April 2004
- 30 -
Back to the tedium
It was a good ride while it lasted...
wait a minute, what am I talking about? The last week was filled
with work to do and classes to go to, just like next week will be!
But still, next week is probably going to be worse. I have an assignment
due for my Operating Systems class, and I have to get caught up on that.
I also have a final for my Environment and Global Economy class, and it's
going to have a lot of essay questions that cover the readings. Don't
worry, I've read the readings already, but I'll probably have to go over
them again. So, this wraps up Rynn and Arokh Speculation Month, which
I didn't do nearly as well as Shalo Kitie Mood and Music Month back in
February. Maybe it's just that the adventures of Rynn and Arokh don't
mesh well with the daily boring life of a college student. You never
really see them just chilling or hanging out at a tavern or anything.
Are there any characters who would work better for this kind of speculation?
You know, instead of Rynn and Arokh, maybe it could be some other duo of
characters who routinely fight evil but also live normal lives and do everyday
things. In fact, maybe... wait, that's already being done.
You know, this speculation just isn't my strong suit, so I'll probably
just bring back Carnage Mustdestroy or some random thing like that.
Today I was going to talk about
the Painkiller demo, but I haven't finished it yet. So far it seems
like a decent game, a frantic shooter with lots of action and little plot
or complexity. However, it becomes much less frantic when that action
slows down to a crawl like it does on my system. I'm not just talking
about the frame rate here. The actual speed of the game depends on
the frame rate, if you can believe that. When you're in a hallway,
it goes at normal speed, but when you're out in the courtyard of a palace,
everything moves in slow motion. Sure, it helps keep things from
becoming crazy when there are a ton of monsters onscreen, but is this really
what the developers intended? I'll talk about this more when I have
more time to play the demo.
I didn't do the usual "what would
Rynn and Arokh do?" thing at the end of yesterday's update, but instead
I'll focus on that right now. If Arokh, the dragons from The I of
the Dragon, and the dragon from Drakengard joined together to form an ultimate
army of dragons, wouldn't they just be the most unstoppable fighting force
ever? Maybe if you threw Bahamut and the dragons from the Panzer
Dragoon series, they would be. These are all the winged lizard style
of dragon, but maybe there could be a few Chinese-style serpentine dragons
in the group as well. Unfortunately, I can't think of any games right
off hand that have that sort of dragon. The best I can think of is
that Crash Bandicoot game that has the Great Wall of China levels, and
there are some serpentine dragons that you have to avoid, but those might
just be props or parade floats and not actual living dragons. Even
if there were Chinese-style dragons, another thing to consider with this
fighting team would be getting through small places. Usually with
Arokh, Rynn goes in all the caves and small buildings. Maybe Rynn
(and also Caim from Drakengard, and the Panzer Dragoon riders and other
dragon riders) could come along for the journey, or maybe Spyro the Dragon
could fit in those small spaces. Of course, this is all pointless
speculation, but it's something to think about if you've got too much time
on your hands. Right now I have too much, but soon I will once again
have no time for anything because there's another programming assignment
due.
Enough talk about pop songs and
school. It's time to get back to the demos! Ferst off, do you
thienk you ar stroung? Oh, sorry, I was just having a Shalo
Kitie flashback there. Seriously, ferst... er, I mean first off,
I played the I of the Dragon demo. The first I heard about this game
was on the Surreal-News forums, where the Drakan fans were talking about
it. Many of them weren't too enthusiastic about it because they thought
it was more like a Diablo clone than a Drakan-style action game.
They were sort of right in that the control scheme is nothing like Drakan,
but it's not like Diablo either. It's actually kind of a hybrid between
first-person shooter style mouse-and-keyboard control and mouse movement.
You can control the dragon using the keyboard, and when you do that, the
camera will automatically track the dragon from behind. Unlike in
Drakan, you can't strafe, so the left and right arrow keys (or equivalent
keys in your preferred control system) turn left and right instead of strafing.
You can also assign keys to fly up and down. Alternatively, you can
move around using the mouse. If you left-click on the landscape,
you can fly to the spot above where you clicked, and your altitude relative
to the landscape will remain the same. You can change your altitude
using the mouse by dragging up and down after you've clicked on the landscape.
The mouse cursor is on the screen all the time, and you can use it to select
objects to grab and enemies to attack, and if you move the mouse cursor
to the edge of the screen, you can rotate the camera. Combat is done
entirely with the mouse. First you select the type of attack you
want to perform. In the demo, the fire dragon is the only playable
character, and its attacks include a fireball, a fire breath stream, and
several magic spells. The spells take some time to recharge, but
they're powerful and versatile. Many of them, such as a spell that
creates lava-spewing craters in the ground and a spell that causes the
ground to rise and form a ridge to damage enemies, show off the game's
deformable terrain. As you defeat more and more enemies, you get
experience points and gain new levels, and you can upgrade stats such as
health and fire power or learn new spells. Now that I've talked about
the gameplay, it's time to discuss the level design. The world is
split into several regions, and a region is usually a valley surrounded
by mountains with repulsor devices at the borders that keep you from flying
outside the area. Each region has several lairs, from which monsters
emerge and attack you, and the goal is to destroy all the lairs and all
the monsters in each region. In the second area of the demo, the
Golden Woods, there's a town populated by several humans, and you have
to defend the town while getting rid of all the lairs. Then you move
on to the third region, the Hole, where you defeat a giant monster and
pick up an artifact that lets you use earth magic to build towns.
Unfortunately, once you build your first town, the demo is over.
It would have been nice to be able to do at least some basic town-building
missions and further explore that aspect of the game. Overall, the
I of the Dragon demo was fun to play, and I might get the full game if
the reviews are good.
I kind of spaced out there for
a while and forgot to keep up with my speculations on what Rynn and Arokh
would do in different situations. It's probably for the best, because
there's no telling how they would've responded to the almighty power of
the milkshake, but now that I've remembered to update about them, the speculation-free
ride is over. Today I've mostly been working on programming assignments,
but Rynn and Arokh have already faced that situation. I did have
to turn in a paper about the political and economic situation in Romania
as it relates to the Danube river, so that's something different.
What would Rynn and Arokh do if they were in Romania? I think Rynn
would go to Transylvania to see if there are any vampires that she could
fight, and Arokh would declare himself lord of a castle or something.
You know where I've always thought
about going? The yard. I've heard that Kelis has this milkshake
that brings all the boys there and I want to see what all the fuss is about.
But there's a bit of a problem because I don't want to go to the yard if
it's just going to be a bunch of guys there, you know? I want there
to be some hot girls there too. Can't Kelis make a milkshake that
brings all the girls to the yard as well? I think she should.
By the way, I am not a crackpot.
I'm afraid the title of today's
update is the only Nietzsche reference I can think up right now, but it's
relevant because today I'll be talking about the demo for Beyond Good &
Evil. This game is available both on the PC and on consoles, but
the PC version still suffers from some problems that plague ports of console
games. The controls can't be redefined, although both arrow key and
WASD schemes are available, so there shouldn't be much problem there, but
the camera can't always be controlled and your character's movement seems
like it would be handled better with an analog stick. However, some
actions, such as precise aiming, are better with a mouse than they would
be with an analog stick, and the PC supports higher resolutions, so it's
not completely inferior. Now, let's get talking about the actual
game. You play as Jade, a woman who's rebelling against a totalitarian
government while collecting pearls and taking snapshots of different species
along the way. You're supported by a cast of colorful characters
like a talking pig named Pey'j and a Spanish-speaking man named Secundo.
In the demo, you're pretty much guided along a single path without much
freedom to explore, although I hope there's more freedom in the full game.
First you're thrust into battle with some monsters, and then you fall into
a cave where you have to defeat a boss. After that, you take a break
back at your hideout where you can talk to people and learn to interact
with objects and take pictures. Later on, you get to ride in a boat
with a malfunctioning engine, and it immediately dies on you, but you're
picked up by these Caribbean-sounding rhinoceros people who fix your boat.
Once the boat is fixed, you have to battle a giant sea serpent, and that's
the end of the demo. It was fun while it lasted, and I enjoyed the
little things like getting the zoom lens so I could take a picture of the
otter on the roof of the hideout, but I don't really know how representative
the demo was of the full game. Do I keep getting carted along on
rails, or are there any chances to take a break from missions and go see
if there are any pictures of animals I forgot to take? The reviews
of this game have been pretty good, so even if there is less freedom than
in games like Jak 2, I'll probably still get it. But now, here's
the big question: do I get it on the PC, Gamecube, or Playstation 2?
I have all three systems and they all have certain advantages and disadvantages.
I like to support the PC, but I also think the Gamecube could use a little
boost, so I'm not sure. You know, this gets me to thinking, maybe
all those media gurus are right about people being afraid of choice.
When I see Metroid Prime and it's only for the Gamecube, I don't hesitate
to get it, but with Beyond Good & Evil, there's a chance that I might
spend so long agonizing over which system to get it for that I might end
up not getting it at all! That's what happened to me with Sparkster,
the sequel to the Genesis-only Rocket Knight Adventures. Sparkster
was available for the Genesis and the Super Nintendo, but I didn't get
either version.
Well, I tried to play Witchaven
but there seemed to be a few problems on my computer. Actually, I
don't know how many of those problems were related to compatibility and
how many were just caused by the old, imprecise control style common to
many old first-person shooters like Doom. I'm so used to using mouselook
and being able to redefine the controls that any game, at least any first-person
shooter, that doesn't let you do that seems clunky and uncontrollable.
You know, it's amazing how much PC games were redefined during the five-year
period from 1994 to 1999. Just compare games released at the beginning
of this period, such as Doom 2 and Descent, to games released later on,
such as Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament. This was the era in which
real 3D was developed and mouselook became the standard control system.
Compare that to how much games have changed in the next five-year period
from 1999 to the present. Nowadays, nothing but real 3D is used except
for games that are explicitly 2D, but the big advancement seems to be in
the sheer amount of detail in both the levels and the rendering methods.
It used to be that it was unthinkable to be able to render large outdoor
areas with lush jungles, but now games like Far Cry are coming along that
feature such landscapes rendered in high detail. Also, things like
pixel shaders and bump mapping are featured in almost every game now, and
screen distortion effects are also common, even in high resolutions.
But even with the graphical enhancements, the control schemes of today's
games remain mostly the same as that of games five years ago. Of
course, I'm just speaking from my experience and observations and I obviously
don't know everything about the advancement of computer game technology
and design. I don't think I'll be spending much time trying to figure
out how to make Witchaven playable for me, especially with the bad
reviews of the game, but I'll play some of those other demos and talk
all about them.
Later I'll be downloading some
new game demos and giving my impression of them. This time, there'll
be a little change of pace because I'll be trying some games other than
first-person shooters. I already tried the Warcraft 3 demo, and I've
already downloaded the I
of the Dragon demo and the Beyond
Good & Evil demo, so I'll be going over those. Also, maybe
I will try just a few more first-person shooters for old times' sake: Painkiller,
a new game, and this old game called Witchaven
that I've been wondering about. It's from all the way back in 1995,
from the same era as Hexen, and I remember that it didn't get very good
reviews in PC Gamer, but it still looked like it might be kind of fun.
Well, I'm finally caught up with
my entries. Sometimes I go a few days without writing, and I have
to fill in the missing days later. I know, it's cheating because
it looks like I'm updating every day when I'm really skipping some days,
and I'm afraid that someday it might look like I'm predicting events before
they happen. For example, there was that September 7th entry back
in 2001 when I wrote, "Oh no, it's really going to be sad when terrorists
crash planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon four days from now!"
or back in late January of this year when I said, "I'm really looking forward
to Janet Jackson's performance in the Super Bowl halftime show because
I have a feeling that it's going to be revealing, if you know what I mean!"
Just kidding, I didn't really write those things (actually, after September
11, I stopped writing for a while because it seemed like my mundane life
was no longer important in the face of such a national tragedy... it still
isn't, but I keep writing anyway), but I want to be careful that I don't
end up writing an entry from an earlier day that mentions things that happen
in the future. It's just one of those little quality control checks
that make this site so great. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to
set my tape to record the swear word that they forget to bleep out on Americal
Idol next week.
Oh no! Conan O'Brien is
all repeats this week! What am I going to do from 11:35 PM to 12:35
AM now? I guess I could sleep, but then I wouldn't have an excuse
for being so absentminded in class. Now I've seen that another two
programming projects have been assigned, and now I'll have to go through
that whole ordeal again. By the way, as a college-aged young adult,
apparently I'm in the prime Conan viewing demographic. Hi, everyone,
I'm a living stereotype! Now I'm going to go listen to some John
Mayer and Dave Matthews Band while drinking beer, eating pizza, and protesting
against globalization or something.
If you've been reading my site,
then you're obviously masochistic or really bored and you've got too much
time on your hands, and also you might know that I get a lot of spam.
I made a lot of mistakes in my youth, spreading my e-mail address all over
the place, and now I'm paying the price for it. You might say that
giving my e-mail address away without obfuscating it was like being really
promiscuous without using protection, and now all the spam I'm getting
is like gonorrhea and syphilis and several other sexually transmitted diseases,
and my spam filter is like pills or something to treat the diseases, and
having to delete messages that get through the filter is like pain during
urination, and you know what, I've had it with this analogy. The
point that I'm trying to get at is that I get a lot of spam, and while
a little bit of it makes at least some effort to look professional, most
of it is filled with the most atrocious spelling and grammar I've ever
seen. I've taken some time to correct some of the grammar problems
in one such piece of spam:
I'm not sure if I should correct "Website" or not. I think "Web site" would be better, or perhaps "website." Also, the last part of the last sentence is redundant and should probably be deleted entirely. That's not even the worst spelling and grammar I've seen in spam. Come on, people, do you really think that I'm going to buy something from someone who writes like a Dragon Ball Z fan on the GameFAQs message boards? Of course not! People are always saying that as long as others can understand the meaning of what you say, it doesn't matter how many typos or grammar errors you make when you say it, but if you're trying to sell something, the errors in your writing will make people think that there might be errors in your product as well. Now, there are some exceptions, such as people who don't speak English as a first language (Kenta Cho comes to mind; great games, but broken English), but if you're a native English speaker then there's no excuse. For example, my ISP, which used to be called MNInter.net but changed names a bunch of times and is now known as Pixius, has a grammatical error built right into an image on this page. Can you spot it? I'll give you a hint: it involves an apostrophe that's not supposed to be there.
The latest Metroid game, Zero
Mission, is a remake of the first Metroid for the NES, and it incorporates
not only the items from the original game but also items that have been
part of the game since Metroid 2 and Super Metroid. I don't know
if Nintendo will try to make a similar remake of Metroid 2, but I'm wondering
if Super Metroid would be changed at all if they made a remake of it for
the Game Boy Advance. I think the most striking difference between
Super Metroid and all the other 2D Metroid games is that Samus is 3 blocks
tall in Super Metroid, whereas she's only 2 blocks tall in the other games.
I think Nintendo would scale down the size of the levels to fit the GBA
screen, and they would make Samus 2 blocks tall to conform to the other
two GBA Metroid games. Also, I've noticed some differences in certain
moves common to multiple Metroid games such as the Shinespark. In
Super Metroid, the Shinespark drains Samus's energy and it can't be propagated
using slopes, but in the GBA games, it doesn't drain energy, and if you
do a Shinespark horizontally onto a slope, you can start running again
and store up the power to do another jump. Then, there's the whole
map screen issue. In the GBA games, the map screen shows an open
circle on any map square in which there's an item to collect, no matter
how hidden that item is, and when you collect that item, the circle becomes
a dot. However, in Super Metroid, the obvious items are denoted by
a dot in the square, while the hidden items do not show up on the map screen
at all. Also, the GBA games tell you how many items of each type
there are to get in each area of the game after you play for a while, but
in Super Metroid, if there are only a few items left, the game doesn't
give any indication of where they are. Another thing is that there
can be multiple items in one square in Super Metroid, but in the GBA games,
there's always only one item per square. I guess if Nintendo were
to remake Super Metroid using the GBA Metroid map conventions, they could
always just keep the open circle icon on the map until all the items in
the square had been collected. One other thing I think Nintendo would
do is to put a bunch of Shinespark obstacle courses in the Super Metroid
levels like they did with the GBA games. There's already a place
in lower Maridia where you need to do a Shinespark jump from just the right
place if you want to get the missile tank in the rocks above, and I think
that when Nintendo made the GBA games, they looked back at this and said,
"Hey, we could really do something with this," and the rest is history.
I've been replaying Chapter 3
in the Warcraft 3 demo, and recently I found a pointless but sort of fun
thing to do. First, I trained a bunch of peons and sent them out
to get lumber until all the forests near the base were gone. Then
I built more war mills around the level and sent peons out to harvest all
the trees they could reach. It took a lot of time and micromanagement,
not to mention watchtower building and repair, but I finally deforested
the land completely. After that was done, I destroyed all the buildings
in the enemy base that I could without ending the level, and then I built
a great hall near the enemy base and started taking gold from their mine.
The enemy didn't even bother to try to rebuild their base. Instead,
they just sent a few peons now and again to take a few futile swings at
the peons going to and from the mine. At first I felt kind of sorry
for the enemy, but then I remembered it's just a computer, and also I was
playing on Normal difficulty so my cheap tactics probably wouldn't work
on Hard. I bet if I tried playing against an opponent online, they
would end up leaving all my mission-critical units intact while cutting
down my forests and mining my gold just to humiliate me. I'd be like,
"You're obviously winning so just kill me already!" and they'd be like
"lol no this is fun newb hahaha i pwnz0red j00!" and I'd say, "If you don't
kill me, I'll quit the match and your win won't mean anything!" and they'd
go, "go ahead quit then ill tell every1 ur a coward" and I'd have to run
away from my computer and cry in the corner while my opponent uses a single
peon to slowly but unstoppably destroy my base.
Today I played the Warcraft 3
demo some more, and I finished the fifth campaign in the prologue, and
that was the end of the demo. I don't even know if I should have
won, because the goal was to survive for 20 minutes, and during the last
few minutes, I was getting beaten pretty badly. My hero had died,
my grunts and trolls were getting killed off all over the place, and those
giant golems were pounding my structures into dust, but apparently my most
important buildings or units or whatever it is I have to protect stayed
safe until the bitter end, because before I knew it, the cutscene had started
and Thrall had miraculously resurrected, and he and what was left of his
crew escaped on their ships. After the demo was over, I replayed
the third and fifth campaigns, trying new tactics. This time, I focused
on defense rather than offense. I built watchtowers all over the
place, and I found that those really are quite a useful defensive weapon
when you have more than one of them in one place. They really helped
me fend off the sea creatures during the 20 minute survival challenge,
and the golems didn't even attack me once I had a bunch of watchtowers
built in the north. At the end, I had cut down a lot of trees, especially
when I had a bunch of peons who weren't doing anything and I needed to
give them a task. I'm still not an expert at real-time strategy,
but I think I'm learning a few things. What do you think Rynn and
Arokh would do if they had to defend some ships against enemies for a prolonged
period of time? I think Rynn would run to the alchemist and stock
up on potions, while Arokh would fly up into the sky and try to see where
the enemies were coming from so he could kill the enemies before they even
showed up.
I'm done with the three dreaded
things I had to do this week, but now I have to wait to see how well I
did. The waiting is the hardest part, or so I hear from a song or
something. I think they played that song on the Simpsons when Homer
was waiting to buy a gun and he kept seeing people and things that he would
like to shoot. Also, I know that finals are coming up soon, and it's
only a matter of time. Until then, it's time to take a break.
But no more Warcraft 3 demo yet, because I'm too tired to play games right
now. Oh yeah, I should probably get back to the Rynn and Arokh thing
now. What would Rynn and Arokh do if computers existed in their world
and they had to do a programming assignment? I think Arokh might
have to put on some glasses to see the tiny letters on the screen, but
probably not, since dragons need to have good eyesight to see their prey.
Wait, I'm thinking about eagles. Maybe it's like that for dragons,
too, but you know what? Dragons aren't real! Rynn and Arokh
are just fictional characters, and I can't just make them do actions that
the games never showed them doing! That's just ridiculous!
By the way, I'm still working on Azenera, so if you're waiting for that,
don't worry.
Well, I'm trying to get my part
of this operating systems assignment done, but it's tough. I have
to design an interface between a cache and a simulated disk, and there's
a lot of synchronization to get right. Synchronization is such a
pain because when you have errors, they're hard to find, and they don't
always happen. I hope I never have to deal with synchronization again
after this class.
I think I did all right on the
exam, and I'm done with my artificial intelligence assignment, so I think
it's time I took a little break. Lately I've been playing the Warcraft
3 demo, and I don't usually play strategy games so it's been slow going
at first, and I'm mostly guessing which strategies work best. The
demo lets me play as the Orc faction, which gives me units such as peons,
grunts, shamans, and the hero Thrall, and there are also some trolls who
become your allies. So far I've fought a human army and made my way
out of a dungeon guarded by fish people. Some of the campaigns involve
building a base and sending out an army to destroy your opponents' base,
but there are also a few Dungeon Siege-style levels where you take your
hero and some other units on a path, fighting enemies along the way.
I'd like to play more, but it involves concentration that you just can't
get while you're watching TV or stressed over homework, so I'll get back
to this game later.
Well, I've been studying for
my exam, and I think I understand this macroeconomics stuff better than
I did a few days ago. I'm learning terms like marginal propensity
to consume, price index, and aggregate production function, and I understand
how all the variables are related. Wish me luck.
Oh, it is too much! I have
Japanese to translate, programming assignments to do, and an econ exam
coming up. Today I'm working on the artificial intelligence assignment,
and it's a doozy. I've got the neural net working, and it works as
expected, but now I have to come up with a way to plot the data, and I
have to optimize these three variables. There'll be no time for video
games today!
This year will be a good one
for PC gamers. Not only are there a bunch of good games on the way
that will no doubt require me to upgrade my system and free up a bunch
of hard drive space in order to play them, but there are also a few formerly
commercial games that are now going to be free to download. First
of all, Bethesda has released Arena,
the first game in the Elder Scrolls series. I hope I can get it to
work on my system and see what it's like. Also, Tribes 1 and 2 are
going to be released for free, but you either have to buy a Computer Gaming
World magazine to get a DVD with the games or go through FilePlanet's download
system. I hope they can get some mirrors up on 3D
Gamers as soon as the games are out. Now, all we need is for
Surreal or someone to make Drakan available to download for free so that
people who missed out can see what it's like. I mean, come on, Drakan's
so old by now and Surreal has jumped between publishers so many times that
the game is practically abandonware (hint,
hint)! What would Rynn and Arokh do if they found something that
they didn't have to pay for, like a sword or a potion sitting out in the
middle of a field somewhere? I think Rynn would say, "Finders keepers!"
and take the item, while Arokh would say, "Look out, it might be a trap!"
Well, yesterday wasn't very good.
Nope, not very good indeed. I joke about being in some stupid worm
cult, but those jokes only mask the amount of dread there is this week.
First of all, there are some problems I've found with my operating systems
assignment, and then there's the realization that my other programming
assignment isn't as easy as I thought it would be. It's like if Rynn
and Arokh were fighting a boss and defeated it easily, but then the boss
returned in a form that was much worse than before because it had a bunch
of new attacks in addition to the old ones. By the way, what would
Rynn and Arokh do if they had to fight a boss like that? I think
Rynn would say, "Um... Arokh, you take care of this!" while covering her
eyes, while Arokh would fly back so that the boss was right at the view
distance limit, and he would start shooting his lava breath at the boss
while waiting for that dreaded first attack.
There won't be an update today
because I've been too busy praying to Glorpmok the Enchanted Mealworm.
Today was Thursday, remember? Now I have to wash these stupid robes
because they have dirt and worm poop all over them. Do you suppose
Rynn and Arokh worship Glorpmok? They're probably not familiar with
that particular worm god, but if they were, I suspect that they would have
no other gods before Glorpmok.
I've been trying a lot of energy
drinks lately, because they have so many of them here at college.
They're no match for a good night's sleep, though, and I've actually found
them to be quite useless in the energy-giving department, so I just judge
them based on the flavor. First of all, I must say that I'm surprised
that they can't make an energy drink that actually gives you energy, because
I've had a Venti size Mocha Malt drink from Starbucks and it made me jumpy
for the rest of the day because of all the caffeine. If Starbucks
can inadvertently do it, why can't these companies make a real energy drink
when they're trying? Actually, there is one drink that has an effect
on me other than quenching of the thirst, and that is Fuze's Energize drinks.
I don't know what the problem is, but whenever I drink one of those, I
get gas and indigestion. Maybe there's something in it that doesn't
agree with me, or maybe I'm just drinking too much at one time. According
to the label, a whole bottle of that stuff has a ton of vitamins and ginseng
and guarana and something called "pectin" and maybe that's just too much.
But then again, Snapple's Elements drinks have mostly the same ingredients,
but I can drink whole bottles of those just fine without any digestion
problems. One thing I've noticed is that these energy drinks have
a lot of sugar, and maybe they're supposed to. Sobe's drinks, for
example, seem just as sweet as a soft drink. However, Fuze makes
another series of drinks called Slenderize, which have no sugar, but they
have some other chemicals that suppress appetite and promote burning of
calories or something. I don't know, I'm not really sure I can trust
appetite suppressants. If I can't hear my stomach growling, then
it doesn't feel like I'm doing anything to lose weight. Oh yeah,
did I mention that I'm fat? Well, it's true, I'm not the skinny little
beanpole you see when you look at my trip photos. Wait a minute...
I was never a skinny beanpole, as you can see if you look at pictures like
this.
Wow, that picture brings back memories. I don't have that shirt anymore,
and I kind of miss it. Seriously, I was so young back then, so idealistic.
Really, did I have to scan and upload all 266 of those Utah pictures?
Is anyone's appreciation of the Western mountain and desert landscapes
really helped by such images as this and this
and especially this? A lot of the pictures
have a greater context and significance to me than they would to anyone
else, but I don't even think I can argue that the "skyline" pictures are
anything but filler. However, I have been using this
image as my desktop background for a few years now, so I think that
altogether it's worth it. Wait a minute! How did this paragraph
change subject from energy drinks to my school trips? Oh yeah, the
whole "I'm fat" thing. What do you think Rynn and Arokh do when they
need an energy drink? I think Rynn says, "These potions are the only
energy drinks I need!" as she takes a speed potion, invisibility potion,
and invulnerability potion all at once, and Arokh says, "Drink? Why
go through an unnecessary medium?" as he uses his soul-stealing breath
(it's in Drakan 2!) to suck the life out of an unsuspecting bat dragon.
You know, I've been thinking
about this whole skeptic thing and I was reminded about an incident that
happened during my freshman year of college. I was living in this
freshman-only dorm, and during the spring semester, the peace of the dorm
was suddenly shattered by the dread of a racial slur attack. There
was this one female student of color who had a racial slur written on the
dry-erase board on the door to her room, and it came to the attention of
the authorities of the dorm. After this occurrence, they planned
to hold a meeting in the basement to discuss the incident in a manner that
reflected the situation of us all being affected by it, and that plan came
to fruition as many of us in the dorm found ourselves in the basement one
night for an emotional vent session. The meeting started out with
several people saying a single word that reflected an emotion they felt
when they heard about the slur writing. Some examples are hurt, shocked,
and devastated. Then the girl who had the slur inflicted upon her
stood up and started saying that she was immensely hurt by the libelous
comment written on the board on her door, and that she was considering
leaving Madison because she didn't feel welcome. I mostly felt sympathy
for her because I would hate to be maligned in such a manner myself, but
there was part of me that felt that if she really did leave Madison, she
would be letting the racists win. But after the formalities had ended
and we were free to converse amongst ourselves, a most troubling event
came to pass. I went up to the student who was attacked by the racial
slur and I said to her, "I'm sorry about what happened." She said
nothing to me, and the look on her face was not in the range of my expectations.
She could have looked relieved to have my sympathy, or sad or angry that
the whole thing ever happened, but what I saw on her face had the appearance
of guilt. I could be remembering wrong, but I think it was kind of
guilt mixed with a hint of indifference. Could it be that she was
lying about the whole thing, and that she wrote those slurs on her own
board or had a friend write them in order to get sympathy and attention?
Of course, I could never actually make that insinuation without proof,
because if it turned out not to be a hoax, I would look like the biggest
jerk in the world for suggesting that it was. That is why I cannot
be a great skeptic about this kind of thing. Of course, I shouldn't
be a naïve sap who believes every sob story that comes up, but I shouldn't
be a callous jerk who accuses every victim of being a liar. Somewhere
in the middle of this spectrum is the place to be. Where do you think
Rynn and Arokh are on the spectrum? I'd say that Rynn is more trusting
than Arokh, because Arokh is older and more jaded, and he's had a few of
his former friends like Werokh betray him. Also, on the Islands level,
Rynn just trusted the succubi right away, but Arokh saw right through their
deception.
I'm going to college at UW-Madison,
and as you may know, we recently had an abduction scare that turned out
to be a hoax. It all started with a few sheets of paper posted to
buildings on campus that said "Have you seen this girl?" and then it became
a news story, and later on, it became this big national story and they
were interrupting TV shows to bring us special bulletins. A few days
later, she was found alive, and then evidence surfaced that showed that
it was a big hoax. I tell you, I like to think that I'm so skeptical
of everything that I can't be fooled by anyone, but after I heard the news
people saying that they were still looking for a suspect, who was supposedly
armed with a knife or a gun or both, I felt a little worried. I guess
I just can't be the ultimate jaded skeptic that I thought I could be.
What do you think Rynn and Arokh would do if they found out that Delon
wasn't really captured by the Dark Union and he was really playing a trick
on Rynn to get her all worried? I think Rynn would yell, "I hiked
across a chain of islands during the night, fighting goblins and succubi
all the way, not to mention those war giants and crimson knights, and you're
telling me that you're just kidding and you weren't really in danger?
That's it, Delon, you're going to bed without dessert tonight!" and Arokh
would just shake his head.
So I'm watching TV and I see
this new McDonald's ad. It's part of this new "hip," "with it," "surrounded
by quotation marks" campaign where it shows people doing stuff and enjoying
McDonald's food while someone sings a pop song and it ends with "I'm lovin'
it." In this one ad, there's this lady who's trying to get her kids
to come to her, and she says, "What would McGyver do?" Okay, first
of all, McGyver? Let me understand this, McDonald's: you're trying
to appeal to the younger viewers out there, so much that your ads just
scream "18-24 year old demographic focus group tested!" and you want to
invoke the name of some clever character who can think up solutions to
any problem, and the best, most up-to-date example you can come up with
is McGyver? I mean, come on, I can do better than that! What
about Sydney Bristow from Alias? She's always having to think up
some way to accomplish some task, like breaking into a facility or getting
information out of a bad guy. Or for that matter, what about Homer
Simpson? He's always thinking up crazy schemes for getting people
to do things, and in addition to that, he probably wouldn't have any qualms
about fooling his own kids with a bait-and-switch trick. Like, remember
that time he told the kids he was taking them to Disneyland, but he really
took them to military school? And then at the end, he said they were
going to Disneyland for real this time, but he really took them to the
dentist? Well, that's what tricking your kids by waving around an
empty McDonald's bag would be like, at least if McDonald's food were really
something to get excited about. Even if the kids just love McDonald's
as much as the advertisers want them to, how many times are they going
to fall for the old empty bag trick? Congratulations, kids, you just
learned a valuable lesson: your mother is a liar. If she says, "don't
hit your brother," then you won't know what to think. Either you're
not really supposed to hit your brother, or else your mother is pulling
another "empty bag trick" and that means you should hit your brother even
more! Although I suppose it is important to teach people at a young
age that they shouldn't just trust anything that any old authority figure
says, because a lot of the time people don't know what they're talking
about. Build up their trust too much, and they end up being indoctrinated
into some crazy cult because they've never thought to question anyone.
I mean, look at me; my parents hardly ever lied to me and now every Thursday
night I follow the Glorious Leader into the basement and pray to Glorpmok
the Enchanted Mealworm. Do you know how hard it is to keep ceremonial
robes clean? Do you? But I digress. Now for the question
you've been waiting for: what would Rynn and Arokh do if someone offered
them a bag of McDonald's food, but they found out that it was empty and
that the offerer just wanted them to come closer? I think Rynn would
say, "Who is this McDonald, some kind of conjurer of invisible food?" and
Arokh, after finding out the bag was empty, would yell "It's a trap!
Get down, Rynn!" and start shooting fireballs at anything that looks suspicious.
Whoa, the next two weeks are
just going to be filled with frustration. I have two programming
assignments and an economics test, plus the usual steady stream of Japanese
to translate. But still, I hope to at least have some time to work
on other stuff and maybe catch up on a few TV shows. Is it like this
out there in the real world, I wonder? Is there any such thing as
"homework" when you're working an office job, where you have to do a bunch
of paperwork on the weekends and after work? I never see my dad doing
work on the weekends very often, except when he wants to or when there's
a really important project to work on. Maybe these assignments won't
be as bad as they look. So, what do you think Rynn and Arokh would
do if they had a really tough programming assignment to work on?
I know, there aren't any computers in Drakan, but let's imagine there were.
What would they do? I think Rynn would try to cast a spell to make
herself really smart, and Arokh would just fry the computer with his fire
breath because he probably hates technology since it reminds him of some
ancient battle against robots from another dimension or something.
I know I shouldn't do this because
I have so much homework right now, but I've been meaning to have some sort
of incentive to work on Azenera. Lately I haven't had the patience
to put up with the game's tendency to crash and corrupt my graphics drivers
so that I have to reboot, but I really want to get this level series done
before there's not a computer in the world that's backward-compatible enough
to play Drakan. In order to achieve some motivation, I am declaring
April 2004 to be "What would Rynn and Arokh do?" week. On some TV
show and movie character fansites and message boards, people are always
writing articles and posts speculating about what their favorite characters
would do if they were faced with the same situation that the writer was
in, so I figured, why can't I do that too? At first I was thinking
about saying "What would Shalo Kitie do?" but that would be a bit too self-serving,
so I went with Rynn and Arokh instead. So, what would Rynn and Arokh
do if they were faced with the task of writing an article explaining that
they were going to hypothesize their own adventures for an entire month?
I think Arokh would say something all serious like "the winds of change
are strong, so the future is uncertain," and Rynn would probably predict
that she would be fighting even more spiders before the month is over,
because let's face it, the world of Drakan is just literally crawling with
spiders. Yes, that's the correct use of the word "literally" because
the spiders really are crawling. Also, about yesterday: what would
Rynn and Arokh do if they were in a movie theater watching Gigli?
I think Rynn would stick popcorn on the ends of arrows and shoot them at
the screen, and Arokh would mutter to himself, "Humans made this.
This is their doing. Now I forget why I ever made peace with humans."
Well, today was April Fool's
Day, and I forgot to play any jokes, just like last year. Or did
I? Yes, I did. And by "yes," I mean "of course," and by "did,"
I mean "certainly did." And by "course," I mean "course not," and
by "certainly," I mean "certainly can't say I." Um... that last substitution
is only supposed to be done once, so don't interpret the grammar so that
it says "Of course not not not..." or anything by substituting "course
not" in place of "course" when that original "course" was contained in
the string "course not" and... you know, just never mind, okay? What
I'm trying to say is, I actually did play a little joke this time in the
form of a themed Drakan level. It's a remake of Sky Island with a
special movie tie-in, and I think it works splendidly. People, I
present to you Sky Island GE!
In case it's not obvious from this screenshot, GE stands for Gigli Edition. Yes, it's all the fun of a Sky Island duel with all the wit and style of the greatest movie of 2003, Gigli! Of course, with my luck, this novelty level will end up becoming the most popular level in the Drakan community and everyone will get mad at me because they're sick of it. In fact, I'm predicting that people will be sick of it before they even play it! That's what I call the Gigli Effect. Now, I need to give credit to the places where I got the Gigli-related images and sounds. I got the title images on the cubes from Rotten Tomatoes, and I got the rest of the graphics and the death sound from the Agony Booth's in-depth Gigli review.