As it was, in case anyone was interested, the $220 ($200 saved from not eating out and $10x2 from page hits) raised from the $10 for 2 weeks experiment was donating recently to a group that directly buys and gives out bags of necessity items for the poor. These bags include everything from canvas bags, to food, to toothpaste and toothbrushes.
Thanks for your support, but don't forget what we did or who really lives off that much everyday and doesn't have the option of only going 2 weeks.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Fear and Loathing in the US
First off I'd like to preface my subject today with a short disclaimer. No, you know what? Fuck that, if your offended by anything at all, you are better off shoving a firecracker in your eye socket than continuing to read this. I will say this though, you can view this next part as either a "zomg liberal/or/neocon" or "zomg batcrackers" or "hello fellow human being on the internets". I would prefer the last one as it leads to more interesting discussions.
I just finished reading a nice article on the modern terrorist and how different pieces of our society have reacted to it. I'm not going to summarize, that eats up paragraphs of possibly useful discourse so go read it you lazy git.
I'm waiting.
Not all attacks on US soil are terrorist in nature. Sure, they might be perceived as such, but terrorism can be so widely abused as a term that we don't even know the difference anymore. Ooo, look, someone with a grievance about the government who attacks a US military base, must be a terrorist! Someone planned to blow up the Sears tower, zomg terrorist! Did you hear someone almost cut down the Brooklyn Bridge?
Whatever happened to, "Wow, that guy is crazy"? Did anyone notice how much more often just plain crazy acts are being attributed to terrorism? I don't like to draw conclusions without good solid evidence but did you notice the rather large spike in "terrorism" related incidents along with the passing of bills such as the Military Commissions Act of 2006? You know what, it's almost irrelevant to fart around on the internet making connections because the people who are on "one side" are going to agree with you and the people in the evil camp of "others" will most likely flame/troll/hunt you down and paint cats on your door.
How about the news agencies? Hell, they don't even wait for the full story to be out before jumping to the easiest possible conclusion. I used to remember people stopping to think about what the hell was going on, even on the news during crisis times, but blamo, a building falls down and we just open our mouths letting the first fleeting thought that comes to mind droll out without so much as a two second pause. When did it become acceptable to stop apologizing for misinformation and then trying to do something about it?
The state our country is in, socially, is rather despicable. In fact, if we weren't such lazy fat bastards we'd be no better off than the current fuckups in the Gaza strip or Darfur. Since when did people dehumanize the other side into "them"? I mean, last I heard that type of treatment was reserved for warring nations, not your goddamn neighbor. That's right, I heard 12B was a LIBERAL. Did you know 4A voted Republican?
Stop being so goddamn arrogant and AFRAID of your "enemies". Nothing spells fear like being in a position of utmost power and saying some really stupid shit to support your strongly backed factual argument like "I'm the decision maker". Either that or utter stupidity. I'm aware at the most visceral level most arguments come down to discussions about the nature of humanity, but damn man, don't blow it on your first level argument on "Why are you sending more troops to Iraq when slightly more than half of everyone you preside over doesn't support you?".
Honestly, I don't know who would be the best president in 2008, but I do know one or two people who sure as hell don't deserve to be within 100 feet of the White House lawn. Most of the people running on BOTH sides of the proverbial fence don't deserve to run much less win. I'm of the opinion the person most able to get elected these days should be the absolute last person allowed to have the job. Why don't we solve some of these differences by allowing multiple presidents? Perhaps a three or five person group formed from varying political factions instead of red or blue? Or would that confuse people too much?
Maybe we should just scrap the whole shebang and start over.
I can only wish.
I just finished reading a nice article on the modern terrorist and how different pieces of our society have reacted to it. I'm not going to summarize, that eats up paragraphs of possibly useful discourse so go read it you lazy git.
I'm waiting.
Not all attacks on US soil are terrorist in nature. Sure, they might be perceived as such, but terrorism can be so widely abused as a term that we don't even know the difference anymore. Ooo, look, someone with a grievance about the government who attacks a US military base, must be a terrorist! Someone planned to blow up the Sears tower, zomg terrorist! Did you hear someone almost cut down the Brooklyn Bridge?
Whatever happened to, "Wow, that guy is crazy"? Did anyone notice how much more often just plain crazy acts are being attributed to terrorism? I don't like to draw conclusions without good solid evidence but did you notice the rather large spike in "terrorism" related incidents along with the passing of bills such as the Military Commissions Act of 2006? You know what, it's almost irrelevant to fart around on the internet making connections because the people who are on "one side" are going to agree with you and the people in the evil camp of "others" will most likely flame/troll/hunt you down and paint cats on your door.
How about the news agencies? Hell, they don't even wait for the full story to be out before jumping to the easiest possible conclusion. I used to remember people stopping to think about what the hell was going on, even on the news during crisis times, but blamo, a building falls down and we just open our mouths letting the first fleeting thought that comes to mind droll out without so much as a two second pause. When did it become acceptable to stop apologizing for misinformation and then trying to do something about it?
The state our country is in, socially, is rather despicable. In fact, if we weren't such lazy fat bastards we'd be no better off than the current fuckups in the Gaza strip or Darfur. Since when did people dehumanize the other side into "them"? I mean, last I heard that type of treatment was reserved for warring nations, not your goddamn neighbor. That's right, I heard 12B was a LIBERAL. Did you know 4A voted Republican?
Stop being so goddamn arrogant and AFRAID of your "enemies". Nothing spells fear like being in a position of utmost power and saying some really stupid shit to support your strongly backed factual argument like "I'm the decision maker". Either that or utter stupidity. I'm aware at the most visceral level most arguments come down to discussions about the nature of humanity, but damn man, don't blow it on your first level argument on "Why are you sending more troops to Iraq when slightly more than half of everyone you preside over doesn't support you?".
Honestly, I don't know who would be the best president in 2008, but I do know one or two people who sure as hell don't deserve to be within 100 feet of the White House lawn. Most of the people running on BOTH sides of the proverbial fence don't deserve to run much less win. I'm of the opinion the person most able to get elected these days should be the absolute last person allowed to have the job. Why don't we solve some of these differences by allowing multiple presidents? Perhaps a three or five person group formed from varying political factions instead of red or blue? Or would that confuse people too much?
Maybe we should just scrap the whole shebang and start over.
I can only wish.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Arena Tactics
Arena Tactics is a small game I've been whipping up on my own time. It has a Swing interface and will most likely not include any animation or database work. I coded about a fourth of it yesterday on my day off and was rather pleased with the meager results. I'll be releasing the code into public domain usage when I finish up with it. It's just meant to stretch my skills and as such most of the code will probably look rather ugly so don't judge too harshly, however I appreciate all constructive critisism.
The simple premise is that you create a character to fight in the "Arena" and get to buy a weapon and armor, compete in fights and level up and assign your stats. As the game has no database, you will create a new character every time. It's not a daunting task for most programmers but it's something I feel I have to do to keep myself fresh and up to date. I wouldn't classify myself as a master programmer either so it's also a good learning experience.
The simple premise is that you create a character to fight in the "Arena" and get to buy a weapon and armor, compete in fights and level up and assign your stats. As the game has no database, you will create a new character every time. It's not a daunting task for most programmers but it's something I feel I have to do to keep myself fresh and up to date. I wouldn't classify myself as a master programmer either so it's also a good learning experience.
Monday, June 4, 2007
Re-wired Protoshell
I decided to take my site back today since it had been in limbo since I dumped my old host Fuitadnet.com. I won't go into the long winded host bashing others do, I'll just say I wish they had kept up their customer support the way they used to before they were bought out and moved to India. That should about clear it up.
I've got a few games in various stages of not working currently, including Protoshell. One of the other games is just a practice game to try out various programming techniques and the other one might turn into something eventually.
I've got a few games in various stages of not working currently, including Protoshell. One of the other games is just a practice game to try out various programming techniques and the other one might turn into something eventually.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Protoshell Wiki
I've put up a links section which currently only holds the wiki I'm planning on doing. It will be for everything from design to gameplay. I stored most everything on my computer when I switched over to here instead of my old host. I find it easier to handle not having to worry about my host going up or down (Google is pretty reliable) and with that in mind I chose PBWiki for my wiki host so I don't have to worry about the software side either.
If you don't know what Protoshell is, it's a game I've been doing on and off ever since I made Visions of Darkness which had only one good release back in the day. VoD was a PHP browser game which has since been deleted since my host wasn't any good and there wasn't any real reason to keep the code around since it was nothing spectacular, and in fact quite bad since it was coded without an ounce of design or OOP involved.
Protoshell is the child of that project which I've kept as a hobby of mine in mind for release sometime this year. It's a cyberpunk based game which I find exciting since there is so much more you can do with technology that hasn't been done a million times over, than fantasy. Not that I'm claiming the project is 100% original, I'm sure lots of sci-fi games exist, they just don't get the recognition of fantasy games these days. Anyway, it's currently being written in Java which was a learning process for me. I've come a long way from disliking the language to realizing all languages have potential in one area or another.
As I said, I hope to have more up on the game soon and I'll be diving into all sorts of topics including game design, programming and a dash of opinionated self-righteousness :)
If you don't know what Protoshell is, it's a game I've been doing on and off ever since I made Visions of Darkness which had only one good release back in the day. VoD was a PHP browser game which has since been deleted since my host wasn't any good and there wasn't any real reason to keep the code around since it was nothing spectacular, and in fact quite bad since it was coded without an ounce of design or OOP involved.
Protoshell is the child of that project which I've kept as a hobby of mine in mind for release sometime this year. It's a cyberpunk based game which I find exciting since there is so much more you can do with technology that hasn't been done a million times over, than fantasy. Not that I'm claiming the project is 100% original, I'm sure lots of sci-fi games exist, they just don't get the recognition of fantasy games these days. Anyway, it's currently being written in Java which was a learning process for me. I've come a long way from disliking the language to realizing all languages have potential in one area or another.
As I said, I hope to have more up on the game soon and I'll be diving into all sorts of topics including game design, programming and a dash of opinionated self-righteousness :)
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