I know I haven't been fair to you as of late. In fact it may seem as though I've ignored you, like I've moved on. I know we were in this for the long haul. When this first started, we were both so excited. Man, remember those first posts? All the fun we had, all the laughter, the joy. Now... well....
It may seem like I've not been giving you the attention you deserve. After all, you're my blog. My one and only, right?
...
I'm sorry. This is harder than I thought it would have been... I- I need to be frank with you. I know this will hurt... but it needs to be said:
I've cheated on you.
There's another....another blog I've been writing for- HEY! There's no reason to throw that!
Listen, okay?! Just hear me out!
It wasn't my idea. You see, I've been busy all summer writing for The Light Post (The number one source for all things Lighthouse Project-y!). It's for an internship. I- I thought that maybe if I wrote there, I could get us some exposure, you know? Maybe stir something up... make things exciting again. Get us out on the front lines again.
Look, I know I made a mistake. I never should have abandoned you. It was cruel and wrong of me, and it undermined our entire relationship. You deserve so much better than that.
I-I have no right to start writing here again. I know... I broke your trust. But please, darling, please let me earn it back. I swear, I'll post here often again. I'll use you as more than just a cheap demo for bigger and better things. I'll show you the love and affection you deserve.
I don't expect a response. I don't even expect an apology. Lord knows I don't deserve one. I just... would like another chance. A chance to prove to you just how much you mean to me.
Th-this isn't what I wanted, you know... I wanted us to be happy. I thought.... I don't know what I was thinking...
Just please- Please, baby...give me another chance.
With love, -Paul
Will All Systems Go! give Paul another chance? Will she hang him out to dry?
Find out next time on another exciting edition of... ALL SYSTEMS GO!
Supposedly, what you saw was a leaked video from Ubisoft's upcoming game Beyond Good and Evil 2. This comes via Kotaku, probably one of the best gaming sites around, so I had to pass it along to all zero of you who read this...
Either this is legit, in which case I'm VERY excited (Beyond Good and Evil, if you recall was on my Top Ten Greatest Games list way back in post 1). Maybe...just maybe, BGE2 will be a sequel worthy of the original. I've been inexplicably wary of the sequel...but this may change my mind back to excitement.
And if this is a fan-made video meant to trick people...then heads will roll.
After a hard drive failure and a short stay in Best Buy, my trusty laptop has been returned to me. And boy to I have catching up to do!
Regularly scheduled posting (irregularly scheduled is more like it) will resume shortly!
On tap:
-A retrospective on the Islanders season -A new Website You Should Know -My new found fascination with Twitter AND -My experience at...a metal concert?
Whatever you want to call it, it's just not working anymore. I'm probably going to lose all my files, but until I hear back from Best Buy, I just won't know.
Hopefully I can get my computer back in about a week, but things are not looking good (I'm writing on my friends laptop...it's a Mac)
I'll be sure to post once I get my computer back. I have a hockey post ready, but I'll add it once I get my laptop back.
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's an review! It's an article!
Well...not quite. It's a review from my school's student paper of Empire: Total War. Give it a read here.
All in all, Empire is an amazing game. The theaters of war are huge, the battles are epic... if you're a strategy gamer, this is your Holy Grail.
Still, a few bugs have popped up since I reviewed the game a week ago. Nothing major, just some strange lag towards the end-game. Also, gamers on Nvidia drivers have been reporting problems, although I've been fine. Supposedly they'll be fixed in the next patch. They're also going to up the AI (which is already stellar) and balance a bit of the gameplay.
Still, no matter, the game is amazing. The best I've played this year for sure. If the bugs worry you, wait until the patch goes live.
If I'm planning on running a company, a web site is a near necessity. Especially if I'm trying to run a small business, having a website would make it much easier to compete with larger companies trying to make the perfect pillow. And where do you get a web site? By registering a domain name through a company like the infamous GoDaddy.
So I did some research. I wanted to see if "www.catchsomezees.com" was available, but alas, it had already been taken by some enterprising entrepreneur. However, "catchzees.com" was available. And for the low low price of $6.45 a month!
This week's lecture explained that a domain name is just an alias for an IP address, and that there's no difference between a .com and a .net or .org. However, for name recognition, everyone seems to prefer a .com over another option.
So when i went looking for a domain name to start my comany's web site, a .com was exactly what I was looking for. CatchZees.com will be the go-to destination for all your cooling pillow needs!
...
(on a somewhat related note, you'd think that GoDaddy would do a better job of Photoshopping their spokesmodel...seriously, I could do a better job)
Ah yes. This week was databases. And I learned that there is one more application I need to learn. This time? Access.
To be perfectly honest, this past week's lab was the first time I had ever used Access, or even heard of it. I was aware of different OS's like Unix which could be used to access an e-mail server or online server, but never Access.
I was surprised by how fluid it was. As a small business owner, having both Access and Excel would make it incredibly easy to retrieve data from a database and then present it in a usable form. This means I could easily store credit card information, mailing addresses, phones numbers, etc. and be able to pull any of that information up whenever I needed it.
I never understood Excel. Word, I got. Powerpoint, I had down pat. Even Outlook I had pretty well. But never, once, had I ever been able to understand Excel.
I know what a detriment this would be to any kind of career I would choose. I know I need to learn just how to use this program, especially if I want to be able to excel (no pun intended) in my place of work.
For my pillow company, the uses are easy to see: planning and using figures and numbers to make useful data tables and flowcharts and graphs.
But even beyond this fictional *GASP* company, I need to know how to operate Excel. What this week's lecture and lab taught me is that Excel can be an incredibly useful tool...far more useful than I had originally thought. I always saw my father using Excel to fill up spreadsheets with financial data and cold immovable facts. Now I see that Excel can be much more fluid. Perhaps used to display a budget, or organize facts in a way that makes it easy to read and understand.
Whatever the application of Excel, I know now more than ever that I need to have Excel under my belt...and the sooner the better.
Unix might be able to help me make queries in a larger database that Windows or Mac OS wouldn't be able to handle. This would be helpful if my pillow selling business expands beyond just a small business.
As my company might grow, the database from which I would need to operate from would only grow larger. Eventually, it would be beneficial to learn a programming language for something like Unix or SQL, so that I might be able to run database queries in another OS should the need arise.
It's funny. At the beginning of the year it seemed like everyone was predicting the New York Rangers to be Cup contenders, and at the very worst, a lock for a playoff spot. Then the Rangers jumped to the top of the standing with a brilliant run of games and it looked like they may be making a run at the Cup. Could another 1994 be in store for Rangers fans?
Then, the team started to even out. Their domination slowly, painfully, slipped away. Over the course of the season, the holes in the Rangers lineup became clearer and clearer. The Ranger's fall from grace had begun.
Now, with about 20 games left, the Rangers sit only 2 point ahead of 9th place and barely holding onto a playoff spot. They have 10 losses in their last 12 games. Gomez, Drury, and Redden, the players the Rangers signed to monster contracts, have all but disappeared and it's the third liners that are holding the team afloat. The "King" has lost his throne.
Some might say that Renney should have gotten more out of his players. After all, their contracts had the Rangers up against the cap. Aren't your most expensive players supposed to be your best. That Drury and Gomez and the rest had all but vanished was blamed on Renney.
And to be fair, Renney's easy-going approach did not help the Rangers as they slowly crashed back to Earth. But the true enemy of the Rangers is the man at the top:
General manager, Glen Sather.
Sather put this team together. Like Ranger's GMs of old, Sather took full advantage of the cash cow that is New York Rangers hockey. When the free agency rolled around last year, Sather threw everything at the best available, and hit the jackpot.
But there was a problem that few noticed. These monster contracts were far above what these players were worth.
It was Sather who paid second line players what first line superstars would be paid. And no matter who the coach was, it's clear that these players may never end up living up to their contracts.
It was Sather who let Jagr, their best player, their leader and point producer, walk away to Russia.
It's Sather who foolishly thinks the key to their success was a "sloppy second" named Sean Avery. Avery is now toiling away in Hartford, just waiting for that opportunity when the Rangers will be desperate enough to let him back into a league that by all means wants him gone.
It was Sather who loaded this team up with huge contracts so that the Rangers now have no space to move.
It was Sather who above all else, threw so called superstars together and hoped it all would fit.
So of course Renney is somewhat to blame. And he was all but crucified by Rangers fans who shouted for his head.
But I sincerely hope that once Torts hits the same roadblock, and these Rangers sink deeper and deeper those harsh eyes of the fans will look farther up the ladder.
Because as long as Sather is GM, the Rangers will never contend.
A much belated review, delayed because of possible publication. Now with that cleared up, here in it's original format, as the director wanted it, un-cut and un-edited: Fallout 3
Many video games promise an open ended experience where you can go anywhere and do anything. But no game has delivered more on that promise than last year’s post-apocalyptic adventure game Fallout 3.
You play as a character born into an underground Vault designed to withstand a nuclear apocalypse that was sealed off 200 years ago when the bombs dropped. Everything is great until your father leaves the Vault when you are 19 and you begin your journey out of the Vault and into the ruins of Washington D.C. to find him.
Fallout 3 is unique in its variety. Most of the characters with the exception of a few are expendable, so ignoring or accidentally maiming a quest-giver won’t make the game impossible to finish. Instead, you’re offered a set of choices, some more outside the box than others, and no matter what you chose, there is a clear consequence for the rest of the game and how the other characters treat you.
For example, upon leaving the Vault you may bump into Megaton, a grungy village built around an undetonated nuclear bomb. Do you disable the explosives and save the town? Do you leave the bomb alone? Do you go the evil route and blow the entire town to smithereens? Choices like this one come and go throughout the game, ensuring that no two people will have the exact same game experience.
The sheer size of the game makes no two play-throughs alike. The Capital Wastes you travel through are huge and there are many side-quests available. Thankfully a method of “fast-traveling” between places you’ve already discovered makes long trips across the nuclear wasteland a breeze.
And what a wasteland it is. No doubt about it, Fallout 3 is one of the best looking games to come out in 2008. When you first step out of the Vault, there’s a brief moment as your “eyes” have to adjust to the sunlight. As everything comes into focus, you’re treated to an apocalyptic world that is both terrible and strangely beautiful. Houses are blown out from the explosions and bits of garbage and debris are scattered around the D.C. wastes for miles; food and ammo are hard to find.
Even rarer are human beings. Much of Fallout 3 is spent wandering and scavenging the burned out homes and buildings for supplies. Medicine and weapons you find among the ruins will help you fight for survival against residual radiation and the world’s mutated creatures.
When you do eventually find another human settlement, you’ll more often than not find a trader who will buy the useless junk you may have collected in your travels, like plungers and old books, bent tin cans and broken lawn gnomes.
For your battles in the wasteland, Fallout 3 uses an interesting new combat system. While the game can be played as a simple shooter, another mode called “V.A.T.S.” pauses the action and lets players choose individual body parts to target. With each body part is a percentage of how likely a successful shot will be. Once the player cues up a list of moves, the game shows a cinematic view of the carnage that ensues.
Watching a zombie’s arm get blown off or seeing your bullet fly across the screen with perfect accuracy is a treat to watch every time, and V.A.T.S. puts Fallout 3’s combat a step above the rest.
Impressive as it may be, Fallout 3 suffers from a bunch of issues that keep it from being truly great. The optional third-person perspective looks a bit tacked-on and the character animations are disappointing.
The game is also littered with bugs. Companions can get stuck or be just plain useless at times. You may be fired on by enemies out of your sight that the game hasn’t rendered yet. And most frustratingly, the game crashed or froze at random intervals during my play through.
However, many of the problems have been fixed by a modding tool released for the PC version of the game. This tool lets aspiring programmers design new content which can be then uploaded into the full game. Even though the tool has only been out for a few months, many mods already exist, from ones that improve and refine game features to ones that add new levels, weapons or even new storylines.
While the main game runs about 30 hours at minimum, Fallout 3 will also receive three additional content packs to be sold exclusively for the Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game. The first content pack, Operation Anchorage, has already been released, and future packs later in the year will expand the nuclear wastes even more. So check your radiation levels, charge up your laser gun, and get exploring.
This week in lecture after the midterm we talked about identity theft and what you can do to avoid being caught by thieves. I have a bit of a personal experiance with identity theft. I myself was never robbed, but my father's credit card number (the one he used to buy appliances for our house) was stolen. He was not robbed in person. Somehow a hacker found my father's information and started charging up fradulent items.
Thankfully my dad checked his credit often, and the bank notified him at the same time that his credit card may have been stolen.
For my company, I would need to ensure the safety of my clients information. This would mean the proper disposal of hard drives I may be done using. I was shocked to find out in class that many hard drives purchased off the internet still had the information on them and that it was easy to obtain.
If I truly intended to make a profit off of my amazing pillow, I would have to be prepared to dispose of my client's information when the time came. Writing over the HD with a single character might be effective if I ever planned on using the hard drive again or were selling it, but the best option might just be to destroy it.
Plus, I'm sure taking a hammer or twelve to an old hard drive and then lighting it aflame would be a nice stress reliever from my normally hectic life!
Before this week's lecture I actually already know quite a bit about computer hardware. When I was buying my last laptop, I knew what to look for. I have one of those "gaming rigs" that Professor Rubin was talking about. Quad-core, 6 gigs of RAM, etc.
How could I use this knowledge to my advantage when dealing with my product idea? Well, I will definitely need to use this knowledge if and when I am buying a computer for my business's offices. I will need to know how fast the computer should be, how many cores it should have, and how much memory it should contain.
I already had an idea about what numbers I should look for, but now I actually know what they mean. I had no idea what DIMMs were, but now I know exactly what they are and how I should build any computer my company would need.
Whether or not you will enjoy this album can basically be summed up like this: Did you like Viva La Vida? If you did, you’ll find that Prospekt’s March offers a little more of the same style that in some ways satisfies more than the album did.
If you didn’t like Viva La Vida, you’re probably not a fan of the new sound Coldplay experimented with in that album. Don’t expect anything different here. The songs still have the same feel as those on Viva La Vida. Three of them are taken directly from that album and reworked, some more than others. If you’re expecting something entirely different, you’re sure to be disappointed.
But if you’re like me, and are curious what Coldplay left on the cutting room floor (like a rap..?), read on!
The EP opens with “Life in Technicolour II,” a reworking of the original opening track off Viva La Vida. The new song adds lyrics that felt missing from the original song and fleshes out a full-fledged song out of an instrumental interlude. What’s left is infinitely better than the original, more song than an experiment like the original was.
“Postcards from Far Away” on the other hand, is pure experimentation. The short (48 seconds) track features only a piano, twinkling away at something that sounds more Chopin than Coldplay. The swaying piano piece sounds reminiscent of a foreign artsy film, and shows Chris Martin is a very talented pianist. One expects to hear the orchestra roar in at any moment, but the piano remains the only instrument. The track is beautiful, but altogether too short. Just as Martin began to explore some beautiful new notes, the song resolves leaving me wishing Martin had kept playing.
“Glass of Water” jumps in immediately afterward and is by far the best song on the EP. The track begins at a nice upbeat clip and the guitars strum and piano bang away as the vocals echo overhead. Eventually the chorus arrives and the song bursts into a satisfying good-old-fashioned Coldplay explosion of sound. The song is infinitely catchy, doesn’t run a second too long, and shows off the best of Coldplay. The only downside is it wasn’t included on Viva La Vida. The song alone practically makes the EP worth buying.
“Rainy Day” is a little bit of a different animal. The track focuses on modern beats that would seem to better fit a dance mix. When the full song starts, it starts to sound a little bit more like something off Viva La Vida, especially when the orchestra jumps onto the scene for the chorus. After a few listens, this track grew on me, but I think overall it is pretty hit or miss.
“Prospekt’s March” is a melancholy return to Coldplay’s old sound that would have belonged on an earlier album. The track lets Martin run with the lyrics, but there’s not too much more to it. It’s songs like these that Coldplay put behind them with their newest album, and I’m glad they avoided falling back into this mold.
“Lost+” is really what the title says: the track “Lost” off of Viva La Vida, plus a little something extra. What’s extra, you ask? Jay-Z. That’s right, the rapper. Instead of a guitar solo in the second chorus, Jay-Z gets to lay down some phat rhymes.I think we’re all lucky that mix there didn’t rip a hole in space time. Oddly enough, it’s not bad. It doesn’t entirely work, but that’s what happens when you add rap to Coldplay. I can’t really decide what to think of it…I mean, it works in a sense…I’m just still a little bit in shock that Jay-Z just rapped to Coldplay.
“Lovers in Japan (Osaka Sun Mix)” however is a different animal. Looking for anything extra? A dance mix? Maybe more of Jay-Z? Too bad! Instead you get the same song recycled off the original track, with the second half “Reign of Love” cut. A mix? I don’t think so. Nothing to see here, move along people.
Which brings us to the last track “Now My Feet Won’t Touch the Ground,” and let me say that Coldplay must have had some sort of fascination with the titular line. It was already included in the chorus of “Life in Technicolour II.” By the time I heard it again, I was sick of it. The track starts off as a beautiful acoustic and the lyrics in the first verse suggest the song may be something special. But the chorus just repeats on the same line over and over again, never letting the beautiful melody of the verse come back into play.
Overall, I like Prospekt’s March. It was a nice little add-on to an album I really enjoyed. So if you enjoyed Viva La Vida, Prospekt’s March is definitely worth a shot, if only for the more satisfying rendition of ‘Life in Technicolour’. Even if you didn’t like Viva La Vida, at least give “Glass of Water” a shot.
I never knew about what exactly binary was until this week's lecture. Counting in binary was an interesting little talent to have, but I'm not sure how exactly that would help my product. That seems to be something that would be far more useful to a programmer, which I am clearly not.
On the other had, talking about bits and ASCII will definitely help if I need to send important information to my customers. Professor Rubin said that ASCII was a 7-bit language and that viruses and trojans couldn't be transmitted in ASCII messages. This means that if I had to send messages with sensitive information, I would send that as an ASCII text file to prevent a virus or key-logger from becoming embedded in the file and using that sensitive information against my company or clients.
Knowing about UNICODE will also benefit my product, especially if I decide to expand into different countries. Since ASCII is based on the English language, non-English speakers would not be able to used ASCII to transmit messages and data. However, UNICODE would allow my company and my overseas customers to translate each others messages and websites.
Professor Rubin discussed Twitter this week in lecture. I had heard of Twitter before, but I never really thought about how it might be used beyond a social networking tool. And especially not for anything like news or politics. A little research after class showed that both the Obama and to a lesser extent McCain campaigns used Twitter to update their followers.
This opened up my expectations for that networking tool. Perhaps Twitter could be used as a way to advertise my awesome new pillow. I could use the site to spread the word on my product.
Maybe I could even use Twitter to update clients and customers on shipments. Something like a Tweet saying "the first shipment of pillows is out the door!" This would then be passed on to all my followers so that everyone would know when my pillows would be in stores or on their way.
Word about my product could also grow by using Twitter. If someone who was interested in my pillows tweeted about it, then all of their followers would find out about it. Then maybe some of them would tweet, and so on. In this way, a Twitter could serve as a way of marketing using a kind of technological word-of-mouth.
Have you ever suffered from insomnia? Have you rolled over in bed countless times, hoping that eventually you'll nod off to sleep? Have you watched the clock tick on and on into the night as your precious sleep slowly slips away?
If so, then you are undoubtedly aware of what I like to call "Warm Pillow Syndrome." When you first rest your head on a pillow, you're greeted with a cool soft feeling that normally would lull you into a deep sleep. But on those nights when sleep is elusive, the heat of your head warms the pillow up, making it uncomfortable and hot. You would likely try to flip the pillow over to reach a cool spot, hoping that you could nod off before the dreaded warmth returned.
But what if you never had to worry about that ever again? What if you had a pillow that would stay cool no matter how long you were resting?
Allow me to submit an idea: A pillow that stays cool at night when you try to sleep. This pillow would stay a constant cool temperature that is relieving in the hot summer, as well as comfortable enough in winter. I'm not marketing an ice-pack, just a better pillow.
Best of all, the new pillow will be just as soft as it's traditional predecessors. You won't be able to tell the difference!
So stop wrestling and fighting with your pillows. Just lie back, relax, and catch up on your zee's.
Ah, 2008. The fun we had, the things we played, the people we met... good times.
And now 2009 has rolled in. Another new year, and a few new resolutions.
1.) Post more often: This blog has fallen on the way-side, again. Again.
2.) Learn songs the whole way through: I suffer from musical ADD. I get a piece of music, fall in love with it, and start to learn it, only to fall in love with a different song, and get started on that one. As a result, I have a vast repertoire of half-learned and partial songs. Going to try to stick to my guns this year. Starting with "Maybe I'm Amazed," by the brilliant Sir Paul.
3.) Learn to play the harmonica: The poor baby is gathering dust. And watching "Survivorman" on TV makes me want to learn it again.
4.) Watch the movies in my DVD collection: I'm something of a movie nut. So when I find a good bargain on a movie that I've heard is really superb, or already seen, I make the impulse purchase. A Beautiful Mind for $5? Please and thank you! But there are a bunch of movies in my collection that have yet to be watched (you know who you are). I've got to get around to watching these sometime.
5.) Meet new people: A little cliched perhaps, but nevertheless true. Classes are always pretty big up at school, but that is not a good excuse. For the new year, I'm going to say hello to at least 3 new people in each of my classes on the first day.
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