The lows are low, but the highs are home

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, and have mentioned far too many times to my friends, I got an Android phone recently. It’s working beautifully, by the way - CyanogenMod 7 is far better than the version of Android 1.5 that came with the phone, and LauncherPro is a whole lot faster than CM’s default launcher ADW. Despite the pretty weak hardware, things run pretty well, though I can’t play many games beyond Game Dev Story. But do I really need anything else…?

        As I was setting up my new phone, I gleefully entered contact info to Google’s servers - allowing me to get everything back if I flash a new ROM, or even buy a new phone - I realized just how much data I was handing over. Am I ok with letting Google know who my friends and family are? For that matter, are my friends and family ok with it? Should I enter their addresses for my own convenience, or would that be a breach of their privacy? Would I start getting ads in Gmail for flights to New Brunswick around Christmas time to visit family, and to PEI in the spring to visit friends? I’m already telling Google which contacts send me e-mails important enough to notify me about. When I’m busy because of class or meetings, and for that matter, where they are. Between my phone’s GPS and cell phone tower information, they can categorize the places I spend most of my time as “Home.” When I post to Facebook from my phone, it’s probably going to say “Posted from Facebook Mobile near Carleton University.”

        A few days later, Lifehacker linked to an article declaring that “Google wants to own your online identity.” Eric Schmidt, formerly CEO of Google, declared that Google+ was built primarily as an “identity service,” and that they planned to build further services based on that information. The article quotes some guy who summed the situation up pretty well: who did Google build this for - you, or them? And maybe it’s worth asking that same question about everything else they do. After all, they certainly don’t make money by providing an awesome alternative to calendar software, or Google Analytics, or a web browser, or their Public DNS service. No, as the GigaOM article reminds us, Google makes money through advertising. And advertising gets easier and easier the more information they can get about their potential customers.

        And yet, this doesn’t really bother me. So long as they sell advertisements, but keep the data to themselves, I don’t really mind. Unless you’re a supar haxxor, nothing you do on the internet is ever completely hidden. Your ISP logs everything, if they’re ever inclined to take a look at your internet usage. Any web-based e-mail service you use will have access to your data that way, and every site you visit probably leaves three cookies in your browser’s cache. If Google collects that data from me and makes some money off of it, that’s more or less a fair trade for the services they offer. What would I do otherwise? Keep track of four different e-mail inboxes in Thunderbird? Use Rainlendar or a Thunderbird extension to manage my calendar, but be restricted to accessing it on one computer? Fact is, Google’s products are a whole lot better than similar software you might otherwise pay for, and somebody has to pay the engineers who create them.

        I guess some people might prefer to pay with money rather than personal information. I’m not that worried about my imagined sense of privacy, though. The day hackers do to Google what they did to Sony, I’ll start worrying.

(Although, 1.5 games might be more accurate, since I’m about to finished the second I’ve just finished the second - of three - worlds in FF V, and after that, FF VI - see my previous post from May)

Sorry for the lack of real updates recently! Here’s part of the reason why: I’ve spent the last couple of weeks playing through FF VIII. Final play time was just short of 70 hours. Couldn’t be bothered to level up the characters outside my main party, or track down a couple of Level 7 Boss Cards, but other than that I did everything there was to do. Except play a no-level game and maximize my base stats using Devour/Boost items, but that’s for craz… dedicated fans. Yeah.

        Anyway! I’m not 100% sure what I should say about it, seeing as the game is a dozen years old by now. I can say that I didn’t care in the slightest about Squall and Rinoa’s relationship - sorry, was there development there? Because it seemed like someone just flipped a switch, and off they went. The thing about the orphanage and the memory erosion of the GFs was pretty silly, but whatever. And what the hell is up with NORG…?

        I admit, though, I have to really look for things to dislike about the game. I definitely had a lot of fun playing it, and the section with Squall commanding Balamb Garden into battle was awesome. Even though I selected “prepare for attack” first, since the game hinted you should ambush them, and later scolded me for not attacking first. But yeah, I never really appreciated the direction of these action-movie-esque scenes (being chased by the robot in Dollet, the fight between Gardens, or the reactor sequences in FF VII) as a kid, but now I’m impressed that the game manages to create a real sense of tension in jaded ole me. Not to mention things like Quistis’s declaration that “Seifer’s sentence was carried out in Galbadia,” and following Sephiroth’s trail through Shinra - the music and everything else just come together for an intense feeling of dread and foreboding.

        I especially liked the way the game’s systems feed back into each other. If you’ve played Persona 3 and 4, much as I love the games, the social link stuff is more or less totally separated from the dungeon crawling stuff. But in FF VIII, everything has a useful purpose. I originally thought that Triple Triad would be dumb or a waste of time, but then I found out what you could get from the rare cards, and so I set out to collect them. The Cactus Thorns you collected a hundred of from hunting Cactuars turn into Hundred Thorns, which can teach some ability called “Return Damage” or be converted into other stuff. Point is, the game rewards you in a lot of ways, and that’s a smart decision. Also, super twinkable, delivering ultimate min/max joy. Final boss casts Meteor? Good thing I only take 20 damage from each hit!

        Oh, I do want to mention the weird as hell part of the ending that comes right after you beat the final boss. It goes on for way too long, and it’s just… weird. If you’re ok with spoilers, watch the first 5 minutes of this video. I think they’re trying to make you think Squall was erased from existence? Not really sure whose bright idea that was.

        To tell you the truth, I actually almost finished FF VIII when I was a kid (roughly age 7). I’d made my way to the fourth disc, and then… my dad saved over my file when he was playing later that night. HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO MEEEEEEEEEEE?! I swore revenge, and retaliated by ripping up some of his old socks with scissors. And never touched FF VIII again, until now. Do you think I secretly have bonus nostalgia for the game, even though I’d forgotten everything about the game except the section with the robot in Dollet? It was like I was playing the game for the first time, but maybe somewhere in my mind I knew I’d been there before. Liek wif Squall and da GFs amirite? But yeah, now I’ve actually finished the game, and it only took me 70 hours to undo the effects of his save file confusion.

        Thanks, Dad.

[Continuing from yesterday’s post about Catherine, here’s the critique part. Or at least, critique-ish. It was meant to be one post originally, but it got to be really long. As in, I spent three hours writing it, so… Best to split it up. You know, this seems to happen whenever I talk about the game…]

        Up until the end, I was also going to say that Catherine is a great example of how you can make meaningful gameplay. There’s a lot of symbolism in the game, and most of the gameplay is a metaphor for one thing or another. Then they shot themselves in the foot during the ending. “Did you notice the central conflict that this game’s masterful creators placed at its core?” says the narrator. And then they tell you what that was. So… what did I say about literal references to these deeper meanings, because otherwise players won’t notice? “The stairway Vincent was forced to climb could be taken as a metaphor,” the narrator says after explaining the central conflict. And then they tell you what it was. And we were so close to a game that just hints at this stuff! You get a few hints in the game towards the end, and at the start there’s a nod towards the metaphor as well to get you thinking. So you’ll probably get a rough idea of what’s going on if you think about what’s going on as you play, and that’s great - some serious analysis would piece the full story together, even if they never explained it. And then they did! It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I kind of wish they hadn’t. Still, at least everyone will get the idea, and maybe take the time to re-evaluate the game based on the explanation.

        I’ve got a few things to mention inspired by comments on a (spoiler-filled, you’ve been warned) community blog on Destructoid called, simply enough, “Catherine Sucks”. One of the main problems the author has is that most of the game feels like the “rising action” of your typical three act structure, and Vincent really only makes up his mind in the game’s final hours, which makes the conclusion feel weak and a bit rushed. Commentor (commentator?) ‘fulldamage’ notes that the sort of long-form character development the author is looking for is the “hero’s journey” type, exactly what you got in Personas 3 and 4 - by contrast, Catherine is more like a short story, and it focuses on just one pivotal moment in time rather than an entire lifetime of the characters. The comment by 'Noir’ echoes something stated in the Art Book included in the game - the character designer, Shigenori Soejima, writes that the characters in Catherine are all fully-grown adults who don’t necessarily grow throughout the story as the teenagers in Persona games would. When you meet someone for the first time, you’re not going to get every detail about their lives or see some long struggle to overcome their problems - you just pick up bits and pieces of what’s important to them as you talk to them, and that’s more or less what happens in Catherine. 'The Silent Protagonist’ also mentions that it’s a more “adult” - dare I say “mature”? - kind of story because none of the characters are blank slates or in need of psychological profiling, but how things are said and what’s left unsaid can speak volumes.

        I didn’t mention the game’s story in my “review” up there because that would imply that you’re taking something as is, and just playing through the game to unlock the story that the developers made for you. Browsing through the GameFAQs board for Odin Sphere on the PS2, a few people said that even though the gameplay can get tedious (since you play 6 different characters, and start over each time and do the same basic stuff) it’s worth playing for “the story.” At that point, why not just look up the cutscenes on youtube or download a completed save file so you can watch the cutscenes in theater mode? That’s what we call film, where you passively watch something that’s delivered to you, as a finished product. From that point of view, the first comment by 'VenusInFurs’ on the c-blog I linked to is absolutely right - the plot and characters are “sub-par” and it’s a “typical anime,” and the last three hours truly do get “beyond silly.” “There’s nothing deep here, it’s not intellectually stimulating or mature,” says 'VenusInFurs.’ But that’s if the situations in the game mean nothing to you, and you’re just watching what the characters choose to do without thinking about it. If you empathize with the situations, and make decisions based on your honest feelings, there’s a thousand different stories to be told by this game. And like the other commentors mentioned, there’s a lot of character development for you to infer from the dialogue, in the sense of things to learn about the characters (i.e. how they develop for the player) as opposed to ways that the characters themselves change over time.

        Speaking of the plot twists towards the end of the game, they occur so quickly that it might make your head spin. I truly don’t want to spoil the game for anyone, and I don’t accept the “willing to be spoiled” idea because it will ruin the game for you should I ever bring my PS3 to your house and make you play it. Which is something I would rather do than post story spoilers! Suffice to say that the game could have ended at one point, and it would have been pretty interesting and tragic. Fifteen minutes later, a (literally) crazy ending opportunity comes up, and it would have been phenomenal. But the game continues after that, and ruins the whole thing with a really dumb explanation. The problem is that they take a game that has been totally “normal” - the Nightmares stages are weird, but they’re nightmares, right? - and throw that all out the window. Either of the two points that I mentioned - the tragic one, and the crazy one, which you’ll understand if you’ve played the game - would have been so much more fitting, and even interesting. So, yeah, from that point of view the game has a pretty bad “story.” But again, that’s only if you take it all at face value and care nothing for the situations the game puts you in.

        If it weren’t for the part where they explain it all to you, there’d be a lot of analysis to make about Catherine. And there’s stuff I could analyze about it anyway, but that would require spoilers, and I wanted to avoid those in this particular post. Mainly, the purpose of this post was to say how much I love the game and convince people to buy it. Then a little bit of critique, just the amount I can do without really mentioning anything specific. Kudos to you if you made it to the end of this post, and I hope you give the game a shot if you haven’t already. If you already have, have an internet high-five.

First, some good news: Catherine sold really, really well. It’s the highest selling game at launch that Atlus USA has ever published, so advertising, word of mouth, and good reviews all clearly paid off. To whoever failed to advertise Shadows of the Damned and Child of Eden: you’re doing it wrong, but it sucks that your games sold so badly.

        Anyway, here’s the “review” part of this post. The English voice actors are absolutely fantastic. I mean, these are award-winning performances. When they give the award for best voice acting to some other game at the Spike TV Awards and whatever other award shows games have, it’ll be an absolute sin. As for the music, Shoji Meguro’s score is fantastic as always - the game features a lot of remixes of classical music, but mostly avoids the really iconic stuff so you don’t find it overly familiar. So, the audio: terrific.

        In terms of the visuals, the game has a great aesthetic. The character models in particular deserve special recognition, because they look “better” than anything I saw in Heavy Rain, or that I’ve seen from LA Noire. It’s probably got something to do with the light anime vibe and the fact that they weren’t going for photo-realism, but Catherine dodges the uncanny valley completely. I mean, the thing about the former two games is that they tried to portray completely realistic people, and it was weird to see because it was done imperfectly - you can’t necessarily render every little wrinkle on someone’s face, much less animate and shade it perfectly. But I actually think I like the in-game parts of Catherine more than the anime parts, because it looks that good. In sum, the visuals are just as good as the audio.

        The gameplay has two different parts: the puzzles, and everything else. I’ll start with the puzzles, set in the main character’s nightmares. I found them tough, even on Easy difficulty, and I wouldn’t recommend even playing on Normal your first time through the game. In Easy mode, you have the option to undo 9 (?) of your most recent moves, so you don’t have to restart the level if you push a block the wrong way. Which happens, even when you’ve been playing the game for hours. I don’t play a lot of puzzle games, really, and I didn’t know if I’d like the Nightmare stages at first. But the action is really quick, and when you complete a difficult boss stage it’s a whole lot more satisfying than some jRPG boss fight.

        Aside from the regular stages in the story, there are 128 (!!) stages in an arcade cabinet in-game, and a whole bunch more stages in the Babel mode that you unlock by getting gold medals on Normal difficulty. I don’t really want to tell you what the puzzles are like, or how they introduce different types of blocks, because none of that matters. The puzzle stages are intense, and you’d be hard-pressed not to enjoy them once you give it a shot. I had to look up walkthrough videos to get past a few mind-bending stages, because sometimes you just wont get what they want you to do. Even so, I finished the game and found myself wanting more puzzles, which - as much as I like the game - is more than I can say about the battle system in Persona 4.

        The “everything else” gameplay is all of the social simulation stuff, but some of that occurs at the “landings” in between Nightmare stages. The game’s story mode is referred to as “Golden Playhouse,” and a narrator introduces you to the game by saying that your role as a “viewer” is to help guide the main character, Vincent, and that his fate depends on you. You aren’t supposed to be Vincent, or agree with the way he deals with situations, but instead make honest choices when talking to people and answering questions. Your choices influence Vincent’s inner thoughts, and at different points in the game a meter will come up and you’ll see the results of your “guiding.” For example, what you do before Vincent first cheats on his girlfriend decides how he reacts to waking up with a strange woman in his bed - you don’t get to literally choose whether he thinks “oh shit, what have I done” or “SCORE!”. So when you’re playing, be honest and just go with what you’d do IF you got into a similar situation - even if you wouldn’t do the kinds of things Vincent does.

        Anyway, I found a lot of meaning in this part of the gameplay, and it’s pretty good mechanically as well. You’re in the bar, and you spend your time talking to people, drinking, and answering text messages (which is great, by the way, and much more interesting than the e-mail mechanic in .hack or Xenosaga), and as time passes people will enter and leave the bar. Who you talk to, and what you say, influences their lives… although if you don’t talk to them, or care about their problems, then what happens to them probably doesn’t matter to you. There’s a theme of selfishness and selflessness to this part of the game, especially in the Nightmare stages, where most of the people you meet think that helping others will only give them more competition for survival. You can play the game as a selfish person who only cares about himself, or a kind, compassionate person who realizes that it doesn’t cost anything to give people a few kind words and helps others to help themselves. Although, because of the way the game plays, you don’t really get to know the characters well - it’s just a brief snapshot of their lives. More on that in a bit.

        So with all of that said, it gets high scores in every category and I really do think it’s worth $60. It’ll probably take you 12-15 hours to finish the story for the first time, which is a pretty good length because it doesn’t overstay its welcome but gives you enough to feel like you got what you paid for. After you’ve finished the game, if you replay on the same difficulty level, you can actually skip the puzzle stages and just play for the story if you want to try for different endings - you could probably blaze through in a few hours that way. If you hate the game after playing the demo, you probably won’t like the full game, but do give it a shot if you own a PS3 or 360. If you have both, I’d recommend the PS3 version, because I’ve heard the 360 version may not play as smoothly, and I hear the d-pad on the 360 controller sucks? But then, as someone who only owns a PS3, of course I would say that. Still, consider giving it a rental, and at least download the demo if you have a decent internet connection.

[This will continue tomorrow, it was really long so I split it up]

Part 2 of my post from yesterday. If you haven’t read it, this won’t make as much sense. I said that I would write about “how I see love, why I say that Brittany "cheated” on me with an emphasis on the quotation marks, and why I have no problem with it.“ Read on if you’re interested, and if not, you probably hate me by now. Sorry!

        I think the ideal form of love is selfless. If you really, truly love someone, then you should want them to be as happy as possible. If being in love requires you to get something out of it, then you don’t love them as much as you think you do. If I had forced Brittany to stay away from this guy, because I really did think that being with her was the only way I could be happy, that wouldn’t have been love. Or, at least, it would have been showing that I loved myself the most, and cared more about my happiness than hers. I let her go because I knew that if it worked out, she would be happier with him than she ever would be with me. We might have been content together, but because she didn’t truly love me, it wouldn’t be a perfect, happily-ever-after kind of thing.

        This is mainly a romantic thing, because it’s not like you ever formally agree to spend the rest of your life with your closest friends. Still, when you care about someone a lot, you should be more interested in what you can do for them than what they can do for you. Since they (hopefully) care about you the same way, they’ll take care of you just as selflessly. And everyone wins.

        So, as for infidelity specifically, I should start by saying that I wouldn’t ever do something like that to begin with. The fact that I could accept it from my partner doesn’t mean that I condone it. To me, the worst thing about a one-night stand would be if it was kept a secret - that’s a betrayal of trust, which hurts. Who cares about the sex at that point? If they come clean right away and don’t make a habit of it, it’s forgivable. And could you really blame someone if they fell in love with someone else? It sucks, but sometimes people just click. Again, if they keep it a secret and start seeing someone else, that’s intentional and wrong. But it’s love, and if they’d be happier that way, let them go and move on. I do think that we can be monogamous with the right partners, and I’m willing to forgive a lot. And, yeah, I’m tough enough to let someone go so they can be happy. It’s hard to appreciate right away, but I think it’s the best decision to make.

        It never really bothered me that much that Brittany was with this other guy, that she had feelings for him, and so on. It was never a secret - she asked for my permission repeatedly, and I gave it every time, with the one condition being that she not do anything behind my back. If she’d done all of this and pretended our relationship was fine until the day that we broke up, I would have been infinitely more hurt. I would have no issues telling people that she cheated on me. If I were to say that now, it would make it seem like I was victimized - when in reality I personally encouraged her to go after this guy. Yeah, we were "officially” together while all of this was going on, but that really doesn’t matter. She didn’t want to hurt me, but at the same time, she was falling in love with this guy and going back to me would have been impossible. I can’t honestly say “no, you should stop yourself from falling in love, and also you should stay in a relationship where you are content rather than search for one where you are truly happy.” Even if someone could do that, why would they? And why would you want them to?

        Anyway, now you probably understand better why neither of us is honestly worried about old feelings coming back. The people who were worried about that, they don’t know this stuff - they just know that we dated in the past and now I’m offering her a place to stay. I’m still surprised that I’ve never posted about this before, but now I have and now you know! It’s probably not worth the effort to explain all of this to people so that they can understand why we could live together and not consider being more than friends. But the people who know we were together ought to know why we broke up, and not just that we did.

        I mean, man. How did I not write about this before? Still amazed by that.

I’ve been thinking for the past week about what different people get from reading my tumblr. Random internet strangers probably just read the posts about things they’re interested in. People who know me well will get to know me better. But for people who don’t know me yet, it’s not a perfect window into my life - there are a lot of things that don’t come across all that well in text. I post about the things that interest me, and I post a lot of information about my life, but not so much about more abstract things - what I believe in, what kind of person I am, and so on. There’s not much point in simply telling you those things. because there would be nothing to back it up, and even if you accept that I’m nice because I said so, it wouldn’t really leave much of an impression on you. Trying to show you things like that with words is tough, but I’ll think about it and work on a few drafts to give the internet at large a better idea of who I am.

        I started playing Catherine last night, and aside from being a pretty satisfying puzzle game (as long as you don’t get really stuck on a hard part), it’s an absolutely wonderful thing to experience. I’d be surprised if I got more than ten hours out of it, but the value of playing it can’t be measured in time spent playing. The basic gist is that you guide Vincent, a 32 year old underachiever, through the worst week of his life. First, his girlfriend of five years, Katherine, starts talking about marriage. Then he drinks a bit too much and has a one-night stand with a girl named Catherine. What happens from there depends on the player’s decisions, but it’s a really well-crafted experience.

        If you absolutely love puzzle games, there’s probably $60 worth of gameplay in there, but everyone else should play the game on easy and act as honestly as possible. It’ll get you thinking about what you would do in a given situation, and about relationships in general. Which is absolutely fantastic, and I’m so glad that this is a “mainstream” video game. I mean, ok, it’s not a AAA blockbuster release, but it’s not some budgetless, vague indie game either. It’s a game that deals with marriage, cheating, responsibility, the nature of relationships… It’s a work of art in every definition of the word.

        So I’ve been thinking a lot since I started playing it, and naturally one of the things I’ve been thinking about is infidelity. Apparently, I’ve actually never written about this before, which is surprising because of what happened between Brittany and I. It’s kind of an important detail, which makes it strange that I’ve never mentioned it. It also means I have to write about it now, in order to get into the stuff I want to say. Alright, so, here’s the quick and dirty version. When we were in 9th grade, Brittany got involved with a guy a year younger than her, and she was really serious about him. It ended badly, she did her best to get over it, and then in November of 10th grade we started dating again. In PEI, high school doesn’t start until 10th grade, so when we moved onto high school she didn’t really see the guy until the fall of 11th grade.  Before too long, despite having a girlfriend, he started flirting with her. She was wary of him because he proved to be a supreme asshole the first time, but I knew she was drawn to him in a way she’d never been drawn to me, and so I gave her permission to talk to him and braced for impact. Fast forward a few months, and by November things are very serious between them and we finally break up ten days before our anniversary.

        I don’t think I need to get into what happened between them after that, but suffice to say that he was actually worse than a supreme asshole. An uber asshole, if you will, the horrible embodiment of all the terrible things women expect from men. Meanwhile, I had encouraged my girlfriend - who I loved dearly, and who was at the time my one source of happiness - to leave me. In the end, her relationship with him made her reevaluate her feelings for me, and there ended the possibility of us getting back together. Understandably, our relationship became strained as things went on, and we spoke less and less often. Eventually it seemed like we couldn’t even manage to carry on a conversation. Considering she was my only close friend, the only person I thought I could share my secrets, doubts, and fears with, this was hard for me. I was incredibly lonely, and of course I spoke occasionally with my friends and family about this stuff, but it was this loneliness that led me to meet Vael and open up to him.

        What I realized, over time, was that I missed Brittany as my best friend far more than I missed her as my girlfriend. We went from speaking all day, every day to never speaking at all, and that alone was hard. Not having anyone to talk to about personal stuff was worse. I don’t remember the exact details of what happened, but at some point I must have told her this and asked if we could “just be friends.” Yeah, I said that, and I said it after we’d broken up. Delicious irony, if you can ignore my crying, desperately lonely 16-year-old-self long enough to laugh about it. Of course there were issues to work through, and of course I struggled with my feelings for her. After all that time, I couldn’t just snap my fingers and only think of her as a friend. But in the end, it all worked out, and now we’re friends and she’s living in my mom’s house. It’s been almost a week now, and it hasn’t been at all awkward for me (although I’ve been at my dad’s house this whole time). She doesn’t find it weird being there, and I assume being around me is no different than it was a month ago. Which is to say I haven’t asked about that, but maybe I should.

        SO OK NOW WE’RE BACK TO CATHERINE AND THE THINGS IT MADE ME THINK ABOUT. Now I can tell you how I see love, why I say that Brittany “cheated” on me with an emphasis on the quotation marks, and why I have no problem with it. Except that when I say now, I actually mean tomorrow, because this is really long. And the chances of people reading it all probably increase when it’s split up. So, that post will go up tomorrow morning, and I hope you all enjoy it!

I have received an offer, in my e-mail inbox, that is simply so good that it must be true. After all, not only did they send me an e-mail, they also offered a Skype account to contact should I wish to further discuss this wonderful advertising opportunity! I will share the message with you, because I believe that it is just so fantastic that such effective advertising opportunities are available thanks to modern technology.

———————————————————

Hi!

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If you want to promote your business to the next rate or to increase useful traffic to your web-site,

If you want to make new friends or find your love,

If you want to realize something, such as a car or a house, or buy something,

Then this offer is just for you!

We own a huge number of databases, we can make any sample of recipients.
For example, country and city of residence, hobbies, profession, post, income, height, eye color and even sexual preferences!

We process all orders as soon as possible!
We are people who have no limits

Prices:

All advertising project that you want to will be beginning with  $ 500 we appreciate our time.
Also there is a system of bonuses and the best offers for all your needs!

Please write us at [withheld] or Skype [withheld]

———————————————————

There is a system of bonuses, and the best offers for all your needs. They are people who have no limits - do you wish to realize a house, or find your love? They can do all that and more, with this wonderful form of effective advertising and their huge amount of databases.

The world is such a wonderful place!

Classes for the fall

PSYC 2001 - Intro to Research Methods in Psychology

PHIL 2501 - Intro to Philosophy of the Mind

LING 3002 - Phonology I

COMP 2001 - Intro to Systems Programming

CGSC 2001 - Intro to Cognitive Science

Classes for the winter

PSYC 2700 - Cognitive Psychology

PSYC 2200 - Biological Foundations of Behaviour

LING 2005 - Linguistic Analysis I

COMP 2004 - Programming in C++

CGSC 2002 + tutorial - Theories & Methods in Cognitive Science

[edit: I wish tumblr would put multiple spaces between paragraphs to make my walls of text less intimidating, because I’m bound to write them anyway]

I’ve been surprised before, but officially, I actually only have the one tutorial in the winter. I expected to have a tutorial in COMP 2004, and LING 2005, while LING 3002 is a strong candidate too. Won’t be surprised if I come to class and they tell us to sign up for tutorial times, anyway.

        The one problem with my schedule this year is that I couldn’t fit the french course I wanted into my schedule: FREN 2401 - Mechanics of language: French (liberally translated from fonctionnement d'une langue: le français). Basically, studying the structure, sounds, and so on of both Canadian French and French from France. France French. First of all, I thought it would be interesting, but it would probably help with my french too. In a grammar course, they mainly just tell you “this is how it is.” But a linguistic analysis could tell you why it is that way. The other thing is that I still want to do a minor in French and for that I need four credits, or eight classes. FREN 2401 is a full-year course, and both of the available times conflicted with classes I need for my degree. There are more french linguistics classes beyond this first one, so I’d take those later and fill out my required credits.

        So anyway! Instead of taking some french courses I wasn’t particularly interested in, which is a recipe for disaster and apathy, I grabbed a couple more programming courses. Considering how many jobs I couldn’t apply for because I didn’t have experience with C++, I thought it would be a good idea to get some. Unfortunately, COMP 2001 is required for COMP 2004, which also means I wouldn’t be “learning” C++ until january. Applying for a job that’s asking for a year of experience with C++ and saying “well, I’m taking the course right now…” probably wouldn’t go over well, I’m going to use the wonderful resource that is the internet to introduce myself to C++. I probably won’t have any time to actually work on a project with it in the fall, between class and helping Mako, but I’ll start reading all those AltDevBlog posts about C++ and learn some pro tricks hopefully. Then COMP 2004 can (well, hopefully it will) teach me the rest. And I’ll keep up with Java a bit, because why not? If I do get a summer job as a programmer, it doesn’t matter a whole lot whether I’m using Java or C++.

        Oops, this is getting pretty long. Well, the rest of the classes are pretty self-explanatory. All required for my degree, and they should all be interesting, so yay. Linguistic Analysis II is only offered in the fall, so I’ll be doing that next year and that way I won’t forget everything I did in Analysis I. The tutorial for CGSC 2002 will probably involve Python somehow, because Jim Davies is teaching it. Otherwise, I can’t imagine what we’d be doing. I don’t think we’d be doing actual research in an undergraduate class, that’s all.

        And, of course, my notes will be up on UniNotes as I take them. When classes actually start, or when I go pick up text books (because it would take thirty times longer when classes have started), I’ll be able to tell you more interesting things.

[Alternatively titled: How I Learned to Stop Being Suicidal and Love Life]

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine told me they were feeling suicidal. Don’t worry - things have turned around completely, and this friend is feeling happy for the first time in a long while. Still, it made me think about the way I used to feel when I was suicidal - how I felt when I was 10, and the slightly more refined thoughts I had during junior high and high school. It made me realize how much I’ve grown up, and I thought it was worth sharing. I’ll try to be concise! Sometimes you have to explore a few tangents, but I’ll try to keep them relevant.

        I gave a quick history in my Depression post last year, and I touched on my suicidal thoughts as well. One thing I forgot to mention was the feeling that I had nothing to live for. When I was 10, I thought that I was so smart and wanted to do great things - but I knew that the world doesn’t work that way and figured I’d wind up in a crappy office job, living a “normal” life. I was just a kid, you know? The life of an adult, in my mind, consisted solely of their job. It never occurred to me that I could have a normal job, and still do great things.

        I wanted to improve the world, though, and since I wouldn’t do it at work, I thought it was impossible. Then I thought I could do it by taking myself out of the picture. When I realized that would only make things worse, I looked for other ways to make the world a better place. I figured that if I could improve at least one thing, no matter how small, I would have lived a worthwhile life. When I met Brittany in junior high, I decided my one thing would be to help her. I figured I could help her with her problems, and then she’d go off and be happy and it would all be thanks to me. I didn’t think that would take too long, and after that, even if I killed myself, I would have made the world a better place. It never quite worked out that way, but I held onto the idea that I could make people’s lives better in some small way and live a good life.

        I knew that I couldn’t kill myself if anyone would be left behind to mourn me and blame themselves for my death, so I decided I would have to disappear quietly. The day no one would notice I was dead, I could slip away and that would be that. I figured that I could leave home after high school and gradually lose contact with my family, and then I’d just have to make sure they couldn’t trace my identity after I died. I felt that it was inevitable that everyone in my life would leave me, so when that happened, I’d be free to end it. “Unfortunately” for my tenth grade self, I’ve made new connections and gotten closer to everyone else, more or less foiling this plot.

        You know how sometimes you can’t figure out whether something actually happened, or you just had a dream and thought it happened? I get that sometimes, except I can’t remember whether I said something or just thought about saying it. Either way, in high school I once said (or thought I said) that I “wanted to be happy when I grew up.” Which is super dramatic, and sad, and that’s what really made me want to say it. I was also trying to say that it didn’t matter what I “was when I grow up,” in terms of what career I chose - as long as I had enough to survive and something else to make me happy, I’d be ok.

        What I realized, thinking about all of this, is that I’ve done it. I grew up. I’m happy with my life, and I’ll still be happy no matter where things go from here. That’s not to say that everything is perfect; I just know that I can deal with and overcome pretty much anything. I’m happy with who I am, and I think I’m a good person. I doubt I’m radically changing the lives of everyone I meet, but I’ve made good friends and I’m helping out whenever I can. Enough to say I’m a net positive influence on the world, at least, which was always the plan. And that’s enough to make me happy!

Should I apologize for not posting while I’m on vacation? I feel guilty about it anyway, but I’m thinking most people focus on their vacation and don’t post at all. Well, I love you too much to stay away for long. Also, I can’t help but think up tumblr posts when I should be sleeping, and the best cure for that is to actually write one before bed.

        If that’s not a significant caveat, I don’t know what is.

        Anyway, I have news! News big enough for its own post, even. It’s a big change, technically, but at the same time I’m hoping for a minimal amount of changes to accommodate it. If that makes sense. Ideally, I’ll be able to continue working at the same pace I have been and life will go on as usual, except with an extra person living in my house.

        I’ll skip the long story of how we got to this point and summarize: Brittany is moving in at my mom’s place, and she’ll stay there while I’m at my dad’s. I’m giving up my bedroom, but I prefer to sleep on the futon in the basement anyway, so all that’s left is to figure out where I’ll move my “office.” No big deal, although everybody’s worried about us living together, but it’s not as bad as it sounds.

        If you’ve been reading my tumblr long enough, you probably know Brittany as my ex-girlfriend. But we broke up two and a half years ago now, and I don’t think our status as an ex-couple (do people say that? makes sense to me) defines our relationship anymore. I mean, yeah, we dated and we broke up - but there’s no tension, no unresolved issues, none of the things you would expect when you’re meeting someone’s ex for the first time. And the more time I spend with her now, the more comfortable I am with the way things are - we’re friends, the same way I’m friends with Vael, Sebastian, or Max.

        I’ve been offering to let Brittany stay with us pretty much since we decided to move to Ottawa, mainly because I’ve always thought her family treats her terribly. Her mom has been threatening to kick her out recently, or at least make her pay rent, which is difficult considering how few jobs are available in Summerside. Ottawa, on the other hand, has many more opportunities. So I asked my mom if she could stay with us, because it would be cheaper for her than getting an apartment in Summerside, and she’d have better odds of saving up money for school. Fast-forward to our vacation, and Brittany came out to dinner with us. One of the first things my mom says is “so Brittany, are you coming back to Ottawa with us?” At first she said maybe, and then there was much discussion and working out of details, and now the answer is yes.

        I figure I’ll be introducing her as my friend from now on, and that’ll avoid plenty of awkward situations where people misunderstand or assume things. Not like it’ll be a secret that we dated, but if it comes up, I’ll just say she turned me into a newt and then I got better. Or something along those lines. I just want to say that I got better and make it clear that it’s a Monty Python reference.

        Anyway, that’s that. There’s not really a whole lot to say aside from re-assuring everyone about the way things are between us now, so there you go. Consider yourself assured!

        tl;dr: my ex-girlfriend is going to be my roommate, but it’s not what you think

Lots of stuff going on ‘round here, but I’m feeling pretty tired and thought of something somewhat interesting to post. The origins of my tumblr’s name and url! Or my account name, or whatever you call the x in x.tumblr.com. And on a related note, the origin of the “Demi” name you’ll see people refer to every once in a while.

        “The lows are low, but the highs are home” is a quote from the song Chasing Hamburg by Polar Bear Club, the title track from their 2009 album. Apparently the song is about one specific gig they played in Hamburg, the idea being that it was an awesome show and they’re “chasing” that kind of fantastic feeling. What I took from that specific line was sometimes life is shitty, but that’s not the point - you’re living for the high points, which more than make up for the lows. It’s not just optimism for the future, it’s having the resilience to deal with the crappy stuff on the way.

        “lamattgrind” is an anagram of my first and last names, in the sense of “this is about the daily grind of my life.” University is a bit less monotonous than high school was at times, but it’s still pretty grind-y. Go to class, study before going to the next class, repeat once or twice before going home. Then prepare for tomorrow’s classes. It’s not so bad, but there’s a definite predictability to it. Which sounds pretty depressing, but it’s not actually that bad.

        As for the Demi thing, that’s a bit of a longer story, but I’ll try to skip the boring parts. A few years ago, I stumbled upon a browser based game called MonBre. You needed to pick a first and last name for your player character, so I went with “Rakki Lesthys” - the names of two characters I’d used in a story a long time ago, and continued to use in party based RPGs. Eventually I decided to change to a more masculine name, and at work grabbed inspiration from a box of pastries. “Demi Lune” seemed like a great name at the time, despite being more feminine in retrospect and thus defeating the purpose of the change. As I became close friends with the creator of MonBre, a certain Vael Victus, he decided I qualified for adoption into the Victus family and the name changed to Demi Victus.

        Did you want to know any of these things? Probably not, but now you do! I’d planned to do a similar post on the origins of all my various interests and hobbies, which would either be far more interesting or far more boring. If I get the itch to finish that, you’ll see it when it’s done.

I’ve been holding off on a link-based post for a while because I’ve had more interesting things to post, but now I really need to clear out my bookmarks, so here’s a giant pile of awesome stuff for you!

Anime:

• The English dub of Durarara!! is not only airing on Adult Swim for people who dislike subbed anime, it will also be available for streaming online

Assorted Lifehacker stuff:

• How Self-Control Works, and How To Boost Your Willpower
• How to Cook Pasta Correctly
• Showhopping Finds Upcoming Shows Around You for Your Favourite Bands
• Quixey Finds the Software You Need (you search by function, not by name - far better than using alternativeto.net and then going looking for a feature list)

Gaming:

• What Does Your Game Believe In? (highly recommend it, speaks to how games can be designed to convey a specific meaning - but only if it’s planned from the start)
• Games Wii Forgot: Little King’s Story (I might actually pick this up, because it sounds both fascinating and fun)
• The Many Meanings of Difficulty in Games (this is actually a real academic study, but it’s not so long or awfully written that you won’t get anything out of it - I’d recommend reading it!)
• The Good Grind (perfectly captures my thoughts about FF XIII and Demon’s Souls)
• We Need to Aim Higher (if Mike Acton is any indication of the people Insomniac hires, my love for them is justified a thousand times over)
• Everything Good Old Is New Again (Good Old Games :D you are gentlemen and scholars)
• Infinity Blade Review (this is pretty neat in terms of writing and web design, you’ll see why when you “begin bloodline 2”)
• What Game Developers Do (the last bit about pillars is pretty interesting, and I’d say that kind of “include only things that support your main points” philosophy applies everywhere)

There’s something I’ve been working on for a few years now, but I’ve never actually mentioned to anyone. A personal quest of mine, I guess. It’s not really a secret, I’ve just never bothered to explain it. I told someone yesterday, though, and I think he was impressed, so I feel like posting about it now.

        My goal is this: play every game in the main Final Fantasy series to completion. A dozen games right now, thirteen if you include FF X-2. I’ve finished some of the earlier NES titles in 20-30 hours, but the newer games are easily twice as long. More if you run around doing sidequests and finding secrets, which I tend to do. I’ll post my final times when I’m all done, but let’s just say I’ve put hundreds of hours into this series.

        At the moment, I have three games left to finish: Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VI, and Final Fantasy VIII. I’ve put a few hours into FF V already, but I haven’t started the other two at all. At a wild guess, I’d say 40 hours each for FF V and VI, but VIII could take a while longer than that depending on how much extra stuff I do. It’s looking good, though - I think I can finish before the end of the year, even if I get a job for the summer.

        I don’t know for sure when I started doing this. I think it was a little over a year ago that I told myself I’d actually finish them all, but it was a few years before that when I decided to collect all of the games. I still remember when I got each of the games, but the thing is - I rarely ever finished them. I actually did complete II, VII and IX before dedicating myself to it. But since last spring, I’ve finished FF I, III, IV, X, X-2, XII, and XIII. Most of those games only took 10-20 more hours to finish from when I’d stopped playing, which may sound ridiculous if you don’t play RPGs, but it means I was pretty close to the end.

Here are a few things I’ve learned so far:

• Basic plots can work, over and over again, as long as they’re well executed - you can make a dozen “go save the world” games, but if you make the player an integral part of the story and give them compelling short-term goals, they really won’t care (good examples: FF VII, FF X - bad examples: FF XII, FF XIII)
• When the player takes control of existing characters, choose your “protagonist” carefully - the player shouldn’t feel like someone else is doing all the important work, but making the protagonist a supporting character can make things really interesting (Yuna is the most important character in FF X, and it’s her job to save the world, yet Tidus is the protagonist and manages to be integral to the story anyway - Vaan is the protagonist in FF XII, but Ashe is the only character that really matters to the story, and you’re left feeling totally unimportant)
• Repetitive gameplay can be rescued by altering the feedback by a tiny bit - if the player has to fight 50 battles in order to get a single level up, they’ll feel like they’re making no progress, but if you give them stat boosts every 10 battles it’ll seem like they’re constantly getting stronger (FF II is great with this, while ability points in FF V and IX fill a similar role of constant feedback)
• It takes a lot of work to make a great character, but it pays off in the end, so don’t skimp on the supporting characters - every character needs their own personality (this means you need to write well enough to show it off), a unique look to complement that, and an interesting role in the gameplay (every game from FF IV to X has a… mostly great cast, but X-2, XII, and XIII have boring, underdeveloped, and relatively uninteresting characters - they’re very pretty, though!)

        There’s probably a lot more to be said than that, but I haven’t thought of it yet. You really need to compare individual games in order to notice this stuff, because the strong points of one game can shed light on the problems of another. So even though I’m almost done playing the games, I’m nowhere near finished thinking about them. I could easily write this much about Dissidia Final Fantasy, the fighting game that pits characters from across the series against each other. I intend to write a whole lot more about the stories and characters of FF XII and XIII.

        I mean, someone’s gotta do it.

For my 300th post, I thought I’d go a little high-brow and talk about a book I’ve been reading called Beyond the Profits System by economist Harry Shutt. The subtitle is “Possibilities For a Post-Capitalist Era,” so that should give you a pretty good idea of what he’s about. I’m really not interested in economics and things like that, but I picked up the book for five bucks when I was buying a textbook, and it was certainly worth the price. It’s a pretty rough read, though - the writing is very academic, and I think it might actually be intended for use as a textbook. Considering I’ll never take the class it was used for, I can’t really verify any of what was in it. A cursory search reveals pretty much no information on it or the author, but that’s normal for a textbook.

        With all that being said, I’m going to assume the book is credible until proven otherwise. The basic idea is that the current model of capitalism, focusing solely on growth and profits, is doomed to fail and needs to be replaced for the sake of public good. First of all, there’s the matter of absurd inequality - not only do we have countries that are far more prosperous than others, but within individual countries, there are people starving to death and others making money faster than they can spend it. Second of all, there’s something called “the business cycle” inherent in capitalism: eventually profits bottom out, and in order to get back the huge growth rates of the past, there needs to be a huge recession. I won’t get into it too much, but from what I understand, the idea is that capitalism revolves around investing excess capital in order to continuously get more. But eventually profitable investment opportunities run out, because there’s too much excess capital. So then you have crashes like the Great Depression, followed by comparatively amazing recovery.

        The part that I found most interesting was a section on how companies could survive without pursuing maximum profit. Ideally, in whatever new system would replace capitalism, non-profit ownership of enterprises would be encouraged. Privately owned companies like we have now would be encouraged in different ways to not accumulate profit, such as tax breaks for distributing the money to their shareholders or employees. New companies could be publicly owned (nationally, or even locally) or owned cooperatively (for example, social enterprises). It’s hard to say which is more interesting - the problems this shows with capitalism, or the good that could be done by the alternatives.

        The way things are currently, the shareholders and so on who create companies basically receive all the profits the company makes. I.e. the people who have lots of money, get to make more money. Employees get more or less the same salary regardless of how profitable their work has become for the company. Meanwhile, the goal of the company is to do one thing: maximize profits. Doing the “right” thing doesn’t matter, unless it happens to be the most profitable thing.

There are some pretty big parallels between the business of book publishing and video game publishing, so I’ll use those as examples. Some of the similarities are…

• most aren’t profitable, and it’s mostly a gamble on the part of the publisher that any individual product will be popular enough to turn a profit
• the ones that do turn a profit are used to help fund the ones that aren’t
• publishers essentially pay the creators with loans, leaving them entirely dependent upon the publisher until they achieve widespread success
• artistic merit or quality, generally speaking, don’t matter as much as profitability
• the price you pay for the final product includes a cut for everyone involved in its creation - the publisher takes their cut, the manufacturer takes theirs, and so on, until the actual creators receive their tiny portion
• depending on the publisher and the terms of their agreement, the actual creator may not have much control over what they create, whether that be in the form of rights or the actual content itself

        There are probably more similarities, and there are differences too (for example, authors are usually expected to promote their own books these days) but you should see the problems here. Economically, it makes perfect sense that only the most popular products actually turn a profit. It makes sense that writers/game developers wouldn’t get anything from the sale of their product until it actually turns a profit. They wouldn’t be doing it if it didn’t make economic sense, right?

        But it doesn’t make any logical sense, or emotional sense for that matter. Authors who don’t become massively successful with their first novels are basically forced to write until they can somehow pay off their initial advance. Game developers that don’t put out a huge success are shut down, and hundreds of jobs are lost. Publishers can gamble with people’s livelihoods by deciding what books and games are published. The vast majority of the time a game developer is closed down by a publisher, it’s really not their fault - see the Guitar Hero series, wait for the Call of Duty crash, and the closure of Pandemic Studios after the release of, arguably, their best game. Then we as consumers have to pay heavily inflated prices, mainly because of things like production costs that could be avoided through digital distribution.

        This is why it’s so interesting to imagine how books and games could be funded in other ways, and in a way that puts the focus on the actual creators. I love holding a physical book, but I don’t like paying thirty dollars for a book - especially when the author gets, at best, a few dollars of that. Reading on my Kindle is wonderful, and paying ten bucks for a digital version of a book is lovely. I like to have a game’s case in my collection, too, but getting an indie game from Steam for ten bucks is almost absurdly convenient. Steam and Amazon probably take their cut from this, but otherwise, someone could create a game or a book and get actual money for it, right away. These services already exist! We don’t even need to change anything to take advantage of them!

        As for funding, Kickstarter is pretty much the perfect example, although it could probably use some more accountability from the people getting the money. The Kickstarter for the PC version (and enhanced 360 version) of Cthulhu Saves the World is a perfect example of this. They only needed $3000, but they got twice that much. Now they’re going to sell the game, and a previous game they created, for $3 on Steam. Two games for three dollars. Development funded by the kind of people awesome enough to donate $750 dollars. If you look at the page, what amounts to a “pre-order” of the game was originally $24. They only needed 125 people to pitch in $25 in order to fund the game, and they got 110. The other fifteen people gave fifty dollars instead. And I’m going to get the game for three bucks! I really want to donate $25, but three bucks is a lot better for my budget :(

        It’s probably a little bit harder with books, but I guess a great idea for a game could easily turn out badly, just as a great book idea could be poorly written. Even so, you create a Kickstarter or something, ask people to pay for the product in advance, and then you have enough money to survive while you’re creating it. Everyone wins in this situation. There are, literally, zero downsides. Except for publishers and retailers, who are no longer necessary in this system. Darn.

        Just to wrap up, think of it this way: if you were a self-employed game developer or writer, you wouldn’t really need to “profit” from what you make. As long as there was enough money coming in, you could pretty much keep doing what you love forever. No need for a fragile salary based job, no need to worry about publishers, just a direct connection between the money and the creation of the game.

What a beautiful world such would be… - The World Ends With You

I watched Thor last night, and it was pretty good. Made my dad stay around so we could see the post-credits stuff, with the other nerds. I think they’re getting better with the whole comic book adaptation stuff - the first Iron Man, the Hulk movies from 2004 or whatever, most of those felt pretty incomplete. Iron Man 2 and Thor don’t really like an advertisement for the comics, or some kind of abridged version like novel adaptations. So that’s all good, and I would recommend seeing it for sure.

————————————————————–

        Apparently my dad found a poem I wrote about the Halifax Explosion some years ago, and an unbiased third party told me that it was really good. He’s mentioned recently that I wrote such a thing, and I was slightly skeptical… But he told me enough about it that I accept it as a thing, so I’ll post it soon for you guys.

        I actually wrote a number of other poems in junior high, mainly for/about Brittany. Perhaps luckily for you, they’ve all been lost. Eaten by my dog, actually. But I think a few of them were really, really good - to the point where I actively wish I could find them again. I remember a few lines, themes I used… It’s incredibly frustrating to know that I wrote these, but all that’s left is the little bits I remember.

        I mean, if everything I’ve written on here were to disappear, I wouldn’t think years later “wow, that was some great stuff, I wish I could show it to people."  I accept the possibility that if I were to find one of these poems, they wouldn’t be as good as I remember. Even so, I just feel like one of the best things I’ve ever written was eaten by my dog. That’s a crappy feeling, man! At least I’ve got the one, anyway.