3Run

Free running = mind blowingly awesome.

I was browsing through my YouTube favorites earlier and I found a 3Run video and followed it back to their website. 3Run is group consisting of a bunch of guys who do inspirational free running videos and commercial work for a couple of companies.

Their website has a bunch of really cool videos and is very well put together. If you have any free time at all and like watching sweet videos, you should go check out their site. If you're lazy, I've included two videos here, one that's pretty funny and one for the straight up wow factor. Enjoy.

Worst!

You know what's the worst? When you have a good idea for a blog post, and then someone you know steals it. Rats.

On the other hand, you know what is not the worst? Getting out of your dorm! I realized recently that I spend the vast majority of my free time couped up in my dorm room or one of my friends' dorm room that's in the same building. It drives you a little crazy after a while, which is probably one (of the many) reasons I enjoy going back home on the weekends so much.

No more dorm!

This weekend I stayed at my college, but I went out to a friend's off campus apartment one night and another friend's house the next night. Both nights, we played some games, laughed a lot, and generally had a good time. The second night, we even went and kicked around town for a while. Kinda wild and crazy, I know, but we're like that.

It wasn't anything super exciting, but it felt good to have a change of scenery. I think I'll be trying to do that more often.

New Look

My blog has a new look, as I'm sure you've noticed by now.

I spent a fair amount of time today hunting for a layout that I liked and then tampering with the code and modifying images in order to fine tune it. My other layout was just a couple of colors that I'd grabbed and thrown together; I'd always intended to change it to something nicer when I had the time.

I'm fairly satisfied with the new results. I might go back and tweak a few more things, though, or even try out another template I was looking at.

So... thoughts?

Told You So

Everyone does stupid things.

I recently witnessed a couple of different "I told you so" moments. I wasn't directly involved in either moment, though, which allowed me to observe the ways that different people handled the situation.

We all get into situations that are not good for us. Sometimes they involve responsibilities we shouldn't have, sometimes they involve relationships we shouldn't bother with, sometimes they involve activities that we shouldn't do. What's worse, oftentimes our friends will point out to us the foolishness of our own actions. As often as not, we laugh off or ignore these warnings, despite the fact that our friends can often see things better than we can by virtue of being distanced from them.

Eventually (or at least hopefully), we come to realize that our friends were right and that ________ was a dumb idea. We have to go to our friends and say "this was a dumb idea". This scene is what I witnessed.

In one scene, the friend said "Yes! Yes it was! I told you so, but you didn't listen!" I didn't feel good watching this response. The person had suffered enough already as a result of their own decisions. Rubbing in the fact that they had been warned seemed a little cruel/self-serving.

In the other scene, the friend responded with "Really? Why do you say that?" The person admitting fault then explained what their own thoughts and feelings on the situation were. This way of handling the situation was vastly better. If someone admits a dumb mistake to you, and they've already suffered as a result of that decision, responding with care and compassionate concern, casting aside any inclination to flaunt your own correctness, is the way to go.

So call it a reminder to all of you out there... if someone admits a mistake to you that you saw days or weeks or months or years ago, squash the urge to laugh in their face. It's not what they need. Talk to them, help them through the consequences of their mistake if that's what they need, and above all, show them love. Cause we're all human, and we all make mistakes.

Busy!

If you frequent my blog, you may have noticed that it's been quieter as of late. Rest assured, though, that I have not abandoned it. I've just been busy doing other things lately. First spring break kept me busy, and now I've got a couple of projects vying for my time. The first being finishing FFXIII, the other being finishing my book by the end of march (which may or may not happen).

However, I am by no means running short on ideas for posts. If anything, I've got a backlog of them but no spare time that I feel like dedicating to writing them out. I will, however, try to throw something up on occasion, just to keep my own little bit of cyberspace from becoming a ghost town. Hopefully, in a week or two, I'll get back to posting more frequently.

Warm Blooded Life

I've noticed a rather depressing trend in the last several years, and a conversation with some friends I had recently brought the issue to the forefront of my mind again. It seems these days that, as often as not, people tend to try to do the socially difficult things in their lives through impersonal means. The biggest mediums I've noticed are texting and Facebook messaging(or any other form of e-mail). Whether they're making up, breaking up, or breaking down, people seem to stray towards these mediums as often as not.

I understand that it's easier to type out words on a screen and press send than it is to confront a person with an issue you're having with them or to deliver some bad news in the flesh. However, it's also a huge cop out. People should be willing and prepared to talk things out in actual-space instead of relying on cyberspace as a crutch because they're scared or nervous to say what they have to say. Lightweight forms of communication like texting and Facebook are great for lightweight communication, like inviting people to hang out, but if you have something heavy to say, you'd better be willing to actually say it.

Some people aren't good at this sort of thing. I should know; I'm one of them. I am vastly more eloquent and clear in writing than I am in speaking. I tend to get tongue tied and have never considered myself any kind of orator. That said, I make a point not to cop out and discuss things with people using text when said things should be discussed using sounds. Being willing to actually talk things out is more important that not letting people see you stutter.

Even as I write this, I wonder whether this post is slightly hypocritical. I don't think it is, though, for a couple of reasons. One is that I'm just discussing a pet peeve of mine, not substituting this post for a conversation I would otherwise have to have. The other is that, if anyone were to ask me this, I would say the exact same thing in the exact same words (or possibly stronger ones). I'm not blogging this because I'm nervous to say it in real life.

Bottom line, say what you have to say in real, tangled, unclear, emotional, flesh and bone, face to face life. It's harder, but it's worth the effort.

Science FTW?

The other night I went to go and see the new Sherlock Holmes movie with some of my friends. I'd seen it before, but my friends' college was showing it for free, so I decided I may as well see it again.

I wasn't real impressed with it the first time that I saw it, and I was even less so the second time, perhaps partly because I was tired and not very comfortable while watching the movie. I could go into detail on why I wasn't a huge fan, but that would make this post quite long, and I'd like to focus on something else.

That something else is the topic of science vs. non-science. It's not even science vs. religion, as the villain in the movie *spoiler warning!* pretends to have occult powers and such, and I wouldn't really consider the occult a religion in the classical sense.

At the "big reveal" at the end of the movie, Holmes explains how the so-called occult powers of the antagonist were actually just a series of cleverly concocted ruses designed to sway the weak and stupid. Nothing supernatural ever went on, and everything has a rational, scientific explanation.

I'm no fan of the occult, so I wasn't sad to see occult practices turned into shams, but the idea behind the whole thing bothers me because I see how pervasive it is in society. Science dominates in today's world, leaving little room for anything else.

Want examples? How about God? Anywhere science enters, God tends to get dismissed. In matters regarding the universe around us, you'll get laughed at for mentioning God. In matters of counseling, a field dealing with the mind and soul, God has been displaced by the science of mental illnesses and neurology. In matters of ethics and morality, God has been set aside in favor of statistics and genetic predispositions. Numerous times, I've heard people say people say "science proves that God doesn't exist", or something similar sentiment.

Here's the thing: science is basically mankind's combined efforts, and God is so much vastly greater than any combination of mankind. God made (and could unmake) the laws of science that we little humans tout so mightily.

I would like to see a little less reliance on science and a little more room for the supernatural. This runs counter to the prevailing idea that science is king and anything else is for the weak-minded and stupid, but in the end, it is the more accurate worldview. Because not everything fits into science's clean little boxes, and that's not going to change.

Jigga What?!

Captcha is a stupid word.

Nonetheless, it is the word that was decided upon for the lovely little word boxes that you see everywhere. Captchas were developed to keep bots from doing a variety of things, most of which involve spam. The idea is that a computer program can't look at a muddled or twisted picture of letters and figure out what it means, meaning it can't do whatever it was supposed to.

For example, many Blogspot blogs require you to fill out a captcha before you can leave a post. This way, bots can't fill comment spaces with ads and spam.

Aside from the name, captchas are great, because they work. Where your average spambot can't make heads or tails of the image, the awesomely designed human brain handles it effortlessly.

Blogspot captchas always make me laugh, though. I chose to allow people to post on my blog without filling out a captcha, since unless it's a problem, I see no reason to make people bother with an additional step, but some of my friends have left the feature on (which is fine). The reason these captchas make me laugh is because instead of being a random assortment of letters and numbers (such as "xl5ji3"), they are an assortment of letters combined in phonetic ways, yet they don't actually spell out words.

If you don't get what I mean, allow me to illustrate. The captcha creator will often throw together letter combinations we see in words, such as "th", "str", "pl", etc. They also have a balanced number of letters and vowels, so that you end up with strings of letters that seem like they should be words, but aren't. Some ones that I just pulled up and looked at were "tsweat", "reptona", "bodccei", and "arglost".

I find it humorous because often times I sit and imagine what one of these pseudo-words might mean. To me, "bodccei" sounds like some sort of funky little tree, "arglost" is reminiscent of a ship or a fantastical weapon, and "reptona" may as well be the name of some female lizard warrior in a sci-fi TV show.

It may not make much sense, but at least it gives me a reason to smile as I fill out captchas every time I want to leave a comment.

Final Fantasy XIII

For those of you who haven't talked to me recently (because if you have, I'm sure you already know), Final Fantasy XIII came out last week, and I've been playing it quite a bit.

If you follow Icarus's blog, you've already read a post about this game. However, I'm going to focus on something a little bit different.

Overall, I've been loving pretty much every aspect of the game. The new Paradigm battle system is absolutely beautiful to watch, making battles resemble what used to only be possible in pre-rendered cutscenes or movies like Advent Children. It may seem a little bit passive, but it's still a ton of fun to use and hasn't gotten old even after many hours of gameplay.

Also, it's fairly hard. To me, that's actually quite enjoyable. I like to play through video games on the hardest setting, as I prefer something that gives me a challenge and I tend to be fairly good at video games. The Paradigm battle system is set up in such a way so that if you die, you usually do so because you made the wrong move or forgot to pay attention to something, not because you were dogpiled by ten thousand unkillable enemies. Because of this, when I die, I usually shake me head and think "yep, I should have done that differently" instead of growling at the game for being unfair and unbeatable.

The battle system is not really what I want to focus on, though. The main thing is the characters/story and how the graphics contribute to them. The story is one of the best I've seen in a video game for a long time. You can tell the designers put some real effort into building a world and characters. Not only that, but the characters are developed in such a way that pulls you into their stories. I wrote a post not too long ago about characterization, and Final Fantasy XIII is succeeding as well if not better than Final Fantasy X did. I'm pretty sure, within the first hour or two of the game, I had already sighed, smiled, laughed, yelled, flinched, and brushed back tears along with the characters.

One reason that this game is succeeding so well at telling a powerful story is the graphics. Normally, graphics and story are not closely linked. There are plenty of games out their with crappy graphics and a beautiful story, or vice versa.

Final Fantasy XIII's graphics are different because of the amount of work that was spent on characters' faces. There are an incredible number of polygons in each character's face, which means that developers can make faces seem even more lifelike that ever before. More than just the number of polygons, though, is the way that the faces are animated. The developers had to have spent a fair amount of time observing and learning how to animate emotion and, as a result, were able to express an incredible range of emotions with a level of subtlety and grace that has never been approached until now.

This makes you identify with characters more and immerses you more deeply in the experience. Mouths sync with words, faces convey the appropriate emotions, and everything just seems to fit, giving you more time to empathize and less to critique.

Even the voice acting is superb, done by people with expressive voices that match their characters. Some games sound like they were voiced by the people who developed them. In XIII, though, I have yet to hear a voice actor who sounded anything but convincing.

So hats off to Square Enix for using their advancements in graphics to do more than make pretty explosions. Their superb work in incorporating emotional subtleties into the characters pays off big time.

A Feast Fit For A T-Rex

Look on my sammiches, ye Mighty, and despair!

Today, I was hungry. Hungry enough to eat a bear. Perhaps even two bears. Something had to be done.

We happened to be going to the store anyway, because late night store runs are what we do. My best friend and I decided that we were going to make some sandwiches. Some chicken bacon ranch sandwiches. So we gathered the necessary ingredients and returned to our friends humble abode to begin construction.

First, my friend cooked up the pound and a quarter of chicken breasts that we had bought. Meanwhile, I prepared the loaf (yes loaf) of bread and fried up the pound of bacon. Once everything was cooked and prepared, we began the assembly process. Vast amounts of chicken. Enough strips of bacon to kill a horse. Piles of lettuce, plenty of ranch, and an entire tomato for my half (since my friend doesn't like tomatoes).

Allow me to show you my half of our masterpiece.



It was probably the best sammich I've ever eaten. It was also enormous. The picture doesn't give a real good sense of perspective, so allow me to help you out a bit. That plate is a full sized dinner plate. Check the hand at the bottom of the picture for scale. This sandwich was built out of an entire loaf bakery bread, and each half contains slightly more than an entire pound of meat. Stupendous!

I finished my entire half. It was more an act of willpower than of anything else, but I did it anyway, because a sammich that amazing shouldn't go to waste. My friend and I decided that we should make sammiches like that far more often, although not very often. As it stands, neither one of us expects to be hungry again anytime in the next three days.

Carpet Bombing Hard Drives

Sometimes, hard drives must be leveled.

My best friend's computer recently bit the dust. I, being somewhat computer savvy, was called in to take a look at what had gone wrong. Folks, it was not pretty.

My friend's computer was somewhat of a communal computer in that he let a lot of different people use it pretty much whenever they wanted to, and these people were not always as responsible or respectful as they should have been. Anywho, just recently, he picked up a virus that started to play merry hell with his computer.

I've patched up a few computers before, and in most every case I've seen, the computer in question just needed some love and attention. A lot of what people call a virus is actually just neglect. Too many background processes running, a cluttered registry, an overfilled hard drive, etc. All stuff that can be fixed relatively easily.

My friend's computer was something new, though. It was an honest to goodness virus. As in, rip up your computer and nom nom nom your system files into a gooey paste. (Your system files are the bits that make your computer go.)

So, after attempting a few other things totally unsuccessfully, I decided it would be easiest to just reset everything to factory settings, which meant reformatting his hard drive. That's the equivalent of carpet bombing a city and starting over. Still, he had most of his stuff backed up on an external hard drive (smart man), so starting clean will probably be for the best, even if he has to go and redownload some programs and such.

Now, time for a little promotion. If you don't have an antivirus, you should. I highly recommend AVG Free... it's user friendly, lightweight (unlike many of the big name antivirus programs out there), and effective. If you don't want to install it, talk to me, and I'll do it for you. Computers that are at risk or under lots of abuse cry out to me to be fixed, and knowing that they're happy when I'm through with them is all the reward I need. Oh yeah, I'm a nerd.

On Cheaters

Do cheaters deserve a second chance?

I heard a story recently that got me thinking about the issue of cheating. The person who was telling the story was encouraging people to take back their spouses even if they cheated because as 1 Cor. 12:4-8 says, love never fails and keeps no record of wrongs.

That didn't jive with me.

I've sometimes contemplated whether or not I would take back a girl I was dating/married to if she cheated on me. I've never contemplated it very long because I already know the answer. The short version is "no". The long version is "no, and I'd tell her to get out and never cross my sight again".

Yeah, it'd be harsh. But you know what? Cheating on someone is harsh.

But what I had heard kept bouncing around in my head, and I got to thinking. Once I tired of thinking, I turned and dug into the Bible to see what I could find on cheating, on forgiveness, and on love. Here's a little of what I found.

Colossians 3:13 - Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.

1 Peter 4:8 - Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

Matthew 19:9 - I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 - Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs... It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."

I pondered these verses for a while. Do they apply to relationships? Not directly, no (Paul, for instance, was writing to the members of various churches, not a couples' therapy group), but shouldn't the love I have for my spouse match or exceed the love I have for my brother(in the Biblical sense)? This language about love and forgiveness is so strong that I can't help but think that someone who loved their spouse this way would take them back even if they cheated.

On the other hand, Jesus talks about how, if you divorce someone and remarry, it's a sin unless they cheated on you. It follows logically, then, that it's not a sin to divorce and remarry if your spouse cheats on you. Based on this verse, I think it's fair enough to say that turning a cheater away is not a sin.

Which is good, because I honestly don't know if I could take a someone back after they cheated on me and shattered my trust. I could probably try hard, and it would definitely help if the person was deeply sorry for what they had done and fiercely committed to righting their wrongs, but even then, I have trouble seeing it working.

One part of me would like to be able to love people like the verses I've found instruct us to. But another part of me screams that loving people like that is just inviting use and abuse and pain and heartbreak.

I'll do my best to love my brothers and neighbors as God instructs and, if I marry, to love my spouse as deeply and completely as I know how. Then I think I'll take comfort in the fact that God will not count it against me should I draw the line at taking back those who would mangle my heart.

Of course, I don't really think it will ever happen to me, or at least I sincerely pray that it won't, but the question still makes me think.

Therefore, I'm curious to see what you all think on the topic. Leave a comment if you have any thoughts.

Rock Anthem For Saving The World

Shout out to Martin O'Donnell!

Halo. The first Halo game was released back in 2001. Since then, the Halo universe has spawned sequels, books, cartoons, clothing, gaming leagues, and countless giddy fan boys. I would know - I probably qualify as one of said giddy fan boys.

The game definitely deserves the recognition it's gotten. It has a fantastic story, absolutely incredible gameplay, and an excellent multiplayer. Part of the game that some people may not fully appreciate, though, (and the point of this post) is the incredible music that accompanies you as you don your MJOLNIR armor and fight to save humanity.

Music is powerful, a fact which movie makes and the like take advantage of all the time. When you watch Lord of the Rings and the camera is doing those great, soaring aerial views of the fellowship traveling, the music stirs your emotions. You're ready to run out join Aragon and Frodo in their quest to destroy the ring and defeat Sauron. As video games have progressed through the years, they are becoming more and more like movies in this respect. I believe that Halo is the finest example of this.

Martin O'Donnell, the composer of the Halo music (and also a Wheaton grad - woo!) started with a great soundtrack for the first game and kept improving for the sequels. His music is evocative and powerful, on par with any movie soundtrack you care to name. As you explore your first Halo, the music is bold and adventurous, making you want to cruise around in your vehicle and unearth new and exciting discoveries. When you're tasked with destroying an enemy position, the music winds up and gets you in the mood to go and stomp on some aliens faces like you're the fist of God. When you're discovering the creepy parasites known as The Flood, the music makes you nervous to peak around each corner for fear of what might be hiding there. When it's time to run, the music will have you rising out of your chair and slamming the joysticks forward as hard as your adrenaline-filled thumbs can manage, as though that might somehow make you flee faster. When you're victorious, the music will have you throwing your arms up in the air and cheering at the top of your lungs in celebration.

As you might have guessed by now, this music is a far cry from the 8 bit stuff of Super Mario Brothers. We're talking full orchestras accompanied by a twenty person choir to make this stuff. Some top-notch bands (Breaking Benjamin, Incubus, etc.) have even contributed to the Halo soundtracks.

Without such amazing music, Halo would be less than it is. I'm sure it would still be a big deal. The gameplay and multiplayer alone are enough to allow it to stand tall. But other games (Call of Duty, for example) have great gameplay and multiplayer, too. None of them have spawned the following that Halo has.

It might just be that the Halo story is so much grander (aliens and spaceships and superweapons, oh my!) than games like Call of Duty. But it might just as well be that the music in Halo stirs players' emotions so much more than in other games. And when you get players emotionally invested in a storyline or an action sequence, they're yours. Fandom ensues.

Regardless of its effect, the music is stellar and, if you get the chance, well worth listening to.

Taste the Rainbow

I have come to the conclusion today that Skittles are the happiest candy.

They may not be the tastiest candy (I'm a pretty huge fan of chocolate, personally), but when you dump out a bag of Skittles, you're greeted by an explosion of bright, happy colors and sweet, tasty goodness. Skittles make it hard to be sad.

Consider this... if the sky were suddenly to start raining candy, what candy would be the best? I believe the answer to be Skittles. They're a fairly clean candy, they would smoosh underfoot nicely, they would make the world look awesome.

Here's hoping that a tornado picks up a nearby Skittles plant.

Eeeeeee!

The trailer for the Halo: Reach multiplayer just came out today! Take a gander:



Holy crap, talk about amazing. Not only does the game look downright breathtaking, but all the new toys they're adding should make the game a total riot to play.

There are some things I'm a little bit concerned about such as the one-headshot kill battle rifle (because the normal battle rifle wasn't scary enough already) and the jetpacks (which, despite being cool, rarely seem to be done well), but I'm trusting in the abilities of Bungie's people to balance a game and make it fun and exciting. They haven't let me down yet, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

And in the meantime, I'll squeal like a little girl and count down the days until May 3rd. Woo hoo!

Two Flavors

In my creative writing class, we just started the poetry section. I've always had a sort of love-hate relationship with poetry.

On the one hand, I can be a fairly proficient poet when I have the motivation and I set my mind to it. On the other hand, I rarely have said motivation. Poetry is rarely my chosen form of expression, and when it is, it's not exactly something I'd share with my creative writing class.

But beyond writing it, poetry is sort of an odd brew in that, in my mind, it comes in two flavors, one desirable and one undesirable. The undesirable type is that which is obscure to the extreme, nonsensical, and entirely meaningless save for that meaning which the reader forcibly imprints on the poem.

The desirable type is that which takes some form of truth or meaningful experience and delivers it in a truly profound and powerful way that, while perhaps not immediately recognizable, becomes clear when subjected to careful consideration.

I think the difference between the two is largely a matter of degree. Some poets plant enough clues in their poetry so that readers can reach the conclusion that the poet intended without having to track said poet down and interrogate him. Some ramble about their topic and speak in opaque metaphors, forcing the readers to fill in the gaping holes on their own.

Maybe it's just that I'm not an English person, or a poetry person, or whatever else. Maybe other people are much better at finding the meaning behind poetry than I am. But I feel like if you're writing poetry, other people should be able to read it and, with enough thought, find that emotion or thought which sparked the words you created, not wander aimlessly through the possibilities.