Saturday Slumpy
Bah.
Has anyone noticed that on the VEVO version of Eminem's Beautiful, the lyric captions censor the word "shoes"? No? ...Didn't think so. It was rather specific wasn't it? Oh well.
Media 180
Just something off the top of my head:
I follow about 10 different news agencies... some local, some global, but mostly national. And, I just noticed something. It may be that I'm missing something, but it seems like there was a lot of new about politics, and about Americans were unhappy with the government, and how fucked up everything is, and bitch, bitch, bitch, moan, moan, moan, etc, etc, etc. And this has been going on for the last two or three years... So much so that I don't really remember when all the ridiculous amounts of political coverage started (hazarding a guess, I'd say the last year of Bush).
And I'm unhappy, damnit!
Oh, but there's always been a ton of political coverage, etc, etc.
But I mean... not as much as the last couple years... where it was like 2/3 headlines was: politicians does this or that, or political scandal, or so-and-so is a damned dirty liar, or Americans unhappy with government, or whatever.
And none of it was so much news as just like... the written equivalent of screaming at the top of your lungs.
And then, the last couple of weeks... suddenly...
nothing.
It's like a void.
Now, the only news about politics you hear about is a few mentions about foreign politics in the middle east, and republicans suddenly talking about how they support obama and "it's not their place to tell americans what to think" even though that's exactly what they've been doing for the last 10 months. But even then, it's still scant.
This smells kinda fishy. Kinda like there a group of people who were pushing to get certain things turned into news... like they were focusing on a small percentage of people, documenting their opinions and experiences, and then presenting it as the viewpoint and position of the majority.
Like... this group of people was trying to get something changed... perhaps get themselves in power... and then, they reached their goal... so now they don't have to spend the resources telling us the world is going to end.
...And of course I'm talking about the republican party. Duh. (I'm neither republican nor democrat by the way. I'm a Meat Popsicle.)
Unfortunately... there's a few problems with this: First off, they spent so much time whipping people into an unhappy fury that they've accidentally created a few segments of the population which are inevitably going to cause a backlash against politicians in general. No, I'm not talking about the Tea Party, because the Tea Party was just an objective oriented shard of the republican party, from everything I've investigated about it. I'm talking rather about the offshoots from the Tea Party. The Tea Party people who didn't fit into the Tea Party, or got kicked out of the Tea Party.
Second, unless they're planning on spending resources to convince people that things are better under them, people will eventually realize that nothing has really changed... And then next election cycle, their converts will flop back to democrats.
Blah blah blah. I forgot what I was talking about. Anyways, the talk of the Tea Party made me start humming a song... so... Music Video time!
Of Trajectories
...Just something to think about.
Over the last few days, as I've been working on Chedr (the top secret application that's technically my second app), I've noticed that while I'm understanding a lot more about Java, I've really slowed down.
Which makes me realize something about the way I learn things: I go after huge, lofty ideas, can't make any sense of it, then eventually have a eureka moment where everything falls in place. But, if I'm just sort of trudging around and picking up small bits here and there, I quickly forget most of that I learned.
As it is, I have a total of 5 Java books, out of which I've only read three.
I really need to sit down and read the other two, even if they're not really "Learn Java" books and more "Giant Ass Reference Tomes of Doom"... So, I suppose this post is more for just reminding myself to stay on task. A book dedicated to Java GUI development would be awesome though. (Alternately, some Java genius pointing me towards the proper resources to make the snazzy GUIs I see other people do, as opposed to the current hey-its-1995-again look.)
*shrug*
Either way, I still need to finish the covers for Issues 2 and 3, then I'll be putting them up on the site, under the Comics page. It shouldn't take me more than a week, provided I don't dig myself into another book.
And, in other news, I'm getting my crap out of the storage place in Colorado in the later half of next week. Hopefully the weather is nice during the trip, and double-hopefully I don't pull any muscles this time.
T'would be nice, me thinks.
Site Changes
Again...
Since I'm doing more Java stuff now, the site will be getting changed around some more over the following weeks or so as I try to gear the site more towards application development, stupid Java programs, and getting a "real job" to make enough money to live on. Major changes:
Spookle is getting taken down.
The forums are getting wiped, and integrated with the main site. (I haven't been able to find a way to import the forums to WordPress, and currently it's beyond my skill in PHP to do. I will however back them up, so hopefully I can import them at a later date, along with the vintage sediverse 1.5 forums.)
The Comics are going down as well, although they'll be put on the side bar as downloadable PDFs.
I won't be using ComicPress anymore.
The Links to the stores will be cut, and the merchandise no longer updated or supported. (So if you do a google search, you'll be able to find the old crap that wasn't worth buying, but I'm not going to pitch it or hope for sales.)
Why? Well, I don't really have any equipment to actually work on the comic, so continuing this site as a webcomic site is... rather silly, honestly. I will still work on the comic when I have spare time and motivation, but really, SED is becoming more and more of a doodle sort of comic. As I make more issues though, I'll add those to the side bar for download.
SED will probably end up as a cartoon on youtube, though, so at least there's that.
Still, SED is pretty much dead at this point, since I don't really have any way of keeping it going. Major thanks and props to everyone who helped me keep this thing going for as long as it has. Hopefully we can get everything back up to the point where the comic will be a regular project again. Cheers!
(P.S. - For those who didn't know (or didn't follow the news posts I left with a lot of the comics) The laptop I used for drawing broke down, then I decided to learn Java, then I had to sell my car to pay bills, then my phone stopped working, then my desktop broke down so I had to build a new computer with the broken parts from my next door neighbor, then the new computer broke down, and i had to borrow money from family to fix it... and my rent just went up (again.) So, all in all, point is: I've had a pretty crappy year, financially speaking, and that's why I haven't been able to draw the comic. On the bright side though, I did manage to go to the doctor in September or whatever, and now I do actually have medication for the migraines that were leaving me out of commission for weeks at a time.)
The Term “Classic video games”
What makes a video game classic? Is it the year they were made? The childhood memories they brought upon Kids? These question are useless. I am going to tell you why ,any of you born before the 1990's believe back then the games were the shit. For those of you who weren't born before the 1990's and are disappointed about no having those awesome games when you were kids, don't be.
Only the good ones are still remembered:
That's right when you think games from earlier on you think Super mario brothers, Contra, Megaman 2, Etc. But remember not all those games we good. In fact a good sum of those were shitty. Anyone remember super marios two? the one where you would get to the end and find out it was all a dream? Did that piss you off as much as me? Am I over using question marks? I think I've made my point.
In 10 years what will be "classic": That's to say if the earth is still around by then. What games would you tell your children about? Maybe games like Halo and Call of duty will be done with production and Activision will call it quits. You sit there complaining about how video games aren't what they used to be. But you have to take account that they just got better, but you and your stubborn generation can't admit that, isn't that right gramps?
Modern people think classic means super old!: We all must admit that the word classic can mean many things but people still have the assumption that it's just age that makes something classic "these fossils are a classic!" (well, they don't say that but you get the point.) All I'm saying here is that a classic is something from before that was deemed popular at the time and has continued to receive some sort of popularity. Fun fact: By 2030 pacman will be gone. The only reason pacman is still praised is because those who played it still live. By 2030 that generation will be gone, leaving halo fans and World of Warcraft nerds alike left to call something classic.
Bad things happen to good people. Why? The victims of Jared Lee Loughner’s insanity
This is a question many people have asked. The more pious ones will reply that it is all but a part of God's will and/or that god works in mysterious ways. The more cynical ones will tell you that there is no reason, God is dead (and we have killed him), and that to believe anything else is sheer utter naivety. Ask a Buddhist and you'll hear of one of the Buddha's more famous teachings, one that goes something along the lines of 'Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.' There are as many different answers to that question as there are stars in the sky, I have listed but some of the more common ones I have heard.
Praying for Gabrielle Gifford: The Insanity of Jared Lee Loughner
Earlier today, Deomcractic Arizona Representative Gabrielle Gifford during her Congress on Your Corner in a local Safeway was shot point blank in the head by gunman Jared Lee Loughner. Luckily for her, the bullet went straight through her head, instead of bouncing around, so brain damage should be minimal and reversible. He shot 11 others, and upon having used up his entire clip, tried to flee the store. He was apprehended by a bystander and later arrested when the police arrived upon the scene. Gifford is currently no longer in intensive care, and is now playing the waiting game as the anasthetic wears off - but doctors are enthusiastic about her survival. As to the others, however, 7 are currently in intensive care. Alas, one of her political aides, Judge John Roll, a 9 year old boy, and an undisclosed other were not so fortunate and are no longer among the living, may they Rest In Peace.
Seeing as shooting a federal employee is a felony of the highest or second-highest order, this man is going to hang (inject?). The insanity defense is no longer a legal defense for federal cases after Hinckley’s acquittal.
If you click this link, you can watch the 3 youtube videos he uploaded to the internet. You can also go here and here for more information.
Sarah Palin may end up getting some flak because of this, and her usage of gun cross-hairs as icons on several states, including Arizona, the home of the recently shot-by-a-gun representative.
The Coordinates of Teamwork (U, I)
At the very beginning of the school year, in our American Studies history class, we spent an hour or so on an activity. We drew an arbitrary letter up on the whiteboard, and then were told to promptly forget it was a letter, and to think up other objects the picture could be. Together as a class, we were able to come up with many, many more responses than any individual one of us could. And this leads to a pondering of just how much of a role cooperation and teamwork play in an ordinary day-to-day life.
For one thing, most inventions and trinkets that we rely on so heavily would not have been invented without intense amounts of teamwork. For example, let's examine the lightbulb. Here's a direct quote from the Wikipedia about the light-bulb's accredited inventor: "[Thomas Edison] was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large teamwork to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory." He was basically the inventor of the factory-line! Another invention life would be dramatically different without is the atomic bomb. It was developed by a crew of scientists working at breakneck speed, but more importantly, a crew of scientists working together, sharing data and bouncing ideas back and forth.
We ourselves go through an incredible amount of teamwork in an ordinary day, though most of it is rarely noticed or paid attention to. Traffic? A large group of vehicles, driven by people, that moves according to a set of orderly and enforced laws. Drive on the right side of the road, stop at stop signs, turn on the blinker lights before making a turn. While this cooperation can be seen as forced and not genuine teamwork, I would disagree. Regardless of why, the majority of drivers comply with these rules of the road, and work together, if inadvertently, to make progress on the road and arrive at their respective destinations. Is there anything that can be accomplished without some form of teamwork?
THQ vs The World 2011!!
Short Explanation: THQ has decided to use a "one time code for online play" for Smackdown vs. Raw 2011. A lot of people go insane. Especially people who prefer used games. THQ then stands up for its decision and says "Hey, we don't really care about people that buy the game used because it doesn't profit us."
Yeah, those guys.
So there's two main camps here: Those that say what THQ is doing is unfair, and those who say it's understandable.
So I'm going to tackle a few of the popular arguments of both sides, just because.
Toy Story 3
Lets face the facts! Most three part (or more) movie series end up finishing on shaky ground. The latest Shrek movie has failed to inspire what the first two movies had, the last Aliens movie was nowhere near as good as the early ones, The Matrix had its two sequels scrapped in production because everyone knew they would be so crap and the less said about the Predator movies the better. So in light of this, with 10 years since the last movie, what can we honestly expect from Toy Story 3? Is this movie really that good?
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