Standing at the edge of endless oblivion

Yesterday evening, I was wading in the surf at high-tide. The sun was setting behind me, and I stood before an endless stretch of water. Its untold murky depths inspired my thoughts to wax philosophical for the first time in all of my visits to the beach. To borrow from Calvin & Hobbes, it made me want to go inside and turn on all the lights.

It is interesting to have lived abroad and now be home again. Occasionally I still get culture shocked. In these situations, I feel like a tourist visiting a foreign land, here to observe the American people and their way of life. I can't quite decide if this is annoying or wonderful. Often times I find myself enjoying the ability to see things through a different viewpoint, but just as often I find myself a little bit scared that I have forever lost my ability to just be an American in America.

Last night, there was a huge storm front about 50 miles inland. It provided an amazing electrical show that was as entertaining as any fireworks I've ever seen. I enjoyed it, along with a cool night-time beach breeze, while I smoked a cigar. Sometimes there are sublime moments where you are completely at peace and content with life... I savor such fleeting occasions. Last night was one such time, and it was delicious.

Vacation!

I'll be going to the beach this week, leaving here in a bit... I might not get a chance to post while I'm out of town so consider yourself warned, faithful reader.

Did I use singular case because I only have one faithful reader? No! It was... it was just a thematic choice. That's all.

Anyways, beach ahoy! I'll make sure to report on any oil if it happens to appear in South Carolina.

Perils of Summer!

I was feeling ill last night and had a hard time going to bed in spite of how exhausted I felt.

In the middle of the night, I woke up soaked in sweat and shivering, with stomach cramps. I had felt feverish before so I'm thinking the fever must have broke and long story short, I had a rough night and feel pretty sluggish today. My reflexes are slow and I'm feeling like a zombie.

Just in case anyone's interested, Steamworks is having a huge summer sale (like as big as their Xmas sale) from now until the 4th of July. There are daily specials as well as a ton of games with a reduced price for the whole duration of the sale. Check it out every day and you're bound to see a great deal on a game or two that you'd enjoy.

A short post today.

This is really cool. Check it out!

Shogun 2: Total War

So E3 revealed that the next title in the Total War series will be a remake of the first TW game. Shogun: Total War was originally released a decade ago, in June 2000. I didn't really notice it until two years later, when I was at the beach and had just been introduced to James Clavell's epic novel Shogun. Seeing a game called Shogun: Total War in a bargain bin at the Colonial Mall, I immediately picked it up. I hadn't heard of it previously, but the setting was the same thing as Clavell's story, so I figured it was worth checking out.

It quickly became one of my favorite games ever, in spite of how horribly buggy and unstable it was. (Even fully patched, the game was notorious for requiring constant saves to guard against the inevitable crashes.) In fact, I never once got to see a siege fight, because for some reason trying to render a castle would always cause a crash on my PC. Regardless, I adored the game and I'm super pumped that they're re-releasing it.

And if you haven't read Shogun, buy and read it. It is such a cool story of political intrigue and cultural differences. In fact, it is directly responsible for my living in Japan for three years. Now, I know some people just don't enjoy reading, and if that is how you feel then I would strongly recommend the miniseries as an alternative.

In the meantime, let's just say that this is the most excited I've been about a Total War release since Rome!

Six Months Later: An Xmas Update

Last Christmas, I got a new LCD monitor for my computer.

Well, after I had resolved the initial stuck pixels, I was pretty happy with the monitor. Until early April, that is; a line had appeared on my display, going the full length from top to bottom, on the right-hand side of the screen. It was only a single pixel wide, but still quite distracting. It would be a random color, usually somewhere between white and blue, often teal.

I was busy with my college courses at the time, so unfortunately I couldn't just immediately send it in for repair. And so more lines appeared. One at a time, at first, but eventually two or three new lines would appear, marching across my screen, destroying my ability to read or see anything on a two-inch block of my LCD. Quite annoying.

Turns out it was what they call a tab fault, and was easily fixed when I sent it in after classes were over. I was a bit miffed that the replacement I was sent had a dead pixel (not stuck, truly dead) right in the middle of the screen, but to Samsung's credit when I called to complain they were very apologetic and immediately authorized my sending it back to receive a new replacement.

Thankfully, third LCD's the charm! All pixels are working correctly and I have no complaints.

In other news, it is only six months until Christmas is here once again. I'm excited for another holiday season here in the States!

What does the future hold?

On October 29th, 1929, Wall Street was shocked by a complete collapse of prices on the stock market. The plunge continued for a full month, and thus began the world-wide Great Depression.

This directly led to the rise of extremism throughout Europe, with fascist groups taking over in Spain, Germany, and Italy. It also was responsible for the military coup that took control of Japan.

The rise of extremism in various countries eventually resulted in World War II.

Now we have the so-called "Great Recession". It certainly has created a great deal of unrest, some of which is dangerously reminiscent of the past. Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, gave a very stark warning about the potential for the democracies of Greece, Spain, and Portugal to collapse under the current economic strain.

Revolution can occur when people lose faith in their government. Kinda like what happened in Okaloosa County, Florida. The county commissioners voted to take action without regard to the red-tape filled chain of command that exists through state and federal governments. They're saying that the government isn't working; it is neither efficient nor effective for their needs. And they're willing to go to jail, if that's what it takes.

I wonder if this isn't an isolated case. It certainly seems like a lot of people, all around the world, are fed up with what they see as government that just doesn't work.

May we live in interesting times, indeed.

Web Security 101

As some of you may recall, my WoW & gmail accounts were hacked a while back. Recently, I've also heard of a spate of email and facebook accounts being hacked. Just about anyone can become a victim now.

Especially with sites like facebook out there, which may have less than adequate privacy measures, it seems that a person's information (and even one's identity) is less safe than ever. (By the way, if you use facebook you should follow the instructions on this site to make sure your information is secure.)

Not a week goes by that I don't hear about one of my friends or acquaintances being the victim of a hacker. The days of lax web security are over.

Let's review some basics when it comes to web security. Passwords should always contain both letters and numbers. Have a different password for every account you have; you don't want all your eggs riding in one insecure basket, no?

Also, try to make your passwords not be a single word, and not be a logical association of words. "God" is a terrible password... extremely easy to guess by a hacking program, and statistically this is a common password. "GodIsGreat" would be another bad choice... a logical association, and no numbers. "GodTaco164Cheetah9" would be a wonderful password, though it might be a bit too long for some accounts. Regardless, you get the idea; random and illogical = secure.

Also remember to be extremely wary of seemingly legitimate messages, even if it appears to be from people or websites that you know. Many times, people can fake who it appears to be sent from. (This is called "spoofing".)

The official-looking email might ask for your account information and password, or perhaps your credit card number. Often they will threaten something if you don't respond quickly. If there is a harsh threat included, be extra careful... that's almost a sure give-away that it is a scam email. (This practice is called phishing.)

Often times, suspect emails will include a link to the official website. You might click on it, and it certainly appears to be the legitimate website... but appearances can be deceiving. What you need to do is be very careful about trusting links. Compare the web address from a link with the one you have bookmarked. Often, though the sites look identical, you can spot a minor difference in the web address. Instead of www.yourbankwebsite.com it might be www.youbankwebsite.com ... which of course would lead to your account information being handed over to hackers if you tried to log in at the latter site.

Remember, some virus programs are even able to send you email from your friends computers (if they've been infected) or else appear to have been sent from someone you know. You must always be very vigilante if you get an email that doesn't make sense, or only contains a line of text and a link. "This is hilarious: (link)", for example, would be very suspicious and I wouldn't click on it until I contacted my friend and confirmed they really did send it.

One last tip: make sure your web browser and operating system is fully up-to-date. (In case you don't follow, a web browser would be Internet Explorer and an operating system would be Windows XP, for example.) Often times, updates will repair some flaws in the security of these programs... so you always want to have them completely updated.

The days of being able to keep your head down and remain lax about your internet security are over. Make sure you're not the next victim!

Piracy Isn't Hurting Any Companies!

At least, that's what 45% of the GameFAQs community believes.


Recently, their daily poll featured this question: "Do you believe piracy is a real problem for the video game industry?" Over 31,000 responders feel that piracy is OK because "they're still making billions". Another 6,000 feel that stealing games somehow makes the victim-company more money than if their product wasn't stolen. I can't say that I'm surprised, given the human capacity for rationalizing something that we want to believe.

Smaller developers can suffer and even go under if their games are pirated. Furthermore, even if the bigger companies won't be hurt too bad by piracy, rampant theft of their product only encourages them to come up with increasingly more draconian DRM measures... this ultimately hurts legitimate customers. That's right, piracy doesn't only hurt the developers and the publishers... it hurts your fellow gamers.

Sure, we can bitch and moan and say that the big companies shouldn't treat their legitimate customers like the enemy, (and I will no longer buy from certain companies precisely because of such an attitude,) but at the same time I don't think its entirely fair to get mad at a company that's just trying to protect its product from being stolen. The responsibility rests with those who steal.


The poll results can be seen here.

The ills of technology

I found this article very interesting. Its about how constant multitasking can rewire our brains, and gives an example of a young tech guru who has lost the ability to focus his attention on any one thing. He's constantly looking for "something else" to the detriment of his family-life and even his work.

Now, I do believe that this family represents a good example on the extreme end of things and I fully admit that heavy use of technology can rewire a person's way of thinking. I have no particular beef with the findings of this article whatsoever.

On the other hand, it seems like they got a really dysfunctional / scatterbrained married couple who just happen to be heavily into technology.

That said, some people will read an article like that and think "technology is bad". Maybe people like these parents who are upset about how an educational video game is being used in New Mexico schools. The game is successful enough that the kids actually want to play it, even though it requires the understanding and use of mathematics.

"We are feeding the addiction of these children to video games," said parent Marlene Perrotte. Indeed, we should abandon an incredibly effective tool that actually gets kids excited to learn about math. Because, as Marlene so eloquently put it, "We are feeding the addiction of these children to video games." I shudder.

And before you go, make sure to check out this test to gauge how well you can filter out distractions. Even though I would be considered a high multi-tasker, I scored perfectly. This just furthers my belief that this article took an extreme worst-case example family just to make the story sexy.

Replay Value

Replay value is generally thought of as a good thing. With that in mind, my obsession for 4X sandbox games means I'm an incredibly frugal buyer. Three years later, I still play Civ4 regularly. That's a good investment!

This does have a side-effect, however. It leaves me with very little time to explore more traditional "play until you complete the story-line" games. Throw in my having recently fallen off the griffin, and I barely have time to sleep! (Yes, that's right, I'm back on WoW these days.) I purchased Tropico 3 recently and have really enjoyed playing it when I get the chance, but I just can't seem to break away from the endless replayability of 4X games.

Which brings me to the question: To a hardcore gamer, is "replay value" actually a misnomer? I have plenty of free time and yet constantly feel like I'm growing even more behind on the list of games I mean to play.

This list... it includes PS2 titles. And even one or two PS1 games! So let me tell you, I am seriously starting to shy away from games that are said to contain "high replay value". Of course with me not having a job, I'm also shying away from games that cost more than $5.

Ah, the troubled life of a hardcore video gamer with too many games and too little time. Some days I can't even manage to get out of bed in the morning.

Luckily, my computer is right beside my bed, so that doesn't cut into game time!

Sixty-six years ago today...

Today is June 6th, 2010. It is now a little after 11 in the morning.

Sixty-six years ago, today, a young man from West Virginia such as myself might not have just finished enjoying a Tudor's biscuit and coffee for breakfast. Instead, he might have already spent more than five hours on a beach in Normandy, France, as part of the largest amphibious assault landing in all of history.

Here's an excerpt from the speech read to all the troops involved in the D-Day operation.

"You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you."

It was written by General Eisenhower, leader of the Allied armed forces. You can see the full speech at this website. If you're interested in knowing more about the actual invasion as told by the men who were actually there, I encourage you to check out this wonderful website put together by the United States Army.

I can't imagine what the world would be like today if those brave men hadn't fought and died in order to secure liberty for their sons and daughters. Nor can I imagine how terrible the atrocities would have been if the Nazi regime been allowed to remain in control of Europe. We already know that in the short time they were in power, they left a terrible legacy in the Holocaust. How much worse might it have been without the ultimate sacrifice given by many young men around the world?

Today is a day of remembrance. Today is a day to honor those who laid down their lives so that you and I might live in freedom.

Concise.

I don't normally do this, but I'm feeling very worn out and I really found today's Penny Arcade comic to be hilarious. So, please enjoy.

"May you live in interesting times"

The title of today's post is an ancient Chinese curse. You see, to the Chinese "interesting times" meant a lack of stability. In other words: chaos, starvation, sorrow, and death.

As a child, I would always love to watch World War II movies with my dad. I grew up on stories about the war as told by my grandfather, a veteran who fought under Patton in the Third Army. Even as recently as high school, I recall thinking to myself about how amazing it must have been to live through such momentous events as those that transpired from the Great Depression up through the Cold War.

Of course, I started to reconsider my opinion that I would never experience anything like that shortly after 9/11.

Nowadays, with North Korea and Iran developing nuclear weapons, the former's increasing saber rattling, and Israel losing Turkey's good will (not to mention the increasing loss of world opinion) along with America's purposeful backing away from staunchly supporting Israel... let's just say I'm no longer convinced that I won't live in equally monumental times of change.

As a side note, I think this woman is the perfect example of what I hate about modern litigation. I think that even though Google is providing directions, it still falls upon the user's shoulders to use some common sense.

It is a tragedy that she got struck by a car, and I don't even particularly mind that she's suing the person who hit her (though I don't necessarily believe she ought to win... if she was walking on a road without a sidewalk, it might be her fault,) but to sue Google for "careless, reckless and negligent providing of unsafe directions" is beyond ridiculous.