New Computer

I haven't blogged for a while mainly because I have been doing nothing but relaxing for the past few months but I do have a few blog entries in my notepad that I need to upload here.

Anyway about 10 months ago my desktop broke, to be more precise my motherboard and since it is four years old and I've had a string of problems with it including the graphics card breaking and needing replacing about 4 or 5 times a faulty power supply and now this has led me to decide to scrap it and buy a completely new one. That being said I will transfer my 1.45TBs worth of HDDs and two DVD writers and copy of Windows XP (till Windows 7 comes out) to the new machine. The function it will be filling is work, games, storage, and some media editing/modding.

So the specs are;

CPU: AMD Phenom II QUAD Core 940 with 3.0GHz and a 8MB cache

$359

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P AM2+

$349

Memory: Kingston 4096Mb 4Gb DDR3 1333 Memory

$149

Hard Drive: 750Gb Samsung SATA2 HDD 32Mb

$129

Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 4870 512Mb VGA

$329

Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi

$39

Blu-Ray Writer: LG GGW-H20L Blu RAY Writer

$269

Case: Antec Three Hundred Tower

$109

Power Supply: Antec True Power 3.0 550W ATX

$139

+ $99 worth of warranty

For a total of $1970

If you have any advice no matter how small please contact me in the ways presented in my bio or leave a comment and i do not want to go over $2000 AUD.

Also wait for new posts and keep track of my previous post as I will be updating them with more current and relevant information in the comming weeks.

You do not exist.

Gordon Moore once made a statement saying that every two years transistors would double. Since then this has stopped being a simple statement and has become a law. in addition to that with economic growth rising provided it doesn't crash and burn, plus the increase demand for video games yield a high chance of an electric world. To be precise an 80% chance that you are not real. this can be from Will Wright's yet to be thought of Sim Earth where the AI is so smart that it mimics human intelligence or resembles it enough to make them think they are smart or any other game for that matter but since I'm not a space marine fighting zombies lets stick with the Sim thing. There is also the possibility that it could be like the matrix that way anybody who discovered the truth could be claimed crazy and got the idea from a movie. Shrewd move Mr robotic overlord. As we are on the topic there would have to be some kind of fail safe to prevent people from rebelling against the system probably the absence of the ability to scientific prove it or just won't see it even if it is staring us in the face, of course even going this far could disprove it or maybe that is what they want you to think. The other 20% represents either banning games as it would mean creating sentient life and putting them through some of the most horrible situations like mass murder, starvation, and your face (no just kidding your face is very...um, nice) or humans could be living in  mud huts flinging shit at each other which is looking more likely these days. So since I don't exist why not exist in style, I do what I do and claim that you are god. That and I got sick of 'I don't care about facts I have faith' card that religious people always use when the debate gets good hence cancelling it out.

In the case of mental meltdown highlight below contradictory statement.

What has changed from the moment before you read this entry to the now. Nothing has. What you feel for your friend and family hasn't changed, your emotions, senses, and even your dreams and wants are still the same. You still have a tomorrow so nothing has change except the clock.

Batman: The Dark Knight

It has been a while since I've updated my blog but that doesn't mean I don't create them, no I usually write them down on my little notepad while I move around via public transport but I usually don't have the time to put them on the net which is why this is so delayed in regards to the release. 

Anyway, lets talk about the batman. in short it was long, predictable, and puffed up too much. The film lasts for over three hours and while I'm a huge fan of long movies it is on the condition that they stay fresh. This is not the case with batmen where the story repeats itself a few times in the middle before ending. It is just fight, escape, fight, escape which I know is to stimulate the repeated battles between batman and the joker from the comic book and flesh out the entire film just in reality it look as if the director was stalling. 

Everyone keeps talking about how heath Ledger deserves an Oscar for his acting of the Joker, well I say what acting? This is not an insult toward Ledger but rather the director and writers for making the Joker so sane. I went in expecting a completely psychopathically, methodical villain and what I got was a plot hole filled, bit off bad guy, seriously what I say was not even worthy of the words bad and guy joined together he just did bad things and was a guy, simple as that. By 'bit off' I mean the kind of person you would think to yourself "that he is a bit off" as you casually pass him in the street. That being said casting, costume, and make up did an excellent job on the entire movie and especially the joker which I think is making the general public confused as to who to credit. OK, I lied there is no confusion, they are just giving credit as they always do to the wrong people mainly the actors and the director. Then there is the plot holes namely where do his clowns or henchmen come from? insane asylums, jails? How many would follow a man dressed like a clown who magically pops into your cell and asks if they want to dress like a clown and commit crimes. Not to mention how Gotham's most wanted gets around, does he drive, have a personal driver, walk, uses the sewage system? what ever he does you would expect at least one person to notice this even if he does use the sewage system considering there is not a manhole in every single building or right outside the door. While we are on characters what was with the change of actress for Rachel, was it contractual, conflict of interests or heavily considered by which I mean to say the director wanted to show that Rachel had been working extremely hard. Because of this I do not fully believe the Joker is dead since they only showed him surrounded by armed police then cut to the next scene which some claim was to protect the viewers from Heath Ledger from being killed but with a major character being changed is it that hard to see another actor under a ton of make up playing one of the most important characters from the batman universe. Anyway I would have preferred a more attractive alternative. Then there is Aaron Eckhart who plays Two Face, I'm sorry but he has already ruined his acting career for me since no matter what film it is he will always be Bill from the film Meet bill to me. I personally think Mark Valley would be a better choice or if you want to stick with the original comic version I don't know maybe Pierce Brosnan.

Out of the entire film I must have claimed 'I called it' over a dozen times, it's like the director Christopher Nolan just read about how to make dramatic points and stole the examples straight from the text. Still he does gets points for creating a situation that represents the prisoners dilemma.

Overall if you want a super hero movie with lots of great action sequences and shit blowing up, a decent story, and the batman go see it or get it on DVD which is more appropriate now, it's a great film with only a few flaws that you would love. That being said I would chose Batman Begins over Dark Knight any day of the week I give this a 7.5/10. Oh, and one more thing, SHAME! Shame on you Mr Director Man this film had such potential but you messed it up.

Spore

For the past couple of years people every where have been creaming themselves at the mere mention of spore. Then it came out and no one brought it. Why you ask? One, because EA put some ridiculous DRM on it that force you to be able to only use the CD-key three times and it constantly check it online to check if you are obeying all the set out rules. So not only does it mean you can not technically buy the game only rent it but also to send a message to EA and any other would be abusive DRM users over half a million pirated the game in the first few days of it being released. Another example of developer gone made is Activision who selects people who pirate just one of their products and sues them for some ridiculous sum forcing the defendant to settle and as part of it are forced not to talk to anyone about it. The story can be found at http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/09/activision-sues.html. I will go into further detail of piracy and how developer are going about it wrongly in a future blog entry but till then I give this simple rule to avoid bad outcomes , respect and be respected. Go to http://www.amazon.com/Spore-Mac/dp/B000FKBCX4/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1222181103&sr=8-1 to read about how others feel about Spore.

The gameplay also turned out to be bad with the wildly open, colourfull evolution of the users creation being replaced with a tri-linear game following a cosmetic only creature. Tri-linear refers to how there are only three ways to do things; the good way of peace, the evil way of war, or a mixture of two. What you have to do falls in a straight line, like take control of all the towns/cities or earn enough points to evolve. Basically have to one thing and have very little choice of how to do it. Coming up to the game evolution was made out to be a huge thing but in reality it turns out that while creature and object creation is extremely advance using top of the line technology and yielding no two creatures alike. Yet it does little to represent evolution correctly in the sense that a creature with one leg has no real advantage over one with one hundred legs. Overall I give spore about 6/10. If you'll like to hear another review of it go to http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/218-Spore of course not much will change between the two sets of points made.

My thoughts on Obama.

Well most folk are singing Obama's praises so naturally I have to disagree with them. Lets start with Obama's running mate Biden. Can't say I know that much about the guy apart from the fact that he is more than competent at the role he going to fill other some other running mates, not pointing any figures (Padin). Padin who can has been described by Matt Damon as a bad Disney movie where a hockey mom  becomes vice president and then has to use every thing she learned to run the country. To learn all the reason why her being any where near a place of power would be a terrible idea simply Google her. After the conservative media, i.e. Fox news had such a field day about how Obama names sounds a bit like Osama he just had to complete the deal with a running mate whose name sounds like Bin Laden. Next we Have Obama's motto of change, What change!? He is not changing anything, just sticking to generic neo-liberal policies. Unless he is referring to the fact that he is the first black president (provided my prediction is correct and he wins the election). Well let me tell you that this is not change but rather history, I can imagine a kid in 50 years time who is in high school beaming a text book into their brain getting to the forty forth president and seeing Barack Obama written there and seeing a footnote saying first black president, then kid gets impressed the simply goes on to the forty fifth president Dr. Ron Paul with the footnote 'best president ever'.

So we learned that Obama is a immature broken record. You know what, while he may not be a Ron Paul he would make a half decent president, especially compared to his opponent.

I mean I don't want to go into any detail but I would not be surprised if he had Alzheimer, the man does not even know what car he drives or how to use a computer. I can just imagine a certain a situation with McCain and a certain red button and the hilarity that follows. Until it actually happens. To see the 'real McCain' watch the video here 

He also called his wife a cunt, leading him to be dubbed McCunt.

The doomday bringing LHC.

EDIT OCTOBER 16 2008: A while ago some of the magnets on the LHC had some technical difficulty meaning we get to enjoy Christmas this year before the zombie Apocalypse as the LHC has been delayed two months.

For a change lets talk about something other than twitter, What's on everyones mind at the moment, I know what able the LHC, that just did a dry test run. The LHC or Large Hadron Collider is basically a big ol' science experiment that should give the answer to life the universe and everything (which is pointless since we already know the answer) but has a lot of people having their knickers in a bunch about how it is going to destroy the world. You can also go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lhc for a less idiotic description of it. Anyway where was I, oh right, end of the world. The most wide spread comment on this subjects is "Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat." which came from the glorious mouth of Brian Cox. I have to agree with him there, it will not destroy the world, only open wormholes where by zombies fly out. What evidence do I have of this, well how about the fact that it would be totally freaking sweet. No, doesn't do it for you well then a while after I came up with this theory I stumbled across these pictures;

Ha, what do you think of that, with employees that work around a high tech, world changing experiment and look too close to Gordon Freeman and the G-Man you know something is going to go down, namely zombie spewing portals. Of course I can't decide if Gordon should get as far away as possible with his cloud of bad luck or stay with his awesome zombie/alien ass kicking powers. I guess we find out on October 21. Oh and in case you want to check out if the LHC has destroyed the world yet go to this site; http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/.

Twitter!

If you have not heard of twitter then you are obviously not spending enough time on the Internet and I do not want to know you. In case you've just come out of a coma of 20 years and the first you did was come to this blog well I'll tell you what twitter is. I would describe twitter as a highly addictive micro-blogging pull-stalkerware* service where you can send tweets consisting of up to 140 characters via the web, sms, im, or through the various applications out there to tell what you are doing at the moment and follow other peoples tweets. The purpose of this is to spread plans to a wide audience of friends i.e. "going to pub in an hour, all welcome to join" or to let you see the daily activities of old friends, people you don't get to talk to often, or even see what your favourite person is doing. Favourite people being any Internet celebrity worth their salt like Kevin Rose http://twitter.com/kevinrose or even a presidential candidate like BarackObama http://twitter.com/BarackObama. In any case you will probably go through the same three stages I and many others did, First thinking this sounds like a stupid idea, then giving it a try and finding it to be a nice little thing, until the final stage of being fully addicted.

If you want to follow yours truly then the URL to my twitter account is in my bio or you can look at the bottom of this page to see my latest five tweets.

*Stalkerware refers to those services that inform others, possibly stalkers about your every action. Pull, as opposed to push specifies the information flow to the service provider i.e. you send the information you want to twitter or in other words twitter pulls the information towards itself. While a certain iPhone application that collects data from the inbuilt GPS and recent Google searches and pushes it to all the friends who seek the information.

Lets try this again, again.

This is my fourth blog with the others never lasting more than a week and if one compares when I created these blogs and when I had exams you would see a connection. Of course this time is different, now I'm avoiding doing study for just tests not exams and I might even change the topic of it. You see my past blogs all involved discussing the major events in my life but with the introduction of twitter I no longer need to blog about this, all I need to is to have a website to link to since it's not like anyone is going to read this. The new topics this blog will cover are reviews of games, films, and music, news from various industries namely tech, pop culture, politics, and the world in general and to finish it off I might add the occasional crackpot theory or rant of mine.