener grass? And when the Lord comes down with his shiny rod of judgement, He's going to kick my heathen arse."
This post is a bit of a toughy. I'm not blessed with inspiration, like I was on Friday (I won't lie, I loved writing that post). I have, however, instilled a fear of the Internet in myself, so that was a little stupid of me, but hey, can't have everything.
I'm writing this on my train to Cambridge again. It's more cramped than I've yet experienced on my travels, so any typographical errors are going to be blamed on the fact that I can't type comfortably, or even really move my hands all that much. Don't ask how I managed to get this laptop out. To cut a long story short, it was with a great deal of difficulty.
But I'm going off on a tangent. Short of inspiration today, so I'm going to just start writing and hope that it ends up somewhere decent, or at least readable.
[[I'm running out of battery here because I'm a fool and I did not put my laptop on a proper charge today, so I may have more inspiration when I finish this. For now, however, my laptop will have a little rest and when I get chance, I'll finish it off later today. But may God have mercy on the guy sitting next to me with his legs opened wide, crunching peanuts with his mouth wide open, for I may kill him.]]
Ok, I've hit a little bit of inspiration while relaxing with a childhood game of mine. I recently mentioned that I'd downloaded a Sega Genesis (MegaDrive) emulator for my PC. I decided that, in a bid to kill some time, that I'd play Sonic 2 & Knuckles, so in today's blog, and possibly a few ones after if it takes a lot of time or space, I will be writing somewhat of a walkthrough-review combination. (Forgive me if this post seems disjointed; I'm not particularly focused right now, but I'm gonna give it a try)
Sonic is a blue hedgehog who has the unusual ability (other than being able to walk on two legs, wear red trainers and talk) to run very very fast. Knuckles is a red echidna whose unusual abilities (other than, again, being able to walk on two legs, and talk) include being able to glide, and be able to grip onto walls with his . . . well, knuckles.
Sonic and Knuckles was a unique Sega Genesis game cartridge in that it could be played as a standalone game cartridge, but it also contained a game slot that could be used to combine Sonic and Knuckles with any other game from the Sonic franchise, allowing Knuckles to be implemented as a playable character and allowing the player to reach new areas using Knuckles' climbing ability.
The game begins with the beautifully harmonised "Sega!" as the Sega logo is shown, before moving to the Sonic 2 and Knuckles title screen. Here, the player can choose whether to play a single-player game or a two-player split screen race. (I will, of course, be player a single-player game. I'm a skilled gamer, but unfortunately not skilled enough to play as two players at once). The game is split into nine "zones", usually with two "acts", and a boss at the end of the final Act of the Zone.. Each Act is a side-scrolling level, through which the player has to fight past robotic enemies, created by the nefarious Dr. Eggman to imprison the innocent animals of the land and attempt to defeat Sonic and his allies.
The first Zone is Emerald Hill Zone, a beautifully picturesque landscaped zone, where the main risks are wasp-bots that fire a fireball stinger from above, fish-bots that leap up from under most bridges the Knuckles passes over, and spikes. For each of these dangers, a mere touch will cause you to lose all rings in your possession, and fall backwards. If you are unfortunate enough to touch one with no rings in your possession, you will lose a life and start back from the last checkpoint that you touched. Emerald Hill has some happy background music played on, presumably a synthesised (all music for these games were synthesised on 8-bit synthesisers, because the games did not have space for MP3s or the like) marimba or metallophone of some kind, with a bouncy little bassline.
If you pass by a checkpoint with fifty rings or more, a ring of stars begins to open up above the checkpoint. If you jump into this rings of stars, you are instantly transported to a "Special Stage". In these so-called Special Stages, you have the opportunity to win a Chaos Emerald. Chaos Emeralds are, and have always been a crucial part of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Once the player has obtained all seven Chaos Emeralds, and obtained fifty rings, the on-screen character can transform into their Super form. For Sonic, Tails (Sonic's friend, a young two-tailed fox who uses his two tails as a propellor to fly with) and Knuckles, their Super forms, respectively, are Super Sonic, Super Tails and Super Knuckles. In their Super forms, they are largely invincible to anything other than falling off the bottom of the stage, and will turn a golden or silver colour. A disadvantage to transforming is that for every second that passes in Super form, a ring is used up. Once all rings are used up, the character reverts back into their standard and vulnerable form.
During a Special Stage, you are required to collect rings (an instruction is shown on screen "Collect X rings!" where X is the number you need to continue) three times. If you have the number required or more by the first "checkpoint", you get a thumbs-up (I know, I wish I got such praise too) and a higher number to collect. If not, you get a thumbs-down and you get transported out of the special stage. If you collect enough rings three times, you reach the Chaos Emerald and add it to your collection, along with a tasty little point score bonus, and get transported back to the level.
The boss at the end of Emerald Hill Act 2 takes the form of Dr. Eggman in a car with some sort of spiked drill on the front. He drives back and forth across the screen, trying to spear Knuckles with the the weapon. An easy boss, to say the least, being vulnerable to Knuckles just jumping on top of the car eight times. Once you have defeated him (he'll crumble into a series of explosions and fly off in his little ship) you'll be permitted to pass and release all of the imprisoned animals from the Emerald Hill Zone.
From here, you move onto Chemical Plant Zone, a Zone with a new set of dangers. There are, of course, the standard shooting enemies, this time taking the form of wall and floor-clingers. They look like little pods just sliding up and down walls and floors, and if you get too close, they'll open up and throw a little ball of . . . something at you. Jump on them to destroy them. Another danger is the chemical jumpers. They emerge from pipes on the ground, and jump to another pipe, and are invulnerable to any of Knuckles' attacks. Other than falling off the bottom of the stage (a danger found in almost every Zone), drowning is a big danger. In the second Act of this Zone comes a place where the water is rising around you and you have to rely on moving blocks to find your way up and above the water level before you drown. Knuckles can survive around fifteen to twenty seconds below water until he runs out of air. Of course, playing as Knuckles is easier than playing as Sonic since Knuckles has the ability to climb walls and thus doesn't necessarily have to rely on jumping on the moving blocks to reach air level. The music in this level is honestly one that you'll find yourself bouncing to. It's a techno-funk groove going on (I actually have it in my music library) and I love it.
The boss in this level is a little trickier than the last. Eggman, this time, has a suction machine that he uses to suck harmful chemical waste from the bottom of the plant into a bucket that, when full, he tries to tip onto Knuckles. The tip for this boss is to jump attack him while he's filling the bucket and then try and avoid the bucket when he's trying to tip it. Be careful, however, of the flipping platforms. If they turn upside down while Knuckles is stood on them, he will fall off the screen and die. Once defeated, he will again explode and fly away, leaving you free to free the animals. Why are there animals in a chemical plant anyway? Bad Dr. Eggman.
Next comes Aquatic Ruin Zone, a ruins-style Zone (obviously), where the biggest danger is drowning. There are arrow-firing stone pillars, pirhanas, and harmful flies, but the latter two can be defeated with a simple jump. Avoid the arrows, though. Drowning isn't an issue if you stay above the water as much as possible, or when in the water, you use every air bubble you can find. If, on the ground underwater, you see a little collection of bubbles, with an infrequent stream of bubbles coming from it, stay near it, and wait for a big bubble to be produced. Then, jump into it to receive its airy goodness and replenish Knuckles air supply. Incidentally, if you've never played any of the Sonic franchise before, you are notified when you only have five seconds left by a Jaws-style change in music and an on-screen countdown. Two quite difficult levels if you can't find any air bubbles.
Dr. Eggman takes the form of a flying, mallet-wielding robot this time, who is frustratingly just out of reach. He raises two totem poles out of the ground that he hits alternately. Each time he hits one, it fires an arrow that will bury itself in the other totem pole. Knuckles can use these to jump onto to provide a platform to perform a second jump attack from to hit Dr. Eggman. I should note here that each boss takes eight hits to defeat. After eight hits, he'll fly off and you can free the animals again, blah blah blah. See the pattern here?
Casino Night Zone follows with its swanky Vegas-style layout of flashing lights. In these two Acts are an incredibly fun little perk. There are useable slot machines. If you see a slot machine layout with a little container for Knuckles to jump into, you can use these to gain rings very quickly. The best result you can get is three "Jackpot"s, gaining you a juicy three-hundred ring payout. The worst, however, is three Eggmans. If you are unlucky enough to get one of these, it will steal around one-hundred rings from you. The only up-side to this result is that if it hits you with no rings, you won't die. Other enemies include bouncebots, robots that use a shield if you try and jump attack them (Spin-dashing from behind is a good method of defeat). Another groovy, bouncy little tune accompanies you through this Zone too.
A particularly tough boss this time, he flies above you, dropping cluster bombs (bombs that, when exploded, release small clusters that can also harm you). You, however, cannot attack him from beneath, since he has an electric shield beneath him. A good trick is to spin-dash up the walls and leap off to jump attack him from above. Tricky nonetheless. Defeat him, he'll fly off, you can release the animals and move on.
Not one of my favourite Zones, but Hill Top Zone follows. It's not a particularly tricky Zone, I just find it a little, you know, dull. A new danger in this Zone, however, resides in some of the caves. Occasionally, you'll find yourself trapped in a cave, with the exit way above you and a floor of lava rising beneath you, and you'll have to slowly work your way up through a maze of platforms as quickly as possible to avoid being harmed by the rapidly rising lava. Other than that, just work your way through. Some enemies return from earlier Zones, such as the Wasp-bots from Emerald Hill, just defeat as you usually would.
The boss in this is around as tricky as the last. Three platforms, and two pools of lava. Eggman emerges from each lava pool alternately, firing a fireball (in a straight line, so fairly easy to dodge) and then returning into the lava. While he is out of the lava is your opportunity to hit him as many times as possible, but move onto the other side of the screen when he returns to the lava. The reason for this? Splashback. When he returns to the lava, he splashes some onto the two platforms either side, igniting them for a few seconds. Eight hits, he's defeated, flies off, you free the animals. Bish bash bosh.
Mystic Cave is next. A strange level, I can't really describe its layout, since it doesn't really look like a cave. Nonetheless, beware of spikes. They can emerge from almost anywhere here. Don't stand too close to walls, since some have spikes that will slide out when you're in the vicinity. Give yourself ample space to jump too. The most annoying enemies are the fireflies. You can defeat them with a normal jump attack, but don't go anywhere near them when they start flickering. When flashing they will hurt you. And infuriate you, but foremost hurt you.
The boss is a little easier if you know what to avoid. He drills down from the ceiling, causing all sorts of shrapnel (I couldn't think of a better word) to rain down. Most of it is fairly harmless, but avoid the sharp bits that look like spines. He'll then lower his drill horizontally and race over to you, before drilling back upwards and causing the shrapnel to fall again. Jump on him as he races across with the drill horizontal. And the usual happens again, with the freeing of the animals and whatnot.
Oil Ocean Zone is the final two-Act Zone in the game. It's easier to not fall off the bottom of the screen due to its namesake ocean of oil which delays the death as you slowly sink into the oil, but it's still a labyrinth from start to finish. Avoid the oil-spouting floating seahorses (are they still seahorses if they're not in a sea?) and try not to get flattened by the lid-poppers (and don't touch the flames that are beneath the lid when it pops off). These levels are particularly long and tedious, but once you get to the end, what's waiting for you?
Find out on Wednesday. Though, I'm sure you already know, since the game follows a fairly obvious pattern. My back hurts and I think I've written way too much for a single blog post anyway. But it's alright, I don't really have much else to do anyway.
"So you're going to sacrifice your life, for a taste of the greener grass? And when the Lord comes down with his shiny rod of judgement, He's going to kick my heathen arse."
Friday 18 February 2011
Fatalism
Today's word sounds very depressing but I'm pleased to tell you that it is as depressing as it sounds. Fatalism is the view that events are fixed and humans are powerless to change them. A very cheery thought, I know.
I don't anticipate discussing this in today's post, but I doubt I'll really stick to that. I don't plan my posts much. It makes them less spontaneous and less prone to my speaking my mind if they're planned. I only edit my posts to correct typographical errors.
I'm going to go all technopolitical on your derriéres tonight. That is, discussing the politics of technology. For those of you that don't know, the Cold War was a war between the Russian Soviet Union and the Western World that was expressed through nuclear arms. Since nuclear arms were in action, many countries in the Western World began building bunkers that were resistant to the inevitable electromagnetic pulse resulting from a thermonuclear explosion.
The Doomsday Clock is a fictional clock that shows how close we are to . . . Well, Doomsday, The End of The World, Hell, the Eternal Darkness, whatever you want to call it. At this particular moment in time, we are at 23:54 on the clock. Once we reach "midnight" or 00:00 on the Doomsday Clock, legend has it that mankind's survival is at stake. In 1949, nearing the climax of the Cold War, the Soviet Alliance pushed the clock to 23:57 by testing the first nuclear bomb. The USA pushed it a minute closer, to 23:58, when they tested their first nuclear bomb the following year. While it was pushed back to 23:43 in 1991 when Bush Snr. and Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty; it's now twenty years on, Pakistan and India are in possession of their own nuclear arms, almost certainly North Korea too, Iran's motives and actions are unnerving the West, and the Doomsday Clock is ticking ever closer to our own self-destruction.
I think I've now laid a suitable foundation to begin my post properly. As we are ticking closer to our impending doom, would the Internet survive a global nuclear holocaust? Consider that a standard sized thermonuclear explosion would send out an electromagnetic pulse strong enough to easily knock even the biggest serve out of action permanently. You're probably thinking right now that the Internet would be one of the first things to go out of action, but it's quite the contrary.
At the moment, how many nuclear bombs are being used as warfare in the Western World? You're right, none. Or certainly as close to none as possible. So, what use do we have for the aforementioned nuclear-proof bunkers? They're certainly not being used for humans. They are, however, being used for server storage.
A site of particular note is the US Secure Hosting Center. It considers itself immune to a plethora of risks, with man-made conflict being only one of them. And with reinforced vault doors, 5ft thick concrete floors, walls lined with welded-seam steel (to reflect any electromagnetic pulses), and the vault doors being strong enough to withstand 800mph winds and a 20-megaton nuclear blast (that's 20 million imperial tons. To put this into perspective, a car weighs around 1.8 imperial tons), they are quite safe to make this assumption. And there are a handful or so others dotted around the globe to protect data and keep it safe.
These sites are almost completely impregnable by physical means. Even with a JCB digger, it would take probably around 6 months to get past the first few lines of physical defence. But by digital means? A lot of these datacentres may be impenetrable by physical means, but they have a large team of around-the-clock programmers working to prevent and route any DoS (Denial of Service - usually when a team attacks a server all at once, floods it with access requests and as a safety precaution, the server just shuts down) attacks or viruses (Any viruses that manage to get past the main lines of defence will be very powerful and very malicious, and will cause an unspeakable amount of damage to any valuable or sensitive data). If it takes a whole team of programmers to be working around the clock to prevent these attacks actively, there must be a large amount of attacks quite frequently.
I'm about to put into perspective the true, grim irony of what I'm trying to say. The Internet is a massive network. Anyone, anywhere with the right tools can find anyone, anywhere who is connected to the Internet. Still not getting what I'm saying? I'll be more blunt. The Pentagon computers are connected to the Internet. The Russian Federation Ministry of Defence computers are connected to the Internet. So are, I assume, the Ministries of Defence for all other countries in possession of nuclear warheads. Almost every country uses computers to activate their missiles and all other warheads. Still not making the link? If that team of programmers aren't on the ball 24/7, a hacker - it only takes one to get their foot in the door - can find their way into the Pentagon or any of the above mentioned Defence Ministries and set off every single last warhead.
They would, of course, need the launch codes. But codes are made to be broken. With the right algorithm and enough processing power behind it (which can easily be done by linking together the phenomenal processing power of computer video-graphics cards), we could be just mere weeks away from a 2nd Hiroshima, but magnified on a global scale.
It might not even be that complicated. When Clinton was president, he made what could have been a costly mistake. In his own words, he "misplaced the launch codes". He "couldn't recall when he'd last seen them". In that one insane mistake, the entire world could have been in danger.
The true, bitter irony of all of this? If every nuclear warhead in the world detonated simultaneously, would we survive? It's very very unlikely. Would our animals, our forests survive? Even less likely. The only thing that would be left on this barren planet, protected by our nuclear-proof bunkers would be our Internet. The very tool used to strike midnight on our Doomsday Clock.
"The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had."
I don't anticipate discussing this in today's post, but I doubt I'll really stick to that. I don't plan my posts much. It makes them less spontaneous and less prone to my speaking my mind if they're planned. I only edit my posts to correct typographical errors.
I'm going to go all technopolitical on your derriéres tonight. That is, discussing the politics of technology. For those of you that don't know, the Cold War was a war between the Russian Soviet Union and the Western World that was expressed through nuclear arms. Since nuclear arms were in action, many countries in the Western World began building bunkers that were resistant to the inevitable electromagnetic pulse resulting from a thermonuclear explosion.
The Doomsday Clock is a fictional clock that shows how close we are to . . . Well, Doomsday, The End of The World, Hell, the Eternal Darkness, whatever you want to call it. At this particular moment in time, we are at 23:54 on the clock. Once we reach "midnight" or 00:00 on the Doomsday Clock, legend has it that mankind's survival is at stake. In 1949, nearing the climax of the Cold War, the Soviet Alliance pushed the clock to 23:57 by testing the first nuclear bomb. The USA pushed it a minute closer, to 23:58, when they tested their first nuclear bomb the following year. While it was pushed back to 23:43 in 1991 when Bush Snr. and Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty; it's now twenty years on, Pakistan and India are in possession of their own nuclear arms, almost certainly North Korea too, Iran's motives and actions are unnerving the West, and the Doomsday Clock is ticking ever closer to our own self-destruction.
I think I've now laid a suitable foundation to begin my post properly. As we are ticking closer to our impending doom, would the Internet survive a global nuclear holocaust? Consider that a standard sized thermonuclear explosion would send out an electromagnetic pulse strong enough to easily knock even the biggest serve out of action permanently. You're probably thinking right now that the Internet would be one of the first things to go out of action, but it's quite the contrary.
At the moment, how many nuclear bombs are being used as warfare in the Western World? You're right, none. Or certainly as close to none as possible. So, what use do we have for the aforementioned nuclear-proof bunkers? They're certainly not being used for humans. They are, however, being used for server storage.
A site of particular note is the US Secure Hosting Center. It considers itself immune to a plethora of risks, with man-made conflict being only one of them. And with reinforced vault doors, 5ft thick concrete floors, walls lined with welded-seam steel (to reflect any electromagnetic pulses), and the vault doors being strong enough to withstand 800mph winds and a 20-megaton nuclear blast (that's 20 million imperial tons. To put this into perspective, a car weighs around 1.8 imperial tons), they are quite safe to make this assumption. And there are a handful or so others dotted around the globe to protect data and keep it safe.
These sites are almost completely impregnable by physical means. Even with a JCB digger, it would take probably around 6 months to get past the first few lines of physical defence. But by digital means? A lot of these datacentres may be impenetrable by physical means, but they have a large team of around-the-clock programmers working to prevent and route any DoS (Denial of Service - usually when a team attacks a server all at once, floods it with access requests and as a safety precaution, the server just shuts down) attacks or viruses (Any viruses that manage to get past the main lines of defence will be very powerful and very malicious, and will cause an unspeakable amount of damage to any valuable or sensitive data). If it takes a whole team of programmers to be working around the clock to prevent these attacks actively, there must be a large amount of attacks quite frequently.
I'm about to put into perspective the true, grim irony of what I'm trying to say. The Internet is a massive network. Anyone, anywhere with the right tools can find anyone, anywhere who is connected to the Internet. Still not getting what I'm saying? I'll be more blunt. The Pentagon computers are connected to the Internet. The Russian Federation Ministry of Defence computers are connected to the Internet. So are, I assume, the Ministries of Defence for all other countries in possession of nuclear warheads. Almost every country uses computers to activate their missiles and all other warheads. Still not making the link? If that team of programmers aren't on the ball 24/7, a hacker - it only takes one to get their foot in the door - can find their way into the Pentagon or any of the above mentioned Defence Ministries and set off every single last warhead.
They would, of course, need the launch codes. But codes are made to be broken. With the right algorithm and enough processing power behind it (which can easily be done by linking together the phenomenal processing power of computer video-graphics cards), we could be just mere weeks away from a 2nd Hiroshima, but magnified on a global scale.
It might not even be that complicated. When Clinton was president, he made what could have been a costly mistake. In his own words, he "misplaced the launch codes". He "couldn't recall when he'd last seen them". In that one insane mistake, the entire world could have been in danger.
The true, bitter irony of all of this? If every nuclear warhead in the world detonated simultaneously, would we survive? It's very very unlikely. Would our animals, our forests survive? Even less likely. The only thing that would be left on this barren planet, protected by our nuclear-proof bunkers would be our Internet. The very tool used to strike midnight on our Doomsday Clock.
"The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had."
Tuesday 15 February 2011
Grandiloquence
Now, there's one very good friend of mine who will be quite pleased to see this. One of my best friends, Dom, showed me a book that would be amazingly useful for my blogs - it's just a book of long words - and I spotted this little gem. Well, Dom brought it to my attention, but it's really the same difference. Regardless, grandiloquence means grand or elaborate speech.
Since my last post, I've made quite a few decisions. Some of them I will discuss and describe later in this post, some later in the future and some not at all. Some of them don't really matter, and some of them are just for fun.
To begin with, a few days ago in daily free newspaper, The Metro, there was a story about a young man who decided to see how far he could get with just a penny, and just trading it. He ended up with a plot of land in Bulgaria, I think. So, my beautiful, mischievous, fun-loving nature has prompted me to decide that I'll attempt the same thing. Well, I'll be extremely lucky to end up as an international landowner, but you get the idea. I'm just going to try it and see if anything comes of it. I will also be updating the items that I am in ownership of via this blog. Maybe something'll come of it, maybe it won't. If the worst comes to the worst, I'll only be a penny down.
I'm also going to be doodling a lot, so I figure uploading them might be pretty funny. I need an outlet right now that guitar, singing and even merely writing isn't quite fitting. They may be depressing, they maybe cynical, but one thing is certain. They will be god-awful. My drawing skills are second to none, and so they will be shoddy stick figures or amusing technical drawings. And most probably on lined paper. Nonetheless, it's something to keep my mind off of my mind. Not that that makes any sense whatsoever, but I know what I mean.
Also, I'm going to go off on a rant that I got really really carried away with today, but that I quite enjoyed. It regards one Mr. Steve Jobs. Now, for those of you who do not know (shame on you, if you don't) Steve Jobs is the official founder (though technically, he co-founded) and CEO of Apple.
Apple was, as of Sunday, the second most valuable company in the world with share prices of $360 a piece, second only to Exxon Mobil (the oil and petrol company). Mr. Jobs wasn't always at the forefront of Apple, however. He began working with Bill Gates who, as I'm sure you all know, is the founder of Microsoft. He is a bad man, though. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were working on software development together, before Bill Gates took the software and ran to get it patented under his own name, leaving poor old Steve with nothing.
Mr. Jobs then went on to co-found Apple with a friend of his (I forget the name of his friend . . .) in 1976. He then, in 1985, left Apple due to disagreements with the board, and began yet another computer company (NeXT Computers) and joined an 3D animation company that is now very very famous. You may know it by its iconic desklamp sketches, or by the name Pixar. Yeah, that's right. Steve Jobs helped build the Pixar that we know today, and Bill Gates was left developing already buggy software. I think we know who came out on top here.
Meanwhile, Apple Co. were beginning a particularly sharp nosedive, and in a last bid attempt to save themselves, bought NeXT Computers and, by extension, the now infamous Mr. Jobs in 1996.
I have made quite an unforgivable mistake here, however. Whenever Steve Jobs is in the news, he is always compared to the likes of Bill Gates and other software developers. And these comparisons always fall short of the mark when attempting to explain the success of Apple and how Steve Jobs has managed to make Apple Co. the second most valuable company in the world. It's because he's not a standard programmer. He is, for want of a better description, an entrepreneurial programmer.
The success of Apple came from Jobs' ability to find a problem that even the consumer hadn't realised yet. The release that really put Apple on the map was the iPod and iTunes. But why? There were already many many different MP3 players on the market. It all came down to iTunes. iTunes solved the problem that many users hadn't even realised. It was rare that a user would have a music library on their computer, so when they wanted to upload music, they would have to trawl their computer for the files they wanted and then drag-and-drop them into their portable music player via a window interface. Now, iTunes provided an interface through which music could be organised and ID3 (the metadata tags associated with music files - i.e. album name, artist name, song title, track number, et cetera.) tags could be viewed and edited, a media player, and most importantly, a sync centre.
If, god forbid, your MP3 player became corrupted, you would have to format it (essentially wiping the flash drive inside clean) and then go trawling through your computer to find your media files and re-copy them to it. With iTunes, there was a neat little function that, on the rare occasion that your iPod for some reason became corrupted, you could format it through iTunes and then resynchronise all of your media back onto the iPod in one swift movement. It was the ease-of-use and organisation of your media that made the iPod and iTunes such a hit.
From then on, Apple has only become more and more famous. Once the iPod took Apple's name into the limelight, more technological advances were also highlighted. Apple's highly-efficient use of the processor, and other system resources, its smooth and elegant graphical user interfaces and it's fantastic capabilites for the media world (due to its efficient use of system resources). And since then, its success has just snowballed with the subsequent releases of the iPod Nano series, the Touch series, the iPad and, of course, the computers (the iMac, iBook, MacBook etc.). And the iPhone was a massive hit. Apple now owns a massive 17.25% of the smartphone markets, and an even more phenomenal 4.2% of the total mobile phone market.
But it's not primarily down to good software or good hardware. It was down to Steve Jobs' faultless ability to solve problems that had not even been realised. With that, he was just pushing at an open door.
And in the words of Mr. Jobs himself, I leave you with this:
"You can't just ask the customer what they want and try to give it to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new."
Since my last post, I've made quite a few decisions. Some of them I will discuss and describe later in this post, some later in the future and some not at all. Some of them don't really matter, and some of them are just for fun.
To begin with, a few days ago in daily free newspaper, The Metro, there was a story about a young man who decided to see how far he could get with just a penny, and just trading it. He ended up with a plot of land in Bulgaria, I think. So, my beautiful, mischievous, fun-loving nature has prompted me to decide that I'll attempt the same thing. Well, I'll be extremely lucky to end up as an international landowner, but you get the idea. I'm just going to try it and see if anything comes of it. I will also be updating the items that I am in ownership of via this blog. Maybe something'll come of it, maybe it won't. If the worst comes to the worst, I'll only be a penny down.
I'm also going to be doodling a lot, so I figure uploading them might be pretty funny. I need an outlet right now that guitar, singing and even merely writing isn't quite fitting. They may be depressing, they maybe cynical, but one thing is certain. They will be god-awful. My drawing skills are second to none, and so they will be shoddy stick figures or amusing technical drawings. And most probably on lined paper. Nonetheless, it's something to keep my mind off of my mind. Not that that makes any sense whatsoever, but I know what I mean.
Also, I'm going to go off on a rant that I got really really carried away with today, but that I quite enjoyed. It regards one Mr. Steve Jobs. Now, for those of you who do not know (shame on you, if you don't) Steve Jobs is the official founder (though technically, he co-founded) and CEO of Apple.
Apple was, as of Sunday, the second most valuable company in the world with share prices of $360 a piece, second only to Exxon Mobil (the oil and petrol company). Mr. Jobs wasn't always at the forefront of Apple, however. He began working with Bill Gates who, as I'm sure you all know, is the founder of Microsoft. He is a bad man, though. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were working on software development together, before Bill Gates took the software and ran to get it patented under his own name, leaving poor old Steve with nothing.
Mr. Jobs then went on to co-found Apple with a friend of his (I forget the name of his friend . . .) in 1976. He then, in 1985, left Apple due to disagreements with the board, and began yet another computer company (NeXT Computers) and joined an 3D animation company that is now very very famous. You may know it by its iconic desklamp sketches, or by the name Pixar. Yeah, that's right. Steve Jobs helped build the Pixar that we know today, and Bill Gates was left developing already buggy software. I think we know who came out on top here.
Meanwhile, Apple Co. were beginning a particularly sharp nosedive, and in a last bid attempt to save themselves, bought NeXT Computers and, by extension, the now infamous Mr. Jobs in 1996.
I have made quite an unforgivable mistake here, however. Whenever Steve Jobs is in the news, he is always compared to the likes of Bill Gates and other software developers. And these comparisons always fall short of the mark when attempting to explain the success of Apple and how Steve Jobs has managed to make Apple Co. the second most valuable company in the world. It's because he's not a standard programmer. He is, for want of a better description, an entrepreneurial programmer.
The success of Apple came from Jobs' ability to find a problem that even the consumer hadn't realised yet. The release that really put Apple on the map was the iPod and iTunes. But why? There were already many many different MP3 players on the market. It all came down to iTunes. iTunes solved the problem that many users hadn't even realised. It was rare that a user would have a music library on their computer, so when they wanted to upload music, they would have to trawl their computer for the files they wanted and then drag-and-drop them into their portable music player via a window interface. Now, iTunes provided an interface through which music could be organised and ID3 (the metadata tags associated with music files - i.e. album name, artist name, song title, track number, et cetera.) tags could be viewed and edited, a media player, and most importantly, a sync centre.
If, god forbid, your MP3 player became corrupted, you would have to format it (essentially wiping the flash drive inside clean) and then go trawling through your computer to find your media files and re-copy them to it. With iTunes, there was a neat little function that, on the rare occasion that your iPod for some reason became corrupted, you could format it through iTunes and then resynchronise all of your media back onto the iPod in one swift movement. It was the ease-of-use and organisation of your media that made the iPod and iTunes such a hit.
From then on, Apple has only become more and more famous. Once the iPod took Apple's name into the limelight, more technological advances were also highlighted. Apple's highly-efficient use of the processor, and other system resources, its smooth and elegant graphical user interfaces and it's fantastic capabilites for the media world (due to its efficient use of system resources). And since then, its success has just snowballed with the subsequent releases of the iPod Nano series, the Touch series, the iPad and, of course, the computers (the iMac, iBook, MacBook etc.). And the iPhone was a massive hit. Apple now owns a massive 17.25% of the smartphone markets, and an even more phenomenal 4.2% of the total mobile phone market.
But it's not primarily down to good software or good hardware. It was down to Steve Jobs' faultless ability to solve problems that had not even been realised. With that, he was just pushing at an open door.
And in the words of Mr. Jobs himself, I leave you with this:
"You can't just ask the customer what they want and try to give it to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new."
Saturday 12 February 2011
Rantipole
Meaning wild or disorderly. Rather like me.
Now, since I'm away this weekend, as I've mentioned several times, I think this is the only chance I'm going to get to upload this. So, after an eventful journey to Kings Cross, I'm now on my train to Cambridge. Well, actually, I'm not. I'm on a train to Welwyn Garden City. Because Transport for London is abysmal. Utterly atrocious.
Allow me to recount my day thus far. I begin at work (to those of you who do not know, I work in a garage, doing general body repair work). I wake up at 8am to get to work for 9am promptly. I'm not the world's greatest for waking up early (or in general for that matter), but I manage it, all in the name of money. It wasn't particularly awful to begin with, but then tragedy strikes. Well, not quite tragedy, but it wasn't particularly pleasant.
At work, we have a spray-bottle of brake-cleaner. This brake-cleaner is a potent mix of hydrocarbons that works efficiently and powerfully as a degreasing agent. When refilling this bottle, care is to be taken. Care that I do not have to begin with. The metal can from which I was pouring the cleaning fluid slipped, and spilt over my hands. It's not painful on unbroken skin, it just dries out your hands badly (hence the reason we have moisturising handwash). However, in a cut or graze, it feels like Satan's pitchfork is being stabbed into your cut (or graze) and wiggled around. Pretty intense pain. I imagine it to be quite an effective form of torture. Not that I'm sadistic or anything.
This, understandably, put me in a foul mood. I finished my work, and left to go home. The next hour or two was pretty uneventful, until I departed to begin my Journey of Fun and Delight to Cambridge. To get to Cambridge, one requires a tram to Wimbledon, a train to Vauxhall, a tube to Kings Cross, and then a single train from Kings Cross to Cambridge. Fairly simple, you think? Think again.
"Due to engineering works . . ." are the four most dreaded words to hear when departing on a long journey. These four words began a sentence while waiting for a train at Wimbledon. My train was delayed by ten minutes. I cursed under my breath a little, but accepted that there was, by and large, nothing I could do to change this fact, and so waited for my chariot pulled by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
I might add, at this point, that I am carrying three bags. One for my notebook PC on which I write this, one for my clothes and any other paraphernalia that I might require for the weekend, and one for the inflatable bed that I sleep on. On my train from Wimbledon to Vauxhall, not one healthy, unburdened young person allowed me to take the weight off my feet. I mean, it's only four stops, but they weren't to know that. As far as they were concerned, I could have been on that train all the way to London Waterloo. Nonetheless, this leg of my journey was completed (including waiting time and delay time) in around 35 minutes.
From Vauxhall, I needed to take the London Underground Victoria Line from Vauxhall to Kings Cross / St. Pancras. This train was, fortunately, not delayed. It's seven stops between Vauxhall and Kings Cross / St. Pancras. Again, not one inconsiderate human being allowed me to take the weight off my feet, being too preoccupied with their phones or makeup, or in one case, painting. And of course, refusing to make eye contact with me for fear of feeling guilty. And rightfully so, too. Regardless, it should only have taken me around 15 minutes to finish the second leg of my journey. How long did it take, I hear you ask? A further 35 minutes.
I had the choice of two trains. One in less than a minute that was inevitably going to be packed, or one in two minutes that would be a little less packed, so I had room to prevent my items being crushed. It seems that I may have annoyed an omnipotent, omniscient being up above, because this day is not getting any better. I choose the second, less-packed train to maybe save a few items from getting ruined, since they include the presents for my girlfriend for Valentine's weekend, and by the fates of the Gods above, it appears that the driver of the first train is unable to pull into Kings Cross station properly.
What does this have to do with me? Well, since my train was merely a minute behind, we were held at a red light signal until the driver had rubbed together his two little grey cells and pulled into the station properly, amounting to between ten and fifteen minutes. We were agonisingly less than a hundred metres from the stop.
[[It is at this point that I stopped writing this post to get the bus replacement service from Welwyn Garden City. Oh how my luck just got worse from here on in. I am now in Cambridge writing this, but goodness me how my journey went from bad to worse. But I will continue from where I left off.]]
From Kings Cross Underground stop, I needed to get to the National Rail station, which to be fair isn't a long distance to walk. But London is full of yet more inconsiderate people (I can think of much better words to describe them, but this is a family show) who seemed determined to hinder my travelling by simply walking in my way, and honest to God, there was one young lady, completely preoccupied with her phone who was actually oscillating between the two walls of the walkway and thus taking up the entire path so that I could not overtake with my three painfully heavy bags. After what should have been a much faster walk, I reached platforms 9 to 11 (the Cambridge platforms) and boarded the aforementioned train to Welwyn Garden City.
This train in itself was probably the most straightforward part of my journey today. There were no delays, no unnecessary hold-ups and it wasn't even full. A chance to relax and get a bit of the blog done, so I did. Now, once I reached my destination, I had to get a replacement bus service (it was really more of a coach, but this is hardly the time to split hairs over something so trivial) to Stevenage. Or so I was told. I waited for the bus to Hitchin to leave and then boarded my bus which took me to Stevenage in the company of a drunkard who felt the need to shout every little thing and sing songs with new crude lyrics that didn't even particularly make sense. You will be pleased to know that I managed to get to Stevenage without shoving my fist down his oesophagus and ripping out his vocal cords. Though I did loudly proclaim my wish to do this.
Upon reaching Stevenage, I was rather looking forward to just being able to get my final train in peace. There were, as you might expect, rail replacement mascots, if you will. Rail officers in high-vis jackets, with the train operator's name emblazoned onto them. I kindly asked where one might get the train to Cambridge from. The response? "Hitchin". I felt the fire in my stomach ignite, my blood began to boil and I nearly heatbutted the helpful young man. But I didn't. To cut a very long story short, I got another bus from Stevenage to Hitchin where, fortunately enough, my final leg awaited me, shimmering in the late evening sun (at this point it was around 6pm, four hours after I'd begun my journey, and the sun was just setting). I boarded my train in a positively unspeakable rage at how damn-near apocalyptic my journey had been, put my earphones in and immersed myself in the sounds of heavy rock, complimenting my dark mood.
I hope this has highlighted just how useless the public transport services are in London. Just as a final note (I'm sure you've read just about enough to be bored now) imagine how much worse this is going to get when the cuts hit public transport. So many people will lose their jobs, meaning that there will be fewer people around to help during these times, fewer people to actually operate the replacement services and, of course, higher costs for the privelige of this high level of service. Sigh, what is the World coming to?
"Look at all these buses now, asking for exact, exact change. I figure that if I give them exact change, they should take me exactly where I want to go."
Now, since I'm away this weekend, as I've mentioned several times, I think this is the only chance I'm going to get to upload this. So, after an eventful journey to Kings Cross, I'm now on my train to Cambridge. Well, actually, I'm not. I'm on a train to Welwyn Garden City. Because Transport for London is abysmal. Utterly atrocious.
Allow me to recount my day thus far. I begin at work (to those of you who do not know, I work in a garage, doing general body repair work). I wake up at 8am to get to work for 9am promptly. I'm not the world's greatest for waking up early (or in general for that matter), but I manage it, all in the name of money. It wasn't particularly awful to begin with, but then tragedy strikes. Well, not quite tragedy, but it wasn't particularly pleasant.
At work, we have a spray-bottle of brake-cleaner. This brake-cleaner is a potent mix of hydrocarbons that works efficiently and powerfully as a degreasing agent. When refilling this bottle, care is to be taken. Care that I do not have to begin with. The metal can from which I was pouring the cleaning fluid slipped, and spilt over my hands. It's not painful on unbroken skin, it just dries out your hands badly (hence the reason we have moisturising handwash). However, in a cut or graze, it feels like Satan's pitchfork is being stabbed into your cut (or graze) and wiggled around. Pretty intense pain. I imagine it to be quite an effective form of torture. Not that I'm sadistic or anything.
This, understandably, put me in a foul mood. I finished my work, and left to go home. The next hour or two was pretty uneventful, until I departed to begin my Journey of Fun and Delight to Cambridge. To get to Cambridge, one requires a tram to Wimbledon, a train to Vauxhall, a tube to Kings Cross, and then a single train from Kings Cross to Cambridge. Fairly simple, you think? Think again.
"Due to engineering works . . ." are the four most dreaded words to hear when departing on a long journey. These four words began a sentence while waiting for a train at Wimbledon. My train was delayed by ten minutes. I cursed under my breath a little, but accepted that there was, by and large, nothing I could do to change this fact, and so waited for my chariot pulled by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
I might add, at this point, that I am carrying three bags. One for my notebook PC on which I write this, one for my clothes and any other paraphernalia that I might require for the weekend, and one for the inflatable bed that I sleep on. On my train from Wimbledon to Vauxhall, not one healthy, unburdened young person allowed me to take the weight off my feet. I mean, it's only four stops, but they weren't to know that. As far as they were concerned, I could have been on that train all the way to London Waterloo. Nonetheless, this leg of my journey was completed (including waiting time and delay time) in around 35 minutes.
From Vauxhall, I needed to take the London Underground Victoria Line from Vauxhall to Kings Cross / St. Pancras. This train was, fortunately, not delayed. It's seven stops between Vauxhall and Kings Cross / St. Pancras. Again, not one inconsiderate human being allowed me to take the weight off my feet, being too preoccupied with their phones or makeup, or in one case, painting. And of course, refusing to make eye contact with me for fear of feeling guilty. And rightfully so, too. Regardless, it should only have taken me around 15 minutes to finish the second leg of my journey. How long did it take, I hear you ask? A further 35 minutes.
I had the choice of two trains. One in less than a minute that was inevitably going to be packed, or one in two minutes that would be a little less packed, so I had room to prevent my items being crushed. It seems that I may have annoyed an omnipotent, omniscient being up above, because this day is not getting any better. I choose the second, less-packed train to maybe save a few items from getting ruined, since they include the presents for my girlfriend for Valentine's weekend, and by the fates of the Gods above, it appears that the driver of the first train is unable to pull into Kings Cross station properly.
What does this have to do with me? Well, since my train was merely a minute behind, we were held at a red light signal until the driver had rubbed together his two little grey cells and pulled into the station properly, amounting to between ten and fifteen minutes. We were agonisingly less than a hundred metres from the stop.
[[It is at this point that I stopped writing this post to get the bus replacement service from Welwyn Garden City. Oh how my luck just got worse from here on in. I am now in Cambridge writing this, but goodness me how my journey went from bad to worse. But I will continue from where I left off.]]
From Kings Cross Underground stop, I needed to get to the National Rail station, which to be fair isn't a long distance to walk. But London is full of yet more inconsiderate people (I can think of much better words to describe them, but this is a family show) who seemed determined to hinder my travelling by simply walking in my way, and honest to God, there was one young lady, completely preoccupied with her phone who was actually oscillating between the two walls of the walkway and thus taking up the entire path so that I could not overtake with my three painfully heavy bags. After what should have been a much faster walk, I reached platforms 9 to 11 (the Cambridge platforms) and boarded the aforementioned train to Welwyn Garden City.
This train in itself was probably the most straightforward part of my journey today. There were no delays, no unnecessary hold-ups and it wasn't even full. A chance to relax and get a bit of the blog done, so I did. Now, once I reached my destination, I had to get a replacement bus service (it was really more of a coach, but this is hardly the time to split hairs over something so trivial) to Stevenage. Or so I was told. I waited for the bus to Hitchin to leave and then boarded my bus which took me to Stevenage in the company of a drunkard who felt the need to shout every little thing and sing songs with new crude lyrics that didn't even particularly make sense. You will be pleased to know that I managed to get to Stevenage without shoving my fist down his oesophagus and ripping out his vocal cords. Though I did loudly proclaim my wish to do this.
Upon reaching Stevenage, I was rather looking forward to just being able to get my final train in peace. There were, as you might expect, rail replacement mascots, if you will. Rail officers in high-vis jackets, with the train operator's name emblazoned onto them. I kindly asked where one might get the train to Cambridge from. The response? "Hitchin". I felt the fire in my stomach ignite, my blood began to boil and I nearly heatbutted the helpful young man. But I didn't. To cut a very long story short, I got another bus from Stevenage to Hitchin where, fortunately enough, my final leg awaited me, shimmering in the late evening sun (at this point it was around 6pm, four hours after I'd begun my journey, and the sun was just setting). I boarded my train in a positively unspeakable rage at how damn-near apocalyptic my journey had been, put my earphones in and immersed myself in the sounds of heavy rock, complimenting my dark mood.
I hope this has highlighted just how useless the public transport services are in London. Just as a final note (I'm sure you've read just about enough to be bored now) imagine how much worse this is going to get when the cuts hit public transport. So many people will lose their jobs, meaning that there will be fewer people around to help during these times, fewer people to actually operate the replacement services and, of course, higher costs for the privelige of this high level of service. Sigh, what is the World coming to?
"Look at all these buses now, asking for exact, exact change. I figure that if I give them exact change, they should take me exactly where I want to go."
Thursday 10 February 2011
Vaniloquence
Meaning vain or foolish talk.
Tonight, I'm struggling more than usual to focus. Which is bad. Why? Since I'm going to be away this weekend, I've decided to write both Friday's blog post (this one) and Monday's one in advance so that I don't have to spend too much time writing it, and I can just upload it on Sunday night.
Well, I'll just write and see if I come up with something at least readable that I can post. I woke up this morning with three distinct "wants" in my head. I wanted to play my old Sega Megadrive (namely, my Sonic collection), I wanted to play my old Warioland games (for the Gameboy series) and I wanted to build stuff with matchsticks.
There was a problem with each of these "wants". I can't find my actual Megadrive, let alone any of the games for it. My father might have gotten rid of it ages ago, but whatever the reason, I cannot find it in this house.
I play a Gameboy Advance SP which, for those of you who do not know, does not take standard batteries. It has a rechargeable pack, for which I've lost the charger. Oh, and I'd probably be unable to find any of the Warioland games anyway.
And for the final want, I have no glue (or matchsticks, it would seem).
I would just like to give a quick relaxation call for you all. This isn't going to be a long-running problem-solving matter, like it was with the Spyro 2 fiasco.
Since I needed to go out today anyway, I decided that while I was out, I'd pick up some glue to build with, so that was that problem sorted. Until I got home to discover that I have no modelling matchsticks. But I'll get some another time. Once I got home, I decided to sort the other two problems. Since I have neither of the working consoles to play these games on, and they were played on a system which relied on buttons as opposed to a joystick, I figured that a computer would be the most appropriate Plan B.
Now, back when I was in Year 9, this was how we killed time. Our school blocked any kinds of in-browser games and any websites that might provide downloads to them, so we downloaded them and brought them in on USB flash drives. There are only so many Flash games that you can play before the graphics get repetitive and boring. So, we decided that we rather missed the games from our childhoods and set about finding them and trying to download them. The best way of doing this on a school computer (fairly high-specification) was by downloading an emulator. A piece of software that emulated an old games console. For example, GENS is a Sega Genesis / MegaDrive emulator, SNES9x is (obviously) a Super Nintendo Entertainment Sytem emulator and so on.
GENS is the emulator I picked to play my Sonic The Hedgehog collection on (Brilliant games, showing the adventures of a blue hedgehog battling his way through insane levels to defeat the evil Dr. Eggman, who is trying to take over the world by imprisoning helpless animals inside robots) and several other old Sega games.
And VisualBoyAdvance is the Gameboy emulator that I chose. Both emulators work incredibly well on even low-spec computers, though at times framerate suffers.
Regardless, you may be thinking that Gameboy game cartridges and Sega Megadrive game cartridges don't fit into a computer anywhere. It's no problem. You download the games in ROM format to play on an emulator. I mean, it's not always easy to find the games that you want that haven't been hacked or customised, and it does take quite a bit of searching, but once you find them, they're not massive in size (usually around a few megabytes in size) and once you download them and unzip them, you can play them straight away on the emulator.
It pleased me for a while, to cut a long story short. I played Sonic 2 for quite a while. Some guy had customised it under the name Sonic 2: Hell! in which you just play Emerald Hill: Act 1 over and over again. Which is hell. I then moved onto some other hacks of it, before moving onto the WarioLand games.
I do quite love the WarioLand franchise. I mean, Mario and Luigi are the two famous Nintendo characters, but a set of games have been created for their more muscular, butch cousin, Wario. He's somewhat more invincible than Mario, in that just touching an enemy doesn't always harm him. And he can shoulder charge enemies, along with "butt-slamming" them. Great fun. Certainly something to pass the time.
Anyway, I'm not really in the mood to write another post right now, and I can't be arsed to wait till midnight to post, so this one'll be early. A quote to finish and I'm done:
"Idealism precedes experience. Cynicism follows."
Tonight, I'm struggling more than usual to focus. Which is bad. Why? Since I'm going to be away this weekend, I've decided to write both Friday's blog post (this one) and Monday's one in advance so that I don't have to spend too much time writing it, and I can just upload it on Sunday night.
Well, I'll just write and see if I come up with something at least readable that I can post. I woke up this morning with three distinct "wants" in my head. I wanted to play my old Sega Megadrive (namely, my Sonic collection), I wanted to play my old Warioland games (for the Gameboy series) and I wanted to build stuff with matchsticks.
There was a problem with each of these "wants". I can't find my actual Megadrive, let alone any of the games for it. My father might have gotten rid of it ages ago, but whatever the reason, I cannot find it in this house.
I play a Gameboy Advance SP which, for those of you who do not know, does not take standard batteries. It has a rechargeable pack, for which I've lost the charger. Oh, and I'd probably be unable to find any of the Warioland games anyway.
And for the final want, I have no glue (or matchsticks, it would seem).
I would just like to give a quick relaxation call for you all. This isn't going to be a long-running problem-solving matter, like it was with the Spyro 2 fiasco.
Since I needed to go out today anyway, I decided that while I was out, I'd pick up some glue to build with, so that was that problem sorted. Until I got home to discover that I have no modelling matchsticks. But I'll get some another time. Once I got home, I decided to sort the other two problems. Since I have neither of the working consoles to play these games on, and they were played on a system which relied on buttons as opposed to a joystick, I figured that a computer would be the most appropriate Plan B.
Now, back when I was in Year 9, this was how we killed time. Our school blocked any kinds of in-browser games and any websites that might provide downloads to them, so we downloaded them and brought them in on USB flash drives. There are only so many Flash games that you can play before the graphics get repetitive and boring. So, we decided that we rather missed the games from our childhoods and set about finding them and trying to download them. The best way of doing this on a school computer (fairly high-specification) was by downloading an emulator. A piece of software that emulated an old games console. For example, GENS is a Sega Genesis / MegaDrive emulator, SNES9x is (obviously) a Super Nintendo Entertainment Sytem emulator and so on.
GENS is the emulator I picked to play my Sonic The Hedgehog collection on (Brilliant games, showing the adventures of a blue hedgehog battling his way through insane levels to defeat the evil Dr. Eggman, who is trying to take over the world by imprisoning helpless animals inside robots) and several other old Sega games.
And VisualBoyAdvance is the Gameboy emulator that I chose. Both emulators work incredibly well on even low-spec computers, though at times framerate suffers.
Regardless, you may be thinking that Gameboy game cartridges and Sega Megadrive game cartridges don't fit into a computer anywhere. It's no problem. You download the games in ROM format to play on an emulator. I mean, it's not always easy to find the games that you want that haven't been hacked or customised, and it does take quite a bit of searching, but once you find them, they're not massive in size (usually around a few megabytes in size) and once you download them and unzip them, you can play them straight away on the emulator.
It pleased me for a while, to cut a long story short. I played Sonic 2 for quite a while. Some guy had customised it under the name Sonic 2: Hell! in which you just play Emerald Hill: Act 1 over and over again. Which is hell. I then moved onto some other hacks of it, before moving onto the WarioLand games.
I do quite love the WarioLand franchise. I mean, Mario and Luigi are the two famous Nintendo characters, but a set of games have been created for their more muscular, butch cousin, Wario. He's somewhat more invincible than Mario, in that just touching an enemy doesn't always harm him. And he can shoulder charge enemies, along with "butt-slamming" them. Great fun. Certainly something to pass the time.
Anyway, I'm not really in the mood to write another post right now, and I can't be arsed to wait till midnight to post, so this one'll be early. A quote to finish and I'm done:
"Idealism precedes experience. Cynicism follows."
Anaphalantiasis
Sometimes I wonder if there's someone out there just making up words for random things that seldom happen. Today's word is one of those unnecessary, ridiculous words, that just make me smile for the sheer uselessness of them; it means falling out of the eyebrows. I kid you not.
I'm not in a great way right now, and I'm certainly not getting any better. I'm on three different kinds of medication, and right now, they're not doing much. I've made some serious errors in judgement in my life, and a lot of these are choosing now to come back and bite me on the backside. I think I'm just dealing with things as best I can for now, and just waiting for things to just get easier before I can properly deal with them. Nonetheless, I maintain that things will soon get better.
These meds are seriously playing with my head though. On the plus side, it gives me interesting thoughts and . . . musings, if you will. I was wondering today what a good technical drawing of the timelines of everyone and everything might look like, showing all of the intersections where people meet and their timelines cross, and showing where they branch off as different decisions are made. Essentially showing the decisions and every possible outcome of every decision. It would quickly become massively complicated. To illustrate quite how complicated, I've drawn up a reatly simplified diagram, outlining a handful of events of three people, creatively named X, Y & Z. Yes, I know that ampersand is grammatically incorrect, but it looked pretty. Bite me.
I've truncated a lot of the paths, to show only one, but by just showing three people, and three event points, you can see how complicated it can get. Now, imagine this diagram showing every single person in the world, showing branches for every single decision they make. If you still don't think it's a lot, think of it like this. Just one person lying in bed. Their alarm clock goes off. Do they: (a) Get up; (b) Snooze the alarm for five minutes; (c) snooze the alarm for ten minutes; (d) Switch it off and go back to sleep; (e) Throw it at the wall and go back to sleep; (f) Reach for it, knock it off the desk and have to get up to find it to switch it off? Now, for each of these options (there are six in total, though there are an almost infinite number of possibilities) they can decide what to wear on their torso: (a) a t-shirt; (b) a button-up shirt; (c) nothing; (d) a vest-top; (e) a jumper. This person has 26 different paths to choose from (assuming that if they go back to sleep, they have no need to get dressed at this point), and they have only just gotten up and decided on a single item of clothing. The reality is far, far more paths. Surely you have more than one t-shirt or jumper? Surely you can choose from a wider spectrum of snooze times than just five and ten minutes? You get the idea.
Now, combine all of these individual timelines, linking them together where two or more people are in company with each other, and you have an incredibly complicated (but AWESOME) "diary" of the world. It would begin to get insane though. Trying to imagine how many times the lines would cross actually hurts. It would be damn-near impossible to understand and would be unbelievably large. A physical copy that is actually legible and readable as a map might span the surface area of the Earth several times over? A digital copy might take up more storage space than we currently have capacity, money and knowedge to create. Hopefully this is getting across the immensity of different decisions are made every day. Some decisions have more weight on them than others. For example, choosing what to eat for breakfast might not affect our future nearly as much as choosing whether to accept or decline a promotion that entails you moving house.
But you get the idea. I think I've said that phrase too many times in this post. Ah well.
I am leading somewhere with this, albeit in an incredibly long-winded and waffly fashion, as my Year 11 Religious Studies teacher used to describe my essays. "They're too waffly" or "Good, but you waffle too much.". Seriously, what is "waffle" in literature?
Right, imagine that, for every decision made, a new universe is created. A completely new one, identical in every single way to the current one, only in the new one, you've made a different choice. I'm linking back here, to the thing about parallel universes that I wrote about in maybe my first blog post.
What do these parallel universes look like from the outside? Is there a sort of super-universe in which all of these universes are stored? If our universe(s) are infinite, then what is this "super-universe"?
I get the feeling, however, that if I proposed this idea to Physicists, I'd get laughed out of every university in the world.
On a final, completely unrelated note, I dug out a book that I'd not yet read. If you're into chauvinistic (note, I'm so off-my-head right now, it took me five attempts to spell that correct) humour, anecdotes of a drunken, self-proclaimed dickhead and his hilarious and cringeworthy stories of sex, drinking and spontaneous trips to Las Vegas, go out and buy this book:
"I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell" by Tucker Max.
It is, honest to God, the best book I've yet read. I've never laughed at a book out loud. This one had me in complete stitches.
Nonetheless, I've been writing for far too long, and just nearly missed my Wednesday deadline, and I've still not uploaded my diagram yet, so I leave you with this famous quote from Albert Einstein:
"Only two things are infinite: The Universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the former."
I'm not in a great way right now, and I'm certainly not getting any better. I'm on three different kinds of medication, and right now, they're not doing much. I've made some serious errors in judgement in my life, and a lot of these are choosing now to come back and bite me on the backside. I think I'm just dealing with things as best I can for now, and just waiting for things to just get easier before I can properly deal with them. Nonetheless, I maintain that things will soon get better.
These meds are seriously playing with my head though. On the plus side, it gives me interesting thoughts and . . . musings, if you will. I was wondering today what a good technical drawing of the timelines of everyone and everything might look like, showing all of the intersections where people meet and their timelines cross, and showing where they branch off as different decisions are made. Essentially showing the decisions and every possible outcome of every decision. It would quickly become massively complicated. To illustrate quite how complicated, I've drawn up a reatly simplified diagram, outlining a handful of events of three people, creatively named X, Y & Z. Yes, I know that ampersand is grammatically incorrect, but it looked pretty. Bite me.
I've truncated a lot of the paths, to show only one, but by just showing three people, and three event points, you can see how complicated it can get. Now, imagine this diagram showing every single person in the world, showing branches for every single decision they make. If you still don't think it's a lot, think of it like this. Just one person lying in bed. Their alarm clock goes off. Do they: (a) Get up; (b) Snooze the alarm for five minutes; (c) snooze the alarm for ten minutes; (d) Switch it off and go back to sleep; (e) Throw it at the wall and go back to sleep; (f) Reach for it, knock it off the desk and have to get up to find it to switch it off? Now, for each of these options (there are six in total, though there are an almost infinite number of possibilities) they can decide what to wear on their torso: (a) a t-shirt; (b) a button-up shirt; (c) nothing; (d) a vest-top; (e) a jumper. This person has 26 different paths to choose from (assuming that if they go back to sleep, they have no need to get dressed at this point), and they have only just gotten up and decided on a single item of clothing. The reality is far, far more paths. Surely you have more than one t-shirt or jumper? Surely you can choose from a wider spectrum of snooze times than just five and ten minutes? You get the idea.
Now, combine all of these individual timelines, linking them together where two or more people are in company with each other, and you have an incredibly complicated (but AWESOME) "diary" of the world. It would begin to get insane though. Trying to imagine how many times the lines would cross actually hurts. It would be damn-near impossible to understand and would be unbelievably large. A physical copy that is actually legible and readable as a map might span the surface area of the Earth several times over? A digital copy might take up more storage space than we currently have capacity, money and knowedge to create. Hopefully this is getting across the immensity of different decisions are made every day. Some decisions have more weight on them than others. For example, choosing what to eat for breakfast might not affect our future nearly as much as choosing whether to accept or decline a promotion that entails you moving house.
But you get the idea. I think I've said that phrase too many times in this post. Ah well.
I am leading somewhere with this, albeit in an incredibly long-winded and waffly fashion, as my Year 11 Religious Studies teacher used to describe my essays. "They're too waffly" or "Good, but you waffle too much.". Seriously, what is "waffle" in literature?
Right, imagine that, for every decision made, a new universe is created. A completely new one, identical in every single way to the current one, only in the new one, you've made a different choice. I'm linking back here, to the thing about parallel universes that I wrote about in maybe my first blog post.
What do these parallel universes look like from the outside? Is there a sort of super-universe in which all of these universes are stored? If our universe(s) are infinite, then what is this "super-universe"?
I get the feeling, however, that if I proposed this idea to Physicists, I'd get laughed out of every university in the world.
On a final, completely unrelated note, I dug out a book that I'd not yet read. If you're into chauvinistic (note, I'm so off-my-head right now, it took me five attempts to spell that correct) humour, anecdotes of a drunken, self-proclaimed dickhead and his hilarious and cringeworthy stories of sex, drinking and spontaneous trips to Las Vegas, go out and buy this book:
"I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell" by Tucker Max.
It is, honest to God, the best book I've yet read. I've never laughed at a book out loud. This one had me in complete stitches.
Nonetheless, I've been writing for far too long, and just nearly missed my Wednesday deadline, and I've still not uploaded my diagram yet, so I leave you with this famous quote from Albert Einstein:
"Only two things are infinite: The Universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the former."
Monday 7 February 2011
Zeitgeber / Somnambulate
I thought that, since I missed Friday's post (I know, I'm as gutted as you are) I'd provide two words instead of the usual one (to make up for the one I missed).
Zeitgeber is a rhythmically occurring event that cues organisms' biological rhythms. In most cases, the primary zeitgeber is light. We run on a 24-hour clock (or 25-hour biological clock) based around our light hours (daytime) and our dark hours (night-time).
And, to somnambulate is to walk in one's sleep.
I've not really got much to report on at the moment. Not much has really happened that I can write about.
On Friday night, I finally got sick and tired of my buggy laptop deciding that the screen was not, in fact widescreen, but standard TV resolution, and thus deciding to change the display ratio and stretch it across my widescreen. So, I decided, once again, to use my recovery disc. (It's a lot quicker and easier to just completely blitz the hard drive and just reinstall everything than it is to find the source of the problem and cut it out like a tumour). I backed up all of my documents, downloads and my lovely disc images (I store a lot of software as disc images to save on physical CD-Rs, and then just mount them virtually if and when I need them. It's particularly useful with large and expensive software like MATLAB) to my external hard drive, inserted the disc and rebooted. I cheerily watched as every other file left on my old and weary laptop was slowly wiped out of existence.
Meanwhile, I decided it might be an idea to back up a few files from my desktop computer (Oh, the temptations of a 500GB hard drive the size of a small wallet), and stumbled upon a few old files that made me smile. But I've now got all important files backed up on a hard drive that's smaller that my passport. I love technology.
However, once my laptop had finished restoring and removing every old file, I decided to start installing all of my old programs. Starting with the so-called Windows Live Essentials. This lovely little package comprises of Windows Live Messenger (the instant messaging program that I use) and Windows Live Mail (the email client that I use). Now, surely if this package were essential, as the name suggests, I'd be able to install it without an ounce (Sorry, I keep forgetting we're working in metric now -- gram) of hassle. Silly me. Forgive me for assuming that the wonderful Bill Gates and that *ahem* highly-qualified programmers at Microsoft would ever create something that works and installs without any problems at all.
It turns out that I need to install the Windows 7 Platform Update. No problem, I'll just download it and install it now. This update requires Windows Vista Service Pack 2 to be installed. Huh? Ok, I'll install that first then . . . Before you install Service Pack 2, you need Service Pack 1 to be installed. Ok, so what has Microsoft actually provided me with, if I don't even have Service Pack 1? Before you install Service Pack 1, you need to install all of the optional updates from Microsoft via Windows Update. So . . . these updates are, in fact, not optional? I've installed all of these things now, but the true irony is that I just cannot be bothered to install the Windows Live Essentials right now. Each of the above platforms or Service Pack updates took a minimum of an hour to download and an hour to install.
I've got my important software installed though. Mozilla FireFox, Spotify, and iTunes. By important, I meant software that I use frequently. I should probably install Microsoft Office, Microsoft Visual Studio and MatLab soon though. Sigh.
I love technology, but sometimes it's so frustrating. Also, mobile phone operators have annoyed me recently. A week or so ago, I discovered the reason that texts have a limited number of characters (160 characters in an English text, using standard alphanumeric characters, and around 70 characters in, for example, Chinese). Mobile phones are constantly communicating with the big masts through the sending and receiving of data packets. These packets, worryingly enough, send information such as your location, what network you're on, et cetera. However, there's a little bit of blank space at the end of this packet. The size of this space is (yep, you guessed it) 160 bytes (Each alphanumeric character takes up a byte of storage). Mobile phone companies charge extortionate amounts to piggyback a tiny amount of extra data onto a packet that was going to be sent regardless of whether the extra was there or not.
If you are on a pay-as-you-go tariff where you pay for your texts, you are being ripped off. Get a contract as soon as possible. Use this information to convince your parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents that you need to go on a contract with free texts. I'm not advocating going down to the network headquarters and protesting, but do not ever use a pay-as-you-go tariff without free texts.
Anyway, I hope this has made up for missing Friday's one (If I hadn't mentioned this, would anyone have noticed?) and I leave you with this:
"Bill Gates is a very rich man today, and do you want to know why? The answer is one word: Versions."
Zeitgeber is a rhythmically occurring event that cues organisms' biological rhythms. In most cases, the primary zeitgeber is light. We run on a 24-hour clock (or 25-hour biological clock) based around our light hours (daytime) and our dark hours (night-time).
And, to somnambulate is to walk in one's sleep.
I've not really got much to report on at the moment. Not much has really happened that I can write about.
On Friday night, I finally got sick and tired of my buggy laptop deciding that the screen was not, in fact widescreen, but standard TV resolution, and thus deciding to change the display ratio and stretch it across my widescreen. So, I decided, once again, to use my recovery disc. (It's a lot quicker and easier to just completely blitz the hard drive and just reinstall everything than it is to find the source of the problem and cut it out like a tumour). I backed up all of my documents, downloads and my lovely disc images (I store a lot of software as disc images to save on physical CD-Rs, and then just mount them virtually if and when I need them. It's particularly useful with large and expensive software like MATLAB) to my external hard drive, inserted the disc and rebooted. I cheerily watched as every other file left on my old and weary laptop was slowly wiped out of existence.
Meanwhile, I decided it might be an idea to back up a few files from my desktop computer (Oh, the temptations of a 500GB hard drive the size of a small wallet), and stumbled upon a few old files that made me smile. But I've now got all important files backed up on a hard drive that's smaller that my passport. I love technology.
However, once my laptop had finished restoring and removing every old file, I decided to start installing all of my old programs. Starting with the so-called Windows Live Essentials. This lovely little package comprises of Windows Live Messenger (the instant messaging program that I use) and Windows Live Mail (the email client that I use). Now, surely if this package were essential, as the name suggests, I'd be able to install it without an ounce (Sorry, I keep forgetting we're working in metric now -- gram) of hassle. Silly me. Forgive me for assuming that the wonderful Bill Gates and that *ahem* highly-qualified programmers at Microsoft would ever create something that works and installs without any problems at all.
It turns out that I need to install the Windows 7 Platform Update. No problem, I'll just download it and install it now. This update requires Windows Vista Service Pack 2 to be installed. Huh? Ok, I'll install that first then . . . Before you install Service Pack 2, you need Service Pack 1 to be installed. Ok, so what has Microsoft actually provided me with, if I don't even have Service Pack 1? Before you install Service Pack 1, you need to install all of the optional updates from Microsoft via Windows Update. So . . . these updates are, in fact, not optional? I've installed all of these things now, but the true irony is that I just cannot be bothered to install the Windows Live Essentials right now. Each of the above platforms or Service Pack updates took a minimum of an hour to download and an hour to install.
I've got my important software installed though. Mozilla FireFox, Spotify, and iTunes. By important, I meant software that I use frequently. I should probably install Microsoft Office, Microsoft Visual Studio and MatLab soon though. Sigh.
I love technology, but sometimes it's so frustrating. Also, mobile phone operators have annoyed me recently. A week or so ago, I discovered the reason that texts have a limited number of characters (160 characters in an English text, using standard alphanumeric characters, and around 70 characters in, for example, Chinese). Mobile phones are constantly communicating with the big masts through the sending and receiving of data packets. These packets, worryingly enough, send information such as your location, what network you're on, et cetera. However, there's a little bit of blank space at the end of this packet. The size of this space is (yep, you guessed it) 160 bytes (Each alphanumeric character takes up a byte of storage). Mobile phone companies charge extortionate amounts to piggyback a tiny amount of extra data onto a packet that was going to be sent regardless of whether the extra was there or not.
If you are on a pay-as-you-go tariff where you pay for your texts, you are being ripped off. Get a contract as soon as possible. Use this information to convince your parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents that you need to go on a contract with free texts. I'm not advocating going down to the network headquarters and protesting, but do not ever use a pay-as-you-go tariff without free texts.
Anyway, I hope this has made up for missing Friday's one (If I hadn't mentioned this, would anyone have noticed?) and I leave you with this:
"Bill Gates is a very rich man today, and do you want to know why? The answer is one word: Versions."
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