Dungeon Runners adventures 2

After the first fun time messing around in the start zone of Dungeon Runners I got the second line of quests from the npcs there. I once more ran through the Dew Valley and reached the level 2 portal. In this area there were more monsters that I needed to kill rather then scattered around in Dew Valley level 1. I found myself enjoying myself as I played at a leisurely pace, looking at the gear that was dropping, comparing it to mine, and either keeping it or leaving it. I picked up a major health potion which increases your health by %50 over a few seconds, but only members are allowed to use it. People like me can only use the lower quality one which increases your health by %40, but its not a huge deal so I'm not complaining.

I made my way through Dew Valley lvl 2 and reached the lvl 3 portal. On the way through I had picked up some nice items that had dropped from various chests. The chests are scattered around all around the place, generally at the deep corners of the map, so it encourages you to explore everywhere. They are guarded by slightly stronger enemies then usual but the chests drop some pretty nice things so its worth trying hard. By then I was starting to get slightly tired with the scenery as it was all the same, I liked the various rays of light that shined down from above, I say above because the view camera doesn't let you look at the ceiling.
Another thing is that the chat screen is so large that it keeps getting in the way of combat, at the time no one was talking or linking stuff so nothing particularly annoying happened but I don't see why they don't allow you to adjust its size.

Anyway, I finished by quests about halfway through lvl 3 and ported back using a wayward scroll exactly like Diablo. I handed in the quests, talked to various npcs to get the next line and cleared out my inventory somewhat. I had used my only wayward scroll so I bought some more costing me $500 which was a pretty high price, but you never know when you will need them.

The quests directed me to two new areas, some place called Rattle Cave and a town called Townston. (Funnily enough) I dreaded the thought of trawling the Dew Valley lvls again in search of the cave that was supposedly in there somewhere but in the end it was easy to find and complete the quests. After handing the last quests in I realized I had finished the nooby starting zone and I gave myself a pat on the back, I was now level 5 although looking pretty much the same as the last couple of levels as I hadn't acquired any better gear.

Weekend reading

Well, I finished the Matthew Reilly book Six Ancient Stones over the weekend. It was ok but definitely not his best, looking forward to the next book in the series though. I recommend Scarecrow to anyone interested in reading his work because that is probably his best.

Can gamers make a rubbish mmorpg good?

I mean, everyone says that the reason they play whatever mmorpg that they do play because of the people they play with, whether they be their guild or friends from the 'outside world.' This basically coincides with the general opinion that if a game like WoW was singleplayer no one would play it, it would have lost nearly all of its appeal. This argument is kinda' pointless because WoW wasn't designed a singleplayer but as an mmorpg. But the fact that the gaming community plays such as big part of an mmo the question arises can gamers make a rubbish mmorpg good?

I think the short answer is a simple no because in the first place most gamers wouldn't play a rubbish mmorpg. But lets just work with a hypothetical; say if a large group of gamers banded together and worked their utmost to make the game as fun as possible; forming one large guild one's entire purpose is to help each other out and have fun, always making groups for people to do hard quests or dungeons. Helping lower level players get better gear so they lvl faster. Organising massive group events in which everyone can participate, as well as offering crazy in-game items to participants. Would it do anything? Would other players be so involved and excited about it that they would tell all their friends about it and subscription sky-rocket? Would people be so immersed in their gaming community and all the great times they are having socializing with others that they would overlook the many flaws of the game?

No, it would never work. The guild would soon be flooded by beggars and whingers who would constantly complain about others getting better stuff then them. The organization required would be massive and in the end, the better gamers would be tired of babysitting others lower-level players. And the players that had been brought up with favors would lose interest instantly after they reached the top level and they have to start looking after themselves. This is all assuming that every player is ignoring all the flaws of the game.

So if its so certain why ask the question? Well, this is what a few mmorpg developers are doing nowadays; relying far too much on their large fan-base or active community and hoping that their loyalty and commitment will cover up the faults of their game. In conclusion, no matter how good a community any game has in the end it comes down to the quality of the game.

Dungeon Runner adventures 1

I finished collecting up all my quests in the colorful starting zone so I entered a place called Dew Valley through a red portal. I had two quests; one to kill some wolves and collect a lucky paw from one of the stronger ones. I was having a bit of trouble trying to get used to the controls but it was soon sorted by a visit to the controls panel. There is no targeting system in DR so its easy for you to miss the monsters lurking in the foliage. This puts you constantly on your guard as often if you get one baddy on you 3 more come rushing out of the distance. This adds a new sense of uncertainty and tension, whether deliberate or not.

I ran around aimlessly for a while killing anything that came in my way, when I found a group of Dew Valley wolves for my quest. After killing them I waited for a little while for the respawn before I realized that there was no respawn at all; instead you were forced to clear the whole level of all monsters in the search of your particular one. However this game me enough to time to adjust to the aspects of the game and fighting became easier. Very quickly I picked up some really nice looking gear and I exchanged my crossbow for a mace and shield as the mace did better damage as well as being 1-handed.

After a little while I had completed the first 2 quests I ran back through the portal into the starting area. After handing in I was surprised to find that neither of the quests gave me any experience rather just gold pieces. I got a lot of new quests after handing in the first and I discovered that many of these involved talking to other people in the enclosure who would then give me a final quest. It was rather confusing and I think I completed about 5 in a minute without doing any killing whatsoever.

Surprisingly though, by the time I had received my second round of quests I realized that not only had I reached level 4 almost without noticing but that I looked really sweet, after picking up some nice blue coloured armor, a helmet, and some shoulder pads.

Ahh

Quick post. I just got Matthew Reilly's most recent novel Six Ancient Stones from the library so will probably hibernate for the next couple of days. Although I still have to do a ton of study over the weekend for tests next week and I hope to get through a good chunk by Monday.

Dungeon Runners first impressions

So I finished the initial download of 400mb and then download the patches which totaled 200mb. While waiting I went on youtube to view some of the gameplay videos. They were quite interesting but what I was truly surprised by was the comments. Countless remarks were made about the quality of the game, and normally I ignore this trash but it was interesting just how many people hated it. Feeling slightly apprehensive I waited for the patches to finish downloading. Once they were done I started up the game.

I was first met with the normal log-in screen in the form of a skeleton sitting on a large throne, I'm not sure quite who he is and what relevance he has to the game but just guessing I would think that he is some sort of boss, perhaps the end boss. I was quite amused by this because of the contrast to this comical, slightly ridiculous skeleton compared to WoW's Illidan.

After I had logged in I had to choose from a couple of servers none of which were in Australia so I just picked the most populated one which was hosting around 100 players. At this number I was suprised at the lack of players but most likely this was the downtime for most living in the US.

Next I had to choose what class my toon would be from a vast 3 options; ranger, fighter, and mage. I looked over them quickly and decided to go with the ranger as he had a big weapon that looked crazy, a quick messing around with his appearance and I entered the game.

The first thing I noticed was the large banner ad at the top of the screen advertising Play NC's other games such as Lineage 2 and Guild Wars, at first I was wondering why that was there and if it only appeared just as you logged in but I soon realized that it was there to stay. A player has to buy a membership to get rid of it as well as to access many other items in the game, which I figured was fair enough as it is a free mmorpg, but it still is piss annoying.

Turning my attention from the ads to the actual game I noticed that I was standing in a large opening dotted by various npcs. The surroundings were colourful, if slightly crude. I ran to the nearest ? npc which seemed almost exactly like the quest giving ? in WoW. I ran around for a bit just talking to various npcs and getting my first couple of 'kill x nasties.' It then hit me; this is Diablo. The inventory is the same, there are the same instance-like killing areas, and the toolbar and potions are the same. Hmm, will reserve judgment for later.

Get out of the park!

While I am messing around with dungeon runners for a bit I tried out the demo of 'Out of The Park Baseball'. Now I am not American and so I really couldn't care less about the actually game, but as it seemed to be getting many good reviews I decided to give it a go.

The aim of the game I surmise is to control and manage a baseball league, as well as making the perfect team. This includes trading players, organizing matches, leagues, and other stuff that I really think you need to know at least something about baseball to really appreciate. I was looking forward mainly to the prospect of designing my own crazy team who would destroy the opposition, but after I started up the game, getting to this point seemed a long way off.
The first thing I had to do was set up a league of my own, what to call it, whether it would be a fictional one or a historical one, what the various teams would be, how many there would be, what they would be called and various other options. I skipped through this process just trying to get to the delicious fun stuff that the game supposedly promised.

I was then presented with a host of options about organizing a game schedule, a team roster, team colours, what players I want, whether to trade players with somewhere else. I could choose what pitchers to use, what batters to use, each one presented me with a long list of statistics and averages of each player. The only problem was that none of the players had any averages because they hadn't played a single game in my league as yet.
You can check out each player's profile and their attributes, such as loyalty, greed, work-ethic, and other interesting options, as well as checking out how much dough you are spending to keep him. This was quite interesting for a time as I dabbled around with player options, but I was soon overwhelmed by the prospect of checking out the hundreds of players that the game has to offer.

The game is designed to simulate a real manager of a baseball team, probably something I should have taken into consideration before I downloaded the game. I was hoping for a more team-based game, where you guide your team to glory as well as watching their performances in matches, as I think that this game allows you to do so, but in reality it is bogged down and hidden like a mystery that takes forever to unravel all the useless pieces of evidence and fluff to reach what you are really after. I had a good look around but was only met with pages and pages of unreadable information. Suddenly I realized that I had to wait for a certain amount of time before the team could actually play a game; just like real life. In this game you can't just click a button that starts a game instantly (Or so I think) instead you have a league schedule with which you have to abide. So saying this I skipped days and days hoping to reach the point of an actual game but before I could the demo ended and I was left with nothing. All that expectation gone, all hopes of seeing my complicated worries of being a manager give way to watching my team play a game were gone.

In summary, the game is for extreme baseball fans who love the idea of controlling their own league, with limitless options of management which they can spend hours upon hours perusing. But for anyone else, the sheer mass of information, and very little action will cause them to be either disappointed or frustrated like I was.

Dungeon Runners

I was checking my emails today and I had received a notification from Play NC about a new feature they had added to the game Dungeon Runners. Something called a Bling Gnome something or other, from what I gathered it is a feature that allows you to vendor your stuff wherever you are, but I'm not certain, mainly because I don't actually play the game. I don't know quite why I had an account with Play NC if I didn't have any of the games but that will soon be fixed.
Judging from the front page of their website the game kinda' looks like it was designed and made by teenagers with their 'FTW's and 'Noobasaur' but that could just be the nature of the game.
From what I have gathered so far it looks like a pretty decent game with some humerous aspects which I feel help mmos tremendously.
The site also has a pretty good video that coincides with the new feature of bling gnome. Curious I decided to download it and give it a go. Will report back later.

Virtuality vs. Reality

Word of Shadow has made a particularly good point about the dedication required for gaming and how it contrasts to fitness in real life. Its a nice comment and I thought I would make my own post about it.
When I was a bit younger I played basketball, indoor cricket, cricket, floorball, as well as gymnastics and boxing. I now participate in none of these, preferring to lead the quiet life of a satisfied nerd/gamer. Now, I don't really want to go into great depths about how unfit this change has made me because I will only break down and get depression. The main reason I gave up all the physical sports was because of two things; the first was because I wasn't particularly enjoying myself, my teams were either not dedicated or just not very good, or even both. I didn't really like losing and it seemed to happen an awful lot, and the fun I had actually playing and occasionally winning wasn't enough to prevent me from quitting. The second reason is the fact that I was feeling no great benefit or accomplishment from doing them. I saw no change in my physical appearance; I had no bulging biceps or a washboard stomach and so I couldn't be bothered putting in the effort anymore.

This applies to mmorpgs as well. These games are designed to play with others, and much of the enjoyment derived by playing is from interacting with other players. Guilds are the perfect solution to one's loneliness, providing a whole new world of things to do which were not possible, or just not as easy previously. However, the people in these guilds generally have to match your attitude towards the game, match your dedication and skill, for it to be fully enjoyable. If they are not then it leads to disappointment, frustration, and ultimately /gquit-ing.

And if the game does not offer the player enough flashy stuff then they will soon lose interest. When there is little noticeable reward to the player, he will lose interest and motivation to keep on grinding away.

This may not however apply to everyone, some being more resilient and patient then others will continue on doggedly, but for the most part gamers want in the game what they want in real life; visible and impressive improvements. The downside to this is that in real life you can only reach a point in which you cannot get any better, and when you have reached this point then why continue? Remind you of end-game much?

Hmm

Hmm, I recently typed in 'Chappo's corner' into google and the link to my website was not there. I dabbled a bit longer and found that the link to my previous web address 'chapposopinion.blogspot' was still there, of course that link leads to nothing which is very confusing...I was wondering why I didn't get my usual 2 million hits. (I wish) Ah well, being technologically backward in these regards I have no really idea what is going on except I guess that it hasn't been updated by blogger as yet.

The Elephant explained

Now after my extremely odd and probably pretty bad metaphor/story in my previous post I think I should offer an explanation.

New developers of mmorpgs nowadays will do anything and everything to avoid being labelled as just another wow clone. This leads to so many problems that will continue to occur until someone realises that their efforts to be unique (Meaning having something original that Blizzard have not even thought of thinking of doing) are not working. Ignoring the Elephant (WoW) and pretending that it doesn’t exist will not work. Trying to think up an idea that has nothing to do with the Elephant or any thing that makes it so smooth, and popular (The disco parties) will not only be extremely hard but also pointless.

Developers are terrified of being pictured as a WoW clone, so they try to stay away from aspects of mmorpgs that WoW are extremely good at, instead coming up with something that offers something completely new, refreshing, and exciting. These ideas (hardworking ants) while original are often lacking is sustenance. But the fans don’t need to know little irrelevant stuff like that, so they take these ideas and flaunt them to death, making them sound like the best piece of gooey gaming goodness since, well, since WoW, although that name is never mentioned under pain of cloney humiliation. They churn out as much propaganda as they can to keep the hype up and rush through everything to get the game ready for use. Needless to say the party goes wrong and nobody knows what is going on, everyone is confused and unhappy, until Blizzard does something that seems awesomeingly cool and everyone tramples off.

(That may have been a bit harsh on mmorpg gamers’ judgement and mentality and I apologise, but for the most part it is true.)

WoW clones are only bad because they are half-hearted. Imagine this; If one developer came out and made a mmorpg that was the definition of a WoW clone, with the same auction house system, mailing system, talent system, questing system, pvp system, and raiding-system, and flaunted all of them. Giving no apologies, shamelessly making a copy and then using Blizzard’s mistakes and gamers advice adjusting and perfecting these aspects. Releasing the game during a slow period of WoWing and adding tons of new content to keep people happy for the first year, releasing a expansion a few months after Blizzard’s, adding same and some new original stuff to them every time. If all this happened, how do you think the game would go?

Stuffing up

Hello readers, I have to apologize for not posting recently as Internet has been messing up so I couldn't access anything. But it is fixed for the moment.

Another Aussie Gaming Mag

After my rage over that gaming magazine in my previous post I began my search for something new and better. Previously a couple of friends had brought a magazine called PC Powerplay to school and I had a look at it. First of all it is only about games for the pc which eliminates all the boring game reviews of stuff that I don't care about, and it also reviews various pc components which I am also very interested in. The articles are nice, the reviews are good so at the moment I started to think of getting a subscription.

Being the cheap sting that I am, I first went to eBay to check out the prices. there was a bulk lot for $55 but it had many old editions and I wasn't too keen on that, as well as there were quite a few people interested so the price is sure to go quite high. I then found an eBayer who was actually selling his copy of the magazine for even cheaper then the long term subscription plan, that includes postage. he says he just opens it up, rads it then packs it up ready to sell. Crazy, and he was 60 something judging by his profile photo. A nice thing to see for a change but I really can't see the benefit of going onto eBay and waiting until he puts the next issue up, then buying it just to save about 30c.
So I went to the PC Powerplay website and clicked on the 'subscribe' button and checked out the prices. Its $99 for a years subscription, which is quite steep, but I guess it includes the disc which includes tons of recent game demos and even full games. I pondered this for a little while before opting for another option; a two year subscription without the discs for $90 which I think is a bargain.
I have been known to buy on impulse and I have no wish to do it again so have decided to sleep on it for a few days before I get it...because I am going to get it; the sleeping on it is just for show.

Aussie CE; why I'm not getting it

The WAR Collector’s Edition preorder was made available to those in Australia and NZ today. And I’m not getting it. The lowest price is from EB games at a cool $129.95. But I might have been willing to pay the 130 bucks to get the CE if there had been anything that really had caught my eye.

While I was first considering getting the game I had heard that is cost round 80 bucks which sounded pretty good to me. I wasn’t interested much in the books or figurine, rather the actual in-game goodies, like the guaranteed open beta pass, the early start, and the new head types. These sounded great and at first I was going to buy it, but then I took some time to think. I went into a cramped dingy corner for a while and thought.

While unpleasant as it was, it made me realise that the CE really didn’t offer me much as mmorpg gamer. Rather it was aimed at the warhammer fanboys who had played the tabletop game. Most gamers aren’t going to want a warhammer figurine, my guess is that shortly after release eBay will be packed with the things. The books look nice but once you start the game you won’t be too interested in looking at all the colourful pictures.

But the in-game items are what everyone wants. The option of the early start, open beta, unique items and quests, titles and faces seems crazily good, these are the things everyone will want. But think about it; Mythic are not going to give you items that will work right up until the top level, they can’t, it would be too unfair. The items will either last a certain amount of uses or the first 20 ranks. The quests and titles, while unique at the beginning will soon be replaced by the abundance of titles that the game will offer, which will result in people generally not even looking at each other’s titles, let alone recognise a CE one from any other. The same applies with the unique faces; nobody is really going to notice them after a few months, however drastic the changes are; helmets anyone? The early start sounds like a dream but even if it does go perfectly, and nothing breaks, and everyone enjoys themselves it won’t last long. An early start of even a week will soon be forgotten, probably within another week and it will count for nothing in a few months.

In the short run the CE stuff looks great and exciting, but when you start looking past the first few weeks it’s obvious that all the bonus stuff will fade away.
And that is why I am not going to cough up 130 bucks for the CE.

The Elephant

World of Warcraft is the huge rampaging Elephant in the cramped smelly, sweaty room of mmorpgs. It holds a massive disco party for 20 hours a day, and then falls asleep for 4 hours but snores loudly, annoying everyone, and stuffing up their work. Underpaid denizens struggle for hours and hours, trying to ignore it, searching for something, anything that has nothing whatsoever to do with the Elephant and disco parties.

For every three lines they write they need to trash two because without realizing it they had gone back into the world of large mammals and bad costumes. Finally, a break-through! A frazzle-haired reed of a man, laughs crazily, madly, shaking his fist in in the air. He had done it! At last! A whole page and nothing at all to do with the Elephant or discos! Instead...well...instead there was something about a hardworking ant and a television that only showed static...riveting stuff.

The man jumps up and begins to ring all his friends, he riffles through the yellow pages calling random numbers, shouting excitedly, yelling about his great achievement. People are interested, they rush over. The man starts his own little disco party...everything is great, everything is perfect.
But then something happens, the music stuffs up, the dj doesn't know what to do, he tries to fix it, adding more and more records onto the horrible soundtrack, trying to cover up...its not working. Suddenly the disco ball explodes and all the lights go out, nobody knows what is going on....
In desperation, the man grabs his sheet of paper and begins to yell it out, trying to get people's attention, trying o get them to realize that he has actually written something that hasn't anything to do with the Elephant. But nobody is paying attention, they are all looking at something else.

The Elephant. Is. Breakdancing.

Everyone rushes over and the man is left reading of his paper, wondering what went wrong.

To be continued...

Aussie Gaming Mag

Everytime I go to the local library, which is not very often at all, I pick up all the latest copies of an Aussie gaming magazine. It covers all the games not just on the pc but also on the consoles which I hate. I only really read it for the reviews and news of upcoming games, and recently I read a preview of Warhammer Online, the game that I am dying to play. Sadly the preview basically sucked showing that the author really knew nothing about the game and probably had only checked out the main site for two minutes to fill up his head with knowledge. This little article sparked my furious rage that I guess had been burning within me for many a long time.

First of all I hate their rating system; its out of 100 with various categories of gameplay, visuals, and sound. While this sounds really quite cool in theory they must have two headed reviewers that make the most illogical conclusions. For example for one game it will get 67 for gameplay, 74 for graphics, and 68 for sound, the logical conclusion is that it should ad up to something around 65-75 right? Nope, less then 60 would be more like it. There are other examples like both graphics and sound being below 50 with the gameplay at 70 at the total for the game 75 but I don't really want to focus on that. Instead I'll go back to a long lasting debate that pervaded the magazine a few months ago when people wanted them to change back to the old marking system of 10. The main point was that they felt that the magazine was stuffing the scoring up, as I do. By the magazine's standards anything below 75 was rubbish. 75-85 was decently good and 85-100 was excellent. This kind of marking system kinda messes with you minds when you compare 7/10 to other magazines and it is considered a pretty good mark. ARRGGGHH

So they stuffed up the marking, so what? Its not that a huge massively big thing of a deal right? I guess not, and I think I could excuse it if the writers weren't such a bunch of hypocrites. I don't meant this in a literal kind of sense but rather referring to their overall demeanor. The articles are often written slightly tongue-in-cheek and quite bias, (As it should be) but when it comes to a criticism of their opinion by a reader, the natural order of the universe is shaken. Suddenly massive big fake pieces of 'I respect your opinion...but you know nothing and I have a better job then you, and I am smarter, and I cannot be wrong!' are thrown about.

Anywho, the magazine pisses me off as most of the writers are self-conceited jerks who think they're funny (And sometimes are, but thats not the point) with a rubbish rating system. But, I guess I'll keep on reading it, until I find a better source of gaming reviews and information, never use the internet as it hurts my eyes...

Kingdom of Loathing

A few days ago I was drawn to the game Kingdom of Loathing by a fellow blogger Tobold. Before that I had never really heard of it before and was interested in testing it out.

The game is a free browser-based game that presents a humerous view of not only pop culture but other, expensive games with high graphics. I found the game quite refreshing for a while and was really enjoying myself before I found out that you could only do a certain amount of stuff each day. See, you have a certain amount of 'adventures' per day which means that you can only fight a certain amount of battles or talk to a certain amount of people every day. While this makes you choose what you do very carefully it does also create a restricted nature to the game that makes it hard to accustom to, for the new player the first hour or so you are just wandering around and getting used to the dynamics and then the big imposing adventure cap comes along and stops you from doing anything more.

If by that time you hadn't done anything particularly exciting, other then just settle down and explore, then the restriction would probably prevent you from playing again. However, this is just a minor problem which supposedly can be solved by eating various foods and drinks that will increase you adventures.

The game also has a rule which requires you to log onto your character every 60 days otherwise your account will be deleted. This is an idea that can swing both ways; for one it reduces the number of people that played for 2 seconds before thinking it was boring and never played again, but it also can put a whole lot of pressure on those that just want to have a break from the game. A friend who has a top quality character with tons of good gear of stuff says he only logs on now and then just so his account is deleted, but doesn't really play very much.
And here is where I kind of agree, Kingdom of Loathing really only interests for a short period of time, while the dynamics, characters, battles, and items are original and funny for a while I couldn't see myself playing for a whole lot longer.

The game is funny, smart, unique and relaxing to play and I enjoyed it for all of two days, but try it out and hopefully you will enjoy it and play longer.

IMPORTANT NOTICE

Hey guys, I have to apologize for not posting over the past week or so as have been very busy with random schoolwork. As a final kind of note on my blog I have decided to make it totally focused on my gaming experiences.
I have tidied up the blog look and made it look like somewhere you would want to sit and have a hot chocolate and just read my lovely writing.
The first week was intense as I was trying to figure out what I wanted to write aboout, and as such my writing was all over the place and slightly hysterical. But now I am slowing down and writing better and slower so that it will be more enjoyable.

WoW private server investigation

Nearly a year ago now I quit the game World of Warcraft (WoW) after playing it for roughly a year and a half. WoW is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) which is a complicated way of saying ‘a bunch of people playing the same game together.’ WoW currently has 10 million players all of whom pay a $15 dollar fee each month to continue on playing, this equals roughly to 50c a day. Now some people in this world decide that they have no wish to spend such an extravagant amount of money on a game and prefer to play on private servers. These servers are set up by independent people or companies that hosts the same game, but with a difference. For starters, there are no monthly payments, instead you have to option of buying ‘donor gear’ but I will get to that later. Instead of spending up 500 hours of constant playing to level up your character to the highest level most of the private servers allow you to level instantly or a whole lot quicker then average; saving you plenty of time and commitment. Generally these servers also offer vendors in which a player can get all the best gear in the game instantly and for free. These items are generally only acquired by the elite players on the retail version, and even then it would take countless hours to obtain the gear.

So basically these private servers supposedly take out all the boring stuff that no one wants to do and leave you with…well, what do they leave you with? There is no motivation for you to try and beat the game any more as you have all the best stuff that the game has to offer. You cannot level and you can’t get better gear, leaving the only option to fight against other players or PvP. This however can turn out to be very frustrating as everyone has the same gear, no one works together, and nearly everyone is under then age of 13. PvP is made even worse by ‘donors,’ people who pay the hosts to give them customised weapons that have outrageous power, thus allowing them to defeat any other play with total ease.

So is it worth it? Despite the fact that you do not have to pay anything, so much of the content of the game is lost that even for free you aren’t getting very much at all, especially when the download for the game is over 9GB. After I quit the game, for a brief period of time I played on a private server but it was nothing compared to the retail version and I soon stopped that habit. Nowadays only my older brother plays a private server occasionally I managed to get some screenshots of the game. Well, this post perhaps begins my line of posts generally about computer games; they are a fun pastime for me and will enjoy sharing my nerdy experiences with you guys.

What Do People Want to Hear?

I mean what do people want to see, read or hear? Well, ultimately they want to receive something that reflects what they believe, they want to be babysat; to be kept in their comfort zone. However many novels/films/acts gain massive recognition by offending people and brutally exploring issues that previously thought to be sacred. Surprisingly these shows often appear to be quite popular, not because they are particularly smart, original or talented but because they offer something that people have not seen. Turns out offending the masses is quite a good method of gaining a huge fan base. Last year an incident occurred on one of the most ridiculous shows on the planet; Big Brother, where one male 'imposed' himself upon a female contestant while another male held her down. The nation went into shock, the prime minister went off his head as did most of the parliament and most significant of all; the ratings doubled. Says something about society

So I guess if I start to writing trashy articles and add disgusting videos to the blog my readership would skyrocket. Some conclusion...and its rubbish. But its true and the person that a I am more then willing to point the finger at is the media for making such a big deal over the stuff. A few weeks ago Miley Cyrus, hugely popular singer/actor from the kiddies show Hannah Montana got dragged into the spotlight for appearing semi-nude in a photo shoot. I was watching an early morning program and the hosts appeared totally disgusted about the picture drivvling on about how they wouldn't want their kids to see the photos, all the while largely displaying one of the photos in question on the screen. It would be quite amusing to me if those kids were, at that moment, watching their parents on tv and then being shown their favorite singer nearly naked. The point is that they were the ones to publicize the photos, they were the ones that made a huge big deal about it and brought the photos out of obscurity and into the wonderful world of telly where any kid could see the photos. I hate people like that. Stupid media, because they know that showing this rubbish will get people to watch. Brainless.

Cirque De Soleil; Why Can't They Just Call It the Circus??

Right now I think I'll do something on impulse and write a blog on something in the room at this very moment. Ok, there is a army bag sitting in the corner. My dad worked in the army reserves for something like 20 years and so has about 6 of them. It is filled with various circus equipment as my family once acted and busked as a family circus. While were not magnificent and spectacular, and sometimes not very good at all, the appeal was the age. With my oldest brother being around 13 at the time I recall and my younger brother being 7 or 8 I guess various Mums and Dads who were rushing through their busy city business day appreciated watching excited children strut their stuff rather badly on the streets.
We didn't do it for the money rather for the experience and excitement. And it was an experience and it was an excitement, but quite a few years ago and now circus acts are a pastime for most of us.
However my purpose for that was not just to tell you guys a bit about my history but to bring up the subject of circuses. I'm not sure if you have heard of 'Cirque De Soleil' (hope I spelt that right) but as far as I know it is one of the biggest and fanciest traveling circuses in the world. Everytime they come round here the newspapers go wild over the amazing costumes and music and characters and that sort of rubbish that no one really wants to know about. I have seen a few videos of their performances and will of course admit that the costumes are elaborate, the sets are spectacular and the music and singing is of a very high quality, but the performance gets more and more boring even when completely new shows come out.
Who wants to see freaky men topless with outrageously tight pants run around with each other and perform various body stunts. I'm sure that most people aren't looking at their 'elaborate' costumes at all.
And what interest is commanded by someone getting tangled up in a thick cloth dangling from the roof. The audiences practically need to be told when to clap cos they sure don't know when a trick has been done. The person is probably making it up as he goes along and if he nearly kills himself falling 10 meters before clutching the cloth again he gets a roar of approval. Total rubbish.
Cirque De Soleil also seems to have an obsession with tiny Asian kids doing all the most interesting stuff, while the adults mess around with each other in silly costumes. Also I am sick of the 'stories' that these people try to incorporate into their performance as no one ever understands them therefor translates to everyone gushing over how great it was, pretending to be part of the elite group who can make something of that which doesn't exist. They can have that group all to themselves.
Maybe I just have no taste in the art of circus, or clothing, or performance for that matter but when I hear of people seeing the most magnificent circus in the world I don't expect to hear them babble on about how great the clothing was, well, what clothing there was of it. Next thing you know they will be doing a nude show...oh wait, are they already doing that?

Morning Shows

Have you ever seen the couple of early morning kid’s shows that appear on weekdays? No? Be glad you haven’t. There are two channels on TV here that show these kinds of shows while the others do their sickeningly awful morning programs which you only watch hoping that someone in the crowd jumping around in the background will come up with a baseball and lop off the hosts heads…well, at least that’s the only reason why I ever watch it. But, I’ll leave that rant for another time, right now I want to talk about the kiddies programs.

On one of the channels they show various mangas about kids with no adults around messing around with cards that summon monsters and stuff. After that you have crazy turtle ninjas who say a lot, and I mean a lot, of bad calls. It’s all fun and excitement for little 8 year-olds who want to conquer the world by getting their parents to buy the many products advertised during the breaks, which incidentally are generally are a pack of cards or a ninja turtle bandana. Fun. The shows wouldn’t be so awfully bad if there weren’t so many little climaxes where one villain says to the hero ‘You will not survive…you underestimate my power…now you will die’ that sort of thing...and all of them come on right before an ad break. These happen so often that it gets to be a game you play to predict when the ads are going to come on.

Fortunately, this problem is not repeated on the other television channel. The ABC is a government funded thingy so it doesn’t have any ads at all. What it does have is even worse; programs like Sesame Street and the Wiggles. I would like to say right now that I do not watch these programs but have glimpsed them during the mornings before school.
I do not know what is so appealing about watching a massive yellow bird turning three high adults into kids so that he can have someone to play with, playing being running around in little circles laughing their heads off. I suppose however that this is rather good for the little kiddies watching rather then viewing something more realistic where all the little tackers sits in front of a TV watching Sesame Street.

These shows are designed to entertain and educate little kids. That’s pretty much all I can say about them. Bleh, I can just feel my head melting into a puddle right now, or is that from sitting in front of the computer for too long?

Bit of a Whinge; Exams and Jobs

Well I got the results back from my first ever exams today. I got a pretty good mark of 79% for maths but only got 66% for English which is quite annoying as I had been averaging 78% so far. Of course everyone at school is in a feeding frenzy over each others score and the biggest peeve is that there is always someone who did better then you, no matter how well you think you did you know that someone did better...somehow. Of course they spent hours upon hours making notes, compressing, summarizing, making more notes, summarizing, making palm cards, organizing a study group or partner to go over stuff together, go to the library and picking out books that are related to the topic, making notes from them, summarizing...you know, all of the things that you couldn't be stuffed doing and they get 5% higher then you. Big deal.

School at the moment seems completely pointless to me as I don't feel that anything I am doing is really helping me to get a job, which ultimately is what I want to get. I have thought about the jobs that I would be aiming for and the list ended up to be rather large; a journalist, a novel writer, a portraiture artist, a comic strip artist, a director for television shows or movies, or just a plain old billionaire. My job choice comes at a pretty irritating time as Western Australia is in the middle of a mining boom, housing boom, construction booms, overall things are booming. As a response to this the government has started all these apprenticeships to encourage people to get into construction. Turns out they do this only when the demand is extremely high and they only bothered to produce these apprenticeships in the construction industry. So now everyone can easily get an apprenticeship in construction but only in that. It doesn't help that we can't leave school unless we get a full time job that is training focused, which really don't exist in any industry other then food and construction. The government has done a rubbish job on this, as it left it to the last moment and only implemented something that is narrow minded and focused on a short term plan.

Early Bloggers; Ads, Money, Traffic, Money...Quality Please

Nowadays it seems as though everyone starting a new blog is desperate to get as many people viewing it as possible. They often install counters that keep track of the amounts of people who visit the site and add the Google Adsense in the hope of generating some extra income. But does this really do any good? I mean, for the earlier times in your blog you might be full of enthusiasm and ideas but most probably you aren't going to be writing particularly well. Whereas if you wait for a month or so before advertising your blog your writing will probably have improved and there will be more things for a new reader to read.

I understand why people want to keep track of how many people visit their blog as it would be an encouragement and motivation to keep on keeping on but it won't improve your writing. As soon as your focus shifts from having fun and writing your blog to making sure that a large amount of people are actually going there, it is most probable that your standards are going to slip. The blog will most likely lose substance and quite probably you will begin putting in much more images. We all want an audience and there is nothing wrong with keeping track of the numbers of readers but I think way too many early bloggers only focus on this aspect.

And lastly ads. From what I gather most bloggers put in ads to gain extra revenue from their blog without doing a whole lot. This links back to getting as many readers as possible; more readers must mean more ad clicks generating more revenue. While I am not an adsense expert by any means, it doesn't take a genius to work out that they aren't going to pay you $5 per click, more like $0.05 per ten clicks. So you aren't going to get much money from that, but the main issue is that it looks bad. Too many times I saw blogger that had started posting a few days ago and their blog was covered with ads and barely any actual writing from the blogger. Not professional and not interesting. Concentrate on your blog, focus on your writing and everything else will follow.

This post really comes as a venting of my anger at the numerous amounts of websites and bloggers constantly posting ways to make money and ways to get more traffic. I am no expert on any of these issues, all my conclusions are based upon observation. I try to keep my blog tidy and entertaining and while it may not be totally professional I like to think it has character. Good luck bloggers...quality matters.

New Computer; A Lot of Money

Well for some time now I have desperately wanted to get a new computer. Our family has two at the moment although one hardly deserves the name. It’s about 6 years old, rough estimate, and can barely handle running Microsoft word and picture manager at the same time. It also has no internet connection and the disk drive doesn’t work. So for the most part that computer is used for nothing and so there is a titanic battle to get onto this one. For some time I have been trying to convince my Dad that we need a new computer, but he remains unconvinced, so it’s up to me to buy it myself.

I have picked out all the bits and bobs and the total comes to $1700, great, 800 more then what I have. The main reason that I want this computer is I don’t really enjoy the times when the computer simply gives up trying to run smoothly. One second it is running a program smoothly, then the next we get a half hour of lag, obviously we need a new processor. When we play games we always have to put the graphics on low others the game become unplayable, even on low it runs at about 30 frames per second. So we need a new graphics card then. But with a new graphics card you need RAM to keep up, so I need an upgrade from our 1GB slot to at least 2.

And inevitably, as a computer gets older more and more of the hard drive is filled up with various junk. This computer has only 160GB of space which is sadly lacking in times like this, so I need a new hard drive preferably with around 500GB, anything over that you would never use.

With all these new parts I would basically need some more fans and a new case, which basically all adds up to new computer. *sigh* Only 800 bucks to go….only 800 bucks to go…

Warning; Mapping Nerdness

Prepare yourself those of you who are not extremely nerdy and interested in computer games. Cover your eyes for this post is dedicated to some ultra geeky; Counter-strike (CS) mapping. Now I won’t get into CS other then to say that it is an online first-person shooter and is known for the non-stop action and speed, and about a week ago I decided to dabble in mapping, meaning making a map for the game.

I was nearly put off from this endeavor by the comments of a friend, stating that it would take at least 40 hours of work. Even though I was slightly put off by this I still determined to have a go. I downloaded a program called Hammer which is basically a map maker and tried to get it started. An error came up stating that I hadn’t got the game list working or something which was quite annoying and I was afraid that I had downloaded this almost 1GB file just to have it give up on me. After a little fiddling around I managed to get it working was quite a relief. I spent the next hour or so desperately trying to figure out what each of the buttons do and was getting nowhere before I decided to take the coward’s way out and search the net. After finding a nice site that gave a series of tutorials on how to make a basic room I began my quest.

After about two hours I had finished the bunch of tutorials and was wondering what I was going to do next, after some deep pondering I decided to impress my CS crazy friend and make a map in a much shorter time then 40 hours.
I took the basics of what I had done and began to add on various rooms and textures and blocks. I worked on it for another 5 hours or so and was very happy with the result. I sent the map to my friend and he quickly jumped into the game. Needless to say my map totally sucked and there was nothing at all good about it. Except one small window I had placed in a wall. Pretty good for my first map eh?

I nearly started an entire new map but changed my mind as I thought about the time required and instead decided to improve the map. I added a top floor, outside areas, and ramp, more boxes, another ramp, and tons of graffiti. It was an epic struggle between me and, well…um…a struggle between me and fate itself. Yeah, that’s sounds good. It took me another 7 hours or so before I had finished the map to my own approval and I was feeling extremely proud. So I had spent nearly 15 hours making the map and finally got my friends approval, great. It wouldn’t have been quite so bad if he hadn’t asked me to play against him on my map and filmed my humiliating loss. Well, I don’t actually play the game! I just made the map for it. And it is one fine map if I do say so myself.

The final part of the story was when my friend decided I was good enough a map-maker as to make his dream map.
Tired and weary I started up Hammer the world maker thingy again and slowly began to fiddle around. All my enthusiasm had been drained from me, as I felt the excitement that had once encompassed me when I was making my own map dissolve. After an hour or so I had barely accomplished anything.

I guess the life of a mapper is not for me, or playing the game for that matter. Yes, I think blogging about my failed adventures is the life for me. But still, my map does pwn l33t nublets. It's a contradiction but it sounds cool.

Random Videos Explained

As you might have noticed I have added some pics to the side of my blog. This comes after some helpful advice from a fellow blogger. These are actually links to various vids from Youtube which are some of my favorites. I'll post 2 new videos each week and I encourage you guys to send me your favorite vids and I might just put yours up there.
This first week's batch are quite interesting. The first video was one I made a few months ago when I was really into speed drawing on the internet. Many other artists are on Youtube because of the amazingly detailed drawing that they did either on photoshop or MS Paint. The latter being much simpler and harder to get a lot of detail in. The problem I had with these people was that they always were taking shortcuts such as making a shape then filling it in with a colour. While there of course is nothing wrong with it I consider it to be less of an indication of the artist's talent. Also it generally it takes them at least 2 hours to do it. So I decided to make up a drawing on the spot and do it as quickly as possible. And that video is the result. I sped it up a little bit so its not quite so boring.
The second one is crazy, while you think it is just an ordinary boring video the real shock is at the end. Perhaps later I'll write a mini-review for most of the videos.
So I hope you enjoy a bit more variety in the blog, and keep coming back for more.

A Look At Comedy; Baby Booming Hilarity

There was a show on this afternoon that captured my interest; it was called The Baby Boomer’s Guide to Great Comedy Shows. Or something like that, I can’t recall the exact title as I only caught the second half. Nearly all of the ‘great’ comedies I had never even heard of and so it was quite an educational experience to learn of all the things my parents supposedly found funny. Oddly enough my Mum hadn’t heard of most of them either. The host claimed that the countdown (for it was a countdown from 20-1) was compiled by a nationwide survey. I thought it was quite funny that so many of the comedy shows were made by either the British or the Americans. Only a shining few stood out as Aussies such as the hugely popular Kath and Kim, for which my family has been bragging about since forever because the actor for Kath is my Dad’s second cousin, but not twice removed so forget the cliché.

The only Aussie ‘comedy’ show that I ever watch is called ‘The Chaser’s’ These guys do a bunch of satirical stunts all over the place, perhaps one of their most famous acts was when they managed to breach the heavy security at the APEC summit. But really other then that show, there really isn’t anything funny on television any more. Even from countries other then Australia. So many of our sitcoms come from America and the amount of canned laughter is outrageous. And I do understand that many of these shows put it in so as to give an indication of when a joke has been told or something funny has been said, but still, give us a break.

The problem with comedy these days is there is only so much you can shock someone with. Years and years ago people were living in little bubbles and so it was very easy to break the mold and utter something that would shock the world and plummet them into stardom. In fact that was one of the examples on the countdown show where this old man said ‘bum’ and earned himself the 13^th spot. (Give or take) Kinda reminds me of Gordon Ramsey’s attitude. Except in this case it was meant to be funny.

But nowadays all people know about comedy is to shock and offend people to bring up the stun factor where people will tune in, however unwillingly, to watch with hands held protectively over their eyes. Clean comedy is almost non-existent except for the puke-producing kid’s shows such as Hannah Montana, and even that should be banned for encouraging kid’s to think that those jokes are funny. How strange would it be to have an adult comedy without excessive swearing and sexual references? I wonder how popular it would be and how much media hype over it.

Adding Bling to My Blog; A Short Post

All in an effort to make this blog slightly more interesting I had a search around and finally found the 'add picture to blog' thingy so I can now illustrate my rants. Also I can link back to previous posts as I also found the 'link' button. The thing is I really do not want to distract the reader away from the writing because the only reason I made the blog is a can ramble on about anything so I will be trying to keep the photos to a minimum so its just enough to create more interest and add to the writing and not enough to detract from it.

New Heading, Sadness, and Too Cool

Well, I finally figured out how to change the heading of the blog and decided to do a montage of photos. I wanted to change it so it would capture people's attention and they might possibly want to linger a bit longer in the dark, lonely corner that consists of this blog. It might be subject to change later, but for now I quite like it and have no plans to change it.
When I told my friend that I had started a blog he said 'sad 2 have a blog.' Just about sums it all up. But how was I supposed to know? They don't teach you these things at school, and your friends only mention it when you have already done it. Now, because now body told me I feel like a total idiot for not knowing what seems like common knowledge.
Mind you, that seems to happen a lot for me, everyone is too cool these days except me. Not that I'm not cool, just that I'm not too cool.
People are so stupid sometimes.

Ramsey; F--k = Hype, Popularity, and Hyphens

I don't know about you but we seem to be getting a deluge of Gordon Ramsey of late. He already has his two hugely popular cooking shows every week, each running for an hour, he is constantly in the newspapers over his coarse language, and just the other day I read and interview with him in a magazine. As usual they blather on about the hype coming from his foul mouth, and commending him for his determination not to give into pressure and curb his wayward tongue. Excuse me while I scream.

The idiots in the media know and Ramsey knows that it is because of the language that the show is so popular. The writer of the article seemed almost impressed that Ramsey was going not going to change his ways to appease some random mothers. Ramsey claimed that the swearing was part of his life, and he wouldn't change for anyone. Well, lucky for him that his nature involves him getting tons of cash from the soaring ratings.
The other absurd thing that Ramsey claimed was that he hated the media and the television aspect of what he does. Poo to him as you can literally see him glance at the camera every time his rips into one of the brainless chefs on the show, liberally swearing all the while. One of his shows Hell's Kitchen pits 12 contestants against each other, all fighting for Ramsey's approval and a restaurant of their own. These contestants obviously take from Ramsey's approach to cooking and also spend most of their time cursing their teammates, the other team, and the world in general. The whole thing is a joke.

The ridiculous thing is that if you swore like that as a chef in a normal restaurant away from any camera's either your staff would leave you, or you would simply be fired. The whole thing is an act which Ramsey badly puts on to push up the ratings. He may be a really good cook, but I can assure you that before Ramsey climbed to the rank of 'celebrity chef' he would have been just as tame as any other professional chef.
Perhaps the most sickening thing about that article was the fact that each F word was hyphened out to F--k. As the article contained quite a liberal dosing of these you would get the feeling that perhaps the 'u' and 'c' keys were missing from this guy's keyboard. But why do they put hyphens in? Is it to prevent young kids from understanding what the word is? Though if they can't then I don't think they would be reading a long article about a cook. Or is it so that they do not offend some people but not putting in the extra two letters? Everyone knows what he is saying and the fact that that the writer has put in the hyphens insults the reader. If the writer really was filled with admiration of Ramsey's language, then why did he censor his writing. The whole article reeks of a set-up. A means just to get more people to watch. Gordan Ramsey could talk about the family pet and still incorporate every second word as F--cking, its not hard to swear. But it appears hard for Ramsey not to swear and stay popular.

The icing on the cake would be from the stupid old lady that has to write in about every article in her beloved magazine. She commended Ramsey's for his language and determination and all that trash. I hate people like that. Stupid old lady probably only watches the show because he looks hot and has a British accent.

The article can be found here

A Boring Side-note About My Blogging, I Say Cheers at the End

From now on I have decided to keep my posts in two categories.
1. For a majority of posts I will comment on something that has interested me such as a show I saw, or an issue that was brought up, or a generally about our society.
2. In these posts I will review things, such as a show I have seen, or a movie or a book, even a game I have played or am playing.

Now I will not label each post with either of these numbers, but these are the things I will be posting on. It narrows what I talk about down and gives me a guideline to work with. I'll look forward to continue on posting and I hope you guys enjoy what I say.
Cheers

Eragon; Shoddy Acting in a Kid's Movie, and Lots of 'Good' Animation...My First Review

Ok, in a previous blog I mentioned that I would post later about the various aspects of hatred that I felt towards to flop that consisted of the movie ‘Eragon.’ Then I though, hang on, people aren’t really going to want me to whinge and complain about how bad this kids movie was. But if I listened to you guys all the time this blog would lose its originality and it wouldn’t be ‘Chappo’s opinion on everything’ instead it would be ‘Chappo’s opinion on everything according to what the readers want to read.’ Which is a stupid title anyway.
But I do recognize your pain and decided to turn my rant into a review, which is much more interesting and informative. So lets begin…

The movie was based on an extremely popular novel written by a 15-year-old kid named Christopher Paolini. Chris had already finished his second epic called Eldest at the time and the goons over at Hollywood finally recognized the popularity of the books and decided to rip it off in a film. Chris’s dream had originally aimed to write a book that he would want to read as his own library supposedly was lacking in sustenance. Anywho, this dream expanded quite rapidly at the though of being paid a million bucks to let others mess around with his creation. Ugh, lets just stay away from those guys as it irks me just to think of them.

Eragon essentially is a ‘kids’ book, a term which I personally hate. It is based in a world of dragons (Who play a rather major role in the story.) and monsters and dwarves and elves and all that sort of comforting fantasy drivvle. Yes, it does have magic and sorcerers and the hero is a teenager but I must admit that it was one of the best reads that I had for a long, long time. The idea, while perhaps not very original, had a great deal of freshness and vibrancy, and really incorporated the reader into an exciting world of adventure.
Sounds pretty good doesn’t it? Evidently some greedy filmmaker who had probably never heard of the book until big dollar signs were presented to him by some large company thought so too. After reading the blurb on the back cover the director, Stefen Fangmeier, set out to make an epic flop and overall achieved that goal quite well. I won’t go into the details too much as it would take quite a long time to do it justice but it was frankly a disappointment to say the least.

But as bad as the actors were, as lazy and ignorant as the director was, and how ordinary the animation was, nothing compares to my worst hate. Before I reveal that piece of treasured information and wrap up my first review with a score, I would briefly like to rip into the animation a bit more. On the DvD you are treated to hours and hours of special features, nearly all are totally focused on the brilliant work of the animation team and how they solved the enigma of how a creepy man with red hair was going to disappear. While this may have been entertaining for the first half hour or so it does show you where the production values lie; they want to make a big flashy film that takes advantage of a popular, brilliant series, and produce something that will be forgotten in a matter of days after its release from cinemas. So DO NOT get the DvD, as it is not worth it unless some idiots pay you to take it away and sell on ebay, and for those that have been so unfortunate enough to have obtained a copy I really do sympathize with you.

The single worst thing about the movie was the fact that nothing was considered in relation to the novel. In the effort to make into a 90 minute clone so many essential characters were excluded and development was minimal. It was in no way prepared to follow the trilogy of the books but happy to fade away. Excuse my while I roar my pain to the world. In short, though I took rather a long time to express my rage at the expense of your precious time for which I do apologize, in short…this movie sucked. I won’t say anything more because I would just be insulting everything and anyone related to the making of the movie and that could take quite a long time.
Do yourself a favour by not watching the movie and instead having a read of the trilogy, of which the third installment is coming out very shortly…can’t wait!

Rating; 1/5 (The only reason I even gave it one star was to acknowledge that quality of the books that lead to the making of the film)

Titles, Capitalism and Discrimination

You know in book titles when all the important words have their first letter capitalized, i mean like; 'The Adventures of Blogman.' Why are 'of' and 'a' always small and insignificant? I think this is a deliberate attempt to discriminate those who really aren't big enough to defend themselves. 'Language' people are saying some words are more important then others and this opens up a huge host of issues and problems.

Without these 'underwords' book titles wouldn't make any sense so the meaning of the word is not what is significant. Generally it seems that a word must compose of a large amount of letters to be included in the capitalized sector of language society. And also if an individual letter such as 'a' is always in the lower case that would have to mean that any words which contain that letter would have to be in the lower case making the title 'The adventures of Blogman.' Which would bring up the question of why is the 'B' and 'T' more important then the 'a'?

Backtracking a little, in any other situation the word 'The' would not be capitalized if it didn't begin the title. So the 'language' people have decided that whichever word starts the title demands capitalization. I guess this gives back a little to the underwords who when placed back at the beginning of the title can gain prominence over its larger counterwords.

The answer to these questions is simple; this is a struggle of position and rank. 'The' 'a' and 'of' all are subject to bigger and more complicated words who can bully there way to prominence through sheer numbers. However, underwords can buy their capitalization by going first.
The manipulative 'language' people could not leave the English language in equality but designed it to reflect human nature and as a result has created a world of bullying adjectives and intimidating nouns, but as ever...prominence can and will be bought by those that can afford it.

Youtube Magic, Lame Comments and David Blaine

A few months ago I had run out of interesting things to do and as a result started trawling youtube for amusing videos. Obviously in those few months we were constantly going over the download limit with 1 or 2 weeks of it being renewed. At this time I was really interested in card tricks. There are many different videos that come up if you type in 'card magic' and many of them suck. Generally they are very simple and unprofessionally done.

However if you spend enough time searching you do find some truly good magicians such as as this fellow. But one of the most popular and well known magicians spreading across the Internet is a 'street magician' David Blaine. He has done all sorts of crazy stunts such as breaking the world record for holding his breath under water for like 16 minutes, all to prove that...well, I don't actually understand what he is trying to prove. Which shows two things; he is genuinely talented and committed unlike some idiots performing magicians that use gimmicks for the magic (Ill post about that later.) And secondly it shows a lacking in brain cells...why go to so much effort and stress and torture just to get into a book in which everyone only ever looks at all the colourful pictures.
I mean he could have bought like 500 broken staplers and gotten into the book. People these days just don't think things through.

Anyway, David Blaine's popularity has sparked many ripoffs of his tricks. The most ridiculous thing I saw were these 13 year old Arab kids explaining how Blaine 'hovered' a few inches above the ground. Of course all it had to do with camera angles but that didn't explain why they spent 5 miserable minutes speaking gibberish and thinking that they are oh so clever.
Indeed a popular parody of Blaine's street performances has grown so popular the videos have got more hits then some of his own. Many whinging fatties have complained through the abused comment system of youtube proclaiming that they can do way better tricks then him and somehow they don't get 10 million views for filming themselves goofing around. While Blaine does do some fairly simple tricks his performance manner and timing is superb, and his half stoner drawl is kinda funny.

Timezone issues, and a rant about film reviews

I was just looking at my first post and apparently I posted at 2am in the morning which is not quite true. The actual time was around 6pm and I was being pressured to let my brother get on. Stupid free blogging rubbish...why didn't they know I live in Perth (Aus) and therefore adjust the timing to my timezone? Service these days has completely gone down the drain. So I think I'll probably leave the time as it is, as changing it would require effort and right now all I want to do is lie down, read my new book, and then watch NCIS...I'll probably give you guys a little review of them after I've finished.
Just because I am thinking of it right now I would like to have a little rant about reviews nowadays. I love reading movie reviews especially and the weekend newspaper that my family gets provides quite intellectual reviews on all the latest reviews.
Just for the record...intellectual reviews are rubbish. I am sick and tired of reading average reviews giving the average 3 stars and stating an average amount of good and bad stuff in the movie. Nobody wants to read a review that says a film is average! Who wants to read an evrage review about an average film? I certainly don't and so if I wrote film reviews I would give them from -768 stars up to 2 stars and then 4-5 stars...nothing in between.
The reviewers are doing nothing for anybody by writing toilet paper material. If someone gives a film a half star you are sure that tons of people are going to see that film just to say how bad it is.
The tiny number of stars or the max number will also capture the reader's eye as they browse the full page adds for some trashy celeb news. The only reviews worth reading and films worth seeing are those that are given the worst possible score or the best possible score.
To finalize this issue, people don't want to be whined at and convinced about the qualities of a film. They don't want to listen to the reviewers cite off all the clever camera angles that the film had. They want a simple opinion. Why don't reviewers give their opinion?? They will tell all the qualities and subtle production gimmicks of the film but will not tell you what they personally feel. As a result of this reviews are often boring and impassionate, and the reader cannot feel the agony that the reviewer has suffered.
The idea of course is that a reviewer who shouted at his readers and constantly give horrible and glowing reviews would soon run out of steam. But why doesn't anyone give it a try? At least for a while it would be popular and it would please me, which is a good enough reason as it is. I know I would keep reading those types of reviews.

First post; exams and terrible movies

Hello, well this is my first ever post so I guess I can celebrate my 1st blog entry anniversary! I have just finished my first ever exams so the past couple of weeks have been quite stressful..not from doing actual study but from stressing about studying. By the way, just so you know, studying really is a waste of time just before exams. Think about it; for the past 15 weeks you have been not studying and you think that in the few hours before your exam that day you are going to learn anything new.
But suprisingly the other day I nearly started studying for my English exam, which I now realise was totally pointless. My family were heading off to see the new Narnian film; 'Prince Caspian' which by the way I am sure is trash as supposedly Susan and Caspian kiss at the end which is stupid.
Don't you hate it when they take a story or a franchise that you like a mess it up because they can't think of anything original, other then what has already been done a thousand times very badly and they just made it one thousand and one?
They did that with 'Eragon' which was a legendary book but the movie failed so badly. Supposedly the actor tried out for the part as a joke and had no acting experience before...which I guess shows as my right toenail could act better then him.
Anyway, back to exams...so today i had 5 hours of cramped writing with various people around me sniffing heartily away with their colds. I had media in the morning which was much harder then I originally thought, of course I hadn't studied for it because studying for media theory is a waste of life. Anyways, we were presented with a couple of pictures of odd scenes such as a run down flat and a man in like if fire suite on public transport, and we had to write up a storyboard or script based on that pic. In the end I chose to do the man in the suit. I made up some quite cool rubbish about him being the last man on earth and was almost finished when I realised that my story had nothing to do with a man in a firesuit on public transport. As a result my story was completely stuffed up but I don't care...its media theory.
After that trek I had my English exam which I will not talk about as it went really, really, really, really badly, and all those smarmy nerds that had actually studied smiled smugly at each other and compared probable percentages.
But its all over now and so I am looking forward to doing nothing for the next couple of days which will probably will translate to a couple of posts. Its been fun so far and I'll talk to you later.