Bokken's Blog

Google Everywhere - no room left for me.

2012-02-06T02:57:00.000-08:00

Did you know that blogspot is Google? Of course not, but there you have it - sign in to blogspot, and you are also signed in to YouTube - even if you asked to sign out from YT specifically, signing in to blogspot with a different email or password will sign you in to the whole network.

Anyway - i just closed my YT account, and will now probably close this blog as well; though there is no real reason to fear Google - at least not today - the whole point is... why ?

Why do my separate accounts on two separate websites *have* to be linked? I'm weary of anything that wants doing but has no reason, same as a cow is afraid of the butcher's axe - she doesn't know what it is, but she's never seen it been needed before, and that alone makes it scary.

Thw whole point of the internet is "a place" of social interaction WITHOUT the social interaction, a "place" where you can call somebody who's ten inch taller than you a wanker because he'll never have the chance to break your nose. I mean for fuck's sake, it's electricity through a telephone wire, the idea that "the internet" needs to have the same policings, laws and clausules that are imposed on broadcast Tv and the press is fucking ridiculous; worse than ridiculous, it's wrong; and scary.

I'm scared for our future, things are going in the wrong direction and it's going to turn out bad, really bad.

FYI a man has been convicted of "rape" after consensual sex with a woman who believed him - after he told her he was jewish; so somewhere in the world, lying (in private) is a crime.

As politicians like to call it "The Internet" (which sounds like "The Telephone Lines" to me) is a wonderful occasion where people can do what they do best - lie freely about everything, and old and time-honoured human tradition which was about to be rendered illegal by our new, multi-expanding government (for those who believe that "The Internet" should afford you the same rigor and accountability that the press or television give, i say : if you don't want to be lied to, don't come to "The Internet") and by God our government is really pissing people off, by being invasive in a way that some once believed was grounds for revolutionary action.

Did you know that a man has once been refused to his flight because of security concerns stemming from his wearing a Transformers T-shirt ? How much closer to paranoid despotism can you get?

Anyway, there are some elements of human behaviour that we simply cannot do without; i already find it next to impossible to live without the bottom pinching that the PC government decided it's a crime worthy of jail time; now the global, all-encompassing government (if you don't believe we live in such a world, read on the circumstances covering the "stealth" passing of the ACTA bill across the civilized world) wants to make ..sorry .. has made it illegal to bullshit - to tell lies of any sort.

Now i'm not one to complain if the police wants to police stuff such as airplane ticket sales, credit card transactions or loan companies and the such being offered on "The Internet", as they quite clearly have some elements to them - the need to use money, the need of a credit card, and other "having-impact-on-the-real-world" items, but as for making it pseudo-illegal (with accountability for actions which might result from yours) to lie in any way - to call yourself a prince, to say that you are jewish, to say you are blonde, older than you are or much, much taller and better looking (notice how cleverly i avoided all legal implications in that phrase) than you really are. And - again - if you do not believe me, remember that a girl was in fact arrested and given community service for "causing grief which led to suicide" of a schoolmate ... through cyberbullying (!!), and more than that, while she was anonymous - the person who got bullied did not even know that it was her, and in fact it could have been a chat bot for all she knew.

Now let me get this straight: a person was "hurt" by someone whom she had no need to chat to, could have put on her ignore list, through a computer she could have turned off, on a website with public access and anonimity, where the only impact on here real life was the impact she herself decided this was going to have.

Pardon me for thinking this is the same as making it a crime calling somebody "hey, big nose".

Now for the less technical here, on "The Internet" as they like to call it, if you "visit" a virtual "place" where there is no safety measures in getting in (anyone can log on to Facebook if they want), this place is not anywhere specifically "safe" (like Your House for example), and you put up a "page" where everyone can write anything they want with no actual concern for the consequences, AND you take that page so seriously that you decide to kill yourself ..

Well let me put it this way: i strongly, with all my heart, and intellect, believe that if i am able to cause someone's death by repeatedly pressing on my D key on this here keyboard, not only that one person ought to die, but it would be our all responsibility to kill it as soon as humanly possible.

What happened to "sticks and stones.." then?

I can see why one would accuse based on a man's actions, but it's on the actions one must accuse - the action is to type a letter after all - take it with a grain of salt - and that is a fundamental life skill our race cannot do without.

Bad behaviour online is akin to writing dirty messages on the walls of public toilets, it's an activity we do in situations where we are in a domain whose characteristic is "it's my kingdom and i am the law", and those who follow must then bear the consequences of reading "your mama sucks dick"; it's one thing if Google lies, it's another if Joe "L337" Deathblack lies.

But hey Bokken (true, not my real name), isn't this the same as lying in the newspapers? What if you read in The Scotsman that poison is good for you ??

Well that is some clever argument.

Problem is that printing the Scotsman takes big stinky oily presses; it takes many dirty vans and sweaty drivers to deliver it, and stands to stand it on in Sainsbury, and cash counters to sell it to you.
Google also takes many clean sterile rooms to keep its servers in, big air-conditioning units to ventilate them, and so forth. They have a monetary value. They have real-world presence inside a virtual world. They can - if the senators so decide - be made fully accountable for all their actions, since in the end, they are In It For The Money.

But not us; we normal people are not "In It" nor are we "For The Money" in any sense and any person wise enough to excuse their being alive as "not a waste of air" will recognize the difference between The Times and sexyfrank1972. And this i say in defence not of The Times, but of poor old frank.
Somehow, our world has turned from freedom of speech, through "we shall not police thoughts", to asking Public Joe to observe the public decency laws even when taking a dump in his own toilet.

Well, closing time. Both this post, and the blog, need to go. (it's getting harder to find email providers who let you create totally fake accounts)

You see, i have always been a kind hearted person, and have been pretty much upstanding in my interwebz interactions, but i find it right to defend even those who i despise, if they deserve it; accountability should work both ways, you know?

Sure, the bullying case did cause a death and i agree she *did* bully her, but ffs, that moron killed hereself on a Facebook comment; sure she should be accountable for being too fucking stupid?
Look, i got bullied too (at school, not that badly, but i get it), but this was an actual, smelly, spitty, in my face, physical, real-world bully of muscles and smelly feet - not an HTML page of text characters; who knows how many people out there in the world hate me and think i'm ugly, but if i go look for them and then blame them for not liking me, should it not be me the one accountable? I *had* to go to school, i didn't *have* to go to Facebook.

Lawmakers have it hard, i understand, but they are trying to make laws for something which is impossible to control - it's easy to police a school, because it's a school (and actual, real-wrld building). But with the internet, every human being is that school. Typed letters - which is what the internet is, in the end - are not physical locations, but are merely thoughts, and policing these is NOT what we want, regardless of the consequences this might have.

"Man arrested for soliciting sex from underage girls ON TEH INTERNETZ"

Sure, i know there are laws concerning 50yo men having sex with 15yo girls.

But as any free human (who knows such laws) will tell you, if said girl chat-types you "i am hungry for cock" then obviously the law cannot be applied in such an instance - all the moral assumprions that have led to its creation have just been destroyed; by a loli.

Regardless of the fact that once that poor guy shows up, the "loli" turns out to be a fed agent.

And there you have it.

Real world jail time for internet world crime.

My problem with policing social interactions is that between me the culprit, and you the law-making government, when it comes to social interactions, i know better than you.
Social interaction cannot be - must not be - policed. At this moment it cannot be, fortunately, since "their" resources are too small; but the butcher's axe, the "internet passports", are a step into that wrong direction.
And i will fight my own fight to make sure we never go there.

God knows how long before they give you the chair for using H4xx.

BBC News goes Nowhere

2012-01-29T08:43:00.000-08:00

Some bankers who need not be named - in the news today - are not going to receive a bonus "they are entitled to" for (i shall assume) poor performance or other issues relating to the recent crash; I am totally against this and wouldn't be surprised if some of them issued a press release containing the words "go fuck yourselves" since after all they are employees just like myself and have a contract, just like myself.

The issue here is what determines their "being entitled to" and who scripted the terms of that contract. Again, i wouldn't be surprised at finding out that the theory behind how bonuses are calculated is faulty, or dodgy at best. In my brief experience, almost "everything" at a level higher than personal life is designed badly, and this is why systems should be designed by people like ME, and not from people like YOU.

Vote Ron Paul?

Incidentally, since it seems that US law is being implemented everywhere, shouldn't us europeans get a vote in the presidentials as well ? Pax Americana indeed.

no title

2012-01-24T10:29:00.003-08:00

Prime Suspect, S01E06; hire the supporting who plays the wife.

God oh god

2012-01-20T13:29:00.000-08:00

There is a new (to me, who am as naive as they come) trend in film marketing which has film studios (totally random guess here) pay to have reviews written on IMDb (or simply forces people from their crew to do it);

Generally what you see is this: a 10* review of the title, on opening day, with the title "Amazing Beyond Belief, (Name of Actor) Is Incredible", then proceding to rant about the cast, features (3D!!), and basically what you see in the trailers, with some even having the immortal lines " I can't wait to see this again and then own it on blue ray!"

Srsly, do you know why you fail?

1) First off, you fail because you (the *reviewer*) only have 1 review (well, now some people go as far as writing two reviews for two titles, voting one 1* and the other 10*, to make it seem like they are harsh judges of style, LOL);

2) Second, you massively fail because it reads like a P.C. newscast; pure biased trollism like Bill O' dreams of at night. Example : "I believe the story is amazingly well played and its never a "you are left wanting more" film. I have read a few reviews of this film from people saying that it lacks story line/plot. Which I cannot believe. Every ~~CENSORED~~ movie brings something new to the scene. One review said there was a 'dull' breakout intro kinda feeling like 'resident evil' style. First off, this is incredibly wrong. This movie (and all other ~~CENSORED~~) LACKED any dullness.".

Oh rly?

Who the hell talks like that ?
And finally,

3) You don't have any l33t sp33k in your txt. How are people srsly supposed to believe that a keyboard warrior wrote that review. The only people you will capture will be those so stupid that they would have come anyways (people who went to watch Alien Vs Predator, for example);

And for some reason it's totally ok to do this - its ok for people to falsify advertisement; whereas in any other trade it would be FRAUD.

SOPA bite my ass - i pray for the day when Hollywood burns.

my problem with education

2012-01-10T12:42:00.001-08:00

i went to an italian middleschool, and also did a year in highschool there,
before being moved to the semi-posh AOSR (also in rome), where i finished highschool,
and then to boston for college (albeit with a delay);
after a year of college, i "wandered", then started a diploma course, then left it, then worked some,
then started another diploma which now is my only qualification.
never mind the fact that my dad - and sole provider of the 20-grand a year the school+ board was costing - died before the end of my second semester and that i had to leave never to return, let's just keep it at "i never graduated".

on paper i'd be your average uncultured oaf. Yet, amongst my friends i seem to normally be the only person with a
bit of education; let's say, the guy who knows stuff.
Now this (me being cultured and knoweledgeable) doesn't surprise me, and one of the reasons of my disgust at school was that everybody else in there cheated their way through it, yet that's not really "my problem with education", which rather is this:
everything that i have been thought is useless.

Example; latin and the history of the roman empire together form a nice basis for understanding languages and cultural stances in europe.
Knowing the political situation at the end of WW2 will help you understand cultural differences between europeans.
Having a solid knowledge of medieval culture will help you understand Americans (just take out all the medieval cultural bullshit they don't have and voila' .. they are just like us). Yes, there are several things i know and can be proud of - i for one know english better than my "i know english better than you" friend Angry Steve and have practically found out one day that "i understand spanish" out of the blue. this and more but again, the point here isn't me telling how awesome i am.

the point is that just about everything i have been thought throughout my school years, is useless.
I have not made a single penny on the back of ANYTHING which i learned at school. all those days of english licterature, italian sonnets, geography of china, history of philosophy, ancient history, latin, greek, french, algebra, chemistry, biology, art, and whatever else comes to my mind have turned out to be absolutely fucking useless. And more, everyone else i know is in the same position as me.

Oh wait no; there is one guy, who actually became a math professor. PhD in maths and a 17k euro yearly wage. and 70 hour working week.

well then , school is good for your child only if he can go all the way - and i mean not a professor's wage, but a post-grad researcher at least. or else, just get kids to take an MBA at 9yo and fuck everything else that is not in the curriculum.

also, parents, if you can't provide for your child both A) a stable life - meaning no divorces, having money for books and shit, and so on, and b) actually the means to finish the highest tier of education (a PhD atm), don't put him through school AT ALL. you will only be ruining his life.. just teach him some very basic math, and that's it. as for the rest of his education, teach him a trade as soon as possible so that he might weep over his uncouthness over his fat bank statements - if it were me, at 17 instead of a high school diploma, i'd take 8 years of work experience any day.

A very futuristic way to get around this problem would be to have - instead of the lowerschool dross - an "assessment" system where kids are shown what trade they can actually be good at, and then teach them all they have to know in that curriculum and that, alone. honestly, most of the subject matters of today's schools can be summarised in a couple of hourse each year, and that's it.
geography ? here's how you read a map. history? we're here, we are alive, that's it. science? oh for fuck's sake... what use is to ANYONE to know what a zygote is. or how plants make photosynthesys. or cell walls structure. or lypids. you get my drift (i hope).

just show the kids a plant, tell them there's a science that shows you how this machine works in its very, very little parts, and if the kid is like *really* interested make him into a biologist but if he fuckin'ain't, then don't!!
who is the genius that thought "an hour a day of Pottery for a year will prepare this 15yo boy for the real world"??
maybe yes, if he's going to be a f*** potter!!

you see, the sad point here is that all of these horrid atrocities are mandatory - skip school too often, and your parents will be arrested (no joke) for negating you "a right to education"; which is supposedly a right to be prepared for life, and yet, you have no idea what life will bring you once you live it, and also those who force you to spend an eternity in school likewise have no idea - it's not like you can graduate from a economy college major and bang on the government's door and pretend an economist's salary - you are entirely on your own then, and let's not kid ourselves, hardly ever people are hired on the grounds of their education.

so there you have it. my problem with education is both that i have a head full of stuff that nobody cares about, and that all the jocks who cheated their way out of math class now have better jobs than me.

now i don't have a college degree ( i wanted one, but then i doubt that BS Music Business would have helped me now), and i'm sure those who do are better off than me; also sure of the fact that i could have done better in school.. but allow me to express my resentment at the educational system and a few words of advice; here they are: it's prefectly normal for a 9yo kid when taken to this weird prison-like place called school to say "i don't like it", and with good reason. it's also prefectly reasonable if the kid expresses himself more sophisticately, such as "why the fuck do *i* have to learn French?? i'm 9!"

Add to all this the horrid character traits of the humans who actually "thought me", and you have my point. I didn't fail school, school failed itself.

Cheers,

an unsophisticated man.

lets see if UL images works

2012-01-09T17:43:00.000-08:00

it does! it werkz!!

why on earth would anyone use image hosting sites when they can use a blog :p

but this last one is just too cool. it's great because it's real.

i feel like this too often. technology has gotten out of hand.

not as in being too much. as in it being designed by idiots.

bring back the era of IBM.

Skyrim's final review

2011-12-06T11:59:00.000-08:00

So, it's a good game.

From my point of view Oblivion was better - i'm an old school gamer and don't mind tons of stats (i actually feel that streamlining is harmful .. after all it's the stats that make the difference between a RPG and a action game), and there were more variables that would affect the outcome of each decision made by the player. The speech wheel, character stats, acrobatics, open lock spells, spell customisation, and many more. Too many more - there is too much stuff that got taken out and although Skyrim is stupendously playable and bug-free (well, a game of this kind will always have a few bugs but .. it's no Clear Sky), the stuff that was taken out pretty much balances out the good stuff in.

And of course, the whole "3d immersion engine" thingie is getting old - Oblivion, and Morrowind before it, was revolutionary. Ofc Morrowind look old today, but on the other hand Oblivion looks just as good as Skyrim does, so no points here.

"A Good Story is what always gets me"

Yes, and i got to say Skyrim's story is way less shit than what you'd expect from a "hollywood" production, but the shit is in the details .. i'm going to have to be a bit specific here, or this won;t make sense.
In a grim fantasy world such as TES, there is too much high fantasy - too many beautiful females, too many clean temples, too many neverending dungeons, too many spell, and in general too much safe play from the designers making Skyrim look like a different kind of commercial ad, but one nonetheless.

I guess i could say that if you took all the complaints from the Skyrim boards and put them together, you'd have a picture of the problem ~~BUT THEN I GOT AN ARROW IN THE KNEE~~ and that's .. it's not grim, it's not fantasy, it's just Bethesda. Same problem as with Fallout, it's childish. The Jarl might have a complicated political situation on his hands - but then he just blurts it out to you who just stumbled into town - making this "we're really doing some serious writing here" thing look a bit silly.

If the Jarl is facing a though situation, why the hell isn't anyone else in town sent - alone - to solve it?

Some things in the gameplay are a bit horrid, for instance, when talking to an NPC for a quest some random passerby will stop and blurt out some random audio while the other guy is talking, some of the most popular being "..i took an arrow to the knee", and of course the immortal "you know what's wrong with Skyrim?".
But Skyrim it's a great game. So let's say screw the gameplay bugs - it's awesome. but ...

"You Know What's Wrong With Skyrim?"

Yes, my friend. Yes, i do.

The problem is that Bethesda, as a whole, wrote a game that they just couldn't deliver; you'v got this immense script (60k pages??), greatly complex situation, so many variables, and they just couldn't code it in.

1) The script is silly.
sure the story is nice, but the script itself is silly. i like the whole "barely escapes thanks to a dragon attack", but if you are going to write such quest lines as "humble beginner becomes Archmage of Winterhold", then you;d better be prepared to code in the changes to the script that this requires.

as Archmage of Winterhold, Thane of (every city in Skyrim), head of the Thieve's Guild, Listener of the dark brotherhood, and of course legendary Dragonborn, defeater of Anduin and saviour of Skyrim, i get the same shtick as average joe in the street. And - if you are listening, Beth - this doesn't mean that i want to hear every NPC saying "i heard you defeated that dragon" every minute of gametime, but it means that you actually need to have a timeline moving forward to make me feel as if anything has changed at all - which brings me to point

2)the game scripting is childish
nothing ever happens.
thief runs amok in the market, people rush out and kill him - you can simply ignore that; it's just a visual trick, and it means absolutely nothing in the story. Nothing really happens in the story. Some guy asks you to deliver food to High Hrotgard, you take the food.. then forget about it for a few months. the guy doesn't care. His sense of time is "takes quest - completes quest". This is made worse by the ingame waiting, sleep modes, quicktravel, and just plain bad time management - sure these are lovely features, if they were implemented nicely.
Like the thief trick, too many things in the game look the part but are just a cloud of smoke; walk past a cave, get attacked by bandits. Walk in said cave, there's a bunch of quest NPCs there. "Why the hell are you guys holed up here with a bunch of mobs??" but no answer there, other than "meh, we're just unkillable mobs".

You see, i'd rather have 5 NPCs in the whole game world, but that i can interact with in several ways, than a thousand that i can't interact with in any way but the one that was coded in. Have the Jarls (the lot of them) in the castle in Solitude after Ulfrik Stormcloak takes the throne, some of whom are all pissy about me having [saved the world] [liberated skyrim][being the legendary dragonborn][being a general badass who can wipe out an entire city, solo] and some of them insult me - and now, if i try to kill one (or more), well, they are immortal.
Some would say, "where is the freedom", others (the coders) would reply "if we let you kill them, you can fuck up your game"; we'd reply then "let us fuck up our game, it's OUR game", but the justly or not, the coders would reply "but then you'd complain about us letting you fuck up your game by doing unsanctioned interactions with environment/items/NPCs".

To which the correct reply is "then code some more interaction responses". Which is something you obviously can't do with a game as expansive as Skyrim.

So in the end the problem is not that Skyrim is a bad game, it's just that the designers should have foreseen that such a game is beyond their means to deliver, and it certainly is. In Oblivion, having a high athletics meant you could get into places the coders never meant you to go, and it was fun - the speedrun for Morrowind is seven minutes without glitches, but there's a nice 16 min speedrun with full instructions here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfNbPQJ5Fdc
Morrowind is still the game that every TES fan cites as best of the series, and while i liked Oblivion very much (Morrowind is too old to me, and i agree, it had to be played when it came out, not now), Skyrim is too devoid of interaction with the - stupidly large - content to make it a good recommendation.. the elements left out weigh particularly in favour of Oblivion vs Skyrim, now that every single character is a dual-wielding, dual-spell casting, daedra summoning, heavy armour wearing master thief archer Dragonborn alchemist enchanter smith, bringin me to the last point of my review

3) the milieu is ridiculous
great visual settings, great visual effects, but sadly, ridiculously mispalced content - not just the guards, jarls, emperors and random NPCs blurting out their life's secrets to everyone in the street, but the general sillyness of making the PC a divine, world-saving superbeing, overpowered form the word go. RPGs are a matter of choice, and choice always involve losing some other aspect of the choice - if you chose tuna salad, you can;t also have steak, pasta and chicken. Had they designed Skyrim to be - albeit the same size - smaller in scope, say, where the end quest is to become Jarl of Whiterun, removed fasttravel except for coaches(what's the point of a huge map, then?), lowered the amount of NPCs (or at least differentiated between main NPCs and minor), and stuck with the earlier "chock-full-o-choices" character build system, Skyrim would have been much, much better - but as you can easily see from the gamefaqs boards, everyone's got the same storyline, everyone's got the same build, same spells, same armour, etc.. the fabled variation (that Oblivion had lots of) is a myth and as such Skyrim is nothing but a complicated, sometimes buggy Action game where Smithing, Enchanting and occasionally Alchemy are overpowered, and when not using these, it;s just plain childishly easy, except on higher difficulties where it's still easy but for some totally unbalanced things which are stupidly hard.

And maybe they could have spent the time instead implementing cool stuff. Like time. Stuff happening. Flight. NPC interaction. Politics. Buildings. A million other things.

I used to be a {insert comparison here} like you, but then i took an arrow to the knee.

Easy-Peasy review of Skyrim (he didn't like it)

2011-11-13T23:36:00.001-08:00

well, after several hours and levels in, i can say that it's a great graphics adventure. but that's it.

i still love how you can finish the quests in so many different ways, yet, gameplay wise, it's really just a ball of *****.

1)too easy
- at level 5 i found a jacket that regens my magic 75% faster.
- the dual casting for free is overpowered
- the basic flamethrowing spell is op
- with horse + companion you do 3x damage
- fast travel is ridiculous
- sprint with 299 pounds on (399 with Deep Pockets)
- you can pay to level up (i just bought 2 levels and have money for 2 more)
- quicksave/load makes for some easy lockpicking/stealing/speechcraft/you name it
- using potions instantly makes for some easy fight, even with bigger mobs. sure not every fight, but since potions weight 0.5 (you can carry 600 if you wanna), some key fights can be easily won at earlier levels.
- shouts use no mana. Also, everyone can use magic. AND armor. so you can be a 25% magic resisting, 50% magic absorbing, dual spellcasting firethrower mage with plate armor, two handed sword and stack of potions who can stun enemies for free every 15 sec. AT LEVEL 1. ad it gets worse.
- and let's not forget the racial abilities (once per day. which translates to once per fight) and the blessings.

2)it's buggy and/or stupid
- kill that giant at level 2 by getting him stuck in the game geometry
- kill that dragon, solo, at level 9 by hiding behind a rock where he can't hit you (but thinks he does) and fill him with iron arrows
- melee weapons, don't even think about it. touch the arrow keys and your stamina goes bye bye.
- press Alt to sneak, press Tab to access inventory. Alt+Tab?? who the **** thought of that one?

- press Tab to open inventory. use arrow keys to scroll to bow. click with mous on bow when highlited. press F. press Tab to close screen. press Q. use arrow keys to select bow. press 1. THAT IS HOW YOU SELECT YOUR WEAPONS ?!?!?!?

- why on earth you cant fast travel within city locations? it takes more time to go from the blacksmith to the alchemist than it does to go from Dragonsreach to Solitude.
- seriously? still using encounter scaling? what's the point of levels then?

thats about all i can think of now.

actually, it's about all. Skyrim doesn't have bugs in the classic sense of the word, it's just that the game mechanics are really weak. even QL/Q3 has physics light years ahead of Syrim. gameplay isn't buggy, it's just poor. but if you played Oblivion you already know all of this.
Surely tho Syrim is not a proper RPG game.

(he didn't like it)

FFS

2011-10-30T23:33:00.000-07:00

Scampi and shrimp are NOT the same thing;

THIS IS SCAMPI

THIS IS SHRIMP/PRAWN

and while we're at it, there are two types of animal that share the same name, one is called Homarus (Astice),

and one is called Lobster, and it looks like THIS:

three of these are delicious, the last (prawns) is shit :/
unless of course you find the Penaeus Kerathurus, called Tiger shrimp.

The whole point of this is that when a recipe calls for scampi, such as "Cocktail di Scampi", you can't just translate it into "Prawn Cocktail" and use shrimp instead; you turn a world-class delicacy into a commoner's dish. End rant.

The Samsung Galaxy Europa

2011-10-25T14:11:00.001-07:00

is shit. 'nuff said.

Waiting for Ivy Bridge

2011-10-23T15:33:00.000-07:00

Waiting for ~~Godot~~ Ivy Bridge.

Technology has gotten so good that it's competing with itself;
The release date for Ivy Bridge CPUs nears, yet i still don't see any new features that lack from my C2D setup.
Of course, IB will have more power, lots more, and lower temperatures (so low in fact that many once-awesome aftermarket coolers are now totally redundant.. once you get your hands on a Coolermaster Hyper 212+, you are set for life), much better memory controllers (i'm actually hoping to see DDR4 with IB), more overcloclability... in fact, IB will be *exactly* like SB, but better in everything, if by little.

And of course the first thing that comes to mind is the Tic-Toc, where CPUs are designed in two steps, one of architectural change, and one of die shrink and refinement; knowing how things work, do you opt for the Tic, the new technology with new features, or do you wait for the Toc, which at the same price point delivers better performance and has less bugs'n kinks?

Now i would have gone Sandy bridge long ago were it not for that i was broke, and couldn't afford to even think about it - which leaves me to consider the Toc, as it's not a good idea to get one now since IB is "just around the corner" (IB has been "JATC" since jan, but whatever).. however here comes the big if:

Should i go Ivy bridge??

As people say on Hardforum, "i'm concerned that these chips will be made to not be any faster than Sandy Bridge" - of course, why whould Intel want to compete with itself, expecially now that AMD is nowhere to be seen and SB chips could be still sold successfully for another couple years.
Well, they won't be revolutionary, but they will certainly be better than SB. In fact you *will* get a lot more, mostly out of the new chipset; the problem here isn't whether Ivy Bridge will be lots better than Sandy Bridge - it will be at least a little better, and that's all that matters - but it's if Ivy Bridge will finally manage to make my C2D setup feel old. Will it?

You see, i'm working and gaming on a 5 year old machine, with a 280GTX bought on eBay for £50, and everything still works perfectly.

Many years ago,in the infancy of computers, things used to go horribly wrong - in fact, the was hardly ever a platform that didn't have several things going horribly wrong at once, and each technological step-up would fix only a few of these, often adding a couple more in for good measure..
But around the years of WinXP SP2, and the C2D, everything started to fall into place.. OSs were stable, hardware got its bugs sorted out, and essentially my machine can do everything that any modern one can.. in the same way. Maybe, just maybe, a very little slower but, hey, is that really worth two grand????

Here is an example (if i find it): FLASH/NAND based storage, or SSDs to us, hailed as revolutionary, "hard disk has always been a bottleneck", "you will be amazed at the speed" and all that shit.
Mind you, a decent SSD today is around £400.
Then, you get articles like this one Anandtech forums:
I got an SSD, why doesn't Windows boot much faster?
And Lol 'n behold, your £400 doesn't actually do anything that you can see.

Cue excruciating explanation of this new and amazing technology that offers very little real life improvement, unless you have ADD and really think its ok to spend £400 to wait two seconds instead of three to watch a film on your computer.

So, will Ivy Bridge truly outperform my Core2Duo ?

Honestly, i don't know. I almost hope it does, because CPUs have become less and less of an interest for me since this build, as i hardly feel that i have a need for more computing power. Ask me, and i can easily tell you the Nvidia 560Ti is the best GPU on the market, and yet, why would i want to buy one?? I still play everything that comes out ..

And again.. i mostly just play QL ...

Sorry Corsair !

2011-10-06T19:10:00.001-07:00

I'm sorry but the new C600T looks fucking horrible; they made it look so cool in the press releases and photos, but in the flesh its shit; the (huge) front bezel is horrid plastic and if you take that out you'v got a $160 box case that you can get for $40 from NZXT.

I saw the black 600T last week at Yoyotech .. just horrible. I can't believe i actually posted on YouTube that the white one was "awesome" . .

2011-08-04T13:53:00.001-07:00

HIRED !

2011-07-14T22:49:00.000-07:00

Today, helped someone across the globe get a PC built for the 12yo nephew; feels good to have done a good action. I wonder if now i can call myself "computer hardare guru".

next week work interview for a full-time audio technician job, i sure hope Karma Kat will smile upon me :)

Creationism For You®

2011-07-07T23:45:00.000-07:00

I understand that a lot of people believe the bible to be true;
well here then is Creationism For You.

In the beginning, six thousand years ago(circa), God created the Earth and the cosmos, in all its glory; the Earth was created as it was six thousand years ago, with a past of billions of years, like when a writer creates a film that hints at a past time. So, like creationism wants it, the Earth was created already 4.7 billion years old, and the universe around it was created 13.7 billion years old. Adam himself was created an adult, so he was already *old* when he was created from nothingness. Alternatively, the Universe, with all the people living on Earth, was "summoned into being", perhaps from a parallel universe.

Then the history of Adam and Eve unfolds. The descendants of Adam become the Jewish tribes of Egypt, and God tells them "you are my people".
So God creates the Jews. The descendants of Adam go forth and "take wife" from the humans who were already there, *not* created by God. (read the bible - it's true.)

Alas, when God speaks that there are rules to be followed, eternal peace or damnation, what is to be eaten, and so forth, he speaks exclusively to the Jews; not to the romans, the greeks, the phrygians, or the persians.

There you go. Creationism For You;

Remember, when you speak of sin, eternal damnation, and punishment, that only applies to YOU. Not to us.

If Yahweh is listening to you, he doesn't care for us, doesn't listen to us, and doesn't let us play his game. While we may have no fear of Hell, we also have no chance to ascend to Heaven.
Please refrain from commenting - i do not blame you for not actually knowing this stuff, the bible can be a hard thing to study - that "the way is through me": when Jesu said that, he again meant it only *for the people he was speaking to*, again, the Jews.

Unfortunately i must advise that unless you are of the blood of Adam - i.e., a descendant of one of the six tribes of Israel - the same applies to you: no Heaven or Hell either, buddy - just eternal boredom.

There; this should pretty much eliminate the creationist movement in one swoop.

Consider that: 1) all this is true - according to creationist, but if you want to stretch it, possibly to everyone else too. After all, the "created old" argument really doesn't have a way that can't work - and 2) pretty much every creationist out there is white american (not Jewish), and not only you have a solid argument for them to not try to push "salvation" unto you (or anyone else who isn't a pure-blood Jew), but you also hold the revelation that "salvation" doesn't apply to them, either.. and it's all true.

Read the bible

Lys Agnes

2011-06-11T09:33:00.000-07:00

No Comment

Videogames

2011-06-10T09:06:00.000-07:00

I want to review briefly a couple of games that i have played lately and that - since i always whine on about how bad games are - were pretty nice and worthy of their shelf price.
All these games can be either purchased from your local retailer, or downloaded illegally from any of a number of websites, the choice is yours; in the end, game companies must be rewarded when they put out a good product, and there is nothing wrong with paying for something you like.. honesty is its own reward.

The First Templar
This is a easy going third-person combat game, rather arcadeish, where you run around in a closed environment killing scripted encounters; it's easy, the combat is rather simplistic, and that's about it. Not a great game by any extent, but it's got some nice writing, and even though you have seen it all before, it's all done rather tastefully.
The graphics are delicious, even if the coding behind them seems pretty horrid since this game will try to murder you graphics card, but i love it, great atmosphere. TFT also tries to do away with classic hollywoodian scripts and even if the sidekick is a bit out of place, the main character is very well written, in person and historically. The story flows well, and keeps you interested; this is one of a very few games where i wasn't skipping the cutscenes at the first chance. The "costumes" being locked in chests which are quite hard to find is sux, but costumes are just a bonus, and you can whizz through the game and not miss out on anything. Truly recommended, and hating the fact that most reviewers have ripped on this game and called it shit.
On a sidenote, i'm playing The Witcher 2 and i'm hating it.

The Black Mirror (part 3)
I have not played parts 1 or 2, but part 3 is truly engrossing. This is a point&click adventure reminiscent of the olden days, with very good graphics and a rather nice and realistic story. Why i like TBM3 is because of two things: first, the puzzles - which are the core of these games - are REALISTIC, not some weird "use hat to move stone" combinations, along with the fact that item locations make sense; this helps with the gameflow and makes you feel like you really are solving the mystery. Second, the writing is really, really good. I mean it, the game directing is truly superior and the script is good, and the whole game design is absolutely fantastic, at times you feel like everything you see onscreen is real. These people really know how to write a P&C game.

I am also playing some games which are absolutely horrid, and therefore feel that i have to warn you;

Brink
Which has had a massive, nationwide publicity campaign, is tripe; "Revolutionary" if you have lived under a rock for the last twenty years, and nothing more than a ripoff of Team Fortress 2(and every other online FPS ever). It's shit.

The Witcher 2
Fantastic graphics, really eye-watering splendor, but truly horrid gameplay. Two things.. three things i hate about this game. The Combat, which is not that far from TFT, in being arcadeish, truly random, but also way too fucking hard; The Interface, which is the worst fucking interface i have ever seen in a game since i was born, and lastly, The Interface, which is so fucking bad it makes me want to open my blog and write up a post on how fucking bad it is.
Also, The Witcher 2's writing is dark, mature, blah blah blah, but horribly hollywood - same old shit, but with swear words.

Dungeons & Dragons, Daggerdale
Fuck me this is really shit. Would have been a great title on launch date for your PS2, thirteen years ago.

I'v been out of the loop for a while, but meh.

Man or Myth

2011-05-29T04:33:00.000-07:00

I thought about writing the biographies of people who influenced me - as i know them; So more than a biography it's an influentiagraphy.

Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson teh IVth you know your life is going to be awesome when your name has a "the Fourth" in it :/
Also known as Frank Black, put together a band in the late 80s, by sticking ads on poles (the iron things, not the people from Poland) around the streets of Boston (center of the world, apparently, if you are a musician). People who answered and were taken (it's not known if anyone was discarded) were Kim Deal, David Lovering and my man, Joey Santiago.
You can read about them in teh Wikipedia, they were The Pixies (or the Pixies, proper capitalization, if you go by the T-shirts);
I first knew about the Pixies in 1987 (pretty good uh ?), when i was staying over at a friend's in Brazil - we were in school together in Rome, and on summer break and totally coincidentally in Rio, and we were both learning guitar in school with mr.Zimmerman, only he was into stuff like Jobim(*w) while i was into Dire Straits and stuff;
So, over his place, i randomly grab a hold of a "blank" cassette (*w) and asked him ( i was bored out of my mind, and hated lamers like Jobim) "what's on this tape?" and he said "man, thats not good" .. so i insisted, and said "yes, but WHAT'S ON IT?" and he insisted "not good".

As you can imagine the tape was a -pretty good - copy of Surfer Rosa and the most revolutionary album in history after Elvis and the Beatles.

After it blowing my fucking mind sky high, i went back home and bought the second album as well . Then i bought Bossanova, and listened to it while skipping school, until the batteries of my Walkman (*W) ran out.
I dare anyone to listen to Hang Wire and not go into a murderous frenzy :?

Ok, enough w/ teh Pixies.

(in case you hadn't noticed, "teh" is intentional;

Emmanuel Top
French guy, fat and ugly.
ed2k:
//|file|Emmanuel%20Top%20-%20The%20Complete%20Works.rar|1110611437|C098F20F979535ED32F9201DB98DD581|h=OQD2ULC4ANQR6DW2R2RQ5V6YIEPBZMHW|
also, the man who personifies Acid (the music genre) (*W) and his mighty album Asteroid - which you can find in the .RAR from the eD2K link above, made by Yours Truly after many sleepless nights in front of DC++, still hovering about teh internets (yes, i'm proud), containing just about everything he's ever made.

I'm not going to say anything else - ET is a hard man to appreciate, his music is uncompromising, you get it or you don't.

Working in music p.1

2011-05-27T07:42:00.000-07:00

Here is a short list of things people will need when trying for a career in performance - this is my opinion, so take it at "whatever" value.
I'm writing this piece because i'm surprised at how many very skilled young guitarists are out on youtube who yet don't know that they need these other elements to succeed.

(1)the Product.
music is a product you sell, but the sellable* product is made up of many factors - like many other businesses . .
I consider Rock to be the main venue in Music Business, because even if a Product is branded otherwise, the business elements which contribute to its creation are rooted in the businesses which came out of the Rock industry;
So, a group will need to have these, for point 1(please note that not all are fundamental, and there are ways to get around the lack of one of these, but these are the targets that everyone should have)
Technique
Looks
Awesomeness
Songwriting
Lyrics
Production
Business Mentality
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
explanation: technique is the ability to play instruments and sing; after all, it's music you sell, so being able to perform it is important; plus, when you perform live, this becomes more important than ever. Looks are a major selling point, not everyone has them and they have been proven over time to be the (second?) biggest selling factor of all - this element should be run parallel with PR, obviously. Awesomeness is a stupid word to encompass showmanship, charisma, PR stunts, stage setup, lighting, costumes, and everything else that is visual yet stricktly about the musicians - videos count too. Songwriting is different from techinque, extremely precious yet rarely necessary - and can easily be subcontracted, if a good budget is in. Lyrics help selling only when they are keyed to product placement - market niche image; it hardly pays to sing about romance in a grindcore band, does it? Production ought to be self explanatory, yet the burden falls on the business leader, so it's here instead of part 2. Business mentality is when a group has a business leader, an effective business plan, a solid model, and business discipline - thus producing more sellable product for the budget. A business mentality is also where the business leader seeks out and obtains the most "shelf space" (gigs) as a priority over anything - sell even if you suck.

(2) Image
this one is short.. if you can understand it:
Market Niche product placement
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Selling" music is something which often escapes musicians altogether - you are creating a consumable product, and as all consumables, you need Location, Location, Location. The three "L" are what product you are selling, who you sell it to, and how you sell it to them - in catering, it would go like this : pasta, from a restaurant, in goodge street. trying to sell the right product to the wrong people will not cut it, nor selling it from a horrid venue; by extention, sale techniques, presentation, all make up LLL.
Music sells when it is well packaged, presented, and when it stimulates the appetite for its consumption, so chose your target audience, package it (and yourself - see point 1, many aspects of yourself make up the product, not just "the music") so it appeals to them, and make sure they can buy it.

(3) Business Enterprise Structure
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
When selling music, you will need to head a large structure, composed of bus drivers, hair stylists, photographers, managers, agents, promoters, and so on. Your choice is simple (or is it?) : the ones which provide you with the biggest cash flow. End of story - do not compromise you cash flow for artistic integrity .. even if most musicians do the opposite.

(4)Time and Money Budget
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Working in music takes both, and trying without is doomed to failure - if you have no funds, don;t attempt a music business venture, for it will fail you.

That's it.

Not as complicated as it sounds, but subtle, here is a recipe for success that will never fail you (unless your band's name is Anvil);

Good luck, and To Futures Bright !!

*Blogspot's dictionary doesn't recognize this word :/

This is going straight in my blog ...

2011-05-20T12:04:00.000-07:00

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3035144?start=0&tstart=0

Sometimes i feel like banging my head in nerd rage when i gaze upon the incredible stupidity of Mac users.

Seriously, be prepared; if you own a Mac you are a certified idiot. You'r a cretin, a moron, an imbecile, a drooling braindamaged zombie.

here is a post by some shmuck who, as a Mac user, installed something just because his computer told him to:

I have the Mac Defender virus, got it late last night on an image search. I trashed as much as I could, but unpleasant unwanted sites keeps popping up,on Firefox. HELP!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

and his friend then told him that :

MacDefender is not a virus per say, there are no viruses for MacOSX. It is a type of malware.

allow me to dissent you fucking nincompoop (i'm running out of insults here), but viruses ARE malware. they certainly aren't niceware, or pcware, or oopsware, or even viruware. they'r fucking malware.

And it's "PER SE" - lay off the latin if your mom dropped you on your head when you were a baby, you blockhead.

Take a minute to read the internal memo here http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/apple-macdefender-investigation-may-16-2011.png where Apple tells its employees to deny* that any such malware (oops, i meant virus) exists, then proceed with the earlier post, and you will find that the great stupidini's solution to a virus was ...

Hi Joseph,

I completely re-installed the OX software from the Installation Disk. Now everything is working fine...
I noticed however that some people are talking about a safari setting re: allow files to automatically open..
How do I get this setting!!

Thank you soooo much Joseph!!!

Well fucketty-da thank you so much Joseph, you just threw the age of computers back fifteen years.

I hate you. With all my guts. But there is one thing that makes me feel better, that's i know that when you go to the alley to suck some cock, that cock belongs to a PC user.

*kinda reminds me of Microsoft in the heyday. Funny how MSFT cleaned up their act, and now Apple is making all their mistakes once again.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20071075-260/apple-samsung-request-for-ipad-3-iphone-5-is-harassment/

W00T!

2011-05-15T15:58:00.000-07:00

Woot! Finally managed to get back to 3x30@12.5Kg , looking to get 3 whole sets of 3x30, then move up the weight; but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Looking at myself - and the world around me - i doubt that anything like success will come around, so being a 40yo fit body is possibly the only taste for success i will ever have, and getting some rub action is better than not getting anything at all;

Becoming old is both good and bad at the same time, so, maybe "weird" is a better description of what i'm going through right now; for example, Movie2k ( http://www.movie2k.to/ ) has shocked me in the same way that RedTube did ( http://www.redtube.com/ ) - as a young boy, getting a hold of porn was something of a great occourrence, and later "the" internet impressed me and everyone else with the possibility of downloading free porn.. amazing, until the endless waits in front of WinMx took their toll on my sleep cycle, and RedTube and its immediate-delivery porn was something of a culture shock, all that excitement of my youth fulfilled thoroughly, and gone, at the same time;

Now Movie2k does the same, with instant TV and cinema, all free;

Mind you, this stuff is illegal*, and yet all in broad daylight, simply because the formula is impossible to stop - when the content is contested as illegal, it gets taken down, then replaced by another illegal copy, and in practice nobody gets sued.

So .. thats it. Watch stuff at Movie2k, pump iron, and cross your fingers, let's see what the future holds for us.

Cheers,

Bokken

*it is illegal, but "server side" (as opposite to "client side"), meaning if there ever is any fault involved, it's the webhost who gets the bill, not you.

Esther Ku

2011-05-15T06:36:00.000-07:00

Today i got the giggles (i'm mildly in love) for Ester Ku

she's smart, funny and - in my eyes - incredibly beautiful. Also helps that she's a cool 10 years younger than me .. yummy.

Still working with barbells, trying to get to 3x3x30@ 12.5Kg

Maybe if i shape up really a lot, i can land a chick like that :p

The Life of a Restaurant Manager

2011-05-07T12:52:00.000-07:00

I'll try to make a long story short; Recently i'v been trying out for a position as "Team Leader", which is a fancy name for Assistant Manager, with a big company, Withbread to name names, and going through the job description with the Manager i had clouds of dark thoughts going through my head.. that can be summed up by the word "boring".
Yep, instead of thinking how hard the job is going to be, my head was already on the "oh this is going to be tedious".

If you have any experience in the restaurant business you will know that a manager's job is anything but relaxing - essentially, you are a waiter who also does a million other things, and generally speaking you are the onoly one who really gives a crap about the business, with everyone else interested in one of the following, instead : Tips, Not Working, and Getting Out.

Withbread instead have a structure in place where managers do the management, and staff does the work, which is .. nice, if you think it can work, but i have my doubts.. if only, for the fact that i believe in "lead by example", and after all, what a restaurant really needs is really good staff, if hey had that, management needs would be minimal.

So, Withbread's managers do exclusively the management work. And apparently, so do many other businesses, here and elsewhere.
In fact, i was watching once again an episode of Kitchen Nightmares USA, and Gordon walking in to be greeted by a formidable looking lady claiming "i am the manager"; my thoughts were "and so you take the blame for everything that's wrong in here". But apparently no, a manager doesn't actually manage the restaurant.

You see, a restaurant is - like many other businesses - a system : 1) money is used to buy food and to transform it into the sold product 2) the product is sold to the customers 3) the cycle repeats. Other subsystems include the cleaning of the premises (part of 2), the serving (also 2), the cooking (part of 1), keeping all the structure functional , i.e., bills paid, machines working, etc.. (part of both 1 and 2), customers booking and table orders (part of 1 & 2), and so on. In my short experience, the person who makes sure the system works is called a Manager; if the general consensus is that this isn't the Manager's job, ok then, i will admit i am wrong, but then i am curious as to who exactly does that.

Or perhaps people think that this role can be split amongst different people, but then it leads to problems that we see happening every time a new episode of Kitchen Nightmares airs.

To be fair, there are many problems a new food business can have, but when we look at Kitchen Nightmares, the problem is always the same - in Chef Gordon's own words, "the food is shit".

Now, customers are normal people - believe it or not - and they *will* put up with poor service; hey, there's even a famous restaurant back home where the waiters yell obscenities at the customers (properly called "The Insult"), and it's packed every day.
But if the food's bad, there is no way you will stay afloat - nope, you'r going under.

End of story, i have a really, really hard time understanding what keeps today's managers from successfully managing a food premise : you know what the system is, if the food is bad, where can you go to locate the problem ??
Right, the Chef.
And if the Chef is bad, what do you do ?

I have never had an instant of hesitation to fire an inefficient staff person - people would not put up with a mechanic, a doctor or a plumber not doing their job properly, but for some reason they are willing to put up with a chef that is incompetent and/or does not perform properly.

In the end, dear Gordon, it's not the Chef who deserves a bollocking, it's the Manager; their very job description is "take shit for everything that happens here", and if you are not able, or willing to do it, don't call yourself a restaurant manager. It's an insult to those of us who really do the work.

Cheers,
Bokken

Good & Bad from Apple

2011-05-04T06:34:00.000-07:00

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/Quad-Core-iMac-2011-iMac-Core-i-iMac,news-35513.html
New Macintosh products are coming down in price (sorta) and the hardware is getting better, so most of the former reasons for not buying a Mac are fading away.

However, Apple is every day exhibiting more and more old-skool Micro$oft behaviour, and i'm afraid i have to call for a boycott. Interesting how instead, Microsoft is trying mighty hard to become a respectable company again.. they haven't done anything horrible in a cool five years, and that's points for good behaviour right there.

Thats it. Short post.

Oh .. and btw .. "you'r lucky that you'r hot and smart because ... well, you'r lucky that you'r hot and smart";

Doctor Taub (Peter Jacobson) - best character, AND best actor on House M.D.

YoYo Diet and Barbell Training

2011-04-29T15:19:00.000-07:00

Gonna edit my post backwards, for those who read it; not excercising at all right now - as i don;t have my weights and i'm ultimately lazy, but am considering quitting smoking. And eating better.

Back soon with weights (maybe next week).

*****************************************
Well, i have had enough of waiting to have a job (an excuse to be active) to get fit again; of the 56 pounds i had lost, most are back on, and i hate it.

Here is my diet diary, starting today. Barbell weight does not include the rod.
Day - body weight - reps - barbell (each)weight - notes, if necessary

Day 1 - 112Kg, 4x20 rep 12.5Kg
Day 2 - 112Kg, 4x20 @ 12.5Kg .. spent whole day eating :/
Day 3 - Sunday who-ho!
Day 4 - 112Kg, 4x25 @ 12.5Kg
Day 5 - 112Kg, 3x25 (lazy) @ 12.5Kg. . bought multivitamin supplement (don't take this as an endorsement for supplements)
Day 6, 114Kg !, 2x25, 2xEx
"train to exaustion" means keep pumping until your muscles are too tired to continue. many trainers reccomend "always training to exaustion", but i'm in the middle .. sometimes yes, sometimes no. when i feel like it.
Also got some "inspirational videos" from http://www.youtube.com/user/sixpackshortcuts#p/u/47/id4ANbSJAew

looking forward to doing some running.
Day 7, 114Kg, 2x25, 2xEx
Day 8, 114Kg, 2x25, 2xEx
Day 9, 115Kg (LOL), 3x25 .. boring. hate having no job, my metabolism is down in the gutter, and my appetite is skyrocketing.
Day 10, sunday again. watching CSI, the first series :/

day ..12 ? doing ok, 3 reps
yday did 8 reps x Ex :)

having trouble posting every day , so today is 27/5/11, doing good on the reps, managed 2x 3x30 quite easily, now going to expand to more excercises. i'm really out of shape ..
biceps getting bigger, but nothing more.

many days later .. no diet yet; but barbells have gone up to 20Kg per, and successful 3x rep. hope to get to 3x3 by end of next week, no real change in bicep size, but my back feels better. keep you posted.

Have it Your Own Way

2011-04-29T12:29:00.000-07:00

I'm having a hard time posting this, because i love to have as my first post THIS ONE , but also because i have to essentially condemn something that i have always loved.. having the biggest gun.

Yes, when i was younger i drooled over the new S&W 10mm range, as it provided "far better ballistics and stopping power", and have been obsessed with the idea of always being the guy "with the best gun"; and for the same reason, i waited to train in any martial art until i found out for sure which martial art was "the best", which one allowed me to learn how to punch through bricks, and not waste my time with etiquette, and bowing, and discipline and stretching and all that stuff which you *always* have to do, in a real world gym.

I never was, really, attracted to martial arts in the real world, though i consider them a great escapist fantasy at any other time, having even taken Karate when i was younger, but the sport did not match my expectations of .. well, violence. The most fun sport i have ever done turns out was wrestling - the real thing, not the TV stuff - even though it looks like the gayest sport in the world, it's actually one of the few contact (ie, "beat the crap out of the other guy") sports that you can get satisfaction out of, without risking serious personal injury. Great fun that was.

But the one thing that eventually turned me off from taking any martial art too seriously, is that they all require intense dedication, and there are a few things wrong with that:

First off, when i go to training i go because i want to fulfill a fantasy, so, i want to learn badass combat moves; i do not want to learn meditation, respect and discipline. Sure, those elements - which i now appreciate - have their importance, but could - should - be kept out of the sport until say, first dan. This would appeal a lot more to young practitioners who come to the sport for its fascinating martial aspect. and if you didn't get that right, let me say it again : Martial, ie connected with "kicking butt". Teachers who ramble on about pacifism and humility have forgotten what kind of people actually embodied their sport when the sports where not sports at all, but a daytime trade. I find that a student who is charmed by the violence and arrogance of medieval samurai has more right to being taught Japanese martial arts than any zen/calligraphy/meditation- loving hippy.

Point the second, intense dedication, it's something i always knew i could never have for what, honestly, i find to be absolutely pointless in the real world; what is the likeness, i ask thee, that i will need to defend my life with sword against sword, today, and in the near future??

I'd like to blend in this post the whole sword loving, gun loving fanboysm that the internet - and YouTube in particular - feeds so virulently these days, and i come forward immediately and say that yes, i am one too, i am fully engrossed in the "best sword against zombies" discussions.. and since i like to take stuff to extremes, i really want to get this bloody answer out, so which is it, which sword is the best for killing zombies??

Q1: what is the best sword for killing zombies?
A: it doesn't matter really, if you use a melee weapon to attack something that lives because of infectious pathogens, the better the weapon the more likely you will die from infection, ergo it doesn't matter.

Ok, back to serious stuff.

Martial arts are fine for making you fit; also..

Any situation in life that enforces self-control and discipline upon you is good, to a point, as it grants you self-control and discipline. These traits can have both positive and negative effects on your life, but here we drift into existentialism; lets just say that self discipline is good to have, and thank you mr. Martial Arts teacher, but it's *not* something that is unique of martial arts.

Being fit through sport has incredible benefits, and competitive sport also gives you great advantages in life, so much better to do martial arts than not do them.

On the subject of what martial art to do , essentially the main point of this post, there are very few elements you will learn in your MA class that will have any relevance in the real world... consider this;

1) Having an aggressive, violent mentality is the only thing that will ever guarantee you more victories than losses in normal-life situations, say, muggings, and bar brawls. Training will not, besides the obvious advantages of having a fit body. All these will also, and almost perfectly symmetrical to the advantages they bring, force you into more confrontations, meaning less losses in percentage, but actually more time spent in hospital.
Instead of going to the gym, take a course in Java programming, and i guarantee you will lose 0 fights, ever.

2) Sports which use weapons are obviously more dangerous to you than to your opponent.
First, you run the risk of injuring yourself in training; should that not happen, and you *do* have a confrontation, it's a toss between losing the fight and getting your ass kicked, or winning it, and winding up in prison for murder/attempted murder/grievous harm; Very rarely will you encounter a court case where a melee weapon was used as defence and the attacker was stopped - and the defender not jailed.
THE MAIN REASON for this is that people you are "legally" allowed to use a weapon against - in most legislations, offenders who are themselves armed - will likely *not* be wielding a sword.. but a pistol.

3) Different sports give different advantages, depending on the situation .. wrestling is the sport - in my useless opinion - most likely to allow you to end a fight, with you unharmed; then other guy will be unharmed as well, obviously, but he might be in an uncomfortable position.
Boxing is seen as a rough and rude sport, but its THE sport which will teach you to hurt people, regardless of what you see on YouTube; ten years boxing teaches you to hit fast, hit first, hit hard, and not get hit. ten years of teakwondo teaches you very little .. no vaulting in the air. this is expecially true for people who start the sport later in life.
Karate and other hard forms can be completely useless in real life - expecially as your training does nothing to prepare you for real combat.
Aikido has elements of genius in it, but good luck learning the useful stuff in a single lifetime..
Jeet Kune Do, if done properly - that is, as a form of boxing, basically - is the best training for real life combat
MMA's are great if you find a competent teacher, and essentially can be just as good as JKD or any other sport.
Non-Lethal weapons, such as eskrima, or block-heavy "sports" such as krav-magra are also great.. wooden sticks are the weapon you will most likely be able to improvise, and any block-heavy sport is just as good as wrestling, if not better - as it has punches as well.
Soft forms, and weird stuff like Capoeira, can get you more hurt if you practice them than if you don't. The reason anyone has ever won a fight after their training with a complex form martial art, is the training itself - the muscles, not the style.
Swords, and other weapons.. forget about them. training seriously in these things is a waste of time - albeit a very cool one, i must agree. But they will *never* help you any more - and often considerably less - than if you took a class in boxing.

4) No amount of training will ever make you win against someone with a gun.

5) Running away is ALWAYS the best option. There are no experience points in real life.

6) You can get fitter by swimming than you can by practicing martial arts.

7) Being really, really strong is not a matter of training.. it's a matter of mentality - only your body mind can give your body the 24/7 training that results in inhuman strength. Pain, a harsh life and stupidity are the three factors which will allow you to unlock your pain threshold and make you really, really strong. Training alone will not help you more than a little. Training will, however, get your aggression to raise, and force you into more fights - and more losses. I do not recommend you go down this route.. intentionally.

So, in seven commandments, the best Martial Arts you can practice are JKD, and Krav-Magra, but often Boxing will be more accessible to you and will likely have a proper gym as backing structure where you can get your shape up.

If like me you like Katanas, buy a $300~ T10 one from SBG, in the links on the sidebar, and don't stress too much on the tameshigiri.. just do it for "the samurai inside you"; make sure you buy a first-aid kit, first. and a Bokken.

A parallel to this is the eternal question of YouTubers "what is the best gun/rifle in teh world", and my answer is this:

Guns are not chosen by their users, they are given to them; the vast majority of people who find themselves actually using a firearm for its intended purpose - to kill people - are soldiers, and they do not chose what rifle or handgun they use, rather, they are given one by whatever force they serve under.

In case of unlikely zombie apocalypse, the best weapon is the one that has the most abundant ammo, so any 9mm / .308 calibre gun will do. If you are in the army, and/or expect to go to war at some time, then any 5.56mm rifle will do, with the AR15 being true and tested, if a little boring. Snipers are awesome, until you find out the truth that A) they are extremely limited in their usage, and B) they are incredibly hard to "actually hit anything with" at any range higher than what your M16-clone allows you.
Shotguns are slow, short ranged, and impossible to reload.

Pistols are deadly only from 9mm upwards, and the calibres most often considered are 9mm and .45, with the latter being a good stopper - yet more recoil and less ammo in a magazine. Also, not quite as common as the 9mm, which is then the best choice.

I follow the idea that its' "more important to hit your target than to kill it, and more important to fire at your target than to actually hit it".

Fire at someone and they will have to - unless on PCP - get out of the way, and not be able to return fire;

Hit someone, and they will have a much harder time trying to hit you back - no matter what the calibre was, getting shot is never "just a flesh wound".

But then again, if i ever was to have a gun, i would probably go for a classic long barrel .44 revolver - chances are the gun will more often serve the purpose of intimidation, than actual killing, and big scary guns do that better. Remember, killing people is illegal! in most countries (joke). I can't recall now any modern conflict where both sides were wearing body armour (vietnam ?? no .. serbia? no. israel? nope. afghanistan ? no again. ), but in general if you are in a conflict, and you DO wear body armour, then you want 5.56 rifle and .45 pistol.. large calibre pistol for stopping power, if you are down to your sidearm then you are "disarmed", but hold that .45 for "emergency" stopping power. If you are in a war and NOT wearing body armour, then you are one of the bad guys, and also have a 7.62 rifle and a 9mm pistol.. the smaller pistol calibre for more shots, after all, if you are shooting at someone in full combat armour kit, only a lucky shot to the face will save you - a .45 slug against a US'Marine body armour will do jack shit :/

In case you use guns for their intended purpose, but outside of the armed forces - say, law enforcement and security (where permissible) you are then looking for different elements to your weapon; first, if it is preferable to use a lethal weapon, say, a .45 instead of a .22, as many legislations have harsh laws determining "excessive force"; assuming that you'r in the clear, then lightweight, low-recoil weapons that afford speed and higher short-range accuracy are your best bet, so once again, 9mm is your calibre of choice, with the MP5 (and clones of) being the best option .

If you hunt, this being in my view the most likely occasion of anyone using a weapon of his choice to kill something, well, you essentially buy what looks coolest to you. Go crazy. Forget the ballistics, you are not going to go alone against anything dangerous anyway. Seriously, when has anyone gone hunting Elk, *alone* ??
Exactly, it's not just your gun, but in case of necessity all your buddies will be firing as well, and even the meanest moose will drop after a hail of 16-gauge, or four clips of 22LR. And if a bear ambushes you, well, you are fucked.

My point here is that although some things, some guns, or martial arts, might appear to be better than others, their difficulty of use, or awkwardness, might in the end make them less realistically useful then their "superior" counterparts. Also, the "better" one concedes to the better-skilled user, and therefore whatever you chose, stick with what turns your training in the best results.

And if you do something because it's cool .. don't kid yourself. Do it because it's cool.

Why i think computers are awesome

2011-04-22T19:24:00.001-07:00

see if you understand this one

The Sushi FAQ - The Definitive Guide to Sushi and Sashimi

2011-04-22T15:09:00.000-07:00

The Sushi FAQ - The Definitive Guide to Sushi and Sashimi

just thought i'd try the "share this" button. i love sushi - and my dream is to be able to make it just like the chef at Hasekura used to make - Takeshi, here's to you kid, your sushi was the best i have ever tried.. and i tried a few.

Came here from YouTube, did ya ?

2011-04-22T03:22:00.000-07:00

Just in case someone happens here from elsewhere, i need to point out some things about myself that aren't clear and might confuse people.

I am a very nice guy (introduction) but also a very stupid person (ha!) :/
Let's just say that i look at life in a somewhat different way from the general consensus, and am not afraid to speak out using weird words, and so sometimes my attitude can offend.

Allow me briefly to say that i'm not happy with the homogenization of tought that has happened in the last forty years.. i'm not against the process itself, but i don't like the fact that we have settled for a standard that is a bit too low for my taste.

More in depth, i'd say that since these forty years, people have acquired a number of intellectual opinions at their disposal, which would be good were it not for two facts:

A) they didn't actually get there themselves, the just picked up the notions from some pseudo-idontwannahurtnobody-intellectual from TV, are therefore content with just repeating these "conclusions", and cannot elaborate OR explain how they got there (in other words, they know stuff they don't understand), and

B) the conclusions they arrived at aren't particularly smart.

Now, you'd think i would applaud people becoming more erudite, but as all they do is carry a bundle of information - and repeat it as if it were fact - that does not belong to them, i see this as more of a "becoming awkward", rather than "becoming smart". Let's say that carrying a book of calculus does not make you a college professor, it just weights you down.

And some - most of - my own intellectual arguments tend to challenge the established positions most people have on the subject.. why ?
Well, my guess is that socio-political and philosophical ideologies tend to be attached to a timeframe, they need to adapt to the times to to be of actual use (and then, i'v always had a problem with how we take Socratic philosophy as pure gold, but that's taking it too far for now).

So.. enough beating around the bush. If you got here by navigating through my many Internet personas, you might have found out at least one of the following:

1) i'm a racist.
2) i'm a sexist.
3) i'm an ageist.
4) i discriminate AND i'm a prejudist.
5) i endorse violent thought.
6) i like drastic measures.
7) i'm ruthless.
8) i'm an isolationist.
9) i'm an antitheist.
10) i'm arrogant.
11) i'm a classist, and an elitist too.
12) i'm an autarchist.
13) i'm a generally nasty person and deserve to be left alone.

Can't think of anything else now. Of course i'm willing to discuss all of these points at any time, but just as a FYI, if you got here because you saw some activity on a video, and came to my blog to say "awdy gawd, you are such a nasty so-and-so" save yourself, the answer is YES.

Good Luck,

Bokken

WD hard drives are ok, after all.

2011-04-17T06:09:00.000-07:00

Ok, two days ago something happened to my PC - a power-related problem, that ctually wound up frying one of the SATA ports on my motherboard, and it led to me discovering that i have made a mistake .. a grevious mistake, in my build, 3 years ago (!!!) that i just only discovered.

Yes, i somehow had a SATA power connector taking electricity from a fan cable - don't ask me how, i must have been really tired when i was setting up, because i missed that in PC building, a cable can take power as well as send it - ie, a connector isn't exclusively male or female, and after all these years i understand that this was the source of all my stability problems.

Well, just so that you should know, i can now excuse the drives - Western Digital is back at the top of the list - though, Seagate might just be as good, as they price everything lower.

I am such a n00b ..

Bokken at it again.

2011-04-16T06:44:00.000-07:00

I need to get back to training.

It's been a few days since i realized i need to get back in shape, and by that i don't mean running in East Ham Central Park, but lifting weights and dieting. Today, for example, i have steamed broccoli florets (from Iceland, £1 a bag, two meals out of each bag) and plain boiled rice.

I guess the point of diet is mostly psychological, not trying to make your food tasty yet light, but to actually do without the taste aspect - otherwise, you are always craving for more.

So back to my crash diet, plain carbohydrates, zero fat, zero sugars, steamed vegetables, minute amounts of calories (except for rice), and mad static exercise. Coffee, taurine if you will (man that stuff is sooo harmful to health), creatine to power up during exercise, sleep on empty stomach, no breakfast, etc.. brutal.

One thing i learned during my last diet - besides the fact that i was right on everything i thought i knew - is that my body should consume, and spend, at least five-thousand calories a day to be on the healthy side, not feeling hungry and miserable but also being fit, but as you can immagine, that is truly impossible; you see, it's assumed in that statement that you get there by doing something fun, and since i'm not wrestling or swimming anymore, i have no way to get that much sport in my life. Also - i should mention - i have no money to even buy, 5K calories of good food.

I wish this blog was so much more .. than just whining. I'm listening to BBC news, now, open in iPlayer in another tab in Chrome, and they are talking about the purchase of the Typhoon (the "Eurofighter"), and of course i have something to say about that as well - as i have opinions, strong ones to boot, on just about everything i see, read about, and hear - but have no energy to write about all of it.. two things then i think i should do.

1) I'm not really enamored with blogging, but it's not bad - just an activity, nice but not really that productive.
I'm absolutely sure that better results would come if i stuck with one subject instead of making it a random whine blog, as people who chance upon it might keep coming back to it if they find stuff that they find useful;
However the reason i never did something like that, is because i have always found some better website than anything i could do, no matter what the subject.
For example, HERE is a brilliant website (all free, of course) that deals with - amongst other things - audio, and this guy is not only a qualified technician (or scientist, should i say, for it is science he deals with, even though we assume "scientist" means "researcher"), but he obviously has some real hands-on experience, amking him quite the authority on the subject. This i have seen in all subjects that i have any knowledge of, or that i enjoy and/or find myself good at, and should anyone need information on the subject, i would address them to that website or the other - one thing i would *not* do, is try to water down the web by setting up a not-quite-as-good website just to get attention, or "traffic". Example n.2 : my Advisor at Ingeus is a person very active in business, as in he "owns dating websites" and "sells ebooks" and "wrote a book about DJ'ing", and kudos to him, but.. his websites are crappy, and they are more of a ripoff than anything; eBooks are something you should give away, not sell, and finally he isn't really the authority on DJ'ing, so .. honesty, and being concerned with the wellbeing of my fellow men prevents me from trying to push my inferior products when better stuff/info is out there, expecially when the better stuff is free.
Sure, i know a thing or two about audio, but i'm far from the biggest guru on the web - and the same goes for all the people who post on YouTube their great efforts and pass themselves as kings of their trade when they are in fact buffoons who know jack shit. like THIS GUY - he thinks he's the shit, but i'v seen him do things downright abysmal - some even dangerous, and not only i don't think he is great, i feel he should be punished in some way for what he does.
If there is one thing i do well, it's .. well, that's hard to explain. But writing it down n a comprehensible form is even harder, and it's not something i could sell anyway. So, this blog will either get shut down or it will be reformatted to fulfill one of two purposes - make me look good in the face of possible employers, say, an audio blog, mostly filled with lies, or purpose two, to draw some traffic, strictly one subject, even if i don;t know shit about it - and if someone dies trying to follow my diet, fuck them.

2) Why not take a picture of my big fat belly and post it, then a new picture every day, and - since i know i can easily lose 60 pounds - make it into another wonder story.
Have just finished reading Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre, and .. i lost my train of thought. Bollocks.
Last books i read - in the last two months - Ubik, Bad Science, Franny and Zoey (salinger), Great Gatsby .. again, The Virgin and The Gipsy (dh lawrence), a Science Fiction Omnibus, The Siege of Nanking (history of the boxer rebellion .. tedious to say the least), a really bad book by Iain M. Banks (yep, The Business was great, but this one ... meh), and am still trying to read the Ulysses - but i will probably give up, since i'm still on chapter two.
So, maybe i will just get back into training and make a big fuss of it, forget all my principles, try to score some femaley attention, and make money i don;t deserve. And might just be better for it. Who knows.

uncertain future, here is london, 2011, BokkenUK.

not getting hired in London, again :/

2011-04-13T05:28:00.000-07:00

Monday "night", around six~ish, i get a call from Lousie at A4e (a per-profit organization that works trying to get Jobseekers in employment), telling me verbatim "there is a wonderful catering opportunity that would suit you perfectly come along tomorrow morning and bring along - among other things - your ID and a proof of address", to which i replied i had no ID, as it's still being made in the chasm of Mount Doom (the italian consulate, bless their souls, 1-month wait for a paper i get done in a day back in italy), and i won't have it until early next month.

She said "bring along the rest of the paperwork, and be here tomorrow".

Now, i showed up as planned, and got put in a room with other ten people, we filled a form and wrote how really good we are at catering and how that particular company would immensely benefit from hiring us; i was done before the rest, so had my interview first. The whole process took maybe five minutes.

Immediately, i was told that A) a letter from the DWP with my address on it did not constitute proof of address (it does, according to the UK government, but not according to A4e - or this one guy at A4e, at least), and B)without my ID there was no way i could be put forward for the job.

To which i replied that the person who asked me to come there that day knew i did not have one.. omitting the "why the fuck did you make me come here then", with an understanding that the fault lies with A4e and not me, and they should be ashamed and i am pissed off - it's my time, and my money to ride the Tube from East Ham to Brixton, after all.

But not only no, then the interviewer proceeded to interview me for a position he had already told me i could not be put forward for.
And when he came to the fateful question "why do you want to get back in catering", which is essentially what my CV is full of since 2005 (i hate catering, but it has become my job), i really did not know what to answer.

And so the next day, i get a negative feedback and the assignment to undergo "interview technique training". I wish that i could assign them "don't make people come if you are going to turn them away" training, it would only seem fair.

I do recognize that interviews can be my weak point - after all, they are everyone's weak point - and i can benefit from training, at least i have been trained to say that, but seriously, i can't fault my answer on that day:

"i can't find work in Audio, so i work in catering".

Hey, this IS what is happening; under the circumstance, i see "interview training" as "lie your way into a job", if they are going to teach me to say anything which is not what i actually want to say.

Last weekend i got a call from two, not one, business owners, and both wanted to see me the next day; the second was a man who had just opened a takeaway pizza shop, not the most glamourous of jobs you might think, but new, small businesses located in posh areas are the best sort of employment you can get, take my word on this one. Having me already an appointment in the morning i offered to call him ASAP after i was done, and so i did.
Next day, at 11am, i phoned him back and told him i was ready to come to the interview, anywhere and anytime, and he told me he was first busy with his accountant, then the family was going on a break, and he'd call me monday~tuesday.

Of course by tuesday morning he had already "hired someone else".

SAVE YOUR RECEIPTS !!

2011-04-11T08:26:00.000-07:00

I made a mistake in the earlier post and forgot to mention that, out of £1200 pounds my PC cost to build, i actually get to keep some other parts now that upgrading is due; twelve-hundred quid, and i keep my Viewsonic 22" monitor, two hard disks at 250 GB each, the power supply, and the case.

I *do not* get to keep my CPU, CPUfan, RAM, motherboard or VGA.
Well, i get to "keep them", but not "in my build"; so, i'll just eBay them or something. CPU is obviously going out (in place of a 2500k, or whatever is coming in Ivy Bridge if it's really amazing), and with the new socket (1156? 1136? 2111? who knows) the old mobo and even the CPUfan will not work anymore.
And 4gigs of Corsair 4/4/4/12 ram (runs at 4/9, or even 3/10 if underclocked) would have been fantastic a couple years back, but it's all DDR3 now.

Oh, i can't tell you vehemently enough how happy i am that DDR3 has run into the wall and that 1333Mhz is ABSOLUTELY IDENTICAL to 1600Mhz.. hopefully, no more minute upgrade steps every other week.. for a while. Not that *I* would.. but you know; fanboys.

Things that broke:
1)Samsung DVD writer :/ was a disappointment, hated the cheap DVDs i bought from Poundshop, didn't actually have Lightscribe even though it was sold as having it, and well, it broke.
Replaced at £18.
2)Artic Cooling Pro7, the CPU fan, the little plastic pegs broke on one of the legs, well, half a peg on one leg, and i *did* uninstall it and then install it back again about 8 times, so i guess it's mostly my fault. Great fan, worth every penny of £17, now replaced with a £15 fan from some never-made-fans-before-but-made-other-PC-stuff company, works just as well (but the removable metal brackets that hold the fan in place are really, really bad).
3)the perennially failing-no-not-really-failing HD from Western Digital, one of two i have, i should have taken the hint when i saw it came new with a horrible soldering mark while its twin brother didn't. WD are possibly still the best brand of HD - reliability being funny enough, one of their strong points.
It's a shame they went for this "low energy" 5400rpm shit on their best models, i really want the extra 1% speed i get from a full 7200rpm model(irony.. sorta).

4)one of the two sets of RAM was somewhat faulty, and got replaced for free (and rather speedily) by Corsair.
Now, rather than say "Corsair make the best RAM", i will say "Corsair always price their RAM so well that there isn't any reason to buy anything else, ever". They do always hit that sweet spot, with the proper voltage, timings, speed, and the package (say, 2x4Gb instead of 2x2 or 4x2, plus the sweet heat dissipators), and in general they have consistently, for the past 3 years, offered this "package" of getting everything EXCEPT THE REALLY FANCY BESTEST for maybe two quid more than the competition.

And plus, if you want "the bestest", well, they do that as well.

5)Asus was a really big disappointment. They robbed me of a legit return, with my 8800GTS failing well within the limits of their loudly trumpeted 3-year warranty, and the card making twice the trip to their repair centre (expenses on me, mostly), and twice coming back as broken as before. Third time in, i just threw it in the garbage.
This is of course after a real Odyssey in trying to get a RMA in the first place.

And of course, the Asus mobo i bought was partly faulty as well, with the hi-def sound making a horrid white noise whine, and therefore i simply chucked it in the bin, not wanting to go through the same shit again.

I should point out that as of today, two companies make the "best" motherboards, and these are Gigabyte, and unfortunately, Asus. Asus also unfortunately makes the best VGA, as they always price down some truly sweet models, but as now i know how horrid their support is, i can easily say "stay away .. if you can".

6)My 4350 is also "half dead", and i replaced it before it died completely, with a really weak 5450, essentially the same thing, different name. Just an impression, i thought the 4350 actually did better, but meh.
I guess, if i had been less careless with my receipts, i would still have most of these parts, or even better a new one to replace the faulty, without having to pay.

SO THERE'S A LESSON, SAVE YOUR RECEIPTS !!

Of course all this is dependant on getting properly hired (and not just a "timewaste", £5'hour job), and fortunately i have just been contacted by a business owner looking for a manager ;/ shame how he was supposed to call me today, and hasn't. I'll ring him 2morrow, anyway.

My next build - if everything goes properly - will be like thus:

a 2500k, but not before i go to [H]ardforums and really read up on how soon the new stuff from Intel is coming out, and really *what* are we looking at.
If nothing magic is coming out, then a 2500k it is, simply because it's absolutely identical to the 2600k (IN REALITY, EVEN THOUGH on paper they look different), costs less, and can perhaps work even a little better.

a Gigabyte mobo, priced at around £105~110.
but i might try a MSI since everyone on [H] says they are awesome and cheap - more than risking it, i just see this as an opportunity to handle some new hardware and get an informed perspective at this company.
in case you haven't noticed, i see http://hardforum.com/ as the holy bible, torah and quar'an all rolled into one (and covered with whipped cream).

a whole, £130+ pack of 4x4Gb of Corsair DDR3 1.5v 1333Mhz RAM (or even 1600Mhz if they cost the same, which sometimes they do; as long as they are both 1.5v, they give me more overhead to OC).
Yes, i know it's not sensible, as i will probably not need 16Gb of ram, but the catch is, i want to buy the RAM *in one package*, and not risk buying a second set later and having it perform *better* than the first, it might sound like thats good, but you risk stability issues. Rather have four worse sticks, but tested to run in parallel.

A new VGA - did you really thing i was going to spend so much and not buy a new graphics card ??
Probably, something in the range of £110-130. Whatever that is, i don't care.
£40 is too little to get anything good, and the sweet spot (where the card runs everything, for around two years, by which time you just buy a new one) hovers between £60 (the 5670, if you can find it when the discounts are flying) and £100 (the 5750), with the market going up and down in a really irritating way.
Of course whether this is an ATI or a Nvidia is totally irrelevant.

A third HD, from NOT WD, not because now i think WD are shit, but because my motherboard's BIOS shows me two hard disks, one from WD, and another from WD, both same manufacturer's code (identical models), and it's fucking irritating having to restart several times, and unplug one then the other, to find out which one is C: . so, from ANOTHER BRAND. Probably a 1TB model, 7200rpm, nice big cache, but nothing expensive. I can get one from £43 new.

EDIT: did i say £43?? my bad. i meant £38. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1tb-hitachi-deskstar-0f10383-7k2000c-sata-3gb-s-7200rpm-32mb-cache-89-ms-ncq-oem

I'd love a SSD, but then again, i don't see the point of a superfast HD if it's that expensive. Hey, i can wait five seconds more to load up a game, and i'd rather spend the extra money on more storage space, or better VGA, or what not. A normal HD does the same stuff as a SSD, just takes a little while longer. And data is practically *never* going to be a bottleneck in any real world application.
Plus, do not underestimate the advantage of getting five-ten times the storage space for the price :/ my case can easily hold 5 HD, and if you want to push it, that's 10TB for £300. A good SSD will have maybe 80Gb, so you would be constantly deleting the old game to make room for the new.

Well, thats it. My Viewsonic stays, no reason to change it, i'll upgrade to a 26" when and if they ever get made. Which is *already*, since i just looked and Ilyiama makes a 27" for the same money i paid for my 22" three years ago, silly me. Of course.

Ok, so then, i'll upgrade to a new technology, like LED LCD, but then again, no, or at least not until i have read everything there is to read about them and understand exactly how that technology is performing at that time :/

unless you really want to be a twat, and then here http://www.scan.co.uk/products/23-samsung-md230x6-widescreen-eyefinity-six-screen-setup-! is a 6-monitor setup for two and a half grand, plus the cost of the videocards to run anything in that definition, which is - if my basic math training doesn't fail me - 5760x2160

Let me write that again

5760x2160

What sort of ludicrous triple-SLI do you have to run to get anything running at that definition??

Anyway..
As of today, the total (set to come down, even though we are at a low in the market) is £470. with the most expensive thing being the RAM, (all sixteen gigs of it), and that could be cut down by a meaty £80 if one wanted to just get the system running *almost to the top*, and while it doesnt include the price of the CPUfan, say another £20, it's bound to get cheaper as ram and other stuff comes down.

For someone (not me) who actually works with their PC, a £500 upgrade is a no brainer - for the price, you get a £1000+ PC that performs twice as well as a C2D base. Keep in mind that a P67 mobo will gladly and cheerfully whip your 2500k to 4~5Ghz.

Yep.

New architecture AND 4.5Ghz speed, thats a serious improvement on anything thats as old as mine, and mind you, my PC is still tons better than what you get in any Internet Cafe'.

So..
I really shouldn't try to end this post with anything like "a revelation" or "a wise advice".. if the stats from what i posted above don't convince you, i guess you don't love computers. But i can make again the point for watching what actually you get to keep from your old PC, and if nothing else, at least you get to keep the case - a good, solid case will last forever, and i find it comforting to know that the pieces i buy have somewhere to go once i take them home. My Ammo533 is not on the list of what needs to be upgraded, and probably will not be for another ten years; The HD i plan to buy is also going to stay in for at least another 5 years, as technology might make speedier HDs, but one terabyte of storage is still a fuckfull of data - oops, there is go again with bad words. Bad Me, bad, bad Me.

Wish me luck everyone. I am going to call mr. Epping (i name the people in my phone with where they live) and if things go as planned (HE said we were meeting mon-tue for a business proposal, after all - i didn't imagine it), i will soon be the proud manager of a pizza restaurant - mo' money, more possibilities.

Maybe some P***y, too.

Metro.co.uk

2011-04-06T11:14:00.000-07:00

just tought i'd run you through today's Metro, just for fun.

But first, my olden hardware is failing, one of the WD hard disks needs to be replaced (bad sectors), still, i recommend the brand as "unfailing", i guess someone has to get the occasional bad HD, and i was unlucky enough to get the one in a million bad apple. Sucks as it is my C:/, and i would have put off replacing it forever, but my DVD rw also has failed (must have bumped it during the last move, it's a Samsung - great lil piece of hardware), so i can't reinstall W7 on my D:/.. and so on.
Well, i abused this PC for four years now, it's just normal stuff will start falling off after a while. All in all, it was a bit less than £1200, and i get to keep the case, power supply, and one of the HD as storage.

Next build will be a 2500k, DDR3 and who knows what else, but not before i get a new job, of course. And from the look of things, it looks like it might take a while.

Which brings me to my first point -

In the Metro today i found a few things i want to talk about;
I always find stuff i want to talk about in the Metro, but i never bothered; not saying these are worse, but they did take my fancy and so here is the post: the price of fruit versus the price of meat, and being on the benefits.

Lately a few people have voiced on Metro how hard it is to eat a five-a-day, or the recommended amount of fruit and veg as your doctor would have you, and as soon as someone went and wrote a txt to the Metro saying how fruit and veggies are expensive and meat is cheaper, a horde of grass-munching hippies got enraged and spammed Metro's txt and Letters section, crying how easy is to eat 5aD and how people obviously buy fags and booze before they buy vegs (guilty as charged).

Well my reply is that i agree with the former. And to the latter i say, if you really count the fruit and veg you can get from a streetside stall, or from the Tesco economy section, as one of five a day, you aren't just deluded, you'r a danger to this country :/

Seriously, the cardboard bananas and plastic apples you buy from anything but Waitrose's "super fancy" sections are - to me, the posh Baronet of Whatchamacallit - not food. When i see a banana in Somerfield, i see a sex toy, not a piece of a 5aD. Ignorance is harmful, as you risk passing it down your family, and i am aghast at the idea of this shit being thought of as fruit, or veg, in the near future.

Of course, there is always the way to eat healthy for less, 50p for a bag of beansprouts, £1 for a bag of leeks from Tesco/Iceland (seasonal), and others, but a 65p for ONE tomato (and a shitty tomato too) from ASDA is where the problem lies.

Once in your miserable hippy life, go to Waitrose (or Harrods) and buy a £100 cart of the fanciest fruit and veg you can find. Then go home and eat them.
then consider that ..

Twenty years ago EVERYTHING was like that(better, actually).
Meat was truly more expensive then, and f&v were cheap and abundant, and they were AWESOME. But your own complacency of buying subpar fruit and veg allowed the market to concentrate on these low-risk products, so if today i can't buy a decent tomato, it's because of all the frikkin vegetarians who bought cheap crap in the past. And seriously, three quid for a kilo(!) of pork chops, you can't beat that.

ok , thats it, end of post :(

funny stuff about reverb

2011-04-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

note:

wet/dry.

when you send a sound to a reverb machine, one "knob" lets you adjust the percentage of original signal versus "with reverb" signal, or simply "How much reverb" you want added to the end signal, the "finished product" of the reverb machine. in most cases, these are called DRY (no reverb at all)and WET(only the reverb sound). whatever machine you own, there has to be a control that does this or something very close.

also note that "reverb" refers only about the sound that comes back to the source from bouncing off the walls - not the original signal. most applications call for a mix of the two.

difficult-to understand differences between artificial reverb and real reverb.

first of all, obviously real reverb (RR) originates from sound bouncing off surfaces, and in a plain square room these might nto be exactly as parallel as you would imagine; you ought to know that stuff that is *exactly parallel* tends to do weird stuff in the amazing world of audio physics (phase cancellation, anyone ?), while minor deviations affect these maths drastically.

However this is a minor point, granted, as in most modern habitat situations walls do indeed tend to be fairly parallel, and the reverb that reverb machines simulate is based on parallel walls; mind you, i am not talking about walls that cause standing waves, but rather a room constructed with the wall shape specular on both sides, so, if the left wall is twenty degrees bent to the left, the right wall is bent twenty degrees to the right. Most homes, offices and other non- audio related buildings are rectangular in shape, after all. It's entirely possible to have digital reverb units emulating a cavern, or a church, with large spaces and indistinctive shape; similarly, it is possible to have simulations of trully horrid spaces, such as pipes, tunnels and .. well, even most basic "club" settings are horrid, to my ears.

Artificial Reverb (AR) machines are quite stupid: whatever the room characteristics, the "walls" involved are matematically flat - the formulas around the parameters do what they are asked to do - modify the sound as if it bounced back from that surface.

I'm not saying that digital reverb units are bad, I'm saying that there are other things that natural ambients do to sound, that a AR unit just do not do; Absorption, for one. And refraction.

AR units create spaces. They go as far as deciding how reflective the "walls" are, but the other two elements are simply not there; they *could* be, in the future, if someone begins working them in to the machines, but as of today ( as far as i know, that is) if you want realistic reverbs from a machine, you have to cheat.

Absorption is a portion of the spectrum disappearing inside a substance - the spectrum of RR is never going to be equal to that of the originating sound; also, different densities and hardness of materials reflect different portions of the spectrum differently, with those few millimetres of plaster on your cellar wall reflecting differently (and at a different time) than the underlying brick. Wave amplitude per frequency is also a factor, granting different wavelenghts different penetration and thus, different reverb times. Low rumbling sounds do not bounce back the instant they hit a surface, they bounce when they encounter sufficient resistance. Shrill reverb sound is typical of digital reverb units, making your bass sound like it's a high hat in a glass room, but sped down. Also, harder materials such as steel beams, concrete and the likes set in motion when stimulated, at different speeds (we're talking both molecular vibration and actual physical vibration), and stuff that vibates reflects energy differently than stuff that doesn't.

Refraction is essentially what happens when your surface isn't flat down to molecular level, that is, always. Anechoic chambers are, afer all, walls covered with a bunch of spikes. Big spikes granted, but microscopic spikes (such as bad plaster) can cause their own refraction, expecially in ultrahigh frequencies; which do exist, and do modulate other frequencies, wheter we hear it or not. Air pockets, cavities, and other proprieties of the reflecting materials collaborate to create the big differencebetween RR and AR.

So how do we get a good AR sound in a small studio ?

Well, "real" reverb machines, such as plate reverb, or tunnel, do get "real reverb", even though it does not sound like a hall, but they do have some physical components which have their own mechanical acoustic proprieties; if you can use one of those, you are almost there. But if you are broke/have a DSP, then you need to cheat.

First, you should always process your reverb separately. Send the feed to the machine, then have it bounce back a 100% wet mix on a separate channel. Do not record the reverb on the main track (you know this), and also do not record your master with the reverb unedited.

You will need to make some changes to your rever sound to account for real world coloration.

Now, i can suggest some way to make your wet AR sound a little more real, but in the end, it's up to you what sort of coloration you want to add; i doubt that even with a lot of effort and money you will ever be able to recreate the acoustics of a granite castle, or marble church.

Equalizier on the wet :

if you have a good listening room, less reverb and more low frequencies makes for a better sound, as long as you are prepared to painfully tweak your EQ to get a great response over the whole song; natural reflections change their equalizing with their natural resonance, and although it *is* possible in a MIDI application to select every individual pitch and give it its own EQ, i realize this is impossibly complicated for anyone but the insane.. simply set multiple EQs each to a different frequency, and have each lower one boost more the signal - a lot more, if you take in consideration the F/M curves; make sure that the boosted frequencies do not overlap. If you want to make this perfect, also have multiple wets to feed to each different EQ; i know this sounds like a million tracks, but after all we have ProTools, right ?

Cutting high frequencies from the reverb is also a nice trick; you could always add a resonant shrillness by boosting a frequency in the wet and dampening it in the dry, such as a room with windows, or vice versa a natural environment (moss, trees) would absorb in the wet and boost in the dry. You can chose multiple frequencies to boost and cut, and though this might seem random on paper, you are simulating a very complex event in nature - as i have said before, great natural reverbs are a matter of drastic coloration. It's entirely possible to drastically cut high frequencies from a reverb wet while keeping them untouched in the dry - you might think that it's going to sound muffled and boomy, but it's what real reverb does. When we are en situ, we have a almost "magical" talent for picking up reverb from our surroundings, something that disappears when listening to "2D" sound. Of course, altering reverb thus means having less of it on the track; if the end product is not what you want, simply have less EQ boost/cut, and more reverb overall.

You can also create unusual ambients by filtering a copy of the dry and feeding the result to your reverb unit, which again you record separate. For example, track 1 dry, track 2 dry with filter cutting all but 200-300Hz low mids and hi-pass everything above 3k, feed track 2 into the reverb and get a 100% wet track 3; record tracks 1 and 3. This will sound like a empty ambient, that only refelects those particulair frequencies. For example, a basketball court next to a glass-walled building.

You could also make that glass building sound further away from the court pavement ..

Find the number of reflective objects you want; then, EQ out all the frequencies you do not want bounced by that object, and feed each EQ to a delay unit. Send both to the reverb unit, and you have your ambient with different distances. And for absorbition ..

Multiple copies of the same reverb, with dramatic EQ cuts, and delays to slow the return of the lower frequencies (they bounce off solid substances after penetrating them, thus their impact point is further and therefore their travel path longer). The lower the frequency, the higher the delay. The effect can be exaggerated to create a vivid impression of massive reflecting structures, and all your friends will think you are awesome when they hear that great RR sound. Again, having at least five wets with different delays is ideal; should you experience something horrid like cancellation, simply skew the delay parameters of one a bit until it disappears. Start with 2ms, and going up - depending on what settings your delay allows you - try to avoid multiple increments.. the Fibonacci series works perfect. That's (1/1)2/3/5/8/15/23/48 etc..

Delay can center a sound anywhere in a room - split the signal, feed it to the reverb twice, give each reverb a different delay time - the higher the delay, the lower the wet mix. then, assign each to Left Pan or Right Pan.

There are no "good" ways to simulate the other acoustical proprieties of reverb-creating reflecting materials, such as air pockets, but in the end, the approach is always the same - send to the AR a copy of the track you want to have reverb, and put your processors on it, then mix the result, 100% wet, with the original dry. Exciters, choruses, distortors and flangers (sheet metal room??), whatever effects you can think of, just make sure you do not abuse them - if you find the result is too dramatic, diminish it and couple it with yet another copy of the reverb track, but without the effect; unfortunately, reverb is just like a compressor - it works best when you can't hear it working. High-volume listening helps immensly in getting a really pure sound.

You might be wondering why on earth someone would want to go through all this effort to get a reverb sound, when there are excellent machines from Lexicon that do it for you .. well here is my answer:

Reverb bores me to death. I hate to listen to a song with reverb, after a few listenings i get really tired, the artificialness really begins to stand out. I have always hated that, and too much reverb (which for me is any reverb at all) means i can't listen to that song, ever again.

Older AR units tend to have better sounding reverb, mostly because they were mechanical in nature, and their plates, or tunnels, had their own micro-audio proprieties, and i can tolerate them more. But artificial reverb units, even a 'Lex, is something i positively do not want in my mix.

Having fought over the years on this and now having accepted that people simply will not live without reverb, if you are like me, try these tricks and you might get an all together better result; failing that, at least you put some effort in, and that's it own satisfaction.

Coarse language in the modern world

2011-04-03T09:19:00.000-07:00

Yet another day passed and another person who enthusiastically told me "surely a Mac, they are the best computers in the world";

Fine. Let Apple cater to those who "should not own a computer", after all, no real harm done.. for now.

There was an old story circulating on the net when it was in its infancy, and text pages made up the bulk of it: a computer retail customer service assistant got a call from someone whose computer "suddenly stopped working". After a while of trying to figure out what was wrong, the assistant asked the customer to check something in the back, and he replied he couldn't , because "the lights had gone out in the building and it was too dark to see", to which the amused assistant replies: "pack the computer back up and bring it back to the shop, and tell them you are too stupid to own a PC".

Now, i am a kind of person that sincerely believes in a lot of things that are "bad", according to the trend de' jour, and amongst these is that good business is honest before it is polite.

Calling your customer a moron is ok, because if he *is* that stupid, he surely cannot be your customer. This relentless hammering of the concept that "we serve our customers" is against my belief of a healthy society - i trade with my peers, and i will not stoop to trade with someone who i find is too much below me. Trading, selling and buying, is a major part of human society and the stepping stone in social relationships.

Potential Enemy

Potential Friend<- you trade with THIS guy

Friend

Remember that "trade" is beneficial to both parties: should your valley be abundant with apple trees, and my mountain with coal deposits, let me trade you some coal and save me the hassle of planting apple trees on a mountain. People are territorial animals, the fact that others are in my space is alone irritating, and if they try to steal from me then they are my enemy; but if they do not harm me, but rather propose beneficial trade, then their presence is welcome.. and that is, in a pich, human society post-tribalism.

Anyway, the world has - after sixty years of peace and decay - turned far too Politically Correct for my taste: i resent the imposing of behavioural laws, for PC (hermm.. PolCo) is no more that laws on our toughts.

Very brief history of Political Correctness.. as i know it.

A while ago, in the late eighties, or very early nineties, two guys were trying to land a job in a lawfirm in the US - one of them was black. (I have no idea what the names are, but sorry - do your own research). At the final interview the firm partners chose the first candidate. Not because he was white. They simply "chose him". The other candidate took the lawfirm to court, as he tought he should have been hired instead as his curriculm was better, citing racial discrimination.

He won.

Now, i am not American and am not praticularely enamored with "freedom", yet i always assumed i would conduct my business as i saw fit - hiring whom i wanted for one.

The ruling took away my implicit freedom to discriminate against ANYONE - be them of other colour, or of a different fotball team, or sex, or hair color, or simply because i saw the guy and i didn't like him. As if discrimination was bad.

Or is it.

But then what about not liking someone? What about not being friends with someone because you "don't like him"?

Well, i resent the government - or anyone else - telling me whom i like or not; i also resent the government or anyone else telling me to employ someone for reasons other than that i find them fit for employment, that is, i like them. This was, historically, a massive step back torwards the obscurantism of the middle ages, with "the man" telling me "what to think".

Then, Clinton went and messed it all up, and the gov't went crazy with all sorts of laws on human behaviour, as any sort of "naughty" behaviour was turned into a crime. Look, i cannot be made a criminal bacause i touch some girl's ass; i touch asses spontaneously, as i breath and as i get hungry twice daily. Making sexual harrassment illegal means the law is criticizing a natural aspect of our species; i hope i don't offend the "liberated" women out there, but males *are* dominant in our species, and sexual innuendo in the workplace reflects that.. making that behaviour illegal is akin to making illegal the act of drinking a soda with your sandwich. And by the way, sexual assault laws were taking care of all the unwanted sexual violence in the workplace anyways, we never had rape as a mean of keeping your work.. though the tabloids might want you to believe so.

Look, i believe that - based on the observations of scientific studies of animals in captivity, or simply, overpopulated societies - going to work somewhere is a part of social integration that is a pillar of human society; if you want *in* to a workplace, you gotta play by the rules. Trying to get in and changing the rules to suit you makes you no more a Potential Friend, but a Potential Enemy, and i come to think you wanted *in* only because of the money.

But on with my post. The US gov't - cause of all the evils in the world, of course - had its way in the forties by estabilishing rules in the emerging technologies of national radio and TV, unwritten rules to boot, most of them anyways, that everything in the gov't was going to be squeaky clean - no bad behaviour, no coarse language, no offensive content - while on the other end of the TV sets people were swearing and cursing like there was no tomorrow. The FCC actively censored years of material because it didn't fit with the gov't plan, but this is well know. It is slightly less well know, but it's out there, that the "plan" didn't work too smoothly and censorship was used by individuals for their own ends, but again, this is no mistery. This was going on well until the 90's, and if you see a sticker on a CD that reads "explicit lyrics" then yes, it is STILL going on.

However my point is not that there has been censorship, or that it is bad, or the likes. After all, watching an episode of South Park has more F**k's than a year of primetime on Fox. My point is that people have been educated that yet, coarse language denotes low intelligence, or worse, that the content is not important.

When i was a little boy i devised a simple game, (yes, i must have been eight or so, so it wasn't an overly complicated game), of table-hockey of sorts, that i played with my dad. I called the game "Irrumator", as i wanted to keep this word alive in my memory. As my dad had told me, bad boys were not bad because they used coarse language; "Irrumator", or "Cocksucker", Catullus said of a fellow Senator (must i remind you that Roman Law is essentially still what awaits you in court to this day, be it in any country of the western world), and coarse language was alive and well even in Latin texts from your school. Of course, the teacher never gave you to translate that bit.

And here is my case; that we mostly now believe that Fuck is a bad word, but "now we can say it".. "even on TV".

No my friends. That is not the case; that fuck isn't a bad word at all.

"Coarse language" is actually the most importance-laden words of our language.

"Fuck" alone has an array of meanings, and omitting this word from a phrase means you will not get your message across. Fuck is also cross-platform, if you will, allowing you to bridge the gap between social strata. Note how i am not referring to the word itself, but to all coarse language. You know we all use it, or that statistically, we do. But omit these words from your language and people will be puzzled as to why you are omitting the punctuation that confers to the speech its rhythm and its emotional importance.

Day to day speech has several layers of content, one of which is the information, obviously, such as "my car broke down", then "mike no longer has access to his vehicle, therefore he cannot move freely and cannot carry heavy weights and cannot get out of the city"; Then, emotional content is attached to the phrase, meaning "i needed that car, i rely on it even though it needs changing, because i am broke", making the phrase, "fuck ,my car broke down" quite full of meaning.

or, "my fucking car broke down"

meaning "man, i'm not really desperate, but i sure wish my car was not one of my weak points".

or, "my car broke the fuck down"

meaning "i am a well earning man, i am angry and will replace that car because i got money".

Honestly, the mind boggles at the idea of an attempt of cataloguing the *meaning* of each use of each coarse word in a language.

But on to my conclusion.

Just as the PolCo people, and the FCC and the rest of them, would like you to believe that "whom uses coarse language, a beast he be", i tell you that those who speak of complex matters, such as politics, economy, and law, and chose to restrain from "bad" words then either have something to hide, or are in fact unintelligent and may be ignored, or better, dismissed as incompetent. Communication is key in .. well, everything, and it works as input to a receiver, whose language you speak - certainly, i cannot program a C64 with C++, as that is not the language it knows. And my language, yours, and that of everyone else is *not* the language i hear coming from the Major of London's mouth. Let us call for reform, pretend from our enlightened rulers to admit our language as the superior, and learn to deal with it; they might have the more extensive vocabulary, but we have the superior word structure;

Let us push onwards - the world is ours*.

*the world is in fact ours.

My thoughts on Blood Bowl.

2011-04-03T09:16:00.000-07:00

BB (Blood Bowl Legendary Edition) is a videogame version of an old Games Workshop board-game, recently published by Cyanide. Now, Blood Bowl has quite the history, and therefore the following you'd expect in this video-incarnation.

Sometimes, i really don't know where to start. Ok, BB is a nice game. I do have to say that selling Blood Bowl full price, then a few months later releasing the finished product as "Legendary Edition" kind of sucks. Of course we have come to expect this of software houses, but this isn't just a "GotY" version or a "Gold" version.. if you don't have the Legendary edition, you miss out on a cool 80% of the new stuff, which essentialy means you *have* to buy it.

The game is loads of fun, and it is mostly keyed towards multiplayer. Well, "loads" of fun it ain't, but some fun, yes. I really resent the lack of quick move game - there is an option for a timed game, but the awkwardly slow animations take way too much time, and can't be turned off. There's also a "real time" mode that falls right into the Really Fucking Stupid cathegory (BB is a turn-based, boardgame, after all. if you are going to add something completely unrelated, you might as well add Space Invaders, or PacMan. just because it's got the models from BB doesn't mean we like it), by taking the game and .. throwing it out the window.

But the main game mode is great fun, of a sort. It's fun how they kept the same exact (not the same exact, but close enough) rules from twenty years ago - you'd think the rulebooks would be lost by now - and how well BB turns out to play on a PC, when in fact it was a horrid game to play (and own) as a boardgame. The original BB was too slow and you never really got a league going, since it was a knock off of other Warhammer/Games Workshop products, and if you had time, you played those, not BB.

Also, if you *did* buy Blood Bowl the boardgame and played it, say, elves vs anything else, you'd see how much it sucked, expecially when all your team was made up of rookies; which brings me to ... the rules.

The PC version of BB assumes you will play with a well-experienced team, one the likes of which never was foreseen in the minds of its boardgame creators. And the rules governing the advancement of your players are completely off - when your player advances, a random, very harsh system determines which skills you will be able to chose from; Getting the right skill on a player means doubling his efficacy on the pitch, while getting a crap skill means only a higher team cost, in effect giving you a disadvantage. Cheating is extremely easy, even when playing online, thus bringing about the question which has been hovering in my mind a while and which gives this review its core - how much cheating is acceptable in Blood Bowl?

Is a Chaos team with every player having +2 strength acceptable?

How about a chaos team with a Minotaur with +2 strength, every Chaos Warrior +1 strength, and some Beastman +1/+2 ?

Of course not.

In the olden days we sure had dice fumbling, contested rolls. and many other jolly ol' cheating habits which are common to all children's games, and aren't much worse than having cg_noHeadBob on in your Quake console. But when your star player leveled up, by Jove we'd be all' eyes peeled watching that roll, and nossir you couldn't cheat. But in the world of remote playing you surely must take into account how such a system of random leveling would be unfair and people will *have* to try to find a way around it. If not, then surely you must level up each player to almost max, then "let them go" if they didn't get at least a couple lucky rolls, say a +1 str (that's a natural twelve on two six-sided dices, or one chance in thirtysix) and a double-roll skill, like Dodge on a Chaos Warrior or Block on a Skink. Which then turns a game from fun, into tedious; beware the ides of m.. hrmm.. beware tedious grinding for it surely is the death of games everywhere, said the loquacious Lucullus, in the ..

Beware from making a game where i am forced to cheat to compete.

Surely the publishing of images of the dieroll cheat window (a little pop-up window which shows you the result of the next dice rolls *before* they happen, in live multiplayer) would spell death for any game, surely, but hey, we're gentlemen - or can assume we both are - and take each other's word that no, in this game of BB there will not be any cheating and after all, what fun is it otherwise? But team editing ?? I would be embarassed if my worthy adversary hadn't done the same.. m8.. you *really* should get doing that y'know, you can actually get a passing play through .. well, it's not his fault but...

Seriously, BB has some major faults. It's not competitive enough for a competitive game, too random at times (Blitz! ?? Pitch Invasion ????), unbalanced (the combination of Stunty, Dodge and MA8 alone is just over-over-overpowered..but to couple it with seven!! heavy guys.. what were they thinking?), has too many demi-bugs in it (not really bugs, but rather just sloppy design .. like formations that don't save, character editors that don't edit, shirt colours that randomly change, players that don't drop the ball, rerolls that disappear, you name it) for a "Legendary Edition", too little content and well, that's plenty bad stuff about one game that i can safely end it here.

Once again the laws of market - and the badly designed ancillary copyright laws surrounding them - have turned what should have been a $10 app into a twice-released $50 game, proving yet again that we were right twenty years ago when we said games should veer off intensive application and towards content(ie graphics vs gameplay), and consolidating my best-ever list, which as today reads:

Minecraft (in no particular order - also, my list isn't comprehensive)

Plants Vs Zombies, just last year.

Angband

Doom, Doom2, Quake, Quake3 Arena and QuakeLive (and possibly TF, and CSS)

the first C&C. and SUPCOM, why not.

A host of RPGs, from Wasteland on to many more. Coming soon.

The holy trinity of PSX games, Tekken 2, Wipeout 2097, MGS.

And so on. I realize this is a pointless excercise, you probably read this already a hundred times.

But by now i can hear the voices saying "jeez dude, you'r such a whiny bitch. hasn't any decent game been done in the last ten years?"

Well, yes. Hmm, no. a few yes.

Oblivion. It was amazing. Sometimes i loaded it up not to play, but just to watch the immense scenery. Mario 64 was incredible, and i hear the Mario Kart series was awesome too. Summoner 2 wasn't bad (Summoner 1 was horrid), Blade Runner, The STALKER series was neat, and Clear Sky has possibly the only realistic ballistic model ever seen in a FPS. Half Life was .. interesting, FF was good if you like that sort of stuff (i hate it), Armored Core was awesome, though the series went rapidly down, MechWarrior was ok, and so on. God of War was great. Easy, commercial, unimportant game, but great. Hey, two sticks, one is roll direction, one is attack direction. thats it. kind of reminds of Krull. it's fun !

There are plenty good games out there, some even free. What they all have in common, even if made tens of years apart, is that they are all both NEW, and THEY WORK.

Take for example FEAR: before it, Alone in the Dark tried to do a scary videogame, but it was more your *character* being scared and running from stuff it couldn't kill, than you the player being scared. FEAR put the Scared Shitless in .. hemm.. well, it scared you shitless. Silent Hill on the other hand just made you confused.

Ico was revolutionary. Now it would probably just make you puzzled, but at the time, it was something incredible. A game that made *everyone* want to play. Tekken was almost a religion, you had serious credibility based on your Tekken skills. Same goes for Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat. Pac Man. Space Invaders. Really awesome games.

So not only these games were new.. they also DID NOT have one thing or other in them that made you want to stop and shout out: ".. but that's just fuckin stupid!"

And unfortunately "That's just fucking stupid" is the way most new games are, today.

I'm playing Metro 3000, and then my character loses all his money because of a cutscene.

"Oh but that's just fucking stupid!"

I die stupidly in Prey, get reday to load the last savegame, but instead i get a minigame that ..a)i can't lose, b)lasts 10 sec max, and c)gives me back life, full health and puts me back in front of the monster who killed me, who is still wounded from before. (ergo, you can never die. in a FPS game.)

"Oh but that's just fucking stupid!"

I have to use a 3rd party cheat because Blood Bowl will not save correctly the formations i make.

"Oh but that's just fucking stupid!"

and Blood Bowl unfortunately goes the same way as all the other games who are a bit or a lot of a disappointment. I swear to you, i am convinced that all these multi-million productions are made by a bunch of guys who spend their time in a dark room patting each other on the back and telling themselves how awesome they are. God, isn't there such a thing as playtesting ?? Perhaps if the big houses stopped contracting out to companies run by douchebags like Babel - who only hire morons to do their testing - you'd eventually get a playtester or two who stand up to you and say look here m8, this game is crap, you gotta change this, this and that, else it sucks. *(i'm not alone in saying that many, many modern games suck ass; check out these game reviews by Yahtzee, we share many an opinion)

But that doesnt matter to them, all it matters is that the game hits the shelves. Don't listen to these people when they cry about piracy, these people are not game creators, they are maggots. Real game makers love their games, and people love the makers.

I suppose people today have come to expect less out of videogames.

We, the real gamers* once expected more. Like a good book, we expected a game to take us far away, in a land of immagination (seriously - no shit), to tell a great story. The storytelling in Champions of Krynn was magical: by the end, I hated that fucking Aurak so bad that when i finally caught him i was fucking shouting out loud at the TV set (C64 hooked up to the TV back then), going berserk. Dude, i was gonna kick his ass.

*who played when playing videogames was unbelievably uncool.

is it ok if i end this post here?

2011-04-03T03:30:00.000-07:00

There's a guy i admire on YouTube called http://www.youtube.com/user/nutnfancy .

Now, i have not met this fella nor am i involved monetarily with him/his projects. It's just a channel i follow.
The channel deals with reviews of military hardware. Which can be a dodgy subject for some. And seeing as i am a stinking hippy (as Cartman would say) it's weird how i can like that stuff.

Nutn's reviews are hour+ long videos covering military/civilian weapons, tactics drills, and occasionally social and political issues, almost universally from the US right-wing(no extremism).

Now i believe that in the end you *never* truly like everyone 100%, and i'm sure there are subjects i would not agree with him on. But the man has many good traits. He is honest. He says it like he sees it - alone this is what i expect from everyone, if you stand by your opinions and say them clearly, even those who do not agree with you will respect you from being a stand-up man.

Right. Nutn's reviews are a bit long in the tooth, but brilliant nonetheless. great professionality, great reviews. And also - though this is not why i watch his videos, i watch them because i like them - I feel it's important .. fundamental .. to listen to people who are different from you; if you surround yourself with people who have only your opinions, you become condescending.

Of course the above rule does not apply to me. I'm waaay to smart for that.

also, new house !! woot!

2011-03-22T04:49:00.001-07:00

the lowdown on ..

ANGBAND

Angband is a MiddleEarth-inspired, combat-based RPG with (depending on what version you are playing) graphics between very poor and nonexistent.

It is also very fun.

Angband is a small (10Meg) freeware game with a random map generator - you create your character, then head down in the dungeons beneath the city, where you find hundreds of different monsters and artifacts.

On level 99 lives Sauron, kill him, and you get to go down to level 100 to fight - perhaps prevail - Morgoth, the Ancient Enemy, kill Morgoth and you have won.

Dungeon creation is random each time you enter a level anew - irritating thought to old school dungeoneers like me who like to clean out everything, but as part of the game mechanics it works brilliantly. Limitless dungeons to explore - and although they might be very ripetitive in shape or colour, the stuff you find within them isn't.

Named mobs (from Tolkien lore - ringwraits, easterlings, uruk hai, great dragons..), artifacts, ego items, scrolls, potions, gems, wands, every item ever imagined in a classic RPG is here. Add to this the extereme complexity of the game system, that lets you do almost every immaginable action - spike doors, inscribe runes, throw items/weapons/nasty stuff, magic in every form or shape, sleeping monsters, sneaking, running madly from big monsters, and eating food - without which you die a YASD.

The Good:

Angband is fun, free, and will keep you busy for approximately one million hours. get it HERE.

http://www.thangorodrim.net

The Bad:

You have to be no less than a D&D fanatic to love it; Angband is hard and unforgiving - the really bad graphics makes you forget that every square you move is a action turn, and you tend to die often.

The Ugly:

YASD stands for Yet Another Stupid Death.

Unless you plan to really spend months on end playing it, you will make some mistakes, and generally wind up being punished for them. Mind you, there is always a reason why you died, and often that reason laughs in your face. Which is made worse by the fact that since this was designed to be a realistic game, you only get one life.. no save game reload. Once dead, you are dead.

If the one-shot game system ins't bad enough, the interface really needs a overhaul, with important ("you hear a door bust open!") messages getting lost in the keypresses, and you really need to survive this initial culture shock with Angband's ugliness and realism to get to like it.

And finally, Angband wasn't made to be finished in the first place; It was a software that ran on a server at a university, with hundreds of people expected to be logged on, trying to kill Morgoth, all of them failing miserably one way or another. The fun would be in surviving a little longer, going a little deeper in the dungeons, and most of all, getting killed in the most unfair way.

In my three years in Angband, with cheats on, i have faced Morgoth but twice, and never killed him. I did though manage to kill Sauron, and Morgoth himself was brought down to half his hit points, and i hear that - but it's just a rumor - Morgoth himself can be killed. Word around has it that Rangers work best ..

How to beat Angband

the old adage goes, Buy Lantern , Kill Morgoth.

And certainly a lantern is the most useful piece of equipment until you find an Elfstone or Glaradiel's Phial, for it makes far more light than a torch and in Angband, being able to see what is ahead is more important than a good sword. Which is also, very important. But the point is, knowing what that stuff in your inventory does is very important. Ignorance is death.

Although Angband characters tend to die very easily, all is not lost - you, as a player,(in a convenient .txt file that you can check while playing, just [r]ecall a monster) retain memories of your misadventures, and slowly get to know all the mobs in the game - expecially those whom you have killed or have been killed by, thus preparing you for what is ahead next. Many, many mobs are unfair and/or overpowered, and getting to know which ones are is the best way to stay alive. Even though it might seem easy to go deeper at first, you really need to do the first levels ten to twenty at least twice, as it is necessary to find a great deal of equipment before you can get to the better mobs/artefacts. Scrolls/Staves of Teleportation are essential to getting out of troublesome spots, but they both tend to be easily destroyed by fire breathing dragons and acid splashes. There are too many variables to list them here, but essentially until you know exactly what is going on, read the messages carefully and ponder on their significance(ctrl+P to see back messages). Too many times i have died stupidly having the very item that would save me in my own backpack.

Anyhow, should you survive the first impact with Angband's horrid UI, go to graphics/David Gervais Tiles and try those, they are quite nice. And if you should survive having your first few YASDs without throwing out the folder with the game(no install required), and get deeper into the mysteries of the game, here is a few tips.

0)Tip number zero: the basics.. after learning the key commands, press shift-c and then [h], there is a list of your resistences, if you don't have one, mobs that use that attack type will mangle you in a wink.

1)Molds are the stupides, most irritating mobs in the game. They are worth almost zero XP and have horrid powers of stat drain/equipment damage/XP drain, so stay away. Also, they don't move. Another good reson to read the messages and see what is actually happening in the game.

2)Hounds are worth little XP, and extremely dangerous. Should you find a dungeon level packed with these mobs, just get out and back in again, we won't blame you for it.

3)Ignore the level feelings. The way they work is completely screwed up. You will find plenty of artefacts anyway if you manage to survive past a certain point.

4)If you are serious about beating this game, just take it easy, go slowly, and remember that the number one reason you die is because you have Recalled back into the dungeon at a level too deep for your character. When you are about to use a Recall scroll, go up about 2-5 levels through the stairs, and then select "reset recall depth?->yes".

5)To beat Angband you must kill Morgoth. In order to do so you must first kill Sauron, and him and Morgoth both have a really annoying power that you must counter in order to win: they can summon every named mob in the game. Therefore, even if you do manage to get to level 99 (it's not that hard after all), you have to spend a great deal of time just running around levels 50+ to make sure you have killed every single one of Morgoth's allies. Expecially the biggest ones, like the Queen of dragons or the Ringwraits (all nine of them). Killing Morgoth himself is just a hack&slash thing, though people have had the most success with Rangers who use Holy bolts and Runes to block him. Personally, i haven't got a good thing to say about magic, i never really had a lot of success with it, i like warriors for their simplicity.

6)Use the cheats. There is no easier way to actually learn what is going on that actually sticking your neck in it until you get your head chopped off by a mob who is ten levels out of depth. Of course, you can't win like that, and instead of WINNER you get the title of CHEATER if you do kill Morgoth, but it's the best way to go. And a bit of wisdom .. when you start the game go first to the weaponsmith. if you don't see [25000] as the maximum he pays... start again. Money isn't really important in Angband, but it can make your life easier around level 30+.

7)and last. or you could make a copy of your save game file...

HOW I KILLED MORGOTH

well, actually morgoth turns out isn't so hard to beat, after all. here is my step-by-step, completely fool-proof method:

step one, stash at home all the potions of healing, *healing*, life that you can. killing morgy will take at least a dozen potions. actually, stashing potions will probably not be that hard at all.

stash at home as many scrolls of mass banishment as you can. simple banishment scrolls might work as well, if you are in a tight spot.

make sure you have enough speed for the beginning of the fight. a staff of haste or potion, plus a nice ring of speed (i have one that's +16) will do nicely.. looking for around +35 speed all in all.

go trough your equipment and have a setup where you have every resistance covered. obviously, chaos, nether, nexus and disenchantment are the most important.

make sure you have a weapon that has Slay Evil as a brand. ideally, a Mace of Distruption or Blade of of Chaos of *Slay Evil* would be the best weapon, but any artefact weapon that has "slays evil creatures" will do.

plenty of potions of enlightment.

something that has teleport, like scrolls of teleportation, or staves. but scrolls are better.

that's it, you are ready. go down to level 100, after you have killed just about every named mob in the game (atm 93 named listed, all killed), and ASAP drink a potion of enlightment. look around the dungeon, and see if there is a vault (the big rooms made of white marble, ie, made of that indestructable stone that makes up the edges of the map. if there is no vault, go back to town and try again.

if there is a vault (smaller is better), go in, and if morgoth hasn't spotted you yet, clear it/banish. if you can't, start again from town(vaults are plentyful at these levels).

when you have your small vault cleared, put your speed equipment on, and sloooowly go around the dungeon looking for Morgoth. When he spots you and proceeds to tunnel through granite to get to you, run to the vault. (once in, get your "fighting" equipment on)

lead Morgoth into the vault. essentially, what you want is a situation like so :

XXXXXXX

XXuM

XXXXXXX

where "u" is You, and M is obviously, Morgoth. X's are the white vault walls, that Morgy cannot destroy. This leaves you with a simple (hrmm..) one-on-one melee with Morgoth. If, or rather, when, Morgoth summons his many friends, just read a scroll of mass banishment. i had 9 at the beginning of the fight, used 6 to beat him. besides this, it's just attack morgoth .. press space bar several times...else you might attack him one time too many, and go too low on HP. if your HP are less than say, 600, then you need to drink a potion. my Dunedain warrior had 1144 HP, Anduril as main sword, 30+ potions of *healing*, AC 237 and all resists covered, plus a lucky Nenya and Vilya combo.. but these are not necessary, as a nice ring of damage will do.

oh btw, you *do* tend to miss Morgoth quite a lot, so rings of slaying will do just as nicely, as a simple potion of heroism also. when meleeing him, simply never push your luck. if your HP are low, drink a potion. do not try "one more attack" as he can manastorm for 600dmg or so. on a good round, i would use two moves to attack and the third to heal. didnt take me more than 15 potion of *healing* to kill him, so around 30-40 turns.. thinking about it, that must have been a solid two minutes of gameplay, not longer. but they sure were a tight two minutes.

HR (with footnotes)

2011-03-21T11:25:00.000-07:00

In the long long ago*, before Human Resources, there was Personnel, a department of the Accounting section, specifically the Payroll sub-section, later rebranded when some keen individuals** spotted that some employees were less fruitful than others - expecially in high-tech*** businesses, where the training of an invidual can reach the cost of a month's wages(quote stolen from my HR advisor); some of these keen individuals went on to open their own businesses, called Recruitment Agencies, and named, as a private sector, as Human Resources.

HR then set out to replace - as a service - perhaps what is the most important aspect of a boss' work, the hiring process.

As in the 80s and in the centuries before, hiring someone was a warm welcome into a closed group, a society that brought about solidariety, kinship and other warm-fuzzy-feely sentiments which however do help a business thrive; expecially when people stay in a job and identify themselves with it****, and stand by their employer just as he stands by his employees(or hers..).

So Human Resources sought to replace, at a price, a task they were not competent for; how can a person external to a business know enough about each individual operation so as to pick the best amongst a number of people this person knows nothing about ?

Certainly at the beginning of the Recruitment Agency craze there must have been a successful businessman who had a pool of talent, and profound knowledge of a sector(these were the early nineties, when old geezers who had worked 40 years in a sector were moving into private business, and the after- babyboom put a lot of highly trained***** professionals in a situation where they could afford mobility), which puts the recruiter's job at putting in touch the right man with the right employer, and earning a "finder's fee" in the process.

Unfortunately there are very few people who can pull off a living from that; the new entrapreneurs who came to HR, with a need to bring business where there was none, started to push their services on the budding corporations, with hard sell tactics and business gobbledygook, failing miserably in the process, as they were in fact selling, instead of the highly qualified mechanical engineer, or physics technician, the less glamorous average joe On The Street. Lawsuits follow, so recruiters begun introducing a series of recruiting standards where only those who conformed would be recruited. So far so good, the problem having been patched up sufficently..

These recruitment standards are, unfortunately, where HR falls flat on its face:

Brief, two page written tests and a list of generic details are not sufficient to determine the various qualities a person has as a worker, nor are there any particulair reasons why the average joe would want to be "recruited" in the first place;

Recruitment is what Sony does when it wants to design a new PCB****** for their Playstation, not what McDonalds needs to do when someone offers himself to go flip burgers for a couple months. Companies which - though not minor themselves - thrive on a business model involving a moltitude of truly minor roles (i.e., not the New York Times, but rather Tesco, or LIDL) have no business "recruiting"; their jobs are awful, and they should be put in their place for it, not glamourized.

There is a strong political undercurrent to the work situatuation, with jobs being controlled rather than created, and in fact large employers being handled chanrge of jobs that would otherwise be evenly distributed among the populace, but i need to focus on HR as i have to go to "work" now and am therefore busy, and can't go too far - it's already on a different post anyway, search and you shall find; but the point is that as a person first and as a worker second, i should not be expected to have any particulair keenness on landing a job as "catering assistant, agency", and frankly i find it unfair, immoral, and borderline illegal to be asked to have any in order to earn a miserable slave wage*********. Rather, the hiring company, who "thrives" - or is barely able to function, that is.. that's what they tell you to pay you so little - thanks to hiring people without any provision for their technical future, something that was implied as a part of their wage in all earlier employment situations, arrogantly assures that government (who sponsors it, or at least approves of its business ethics) that minimum wage is sufficient for one of their workers to be considered "in gainful employment".

But alas, the work market is not to blame: the real problem in HR is HR itself. The sector is largely redundant, with recruiters largely ignorant of any technical aspects of the job they are recruiting for, and personnel being recruited not on the ground of their techincal experience, but rather on their conformity to a series of HR standards which have been largely fabricated by HR themselves; and for the keen, where they have not been fabricated, they have been lifted from "real" companies, who do "real" recruitment, and are completely out of place in 99% of the cases to date.

In simpler words, you have to learn the words, attitudes, and interview techniques to be hired through a HR agency. And to learn those, you must resort to a HR agency.

To quote Civilization, "the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy".

- Oscar Wilde

Here i list a few of the situations i have found myself in; i'll keep it short.

Sainsbury showing videos of "how to" customer service, for nighttime shelf stacker job. Caterforce, minimum-wage zero-hour contract, asking recruits to be only passed if they utter the phrase "i really want this job". Sky chosing people on how they say their name. YoSushi turning me down because i make a office work reference in my CV. And so on ..

A couple days ago i met a nice girl, who has been working as a recruiter for a few years; she says she knows the job now, and can do it well, irrespectively of the position one is applying for.

And i don't doubt that is true.

People do learn to do a job just off their gut feeling, and with experience comes knowledge, regardless of who you are or what you do, and this is, sha-zaa, how we actually did it twenty years ago, before mankind forgot what life was really about. I absolutely don't blame her for working in a sector of our society that needs to go to the bin, along with all the people working in Corporation Law and the nice folks at the Campaign for Political Correctness, and a good half of those who work in Health and Safety********. but i just wonder how much good she could do if she had been working all those years in a proper job, one that deals with the gathering, manifacture or processing of resources, and essential services and structures management*********. Like, a normal job.

But anyway, for my conclusion.

Lousie (my new Advisor) says i am not getting enough responses from employers because my CV does not conform to the standard, in the specific for not having proper bullet points in it;

Well, all apologies - if HR hadn't introduced bullet-point CVs for people who have no real reason for having one, this would not have happened. I find it laughable - in a sad way - that people whould bullet something like "answered the phone" or "wrote emails" - of course you did, unless you were employed as shitshoveller or automated tollbooth attendant.

Sorry, i know i promised to not have any more coarse language in my posts until i publish the "Coarse Language in Modern Communication" post, but i slipped; ah, if only i had an EDIT button on my blog dashboard...

The worker-boss relation is essential to the development of our society, and it is a beautiful thing - be weary of consentually allotting job control to workforce-abusing business models, where a boss does not know his employees and vice-versa; this has deprived us average joes and janes of having a nice ol' life working in the local butchers, pastry shop or garage, or foundry, why not, or even coal mine (you do what you do), leaving the preps to be recruited for their bridge design, winglift models, heriarchy processors, ultrahard materials, keyhole surgery, molecular chemistry, marine biodiversity..... and what they do.

Good bye. I'm off to work. **********

*South Park S04E16

**there are no "keen" individuals in Accounting; it is meant to be irony.

***there were no "high-tech" industries in the 90s (except of course toshiuba, or Intel.. but this paper does not concer itself with the few, rather with the many who think they are high tech, while they are in fact just stupid) nor are there now any.

****could quote any of a million papers on this; but i can't. i'm ignorant.

*****through many years of work - having been otherwise recruited, as normal back then, with no skills except a nice face and knowledge of the local NFL team's histroy, rather than PhDs or professional schools. however, most DINKs also fit this profile :/

******i bet you don't know what a PCB is.

*******"what is a slave wage?" on the next post. or next.

********to which also applies just about everything else written about HR - they were made for a good reason, and they are now bloated beyond recognition.

*********neo-marxism FTW!

**********unemployment office

Ulysses - man or myth ?

2011-03-16T07:46:00.000-07:00

they told him to write a book, he wrote a fucking book.

I'm trying to read the Ulysses, but it's like a brick wall.

I first tried under a dare from my friend, philosophy teacher and highschool headmaster Anthony Brophy, in my junior year, and for the first time i realized i needed to take the English language seriously, having not made it past page one.

Now, i had read (as a "foreigner")Dune by the immortal Frak Herbert, in English at the rate of a cool 20/30 pages an hour, and being able to easily converse with my friends in the Hamptons made me snotty on my language skills.

I had also the conviction that having not bothered with Latin and Greek in school - something that made me one of the few people ever flunked from italian high school for sheer stupidity, as you had to be something of a budding criminal to be otherwise thrown out of the system - i was saving myself for the better foreign language, English, having already successfully resisted my mother's attempts to confuse me with her native language, serbo-croatian.

Whether this' the truth or not, i wasn't doing too bad for an italian, and i tought i had it in the bag. But mr James Joyce dissented, and hit me square in the face with a brick of a book.

Now, twenty years later, i find myself still struggling to cope with the Ulysses' incessant horridity. Yes, i think the Ulysses sucks ass.

Oh don't get me wrong. I also think Anna Karenina sucks ass, and possibly some Shakespeare too. The Iliad sucks asss, and i just finished reading it for the third time.

On to Joyce. Oh Horrified reader, who surely knows the Ulysses inside out; The witty allusions have excaped me not - for i also wield a tome of magic internet power, giving me full access to the Annotated version of The Ulysses - such as "you fearful jesuit", but i just - forgive me - don't find them of much importance.

Yes ok, so the prelate is in fact Filippo Borgia*, but so what. It could be a De'medici, or a Sforza-Cesarini** for all it fucking matters.

And the tediousness is not just on the extremely slow unfolding of the story, or anachronistic imagery, but the constant distractions of innumerable irrelevant detail making it impossible to distinguish between the story and the embellishments.

"The covetous caroting of the sommery ruptless daunts became aghast with blithering shocks from the thetrahedron of terminalities involved" - random words chosen by me - is an example of how the Ulysses reads.

Now write six hundred pages of that, but try to make it sound coherent. for example, we switch around or change a few of the adjectives and verbs above, an get:

"The covetous caroting of the core of sommery haunts", meaning someone is digging "a core", the essence of, of stuff, in a covetous..wanting... manner, of the haunts of "sommer", olde english summer, etc..

and try to stick in it a story about a bunch of guys in ireland going off to the pub for a few pints.

..Is as similiar to a good book as sticking some gum on your remote control and getting the TV to change channel repeatedly is similiar to watching Murder She Wrote. This is not Mozart, this is Einsturzende Neubauten, and i tell you, it sucks ass.

Great Books are not Really Big books, they are "great" because they have the qualities which compels you to read them. Call of The Wild, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, all have something that makes them worth reading. Lord of the Rings has the creative imagery, twists and immaculate realism. Dune has the convulted intrigue, the alien landscapes. Clarke has the Ideas, Asimov gets your brain thinking. Ende has the emotion, Sagan has the wow, Heinlein has style, Castaneda has a message to say.

The Ulysses has squat. Fuck me, even the Iliad isnt so bad if you skip over some of the gayness. Even Naked Lunch makes more sense that this.

I hate to sound so judgemental - and so wrong - but i just don't get the excercise that i must read a book with a dictionary in my hand. I could just as well write a book 'meself that is impervious to reading unless accompanied by a second tome of references. Example:

-"Rispondi comandante Koenig, rispondi. Si, ma a coppe. "+(spoilers below)

I fucking dare you to understand that reference. It's misterious to even most natives of the place where it was written, good fucking luck.

Those words that a language - and its people - abandons when growing, are not necessarely good just because your college-teacher ego tells you they are; as a "mater of fac't"(a play on the words "matter of fact", and "alma mater" and "faculty"; but no, not really, as Joyce would have you believe, just a spelling mistake in fact), embellishment should accompany communication, not hinder it.

For fuck' sake man, say what you have to say. If you prance around with gaudient, aloof verbose riffs i must conclude that you have got fuck all to say. Unless you reeeallly, really meant to say all those things you did say, in which case i think you are insane.

What do i care what kind of braiding the carpet you will never fucking mention ever again has, just get on with it. No, there is the shapely figure of the pint glass, the brooding shadows on the aquamarine-tinted pub windows, and its damascene metalwork frame, the twirls like a mountain stream. And all this in an even more complicated and archaic language. Sorry, but the Ulysses is shit. As an English speaker of 28 years, this book is shit. If your life culminates with reading it, you have gone down the path of literary extintion and you are a massive twat.

Get on with you poth!++

*the name is wrong

**another important italian noble family, one which you don't actually know. Most smart-ass people will get as far as knowing the Borgia, maybe even their first name and not just Lucrezia's, but they will probably know shit of the actual history of noble families in italy, much less of europe altogether.

+it's a quote from the first album of underground heroes Santarita Sakkascia; quotes Space 1999, and also the local game of Tressette. It implies also that the japanese TV serial Specterman is involved.

++from Lawnmower Deth's b-side live track "Sumo Rabbit", but i guess any Nottinghamshire folk will get this. Just means "get on with it".

dedicated to mr Jez

2011-03-16T07:40:00.000-07:00

dear guy;

I hate to be a spoilsport, but that square-headed asshole (Dr.Kaku) is wrong.

Time travel does not exist.

Time travel is not "impossible", as impossible is only a few steps removed from "very diffcult". The problem is that "time travel" does not in fact, exist. There is no such thing as "travel" through "time".

What we call time is in fact enthropy, and the "passing" of time is our perception, while in fact "time" does not "pass". One could in fact argue that there is no past or future, only present. Allow me to explain, in simple terms.

Imagine a bucket of sand. This is the matter our universe is made of, originally made of larger grains of sand(well, smaller FYI, but the paragon stands), that grow smaller(heavier) as they erode touching each other. In one period of time the grains touch each other in a certain way, they lump, or swirl close to each other. Then the bucket is shaken, and the grains shift, now in different position. Atoms transform over time, as they have from atoms of hydrogen to atoms of other elements, but the same amount of matter remains in the same area of the cosmos. All that we see around us was in fact at first just hydrogen atoms that were smashed together in the furnace of our sun, and became all the elements, organisms and things around us. The same matter which composed the body of Julius Caesar is now a flower, a plant, a rock or a grain of uranium, a parcticle of iron or of cobalt. Atoms in Julius Caesar's feet could well be now in one of your teeth. Julius Caesar is in fact not really gone, he is well, and standing next to you as you read this. Only, he looks like a chair now, or a table, or a cigarette.

Although we imagine time as "when the bucket of sand looked like Julius Caesar", what we mean is "when the atoms were arranged differently". Therefore, any "time travel" attempt would in fact be an attempt not to transport ourselves "in a different time", but to rearrange ALL the atoms in the universe. Since that would take hmm.. all the energy in the universe(and is also directly opposing the law of entropy) it is safe to say that is is impossible, to be understood as there is no such thing as "time travel". You cannot "travel through time" any more than you can travel through Pink, or through Happy. Time isn't a "stream" of anything, it doesn't move forward or backwards, as much as it actually stands very still.

It's quite accurate to say that no substantial part of the matter making up our galaxy has ever been outside it, and probably never will until the heath-death and the next big bang. Julius Caesar is not even a person, when it comes down to time - he is just a state of matter. It *is* theoretically possible to reconstitute matter - without the -re, to create a Julius Caesar out of any matter parcticle, though as you can create one you can create more, and in fact there would be no element in that new Julius Caesar which would have an atomic age different than that of the matter which constitutes him. It would seem like Julius Caesar, you would think it was him, while in fact it is not. You see, the problem here is not that you cannot travel back to see how it was in ancient Rome.. the problem is just that you don't remember. For in fact, you WERE in ancient Rome. The atom of iron that is in your left thumb was an atom of iron in Julius Caesar's left shoe. And so on, your entirety was already here when the planet cooled, when the stares exploded, when the universe happened. Matter IS energy and neither is ever created or destroyed. Maybe you were dark matter, maybe a quarklet, but besides any change of shape which your surroundings might have had, you are still in the same "time" as you ever where. The matter which makes up your body is still 13.7 billion years old, though it might now be a different element that it originally was, and there is now way which it could not be.

You see, Doctor "I'm a dickhead" Kaku is a crook; The multiverse mathematical concept of plotting each moment as a different radiant and therefore a parallel universe is not a physical reality. You cannot have two parcticles of matter standiong next to each other where one is of a different age than the other - one atom 13.7 billion years old, the other 4.1 years old. However, you can apply the maths to analyze OTHER elements which in fact exist in "reality", just like you can use irrational numbers to solve "real" math.

Now lets take some science, and make time travel possible. Lets assume the model of parallel universes is correct. Let's then assume that some parallel universe has transformed itself into a machine which makes transport of matter between "parallel" (therefore "cannot be travelled between")universes possible due to a lowered need of energy, and you are in fact transferred through said machine to a universe where the parcticles which would eventually make up your body are "re"constituted to form your present body, and where also all the other matter is in the configuration which you call"the past".

Let's also assume that the particles that now make up your body aren't missed by any other body in your present universe, or that they are drawn from our universe of origin. Well, then yes, you *can* have "time travel". You *can* come back holding a roman helmet, but you see, science is about trying to find the truth. These theories - atomic, quark, relativity - we have.. work, and they work so well that we can make bombs out of them; but they are just theories, and a learned man knows that tomorrow we might just find out that we were completely wrong, and that we have been fooled and the laws governing nuclear explosions where in fact different than what we first thought. As a matter of fact, we might one day find that we are in fact imagining all the universe, that the Hiroshima bomb never exploded, and that you are if fact, a flower pot.

It is possible. But it is unlikely, and to whore yourself on national television saying that time travel is possible - and trying mighty hard to make it seem as if it will be a commercial reality next week - is wrong, it leads to the Evening Standard printing two-page spreads on string theory that confuses the common man and spreads stupidity, and no self respecting scientist would do that. Science can *never* be proven, but we can humanly get as close as possible to never have a doubt. Or else, go ask God.

Sorry i have to be such an asshole, in the end, but loving science means asking questions, poking your finger where it most hurts. I know you blame me for being an asshole, even *if* i was right, but science is a touchy subject and all *scientists* are as much of an asshole as i am. Sorry.

I hope we can one day still be friends; i'll let you even like Dr. Kaku, he's ok. I know the fascination Japanese people can muster, they are so weird. They are yellow !! And the big heads, and small eyes!!!

ON THE JOYS OF SMOKE (and the joy of being a really smart guy, too)

2011-03-16T07:28:00.000-07:00

I'v just finished watching (for the fourth time, m'kay?) that South Park episode where Rob Reiner tries to get smoking banned in Colorado, acting like a douche in the progress (in the cartoon - i'm sure the real Reiner is a sweet, loving guy) and getting everyone to hate him, shuts down a cigarette manufacturer, and ends up being stabbed and losing all his "goo" ..

You have to see it to understand. But anyhow, i'm a happy smoker and pro-tobacco, though i am well aware of how incredibly super harmful it is; eating chunks of asbestoes has nothing on smoking, real!*

*jamaican expletive meaning Yes, Yeah, Of Course, You Said It! or likes of these.

I recently got off having what is, by a large standard, a pretty cushy job : street sweeper, or garbage man, as we know them.

As proud street sweeper i worked 8 hours a day, seven days a week, 30 days to the month, up and down a mile-and-a-half long road, thrice daily, plus a t-junction, half mile long road, twice daily, plus all "headways", or intersections, pushing a iron cart, made of two iron cast bins, with two thick rubber wheels, and iron handle, carrying all my garbage bags, two huge wooden brushes with raw wooden handles, a smaller wooden brush and a metal-head shovel to pick up the garbage with.

This, i did under any wheather, be it snow, sleeth, pouring rain, or freezing cold (and in the rare circumstances, sweltering heat), from 6Am to 2Pm, with a half hour break, if i had time to.

My "protective gear" included full steel safety boots, which have a steel toecap, torsion-resistant steel rod insert, and steel heel support, which i put at a weight of around two pounds per shoe.

They were also horrid (though made by DrMarten's, and bought with 'me own moneys to replace the even more horrid standard issue steel toecaps), and the job hardly consists of anything more dangerous than the average citizen experiences as he walks down the street, yet these boots, or instruments of torture as i call them, were mandatory. Also, a full three piece suit of plastic, completely made of no-respiration material, which was also mandatory.

The job itself consisted of sweeping garbage off the road, and emptying really gross road bins, yet the company somehow forgot to make "mandatory" any sort of disinfectant or other germ-protective equipment, instead providing us with dry-only gloves, one pair per week(with two pairs per day being hardly sufficient).

I was drawn to the job - you might be wondering, by now - by its immediate availability, and the rather handsome £320 weekly after tax, and did it for a year, no complaints. Yeah, the job was horrid, and the people in charge made you hate it even more, but it's a long shot from any seriously "dangerous" work; I certainly didn't work in a steel mill, or offshore platform, mine or other drilling operation, foundry, cannery, fishing boat, processing plant or even a simple factory. Mine was a job of luxury by any standard.

But having been born the Baronet of Ferrero della Montagnola, i can tell you that by a number of other standards - let's say, kid who works in a Phones4U shop, or shelf stacker at Marks&Spencer, or even floor assistant at Primark, hardly high finance jobs all of them - its fucking horrid.

The simple physical pain one experiences when doing this sort of job, one day, is enough to put you ill in bed for a week; lifting repeatedly, hundreds of times an hour that metal shovel would be a feat of itself even if it were not laden with gross, germ-infected rubbish.

Walking the 7+ miles daily would also be enough excercise for a day or two, and that is excluding pushing a smelly, garbage filled metal barrow and your tools amidst traffic and pedestrians, who also aggravate you. Add the metal torture boots, wet sleeth, snow and a dozen degrees celsius below and you have a picture of how to get hospitalized within a day.

Repeat 7/7, 30/30, 365. Add some overtime too. Take out health insurance and sick pay(none for the first 12 months, and then ONLY after you get hired "by the company", and not just running as agency boy - same shit, lower pay), and that was my job. And still it's better than gutting fish for ten hours straight on a fishing boat that hasn't been cleaned properly in .. ever.

Now, mr Rob Reiner (the cartoon guy, not the real person, of course) and any other hippy (whoops, pulled a Cartman there) who speaks against smoking.. i'd like you to understand this. Really, truly understand it:

The effort to go to work on day two, when you do any such jobs, and are still aching from the pain of the day before, and have only a month's work ahead of you to look forward to, requires you to at least do some sort of mental gimnastics to pull it off, block the pain out and just go out and do it. It is possible, i did it. But the problem is, you can't shut it off.

Ignoring pain is a one-way street, once you get there, you can't feel normal again, least a seriously long period of rest, and i mean not a couple days, rather a couple months or more.

Sores have to disappear, irritated nerves need to heal, and all the various posture problems must be allowed to streighten themselves out, which isn't easy work. Obviously, none of this is possible while you are expected to be back at work the next morning.

The main problem is sleep, or lack of. Repeated pain, RSI, and plain 'ol open wounds and infected body parts, make sleep absolutely impossible.

I will spare you these next few details, since sleep deprivation is a really touchy subject, and people may get put off. Suffice to say that sleep, when you don't have it, you resort to any measure to get it.

Now, smoking, drinking, and other "harmful" habits have something that their distant cousin, "getting kicked in the balls", doesn't have: people like them.

Yes, because while getting kicked in the balls hurts*, and if you get too much of it it's harmful to your health, it never really caught on because it doesn't otherwise prevent any of the symptoms which i herein described.

But smoking, long time honoured human tradition (well, not that long, at least in Europe, but still), does indeed help you control these probelms, quite well indeed.

On the other hand, having a retainer (a "basket", or rather large container of, or serving of, foodstuffs, drinks, champagne, caviar and lobster, exotic fruit, and other expensive amenities which, free of charge, is provided for any - and all - personality in the showbiz) makes you a bit of a pussy; but for us Real Men™ there is nothing on the market like drugs, alcohol and tobacco which will help you get through to the next day.

*(some people like it)

The first school of tought (i hate to call it that, i'd rather call it "school of regurgitated idiocies") here says that you should instead have a tea or eat a nice salad.

Mind you, you cannot, *even* in a perfect world, go to work as a garbage man, then go home and relax with a nice lobster. Whatever you chose to consume to relieve your pain MUST have a psychotropic effect of sort : valium, alcohol, thc, or nicotine, it must be something your Io (a part of the human psyche) can focus on.

The amount of stimulus which your brain receives from an infected cut, a RSI shoulder, a bleeding hole in your heel and a dozen irritated tendons ALL AT ONCE is no match for a little music and a few roquet leaves.

Imagine we meet. You have your anti-smoking ideas and i have my pro-smoking ideas. I introduce myself, then take my fists to your face and smash your nose into little bits. Then i give you a Lindt chocolate bonbon.

Then, i ask you to smile, after all, you have a chocolate bonbon. You cry, blood, tears and mucus running down your face, I insist on smiling, and ask you to "eat your bonbon". That's a fairly good approximation of the measures of pain and relief that you experience when you have a "real job". Lettuce doesn't do it, nicotine does.

As a prefrontal brain stimulant - in the same bunch as cocaine - nicotine does it perfectly. You would not want to use any LSD when in those conditions, though. However at times, you might even need to use multiple substances, such as both alcohol and nicotine, to "switch off" at the end of a day.

At this point my guess is that the only school of tought that still protests it that of the "it's not necessary to use those substances to relax"; i guess they have never endured that amount of protracted pain. But fear not, if you think so, then next bit applies to you as well, not just Rob Reiner (again, only in cartoon form, as i'm sure the real Rob Reiner, who has lawyers and could sue me, is a really nice guy).

My dare, is try a month as a - pick one job from the ones listed above - without any external help, no credit card, and most important no "medicinal" help. If after that you don't come crawling to me, howling in pain, crying like you just lost your testicles, to beg for a good pipe of Three Noggins Full or a half of Port Ellen(22), you are truly a man and you deserve to be able to force me to quit smoking, forever. But if you do, then from now on, shut the fuck up, because you'r a fucking fag* and do not have the right to speak when we do.

*with no offense meant to real fags

But on with my being pro-tobacco.

The last, and most important part of this discussion, is the technicalities associated with tobacco smoking, which are its harmful contents, and second hand smoke. Allow me for ease, to start from the last;

Second hand smoke is either, i'm not sure, the smoke which comes from your cigarette while you are smoking, or the smoke which you exale yourself. Now, if you think that second hand smoke kills:

[long, exaustive scientific discussion about filters which completely disproves second hand smoke theories and proves that those who believe in them are idiots].

Part the second, the shit *they* put inside.

Now, i'm totally with you on this one.

Many, many years ago i bought several packets of - i was taken in by the marketing, i admit - a brand of cigarettes called American Spirit (and some Black Death too), which purports to be made with .. just tobacco. I was already somewhat aware that nasty stuff was being put inside my cigarettes, and that *that* was not right. And true enough, i could not get satisfaction from the "clean" cigarettes.. i needed the adulterants.

Of course, this does not happen with proper tobacco, like a good Cohiba Esplendido or a Davidhoff Numero Uno, but as you can see i'm not only with you on this one, i'm way ahead of you. I demand barbaric punishment on those who - that's every, nearly, cigarette manufacturer in the world - put nasty chemicals in my tobacco TO GET ME HOOKED, REGARDLESS OF THE EXTRA HARM TO MY HEALTH, worse than that prescribed for drug dealers, i really want them dead. I want them dead and then skullfucked. I want them so dead you probably would think i am taking it too far.

But plain old, clean tobacco, as mama makes, from the plant, such as a good Early Morning Pipe (Dunhill), Hal'O The Wynd (Rattray's), or Latakia Pure (Thorben Dansk) is a godsend, and the governement should not only liberate it, but should subsidize it as a great mean to relieve the populace of their pains - akin to the tax policies on cigarettes and vodka that Russia adopts. When you live knee deep in the fucking snow, you *need* something to keep you from staging a revolution every other year.

I envision a world of free substance use, where the substance's social harm is nullified by the education the users posses.. their own wellbeing being a factor.. in turn helped by ..the substance use;

and where men are not afraid to use, work, and die.

Death by smoke-caused cancer is not bad, if you needed to smoke to work, to help your people thrive.

The recent antismoke crusade has - like crusades before it - other sinister shades to it, strong social unrest and separation being the first; let alone the psychological component which compels people to aggravate themselves on what someone else is doing to himself, something which i find not unlike people arguing against consentual homosexual sex (hint: if you hate smokers, you are a fascist shit. try to argue that a tiny whiff of smoke from their cigarette is killing you, while their lungs are absorbing thousandfold the amount of the same substance harmessly.. you wind up being a math-challenged fascist shit); i find fags having buttsex (Mr.Garrison) just as gross as you do, but fuck, it's them, not me, and the same rationelle MUST be applied to smokers. With a majority consensus addendum, obviously, such as allowing private businesses to cater exclusively to smokers freely.

And for my conclusion. I started smoking Pall Mall when they were 100% tobacco and not a filter in sight, and just so slightly longer than other brands; and of course, i started smoking for the same reason as i started using a mobile phone: because people where doing it before me. Don't blame the peer pressure, it is a fundamental mechanism of our human society.

People who do not smoke where subject to the same peer pressure that i was - i choose smoking, others chose buttsex, holistic medicine, religion or whatnot. Smoking is for some a great human invention, and while it does have its harms (*smoking* is harmful, wheter you smoke tobacco, weed, tea, or dog poo off the sidewalk), it has a number of benefits that antismokers would be glad to hide from you.

Do what you always need to do: to determine what is right to do, follow the Miroslav Patented Way of Conclusive Logical Thinking, and you will always come to the right conclusion, no matter what the subject.

And that is what i think about smoking.

Better Bring A Bucket

2011-03-16T02:39:00.000-07:00

Stuff's better, still no 'net but more moneys coming in. Coming soon:
The Ulysses - not such a good book
Blood Bowl, UnLegendary Edition
Angband! - it's the 90's all over again
Pipe Smoking - great or awesome ?
and of course, lots of Python

plus the usual spewings of satire and hate.

Still job-hunting :/

Getting Hired in London

2011-02-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

This blog is temporarely shut down due to seriously insufficient Internet Provider Services, ie, my new house has no internet and the contracts offered in the area are ffrom 1999.. 60 gigs a month is.. 2 gigs a day. barely enough for watching youtube, and nowhere near what i need for my filthy porn habit (joke).

Until then (that is, when i have a decent job that pays enough to afford what, £50 a month just for internet) there will be no more updates, and likely after that, i'll shut it down anyway as a new audio-related project is coming out, and will make me busy most of my free time. Nobody was reading it anyway.

Good luck foreigners... oh btw, an opportunity has come up that might take me to China, and i'm not one to pass up the chance of Adventure !!

Halleluya

2011-01-02T20:28:00.000-08:00

Finally, Windows 7 has a proper application audio mixer - allowing me to turn down the output of individual applications (more useful than you'd think); kudos to Microsoft for implementing this - long overdue - change.

Audio on Microsoft computers is still many years behind what i expect from a home machine.. but never mind that. Windows 7 is a really great OS, just as good as XP was many, many years ago. The main strength of W7 lies in the fact that as of now, every piece of XP software i had to run runs fine - even if my system is 64bit.

Well, Duh you might say, but the fact that i can function just as well as i did on my ultra-tweaked XP, and i can do so by just popping in the W7 install disk (i didnt need to install *any* driver this time around) is agreat advantage. Also, i'm not just having the same experience, as W7 fixes some long-standing kernel bugs that XP had, making this "2010 XP" version of windows a no-brainer choice. The loss of performance for using a more modern OS (more stuff running on it) is .. negligible. seriously. When i installed W7 i just *knew* it was going to suck, but it didn't ! What a surprise..

So, W7 is good, but is it great (yeah, i know i said it was great, but the question stands)?

Well, only time will tell. I can already see a couple things about it i don't like, but all together i say it's promising.
Sure beats working with OSX.

The Post With No Name

2010-12-30T18:58:00.000-08:00

Macchiavelli would be turning in his grave.

I wasn't *raised as christian* but am one of sorts. My father was largely a humanist, my mother was somewhat more religious, yet never once said anything as sensless as "because god wants it". When i was ten or so i got baptised, and it was in Missa Grande (grandiouse mass), so as proud as i was i started taking this thing very seriously, and i guess that was the beginning of the downfall. My path through religion was as follow:

1)Religion class in school (mandatory in the 80's in Italy), and finding out the priest couldn't answer my questions about what he was saying , such as "if the angels do this, then can they do that ?"
2)Mr.Spock making Logic sound so cool
3)Philosophy in high school, and me understanding more or less the nature of religion.

Understanding the Nature of religion is where it is at. What *is* religion ? Also, what is God?

I'd like to go into detail and i will, later, but the point of this post is different. I love Hitchens and Dawkins, and all the YouTubers who speak so intelligently, who put so much effort into debunking religion and theists, but i do not want the disappearance of religion. I do not either want religion to be made illegal, religion is something that as a race, we need.

Never once i have heard anyone on YouTube - or anywhere else - preach that in the name of science, Logic, ethics, or any other atheist argument we must do something extremely evil. Religion on the other hand has people both preaching peace, and preaching war. Because evil people *do* exist. So also stupid people exist, and for them Reason will never suffice as a safeguard. Never will logic be enough to prevent people from wanting bloodshed, because it is our nature - Hitchens himself has a Religious brother (an Apologist, if i am correct), so education and upbringing is not what makes you Atheist - your nature of wanting truth makes you atheist, other people with your same genes might have more emotional needs, and that is where religion comes from - this is a product of the human mind; and it is *mostly* a regulatory construct, people who need this cannot be deprived of it. Do you really think there is the possibility of convincing a Atheist/Theist of changing his view?

Please understand that our future is not Atheism. Our future is Individualism - as we humans have created Nations (we were tribal once, then evolved), we are going to create non-geographical Individualist Nations, where people of like mind can live together in acceptance and tolerance. The Religious amongst themselves, the Rationals likewise.

I argue that we cannot, today, even agree on what is right/what is wrong .

This is because we have no Icon to base ourselves on. Mental constructs (what essentialy creation myths do, along with Prophets and other Mythological entities) of characters we can identify with - it's easy to say what is right is you agree that "what Dirty Harry/Han Solo/Superman do, is RIGHT; what Darth Vader/Joker/some other bad guy does is WRONG". And this is why we have religion - why we invented it.

We should be more judgemental of others - there are some people who must have religion, they NEED it.
You can be as smart as you want, but going to a christian university and having a debate with a creationist (who makes a living out of religion) is extremely stupid. Hoping of proving they are wrong is so stupid it makes me wonder if you figured out Logic at the expense of common sense.

I hope you see where i am going with this. This blog is about one year old now, and i am getting to not want to write anymore. Written words do not have the same power as personal communication, and i am getting tired of just writing. I think is was someone who told me "just write, it will come to you" and i did it half knowing it was bullshit - it's not like i never had the chance to write, i just never wanted to. I never *needed it*.I don't worry about the religious nuts teaching *the children* reliious crap. I was tought that and i grew out of it. But just as that, someone who is tought Science could one day become religious on his own. Spiritualism is in our nature, WE invented it. Our race did, not the penguins.

Imagine if one day in the future, 99% of the world Atheist, the very son of Hitchens starts to speak of God. What would Hitchens do? Chastise him ? DeProgram him ? Attempt to brainwash him ? Not only i don't care if *these people* teach bullshit to *our children*, i don't care if they teach it to *my* children. If my children turn out to be Rationals, they will live with me, if they turn out to be Superstitious idiots who Believe In The Flying Spaghetti Monster, they will live with their own kind.

Ok, so that last paragraph sounds horrible. But here is what is going to happen.

Someone will write down a long list. A long piece of paper that explains exactly what that guy believes, on what is right and wrong, and why.Really getting down to the core of things, so no mistake is possible. Then some other guy will go there and say, "hey, i agree 100% with you - lets make a club of people who agree with that" and then people will gravitate in this new nation. Where there will be no need of Laws, or Regulations, because people who ARE made that way will be able to live AS THEY ARE. The same goes for Economy, Ethics, and every other aspect of human society which you have ever tought "it shouldn't be like this".

I think we should be grateful to religion, because it got us *this* far - there is no way we could have built stable societies, if we didn't have religion to bunch us all together before this new age of communication made atheism possible.
The future is very different from what you imagine. Trust me, i have seen it.

Christmas? What christmas?

2010-12-26T11:11:00.000-08:00

Just watched the christmas special of Doctor Who. Matt Smith has to be the worse screen presence in all of England - god i miss David Tennant. Or even Ecclestone, would have been better. Writing on the series is pretty bad as well, but it was never really brilliant, except maybe in Midnight, Forest of the Dead, Army of Ghosts, Impossible Planet, and ...thinking about it, more or less the whole Tennant series was awesome. Ecclestone, was ok. Loved Rose Tyler's big juicy ass. Matt Smith's choice of personality for the Doctor is easily comparable to The Phantom Menace's choice of script. Just unbelievable that nobody yet has gone to him and told him "look here mate, its just not funny. or serious, either".

Amy Pond in policewoman outfit and red hair is really sexy. (attack of the obvious statements). Maybe even *too* sexy, i'd say that any companion that goes above Tegan-level sexyness is too sexy for the show. Hey, call me a prude, thats just how i feel. Would love to see her in the buff, sure. Even privately. But she's not really the type you expect as a companion.. in a bad way. not revolutionary a choice, more of .. awkward. and mister fish face (whatshisname, Amy's husband) is the second most pointless companion since that guy with the Kilt from 30 years ago. Look, Doctor Who *is* a children's show. It's all true, *that show with the puppets* sums it up perfectly. Without good - grim, captivating - writing, better acting, and good pace of direction the show just falls apart. This last series is just bleeaurgh, not even worth watching. And FFS, the continuity, writers *really* should know that scifi serials are very strict on continuity, you just can't have a room filled with every enemy the Doctor has ever had and not expect some raised eyebrows.

And the story ?

Honestly i can't even say what the story from S5 is. Did he spot a crack in time, that he then closes? Well? Where are the twists ? The intwined plots? Well?
And how can you fuck up a character so deep as Professor River Song?

She is the ONLY person alive to know the Doctor's true name (something quite big for the show.. i would say .. the biggest revelation that the show has had since day one ????).
She can fly the TARDIS, better than the Doctor can. She is also a person of courage and someone who the Doctor loved - she sacrifices herself to save him in Forest of The Dead.
This person was the one who changed Doctor Who, a real catalyst of years of the show.. and then they went and gave her the manga treatment, where she is a ... what, intergalactical thief who travels trough time? She was supposed to be just a human that he would fall in love with, like Rose almost tipped him over. Good character stories do have to come to a closure, it's an unavoidable fact.

And - everything else apart - how can the Doctor now be such an idiot? Remember that personality may change but capabilities remain unaltered. Meh. Another example of the voice of reason going lost to the wind.

Anyway, show is crap. Even the new tune they have is worse than the one from last series. And Christmas always seems to the a good excuse to not have to write anything, just do a toss-off of Scrooge McWritersux
and be done with it.. What has the world of television come to ...

*sad*

a final edit. In Waters of Mars the Doctor goes to a base on Mars; he then discovers that the people who he is trying to help will die regardless, because it's a event fixed in time, a key Doctor Who continuity element that has helped the series develop with some interesting hardships along the way, rather that a one-button-solves-all solutions you would imagine associated with owning a time-traveling machine. The key element of the - rather bad - episode is that the character is faced with a dilemma spurring from his own nature - he is a Timelord, and therefore he cannot "afford" to love those who he knows cannot be saved.. That is what is happening in the episode. Not "he wiggles the screwdriver"; he does that, but those are just filler actions, not plot or story elements. Series 5 HAS NOT GOT a story. that, is the problem. or teh problem, as they say.

A Circular to Everyone on YouTube.

2010-12-23T23:03:00.000-08:00

YouTubers. You know who you are. This is on your way; It is still rough, and might be shortened/lengthened/rewritten, but the idea remains. To ask people on YT to stop trying to 1)convince stupid people that they are in fact stupid, 2)expose criminals in an effort to get other criminals - their accomplices - to punish them, and 3)do good to those who do evil to you.

What you need to do is roll up your sleeves and get writing. We need a banner to unite under, and i am sure everyone wants to know the details.

Dear YouTube Friend.

We do not know each other, and if we met in daily life, we might even dislike each other.

But we have something in common, and this is what this message is about.

This is a circular - i hope this does not offend you; actually, i hope you will like it, and help me circulate it - to your liking, to those who you deem might be interested.

I'll come to the point. You, like many other, have videos that try to speak rationally about one of a series of subjects: perhaps religion/god/faith, social issues, politics, science, and more - if you got this email, it means i like your videos and i share your ideas.

Or at least, i like your way of thinking.

I like a lot of people for their way of thinking, and YouTube is a great way to finally *meet* all these free thinkers like me, and perhaps like you.

I have an issue - a positive one, if you would allow me to explain. I need to make an example to properly explain, so here it is: Religion on YouTube, Atheists VS Believers.

Religion is an argument well covered on YouTube; many people have taken the time to explain thoroughly why the creationist/apologists/etc.. view of creation, god, et cetera is illogical, irrational, and false. Much work goes in disproving these people, too much in fact.

I call upon you, and all others like me, to move a step forward now, and change your attitude to the world and our future. As you have seen, every one of these arguments have been disproved, and yet those who make them keep making them nevertheless, and it should be evident that these people are either mad, or evil liars, or both. You should be able to see that being right AND in their face is still not going to stop them.

You, me, us, we are fools when we believe that being right is enough to change the world.

Isolationism.

Our answer is that, in a complex isolationism we can win. A new movement to unite all - stop fighting an unwinnable war, and put your efforts into creating a unity of those like yourself.

This is not a revolution i am asking of you: a secession, yes.

But look now, i am not proposing myself as the next King or God-Emperor. I *am* asking that you

consider starting work on a Manifesto - your own. Lets start by telling the world what *we* believe in, and this one day might become a real thing. And tell *us* what rules *you* would need to have, to be happy to join this new unity.

Let me sum it up, becuase i think i might have confounded myself.

I cannot continue to live in a world where the church is allowed to dictate what must be taught in schools.

I cannot continue to live in a world where corporations have no individual responsability, where private banks are allowed to control money, where there is no proper government or social structure, where laws are essentialy what the Romans used, where horrible abuses happen every day. I can stop here, because i know you have more examples to add to this list.

But i can live together with Dawkins. Or Hitchens. Or Ron Paul (or maybe not, but this is not *my* manifesto, if you get my drift). I can live with all of hundreds of thousands people like me, who like truth, reason, freedom AND order, and these are the ONLY people i can live with. I could live with you. Even if i *did* meet you and then hate you - we are but animals after all - i would still respect you for your stance on making truth, and reason, prevail.

You know i watched your videos, of course. Everyone who writes to you on YouTube has watched them. But you - like everyone else i am calling to - either preach to the choir, or throw your words to the wind. There are too many that are ignorant and unwilling to change, i say leave them. There are many who are hurting to be in a world with people like you, i say, give them this world. Do your part by giving us your help on a new constitution, a banner we can use to unite under. A Manifesto .. which has as of now, no name.

I need everyone's help. I need to believe that the world will not continue to have a small percentage of rational people, scattered, and a ocean of cretins everywhere else. I need to know that we can come together, not to prove that we are better, but to be rid of having this obstacle, these liers, these criminals in our midst who try to make our lives worse to make theirs better. It is time to leave them.

I have learned all this by myself. I have seen through the bullshit and thrown it out. The evengelists, the oil companies, the bankers, the politicians - they are not like us. They cannot be saved. You must understand that they cannot be saved, please. But what must be done is to take out the young minds who seek refuge and cry for help. Pardon the *fancy* words. But they do not want YouTube friends. They cannot do well enough with sharing opinions with YouTube people. They want a family, a nation to belong to. They really want - i really want - someone to actually take them OUT of the world where so much bad shit is allowed to happen, and into a world where none of that shit is allowed to happen.

Look at science. My closing remarks. In science, at either end of the spectrum, whether microscopic or macroscopic, there is always empirical observation. We always just *see*, before we do the maths. We speculate, then calculate.

I have seen the future and if i can be wrong, let me have *my* one minute of madness, this is my idea, my opinion, my rough guess of what is going to happen:

Unity. A statute of a new kind of nation, or political party, or religion, a unity of people who clearly belong together.

We need to come together. We need to be one. I have dedicated my life - and am not alone - to thinking up rules that would do for everyone. That were fair. And Just. Only to discover that justice, truth and reason is NOT what the majority wants. So we are a minority, therefore, we must unite. And i really mean unite. Live together, have our own land. Make our own future. I NEED your help. Please do not tell me i have wasted my life. I have the maximum faith in you.

To futures bright.

The Miroslav

Oh computer case! (this post contains coarse language)

2010-12-16T15:12:00.000-08:00

i own a cool CoolerMaster PC case, which i am very glad to have bought.

Computers can be built by just assembly of the parts - and a few drivers - and when you buy the parts you always go through the same mental process:

1)Oh i want that CPU.
nobody wakes up one day and dreams of buying a new ram. Of course ram is just as cool as CPUs go, but its an accessory to the power of the CPU. great ram with a shit cpu does nothing (while a cpu works good with any but the shittiest ram).
So a perspective computer owner would look at the CPU market to determine what computer he wants, because that is what makes the computer.
2)Woe me, i should not be spending so much money on Games.
and so you think of buying the best graphics card there is, while the voice of reason tells you that the cheapest would do just fine (lies, i tell you. lies!), then you settle on something that reminds you of the best, but it isnt. Like the ATI5750, or the Nvidia 460.
3)then you go through the other parts, like HDs, cpu coolers, and such, thinking that EVERYTHING THAT WAS EXPENSIVE IS BOUGHT, no need to spend more. from now on, all the parts are cheap.
..and then you remember that you need electricity...
4)The PSU! Damn the Gods, the PSU !
you realize that the VGA you bought needs a proper Power Supply Unit, and that its going to be another £50 or so minimum. And you wouldn't want to spend an extra £5 for modular? of course you do. so, £60 in the bag.

and you know what? all this goodies that you spend so much on that you want to cry, that you made sure is future-proof to 3 years at least (thats is how you justified spending so much on EVERYTHING), will look like a furry pile of shit in six months no matter what you do.

because the computer case you bought doesnt have dust filters.

no matter what you do - even if you DO buy the cans of compressed air and try your best to clean the beast every now and then - dust will start from day 1 to accumulate every-fucking-where and your PC will be a mound of fur before you know it, and there is nothing you can do.

OR IS THERE !

of course you rush out and try to buy a more expensive case. You think :

5) The Case!!
i spent so much money on this lot, i must put this stuff in a proper case. And you are - partially - right.

trouble is that, amongst the hundreds of useless trinkets and thingamajigs that cases come with nowadays, the one thing absolutely NONE of them have, is dust filters.

Now i am no engineer, but fluidodynamics 101 tells me that:

if you have a case with holes everywhere, you essentially do not have a case. that is, you do not have a contained space where air could be directed in any way. therefore, if hot air is expelled soooo efficiently by your 145.3billion fans you have attached to every part of the computer but it is expelled in the immediate ambiance of the fans, it is simply sucked back in by the same fans. and you are an idiot*.
(*it's french)
a computer case that actually has circulation of air would have to be sealed everywhere except at two ends.. the intake, and the outtake. see? the magic of physics??? for exmple, a TUBE would do. with the outtake far away from the intake.

but i digress.

i cannot belive there isnt a high end computer case out there with total dust filtering.

my case is nice, sturdy (almost), well built (almost), well thought out (WHO THE FUCK NEEDS 5 DVD PLAYERS ON THIS EARTH ????????????????????????????????), and it was decently cheap.

its the Ammo555 if you'r curious.

but again i digress. i thought that since i delude myself that people read this, i might as well dream that someone from CoolerMaster, or LianLi, etc.. might read it and do this:

6)build me a case thus:

Dust Filters everywhere - and possibly airtight if air circulation means anything to you, but i dont want to stress your little minds just yet. just DUST FILTERS EVERYWHERE.

PSU ON THE BOTTOM.

ONE CD slot please, the rest HD slots. side facing, not front facing. but whatever.

STEEL. and with a handle sturdy enough to fucking flip it about.

Motherboard Tray. NOT WITHOUT A TRAY>.

Toolless (obviously)

NO PLASTIC (outside) WHATSOEVER. no decorations, mine has it and they are shit.
and THAT IS IT. its not weird. its not strange .. most of these things you already do.. just do them properly pls ?

and while you are at it please do call your friends at Intel and tell them if they design yet another socket without proper screwholes for screw and bolt mounting the cpu cooler, they are going to get abducted, take into an alley and fucked in the ass, by a donkey with aids.not by me. but i might be helping the donkey.

My BTEC part 1 of many.

2010-12-12T20:48:00.000-08:00

When my BTEC course began, we were presented with a series of questions to be answered in writing - some essays - explaining the nature of sound and simile. I had trouble with them not because of the nature of the material, as i told my teacher, but because i did not know who i was answering to; Did this person who wants to know what phase is(or reverb, or vibrations, or kinetic energy, or amplitude, or frequency, pick one), knows *anything* at all about sound, physics and the like, was he a learned person, or a complete ignorant? To an acoustician who asks me the same question i could answer with three words, to a schoolboy i would have to explain lots more, in a long and extensive manner which explains terminology, basic physics, and so on.

Explain it to an idiot, the teacher said.

As the course went on the questions got more complex, more in depth, and also reflected on what we wrote before.
On one side you must assume that anyone who asks a question so specific must have a knowledge of at least certain particular elements, so the answer you give is appropriate to that person - too short for the BTEC course to be good. But if you assume that you must explain a very advanced acoustics concept to someone who doesnt know anything at all, a simple "what is the Doppler effect" becomes a 30 page essay, instead of the simple answer "compression of soundwaves".

And furthermore if we advance in a course we cannot be expected to not reference earlier work on the same subject; the idea that your "examiner" has forgotten everything you did yesterday and you must explain it again is ridiculous.

Look : an unrelated link : explaining why the new Skype is shit and how the fuck can a group of programmers fuck up so badly. But my course is exactly the same, how can professionals fuck up so badly something they are specialized in when a student knows more about the art of teaching than the national board of BTEC examiners does.

That link speaks the truth and, if you read it, you will notice that it does so RIGHT ON THE MAKERS' OWN FORUM. Do you think they fixed it? They went "oh no, we screwed up, we must fix this embaressing thing double-time!".

They didnt. (nerd rage follows).

only one minute of your time

2010-12-12T15:01:00.000-08:00

Avast! is seriously the best Antivirus program and the most serious company out there.

They politely ask if they can try to sell you other products (its ok to say no both/either time)

You can have their antivirus free forever just by asking (you must buy it if you are a business, though)

the strength of Avast is beyond measure. updated twice daily, the best around, and extremely well designed engine-wise, not like "tombstone" Norton, for example.

i do not own a company so i have no money to give them, but if i ever do i sure know who to ask for antivirus, and it won't be Panda (or Norton).

to be completely fair AVG is almost as good, but Avast is just better.

So you see, they have been giving me free antivirus for years, and they haven't gone broke ! Magic !!
"Piracy" is bullshit. It's like imagining a bank manager who steals gum at the checkout counter (they steal other stuff, though). The free until you buy model is the future, get on the bandwagon.

Cheers.

(almost done with school, part 1, coming soon: BTEC and other weirdos)

SRSLY ?

2010-12-10T19:14:00.000-08:00

Kingdom Hearts is set to win Game of the Decade at Gamefaqs, one - the biggest - game FAQs site around Gamespot, so as far as not really important competitions go, this one is pretty important.

This brings me again to think that the future must hold some kind of isolationist policy if we are to survive. I cannot begin to believe that i am made of the same stuff that makes people vote KH the game of the decade. I would go as far as saying that it's shit. Kingdom Hearts is shit.

Final fantasy also is shit. All the FF-like games are shit.

FF has a combat system that is completely broke, and by episode 15, they still haven't fixed it (well, overhauled really).
If that weren't bad, its a fucking repetitive random encounter generator with the most ludicrous monsters ever (in KH you play as FF characters mixed with Disney characters.. thats right, Goofy, Donald, etc..), and the storylines are pathetic. Every character is distantly related by blood, 7yo girls who kill monsters, worlds that collapse because the magic flowers are gone, evil demons, people who change ability by changing clothes, its so fucking fucked up not even japanese girls on acid can play it. Its the equivalent of Transformers 2 in the world of RPGs. A complete visual mindfuck with no realism or even intelligibility anywhere.

I played FF9, i even finished it. By the time i was level 44 out of 50, had saved the kingdom several times and could slay dragons alone, bouncers could still not let me in to the door to the pub.

Man let me in through the fucking door. i can murder the whole fucking empire, you can't keep *me* out.
You must find the glass baubles that Eric the thief has left in the barrels around town and return them, and he will let you sneak through the pub back window.
No i must not.
I do not want to go through one hour of random loading times and scavenging through screens i have seen before, just because you say so. Just because you want this game to be 90 hours long.
Where is the fucking "Murder The Bouncer" option in the menu ? Why isn't it there ? You'd think i would have one if i am level forty-fucking-four.

You see, the soul of RPGs is that your characters get STRONGER. thats right, that is why we like them. A classic problem of GMs is how to entertain your players by making their characters grow stronger, but not too strong as to make it impossible for you to shape their path through the use of enemies and obstacles. And by extention of this idea, you cannot set a backstory, or quest, that would make them too powerful. Save the princess, yes. Save the whole empire singlehandedly by killing every demon soul released by the God Dymhethovjan then banishing him by jumping through the mythical Cyclone of Cataclysms and venturing through the Hell of Fiery Deaths to extinguish the Unextinguishable Flame, no.

So, it is clear to me that KH and FF are shit.

I have arguments to provef it as well, but thats not the point. Point is, people - some - are way different than me.

There never can be a successful society if we just bunch up together, some sort of individualization followed by isolationism must surely happen. I'm not mad at people for liking Kingdom Hearts, i just dont really think we belong to the same species, and do not want to live with them.

The same goes for Hitchens and Dawkings. I dont really think we should be trying to convince everyone that religion is bullshit, and science is cool, we should get up and get started to live by ourselves, and leave these other people to die. Or prosper. Or reproduce wildly and overpopulate and then die. Whatever.
I simply do not want to be in the same legislative commune with people who like Kingdom Hearts. They MUST be dangerous. They haven't got a fucking clue what is what. I wouldn't let one of them drive a bus, much less vote. Of course Ron Paul didn't win. Because you voters are too fucking stupid to see the man who can save you*. Noo, let's vote Obama, he's black. newsflash, he ain't black, he's a fucking US senator, he's more white than any white kid from Croydon for sure, and he most certainly isn't no ghetto boy. Besides the whole diatribe of why vote him because he's black, as that is even worse than being democrat but voting McCain because he's not black. But FFS you are supposed to vote because of policies.

* and possibly half of the world.

1) What use is democracy if you vote based on a whim ?

2) At what point will you realise that the system has failed and must be changed? When Howard Stern goes to downtown and passes McCain's policies as Obama's ?
thats already happened.
When not a single voter has any idea of any policy whatsoever? Ok, maybe that is a little too drastic. Hoiw about when 30% of the voters have no idea. Or 50%.
When people vote randomly. When house pets are given the right to vote. When the voting age goes down to 6yo. Hey, i have an idea. Lets just randomly pick an Emperor, a lottery, for 5 years. No laws.

Do you have ANY idea what DEMOCRACY means?

It means
THE RULE OF A FEW PEOPLE WHO ARE RECOGNISED AS WISE AND INFLUENTIAL.

it does not mean the rule of everyfuckingbody.

The idea of letting people vote on how to regulate themselves is like asking a 5yo what he wants to eat for lunch. Of course then you vote people who promise you shit but don't deliver.

orright fuck this i had it

QL

2010-12-10T17:02:00.000-08:00

I play Quake because there is nothing better to do - lots of times - on the internet.

QuakeLive is a in-browser version of a game i used to own in 1998 (Quake3Arena) as i was a Doom fan, but could never get my head around. Q3A was extremely hard, and my first game on a instagib server while on 56k was my last. But as it turns out, Quake is brilliant. The engine is ultralight, very fast and quite complex. Learning how to play can be a frustrating experience, since there are so many "hidden" rules concerning the physics, and mastering these is key to playing the game decently. To get any better, since Quake is quite possibly the second most popular - and first in difficulty - eSport in the world, with the crown going dubiously to Starcraft, you need more than patience, you need superhuman reflexes and extreme precision. Surgeons will have nothing on you.

Anyway, i sometimes get frustrated at QL even though i have gotten pretty good at it, because of some faults (or at least i think they are faults) within the game engine.

Unfortunately, the QuakeLive community is the biggest bunch of douchebags ever assembled on the internet, so trying to get help - or even a shoulder to cry on - from them is impossible. So i vent on this here blog.

I apologise to anyone who reads this and understands nothing of it. I especially apologise for what is coming next. It will make no sense whatsoever.

The LG (and everything else, really) is fucked up.

I have recently found out what mouse acceleration is, and turned it off, to the expense of everything else on my desktop. Turned down the sensitivity, which has helped but fucked my rockets.
Already i wonder why the fuck the QL website doesnt have a big "THIS IS HOW YOU TURN YOU MOUSE ACCELERATION OFF ON XP" sign on the login page. Since having it on stops you from possibly playing this game decently.

Yet still i cant get results with the LG.

This is because.. bear with me .. the client-server packets lose some informations about the hitscan location on some cells.

I have ran right behind newly spawned players (not glowing) and wasted 60 cells on them.. that 420 damage, and they didnt die.
I wasted a whole clip of MG on a player, hitting with every shot, and he didnt die. newly spawned, no armor or health pickup.
I have hit people 4 times with the shotgun while with Quad, and they didnt die.

On the other hand, i have been killed by gauntlets when hit twice. I have been hit for 70 damage from the other fucking side of the room with a shotgun, while i hit the same guy from the same distance 4 times with no avail.

I HAVE SEEN WITH MY OWN EYES the beam of the LG hit a model, the white spot of the crosshair in the middle of their hitbox, and no hit is recorded. for a cool quarter second, then the bells begin.

Since over a second your opponent might get in and out of the beam maybe 5-6 times, a quarter second bug makes the LG pretty fucking useless.
And since this is arguably the second most powerful gun in the game, of three, playing without it means i'm bound to lose no matter what.

Different reactions from playing against different clients.

Some players in the same arena, same server, have a hitbox as big as a house. i have hit people who were well gone behind a corner, while some other people have a hitbox that disappears from time to time.

hey sure, its a fun game, but when the community agrees that a ping above 60ms is too high for professional gaming, didnt you think something was wrong ? That maybe you should change the physics model to accomodate the reality of technology? And remember, this is a 1998 game, was even more shit back then.

As it stands now, Quake is only playable properly in LAN. And i know it cannot be fixed, and i am sad. But it is still the best FPS out there, and its free.

Garrow's Law

2010-11-30T11:13:00.000-08:00

Season one of Garrow's Law was the best thing i had seen on television (hermm.. on my BBC iPlayer) in a long time.

Now season two (here) is back, after the network announced last year the series had terminated (after a mere four episodes) and that no new seasons were planned. I cannot be brought to believe that the many protests (i read many ) at Garrow's being the best thing on and worthy of continuation have actually led to season two;
I am more of the opinion that holes in the schedule have blessed us (and a few film crews) with this wonderful show's continuation.
It does looks like the production values have come down quite a bit since last year. I like to interpret that as a confirmation of the series being brought back as programming filler. It's still great, though.

Production Value(s) - the cost of, and results obtained, from the technical skill and equipment used in film production: lighting equipment, cameras(quality and number of), film quality, software hours, and so on. In short, what makes an expensive movie look better, more polished, and so on. Always used (in the real world, whatever Wikitionary says) in the plural.

Unfortunately, Garrow's Law on the iPlayer only covers season two - and possibly not all episodes by the time you get to the page; i must therefore direct you HERE to find all episodes, which although they have been made available freely to you once, they are no longer so through legitimate means.
Note please that by illegaly downloading these earlier episodes you risk having your soul torn asunder and then devoured by The Devil©314AD Catholic Church; You do not, however, risk incarceration of fines. Please also note that - if you follow the link and read the page - the code mentioned was actually implemented BEFORE the law was passed.

Oh yes.

You might want to read up a little on copyright on the side. here is a nice page on it; note that what's written here (don't let it bring you down, it only says one side of the story)is the courtual practice, not the theory, or even the justice, behind it. Copyright - as any law - is fickle, changing with the wind.

PSEUDOSCIENCE FTW !

2010-11-29T20:17:00.000-08:00

The largest non-scientific scientific community on YouTube *has* to be the Vegan Party.

This guy now i was just talking with has difficulty separating diet, animal eating habits, humany physiology, and evolution in his arguments, all the while trying to pass himself off as a diet guru and humanist torch. I don't name names but he'll be getting a link of this so you can be sure he'll know we are talking about him.

My standing on Veganism - i name i will use as shortened version of Vegetarian or Vegan, to avoid double typing each time - is that it is wrong.

Thats right. I strongly believe that Veganism is a psychological illness(a psychosis, to be exact).

And this could easily be as far as i am willing to take this post, for a have a few Vegan friends that might be offended by it, and Veganism is also a rising trend, and i risk making myself even more unpopular by speaking against it. So, instead of fermenting hate, i will stick to my facts, hopefully finding a platform of equality where Vegans and ... Normals can coexist.

1)There is nothing wrong with *you* being Vegan; As a matter of fact, i encourage everyone to become Vegan, Vegetarian, or whatever else, as long as there is more meat left for me to eat. Expecially lobster.
Sure, Veganism is wrong, but there's nothing wrong with you doing something wrong because hey, it's you and not me. I don't suffer in any way if you do not eat something you think you shouldn't.

2)Please DO NOT tell Normal people to not eat meat. It makes you immediately undesirable. Anyone who expresses his Veganism to any Normal can expect to be treated like a crazy person because they, in fact, are one. Ironically, Veganism is even weirder than religiousness, though it should be the other way around.
Still, it is a system of belief, and that is one thing you should NOT speak to others about, expecially in a way as to trying to promote it.

Thats part one. If every Vegan sticks to these rules, they can peacefully coexist with me and any other Normal, mostly.
You should still understand that not eating meat is in itself quite offensive to Normals, though they would not normally notice unless they were to know you for an extended period of time.

Part two, some reasoning, and a link to the facts of the first paragraph.

Many, many Vegans i "meet" on YT break rules 1 and 2, and that is NOT GOOD. Trying to tell people that Veganism is good, breaks rule 1; Trying to tell people that eating meat is bad breaks rule 2.

To me, the most offensive thing is neither of these, it's the pseudoscience they throw around trying to make their point. My advice to these people and their simians, before you think, learn *how to think*.

You can't Win an Argument.

Vegans don't eat meat. According to them, we Normals eat meat.
We don't.

We Normals eat.

The human mind - by which i mean the sponge that is our brain - makes no distinction between animal and plant. We hunger, and consume anything. Some humans, some animals even die because they stuck in their gobs stuff that is not even remotely food. ALL animals do this. those whose instinct drove them to avoid stuff that isnt edible, survived and created a species that had particular diets.

Through millennia of extended tought, we have found out that Meat is Good, by which two things - two distinct things - are meant:

3)Meat is nutritious.

4)Meat tastes good.

The general consensus in the Vegan camp is that

3b)Meat is unhealthy, leading to a number of complications (ie, colonic cancers, renal failure, and so on), and that

4b)Meat is unethical - we had developed a notion that meat gives calories, but we no longer need that an should, therefore, not indulge in murder, anymore.

Well, that might be (in a film), but i have an opinion or two.

Would any assertion of the above be worthy of consideration, if the person making them was mad?

Look at my above statement, Vegans are Mad™;

Not for a moment i believe that Vegans abstain from meat to have a healthy diet; if it were so, they would not resent the occasional serving of DEAD FLESH - i myself sometimes through times of strife have to eat food that is less than ideal, so if you had a perfect diet nine days out of ten you could easily eat whatever is available the other one time. Strangely enough they never do, though.

1 point towards proving Veganism is a psychosis.

Also, Meat would be unethical, were it true an assumed standard that i - strongly - question;
Let me be clear here: Meat IS Murder.

and thats like saying obvious troll is obvious.
Meat Is Murder.
Murder Is Nice.
Meat is Nice.

Whomever implies that Murder is Wrong obviously needs to do a bit of soul searching.

Maybe the phrase that Vegans are searching for (true, one should never help one's enemies) is Cannibalism Is Wrong, and to that i subscribe.

Cannibalism Is Wrong !

Animals do not cannibalize each other, in their own species; at least within the Chordata family - with a few exceptions even there :p
Alas, Homicide (the killing of my own) is inconvenient and we therefore have a society that discourages it, and while we might superficially agree that it's wrong, it really isn't, it's just a social pas faux that we don't do for a number of reasons, but as the wise man says, "The last thing i want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list".
I don't mean that i kill people left and right for fun, but eating a rabbit does not make me, in any social sense, and from many perspectives, a monster.

Example.
I love bunnies.
I eat bunnies.
I also love cows, and also eat them.
One thing does not preclude the other. There is nothing wrong in me hugging a bunny with one hand a killing one with the other. This is not animal cruelty.. which itself is something i don't understand, at least half of it. I can tell when someone is pointlessly killing or hurting an animal, and that means to me that person is crazy, therefore can be dangerous to me. I also share empathy with animals, whom i want to be just as happy as i want to be, unless of course i want to eat them.
Well, you could say thats just me.

Not discerning between meat and vegetables (to the extent Vegans mean) is not Wrong, just as killing is not Wrong. The motives, are what determines if an act is wrong or just. Thus we come full circle to the fact that we as a species simply Eat, and killing is more natural to us than brushing our teeth is. Of course, the morbidly overprotected children of families who have no contact with the real world (which is something we should avoid having in the first place) would not know that, having scrounged an education from whatever media they could grab. Is it perhaps that they *cannot* eat meat? A form of phobia, where eating meat is associated with feelings of repugnance. Ask yourself, if you feel repulsed at eating something (everyone else eats daily), you can be sure that it's a phobia. Just like my friend V, she has a phobia of dogs. But having had help, she knows its wrong, but still can't help it.

So...

4c)Meat may be healthy, may be unhealthy, but we do not eat for health, we eat because WE CAN. Thats why we kill animals and cook them with a nice side dish. Eating is so important to us as entities, it is the defining factor of existence in the face of the universe. And whether you believe it or not (and i feel shamed that you'r one of Us) You belong to our same species, if you feel uneasy "see above". There are no people who do not eat meat - there are some people who do not *want* to eat meat and fortunately for some, Phobias can be cured, sometimes, and have no doubt about it, it's all in the mind. If i was to be vegan, it wouldn't be so bad. My diet would suck, but hey, i'd still be alive. If a Vegan would have to eat meat, they would feel horrible, depraved, desperate, disgusted, and that, is the proof that Veganism is a trauma in the psyche. It has no physical ground (yes, i will not argue our omnivorous/carnivorous/vegearian teeth structure. we might even have no teeth at all, if you *can* eat meat, and you don't, you'r crazy), and certainly isn't something that one does naturally, for we are attracted to meat as food just like we are attracted to women as mates. Of course we aren't *always* attracted to women, and just as well we aren't always attracted to meat.

You should however understand that not being the "food- alpha male" is your loss, not mine.

4d)Meat is not unethical.. eating meat is nice, and knowing that an animal was brutally killed gives me a warm fuzzy feeling of love throughout my body. If anything, i resent that i wasn't the one who killed it, possibly with a weapon far too large for its size. This is only a piece of advice, do with it as you will, but in life when you make your choices, try to make it so that you like the most things, not that you dislike them.

I understand your point of view. Having grown up superprotected, you feel you have no need to kill to eat, and emerging from your gold-bowl and marble bathroom you look down on the rest of the world as we were cavemen, going around with shit stuck to the fur around our ass. We however do have our perspective too, and to us you'r a big lump of meat, a child who has grown in the cradle so much that her flesh is stuck to the wood walls, unable to come out and bear the grunt of the hostile weather of the outside world. We rejoice in our life, our enemie's strenght, the impending death we all face. Truth is, you face it too, willing or not, it will come for you. It IS is you already, and you could stave it off by chewing on a juicy steak, but if you are just letting yourself die, i can have no pity, for those who cannot fight.

Or perhaps you think evolution does not apply to you?

Are you perfect, made by god, frozen in the present with no dim future lying ahead of you?

Well maybe. Maybe not. Maybe we will build golden domes that reach into the sky, and become creatures of pure light. If we even get there(and in the meanwhile please stick to rules 1 and 2). But let me tell you something sweetheart,

should something Bad™ happen, *you* would not survive.

Not because, "you wouldn't eat meat", for when hunger strikes, the one Lawrence of Arabia speaks of in his Seven Pillars - and that not the one Britain has for conquest, but the one the Arabs feel when they have not eaten in days, your gob would be as bloodied as mine, in the entrails of vermin and carrion.

But for while crossing a vale, you would be breathlessly entranced by the virginal beauty of nature, while I would be watching for tracks, listening for noises.

Making sure i don't get Fucked by a pack of wolves.

Hungry again, M

Collection

2010-11-25T16:21:00.000-08:00

if you have some spare time, and like to do a bit of reading, pick a link from the following and read the page/watch the video.

I do not claim that everything contained in the list is scientifically correct, morally right or .. what do we have left.. constructive, let's say.

The links below (which i will expand as i gather more, and when i can) direct you to videos/texts/people i have found to be extraordinary in some way - mostly science, and some stuff thats just me or my m8s.

While some of the videos may be complete bullsh*t, do understand that science - and life, in a way - is the art of posing questions, and finding answers; Often, the answer is "we wasted time", but failure is an integral part of the process of finding the truth: Those who are scared of it will never succeed.

edit: there might not really be a lot of science here.. now. i see mostly they are just videos i like (a lot).

Anti Gravity     What Happens When a Acc80%+ Quake player meets a bunch of noobs

The AlienScientist, his channel   A Video That Will Shock You   Sagan  One way to sing

Sam Carey, first proposer of the Expanding Earth theory   A Different way of singing

Expanding Earth   More Expanding Earth   Atheist stuff.. boring, but makes a point.

One of my friends playing  Another one  Dtt.Bonacasa on piano and Here   Sal again

another one of my friends (proper drummer)   20 sec video to jumpstart your brain

A rather shocking video (whatever side you might see it from)

Are you still typing ???   Roots The Movie  Roots The Movie Part Two

RedLetterMedia's Epic, Oscar deserving rant on The Phantom Menace

Why you should not play guitar   for everyone who's ever rolled one

Parkour - the best sport in the world

If this video doesnt make you cry you are an evil person and should be kicked in the ass.

edit on nov 25

The Horde

2010-11-23T16:54:00.000-08:00

I was going to say how a horde of new free-thinkers is coming out thanx to the wonders of WWW 2.0 (i hate the word, it stinks of sales rep) innovations, the likes of YouTube is one of; It really doesn't take much to think straight you know, once you figure out the process of *how to think* everything that follows will be - more or less - right. However, they - we - are slowly clumping together, something that has never happened before. And i will state my idea why.

I was also planning the impossible by listing a large number of these with their links, and maybe later i'l include a small number, but the task i set myself is obviously too big.

But i got shocked by the ignorance of some people i ran into while surfing; One feller today - apparently, an italian - was thoroughly convinced i was a brit. For no reason. And insisted. (perhaps he thought that my UK IP must mean i was born here)
Take a hint Jack, nobody knows who the fuck EELST, Ku Fu Dalla Sicilia Con Furore or Prophilax are, outside of italy... anyway..

That isn't shocking by itself, though i have always been a fool for trollism, but it's just the catharsis of many like him before crashing against the wall of reason. And then, being right becomes more of a physical exertion problem than reasoning, i just need to spend time and effort to rebut an ocean of stupidity, and since problems never come alone but always in pairs, the smugness of a man who is convinced he's right give them something i christen stupid strength, where they just keep coming ignorant of how fucking thick they are. Logic does take effort, while easy living comes with instinct, but it has its problems.

And this is why something like this has never existed before. When personal opinions where shared socially, trollism, machism, jockism, and just plain ol' brute force superceded the nerdy brainiac; People who showed a tendency to express complex ideas were ridiculed as a simpler solution was available. For example a few years back, you could be racist, or not be. Ignorant if you were, modern if you were not. But if you spoke of difference when considering the issue socially or individually, then you were a moron, or a nerd, or a wacko.

Know that in most disciplines complex ideas find their proof in other complex ideas, so even if one was willing to give you a shot and listen to you, their interest would be exausted within the first few minutes, when they would simply decide you think too much and act too little.

And to avoid getting beaten up (we're rational, not stupid) and to fit in (believe it or not, you can't survive without others) we had to grin and bear it, but luckily not anymore.

Ok then, before this one also ends up in the purgatory of unpublished posts i'll cut to the chase: start from Thunderfoot and move on from there. Like this girl here. Or this guy. or this one. or this. this .. this ...

sorry if most of these tend towards atheism, there is little room for religion in the world of science.

Till later..

A post full of Meaning™

2010-11-18T21:22:00.000-08:00

The circulation of money is something i dont give a crap about; What i care about is the circulation of goods, the facilitation of which is the original purpose of money. From the way economists talk these days, you'd think the purpose of money is its own circulation.

Tuesday the twenty-third is the beginning - for me - of yet another "course" at a group called Action 4 Employment (yes, the name has a number in place of the word "for") where (i just received the form) the first step will be to review my Cvrricvlvm Vitae for the .. fourth time, this year ?

Yet it is amazing, in a bad way, how people will blatantly ignore whatever is written in it, mark my words and may i be wrong.

Example : Jobcentreplus, four weeks ago (again) : "hello mr. Bokken(not my real name), i see here you have listed you were a PA for the head of the Left Wing in the government, and handled confidential information; how would you like to clean dishes for a living ?"

Moving to England has destroyed me. This was the worst idea i could possibly come up with; Or maybe i would have fared just as badly in Italy, but one thing is for sure, i should have stayed in Boston, no matter what i had to do to make it happen. This, is not America.

And so i find my unedited posts starting with "the circulation of money..." where i would have written how the anachronistic monetary system we all use cannot survive overpopulation, the age of information, a salaried population and a slew of other sociogeographical changes that have come about since the 30s. And at the same time i am getting turned down for jobs peeling potatoes and answering telephones. If i had a dollar for everytime i read the phrase "must have excellent communication skills" i would be well off to owning a Core i7 system by now.

To make a point about the recession, i like to quote how the Mafia takes only ten percent, so with them in government i would have an extra 18% of money left after taxes. Taxation at 28% for the lowest strata is ridiculous already, when considered that the average rate of pay has declined in three years from almost £8/h to barely £6/h, resulting in a wage that earns you two-thirds of what is poverty level, so the fabled change has to happen, now.

When i first came in the UK, in 1990 (a country i more or less expected to find unchanged, it was), there was a pub on the corner of Tottenham Court Road i used to go to that would charge £2.85 for a pint of Guinnes. Today, they charge £3.20. That is fucking ridiculous. England used to be mythical for how expensive it was. In the same days, a can of Coke in Italy was 300lire, while now its 2000. that 7 times the moneys. So, a pint of beer should be £20, wages should be at anything between £20 to £35 an hour, basic, and everything would be OK. No one would be offended by a £460 weekly rent for a studio flat.

The reasons for these discrepancies are evident to me - and i wouldn't blame you for not knowing them - but if they aren't to you, i am sorry but i will not explain. Not got time, you see.

My real problem is that the society that created me, who demanded well learned young boys who could tackle any problem and understand the intricacies of class relationships, simply does not exist anymore. Just as the proud Athenian warrior who bravely chatters nonchalantly to his Trojan opponent as bronze-tipped ashen spears fly by his head has been replaced by the grunt, whose education level is better when is lower, the workplace reflects the same ideology: "We don't need them smart, we need them stupid".

I recall a saying by Adolf Hitler, "don't give me men of intellect, give me men of violence".

So, what is it relevant to if i know the Dust Bowl and how the Ghost of Tom Joad relates to our modern education system.. proper-waged jobs don't exist anymore, they have all been replaced by more efficient low-wage workers Not only does automation dehumanize the work rhythms, but also overpopulation drives the need for work as it becomes no longer an activity, but a commodity.

Think how the recession is once again helping the rich against the not as rich: as my money influx lessens, i must resort to shopping at Tesco discount supermarket. Less earnings for the local butcher means that he will have to fire the girl who works for him and then she will too have to go to Tesco for food.
Poverty is the best thing a rich man can hope for.

Earlier in our history it was not thus, for we worked the land - i know, a lot of idiots with a degree will think that this is a simplistic view, although it *is* shown how in 80 years we have gone from 70% self employed to 30% self employed, but in substance what we need to survive is not money, but goods.
I can't, for the life of me, get any food if not from a shop. I have no access to wildlife and even if, i have no weapons or hunting skills, and am also not legally allowed to hunt. Then it makes me mad at* the stupidity when a conglomerate says it has created jobs -
(*poetic licence)
Jobs are not created - they are controlled.

A timbering factory doesn't create jobs - the trees create jobs -

More specifically, they create work potential, by letting you work on cutting the trees, you have some activity to invest time on, and the invested time can then be exchanged for goods from those who need timber but spend time on a different job, and this, is called Work.
If a company "creates 300 jobs" they in effect are "controlling" 300 jobs that could have been performed without the need of a company in the first place - i don't need the company, all i need is the trees.I have trees, i cut trees.I Work.

Services are even more stupid: the whole concept of "service" is translated to "superficial". ie, i am so rich i can afford to pay someone else who does this "service" for me. We as a technological society have an overabundance of services, which are a drain to society and do not produce anything - forgive my marxism - and thus are a false hope of Work, as in practice we have too many skilled workers and no real Work to put them to. Sure we can have a Wage, but what future does a Wage hold?
Will i ever buy a house with it, much less two? Will i be able to retire and own a business?
I assert that no, Wages do not bring about a successful life, simply because there is no chance of career - because there are no careers - they have all been filled up: over a territory of control, all the resources already have long since a controlling entity attached to it, and they aren't budging... and from the way i see it, i doubt there will be many new resources coming to the fore.

Forget what they say in school that the more talented become the upper crust, it's the ruthless and criminal.

Do you know what it takes to be the successful manager of a large company? Do you know what it takes to be the PA of a politician, the Director of a production unit, the Sales Advisor of a group, the Buyer of a society?
Takes fuck all, that what.
Maybe i have been "excessively" educated but i haven't yet found anything challenging in any work situation i have been, yet. As today, keep your eyes and ears open, your hands and clothes clean, and do your homework, and *fuck me* the job always turns out right, for some reason. The only times i had any trouble was when confronted by dishonesty and crime, but when the business is serious it's all plain sailing.

So what is it?
I have know of the recession since 2007, long before it was in the papers. All the sudden, people just didn't have the money anymore. Because, they had no way to earn it. EVERYONE was trapped into a slave wage situation.

Why didn't the smart people who are much smarter than me by definition, since they *are* in power while i am obviously not, not noticed that the waged population was becoming excessively large, then increase the minimum wage *severely* to make THE WORKERS a commodity, and not THE JOBS ??

I was going to say something about the banks, but it would be fucking stupid. The problem is more extensive, it's how we got to be a world of slaves. If i owned a farm - OWNED - i would care nothing about the money - if it went, you'll get some more. And you still have the farm. But seems people have already thought of that, and arable land is all taken up. And every other resource.

We are, gentlemen and Ladies, Royally Fucked. Me more than You.

Nov 2010 (my b-day, couple days off), 5:18 AM,

Good Luck.