Why I Don't Use MySpace

This link is for a certain friend of mine, who I hope is reading this:

The End of MySpace

I would have written a mini-essay myself, but fortunately I found this one, which covers the same points that I would have used in an anti-MySpace debate.

Reflections

[00:24] Alex: don't tell me you're up at this hour?
[00:24] Bob: go to sleep

Well, my parents are at a wedding (my second cousin, who, for some reason, forgot to invite me), and I assume that it's common courtesy to stay up until they get back (am I right? :P). So, seeing how it's the new year, let me take this time to reflect on the year 2006.

Uh-oh. I just realized I can't remember back that far. Curse my complete lack of any long-term memory!

Well, let me try something a bit easier: can I look back on winter break? After all, school starts again this Monday.

Let's see, this winter break I managed to:

• - Find a long-lost (as in, never before heard of) relative (most likely).
  
• - Do most of my homework before the last day. (Guys, I'm serious!)
  
• - Wade through A Tale of Two Cities and work on finishing up my Strugatsky collection.
  
• - See Everything is Illuminated, My Cousin Vinny, Glengarry Glen Ross, and A Prairie Home Companion, and enjoy all of them except the last one (no matter how charming the subject matter, the lack of any coherent plotline is never a good sign)
  
• - Discover some new music, none of it any good. Well, maybe that's a bit harsh, some of it was OK, maybe even a few gems. OK, lemme rephrase that: "Discover some new music." Better =)
  
• - (Re)discover Chip's Challenge and Cosmic Encounter Online, and proceed to get addicted to both of them, primarily the second (though the first has its merits too, in a retro sort of war).
  
• - Try to do a bit of math studying, and fail miserably (but I'm not giving up! ... yet)
  
• - Get all the guitar accessories I needed, and begin learning guitar in my free time.
  
• - Promise to write a blog post every day, and then proceed to write 3 or 4 total.
  
• - Fail to even start working on the personal website that I hoped to finish by the end of winter break.
  
• - Eat a lot of muffins (and not sprain my elbow doing so, if anyone's wondering *cough*bob*cough*)
  

Well, that's about it, the long and short of it. Worth using up most of my winter break on the above items? Dunno.

There's cruel, and there's army cruel...

"You want some water? Keep running."

This is undoubtedly the cruelest thing I have seen in a long time. I'm ashamed to be from the same country as these guys...

Who wants an Xbox 360 for $100?

As many of you probably know (the event was highly publicized), yesterday, that is, Thanksgiving Day, at exactly 11:00 am PST, Amazon.com sold 1,000 Xbox 360s for $100 each.

Needless to say, when I heard about this I jumped at the opportunity, and spent several hours on Wednesday and Thursday preparing myself mentally and physically, and uhh ... computerifically.

And then ... well, let me give a sort of a timeline:

10:00 am PST: Sit down at the computer, make sure that RoboForm is configured properly with my Amazon.com password - I'm not taking any chances.
10:20: Make sure my computer's clock is accurate to atomic time.
10:30: Begin stretching my index finger by repeatedly pressing F5 on the keyboard.
10:40: Re-login to Amazon, just in case.
10:45: Go to the page with the deal and begin refreshing repeatedly. So far, so good, but then all of a sudden ...
10:55:30: The Amazon server finally crashes from anticipation, one can only suppose. The page doesn't load. I try everything, different browsers, different computers. Nothing, until finally...
10:59:50: The page miraculously loads, 10 seconds before 11:00. The Xbox isn't there - the page is being updated! I quickly hit refresh again but it doesn't load until ...
11:01:45: Ouch. All gone.

I came really close though - if that first refresh loaded 5-10 seconds later I would've had it for sure...

At first I was pretty pissed... I mean, I came ridiculously close to being eligible for a crazy bargain, but missed it by 10 seconds because of a server crash. But the more I thought about it the stupider the whole deal looked. Observe:

Item: Amazon held a "contest" between 4 deals, of which the Xbox 360 deal had a 90% vote from the start.
Item: The $100 (reg. $300) deal is so low that even people who don't really want an Xbox 360 would still try to get it.
Item: The deal was broadcast on national television and displayed all over the Internet.
Item: I estimate that at least 500,000 people would try to get that Xbox.
Item: The Amazon servers are a bit laggy even on good days. No way can they support that sort of traffic.
Item: Microsoft claims to reduce the price of the Xbox 360 "on a yearly basis". The holiday season is coming up... *wink wink*
Item: Last I checked, only two people on the Amazon discussion boards claimed they won the deal. Now, I realize many customers aren't active on the boards, but 2/1000?

From this, one can draw one of four conclusions:
1) Amazon offered the deal out of the goodness of their hearts (yeah, right).
2) Amazon is trying to attract publicity (and is going about it the wrong way).
3) Amazon knows the Xbox 360s will soon drop in value, and is trying to sell off as many as they can under the pretense of being generous, while attracting a ton of media attention. This is a very good possibilities, but I think it's really...
4) The whole deal was a sham to get attention. Either Amazon only sold 10 Xboxes or they didn't sell any, and planted people on the discussion boards to give "proof" that the deal was real. Hey, it all adds up. Call me a conspiracy nut, but this is what I'm going with.

Now, this doesn't mean I won't use Amazon anymore. Hey, I love Amazon. One thing about the Tech industry, and in fact the business world in general, is that all companies are evil. Some are just more evil than others... ;)

Obligatory Midterm Post

Given what has happened over the past week, I feel obliged to write something about thes whatchamacallems, midterms. Now, I don't know much about politics - in fact I know less than nothing, counting propaganda and brainwashing in the negative - but what I do know is that the Democrats finally won the House, governatoria-tialization?, and i think ... no wait ... or maybe ... it's close ... nah ... oh yeah the Senate too, by a narrow margin.

It would seem that (for once) Jon Stewart is wrong, but do the midterms really change anything? The old regime is replaced with a new one, which as always promises to fix everything, but looking through history, promises like these are hard to believe. It seems that all politicians are equally detached from the real world, be they Republican, Democrat, or None of the Above. And even if once upon a time, some guy comes along who really understands what he's doing (god forbid!) the bureacratic nature of the system means that his opinion will be stifled anyway.

Here, let me give you an example, with simple math and that bill-becomes-a-law stuff we all learned in sixth grade. Suppose the Republicans want to propose a law that the Democrats don't like. Oops we have the majority - overruled. Ah, but what if the Democrats want to propose a law that the Republicans don't like? The president can (and is not afraid to, as we now know) veto it, and we don't have to 2/3 majority in either house to overrule it. So.... what does this mean? It means one of two things - Republicans and Democrats will (for the next two years) have to learn to set aside their differences and get along ... or, for the next two years, no federal laws of any significance will be passed. Say what you want, but I'm betting on the latter.

Well, that's just my analysis of the midterms, but as I said before, I know very little about politics. Say what you want.

Oh, and speaking of politics, now's fine time to post my political compass:

You are a Social Moderate (56% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (31% permissive) You are best described as a: Democrat Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid

Ah, looks like I'm a Democrat ... just barely though. Those Centrists sure have an appealing philosophy though: "Compromise? " Yes, the reason we don't have a major Centrist party in the U.S. of A? I guess they're just not crazy enough.

A Story of a Story

For English class, today's assignment was to write a dramatic monologue story (that is, one character talking to others) that is exactly one page long, 12pt Times New Roman, 1 inch margin, down to the last line, no more, no less. Naturally, my story is about how cruel it is to impose such limits on stories, and the harm it does to the characters, who don't have enough time to develop in such a short story and I imagine probably don't even know what's going on.

The story is a bit weird so bear with me:

Well, now that we’ve introduced ourselves, I think it’s time to go straight to the matter at hand. And the question we all have in mind is of course, why are we here? It was the same for all of us; the day started like any other. But we somehow had the feeling, you know, that we’re just more important, right? And as the day went on, correct me if I’m wrong, but it seemed like everyone else in the world but us, you know, just sort of faded. And now, it looks like it’s just the six of us. The only people in the whole wide world, right? The question is, “Why?” Why are we here? It’s so strange, though, everyone else disappeared. It’s almost like, I don’t know …

Yes, that’s exactly it! It’s like we’re characters in someone’s story! But what sort of sick, twisted story is this? There’s no plot whatsoever, the writing I’m sure is sub par, and even the characters have no idea what they’re doing here. What is this, just us sitting around a dirty table in an abandoned building? This story needs some excitement …

Larry, how long have you been an elephant? Oh, never mind. It’s just the author trying desperately trying to make something out of this horrible piece of writing. Just ignore it and hopefully it will pass. I hope this story never sees the light of day! I think I’ll have a talk with this author fellow. …

Hey you! Author! Whatever your name is! I know you can hear me! Please, we’re begging you, end this! End this horrible charade! Give our lives some purpose! … Reveal yourself! …

Yes, I have eyes, don’t I? Of course I see something’s happening! … We’re … flying! Careful with that trunk, Larry! … Oh my god, what is that thing?

The gargantuan face stared down at the five men and the elephant, and they cowered before it. The face said, “Your job here is done. One page was all I needed. I do hope I didn’t bother you.” They all disappeared and the landscape was empty…

A return of the Donkey? Who knows?

Now that school has started and the summer is finally over, I have begun thinking about what to do with my newest website, www.PodDonkey.com, which, as you may already know, was effectively shut down over the course of the summer.

Here's what I know:

- I recieve two types of traffic: iPod traffic and Forum traffic.
- The iPod traffic is that that actually goes to the iPod pages of the site. There's not a lot of iPod traffic.
- The Forum traffic goes to the Poddonkey Forum, rather than the rest of the site. This is primarily made up of my friends and aquaintances.
- Over the summer, the iPod traffic stayed about the same, but the much larger Forum traffic disappeared entirely. This shows that I have no control over iPod traffic, but much control over Forum traffic.
- Everyone's favorite parts of the forum are (or, were), in order, 1) the game of Mafia, 2) the General Discussion and Music Discussion boards, and 3) the points and shops. I'm guessing a bit on this one.

So, to get my friends, and other people from my school, to go back on, some things I can do are:

1. Promise to start a new game of Mafia within a week. I have a really fun game planned.
2. Reward new members, with, perhaps, points, or point drawings, or both.
3. Reward longtime members as well.
4. Start a string of interesting discussions in all forums.
5. Try to get most of my Moderator team back.

These are OK options, but can PodDonkey manage to bounce back? I asked some PodDonkey members:

"Do you think i should try to get PodDonkey back up?"

I got five responses (names are confidential):

- "I don't have much time to go on."
- "Maybe, but people are kinda busy right now. Wait till October."
- "Hell yeah!"
- "Dunno how it'll work, but you should try."
- "Maybe, why not?"

So I guess it could go both ways. If I have time this weekend, I'll see what I can do. =)

How the Game Industry Treats Freeware Programmers

A long long time ago, two years to be exact, I discovered a cool little program called MtG Editor, a free program that lets you create your own Magic the Gathering (a popular trading card game) cards. I played around with it for a while and promptly forgot about it. Now, two years later, Magic is inexplicably becoming popular again in my school (well, it's the summer actually - let me rephrase that: "Magic inexplicably became popular again in my school last year"), and some of my friends remembered about MtG Editor and asked me if I could find it again. Well, I did a Google search and went to the MtG Editor website. Once there, I saw a huge box containing an email from Wizards of the Coast (publisher of Magic) and explaining that MtG Editor has been taken off, for copyright reasons.

Several thoughts come to mind. First off, a developer comes along and makes a program that lets you create your own custom cards, in effect contributing to Magic's popularity, by making something that Wizards should have made in the first place. What happens? It gets labelled "illegal" by the very people who should be grateful! Funny thing now, The Wizards of the Coast forums actually have a "Create Your Own Card" section, which remains one of their most popular forums. Question - how are the good folks on the forums supposed to "create their own cards"? Answer - they can't! Wizards has removed a portion of their own community.

Another thought springs to mind - about Wizards' own inefficiency. It took them three years to discover a program that was used and advertised on their own forums! If it takes them this long to find something right under their noses, I dread to think about their future, and of the future of Hasbro (the company that bought Wizards).

Oh, and one more thing: check this out! It's a program called CCG Maker, which does exactly the same thing that MtG Editor does, the only exception being that it's not free - the full version costs $10. Now, CCG Maker has been curiously exempt from the copyright laws that govern MtG Editor. Some asking around reveals that this is either 1) CCG Maker, although using Wizards' layout, uses it's own symbols, rather than copying Magic's, as MtG Editor does, or 2) Wizards simply hasn't discovered CCG Maker yet. Given Wizards' track record, I'd go with the second. But as for the first ... what's worse, copying five little symbols , or copying the entire card layout? Wizards seems to think the first is.

Is anyone else outraged by this??? If so, voice your complaints directly to the people responsible - email Wizards of the Coast! Perhaps if they recieve enough emails ... Also, please comment here if you agree with me!

You know what the gaming world really needs?

A complete RTS / FPS crossover game. Like, one of those games, where it starts out as a regular RTS, but at any time you can choose to play as any of your units, at which point the game becomes an FPS.

Let's take a look at existing games that call themselves "RTS / FPS hybrids". These fall into two categories, the first being normal FPSes with some RTS attributes. Examples are the Half-Life mod Natural Selection and the free standalone game Tremolous (shown at right).



No, that's not what we want at all! It's about 90% FPS, 10% RTS - a very bad mix. But what else do we have that's even remotely similar to what we want? Ah, we have squad-based RTS / FPS shooters, such as Urban Assault and Field Ops (shown at left). Better, but as roemin points out, the emphasis is still on the FPS.

The best way to make an RTS / FPS hybrid would be to make it about 20% FPS and 80% RTS. That is, the RTS mode is the most important, but certain aspects of the game require FPS mode. Just one example: money (and perhaps items and weapons) must be stored in a bank. You can destroy an enemy bank, which would make your opponent lose all the money and items
in it, but you still won't get any of those items/cash. If you want to get it, you must first get one of your units to sneak inside of the bank (possibly through a diversion or some other RTS tactic, or by using a special item, such as a camo suit), and then get into te vault and out, without running into the security system - stealing items from a bank would require both RTS and FPS gameplay.

This is the kind of game that I would want to see. Of course, it would take up a ton of space and require a fast proccessor - everything in the 2.5D RTS view must also have an analogue in the 3D FPS view, and vice versa. This type of game has been impossible ... until now.

What is this world coming to?? - Part 1 of 3,843.5

Yesterday I watched a documentary called The Dark Side. I strongly urge all of my readers to check it out.

It's amazing what our country is turning into, isn't it?

Reflections on the 2005 - 2006 School Year

I think it's time I write down my thoughts about my freshman year, which ended about a week ago. Here goes:

Honors Global Science (Mr. K) - I have very strong emotions about this class, all of them negative, and all concerning the teacher. Quite frankly, he has no idea what he's teaching us - he feeds us wrong information and denies it, he has an average of 5 mistakes on each test (which definitely affects one's grade), and whenever there's any problem of any kind, whether the tests were graded incorrectly or his worksheets are covered in typos, he always puts the blame on his "aide". None of us have ever seen his aide, and he or she may not even exist. I heard that Mr. K may be teaching AP Biology next year. If so, I will seriously consider dropping the class. I would do anything to avoid having him again...

English I (Mrs. B) - I was never a big fan of english, so I did not immensely enjoy this class. However, I did manage to stumble through. I imagine Honors English next year to be a different story. Our teacher was decent, but spent an inordinate amount of time "checking her email". Countless periods were wasted just because she said, "Can you just do your work for five minutes while I check my email?" and then came back no less than an hour later.

AP Calculus AB (Mrs. V) - This was the hardest math class, and the first AP class of any kind, that I ever took, so this was an interesting experience for me. In my opinion, calculus is an interesting topic, second only to combinatorics in terms of my favorite branch of mathematics. Our teacher was fine, but tended to laugh at her students (especially me - I was the only freshman in a primarily senior class). I remember one time we were taking a rather difficult free response test and Mrs. V let us draw pictures or write poems instead of answering problems we couldn't get (I still did all the problems - even calculus comes easier to me than art or *ugh* writing).

Spanish I (Senora B) - Our teacher taught us nothing. Everything we learned we learned from the textbook. 90% of the time was spent either taking ridiculously easy tests or playing pointless 3rd-grade-level games that had nothing whatsoever to do with Spanish. Also, she was nearly deaf - you can imagine what the class was like ...

World Geography (Ms. G) - This was probably my favorite class. I am interested in both geography and history, and this makes me better suited to take Euro AP than others. I am already held in high regard by my friends for my ability to read two consecutive chapters in the Euro book without falling asleep. :p

Health (Mr. P) - This was a pretty boring class, but Mr. P made it funny. The highlight of the year was his famous (dare i say award-winning?) puppet show, featuring the lovable Mr. Hippo and Ms. Alligator demonstrating the properties of body metabolism.

PE I (Coach B and Coach P) - PE. 'Nuff said. =(