JAPAN! Part ni

This place doesn`t believe in air conditioning. Everyone sits and complains atsui da ne! (it`s so hot!) but then they just sit there with the air conditioner, off, right next to them. It`s hilarious. In the car, at school, at home, it`s all the same. And it`s hot. It hit 35 degrees!

Yellow Trucking: Color Blind?

JAPAN! Part ichi

What the heck?! Japan is all about being germ-crazy. People wear masks (like a surgeon`s) if they`re sick so they don`t cough on people and they even sometimes wear gloves while they`re driving (haven`t figured that one out yet) and they wear slippers in the bathroom because the floor might be dirty. However, they don`t think it`s weird at all to take a bath with a bunch of other people of the same gender in a hot spring. Naked.

Driving really isn't that great

It's almost every young teenager's dream to earn his or her driver's license. That's an almost inarguably true statement. People want the freedom of driving. People want to be able to go wherever they want, whenever. And do it now. Right?

I've recently discovered that walking is far more liberating than any car. With a car, you have to stay on the road. Roads really don't cover that much of America. There is so much unpaved land just waiting for someone to find it before it is paved. There are paths through forests and lakes to walk around. Even here in town I've discovered things I didn't know existed, just by walking around. If you're bored, and you've got time, go take a walk. You don't need a destination. Just go!

Best Buy thinks I have no friends

Discrimination!

Discrimination/persecution of an individual based on race = Racism
Discrimination/persecution of an individual based on sex = Sexism
Discrimination/persecution of an individual based on religion = uhhh... mean?

Seriously? what word should I use here?

Headlights are good.

Ever wonder what it looks like to drive at night without your headlights on? It looks like this:

Dudes

"Dude, I forgot napkins. Good thing there is this table cloth."

"Dude, I forgot kleenex. Good thing I wore this shirt."

"Dude, I forgot toilet paper. Good thing I have a left hand."

A Frustrating Phenomenon For Flies

Flight Plans and Blown Minds

Weather.com, you have failed me.

Another piano tune!

I was bored yesterday, so I wrote a short tune for piano. Here it is!

Wisdom Teeth. More like just Dumb teeth.

I recently got my wisdom teeth pulled. And I only had 3, which is weird. I decided the only wise one was the 4th who knew he wasn't invited.

Psychic DVD player!

More screenshots!

A pretty flower in Sitka, Alaska


Awesome mountain and inlet, in Tongass National Forest near Ketchikan Alaska My avatar in RL
Clouds on a sunny day in Indiana


For more from Alaska and San Francisco and a little in Canada, go here

What the heck?

YouTube Comments

So I watched a freakin' Hannah Montana video on youtube one freakin' time; sue me! Well, anyway, I read some of the comments, and some of them made me laugh, so I took a screen shot. Click to enlarge.

Business Card

Click to enlarge.  I found this business card.  It's funny on so many levels.

Standing Ovations

I think standing ovations are too readily given today. As an accomplished actor, legendary tuba player, and guitar hero, I am used to standing ovations (wink). But the sad reality is that standing ovations are way to easy to get. All a performer has to do is show up, and he or she get a standing ovation! The performance doesn't have to be legendary, mythical, or even great. It just has to be okay. The easy standing-O detracts from the meaning of the applause. If every performance gets a standing ovation, then it isn't special any more.

Security Device Enclosed

An Annoying Question

RL: The Game

I will be reviewing perhaps the most hyped up game ever to be released.
It is fully worthy of all the hype. This is RL.

First of all, I would like to simply say that this is the most beautiful game my eyes have ever beheld. Absolutely stunning. The graphical quality is superb. Some in-game screenshots are available throughout the review--I had to lower the resolution. Once you see those, you will know for a fact that there is no way that any game could ever approach the immense quality seen in this world. While looking through your avatar's eyes, the graphics are in such High Definition that you will never see a pixel, or "jaggies" or a low-quality texture on anything. EVER. There is no limit to the draw-distance. No objects "pop-in" as you approach them. The only limits to the distance of your vision are your character's vision rating (on a confusing scale of fractions over 20), the weather, and (obviously) objects in the way.

You have not seen weather like this in a game before

Speaking of weather. Wow. The physics engine in this world is astounding. The amount of time and brain power invested in creating this world is absolutely mind-boggling. Most games' physics stop at making things fall realistically, or crash realistically. Not so here. Each sub-microscopic piece of matter is meticulously detailed and can be observed indirectly through experiments and electron microscopes and all sorts of fantastic things. The world spins around an unimaginably large ball of burning gases hundreds of thousands of miles away. And around the world on which your avatar resides, another near-sphere orbits. As night progresses, this sphere, known as "Moon" will realistically move from one side of the planet to the other. The clouds and wind and rain and all weather effects are superbly done with never a glitch or faulty detail. Such detail is unprecedented in any setting. Clouds float and change, you can activate an in-game computer or television and find out what sort of weather will come soon, or see what weather you slept through (I'll explain sleep later). I could go on and on explaining and praising the amazing physical detail, but you should buy the game yourself and experience it firsthand. One more thing about physics here. Water. [jaw drops]

You've seen pretty water in games before (see Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Half-Life 2, Crysis) but you have not seen it like this. Light reflects, and bounces, and filters through dirty water (and any other liquids--acids, drinks, everything!) Water flows from high to low and is absorbed by certain substances and not others. Absolutely amazing is the work that went into the creation of this world's water effects. Screenshots speak for themselves.

Artificial Intelligence. The AI in RL: The Game is fantastic. People and animals react in realistic ways to every action performed. You push a cat, he'll either run away, or bite back or just fall over, it will depend on that cat's personality. Every NPC (non-player-character, for the uninitiated) has his or her own distinct personality. Reactions to other actions all depend on a massive list of various factors including (but not limited to): mood, personality, time of month, friendship status, time of day, exhaustion level, laws, social standards/norms (which differ in various parts of the world), political views of the individual, and other events going on at the time. Occasionally, a reaction to a joke or physical act will be unexpected, but that is part of the fun. Don't break these laws.

You never know about all of the other circumstances in an NPC's life. So what may seem to you an over-reaction may be simply a result of a bad time frame. Maybe the NPC's grandmother just died. Maybe he or she failed a test. You never know. The variety of people and personalities is so vast that you will never meet a copy of a character you've met before (except in a few small instances, where you may meet one who looks almost identical to another, but they will generally have very different personalities. These are known as twins--even rarer are triplets or quadruplets and occasionally even higher numbers. Those psuedo-clones approach non-existence with their low population numbers.) Currently, there are over 6 and a half BILLION players in the world, and the number is ever-rising at a current rate of around 1 percent a year. Try to wrap your head around those numbers. Here, I'll show you 6.5 billion. 6500000000. Look at all those zeros. You know your computer screen? You know those little dots that make up the image? If you're running at 1024x768 resolution (pretty standard) that's only 786432 dots. And you can hardly see those on your monitor. Multiply that by more than 8000 and you'll get the amount of dots to be around the number of players. That's a lot.

Look at the amazing flora

Each action you make has realistic and meaningful consequences. There is a realistic decision-making mechanism, and with each decision you make you affect many around you. You may be punished by law-enforcers for making poor decisions and you will actually have to endure your punishment (unlike Oblivion, wherein you can simply skip through your sentences), which provides ample reason to not break the law. So yes, you can do whatever you want, but punishments will follow. Similarly, you can also say whatever you want to people, or do whatever, but you will suffer consequences for it. If you build up a strong friendship and one day feel like terrorizing that character, he or she may never talk to you again. You have to be willing to deal with the consequences of your actions. This is not Grand Theft Auto. On the same token, when you die, you die. There are no "Continues" or "Extra-lives" or anything of the sort. There are no spawn points (unless you count the hospital where new characters are brought into the world, after having been created about 9 months earlier by combining half of two character's traits (randomly chosen by a complex algorithm)). When you die, there is no more playing in RL. However, there is a hidden Second Portion (SP) to RL: The Game. Everyone's having too much fun (or everyone's too scared) to go try it out, as it's only accessible after closing your account in RL proper. Also, as no one comes back into RL after going to the SP, no one knows what SP is like.

Beautiful tree images

Related to the SP is the topic of theology. In the game world, you may choose any theology you like (not completely dissimilar to Civilization IV's religion mechanic) and each comes with various positive and/or negative effects. I don't know if they should be called positive or negative, because perception of these effects is all subjective. For instance, there may be rules you are to follow in your religion (which some may view as a negative effect) but there may be positive consequences for following those rules, such as longer life, better health and opportunities to meet nice people. Your character may be raised in one religion, but you are permitted to change your religion as you see fit (of course there will be positive and negative consequences of this as well--maybe your family is composed of devout members of one church, but you don't believe in it? Do you risk ostracism? Or is your family kind and loving enough that they would love you and accept you even if you left? Decisions are yours!) Almost all Theologies come with some perception of the SP, and it is up to you to decide what you believe. Effects in the SP of the Theology you chose in RL proper are still unknown.

Look at the incredibly contrast ratio and the colors and the light filtering through leaves.

As I promised I would mention it earlier, here is the section on Sleep. While you sleep, to recharge you exhaustion level (or avoid troubles or speed through boredom) there's a mini-game for you to play. When you sleep, your character enters into the "Dream" mini-game. "Dreams" vary widely and are described/created by an algorithm factoring all sorts of variables including mood, how recently you ate, recent in-game-movies you've seen, exhaustion level, current game-world events, among other things. These mini-games can be anything from a fun jaunt along the beach (with no real goal) to a fast and intense race from an alien monster (with the goal being survival (in Dream, deaths only result in a new mini-game to play, or consciousness)).

Your character has a huge list of stats, and you have to decide which to increase through practice or training. Some stats start higher than others. Those "knacks" are generally decided by the traits passed from your character's predecessors. All stats can be trained to "master level" but some will be more difficult for your character to increase. Others you will find increase in level rapidly. The list of these statistics is so immense that it would be foolish of me to list them all, so here is a very very small sample: Amiability, Emotional Control, Musical Skill (General), Musical Skill (Specific Instruments), Mathematic Skills (General), Mathematic/Science Skill (Specific Area), Alertness (Of the wellness of others), Alertness (Of Danger), Fashion Sense, Laziness, Sports Ability (General), Sports Ability (Specific Sport), Hunting (Bows), Hunting (Firearms), Cooking (General), Cooking (Specific Style)... et cetera. The list is nearly infinitely long. You are also permitted to increase as many of those skills as you can find time to do. Within those "Specific" subsets of skills are lists of various more specific subjects, and you can choose many different ones, so you aren't prevented from only learning one sport, for example, or one cooking style. As long as your character has time, he or she can increase skills in as many areas as you want.

This only covers a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny miniscule portion of RL: The Game, but I hope that it gives you a glimpse of the perfection that is RL, and an appreciation for the Head Programmer.

An explorable barn

A grove with a small creek at the bottom. Look at the quality of the reflections!

Gorgeous lake with spectacular reflection. The birds had flown away as I moved my character too close. Note that no objects are missing in the distance.

By Sir Michael Saylor

I looked up the definition of girlfriend in the dictionary.

girl·friend
–noun 1. a frequent or favorite female companion; sweetheart.
2. a female friend.

Which is it, dictionary? I wish you would stop sending me mixed signals!

Tobacco is dumb

You know what's ironic? When people buy cigarettes when they turn 18 "because I can." Usually the people who do that are trying to be rebellious. Rebellious people hate the government. Buying cigarettes hands the Indiana's government 99.5 cents/pack and the US government 39 cents/pack. That's a large amount of the price of cigarettes handed straight to the government.
Irony is delicious.

Opera

To me, school is like being forced to go to the opera by your wife. It's annoying. It isn't fun. It's a pain in the butt. All you want to do is sleep, but you have to go. So you might as well suck it up and get over it and laugh at all the fat people.