Face Value or Sub-Text?
After finishing the Mass Effect Trilogy and filling my head with the Indoctrination Theory, I kept thinking about the idea of the face up value vs sub-text. A lot of games that are available today are simple games, what you see is what you get. Monsters are overrunning the Earth and you need to kill the Devil, ok no problem. Seems pretty simple. And you can find some games whose stories takes a few twists and some things are not as they first seem, for example… [SPOILERS AHEAD! If you see the name of a game you don’t want spoiled, skip it! But there is another section after this.] Portal 2 – One of the more obvious examples when you start out fighting your previous villain only to discover you’ve helped a worse villain. Star Control 2 – You start out thinking you’re fighting to stop this evil race only to find out that they are doing what they are doing because they were burned pretty badly in the past, burned so bad that galaxy wide domination or annihilation is the only choice. Borderlands – At the beginning, the vault is this huge treasure trove but at the end you realise it was a prison. Knights of the Old Republic – You go hunting for a malevolent Sith Lord only to discover that you were the villain that lost his memory. One Must Fall 2097 – You fight through all the tournaments to face the big boss and he’s not piloting his robot, he is his Continue Reading →
Posted in Gaming, Practice, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with comments disabled.
Evans Blue
Are a band I got reacquainted with during my rerun of my favourite songs. I don’t know how they got there but I suppose I found them through the “radio” feature and decided they were cool enough. And after listening to all their albums, I have to say they are very cool. If you like hard rock with a tinge of thrash, you’ll like them. Here is a sample of my favourites among them.
Posted in Art, Reviews by Eran with comments disabled.
Imagine if there were no pirates…
NetFlix will have to write their own subtitles… Ubisoft will have to disable their annoying copy protection on their own… They will also need to convert their own audio files… Artists will have to be sought out for their music… It will be a tragedy. On the other hand: Music sales will go up… People everywhere will pay to watch TV shows… Authors will be much more well known for their work… And every form of media we wish to consume will be readily and easily available… It will be a utopia. (Hint: No, it won’t).
Posted in Gaming, Less Interesting News, Practice, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with 3 comments.
People Will Rise Up: Babylon 5 vs The Hunger Games
This thought coalesced around the time I saw this lecture and we were talking about The Hunger Games. One of my first problems with the story is that I think there is no way people will be willing to live under oppression and fear. One of the things I loved most about Babylon 5 is when they described the Earth-Minbari war, the Minbari were superiour to the Humans in every way. They were beaten back and the Minbari got all the way to the Sol System. They fought all the way to Mars and Humans were on the brink of annihilation. It wasn’t what stopped the war but the Minbari were in awe that a people were so stubborn and so unwilling to give up. Only on the footsteps of Earth did they acknowledge surrender and even then, people still joined in a fight, that they knew could not be survived, just so civilian rescue ships could evacuate. Because people are stubborn and will fight for what they think is right. And so, I was facing a big problem with the idea that The Hunger Games were 74 years on going. And I was shocked that a people were oppressed for so long without a fight. I can’t remember, in human history, an oppression so long without some fighting, some resistance. And it resonated for me with the Arab Spring. Here was our current real-life example that a people in the dumps, knowing and seeing that things could be better, chose Continue Reading →
Posted in Humanity, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with comments disabled.
What We Did For Our Anniversary
It all started off quite innocuously as I sent Maayan flowers to work on Wednesday, the actual date. Picture of bouquet to follow since the only other picture I have is in an MMS message and it will take more will power than I have right now to get it. Any road, I apparently set a bad example for husbands everywhere. We couldn’t do much for the actual anniversary since it was too much in the middle of the week. So we had to compensate. On Wednesday, after work, we went to one of our favourite restaurants and shared a burger. Which was kind of fun since another family in a table nearby celebrated a birthday. And thanks to Keren who actually called to congratulate us. :) Next day was my big surprise day. Since it was Thursday, we could afford to do something that could be followed by not waking up in the morning. So, I took Maayan sailing. She mentioned something about it and I was actually planning it since last year but it was fun to actually put it into practice. We get to see Haifa a lot from all sorts of angles and we do think it’s a beautiful city. But there is only one way to see it like this and that is what we did. Continue Reading →
Posted in No Category by Eran with 2 comments.
So… New Job, eh?
Yes. New job. Not much to say about else-wise. It’s software engineering. The environment is great. I like the people. It’s security related so I can’t say much more. I still don’t understand all of it myself. So, my life just got a bit more complicated and hopefully for the best. More to follow. Eventually.
Posted in No Category by Eran with comments disabled.
Taking Some Time
I am currently working on my last project of the semester. Basically, a client-server application I need to build from the ground up. Along with that, I’m gonna start a new job soon. My first professional, actually in my profession, work. Which means, I am very much trying to keep myself busy with the things I need to do. I have some things I want to write but those will have to wait until I can concentrate on anything other than work. Until then, this blog is going on hiatus. Until mid-September at least. So no worries.
Posted in No Category, School by Eran with comments disabled.
Kids and Strangers
I’ve been reading the Free Range Kids blog for a little while now. This blog came out of a book, written by the blogger Lenore, about the idea that kids are not unsafe if you leave them alone and when you give them responsibility, whether they are 16 years old, 11 years old or even 6-7 years old, you’re not endangering them but empowering them. And on top of that, the fact that current society sees all of these activities as dangerous to kids is borderline psychotic. It has been interesting so far, but the first post I would really like to talk about is this one. The story actually starts in this post (linked inside the new one as well) about the Virgin-Air Airline who forced a man to move from his seat just because he was seated next to two boys, 8 and 10 years old. The 33-year-old firefighter was immediately suspected as a secret pedophile just because he was male. This is a great blow to this man’s honor and to human decency in general. After that story was posted, Lenore posted two letters she got in response. One stating how right Virgin Air is of their action because 99% of pedophiles are male (so, by obvious “logic”, 99% of males are pedophiles, right?) and another one, which I linked to first, that tells an interesting story by a reader who says that when she was 4, she, her mother and her 1-year-old sister where going cross Continue Reading →
Posted in Humanity, Practice, Thinking Out Loud, Weird by Eran with comments disabled.
Eclipse, Tomcat and MySQL for Java Web Development
I am currently working on a web development project for school. Eclipse is pretty much a given. Tomcat is required by the guidelines and I decided to go with the MySQL as my database server. I took the instructions from this page. But here is my “Pro-Version” synopsis for savvy people who just want to get going. My system is a Windows 7 64-bit but this should be valid just about anywhere because these are platform independent bundles. Install the latest JDK if you haven’t already. (I am working of 7u5) Install Tomcat. You can lay it down anywhere, it’s just an unpack. (I use 7) Install Eclipse. It’s also an unpack. Unless you’re not doing Java at all (and here you are) there is no reason not to go for the JavaEE version which contains just about everything. (I use the Juno version) Make sure Eclipse knows where you’ve put your jdk. (If it’s not automatic, I’m sure you can figure it out by yourself) Install MySQL Community Edition (I have 5.5.27). Check in as new user and then select to skip the process. The installation itself is pretty straight forward. You’ll most likely want the developer install. And don’t forget to grab the connector/j library (Mine is 5.1.21) as well. Put connector/j library in a place you can find it. Like in the Java main directory or with your project. Go into your MySQL command prompt and create a new database (“create database something;”). Go back to Eclipse and open Continue Reading →
Posted in High-Tech, School by Eran with comments disabled.