BP’s New Pretty Boy; Cute Common Sense Blog; The Gaming Death; Cleverbot: Your Clever Bot;

Tony Hayward leaves BP and they find another pretty face to replace__________

It seems BP has made another move in repairing their shattered PR in getting rid of their old “fall man” and putting a new one, just as bad, into play.

People have definitely turned on the offensive against BP for the infamous oil spill that has just recently been capped (finally), but I feel obligated to remind those who aren’t aware that this could have happened to any company. 

This past semester I worked with a group of students researching information about America’s coal mines and the coal mine industry as a whole.  Our coal mine industry is practically the poster boy for not following government regulations and having a plethora of tragedies occur because of it.  The statistics are astounding.

I have no doubt that, like the mine industry, the vast majority of our oil industry do not follow government regulations.  It just so happens that BP was the one company to have an incident of such epic proportions.  Rather than tearing apart one company, I feel that we should stand back and look at the industry as a whole.  Take a magnifying glass and look and see just how similar BP is to other oil companies.  Those doing the regulating should be put under the microscope as well seeing as we heard about the payoffs those who were supposed to be doing the regulating were receiving.

A funny blog for those lacking in the common sense department__________

Or if you like that kind of humor…

 Stuff No One Told Me is a cute little blog that takes those things that we all know (well… most of us know) and makes them into funny little pictures and sketches.  I spent a good half hour going through and reading Alex Noriega’s work and I found it to be my type of humor.  I hope you’ll enjoy it too.

The Gaming Death____________

What will we do when blowing as hard as we can into our Super Nintendo’s no longer works?

As a fairly hardcore gamer, every now and then I’ll take a break, unplug my Xbox 360, get a chair and feel around in the top of my closet, and bring down one of my old treasures:  My Nintendo Entertainment System (the original Nintendo).

While most I know who use to have these had parents who bought theirs for them or they saved up for ages to buy their own, mine is actually the product of an interesting story.

One morning I was out walking my dog in the pouring rain, fairly miffed that I was becoming soaked for a dog that would much rather be inside as well.  On I walked down the street, on garbage day no less, when I spotted something sticking out of the trashcan beside me.  You never know the treasures that can be found in someone’s garbage until you find something, so I lifted up the lid and peered inside.  On top of a foul smelling garbage bag was an NES in perfect condition along with a controller and a lasergun controller.

There was just no way, this was too good to be true!  I pulled the system out of the can and laid it on the ground, careful to avoid the puddle I was standing in and began digging around for the adapter.  A few minutes later, I was on my way home with an armful of my treasure.  Sure enough when I got home I plugged that bad boy in and it worked perfectly!  Much more exciting than buying one in the store, now if only I could dig an HDTV out of someone’s trashcan I’d be set!

The article above talks about a paper that’s been written which illustrates the ups and downs of different ways to preserve our videogame heritage along with the legal issues surrounding.  It’s quite interesting and I encourage you to read it.

To go hand-in-hand with the paper, here’s a cool little geeky gamer game I found to test your reflexes and quick thinking abilities.  Check it out HERE

 Cleverbot- your AI friend__________

I found this website a few days back called Cleverbot.  It appears to be some AI created for no other purpose but to talk to, and it’s quite smart.  It kind of blows my mind how it responds and how it knows what to say.  It’s most likely a simple script that my non-Computer Science mind cannot grasp.  I’ll let you be the judge

____________________

Alright, there’s day two of the daily blog posts which have no name as of yet!  I noticed that I forgot to mention yesterday that all the links to articles I’m talking about are in the titles in case you weren’t aware, hyperlinks are bloody genius when you know about them.

Not sure how my weekend is going to be spent yet, probably the same routine as every other day, but we’ll see.  New True Blood on Sunday to look forward to!  I’ll be back on Monday to post again, so until then have a good weekend!

Ep. 31: Hitting the Ground - Preview

Ah yeah, and here’s a trailer for the new episode to sink your teeth into from HBO.  I won’t talk about it because I don’t want to ruin anything for those not caught up with the show.

Facebook’s Dead People; Canine Heroes; Nintendo Finally Faces Losses; Where You Might Want To Go To Prison; And A Most Obvious Blunder;

Alright, this is going to be my first run at doing a daily blog post, so bear with me because you’re in for a bumpy ride.

Facebook Sees Dead People__________

Everyone I know has a Facebook these days (Who ever heard of Myspace?) so I figured this was an article of interest.  Many people have probably wondered, “What happens to your Facebook when you die?”  Well, unless you’re sheltered and your parents have the passwords to delete it, probably nothing; At least that’s how it is right now.

At one time Facebook deleted member’s profiles when they were reported deceased.  Of course, there’s always those who have to take issue with something, so they stopped.  Now people are complaining that they’re being suggested to reconnect with their friends who have passed away, sometimes months ago.  This can bring up old memories and so on. 

I think that the profiles of the deceased should be deleted just like the profiles of those who have gone inactive.  If no one logs in for six months, delete it.  This method is used on countless other membership sites and forums.  It’s simple and effective and keeps your system from being swamped with deceased or inactive people.

Memorial pages just make me raise an eyebrow at ya.  You can already do something similar with the handy ability to make whatever page you want, and to be honest getting off Facebook and remembering them another way is better for you.

Why Dogs are WAY Better Than Cats__________

If three cats had seen the suicide bomber, would they have done the same?  HELL NO!  They’d have gone on licking themselves and clawing up tents.  This article further proves that dogs will always be the most superior pet.

Truly sweet story about three dogs who saved a group of American soldiers and now the two that survived are being adopted by one of the soldiers they saved, and the medic who saved them.

Nintendo Finally Hit By Losses?__________

What’s this?  Nintendo and… losses?  It’s the first time in a long time that Nintendo has been in the negatives.  I personally blame it on their E3 show.

While the Nintendo 3ds was super impressive, it’s not out yet, and Nintendo hasn’t showcased anything new in a very long time.  In fact I haven’t seen any new Nintendo games that sparked my interest in the last year.

With the prospect of Microsoft’s Kinect, we could see Nintendo crumble a bit.  I would mention Sony’s controller with a ball on the end wand thing that lights up… but we all know that’s a joke.

Because Prisons These Days are a Joke__________

The only prison on this list that is a real, legit, “what prisons are supposed to be” prison is the one in Russia.  Do you see that?  They get one fifteen minute shower a week.  I wonder if prisons were like that here people would be more afraid to go.

All this “coordinated” dancing in prison nonsense, TV’s in their cells… It’s a joke.  You ever see that movie Alcatraz?  I watched that when I was ten, scared the Dickens out of me, I never wanted to go to prison.  Prison should be a scary place.

Oh So Innocent a Music Player, Yet Oh So Not_________

Open this page, what do you see?  Oh, a little music player where I can type in my desired artist and get a list of songs, I click on the song and I can listen to it just like that… AMAZING

What I see:  Oh wow, I have DownloadHelper for Firefox, I wonder if it’ll come up.  *waits for a few second* Oh my gosh… I can!

Add the DownloadHelper application to your Firefox browser, go to this website, type in your artist, find your song, play it, download it, enjoy wherever you want to.

Whoever made this website is a real winner, it’ll probably get taken down soon, so enjoy while you can.

For the record, I didn’t download anything from this website and do not encourage you to download music without paying for it.

__________

Have a nice night and see ya tomorrow!

New Angles

These titles suck, I know.  That Miranda, no creativity when it comes to this at all.  And she promised to keep up with this!  LIES!

There’s a month left of summer and it’s about this point where I come to that sliver of time between where “I cannot wait until summer ends or I will die of boredom” and the time of “Oh hell, I have to organize and pack up in less than a month, and Imma miss my mommeh, and I have to work, and go to class, and oh hell eighteen hours of PAIN, and it’s already my Junior year, hell, I’m a senior next year… and then real life *sigh*” panic attacks.  Around this time I also realize all those resolutions for summer, never did them, none of them. 

For those who don’t know, I’m currently a Journalism major who’s own lack of expectations makes it so that I can never see myself actually writing for anyone.  This roadblock has kept me from being able to write anything of substance and length ever.  The cycle usually goes something like this:  Oh great idea!  *sits down and writes down idea* *thinks about idea* *fleshes out some characters* *starts writing main events of story* *perfectionism and critical side kicks in and says, “Oh no, all of this is wrong, that doesn’t make sense, that will never work”* *critical side takes over and trashes all work done because no one wants to read this crap* *depressed for a bit* *new idea* and so on.

It’s tiresome and it wears on me a lot.  Identifying a few main issues, one of the big ones is that it’s incredibly difficult to make myself even right the first word.  Something’s always there stopping me, a distraction, whatever I can fathom to keep myself from writing the first word.  My solution:  I need to commit myself to a routine; this will be my routine.

I am going to post here every weekday, no matter how late, short, or terrible it may be and I’m going to start today.  We’re going to call it… Well I don’t have a name yet, but I’m going to think of one between now and next week, or maybe tonight.

We’re going to start with something easy.  Often times I post to my Facebook and tweet interesting links and info I find, the character limit sucks anyway, so I’m going to do it here from now on.

Alright, expect a post later… Dinner time.

Red Dead Redemption Review

So today I sat with my laptop placed firmly across my knees, started up my 1930’s Pandora station (Check out The Ink Spots), and proceeded to check up on all my favorite feeds when I remembered something; I forgot about that planned review of Red Dead Redemption.  After smacking my forehead and admonishing myself for, once again, not keeping up with this blog, I began to write.  This paragraph is the product so far…

For those of you who have slept through the last couple months, or simply know nothing about video games (why are you reading this again?), Red Dead Redemption is a wild west sandbox game.  If you don’t know what a sandbox game is then… No, I’m not going to bother explaining.

Red Dead Redemption is Grand Theft Auto taken back in time to our nation’s early much less favorable days, and, much like every other pop culture version of the wild west, glorifies it.

When I first heard about this “cowboy” videogame I immediately thought, “Wow, Rockstar is taking their same game engine and creating the same game except with a few pixels mixed up.  Of course I was wrong which I found out after I bought the game after hearing raving reviews about it.

Campaign__________

The game is excellent.  There is something to be said for a game which I can find nothing wrong with.  Red Dead Redemption excels in its element: a sandbox do whatever the hell you want game.  Of course, we already knew anything from Rockstar would excel in the category because this is their element and they have mastered it beautifully.

The campaign is fairly lengthy, but short enough that by the time it’s over you’re sad and left wanting more (which is the way every good videogame should leave you).

My one complaint is the fact that I have to repeatedly tap the A button to sell all my pelts after I go on a hunting/skinning spree.  It sounds like I’m nitpicking, but when you have a fifty pelt inventory to sell, it gets old.  However, if my biggest complaint about a game is my own laziness in the shop, then I think you’re alright.

Multiplayer__________

The biggest disappointment about this game by far and I can’t blame the creators for it at all.

The online multiplayer has countless possibilities: challenges, gang hideouts, missions, etc.  But… you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink, just like you can lead a thirteen-year-old to a good game, but can’t make him play it right.

The online multiplayer is a disaster, but it’s not at the fault of Rockstar, no.  As soon as you, as a gamer who simply sees the online circuit as a way to play through the challenges of the game together and make awesome teammates online, go into public mode you will endure the splatter of brains of epic proportions.  You cannot walk two feet in the game without being hunted down and blown away, which defeats entirely the idea of cooperative missions and challenges.

Rating:  4/5

And yes, I know the game came out ages ago and this is a very late review, but oh well… the amount I care could fit into a teaspoon.