Tuesday February 21, 2006 - 12:07AM EDT
It is kind of sobering to think that we as humans are just another creature on this planet that can go extinct as those rare tree frogs we here so much about. Our whole society, human civilization doesn't seem to ever keep that in mind. It just seems to me as if we don't carry ourselves as if we really understand the frailty of our body and the planet. I would have to say a little bit of the various religious concepts of there being something greater than this world contributing to the neglegent attitude towards the planet and ourselves in general. This just in, this world is all we got, ain't nothing greater.
Sunday February 19, 2006 - 1:36AM EDT
With what can be described as a lackluster XBOX 360 debut and now rumors that PS3 will be delayed and outrageously expensive Nintendo may have hit upon the right strategy in this round of console battle. Free internet gaming, old school downloads, cheap system, new interface and promise to make games easier and cheaper to make but reach a wider audience. Integration with their portable systems possibly also. They could dominate this round of console wars. There is no buzz with XBOX because of their less than impressive game selection. If Nintendo beats PS3 to market PS3 just may be doomed. It will probably still sell but if it comes out late and has a huge price tag sales will definately take a hit. If Nintendo can come out with their trademark quality games and attract wide audiences we could be looking at dominance on the level of their 8-bit system again. And their system design is the best of the 3 consoles. Small and it can fit in nicely an any kind of setup. Revolution will definately be huge in Japan, that is almost a guarantee. Really though it will come down to the games as it always does. Nintendo lost it throne as console king after Super Nintendo because of the lack of third party support for n64 and gamecube. N64's catridge format and Sony's attracting so many 3rd party developers killed that system. Although both N64 and Gamecube both had quality 1st party games that couldn't be found on any other system.
If 3rd party developers buy into Nintendo's make quality games instead of just ramping up graphics on sequels then Revolution will dominate. Their online play remains to be seen though. Its free so they have a leg up on XBOX Live already but they still need to do it right. I keep hearing about how more and more 3rd party developers are signing up for Revolution. The main thing game developers look for in a system is how big the installed user base is. If Nintendo can attract the wide user base they are hoping and not just the traditional male sect developers would be scrambling to be making games for that system. Looks like also developers are also buying into the new controller for revolution. While still having the option for a traditional controller. I'd feel pretty good being Nintendo right now. They make tons of money on their portables and they still have a good hold on a niche albeit small market share of nintendo loyalists who love their legendary games. Just keeping Revolution production costs down means that the system will not be a failure for them. It isn't a matter of the system failing, but how successful it will be. I'd bet it will be much more successful than gamecube which I guess could be seen as a failure in some light. After two lackluster console cycles Nintendo is going to be back. Funny part though is that since they fell off the top I never hear anyone outside of gaming talk about them. Financial analysts are predicting a two console race between XBOX and PS3, very few even recognize Nintendo. DS althought not as powerful as PSP has PSP beat in terms of sales and their wi-fi games with free internet play really raised the stakes.
I really can't wait for Revolution. The free internet and old school downloads are enough for me.
Friday February 17, 2006 - 10:03AM EDT
This interest in the hunting accident involving the Vice Pres and his friend is so freaking weird. I saw Chris Matthews on TV looking like he wanted to interogate Cheney on what happened. Ok, maybe there should be some minor interest as a footnote because the guy is in the public eye. But he commited no heinous crime and there is no scandal involved. It was just a freaking hunting accident, a fairly personal matter. While I really don't care about the privacy thing, the inane coverage of it is just weird. There has got to be more important stories in government to cover. What ever happened to Cheney's possible investigation into Haliburton ties?
Wednesday February 15, 2006 - 7:34PM EDT
You know what is really weird. Any kind of hoopla over the Da Vinci Code from religious groups. First off it is a work of fiction. Second, the holy grail is an object that never existed. It got mixed up with legend back in medieval times and somehow some people forgot that.
Wednesday February 15, 2006 - 1:47AM EDT
Did a lot of website work today. Complete redesign on my portfolio website. Much much better. I think it is one of my better designs to day. Which isn't saying much. My mind is cooked right now. I need sleep.
Monday February 13, 2006 - 11:04PM EDT
When I reviewed that movie flight plan on of the things that I didn't like was the trick they played with the Air Marshall and Flight Attendant being the terrorist. That kind of action by people in their position has to be extremely rare and also the movie never gave us a clear motive for their actions except the obligatory money reason. But to do something like that with those people you need some more depth to their motive and their money motive wasn't developed at all. Anyway now I read a story of how two air marshalls tried to use their position to smuggle drugs. Ha, it wasn't even that much mone, what were these people thinking. Do they not get paid enough?
Monday February 13, 2006 - 2:31AM EDT
Hadn't made a post since Friday. Damn. I am just getting into work on a website now and it is late and I have to sleep so I can wake up early for an eye doctor appointment. Its ok though. I was on a roll.
Friday February 10, 2006 - 3:37PM EDT
Was watching a Dennis Miller stand up special last night and he mentioned global warming. I think Dennis Miller is hilarious although some people don't like him. Anyway his comment on global warming was assinine at best bujt I feel as if it is better understanding than the majority but still piss poor. There are no sides in the so-called global warming debate. Those who have formed sides are incompetant scientests, ignorant morons and just all around losers who play loserball. My geography teacher explained it best. He said, and I think I went over this in a post already, that we just don't have enough information to be certain of anything. Global weather patterns as far as we know now operate on time scales into the tens of thosands of years. The paltry 100 years of data and spot information from ancient times from ice drillings is not enough to form a workable a hypothesis that we can even begin to try and prove. We still need faster more complex computers to do weather and climate situations and that is the bottom line. We cannot reliably look at any weather phenomenon today and say we know a definitive cause for it. We do know this though. Our impact on the planet is huge, but it doesn't mean that it is the biggest or something like this hasn't happened before. Catastrophic disaster such as Volcanoes, asteroid strikes, etc... Can cause huge impact on global weather. However now that we live on this blue sphere we can't ignore anything that changes weather to our detriment. Whether it be natural or man-made. Even if global warming was a natural phenomenon not caused by human pollution we still would have to figure out what the hell is going on or possibly face huge consequences.
Then there is the question of what warming of the planet is going to do. Uneducated clowns percieve when a scientest says the earth's temp has risen a few degrees to mean an extra warm morning. Or that the fact global warming may mean it gets colder some places as some kind of error in logic. I hate when uneducated fools take a side on global warming, its ludicrous. The ironic part is that those who want to ignore global warming most likely just don't want to change their way of living or want to ignore change as long as possible. It is that very ignorance that will force change upon them. The planet is changing and we can either live in the dark about it or figure out what is going on, whether it be bad good or inert.
Friday February 10, 2006 - 4:12AM EDT
So I read this article about Ford and GM wanting to promote ethanol and of course recent state of the union mention about alternative fuels. Does everyone miss the point? Sure foriegn oil dependence is bad. But that is merely a faux problem to mask the real issue of energy consumption. Oil is a finite resource whether we get it here or somewhere else. Petroleum products also pollutes the environment a lot in ways that are detrimental to human health. It is an effeciency issue. I read an article on how tackling effeciency would ultamitely be the smarter move than simply going to another source of energy but using it just as ineffeciently. So-called long term thinking nowadays is restricted to the lifetime of a person, not even. If the founding fathers of our country thought about everything they did in terms of their own lifetimes this country would be a complete disaster. But they didn't, they did take the time to consider longer term effects for some things. Where am I going with this? Oh yeah alternative fuels. It is an effecieny thing. Simply switching fuel sources solves no problems. It just makes you feel better because you aren't getting oil from those "arabs". We are still on the same freaking planet. Population of the earth and globalization won't allow us to live in seperate little fiefdoms like we did for most of our development.
When I listen to people sometimes and am able to see how their thought process works I am utterly disgusted. It makes me think more and more about Hawkins brain function theories. Piecemeal discrete logical thinking doesn't seem to be the natural way that humans' minds work. It is something that must be learned and taught. Some have a better prediliction for it than others. But surely that kind of thinking has to be the most adavantageous way for a person to be in today's society and the future. Hawkins mentioned something about learning being the creation of analogies from experienced stimuli onto other seemingly unrelated things. We are not like computers the idea of discreteness in the way our brain works does not seem to hold water. The only thing that is discrete is the physical structure. An idea, concept or a thought is not a singular thing in our brain. It is a amalgam of many things that vary by person. Although we may seem to have higher concepts we agree on the underlying components of these things would varying almost infinitely by person. I am not even talking about abstract thoughts but something like an apple. We can all agree what an apple is but to think that to form the concept of an apple in our minds would be done exactly the same way for each person is unfathomable. Where was I. Oh yeah, teaching logical thinking. That must be done to a much greater extent or we are not going to progress much further as a human race. Sure the small percentage who do have the ability to advance humanity through sound logic will always be around. But I'd like to imagine a world in which everyone was like that. People just make these massive leaps of logic through analogies that they have no business creating. Hawkins briefly went over how if we learn through analogies then there are going to be a whole lot of false analogies that just aren't going to help you in the end. I think there is something to that. Especially when I see people moronic turns of logic. I am not talking about the obvious ones, but the everyday ones. The ones that have simply become the status quo. The rise of opinion to signify strength of character runs rampant with bad analogies. People are proded for opinion but rarely asked to study it. I remember how it worked in school. It used to be that all you got was someone dogma and never asked for opinion. Then people wanted to be heard and opinion became key. But still it has not been integrated into learning well enough. I remember in school discussing things and various people would present opinions. Discourse among other people is a good learning tool but it will not shape the perfect person. I just remember having to give opinions on things that I really had very little information on. I go back to that Conucious quote my Chinese teacher used to say all the time. "Studying without thinking is foolish, thinking without studying is dangerous." I don't think human society as a whole has found that balance between studying and thinking. In that quote I'd like to take studying to mean something more than just reading a book or going to class or something. Studying is attentive scrutiny, the pursuit of knowledge through observation. We've finally I think gotten the thinking part down. That is opinion. Studying is still lacking. We form these opinions but have very little to work with when forming them.
Dare I say that we should always be in school. It seems that once we finish our prescribed secondary or post-secondary education study is all but forgotten by most people. Sure you pick up things as you grow old and experience stuff. But for most never in their life again do they study and acquire knowledge like they did in school. While this cannot be said of everyone, I would wager it encompasses the majority of people. We should always be learning at the rate we did when we were in school. Modern mandatory schooling was a response to child labor. Our country and most who have such things are immensely better for it and probably couldn't imagine children not being required to go to school. So while maybe we don't need something structured like school for adults, but we need to have our minds working like being in school as a kid. People exit school, form their own little groups of whatever and their minds rot into nothing. Again this is not something that I would say applies to everybody but a good majority. It is the structure of human society. There is nothing after school for most, for their minds. That has to be changed.
Costs and more costs - comments(0)
Friday February 10, 2006 - 3:17AM EDT
I was just thinking. Cost is an economic illusion put on by bastards who don't know what they are doing, can't see past their own nose or those ruled by mephistopheles younger brother monetary greed.
Thursday February 9, 2006 - 9:17PM EDT
Its no secret as to why I haven't already established my freelance work as a steady source of income. I am disorganized and lazy. When it comes to getting things done, I am horrendously overmatched. Luckily I do good enough work to keep the few clients I have. I need to get on top of this organization thing. That is all that is left for me to wratchet things up.
Thursday February 9, 2006 - 7:11PM EDT
As much as I rip things for being inefficient, I do so many things inefficiently. Especially when it comes to scheduling to get things done.
Thursday February 9, 2006 - 12:10AM EDT
I'm still waiting for Nintendo Revolution. I just salivate over the possibilities. That system is going to be awesome. You know what else is going to be awesome. My new website. Actually a few new websites. There is like 5 of them. One more year. One more year and I think I won't have to go back to working for THE MAN ever again. Or I'll end up drunk in a gutter. Either way I'm kosher.
Wednesday February 8, 2006 - 7:53PM EDT
When I made the post about the movie Hostel I said it was the best horror movie I've seen since the original psycho as far as demented concepts go. I neglected to mention The Shining. I should be ashamed of myself for forgetting that movie.
Wednesday February 8, 2006 - 7:49PM EDT
I liked this movie. It was entertaining. It will win no awards or anything like that but sometimes finding entertaining movies is hard. This movie actually makes you want to keep watching. The story is simple but effective and the acting is very good. Some people might not like it because they expect something bigger from it. But I enjoy movies like this. That show stories that don't involve massive world encompassing plots. Just a few people and what they are doing at the time. It easily could have taken that route but it didn't and I liked that.
Wednesday February 8, 2006 - 4:47AM EDT
I just had the worst dream. Every once in a whille I have what can only be called nightmares. They are not about mystical beings or scary beasts. They always involve the most fucked up depravity of the human psyche my mind is able to conjure. They scare the bejesus out of me. They are not ever violent or graphic in any way. It is just whatever screwed up concept it presented in this nightmare is so utterly horrifying that it is all that is required to invoke a paralyzing sense of fear. I don't even want to blog about what I just dreamed.
Tuesday February 7, 2006 - 1:37AM EDT
I just saw a movie with pecan pie in it now I am eating a mini pecan pie I got from Wegmans. What the fuck. Why am I doing this. This fucking blog is just like the rest of the millions of blogvestites out there bitching about something or other. How did I become this guy. How many other losers like me are doing this shit at this hour. Too fucking many that is how many. This pecan pie is pretty tasty though. I could continue to write about how many idiots I ran into today but I really didn't come across any that I remember. I'm in one of those give a fuck moods. In other words I could give a fuck about pretty much everything. Nothing really matters. It is all a made up system in our heads. It funny to think about life like that. One day I am going to lose my restraint and really start doing whatever I want at any moment. Or not, whatever.
Sunday February 5, 2006 - 10:07AM EDT
The funniest part about this cartoon flap is that the riots are taking place in their own countries, so they are just destroying their own country. They call for restraint and apologies for some dumb-ass cartoons. Ha, that is hilarious. I'd apologize then print even more insulting and offensive stuff.
Sunday February 5, 2006 - 2:31AM EDT
One always hears the story of the captain going down valiantly with his ship. It seems as if there is no honor greater to a sailor, to a captain than to do that. That their own life is last in line after the passengers and crew. So when I hear of the opposite happening. The captain abandoning ship first it seems like the lowest thing anyone could ever do.
Friday February 3, 2006 - 10:43AM EDT
This dust-up over mohammed in a political cartoon is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. How is it that even ambassadors of countries and palirments feel like the have to be offended at this. This is probablly the best demonstration of what is wrong in some middle eastern countries than anything else.