Space and Aliens

Hey all,

I've been browsing around the web, and i'm sure more than a few of you have hit upon an article about a certain theory called the "Fermi Paradox"

Wiki Link

Summed up? There are no other advanced civilizations... or just flat out life that we can see from out little blueberry of a planet... and we have been looking for quite awhile, with very powerful telescopes.



Fermi was just eating lunch when the question of "Where are all the civilizations of the galaxy?" was proposed. He said that we are such a young planet compared to the rest of the galaxy. We know this due to the fact that our sun is something like several billion years younger than other suns in the galaxy. Our sun is about 5 billion years old (link), and the supposed oldest star in the galaxy is about 14 billion years old (link), with the average star in our galaxy being around 6.3 billion years old.

Thats 1.3 BILLION years on average gap for the average star... 9 billion at most. Billion. Thats a freaking big number (1,000,000,000 years).

Next, we look at our own history. Ever since the first world countries got all industrialized, there has been an exponential boom of technology. Everything from a phone the size of a pinky to an elevator that goes into space, and that's just this lifetime.

So, if we are considered a young star... and there are so many other stars out there... and there isn't a civilization?

Fermi says that with this big boom of technology and a billion years head start, this advanced civilization should have shot out probes to every corner of the galaxy for colonization/exploration. Wouldn't you want to know just whats out there? So if there was a civilization, they would undoubtedly have found us, or we should have heard of them... so why haven't we?

The solutions were as follows:
1. They have been here already and are here.

I'm not big on alien conspiracies... theres no evidence for this in my opinion, sorry.

2. They dont care about us.

Kinda interesting. This is valid, they don't care about us and dont wanna talk, and we cant hear them. But.. im sure we would have caught something by now.

3. They were killed off.

Something happened that killed them off. So... like what? Theres an alien race out there, THE GROX!? Probably not, we haven't heard of them either..

Or maybe some sort of event that every civilization seems to hit. No way to really tell... but if you've watched enough sci-fi like me, you'll know the crazy shit that writers sometimes come up with. Sometimes its scary... because its plausible. Tapping into an alternate demension for energy?? Psh, yeah whatever. Trying to re-create the suns energy? You're crazy. But then again... we did figure out about atomic energy, and are currentley smashing particals together with the Large Hadron Colider (LHC) which creates miniature black holes (Don't worry, they aren't dangerous)
As small as they are, we are still doing something that makes goddamn black holes. What does the future hold there..? Did these other civilizations hit the same problem?

Or is it some natural force? Did a sun explode on them? Did a black hole suck em up? Did the planet explode? If there were remains, we probably couldnt see anyting (Space debris and such) since, as far as I know, you can really only see things that are lit up in the sky.

4. They never existed.

The certain climate and science behind creating life is so unique... that they never came to be. Makes sense... the only other planets in our system are only bigass rocks our gigantic gas balls, no life we know of can live there.

And... from what we see... the only planets we have found, which isn't too many really, are mostley all gas giants. So... we are the only unique place that life has exploded in.



So there you have it. Fermis Paradox.

A few other things to consider: Our telescopes cannot see super far, so we still have a lot to explore.

Its kinda freaky to think about... outside of the human race and all of its problems, we are all alone in the galaxy. There's just a lotttt of nothing out there.

Anyways, something for you to ponder...

Yours truly,

-Jake


The milky way, our galaxy. For those of you who live in light polluted areas, you can actually see the inner edge of the milky way in an area thats not very lighted. Such as an island or australia or desert... as well as most all the stars in the sky.

Video Madness

Hot on the heels of my "I'm returning!" post comes this, my first in hopefully many new innovations and posts and things I'm totally not ripping off other blogs no way no sir! I will share to you, my audience, videos from the bowels of the internet which I find to be amusing, interesting, or anything that otherwise catches my interest. Fun!

Today's video has been floating around for a while (over a year according to the Youtube page), but only recently came to my attention. Titled "Overdrift," this video is made of win and awesomesauce. It cleverly satires the ridiculous obsession with "drifting" that some underground racers and wannabe racers that enjoy playing "Need for Speed" seem to have. The video is about a guy who's brother seemingly disappears and dies during a drifting race 10 years ago, who now finds he has to fill his brother's shoes. As it turns out the protagonist's brother didn't die but drifted so hard he went into "Overdrift" and was transported to the D Dimension, the dimensions the dinosaurs fled to when they faced extinction, and also a place where they drift all the time. The protagonist discovers all this when his brother appears before him and tells him he has to fulfill the prophecy of the D Dimension and be the one who can cross between both worlds. More drifting and ridiculousness ensue.

The whole video is drifting between two different dimensions of ridiculous and clever at the same time (see what I did thar?), and is highly enjoyable. If you're someone like me and somehow missed out on it, I highly recommend you watch this video.

DUKE OUT!

-Joe

The Return!

First off screw my naming format! I'm done doing that. It was silly to begin with and I knew I'd break down eventually. More importantly, I'm actually going to try to blog again! Now that school's over and I'm graduating on Friday, I'll have a bit more time to myself...at least until I get a job, which my folks have been really pressuring me on, and for good reason. Tution for college is a whopping 22k a year, even with a 3k per year scholarship...yikes. As much as I need a job my laziness has been, as usual, interfering with that endeavor.

To spice things up, and make myself post a bit more often, I'm gonna try and come up with things to do on a weekly basis, one post of that format on a specific day. I'll start with maybe one or two, but if I can keep myself with it maybe continue with more. Off the top of my head I'll probably attempt to continue the New Music articles, and possibly the gaming ones as well. We'll see.

For now, here's to hoping for no more two month post-less periods!

-Joe

The Last Couple Days

So I've been sitting here, still Joe-less, for the past weekend.

Well, that's sort of inaccurate. I haven't been sitting much. Had an amazing bonfire over the weekend (We do that sometimes) and I also got up at eight thirty on saturday morning to sing the national anthem at a baseball field and then get owned by some fifth grader who sang "my country tis of thee". Sunday was a little better, though I had to take the Dalton home, and I was unreasonably pissed.

Today sucked.

However, I am one of those people that appreciates a terrible day, if it's so terrible it can be comical.

I'll give you the run-down:

Woke up at 12:45. Had breakfast in a bowl that I figured out too late was dirty. Went and got my guitarist, Justin. Got back just in time to take Stp out to the dentist for his appointment (I know you don't know any of these people. I'm doing this to spite you.), and waited a half an hour, beating Justin at Street Fighter IV in Gamestop. We got back to the house, and Stp and his female went to a corresponding love-making session upstairs while we sat and did nothing for a while. Eventually, we went to Dylan's. It was fun, for about fifteen minutes. Then his dad left. Dyl got in an argument / fight with his sister, who called the cops on him. Then Dylan got arrested. We had to wait in his house while his dad was going to get home, and then, when it was cleared up that his mom was going to go find him, we decided to leave. We went back to my house, where I went on 4chan and watched threads about people dying for an hour. I passed the time waiting to drop off Stp's female by being on my computer, again. At midnight, we left to take her home.

And when we came back, things started to change. Stp and I recorded another one of our very-old talk sessions (Which are absolutely hilarious, let me tell you...) and then, we got in contact with a pair of females.

Currently, one of said females is knocked out with her legs in my lap. The other female is next to me on the computer, watching Madigascar but too high to actually sit through it.

I don't smoke, so I'm sort of laughing at her.

Today got better, I suppose.

/Rant

For the record, you won't hear pointless bullshit about my life anymore, this is purely to keep me awake.

On Finishing Work (For the Moment)

I've finally managed to get the blog to a point where I like it (i.e. it looks good and performs the way I want it to), though it's hardly perfect and I'll definitely be revisiting it at a later point. I'd like to thank the folks over at Blogger Templates and The Blog Doctor for the template of the blog and the little bit of coding I did on the site in order to make things cleaner.

"So what took you so long???" you may be asking me.

Well, I felt that the original, Blogger provided template, while very nice, was a bit lacking. So I decided to browse the various corners of the interwebs in order to find a design that I thought looked good, fit the basic "theme" of the blog, and functioned properly. Though there were many, many blog templates I liked quite a bit, not all of them were very easy to mess with the HTML, and some didn't even work at all. Often times it was simply an issue of formatting in accordance with the change to the HTML that made the template simply not work. Granted this could all be problems on my end, but I don't know nearly enough to make any sweeping edits to the blog. Ultimately, this format ended up being one that I liked and worked just the way I want it to. 

"But what is it exactly that was so tricky that caused you to have to work for so long on fixing it?" you may continue to ponder. 

Well you see, with my rather long and rambling posts, particularly my review posts, the front page can get really cluttered and reaaaally long. So in order to fix this problem, I looked up how to make the posts EXPANDABLE!!! (oh shnaps)

Basically, every time one of us here at TEOI (see what I did thar?) makes a long, long post, it will be split into two sections. You, the reader, will be able to see the first chunk of the post as normal, but in order to see the next section, you must click the "Read More -->" link at the bottom of each post. Unfortunately I don't know how to only put that link on posts that actually have more to read, so we'll have to figure out a system here in order to inform you on which posts do have things to read on.

To other authors: there's basic instructions set in the text of each post by default in order to let you know where to write in order to use the "Read More" link. It isn't anything painful to deal with, I promise.

To readers: ROCK ON

-Joe

On Responses To Rik

The blog's only been barren 'cos I've been trying to fix and upgrade the damn thing, hehe. I've been having a bunch of complications with different layouts and formats that both look good and do what I want them to do in order to keep the front page of the blog clean and smooth.

Any ideas or recommendations for templates would be much appreciated, and can be emailed to me here.

(Whoa shortest post made by me ever!)

Need to post something....

This blog has become so barren in the past week.

Announcements:

1. Joe should be coming over my house this weekend. We'll make at least one post.

2. I give up on girls. (Waiting now.)

3. Today's music:

1. I am Ghost- Dark Carnival of the Immaculate

2. Thrice- Digital Sea

3. Bomb the Music Industry!- My Response to an Article in Alternative Press

I'm too lazy to look these up. Be inventive.

On Site Maintenance

First of all, I lol'd really hard at the above picture when I was looking up something to use for this post. You can't not look at it and giggle a little bit.

Anyways, I'm planning on doing some work on the blog in order to make things a bit smoother, more condensed, easier to read, etc. etc. As it is right now, with my ridiculously long posts, one has to scroll for ages to reach the older articles, and that's no fun. Also, I'm not really a fan of the font right now 'cos it seems to be just a bit too small. And I already changed this, but I moved the author for each post to the top, so the reader can immediately see that "Oh no, Joe's making another post on stupid stuff, I'm gonna skip it and go read one of Rik's things/Yogo's reviews/Jake's rants!"

I'll be looking into this and more, possibly trying to customize the site a little bit and make it look a bit cooler and more unique. So if you (the reader) have any suggestions you'd like to put forth, feel free to go ahead and leave me a suggestion in the comment's section. And other authors...please don't go overboard with ridiculousness while I do said tweaking. Danke.

On Haircuts

So. Yesterday I got my hair cut. First of all, I usually keep my hair medium-long, and I like it that way, so I didn't really get much cut off. Texturizing, or some crazy shit like that. Basically I was just getting it "cleaned up" or something similar. Point is, I got some hair removed and paid a woman to do so.

But I'm not here to talk about the actual haircut (I think my hair is fugly half the time anyways). I'm actually here to talk about the goddam mirror.

Seriously, when you're sitting in that barber's chair, you have nothing to do but to stare into that freaking mirror in front of you while your barber person thing does their work. Sure, you can make some small talk with the person, but especially when you're a person like me, a socially awkward white teenage boy, the conversation will eventually fall to silence and you're back to just looking at that mirror, listening to oftentimes thoroughly blah pop songs on the radio over the sound of electric razors.

Let me tell you, those mirror's can e entrancing, mystifying, but they are above all a self-esteem test. Looking into a mirror like that makes you really see all the various flaws in your face. I found myself thinking "My cheeks look chubby; Does one of my eyes always sorta squint like that? Goddammit there's those symmetrical moles again!" I couldn't help but analyze every aspect of my face in some sorta negative light. I never realized my chin looked the way it does!

As soon as one steps away from the mirror, however, things seem to go back to normal as all your focus is taken off of your face. But goddam it's a powerful force. I swear it's all a conspiracy! You go to the barber's and they do a little with your hair, this and that and then it's all OHMAGAWD I need to go buy some skin care products or some lotion or this and that and blah blah blah. It's all "The Man" trying to get you to buy more stuff!

Luckily I'm just too smooth to fall for such ploys.

Rik's Required Listening: Issue One.

Alright, I've determined that I need something to talk about.

So, as a result, I'm going to come up with required listening every day. Three songs that will change how you look at the world for just that day. You can listen to all three, just one, or anywhere in between.

The first three are:

Bluejuice - Vitriol (pious edit) [off of The Zen List, volume two]

Nine Inch Nails - Where is Everybody? [off of Things Falling Apart]

Incubus - Follow [off of Halo II, though there is a version with words which, in my opinion is better.]

Have a great (and strangely wonderful) day. =]

Solid State Escapades

So I'm in a ska side project.

We need band names.

Heavy influences:

High School Football Heroes

Bomb the Music Industry!

Operation Ivy

RX Bandits

Streetlight Manifesto

311, probably.

Any ideas?

Game Shit. Shadow Of the Motherfucking Colossus. (Abridged)

Good afternoon... Clarisse.

Or general public. Y'know.

I'm here to talk about a game, because I do that occasionally. The game is entitled SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS. I put the name in capital letters because there is so much manliness in the game it can't be expressed by written word.

THE SCENARIO:

Alright, so first off, write a book. Then take out anything that could be a reference to plotline in that book. But keep all of the actual events. This is what they give you in SHADOW OF THE MOTHERFUCKING COLOSSUS. Anyone playing the game will usually feel a sort of disconnect as to what is going on. You get a vague idea, but if you need things to be typed out for you, this is NOT YOUR KIND OF GAME. Essentially, you start as a character (Who you don't find out until the credits is named Wander) who is roughly five foot nine and wields a sword, a bow, and a horse.

You don't use items in the game.

Wander's job, in order to save name-unspecific female (Also referred to in the end credits as... Memo?) from indeterminate fate is to FIGHT FUCKING GIANTS.

The first boss is bigger than the house that you're in right now.

Let me be the first to say I love this game. The plot is -kind of- unraveled as you go on, but in the end, you still have to go to Google to determine exactly what happened. (Remember Cloverfield?) That being said, there are tons of theories up on various websites, including one that I can't remember exposing a meta-theory/faq on the game.

GAMEPLAY:

Before you buy this game, get a roll of duct tape and apply to your R1 button. This is the "OH MY F*CKING GOD I'M GOING TO FALL AND DIE SO I HAVE TO SAVE MYSELF" button. The game runs on a health and endurance system which you sort of have to get used to because the LED might as well be in the same sort of half-german language that Wander and his zombie girlfriend use. The control system makes this game. It, too, takes a bit of getting used to, but once you find it, it's awesome. My only real regret about this game is that it is like twelve hours long, but the secrets that you have no way of finding out in the game (Go look on Youtube, people are still finding shit) extend it. For example, they never tell you that you can shoot lizards and eat their tails to gain stamina.

VISUAL/CINEMATICS:

By far, the best thing about this game is the immersion factor. All of the hard-to-get storyline, dialogue, and vagaries about what to do in the game just make it more ridiculously epic than it could have been. The graphics and such are absolutely stunning, and the diabolically large bosses with equally threatening attacks make Kingdom Hearts bosses seem like a bunch of Disney... Wait...

Anyways, it's absolutely beautiful, absolutely crazy, and the easter eggs you can find by looking in the game are phenomenal.

Summary:

Great Game.

Hold R1.

Climb Mountains that are fighting you and stab them with your flimsy-ass sword.

Get the piss scared out of you.

Find secrets.

Save girlfriend with GODHAND.

This review is very short, because I had almost no time to do it. I will likely expand. Unless I'm lazy.

Wait, I'm always lazy.

On Gaming: Mirror's Edge

Goooood Sunday afternoon, empty abyss of a blog! This is Joe again, coming from on high to deliver yet another succulent post about another inane topic! As Jake mentioned previously, yes, I am in fact a gamer, and a rather heavy gamer as well. "But Joe!", you ask, "If you're such a gamer why haven't you posted anything about games yet and just posted stupid things about Pokemon and music we don't really care about?" Well, see, I have a sort of confession to make.

I....I....I play World of Warcraft.

Now don't get me wrong, it's an awesome game, despite what people say. However, because I play WoW, I all too often put some of my console games on the back shelf, because chances are when I'm not playing WoW I get commandeered to play Civ 4 or Warcraft 3 via AIM, or even while I'm playing WoW. So basically I end up doing a lot of things on the computer and less and less on my consoles.

That being said, my intertubes were crapping out on me hardcore about a week ago, to the point where I wasn't able to log into WoW, and my ping on Ventrilo was well over 9000, which created some interesting scenarios, such as the ghostly voice of my disconnected self drifting into Vent announcing the boss had spawned some adds, even though we had all died to the boss at least 10 minutes ago. What made it even better was that I could still hear the group in (relatively) real time, so I got to have some fun throwing random things into the middle of chat and hearing their responses.

ANYWAYS I totally digress. Because of this general internet failure, I decided to bust out my Xbox 360 again after at least a month of negligence, which I totally blame on my friend for borrowing my copy of Fallout 3. Since the aforementioned game was currently absent, I decided to bust out a game I hadn't even touched since I got it for Christmas, as I was too enamored with other things. And as you may have guessed by now, that game is in fact

MIRROR'S EDGE





The Game


Mirror's Edge is a game about a "Runner" named Faith in a seemingly totalitarian future city. Runners are sort of vigilantes that live on the outskirts of society, choosing to live on the run from the city rather than be run by it. Her sister is a cop, which are referred to the Runners as "Blues," and are regarded by the Runners as enemies. After a few basic missions to get the player accustomed to the city, the story opens with a high-profile person in the city being murdered, and Faith's sister is blamed for the crime. Most of the game then revolves around Faith's mission to clear her sister's name and solve the mystery behind the murder.

The story isn't exactly the greatest or most original and isn't developed too well during the game, but that's completely alright, as it really only serves to give the player a reason as to why they're going here and there. The game isn't story driven at all, which is entirely the point, as the real star in this game is

The Gameplay
At it's root, this game is all about getting from Point A to Point B. But the real joy is exactly how you get there. You'll leap across buildings, dart across ventilation systems, break through doors and do other batshit crazy things to reach Point B. And you'll have a kickass time doing it. The first person view and the complete lack of a UI keeps you focused on the task at hand, be it finding a way across a large chasm or beating up one of the many Blues that try to stop you along your path. Which brings me to the subject of combat...

The combat was, in a word, weak. Early on you're taught the basics of fighting, which involves various mechanics of punching and kicking, at different levels (high, medium, low). Unfortunately, you aren't taught about things like how momentum can affect your attacks (for example, a running jump kick can defeat some of the weaker enemies in one blow, while going toe to toe with a foe often takes a lot longer), and it turns out that half of the combat techniques you learn are completely useless against the more heavily armored foes you encounter later in the game. The game encourages you to single out opponents and take them out in one-on-one combat, yet throws you into a room filled with up to five enemies at a time and gives them each guns that can hit you from quite a range, so even if you can corner one you can still have others shooting at your unprotected back. And when you do have the misfortune to fight some of the heavily armored SWAT team members, practically the only way to combat them is through a very unforgiving button press to disarm them and knock them out. You have less than a tenth of a second to pull it off, and should you fail, you'll almost certainly be killed. Sounds easy enough, right? Apparently the guys at DICE thought so, since even on normal difficulty I've found myself dying dozens of times in the same room to the same groups of enemies.

Now, don't get me wrong, it's still an incredibly fun game. The parkour elements of the game are excellent, and you really feel in the middle of the action with the first person view. I have almost nothing to complain about with the platforming and adventuring aspects of the game, except that, similar to the combat, there is no room for error, as any mistakes will most likely send you hurtling to your death in the streets below. At the very least they give you the option to see about where you're supposed to be heading, and through "Runner Vision" anything you should and can interact with are highlighted in a bright red color. Save for the deaths, the gameplay is definitely worth it.

The GraphicsI'm not normally one to harp on graphics or anything like that, as I'm of the firm belief that a game can be fun regardless of how many pixels the main character is made up of. However, it must be noted the graphics of this game are absoulutely incredible. The entire city is of a mind-searing white, which helps to reinforce the totalitarian setting of the game. There are splashes of blue, orange, and other colors that really stand out among the white, and it's easy to tell where important areas of the city are based on the bright red of the Runner Vision. The conrast of colors and great amount of detail that have been put into this game is incredible, and is a visual beauty.

Final Thoughts
Mirror's Edge is an incredibly fun game, but it isn't without it's flaws. It has a simple story and very clunky fighting mechanics. In a game where keeping momentum is law and moving around quickly is key, why does it force you to die over and over (and might I add over) while you attempt to fight off some incredibly overpowered and impossibly difficult enemies? It is a visual beauty, one where you stop mid-leap to observe the brilliant design of the city only to quickly find yourself falling to the pavement. The music and sound effects are brilliant too, with only the sounds of the city to accompany you while you leap from building to building, enhancing the feeling of being alone among many, yet being the most free out of any of them. It quickly switches to an upbeat and fast-pased music once you engage in combat, creating a feeling of urgency and giving it a sort of movie fight-scene sort of atmosphere, which is rather suiting for this type of game.

Though it certainly isn't Game of the Year material, Mirror's Edge is definitely a noteworthy game, and should at the very least be tried by any serious gamer. For real platforming and parkour junkies, the Time Trial mode will keep you playing for many long hours. All in all, I enjoyed/am enjoying Mirror's Edge and would reccomend it to other gamers.

Overall Rating: 7.5/10

Introduction: Rik

Hey guys. I'm Rik, the fourth and semi-nonexistent author of this blog. Per Joe's word.

I know Joe from a really long time ago, but I still don't know Yogo or Jake. Probably will get to know them once they see this.

I'm really into music, planning to major in it in college (And get about a thousand dollars a year, I'm entirely aware). I also appreciate gaming from a somewhat objective sense (I'm an adventure gamer myself, if you had to classify) and I have a guilty pleasure for roleplaying. On top of that, for physical activity, I love frisbee and parkour, though I'm arguably terrible at either. I'm an author, I'm a poet, I'm a philosopher, I'm a mediocre artist, I come in a funny-colored wrapper with bowties on it. Hmm.

Also, I like green tea. Let's have some green tea sometime.

=] Looking forward to posting more in the phuture.

On Music: The Campaign For Real-Time

Aaaaaand welcome back to another installment of "New Music," with me, your host. I've been really lazy about posting of late (again), but I have returned (again) with a renewed vigor towards posting on an empty and readerless blog! Today I'm gonna talk about a band that, to be entirely fair, hasn't been exactly "new" to me for a while, since I've had some of their music on my iPod for a few months at this point, but until recently they were completely unnamed and rarely listened to. What band is this, you ask? Why, it's the

Campagain For Real-Time!




The Story
I originally recieved two of their CDs from a friend of mine in exchange for my copy of Daft Punk's Discovery. Me and this person worked together on a project where we had to relate various works of American Literature to music, and he threw one of C4RT's tracks onto the setlist. It eventually got taken out, but I enjoyed it enough to ask him for some more of their work, and, me being the forgetful lazy person I am, didn't actually end up making the trade some months after the fact. When we did finally make the exchange, he gave me a blank CD with the two albums on them, with neither the tracks nor the albums labled or identified. I put them on my iPod but, since they were all completely unknown, they ended up just sorta floating around, rarely listened to except on the occasional shuffle.

About a month ago (back when I originally planned on writing this post -fail), one of their songs came up on shuffle and I actually listened to it. And it was really good. I had a general idea that the band was good, as the only labled song I had by them, Song for New Amsterdam, the same song I got from my friend originally, was really good. It was a sort of hard to describe melodic punk-rock, with a real message to get across. But this new song was completely different, but in a good way. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what the song is like, yet again, but, and I'm no expert on anything musical, I'd say it was almost a mixture of hip hop and rock. I really don't know what to call it. Shortly after hearing this, I got really interested in C4RT again, and, remembering that I had two whole CDs of theirs on my iPod, set out to label and identify each of the songs and then listen to them.

The Artist
As mentioned earlier, it's really, really difficult to pinpoint exactly what kind of music this band makes. It ranges from rock, punk, techno, hip-hop, electronic, dashes of metal here and there, and it even covers Lennon. It, quite literally, is music. You can label certain bands as rap, rock, punk, techno, etc., but C4RT encompasses it all in such a unique way that you can't label it by any single genre. Though the band itself is made up of members of previous bands that broke up, they live by some crazy story that they are time travelers here to present us music from the future (or is it the past) in order to enhance our lives or something. And one can almost believe it too, based on how unique and varied each track is...except for the fact that it's completely nutters.

At the end of the track One in the Gut, there's a brief sound clip of someone asking one of the band members "So are you guys a serious band?", with the reply "We're serious about being effective..." I think this more or less sums up their perspective on the way they work as a band; serious about their music, but they don't take themselves too seriously.

The AlbumsLet It Rise
I have no clue in what order the two albums I have were produced, since there's so very little out there on the intertubes about C4RT, so I basically picked one of the two at random once I finally identified all the tracks and had everything nice and organized.

Let It Rise was the first album I ended up listening to, and, true to form, it contains no specific single genre of music. Each track was unique in it's own way (except they all weren't...more on that later), and each was excellent by it's own rights. D.C. 77 was the song I had originally heard that convinced me to look back into the band, and Let It Rise also has Song for New Amsterdam, the other song I had mentioned originally. Adjustments is a strong track, but the acapella "doo doo doos" they do in the chorus can be kind of annoying after listening to the track enough times. Rachel Says is another of the songs I would often hear on shuffle, think to myself "Hey, this is pretty good," and then forget what I was planning to do with it later when I couldn't find the track. Photo (Negative Cutter) and Real Time Blues are both good in their own, weird way and the rest of the tracks are just plain great.
Overall Rating: 8.5/10


Yes...I Mean, No
So, after thoroughly listening to Let It Rise I started on this album. It is in all parts equally as good as Let It Rise, but I can't really say which is better because of the ongoing uniqueness this band displays. However, as I listened I couldn't help but notice that some of the tracks sounded...familiar. I could have sworn I had already heard this or that track, and yet I know I couldn't have, because I was listening to the CD I hadn't listened to yet. Then I took a look at the tracks, and sure enough, almost half of this CD and half of Let It Rise shared similar tracks. How could I have not noticed when I was labeling the songs Turn the Gun on Me on and Yes...I Mean, No and Turn the Gun on E on Let It Rise. As it turns out, about half of each of the two albums share a similar song, one a remix of the other. After looking into the track titles a bit more, I learned that Yes...I Mean, No was almost certainly before Let It Rise, because of the track pairings. Turn the Gun on (M)E is relatively clear, but by far the most obvious was In Your Dreams and In Your Dreams (Sir Certainly Remix).

Remixing aside, I found that each of the tracks, especially the original mixes, were still completely different from any other track of theirs, even their remixes. C4RT has somehow managed to come up with a way to redefine themselves with each and every song. As a whole Yes...I Mean No is a little weaker than Let It Rise, but since it most likely came before Let It Rise, that's a bit more understandable. All in all, I really enjoyed this album as well, and would reccomend it to others for their listening pleasure.
Overall Rating: 8.0/10

Final Thoughts
The Campaign for Real-Time is an incredibly diverse band from a musical standpoint. Their tracks are varied and unique. Each song could stand alone, and together you have to ask yourself "Did one band really make all these songs?" Even the remixes are solid, to the point where they practically shouldn't even be recognized as remixes but entirely new songs. Ridiculous time travelers or not, I really like this band, and look forward to more music from these guys.

Band Rating: 9.0/10

The Campaign for Real-Time can be found on their Facebook or Myspace page.

Nerd World: Gears of War 2

Name: Gears of War 2
Console: XBox 360
Release Date: November 7th, 2008

Official Site

If your a Gamer, your probably own a console.
If your a fan of FPS (First Person Shooters), then you probably own a 360.
If your a fan of fucking awsome, and gory, gritty wartime games... One of the games your probably own? If you could'nt tell by the title, its called... GEARS OF WAR 2

Gears of War first came out on the XBox. It was met with much delight, and gained more than enough popularity to spin off this sequel for the 360.


Plot: The plot is basicly this: Humans live on this planet, and fight eatchother, as humans do. Then one day, called E-Day (Emergence Day) this race called the "Locusts" dug up from beneath is and starting kicking the shit out of humans. Humans banded together and fought back against these creatures in a bloody war.





In the first gears, Dominec Santiago gets the main character, Marcus Fenix, out of this crummy jail. Marcus is a rebellious man. Marcus is a friggen tank of a man. Marcus is a known hero. Marcus is fucking badass. Marcus is voiced by BENDER for crying out loud, you can't GET any cooler than marcus fucking fenix!

First gears is this: Get outa jail, fight locusts, go underground, and blow up the locsusts home with a ligthmass bomb.

Gears 2 is this: The bomb awakened this big worm that sinks cities (Nice goin Military). With like one city left, the humans decide to finally attack the locusts at their home.

So its plot is by no means amazing... but its still fairley decent.

I want to just focus on this one part of the game... its when you leave the city on this big, elephantesk rigs. You get to ride with arguably the second best character in the game, Dizzy.
Dizzy didn't want to fight, but does to keep his family safe. He is as southern as you can get, and drives his rig called "Betty"
Now to be completely honest with you... Just play the game for the 3 levels with this guy. He MAKES half the plot, ok?
Like, all the plot consists of is Marcus being extremely bad ass, and Dizzy being stereotypically southern. And its awesome.



And lets not forget to mention the easter egg that makes everyone wears cowboy hats, like dizzy.
Yep, everybody.
Remember that humongous spider monster, the corpser? Yeah, he's got it too.



Gameplay: I'm not gonna get in depth with the actual gameplay here.
Basicly, the game is just Gritty, Gory, and RAWsome. Its a basic third person shooter, with a bit more realistic physics to it... Die faster, Have to get cover, etc.

The devolpers give us a pretty nice selection of weapons. You are allowed to carry 4 things:
1 Grenade
2 Guns
1 Pistol

You have a small selection of grenades, a few pistols (Standard, Uzi like one, Magnum), and a fair ammount of regular guns. They range from Standard rifles (Machine guns and Single shot guns) to Snipers (Sniper Rifles and Explosive bows) to big guns (Heavy machinegun, Artilery, and Boomshot), as well as Shotguns :D





One quick thing: The machinegun that the humans use? It has a fucking chainsaw attatched to it. Yeah, thats right, you heard me: A CHAINSAW. That means your all "Oh hey there some guy next to me. Should I punch him in the face?" Abselutley not, soldier! You've got a chainsaw attatched to your gun! SAW THAT SUNNUVABITCH IN HALF!

As for multiplayer? It actualy goes down pretty well. The best mode they have on it is Horde mode.
Horde is bascily what the name implies: Stand your ground on a small map against repeating hordes of enemies. Get some friends together, crank up the difficulty, and your in for the best night of your lives.
Because, since your a nerd, you ain't getting any girls ass at the bar ;)

Id give this game an 8.5/10.

So if your an FPSer, get this game. Right. Fucking. Now. And then enjoy your gory game!

P.S. Funny story.. when I went to get this game, I went to gamestop. I walk up to the guy and say "Hey there man... id like gears of war 2." in a gritty voice. He looks at me with narrowed eyes and gives me a nod that says "You sir, are a MAN amongst nerds."
His reply is "Anything else with that, fellow MAN?"
I proceed to sheepishley slide my copy of Harvest Moon: Island of Hapiness over and say "annnd this."






-Jake

Intro

Evenin' folks,

I am the third contributor of this amazing Blog. Obviously my name is Jake, But you can call me Jake or Andy if you like :D

So leme just say a few things about myself and let you be on your way. Assuming your not just some random spam bot or the Google search engine... ;_;

I'm like the weirdo among nerds. Now, since your a spam bot or a search engine, you might not understand how I can be a different class of nerds. Well let me try to explain it.



Lets say that there is a scale. On the left of the scale, you have those people who are on drugs and steroids or are just jocks, have an actual life, but are extreme when it comes to FPS's. Their the kind of person you'll find flipping out on Gears of War, or talking about Call of Duty with as many swears as possible. They are talking about a nerdy subject, but are making it sound EXTREME and badass.

Then we got the right side. This is like the nerds that play D+D, Civ, WoW, Have some super computer, Spend most of their life on their ass inside, etc...

So, First we got Joe. Joe, our all loving creator and god, is sort of mid-righish. He plays all those nerdy games, but actualy has a life. Sort of. Not really. Ok he has MORE of a life than we do... and hes a total pimp. With both ladies and guys ;-)

Then we got Yogo. Yogo is far right. Yogo is also wicked fat. He sits on his ass all day and plays WoW and D+D. Occasionally he might go play B-Ball.. But that doesent count! His life consists of being smart and wasting his intellegence on games :P, or trying to out-do the GM in D+D. Far right.

So where am I then? Im extreme. How extrme? IM SO GOD DAMNED EXTREME MY EXTREMENESS CANT EVEN BE MEASURED ON A SCALE

I play D+D and nerd out on that, but I measure it out with Gears. I camley tactize in civ against my enemies, and flip out like 2 year old kid on Halo 3. I go outside occasionaly, but own the best computer amongst the nerds. You might say "But jake, your totally on the middle then!" BUT ID SAY YOUR WRONG. Im both far left and far right. and I hate the image of far lefters even though I am, I dont like the usual fat acne ridden nerd of the far right, SO IM NOT EVEN ON THE GRAPH!

Now that i've wasted my "short" talk about me on my rant, let me just list off my interests.

I play soccer, but not so much anymore. Will get back into it.
I play like every game ever, but I find FPS's most appealing.
I am fariley tech saavy, but know nothing about networking.
I know basic VB, C++ and Java, and hope to learn more about the latter 2 later in life.
I drive a Honda Accord, and hope to drive a motorcycle some day (Probably a honda :P)

My goals in life:
-Create a game from the base up (Never gonna happen though)
-Go to a disputed region of the world and help. Probably Darfur if its still shit by the time I get there
-Live somewhere in the middle east for a few months or a year (And probably die.)
- Go telescoping in Australia
-Get everybody in a bar to have a huge fight. And come out the winner.
- Be in a Motorcyle chase on the highway (GTA anybody...)
-Have a computer that totally wrecks my rival in computers. (His is currently blue and better than mine ;_;)
- Make sure the Gov't stops being a power hungry growing dick that likes to rape the world.

There ya go! Now you know stuff about me :D

Ill try to keep my blogging to just rants, game reviews, and observations on stuff (Society, Industries, School, etc..)
Feel free to comment or send a flame letter to me

PEACE!

-Jake

Nerd World: Gaming in the Free World!

Well it's that time again, that's right the time i have homework and feel like procrastinating. So i figure I would make my next newest article, this time around its about free game I have recently found that are enjoyable.


First up is a new game out called Project Powder made by Outspark. This is a MMO that based purely on snowboarding. I know weird ehh but after playing it for a bit I started to remember the good old days of CoolBoarders. This game is what you would expect most boarding games to be. You start at the top of the hill and you try to be the first one to the bottom. On your way to the bottom you try and pull off as many tricks as you can to get more boost so you can fly by your enemies. There are tree main game modes race, battle, and coin race, and each of these game modes can be either played with a team or free for all. Race is what it seems to be no tricks just clean cut snowboarding, first person to the bottom wins, and if in team their whole team wins. Battle is similar to race in which you try to get yourself or a team member into first but this time you use random weapons to slow down your opponents.Be careful though because you can also hit you allies. The finally game type is based on coins the person with the most coins gets first. This game is still in the open beta so of course it comes with a few bugs, but the number of bugs was very few in the week that I have been playing it i have only seen one. There are some things I do not like about this game so here comes my criticism. I hate the fact that in teams your team can only win if one of your members gets to the bottom first, I think it should be an average of your team. I have never like that in these online games you have to use your gold and buy upgrades that are not permanent. Other than that I do like this game, if you decide to play look me up my user name is Caerus31. So I will give this game 9 thumbs up.


Thought this post was over ehh, well i got one more game for you to make up for missing a week or two of posting. This game is an online game called JamLegend. If you can not guess by the title it is a guitar hero type online game. As you play the songs they have up right now you gain experience based on how good you did. The list on the site is pretty good and it is bound to get better as the game gets older. Now to play the game I find the only way to really have fun with it is to dust of that old wired guitar for the 360 and plug it in map the keys to the keyboard and rock the night away, but for those that do not have one you can use your keyboard and map the beats to what ever would suit you. There is also a friend system in which you can duel your friend on any song currently online. The only real cons to this is that sometimes your browser will lag a little and cause some lag which screws you up. Other than that the game seems pretty cool and I hope that some of my favorite bands get onto the game. So like the last game if you do try it and think your gonna stick with it give me a friend invite, my user name is Caerus. So for this one ill give it 8 thumbs up.

~Yogo

On Failure

First off, I totally fail at updating this. But it's ok! 'cos no one reads it!

In other news I've been keeping busy. Lots and lots of theater! Angels in America has moved on to the MHSGD state finals in Boston, which should be lots of fun. That's happening next weekend, on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, which means skipping school on Friday. Woo!

Schoolwork has been eating a lot of my time too, when I actually get around to it. Mostly I've had to deal with some scholarship applications, which are a real pain, but something that has to get done 'cos when you're talking about a twenty grand baseline cost for tuition and housing and the like, any amount of money off of that is awesome. Luckily, Technical Theater is such a "small" major, as in a very small amount of people actually major in it, that as of right now there's only one other person applying for the one at the actual college, and very few people applying for the theater ones at the school as well. Woohoo! (Redux!)

I'm gonna hopefully try and force myself to post on this at least once a night, to make myself do some creative thinking on posts and not be lazy and stuff. Speaking of which I have some other work I should probably be doing right about now, so I'm gonna go find out what it is and then find a way to procrastinate!

Post on another band later today!

On Victory

Earlier today I was having a dicussion with my comrade in arms (aka friend slash associate) Vlad Firoiu (don't ask me how to pronounce that). I can't quite remember what we were talking about, but eventually I brought up the discovery of my old, old Gameboy, and I'm not talking about no SP or Advance or Micro or even Color. No, I'm talking about the original Gameboy, the freaking brick, the one I grew up playing with and dropping down my basement stairs, noticing no difference between pre and post droppage. The thing was freaking indestructable! But I digress, my various Gameboys and my growing up and such are stories left for a different (yet equally inane, remember this!) post. No my friends, we are here to talk about something different. Something that was just as close to me as my Gameboy. Something large, mean, and not-really-green-'cos-he's-actually-orangey-and-yellow-with-a-bit-of-blue-there-I-guess. Something....in bold, italicized print!

Something called....Charizard.

Like I mentioned, Charizard was another important part of my childhood. Charmander was the first Pokemon I ever got, and Charizard was a direct evolution of that. I struggled with him, I triumphed with him. We laughed, cried, and jumped for joy together (well, mostly me, though I like to imagine my little 2d sprite of a friend could do those things). So needless to say I was more than a little taken aback when this Vlad character tried to convince me that Charizard was capable of using the move Fly in Pokemons Red and Blue. 

Having played Blue for the greater part of my original Gameboy's lifespan (and even now when I get bored), I knew for a fact that Charizard couldn't use Fly. But Vlad was absolutely certain, as he always is, that he's right, and 90% of the time he is. But this was more than him questioning whether or not Charizard could fly. No no no, it was much more than that. By questioning the abilities of my Pokemon brother, he was questioning my very childhood. And such an injustice could not stand.

And so the battle began. Or at least it did for me, I don't think he really cared that much, as these things often go. Vlad had an extensive knowledge of all things Pokemon (go figure), which only bolstered his confidence. He quickly directed me to a website that contained (you'll never guess it), all things Pokemon. And horror upon horrors, a great blow was dealt to me.

This site claimed Charizard could use Fly!

But, being the crafty Pokemaster that I am (insert mwahahahah), I noticed that it lumped together Red, Blue, and Yellow into one category. "Aha!" I probably said both aloud and in my head. "This site lumps Red, Blue, and Yellow into one category!" Yet Vlad was still adamant. Frustrated, but with this singular point backing me and my childhood up, I quickly scoured the interwebs, hoping and praying for something, anything, to prove me right.

And, after maybe five or so minutes of searching later, I came upon this:

"Can't in Red/Blue

 Can in Yellow"

This simple, short post was all I needed. I jumped in the air, shouted for joy, and let out a big YAWP, for I had been victorious!

And thus, I won the day, and my childhood was preserved. 

The fact that I've spent the last twenty minutes posting about a debate over a single Pokemon and it's capabilities, and enjoyed every minute of it, shows that it truly is the simple things in life that keeps one going.

Gotta catch 'em all!

Nerd World: Streetfighter 4

For my first trick I will be reviewing my favorite fighting series newest game Street Fighter 4. When I was a kid my first fighting game i ever played was Street Fighter 2 on the Genesis. I used to play it for hours as Ryu (because he had the only moves i knew). Ever since they announced SF4 I have wanted to get it and last week I had enough money to get it, so heres my thoughts on it. If you have ever played a Street Fighter and liked it this is the game for you. The controls for the original characters are similar so old fans can get right into the game and have a sense of familiarity. Even if you have not played it I suggest you badger a friend to get it and at least try it, the game play is different from that of Soul Caliber, Virtual Fighter and etc. Unlike those games that have gone from the 2D fields to become 3D in how you can move SF4 sticks to its roots and stays 2D and pulls it off fantastically. The moves are more complicated than other fighting games allowing people with knowledge of their character to beat the annoying SPAMMERS (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE).I am not saying that I can do that but I have faced people that just combo me to death :(.

Which brings me to my next point internet play. I have not dived to deep into this but like most online fighting games it can be a good fight or a horrible one depending on both your and your opponents connection. Now my connection is always in the green but i ran into some horrible connections which ended with me not being able to control my character and dieing to retard i should be able to beat.

Now about the Art, in video games most people disregard art and just go into how real it looks and bla bla bla. Personally i dont care if its two pixels in a big pixel if the game play is good ill play it. Now you might be asking yourself "if Yogo doesnt care about art why is he bringing it up". Well my reader i bring this up because the art is like mixing the old arcade days with the modern 3D days. The characters still have that arcade 90's feel but they look amazing, I truly love what they did for the Aesthetics of SF.

Onto the characters, if you have followed the series you probably noticed that Ryu, Ken and Akuma have always had the same or at least similar moves. Well that is still true but they did a much better job at dividing them up. Ryu now has a better Hadouken and Tatsumaki Senpuu-Kyaku (Hurricane Kick), whereas Ken has an amazing Shoryuken, and Akuma can teleport and has other new moves that are still hard for me to pull off. Besides those characters the others are very unique in speed, power, and moves. Personally my favorites are Sakura and Cammy. Sakura has some of Ryu's moves which helps me get used to her faster because of the amount i used to play Ryu and she can combo much better than Ryu in my opinion, and Cammy because she is fast and she has moves that are very versatile.

So over all if your a SF fan this is a must buy, and if your not I would try it first to see if you like how its set up first. You have reached the end of my first Video Game review congrats....


~Yogo

O CRAP forgot to rate it sorry. I rate my stuff on thumbs 10 thumbs up being perfect 0 thumbs being the creator should go on a deserted island and stay there for all eternity. So for SF4 I give it 9 Thumbs up.

~Yogo (for real this time)

My Intro

Evnin Yall. My name is @#~#$ $#@^&%$&*(% but u guys can call me Yogo. If your reading this then you have somehow found Joe page. He decided to make me an author (ya go figure) and so out of boredom I have decided to contribute to this small blog. I am really into Video Games, learning(ya i know weird),and computer stuff(VB, C++, internet in general). I am currently learning about the whole process of hosting websites and how to get a forum site up and running for me and my friends,and hoping to move onto C++ within a week. I will try to post at least once a week about whatever is on my mind whether it be help with a computer, cool programs to try out, or just video game reviews. As a last note I am not a professional in any way, I do like computers and games and know a good amount on both, i am just stating my opinion, if it helps you gratzy, if you think im wrong well good for you somehow i think ill go on.

~Yogo

On New Music

So, now that the introductions are all out of the way and whatnot, time for some of the juicy content that I know all of my nonexistant readers so ravenously crave!

One thing I plan to do is, once a week every week, download, buy, or otherwise aquire a CD or two from a band, previously known or not, that I currently have no music from. I'll then listen to said CD, and over the course of a few days come up with a general review of the albums. I love music, I have a new iPod with lots of space, and I have a relatively small library of music at the moment (going from a puny 2g Nano to a shiny new 16g iTouch is quite the mindblowing change), so everything fits into place! Funfun!

-DISCLAIMER-

I am in no way a professional or otherwise important person (read: my opinion doesn't matter), and everything I'll be talking about is strictly my personal opinion. Feel free to hate me and tell me why I'm wrong, however! Just don't expect me to listen.

THIS WEEK, ON THE MUSICAL REVIEW....

DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE!

Death Cab's a band I'd heard of previously, as a few of my friends listen to them and I've heard their song "Cath..." on the local radio station 104.1 WBCN a few times and liked it, so I figured they were as good a band as any to start. I aquired their two most "recent" albums, Narrow Stairs and Plans, a couple days ago so I think I've had enough time by now to analyze and reflect and all that fun stuff.

I almost always keep my iPod and iTunes on shuffle, 'cos I'd rather let my music be randomly chosen to keep things interesting, even within individual albums and bands along with the standard "shuffle" option. Keeping this in mind, the first six songs from between the two albums each had a mention of "love" or "heart" in them. Now this isn't a bad thing by itself, but it can create an almost sort of stale lyrical effect, in that almost every song is more or less about the same thing. Again, not necessarily a bad thing, but I enjoy bands that are capable of exploring many different themes. This may also be biased, having only two of their albums to sample from.

Beyond this string of similar songs, there was just enough variety to keep my interest satieted, and overall came out feeling positive about the band. The smooth vocals of Ben Gibbard are easy to listen to, but I found that half the time I could have removed the vocals entirely and still enjoyed the music. The band is just that good instrumentally. The rather lengthy instrumental intro to "I Will Possess Your Heart" is absolutely awesome, and "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" is touching with it's story of one's devotion to another.

Overall, I rate Death Cab rather highly, and I definitely plan on looking into some of their other albums. Though many of their songs may be similar, they provide me with plenty to enjoy, though I certainly won't put them exclusively on shuffle unless I'm feeling overly sappy, sad, or romantic (which, now that I think about it, is quite often...).

I'll see you next week with another review of a band I have yet to choose! Weeeee!

On Introductions

Hello there! My name is Joe Alden, and in case you have happened to somehow stumbled upon (not to be confused with Stumbleupon) this blog, then congratulations! You need to find some more free time! Truthfully I expect very few people to ever actually read any of the posts I will be making, but I plan on making at least a post a day, if I can manage to pull that off. "But Joe, if you obviously have a lot of free time yourself (enough to actually make this rather inane blog), then how would you not have enough time to make a single post a day?", you may be asking. Well, whenever I am supposed to be doing other things I often get distracted or bored (and having an internet capable iTouch certainly helps), and wind up doing inane or stupid things...such as creating this blog. Go me! As I've mentioned earlier, this blog is purely for the sake of my own entertainment, and as such I will be posting about whatever I feel like, whenever I feel like (at least once a day, see what I did thar?)! And, should any lonely readers ever find themselves viewing this, feel free to comment on anything I may say...it will make me feel a bit less lonely and worthless.

Onward to victory!