Exploding Penguin on the Blog Post

As you are about to witness, the title of this post has, simultaneously, everything and nothing to do with the actual subject of the post. The subject of my post is.....[dramatic pause]....[dramatic background music]....CALCULUS! Now, before you run away either to get away from the horrid subject of calculus or to go get your TI-89 for any math problems I might include, I should tell you that this is a rather unconventional view on the subject. Many people, including a few of my fellow bloggers, either love or hate calculus for the basic reason that it is math and, therefore, requires some sort of brain function that does not come easily to all. I enjoy calculus because it is an absolutely wonderful class for doodling.

Math is a very example-/problem-intensive class. Often times, the majority of the class is spent doing practice problems or watching the teacher go through examples. Initially, everyone who is not already aware of the concept in question must pay strict attention as it is presented and justified. It may take anywhere from 1 to 100 examples for the idea to really sink in. However, there will come a point when you understand the concept so well that you could not possibly understand it any better unless the brain of the man who invented it was transplanted into your skull. When you reach this point, there is little left to do. The examples are helpful, but tedious once the concept is properly grasped. It takes a supreme effort to pay attention and force the repetition. That is the point when the mind begins to wander. That is the point that Dominic and I found yesterday (again).

As you might guess, the answer to the almost certain boredom of calculus and a variety of other classes is doodling. This can be either productive or decidedly unproductive. Productive doodling is most often seen in history classes or similar literature-/story-intensive classes where it is possible to illustrate concepts. Calculus is not one of those classes, but it does have one advantage: worksheets. Worksheets always mean time in class to work on said worksheets and, most times, collaboration is encouraged so that students can check each other. In the common tongue of students, this translates to "type A free time." This is where the doodling comes in.

*Type A free time is essentially the kind in which you appear to be working diligently while getting no significant amount of work done. Note in the above picture that only about 1/3 of the worksheet is finished - the amount of possible work that can be done in the average time that the teacher spends at your desk watching you do it.

The latest calc masterpiece began with the rather pointless labels at the top. All those who are amused by it should thank Dominic for starting that. Surprisingly, most of the drawings do have some connection to our class. Gandalf's staff came from the dark mark made by the staple on the worksheet this was copied from, in case you were wondering. Two Gandalfs and one marshmallow Balrog were drawn on the powerpoint notes as well (thank you to verydemotivational.com for the ideas on asymptotes). The rest of the drawings should be fairly self explanatory - in this case meaning that you will understand it or understand that we were bored and we don't need reasons for it looking like that. The Sparta jokes are there courtesies of inspiration by epicwinftw.com and the deliriously bored state we were in.

By far, the best picture on there is Davy Jones Crocket. I can't honestly say why Davy Jones was relevant to writing the proof for the chain rule, but a classmate of ours was attempting to reference Davy Jones and couldn't remember his name. He, apparently, confuses Davy Jones and Davy Crockett. However, due to our sudden genius (or insanity), there is now Davy Jones Crocket, King of the Wild West of the Carribean, and no one need ever reference either one separately. Before you mention it, I do realize that "Carribean" is supposed to be "Caribbean," but someone who shall remain nameless told me to spell it wrong. I am now in the process of creating the mystical land of the Carribean. Feel free to add your ideas to the comments. The laws of physics need not apply.

And now an earlier masterpiece: All Your Donut (so named by Dom).

I was attempting to do lit homework in calc, but obviously that didn't happen. Dr. Who references and donut impersonations are much more fun.

I hope you enjoyed the fruits of our delirium.

~Minister of Silly Posts

Silence of the Readers

oI've noticed that there are around 30 people in the Blog of Crazy Random Happenstances Facebook grouop, and several others who read this, but the only comments seem to come from us bloggers (excluding that one from my sister, and the one from The Sleeping Blogger before he had been deemed a blogger). You guys should know that we need your input. It also tells us where to go with this blog. We seem to have hit a standstill ith what to post. I would be very glad to hear your thoughts about what we should talk about more and what we should never talk about again. So! Please, tell us stuff, accouns(if you need them), are free and spam-free. Well.... mostly spam-free. Well.... kinda spam-free. Well.... I'm gonna go check, see if it's spam-free.... (someone tell me where this adaptation of a quote is from and I will love you forever.... but not in that way, in the other way, dude(also a good quote)) But yeah, it's fun and we need your comments! please!

C&C 4: The Beta

Change...it can be good, it can be bad. Command and Conquer as a whole has always stayed to the tried and true classic RTS style, well as a conclusion to the tiberium universe C&C4 decided to change things up.

Lets start with some backstory, command and conquer(excluding Renegade) has been the mold for RTS games sense RTS games were created, being the first big hit following up Westwood's introduction of the RTS genre with Dune II C&C 1 was a basic model for all RTS games to come. Three major ideas: manage your base, manage your economy, and manage your troops; whoever did this best would win.

Command and Conquer takes those three ideas and simplifies them in an attempt to widen the market for RTS games which have traditionally had rather steep learning curves. Your whole base is condensed into Mobile Construction Vehicle(MCV) or a Crawler. From this you can build units, defenses, structures, and call for support depending on your class. The game lets you choose if you want to play offence, with powerful land based vehicles; defense, with turrets backed by swarms of infantry and artillery; or support, with aircraft back by support powers.

Your crawler can move across the map and deploy to let out any units it's built and create a repair field.

In order to improve past the beginning or tier I units and defenses you must gather Tiberium at centralized nodes and return it to your deploy zone. Unlike previous iterations of C&C any unit can pick up the tiberium and all players on the team benefit from it. Rather than defending harvesters it becomes a capture the flag game. Speaking of ctf to win now rather than destroy the enemy you gain victory points and the first team to 2500 wins. There are two ways to do this, kill enemy units or control more VP nodes than the enemy netting you a steady stream of points.

The game is very different from standard C&C and that's kind of disappointing however it has it's own fair share of enjoyment.

RANT ABOUT LEVELS(pure opinion)

EA, in their stupidity said "hey, look at that really popular game CoD:MW, lets steal their ideas and put it into our game! Oh wait it's an RTS not an FPS, w/e" They added a system where you level up and unlock more units and tech the more you play. This means that at lvl 1 when you forst get the game you only have 4 units and one research available on each crawler until you play enough games. So if you pit a lvl 1 vs a lvl 20 there is about an 80% chance the lvl 20 will win! Great job EA!

Pros: fun, easy to play, more lenient with mistakes than other RTSs, some really fun unit mechanics.

Cons: level system, bad matchmaking, unbalanced(i know, what should I expect from a beta), terrible community, lack of game diversity(1 game is just like the next)

Blah, should have written more but I'm too lazy

Got a little present for ya

If any of you got that reference in the title, you have suddenly become awesome. Congratulations. xD

The 'Real-Time Strategy' game has only been in existence for 15 years, but it has become one of the most popular genres of all time, second only to First Person Shooters, if my sources are accurate (MMOs get a lot of publicity, but there are simply more good RTS games than MMO. It also helps that several MMOs began as RTS games. :P). You've probably heard a lot about them, you've probably even played some of them. But what do you really know about them?


Age of Empires A-
Commonly reputed to be one of the oldest RTS game series' in history. You battle your way through history by taking control of various armies and beating your oppenents to a pixelated pulp. It's a good game: fairly imaginative, yet reasonably historically accurate (assuming you don't activate any of the cheatcodes this game is full of). However, it has a fairly shallow learning curve, I didn't really have much difficulty beating it at all when I first played it. AoE is a great game to start with, if you're testing the waters to see if you like RTS games.

Battle for Middle Earth A
One of the most widely-known and widely-played RTS series' ever created. Based off of Tolkien's Middle Earth, and inspired somewhat by the movies (more of the former than the latter, thankfully), BfME walks you through various portions of Lord of the Rings history. The first game, I must say, did not impress me that much. The units were rather unimaginative, the base construction format was quite restrictive, and the storyline was simply a rehash of the movies. The second, though, more than made up for the first's blunders. While the main battle system stayed the same, the units, upgrades, and base construction options were redone much more to my satisfaction. And finally, we have the BfME II expansion pack... Rise of the Witch King. This is personally one of my favorite RTS games of all time. It takes you through the Witch King's rise to power (the Witch King, for those of you who don't know, is the Lord of the Nazgul, aka the guy with the spiky helmet in Return of the King). While I don't really like a lot of the Angmarian units, they are certainly more thought-out and well planed than most of the other races in BfME.

Universe at War B+
Universe at War is basically your generic RTS. It starts off with Earth being invaded (like that's never happened in any other games :P) by an advanced alien race called the Hierarchy. The Hierarchy is actually an alliance of several conquering alien races who decided they needed more elbow room, so they invaded the Solar system. Using a combination of biotechnology and plasma weaponry, as well as ships that resemble Covenant technology even more than the concept of the Hierarchy itself does, they attack and pretty much wipe out every country except, you guessed it, America. As the Hierarchy is closing in on the White House, and about to take it, random blue portals appear in the middle of the air and start spitting out robots. These robots, led by a Gundam named Viktor piloted by a girl named Mirabel (ok, so it's not actually a Gundam, but it looks... nevermind), storm across the White House's front lawn and whup some alien patooie. At this point your control switches from the humans to the Novus civilization. Some unspecified number of millenia ago, the Hierarchy destroyed the homeworld of Novus. While all biological life on Novus died, their robots lived on, vowing to fight the Hierarchy in any way they can. The Founder, which definitely does not look like Optimus Prime with capacitors where tires should be, founded the Novus army and found a piece of Novus DNA, from which they cloned Mirabel, the last surviving biological lifeform. Many battles ensue, and eventually your control switches automatically over to the Hierarchy, where you discover that an aging robotic general is becoming discontent with his eternal lot in life. After he was killed on the battlefield, his consciousness was transferred to a robotic shell so he could keep living, and he's getting rather tired of constant war (as would tend to happen after hundreds of years of it). Your first mission with him is to invade Egypt, where one of your walkers (a la War of the Worlds) accidentally shoots a pyramid, which sends out a distress beacon which awakens the last alien race in the game: the Masari. The Masari are basically a race of... race builders. They created the Hierarchy untold eons ago, and the Hierarchy eventually fought and defeated the Masari. The surviving Masari, in their city-ship Atlatea, came to Earth, where they started humanity and acted as our gods for who-knows-how-long. Somehow after sleeping for hundreds of years on the bottom of the Atlantic they can speak our language perfectly with British accents, but that's another story. Anyway, the game itself is interesting, but it's not exactly original intellectual property. Interesting gameplay, well-developed factions... lousy storyline. :P

Empire at War A
Note: I can't comment on the expansion pack (Forces of Corruption) because I haven't played it :P
Empire at War filled pretty much the only game niche that Star Wars hadn't yet touched: RTS. When you start the game, you pick your side (Rebel or Empire), and fight your way from the events leading up to A New Hope through the end of the movie. As the Rebels, you start by following Captain Raymus Antilles (no relation to Wedge Antilles) around, and end by hunting down and blowing up the Death Star (you can wait for it to come to you at Yavin IV, but it'll blow up every other planet in the galaxy first. Believe me, I tried :P). As the Empire, you start by following Darth Vader around, and end by... blowing up every planet in the galaxy (at least those occupied by Rebels). The gameplay and the units are VERY well thought out, they exemplify the individual quirks and strengths of the two factions extraordinarily well. The learning curve is enough to keep you from winning every time on Easy, but it'll always keep victory close enough that you want to keep trying. This game comes to me very highly recommended, and I return it to you the same way.

Command and Conquer A++
Ah, the mother of all RTS'... literally. The first ever RTS was Command and Conquer (the original), made in 1995 by Westwood studios (later absorbed by Electronic Arts). The Brotherhood of Nod wants to take over the world, the Global Defense Initiative (GDI) wants to keep that from happening. Throughout the whole game, the resource they're fighting over is Tiberium, this magic green crystal that's randomly started popping up that can be made into pretty much anything. When Command and Conquer II: Tiberian Sun comes out, things have gotten a bit worse. Tiberium is spreading rapidly, and no one knows how to stop it. Nod wants it to keep going, saying it's the catalyst for the next stage in human evolution, GDI recognizes it as the environmental threat that it is. The leader of Nod, Kane, suddenly comes forth with two aces in the hole: the Tacitus, a magical orb of extraterrestrial origin that tells him how to utilize Tiberium for various military measures, and CABAL, a supercomputer he uses to help run the war. You can probably guess the story; Nod is defeated (again), CABAL turns against Kane (and the rest of humanity, but that's a different story), and the Tacitus is captured by GDI. Fast forward 30 years to Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. Tiberium is still spreading, having covered approximately 80% of the Earth's habitable surface in varying densities. Nod rises again, still under Kane, and tries to get the Tacitus (or at least info gleaned from it) back. They succeed and start World War V. While they're fighting, an alien race called the Scrin comes out of nowhere and starts beating on both Nod and GDI. The Scrin initially seeded Earth with Tiberium 50 years ago to terraform (Scrin-form... whatever), and now they're back to finish the job. Whooo. They get beat off, GDI saves the day once again, Nod once again goes into hiding, beaten but not broken. I would say something about the next game, Command and Conquer 4: Tiberium Twilight, but I don't really know much about it. Ask John Hicks, he's in the beta for it.
As for the gameplay in C&C, it's outstanding. Each game has a different innovative battle system, each one better than the one before it. I don't really have the time or energy to write about each one, so I'll just say you should play it. This game series gets my highest possible recommendation.

That's all I got for now.

Regards,
Spam

I was going to title this "I'm not lazy" but that wasn't random enough.

According to the Feedjit map, we have yet to score any hits from Japan. For that reason, I imagine very few of you have heard of Hayao Miyazaki.
Miyazaki is one of the premier anime writer/directors in Japan, whose movies have enjoyed legendary popularity both domestically and overseas, mainly because they're awesome. However, they are going to have trouble taking over the wor- er, reaching viewers... unless people like me come along and do reviews like the one below. I have yet to watch every Miyazaki movie, but I have seen three of the most popular ones, and read a bit about a fourth, so I see no reason not to consider myself decently qualified. Unless of course some other author has seen more Miyazaki animes than I, in which case I declare them lazy for not making this post sooner.
In the order in which I first saw them:

Princess Mononoke
Synopsis: In a fictional version of feudal Japan, there is a huge forest that covers most of the land, in which live a host of nature spirits. The most important spirits are the animal gods, who can apparently speak telepathically take the form of  giant versions of their patron animal, and the Forest Spirit, which appears to be a pimped-out deer with a human face and who turns into Godzilla every night. Or something to that effect. Anyway, one day a boar god goes crazy and attacks a small village, and in his efforts to repel it, Ashitaka becomes infected with some type of computer-generated worm stuff, which will gradually kill him if he can't find some miracle cure. Thus, he goes off in search of a miracle cure, eventually encountering a mining settlement where Lady Ivoshi and her cronies are destroying the forest (because that's what humans do). The settlement is being plagued by a girl from the forest who was allegedly raised by wolves and may or may not be the title character.
Opinions: AWESOME. But other than that, sort of weird, and heavy on the gore at times. For example, in the beginning you get to watch a giant boar rot to nothing in five seconds. It has some kind of weird parts, like the climax scenes involving uh, the climactic parts I refuse to spoil, and suspension of disbelief is necessary, as in all the Miyazaki movies I've seen (in fact, all animes in general), to get through the dramatic parts. All in all, if you have restricted yourself to only watching one of the movies reviewed here, you should watch this one.

Spirited Away
Synopsis: Chihiro, a whiney ten-year-old, is upset (big surprise) about her family moving and having to go to a new school. The long, boring car ride isn't helping, but it is conveniently interrupted shortly after the title shot when her dad falls into the stereotypical husband driver trap of getting lost and taking a "shortcut" through some mysterious woods. There is some obvious foreshadowing when Chihiro's mom tells her that the little house-shaped rocks are supposedly the homes of little spirits. Eventually they come to what the dad claims is an abandoned theme park, where the parents are both distracted by the smell of some irresistible food. Of course, they can't control themselves and pig out, leaving Chihiro to her own devices (Irresponsible parents For The Fail!). She wanders off and suddenly runs into this androgynous-looking guy Haku, who tells her she must flee immediately. She fails. Night falls, and it turns out that the theme park is actually some sort of portal to a parallel universe with very few humans and lots of weird stuff. Eventually her adventures with witches, dragons, babies, and killer paper planes reform Chihiro into a uh, less of a wimp.
Opinions: AWESOME. But other than that, sort of weird. I had to watch the first half of this movie like four times before I could get to the end, because my video player decided that it would only sync up the audio and video if I watched the movie from the beginning and watched all the way through in one sitting. (BLAARGH). So I didn't have much brainpower left to reflect much on the movie while watching it. What I did come away with was that Chihiro must have had muscular dystrophy or anorexia, because she was morbidly skinny, and that the witch had a really big head. At times the movie was cute, at others very exciting, and at others overly mysterious, so one may wish to watch this movie twice to straighten all the plot out in their head. If you've already seen Princess Mononoke, this is a must-see, and the amount of references to it you're bound to run into at conventions make it a worthwhile movie with which to be familiar.


Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
Synopsis: In the future, mankind will continue to develop industrially until we've poisoned the crap out of the poor planet and our wars with each other have driven us near to extinction. The giant terminators with lazer breath don't help. Over the next thousand years, a "toxic jungle" arises and begins spreading out over the world. Its plants are invariably poisonous and even breathing near the jungle will kill a human in five minutes. (Sounds like Avatar, now that I think about it...) Near this jungle, but conveniently upwind of it, is the Valley of the Wind, in which lives (yes, you guessed it - did you figure it out all by yourself or was it mentioned in the title?) a girl named Nausicaa. They're going to have really weird names in the future. Nausicaa likes to explore the toxic jungle (with a gas mask of course), and at the movie's opening she stumbles across the discarded exoskeleton of a giant arthropod known as an Ohmu (pronounced "Ohm"). The Ohmu itself is engaged in chasing around a friend of hers, lord Yupa, who has a giant mustache that makes you wonder what he needs a gas mask for. She comes to his rescue with a bunch of flashbangs, with which she is able to distract the insect and lead it back to the jungle with nobody getting hurt. She is obviously very good with animals, a skill which will come in handy later in the movie. She then flies home on a very awesome portable plane thing, which is very awesome and something I want to have. However, that night the valley is shocked  by the appearance of an enormous airship (read: ridiculously large plane), which crashes and reveals its cargo to include a giant fly; Princess Lastelle, who has been taken prisoner aboard the craft; and a great big heart-looking thing. Adventures ensue.
Opinions: AWES- anyway... The movie starts off very cold and depressing, but as it progresses either you get used to it or the tone warms up a bit. It is a prime example of Miyazaki's purported fascination with flight, which allows for a few aerial fight scenes. Suspension of disbelief is necessary to get through the claims that the whole jungle and its giant insect inhabitants all evolved within only a thousand years. On the whole, not quite the average person's movie - you have to have some level of attraction to the weird and as little as possible of an aversion to bugs. Liberal on the explosions and on humongous stuff, and somewhat bland in color, though that may be because it was made in 1984 or something. The music is definitely 80s movie music, but that's okay. The movie's overall atmosphere is slightly similar to that of the original "The Never-Ending Story," but fortunately less mucky and boring. Definitely worth the two hours of life it takes to watch, especially for, as with "Spirited Away," the ability to get all the references at conventions. Also an edifying glimpse into the earlier forms of anime in terms of art style and theme choice. The final selling point is that there is a surprise near the end for all you Shoop da Whoop fans.

Ponyo
Synopsis: I haven't actually seen Ponyo yet, but it's tentatively on my "to watch" list. The commercials reveal that the subject is a boy who lives near a rocky seashore, a la "Water Horse." Instead of an egg, however, he finds a goldfish who has miraculously managed to survive in saltwater (coughsuspensionofdisbeliefcough), and who is supposedly the princess of goldfish or something. She really wants to be a human, and of course for the sake of having a plot she must have found some way to get her wish. Adventures ensue, which if the commercial says anything will involve boats, big waves, swimming through clouds of jellyfish, and lots of jumping.
Opinions: I haven't watched it yet, you n00b. Okay, I guess I have a couple preliminary judgments. Seems much more "normal" than Miyazaki's other movies, possibly because it was released just over a year ago and better suits our modern cultural tastes, and possibly because Disney is somehow part of the deal. Man, they're involved in a lot of movies. The theme reminds me of "Water Horse," as I have mentioned, substituting a goldfish for the Loch Ness monster. Go ahead and watch it if you like and tell me how it turned out.

WHEW that was a lot of typing.

The Contributors on this Blog are Lazy

Okay, so I don't like to post twice in a row; I try to let at least one other person on the blog post before I create another post. But, the contributors on this blog appear to be very lazy, and haven't posted in a week now. So now, in order to revive the blog, I'm going to perform the first double post in TBCRH history!

So, what is this post about you might ask? Well, it's about...

FACEBOOK!!!

I could be done with this post in a single statement: "Facebook Sucks", but I'm going to elaborate a bit on exactly why Facebook sucks.

Errors: Even if I'm on for only 5 minutes, I seem to get constant errors; "Oops, sorry we're working on this", "Network Connection Error", "Could not connect to FB Chat", etc... plague this website. I also have problems with pages not loading. WHAT IS UP WITH THIS!? The shear number of problems that I have to do something so simple. Instead of designing new layouts for the site, they should spend their time on getting the site freaking working!!

Spam: Tons of it. Applications spam senseless posts that fill your home page, people make fan pages for EVERYTHING, etc... Also, there seem to be a new string of applications that mimic Facebook photo, wall, etc... that somehow can give users a notification even though they've done anything on Facebook relating to that application. I'll give Facebook a bit of slack that its a bit of the user's fault for not realizing the obviously suspicious nature of having to allow an application to access their profile, but these applications shouldn't be able to access our profiles to give us false notifications in the first place!

Privacy: There are issues here. I can only filter certain content from certain friends, but I can't filter some things (being tagged, notes, etc...). That, and add the fact that businesses can somehow access your profile and use it against you is just plain ridiculous. People are losing their jobs over things that they said on Facebook, which may or may not be deserved. Nothing on Facebook is private.

The Company: This company is the biggest bunch of arrogant snobs that I've ever seen. They've rejected investments from big time companies like Google because they think that they're better than them... Why would you do something like that? On top of that, they accept Microsoft's offer to invest in them. Wow, smart move. Facebook thinks that they can do what Google does better than Google can: bulls%$! Go on Facebook any day, and you will find someone complaining on how they don't like Facebook. I bet you that they will jump as soon as a new (and good) Social Network appears on the online scene.

Mark Zuckerburg (aka Satan) envisions a world where people obtain information primarily through their friends and family: that's a terrible idea. Secondhand information is inaccurate, unreliable, and lacks the depth that you can find in the online world. This is coming from the guy who tries to make an enterprise on user's personal data, tries to shove advertisements into our new feed, etc...

Facebook is fail, and I'm going to most likely quit it soon. I disagree with their idea of the future. Although, 1 good thing has come of Facebook: Failbooking.com. Facebook is terrible.

That's all for now,

ACRONYM of the Blog

Mario: Does he live up to the standards?

Go back in time with me for a minute. Mario, ever since he emerged from the original Donkey Kong Arcade game, has been a video game icon: probably the most famous one to this day. He's stared in countless video game titles. From the arcade, Mario made his way onto the Nintendo Entertainment System, the sole survivor of the console wars.

Now, back to the present. Mario has since been on every Nintendo console, (as well as the Philps CD-i, but we're going to ignore that failure of a console). Now, I'm starting to wonder: does Mario live up to his classic games in these new Wii games? Let's go through his 3 exclusive Wii games and find out!

Super Paper Mario: This is the 3rd game in the Paper Mario series. The original Paper Mario games were more RPG like, where it featured turn based battles and a variety of characters who help Mario on his journey. Now, Super Paper Mario goes away from this formula, and makes the game a platformer, with no interruptive battles, and all one smooth playthrough. Is this a good thing? Personally, I liked the original turn based gameplay better: it was a lot more challenging, longer, and had one of the toughest final bosses ever (referring to Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Old Door). But, this game is its own creation. The creativity in this game astounds me, where it jumps from world to world, with different graphics and a different gameplay style. It's very interesting and unique. Even with its creative gameplay though, I liked the original more because of it's challenge and RPG style gameplay. Does that make this game bad? Of course not!! This is, by all means, an excellent game. I found it a bit easy though, unlike The Thousand Year Old Door; that game was insane!! The final boss in that game took me FOREVER to defeat. I feel like this is mainly because of Nintendo trying to not scare away casual players with its difficulty. Overall, this game is one definitely worth playing, but it's not too hard, and not that long of a game.

Super Mario Galaxy: Okay, I love the graphics and the idea of Mario going to different planets. The camera angle adds a ton of depth to this game. But, for me, it's only a mediocre game. I mean, it's reminiscent of Super Mario 64 and all, but it just didn't have the greatest gameplay. It was typical, and not too different. It's a great game, don't get me wrong, but it's definitely not the best one out there, and I feel that's its gameplay style is a bit stale. Solid game, but it's a bit cliche.

New Super Mario Brothers: Okay, first off: I don't own this game, but I've played it, and it deserves a spot in this review. This is the only Wii game to not have a white case, which makes its red case really stand out, which is probably what they were going for. Fans of the original Mario games will LOVE this one. It features the original Mario side-scrolling action, but with up to 4 players. That's pretty insane. Nintendo did a great job with this game: you can to cooperate with your friend to get through the level, or you can be total jerks and annoy each other, so that you keep dying over and over again. The thing that I really don't like about this game, is how N008 friendly it is. If you fail a stage enough times, the game will let you bypass the level, or skip the part that you couldn't pass: for me, that kinda ruins the magic of the game. Why would I want to cheat myself from that challenge? Ah well, this game is a solid remake of the original Mario Brothers game, but remember: it's only a remake.

Essentially, I really feel like Mario on the Wii isn't that spectacular. The games are solid, but there's nothing new and original: only newer versions of the classic formula. I want to see a new Mario game in a way I haven't experienced or played before: I want something new. Of these 3, the closest was Super Paper Mario, but even then, the older games just seem better. And, at the last E3, when they announced Super Mario Galaxy 2, I wasn't that excited. I just thought "Okay, woohoo, another Mario Game." I wanted to be pumped for this release, but quite frankly, I can't. I hope I'm 100% wrong though, but I highly doubt that I will be.

Final Words: Nintendo, come up with a Mario game that's more original and more interesting that match your former timeless classics. That would be totally amazing. And, to those of you who are insulted by my review, don't take it seriously: it's an opinion. Although, if you look at the games in detail, I think that you'll find that the new games aren't quite up to par with the originals.

That's all for now,
ACRONYM of the Blog

They're just terribly comfortable. I'm sure everyone will be wearing them in the future.

That's right! This episode(if you can call it that), I have decided to rant about hats! Because I can and have nothing better to do with my time. Apparently. So, let's get started!

Balaclava: Possibly one of the coolest "hats" ever. I only call it such because wikipedia calls it a hat. Anyways, it's basically used as a ski mask and a mask for robbing banks. Also used for becoming a ninja and still being able to see. Cool hat, keeps you warm. So good looking and functional! A

Baseball cap: it's called a cap. It's worn at baseball games. It's so overused and overworn that no one cares. You know what it is so let's move on. C-

Bearskin: Only one of the most memorable and awesomest(yes) hats there is. You've probably seen them outside of Buckingham Palace worn by the royal guard. Everyone knows the tall furry hats and loves them. Probably keep you very warm and looks generally cool. Although in any other country besides Britain, you look like a moron. In fact, in Britain, you still look like a moron. But still cool. B+

Beret: A pretty cool hat. Worn by French painters, French mimes and military alike, it's pretty cool. Except fr the mime thing. No one likes mimes... not even mimes. anyways, they are easily recognized and most famous for being worn by a Walrus. (The Hyneman) B

Bicorne hat: If you can't figure out what that is, think Napoleon. Cool pretty much only because Napoleon wore it. C+

Chullo: A nice wool hat with flaps for covering the ears. Pretty functional, but really not that good to look at. The only reason I like this hat, is because The King of the Blog has an awesome Jayne hat. B-

Cowboy hat: must I say anything? big, stupid looking, really not cool at all. D-

Dunce cap: Just that awesome. For those who don't get why, I will tell you. A dunce cap is a sure sign of a stupid person, which is very important. You no longer have to engage with the stupid person and can avoid conversation all together! A

Fedora: The most epic hat of all time. Commonly worn by the mafia and other mobsters, this hat inspired fear and awesomeness at the same time. You don't mess with people wearing this. Later used in movies because when a stunt double is needed for a fedora-wearing person, you couldn't see their face underneath the fedora. Because it's awesome. I know many people who have these and they seem to be making a comeback. A++

Hadee hat: Civil war style hat. Long brim on the sides and curved upward. Usually decorated and pretty darn cool looking. I'd suggest you wear one and see what happens. A-

Santa hat: awesome, but once a year, so not that functional. Also, you look a bit too cliche. C

Top hat: Not too shabby. A sign of being a rich gentleman or Scrooge. I have to say they are pretty cool, but not the best unless you happen to be President Lincoln. B-

Tricorne hat: Not bad, but just too overused. Not that people wear it anymore, but it's a little cliche for some militaries. I wouldn't ever wear one. D

Turban: Awesome because it's just so darn ard to put on. By wearing one, you're saying "I'm awesome, and you aren't. Owned." However, if it falls off, you have to spend the time to put it on in front of others, and thus divulge the secret of putting them on. B+

Well, that's all I got, hope I have made your hat choices simpler.

Mahatma Gandhi

Today's rant is about everyone's favorite Indian political peace activist (okay, maybe I can't think of any others...) - Gandhi. However, pursuant to my nonconformistismalictasticfulness, and penchant for making up words when I feel like it, I shall rant not about how awesome he was as a peaceful protester and so forth but about what you probably didn't realize about this eccentric fellow.
As you know, Gandhi was a well-to-do businessman who decided to become an "untouchable" and dress and live as such. In doing so, he forced himself to wear skimpy and not very flattering clothing all the time, even going so far as to go barefoot. This, combined with the rough environments in which he, as an untouchable, frequently found himself, contributed to a massive degree of callosities on his body. I mean seriously, you could look at him and go "Dude! There's a frood who knows where his towel is. And who apparently uses it to rub sand all over himself all the time."
What's more, the life of an untouchable meant a very low-calorie diet. This turned out to be a double-bladed sword, as not only did he lose a lot of weight - especially muscle mass, due to a protein deficiency - but the low flow rate of saliva in his mouth caused him to have horrible breath. You could look at him and go "Dude! There's a frood who knows where his towel is. And apparently uses it to uh, soak up bad-smelling stuff and suck on it. Or something."
It gets even grittier! Before he established his reputation as a very awesome frood who knew where his towel was and used it to fight off the British (in combination with his formidable arsenal of civil disobedience tactics), his highly nonconformistismalictasticfulness ended up making him rather unpopular, to the point where those who encountered him would say "Dude! I'm sick of all these Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy references!" and also see him as a somewhat supernatural sort of human.
In the end, you could say he was a super-calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis. And also that he knew where his- okay, enough already.

Shutting up.

Nerdology 101: Mathematical Constants

I'm going to start making some (not all) my posts related to the epicness of nerdiness. So, let's see how this goes.

This post will discuss some common (and not so common) mathematical constants. Personally, I think that it is important that a well educated nerd knows the basic mathematical constants. If you are a nerd of any kind, you should read this (ignore the calculus parts if you don't understand it). I will divide this into an basic and advanced section (for thoose of you not so mathematically inclined, skip the advanced section). So, let's get started!!

Basic:

Archimedes' Constant: When you ask someone to name a mathematical constant, the one that they will most likely answer is pi. I mean, who doesn't like pi(not to be confused with 'pie')? Most people who know what pi is (if you don't, continue to read this post, otherwise you are a n00b) can name the first few digits: 3.14 or 3.14159 if they have above average nerdiness. I, myself know 3.14159265358979, which is the first 15 digits, which is pretty good. However, when you think of people who know pi, you think of the people that can go 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288... or the pi song. Now, for those of you don't know what pi is used for, it is used for calculations relating to circles or any shape containing circles (sphere, cylinder, etc...). Pi represents the ratio of a circle's diameter to its circumference. In terms of calculus, it is the limit as the number of sides of a polygon, of the perimeter of the number of sides circumscribed around a circle over the diameter of the circle.

Napier's Constant: Ah, the natural number. It is pretty well known, as it is used to describe exponential growth, and has its own special logarithm name: The Natural Logarithm. While this number is pretty amazing, it fails to compare to pi's fan base, even though it is more useful for normal people in day to day life than pi. That, and e is incredibly useful in upper levels of math (i.e. Calculus). However, it is not completely ignored, for in 2004, Google announced that it was going to raise $2,718,218,828, which is e multiplied by a billion rounded to the nearest dollar. The decimal representation of this number is 2.71828182845904523536028747135266249. In terms of calculus, it is the limit as n approaches infinity, of 1 plus 1 over n raised to the power of n.

Phi: You probably didn't recognize this constant did you? Does the Golden Ratio ring a bell? It's the same thing! It is the ratio that is most aesthetically pleasing to the eye, it is greatly encouraged in the world of art. In actuality, it is a specific ratio of a smaller side to a larger side, and it commonly found throughout nature (in humans, plants. etc...). So, as you can imagine, this is quite an important number, although similar to e, it is commonly forgotten and ignored. It's decimal representation is 1.6180339887... In terms of Calculus, it is the limit as n approaches infinity of a Fibonacci sequence of n +1 over a Fibonacci sequence of n.

i: I know what you're thinking: "Pssshhh, i doesn't exist". Technically, you're right. i is the mathematical constant of the square root of negative 1, making it the building block of imaginary numbers. Most people either hate or love this constant. This number allows the exploration of a whole different area of mathematics, so its natural that some people hate it. You might be wondering, why the heck do we care about an imaginary number? Well, for 1 thing, there are mathematical applications, plus, if i is raised to an even power, it becomes a real number, making it so that i can be used to help equations that cannot otherwise be solved. Still think it's useless? Well, the quanity e raised to the power of pi times i, plus 1 equals 0. PUT THAT IN YOUR PIPE AND SMOKE IT!!! (Euler FTW)

Pythagoras's Constant: You most likely don't know what this constant is, even though you are actually already familiar with it: the square root of 2. Now, you may be wondering, why the heck is that considered a constant? Well, Pythagoras discovered it first, so naturally he named it after himself. Using the Pythagorean Theorem on a right triangle with legs of 1, the hypontanuse is the square root of 2. Now, you may be wondering what this constant is actually used for. Well, it is common in trigonometry because square root of 2 over 2 equals the cosine and sine of 45 degrees (or pi over 4 radians). It also used in the aspect ratio of paper sizes so that when you cut a straight line parallel to its short side, that the 2 sheets will have the same ratio (Bet that you didn't think that paper was so complicated!)

Advanced:

Brun's constant: This one is pretty uncommon, and in fact, I can pretty much guarantee that unless your friends are mathematicians, they will not know this constant. This constant notates the sum of the reciprocals of twin pairs of prime numbers that are different by 2. Specifically, this number is approximately 1.902160583104. This proves that there is an infinite number of pairs of prime numbers (two primes that differ by 2). Outside of mathematics, this number has little practical use.

Mills' Constant: Another prime number constant, this number raised to the power of 3 time n generates a prime number. This constant is approximately 1.3063778838630806904686144926... Any prime number generated by this number raised to 3 times n, where n is a positive integer, is called a Mills Prime (i.e. 2, 11, 1361, 2521008887, etc...). This number is useful for finding prime numbers.

Plastic Number (Also called the Silver Number): Is the only real solution to x cubed equal to x plus 1. It is approximately 1.324717957244746025960908854. It is also the largest Pisot-Vijayaraghavan number (meaning that it is a real cubic solution greater than 1, whose other solutions are less than 1 in magnitude).

There are a lot more mathematical constants, but I only touched on a few of them. Now, go and impress/buffalo your friends with your new-found knowledge!!

ACRONYM of the Blog

P.S. Blogger decided to be annoying, and screwed up the format of my post (extending the page indefinitely to the left) and it took me a while to remedy it.

Umm....Help?

For some reason, my new post was mistakenly posted under 2/3/10 instead of 2/5/10. I really don't understand this at all considering I did it literally two minutes ago and it should read 2/5/10 5:20pm. But anyway, my post is down there if you care to read it.

~The Minister of Silly Posts

I'm pretty new here

Some of you may know me, but as far as all this goes I'm new on the block. I've seen some share in interests amongst all of us: webcomics, physics, anime, etc. Well in case the author at the end of this post does not indicate clearly enough my identity, I am Thurston. Perhaps I must keep in line with the title of this post, "Crazy Random Happenstance." I offer to you a dream I had when I was about 7, and taking karate (Choi Kwan Do if anyone is particularly interested): I go to my backyard because I know there's trouble. Above me I see there is a wire slung from the roof to a tree out in my backyard. In front of me are Barney and his friends trudging towards our house. They seek blood. I know I can beat them. Using the wire, I slide towards Barney himself and drop kick him from the wire. That yellow dinosaur comes from my left, and I easily dispatch him because, frankly, it's really difficult to hurt anyone when one's arms are a mere foot long. That girl dinosaur comes in from the right, and my brother, who doesn't even know karate, removes the threat with a well placed kick to the head. I did not find it odd that he could jump well over twice his height to land a kick to the bloated female skull. My parents watch from the glass sliding doors of the house, obviously pleased that the lessons were paying off.

From here, I basically wake up, knowing I had a dream that I will never forget. I've had a few others, some involving werewolves decapitating friends that I did not have and a hamster that could travel the speed of light, which I utilized for rapid transportation, and perhaps I can post new ones as they come up. This, then, will be my name for the blog: The Sleeping Blogger. This is, to a few, a double entendre, taking into consideration the hours of sleep I log at school.

You all seem to have a well enough basis for material to write about, but I often find there is little worth saying, so you may find my posts far and few between. Perhaps not, if interesting occurrences permeate my life in short enough intervals. I do like watching some anime. In fact I've just recently undertaken Soul Eater, as I believe some of you know rather intimately. I like playing tennis too. If any of you play tennis, tell me. I can never find anyone to play with. In class, I often find myself losing contact with the teacher and the material which I should be learning, especially as my final semester winds down to an end. Well, it should not have devolved as far as it has, but I am not attempting to change my actions. As a result, however, my creative processes find space to maneuver, and I sometimes create little devices that entertain me through the hour and a half that dictates the "learning period." I may post a few of these creations, among some that my friends create, as I see fit. I have probably bored many of you to tears, so I shall stop, leaving you with a line of lyric, which, if you can genuinely identify it, I will be duly impressed: "seven apples on the witch's tree."

Blog-Stretching Time

In response to recent pressures those of us on this blog have gone through, I must address the vicious cycle that is senior year. First of all, we are all quite sick of school by now. We're sick of teachers who can't teach and teachers who think their class is so important that they can give hours of homework and assume that you can ignore other classes (this is particularly annoying in classes such as Calculus or Health which I will never use in my current career path). We're sick of not having time for our beloved nerdy/geeky things such as video games and webcomics (or two novels stuck in the planning stages in my case). Most of all, we're sick of dumb people in our classes.

Senior year is also annoying from a social point of view, particularly right now. For one thing, we have no time to be social and actually *gasp* have fun. I can list several things I want to do with my friends that will be postponed indefinitely because of this idiotic work. One of these things was supposed to be started two months ago *cough* TCRH *cough*, but school has stabbed it in the metaphorical heart. The second annoying thing that I feel I must mention is prom. The venue for prom was announced recently and now the school has come down with prom fever (I'm sure this is a real and classifiable disease considering the consistency of the symptoms and the general unhealthy effects on wallet contents and single people). Anyway, in the week or two since the announcement I have probably heard the word "prom" 200 times and I have been dragged into the seemingly-satanic ritual of "finding a date." I won't be able to make coherent sentences if I get started on that, so I'll skip it. Use your imagination. In short, prom is an event that, if it were not so overly glorified, would be extremely exciting and fun. However, in similar spirit of any holiday, the prom season begins far too far away from the event itself to hold my interest for that long. Last year, I took to ignoring it until a time I deemed reasonable to think about it. Unfortunately, this year it won't work due to the fact that it's our senior prom and I am actually obligated to find a date this year. Imagine the hype of previous years and multiply by infinity.

Before I go on, I feel I must mention that I actually am excited for prom and I will go. My issue with it is the sheer amount of shallow chatter it generates.

Now that I have deviated a bit, I return. The point of all of this is, we're mentally done with high school. 'What's the solution?' you ask. College.

College is the solution to high school just as high school was the solution for middle school. It is the logical next step, it hopefully contains more interesting subjects and I pray it contains smarter people. The idea of college itself is a bit exciting. We imagine more freedom of self, money and study - not to mention more time to spend with our favorite nerdy/geeky people. However, there is one major problem: college applications.

College applications are a plague upon us high school students who actually take challenging classes. The baseline is: WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS! The personal information is easy. It's not fun, but it's do-able considering it's the same thing over and over again. Plus, with the miracle that is the Common App, I only had to fill out that info 3 times for the 7 colleges I applied to. The college-specific supplements are the things that really get complicated. Filling out your interests and prospective major are simple enough. The only differences there involve format. Then the eye catches on the colleges' not-so-secret weapons: THE ESSAYS [insert dramatic background music and extreme close-up here].

I don't mind writing essays. Generally, I like writing anyway. I write fiction mainly, but obviously nonfiction is not that much of a stretch for me either. In such things as blogs and college applications, it tends to be about myself and I have more extensive information on that than most other people. Besides, I'm Irish. I can write about nothing for pages (not as much fun though). The part that angers me most is the fact that A) the prompts are usually generic, boring and overused B) the word/character limits stifle creativity and C) most colleges require several essays EXCEPT, of course, the one college you actually need to entice to accept you. On a slightly related topic, I move that we make it illegal for a college to require 4 essays AND an interview unless it is something similar to Harvard or Princeton.

Right now, I am finally done with my applications and nearly done with my interviews. I am infinitely glad that I've made it this far and I wish the colleges would respond sooner, but overall that piece of the process is good. My goal now is to apply for every scholarship known to man to get money to fund this escape from high school. Needless to say, I don't have $100,000 on hand or anything nearly like it. I need as much money as I can get from these scholarships. The issue is that the vast majority of them take quite a while to prepare an acceptable entry for. Also, the deadlines are quite often on the same day. With school work and all of the scholarships I have to fill out, I may spontaneously combust. However, I did find a small glimmer of hope when I saw a $5000 scholarship for simply drawing some species of duck or goose in its natural habitat (to be made into a stamp). Obviously, with such a diverse array of subjects there must be at least one with my name on it. I just hope it's the $20,000 one.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my ranting. I'm sure some of you can empathize.

~The Minister of (not always) Silly Posts

Please don't step on the penguin

As the blog is beginning to move ahead without me, I feel somewhat compelled to make a post about something. As nothing particularly interesting has happened in the past few days, I shall proceed to rant and rave about one of my favorite subjects:

webcomics

How, one might ask, does the discerning nerd find the webcomic(s) that is right for him (or her)? The most reliable source is from other fellow nerds, but if you find one that you can't get any intel on, here's the strategy I use most. Go to the beginning of the current story arc/chapter/whatever, assuming it isn't 200-something pages long like one comic I could mention. If you can't find chapter markings, or if it's just too long, go back a good number of pages (20, 50, somewhere in there) and educate yourself on how things work in this world, according to those pages. From that much you can usually tell if you like a comic or not. Don't worry in the least bit if something you've read doesn't make sense as you're doing this. You're behind by about 500 pages of pure awesomeness, there are probably oodles of inside jokes that whizzed right over your head as you were reading your sample of the comic.

Most people who don't read webcomics do (or rather do not do) so because either it takes too much time to weed through all the garbage out there, or it's just not interesting enough to them. Folks, I'll give it to you straight, there is a LOT of junk out there. Some's badly-written, some's badly-translated, some's just downright nasty (if you find a comic labeled NSFW, find another comic). But there's also a lot of good stuff out there. If you'd like some pointers towards a couple good ones, I'd be more than happy to give them to you.

Dominic Deegan
Rated PG-13 for language, violence, and innuendo
My personal favorite among all the webcomics I've ever read. It's well written, well-drawn, and filled with pure epic win. It's set in a fantasy realm all its own, filled with magic, elves, orcs, dwarves, hobbits, and a talking cat.
There is a chapter fairly close to the beginning of the comic that's somewhat risque, and every now and then you'll come across a bit of... stuff that he could have just as easily left out, but of the 2000+ pages he's done, I'd say you need to throw out 50, tops.

8-Bit Theater
Rated PG-13 for language, violence, and innuendo
Almost as win as Dominic Deegan is 8-Bit Theater. 8-Bit Theater is a spoof on every Final Fantasy game you've ever played, and most of the ones that you haven't. Black Mage, Fighter, Red Mage, and Thief battle their way through the lands in an attempt to overthrow Chaos and restore order to the world... theoretically. They might do it if they can ever stop stabbing themselves in the back long enough.
Black Mage reeeealy likes White Mage, and makes it quite obvious... often times more crudely than necessary. Read cautiously when BM and WM are in the same page.
Tacked onto 8-Bit Theater as side projects are How I Killed Your Master (a martial-arts manga), Atomic Robo, and Warbot in Accounting. All are written by the same guy, all are drawn by different guys. [shrug]

Looking For Group
Rated PG-13 for excessive violence and language
Much less selective than 8-Bit Theater on what it'll spoof. An elf, a warlock, a minotaur, and a female of unknown pedigree all try to find their place in the world. It turns out the elf is destined to be king of an ancient elven civilization. Funny how life works.

Dr. McNinja
Rated PG for violence and brief language
He's a doctor. And a ninja. And he's Irish. Put it all together, and you've got Dr. Mcninja. When he's not treating patients at his private practice, he's fighting zombies, ghosts, pirates (obviously), and tennis-playing robots.

Awkward Zombie
Rated PG for cartoon violence and brief language
A spoof on almost literally any video game you can think of. It's about as full of nerdy win as you can get. Pokemon, Metal Gear, Oblivion, World of Warcraft, Super Smash Brothers... you name it, she's probably done it. If she hasn't, she probably will in the near future.

Comedity
Rated G
Welcome to Comedity. Please don't step on the penguin.
Another of my all-time favorite comics, Comedity chronicles the life of college student Garth Graham, as well as that of the multiple sides of his personality (good shoulder, bad shoulder, 'cool guy', random trivia, Prime (the guy usually in charge), and most notably, the penguin). It has been unfortunately discontinued. However, he continues to ply his trade in

Finders Keepers
Rated PG for violence and language
Take a look behind the veil. There live all of humanity's collective hopes, dreams, and fears. Watch out... nothing is as it seems. Nothing.

Lackadaisy
Rated PG for violence and mild language
New Orleans during Prohibition... you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Speakeasy's are running rampant, and they're starting to trip over each other. Follow the story of Rocky, an accident prone, more-than-slightly crazy, all-around henchman and part-time violinist. He's also a cat. They're all cats, actually.

Helia
Rated G
The girl in the yellow dress, as told by Aaron Kauffman. Accident proneness (is that even a word?) seems to run in her family, she lost both her arms after her mother was struck by a meteor. She later has a new pair of arms donated to her by her best friend. That's about as far in the story as we've gotten so far, but it's a work in progress.

Apple Geeks
Rated PG for cartoon violence, language, and mild innuendo
Who needs a human girlfriend when you can build one out of a Mac? Meet Hawk, an average guy with a not-so-average set of skills. He can build or program pretty much anything, but it has to use Apple software. He avoids Windows like the plague, and just pretends Linux doesn't exist. He makes up for his poor computer gaming skills by building a computer to play for him... and also to be his girlfriend, but that didn't work out so well.
Hawk also built Alice, Garth's computer that he uses over in Comedity. Alice is basically Eve's (Hawk's own android) sister, just less buggy.

I think that does it for now... if I think of another one I'll put it up here.

In the interest of having some sort of signature, until I find one of my own, I've decided to rip off that of my squadron commander.

Happy Groundhog's Day to all, and to all a good night!

Regards,
Spam

Failblogging

So, it's time for another one of my spectacular blog posts!! Not really, but onward anyway!

Okay, so you might be wondering what this post is even about. Well, it's going to be about an assortment of things, so let's dive right in and find out!

Part 1: The Internet

Okay, so you're on The Internet right now. Most people use The Internet for a variety of things such as viewing Email, chatting, going on social networks, playing games, etc... But, if you are going to truly embrace The Internet, you need to do a few things. First, know the rules of The Internet. If you are not familiar with the rules, click here IMMEDIATELY!! Second, check some of the entertaining sites on The Internet regularly. I'd recommend going to http://cheezburger.com/ and finding the sites with the humor you identify most with (there's a few links in the sidebar, but a LOT of the sites are left out). Also, be sure to check various webcomics, youtube, and other such media. You never know when the next big thing will appear on The Internet. Third, you need to understand 1337 s0 7h@7 u c@n pwn |\|008s. Finally, check The Internet regularly, as it stops for no man!

Part 2: I Choose You, BLOG POST!!

Okay, so if you didn't get that reference, go educate yourself IMMEDIATELY (Or skip this part if you don't care about this topic)!! This game series has been present since the 90s, and has spawned one of the best and most successful game franchises of all time. Any gamer that has not played a game in this franchise (especially the originals) is not a gamer. I personally have played Red, Silver, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Blue Rescue Team (not as good as the main series), and Diamond (As well as Yellow & Cyrstal on Visual Boy Advance). These games are just pure awesomeness. Sure, they've gotten carried away with the sheer number of them, and their names, but that doesn't detract from it at all. It still retains it's appeal, as shown by the fact that a remake of gold/silver called HeartGold/SoulSilver is coming out (basically combines Kanto/Johto/Honen regions, so there are 9 STARTERS!! Plus, like in yellow, YOU CAN CHOOSE ONE TO FOLLOW YOU AROUND!!! ) This post is simply a tribute to one of the greatest game series ever. May it live forever (the card game and TV shows can die for all I care).

Part 3: NERDS

I feel obligated to talk about a few Nerdy things. But first, some background: society (being the spawn of Satan that it is) has put a negative context on the term "nerd". Why is this? Nerds are clearly superior to non-nerds in almost every way that matters (A few exceptions, but the point stands). So, why is the term negative? And what can you do to help solve this? Well, first of all, you need to prove that you are a nerd, and you can do that by answering the questions below!

1. Do you find yourself knowing unusually high amounts of knowledge in certain academic areas?

2. Do you tend to dislike the "preps"/"jocks"/"cool kids" ?

3. Do you think about academic subjects outside of school/work?

4. Do you talk about academic subjects with your friends outside of school/work?

5. Do/did you take advanced level courses in school?

Academic in this sense means any real valuable courses that a school would offer (includes tech, business, etc...) And, when I say say academic subjects, I mean more than 1 (clarification for non-nerds).

If you said yes to at least 4 of the questions, you are most likely a nerd. So now that we have this established, how can you contribute to the world of nerds? (aka the world) First, whenever someone calls you a nerd, thank them, and take it as a compliment. So many people will be confused by this, which leaves them vulnerable to your nerdy mind tricks (use your knowledge to outsmart them). Also, begin plotting with your friends to do something (ANYTHING). Plotting is a good mental exercise to stimulate creative thinking, and exchange of nerdy ideas. There are other things, but I will save that for another post. (Also, be sure to look HERE for information on how to do nerd bombs).

This may be the longest post on the blog (or one of the longest.) So, farewell for now!!

ACRONYM of the Blog

mmm....new teeth.... that's weird. Where was I? oh yes! Video Games!

Hello again my non-existent viewers, and welcome to the first installment of old-school Gaming.
This section is for games that most people have played but I have just gotten around to playing. Basically I'm reviewing older, but still fun, games.

First off, Golden Sun. Great game if you can get through the first part. Not that it's hard, there's just way too much talking. Also, there is no way to skip any of it, you just have to wait and bear it. Other than that, there are some annoying puzzles in each dungeon. Some are fine, others take me quite a while to figure out, just so I can get one special sword. Combat however, is a different story. Very fun to perform and many options to choose from. Djinni hid throughout the game help in combat by performing a special ability ranging from attacking one enemy, healing your party, or reviving a character. After the ability is used, the djinni are ready to be used in a power attack. The attack hurts all enemies and is more powerful depending on how many djinni are ready. Or, you could use "psy-energy" which is just magic. Or you can attack normally. It's fun.

Final Fantasy Tactics. AMAZING GAME! A boy is placed into the world of Final Fantasy, joins a clan and fights to get back to his world. Along the way, you find more people to join your clan. There are many different classes from hunter, archer, sniper, thief, warrior, black mage, white mage, red mage, fencer, ninja, assassin fighter and animist.... to name a few. Many of the weapons you get (only one weapon type per class) give special abilities. After a certain amount of time wielding these weapons, the character masters the ability, meaning that you no longer need the weapon to use it. The battles can take a while and are extremely annoying at a few points. Some enemies can't move, but will take control of your characters and attack you. At one point, I only had a white mage to use until my other characters came out of their stupor. The amount of weapons, armor and abilities is a little daunting, as I forget what I still need very quickly. There are literally TONS of missions, each giving you items that can be used to perform other missions. If you fail a mission, you can redo it a few battles later. They range from dispatching one of your units for a certain amount of days or battles to fighting a few enemies. The map is fun to move around on, and random other clans will pop up and you can battle them, thus giving you an infinite supply of experience... if you have the time. All in all, an amazingly well-done game but can make you scream at some points.

Also, to show how amazing Google is, I would like to draw your attention to the bottom of this blog. Google automatically placed a search bar at the bottom and used the best line EVER! "find the droids you are looking for" I submit that google is awesome. and none can oppose it.

All right, that's all I got for now. More to come in the future.

-The Doctor