Iain's Blog: June 2007

Friday, June 29, 2007

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Jonas family seems somewhat like Rick Deckard's world as a Blade Runner (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/) and a version of socialism dating sometime in the last 40 years, because of regular sight of supersonic jets (people are afraid of advancements in jets...less perfect then tried and true turboprop cargo planes .

His dad and mom are nurturers, and Jonas is going to be selected by the Receiver at 12. His sister, Lily, is turning 8 and looses her stuffed elephant. Jona's father speaks to his son of having fun after 12. His family is perfect so Jonas can be selected by the Receiver . Andrei, Jona's friend, talks a lot and confuses his words and is the same age as Jona, but isn't perfect and won't be selected by the "Receiver " (man on the cover). This will lead to Jona screwing up later in the book, because he isn't suppose to see Andrei after 12.
Did anyone know that the movie is coming out this year?
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435651/)

A family can be anything ranging from both parents to single parent and can include faster parents so that love and the ability to help with their son's payments are ethical. My family works and watches movies or Fox News. My mom likes to talk on the phone with her few friends and is short tempered.

I have dna from a Scottish and German family whose parents lived in Wisconsin and Minnesota since birth. My dad's parents moved here from Germany and my Mom's parents were always Scottish dna-wise.

Families are made up of biological parents no matter and sometimes families of adopted kids. That's not any less of a family My cousin Joshua was adopted by my Uncle's daughter, but he wanted to live with his biological dad recently so I don't see him anymore. I didn't see him enough to really like him though.

The Giver - Sameness

If we were all the same there would be no wars unless there was a resistance of anti-sameness citizens. Everybody would watch the same sports, go to selected vacations by the giver, and have stupid ceremonies where the parents say the newchild's name 30 times when their first baby dies by falling into river. I wouldn't be proud of my accomplishments, because job pay would be the same as most people in my occupation. There would be no military superpower like USA. There would be no 33 people died at Virginia Tech because of a Chinese physco's shooting-spree. There would be no Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Fusion or fission bombs would be unlikely. What is wrong with The Giver is every time Jonas stares up in the sky and see a military fighter jet...People think there may war in the past or present. These citizens take every jet seriously. Everybody would play the same non-violent videogames, and the only R movies would be comedy, action and drama. No crime-drama, war-flick, horror, porn-flicks or anime in case of Giver's world. All the Marvel Comics in stock are the 1950-1960s cloned versions where everything is pro-superhero. Bad guy always looses. None of the cars would have chrome and all the pickups would be generic w/o luxury. A world-wide plague would be very unlikely.

The Giver: Main issues

Main issues of "The Giver" is that no one was able to think, feel, grow, and develop as an individual. The community was so controlled that everyone was assigned a job, and a mission in life. Socialization was only done in a positive manner. Schooling was narrowly defined. The selective process, of who lives and who dies, was evil, yet unknowingly to the community. The selective process pertained to the newborns and the elderly. The whole community pretty much acted like programmed videogame characters. The community knew little beyond its borders. Living was simplified and disconnected from the world like the Amish.

The Giver: Euthanasia

There are reasons why society don't make doctors countdown to death of their patients. It's unmoral, and it's like putting a gun to your head and counting down to zero. In fact the author purposely put that in there, because she knows this is how the death sentence is carried out for murderers (aka the lethal injection death sentence)! The elderly in the book aren't murderers (except for Jona's father who kills babies) so they shouldn't die this way.

The Giver: Tradegies

It gives me chills when I think of brain death, because it's a human reaction. After death happens my conscious/subconscious is obviously in a infinite state of nothingness. It comes without warning and you're dead before you know something happened, because death is something completely at random. Pain is worst then death, yet counting down to death is worst then pain, but war is the exception. You don't die for your country; you let the other son of a gun die for his country. I prefer the natural random way myself [as a civilian].

As far as tradegies go, I have a many post-Apocalyptic videogames which pretend to be after nuclear fallout or demon fallout. I haven't experience a significant tragedy in reality, but have many examples in videogames. The movies are less important, but I've seen most of the the major end-of-the-earth ones.

Pre-Apocalyptic videogames I own :

1.Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion
2.Final Fantasy VII for Playstation
3.Half-life for PC
4.Shoot em ups like Ikauga for Gamecube, Gradius V, Silpheed The Lost Planet for PS2
5.Odin Sphere for PS2
6.Phantasy Star 2 for Sega Genesis
7.Phantasy Star 3 for Sega Genesis
8.Phantasy Star 4 for Sega Genesis
9.Xenosaga Episode 1 for Ps2
10.Xenosaga Episode 2 for Ps2
11.Xenosaga Episode 3 for Ps2

Apocalyptic videogames I own :

1.Battlefield 2142 for PC
2.Command & Conquer 3 for PC
3.Dead Rising
4.Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction for PC
5.Diablo for PC
6.Diseagea 2 for PS2
7.Diseagea Hour of Darkness for PS2
8.Gears of War for Xbox 360
9.Half-life 2 for PC
10.Phantom Dust for PS2
11.Resident Evil 0 for Gamecube
12.Resident Evil for Gamecube
13.Resident Evil 2 for Dreamcast
14.Resident Evil 3 for Dreamcast
15.Resident Evil 4 for Gamecube
16.Resident Evil Code Veronica for Dreamcast
17.Shin Megami Tensei – Digital Devil Saga 2 for Playstation 2
18.Shin Megami Tensei – Digital Devil Saga for Playstation 2
19.Shin Megami Tensei – Nocturine for Playstation 2
20.Warcraft 3 for PC
21.World of Warcraft for PC
22.Xenogears for Playstation
23. Stella Deus for PS2

Pre-Apocalyptic movies I've seen :

Dr. Strangelove
Armageddon

Post-Apocalyptic movies I've seen :

28 Days Later
A Boy and his Dog
Children of Men
Final Fantasy the Spirits Within
Independence Day
Mad Max
On the Beach
War of the Worlds

The Giver: Ceremonies

I graduated from conformation at Redeemer Lutheran Church. I was also baptized at a Lutheran church. Today, my religious beliefs are bare minimal. In elementary school, every classmate worked on their project to science fair held in the Gym. I never was awarded the blue ribbon, because my ribbon was white. I didn't try hard enough. Our family celebrates Easter, Thanksgiving, Halloween and Xmas, but those are national holidays as well as Christian holidays. Of those four holidays, we don't go to church for any of them. It is difficult to describe how ceremonies are different in each culture, because Atheists like to adopt Christmas, Thanksgiving and Halloween for unique characteristics respectfully. Everybody gets cake and presents for their birthdays. Every elementary student is involved in school ceremonies including graduation, science fair; a small percentage who play in band are a part of homecoming twice [one for football and the other for basketball] and Christmas band concerts. In elementary school, A-honor role students ceremonies went on special field trip. Other school ceremonies are Christmas band concert, and homecoming football game held at night. The Jewish are known to have 24 more holidays than Christians holidays. Muslims have a lot more ceremonies than Christians and Lutherans. The Super Bowl a national ceremony in that 150,000,000 viewers watch the game on TV and eat junk food. Also since NASCAR is the 2nd hottest spectator sport, 1/3 of US households watch the Daytona 500 Sunday and eat junk food and watch cars go around in circles counterclockwise as the announcer names the places and gives history.

The Giver - Sameness

Saturn Review

I was researching thru Game Faqs and perhaps steal a review, yet I haven't. Everything there was 8 or 9 or 10. Sega Saturn biased. In reality we know that Saturn "sucked", N64 sucked much less, and PS1 was awesome. With a few possible exceptions.

Many Saturn games were coming to the US that made it to Playstation after Saturn's death including 3 Game Art RPGs

Grandia - which was suppose to be Sega's weapon against Final Fantasy VII. The PS port is idenical graphically, sound, and gameplay...and recieved a 9.2 at Gamespot and 9.0 at IGN.

Lunar 1 and 2 - Port of the ill fated 16-bit Sega CD which I guess was Working Designs strategy of getting an average RPG to small nitchi Sega RPG fan hooked. That also went to playstation and scored a 7.5 at the lowest and 8.0 at the highest.

Princess Crown - RPG from Atlus and Vanillaware that got ported to PSP this year. It is amongst the most popular Saturn games at Gamerankings and Gamefaqs. Never came to the US.

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner was ported to PS2 as a remake of the Saturn game. Did come to the US, but scored below average [for me] 7.5 out of 10.

Daytona USA got a remake on Dreamcast known as Datyona USA 2001

Then of course the 2K sports series

NFL '97 was designed by Visual Concepts and continued on Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox till 2004

World Series Baseball by Visual Concepts continued on Dreamcast, PS2, and Xbox till 2003

Earthworm Jim 2 was ported to PS thru the Saturn port of the Genesis game

Panzer Dragoon Saga got a sequel on Xbox called Panzer Dragoon Orta and got a 9.2 at IGN.com and 9.2 at Gamespot. It was a lackluster seller.

Then of course the Saturn game Shenmue (thought to be 95% finished) got remade for Dreamcast and still is the most expensive videogame project to date.

Now for the actual review:

I started up the Saturn, was heavy, and played Gex 2D platformer. Crystal Dynamics succeeded in giving it that B game feel. It felt like Donkey Kong Country of all games. The first and only level I played was the Cemetery, because it was discusting. The controller was decent

Then I popped in Virtua Fighter 1, the really blocky game. This game had only 3 buttons to control from and felt really dated, and there was no special moves that required pressing 1 button twice quickly or C+A or A+B or A+C or anything. The music was horrid.

After that I stuck in Daytona USA. I played the beginner and intermediate races. With the horrid dpad, I managed to get 8th place. Now this game DOES NOT feel like the 2nd best selling Arcade unit of all time, that's for certain. I'm thinking that the best selling one was MS. PAC-MAN. The music was terrific though, but the cars and low res textures feels like 1994! Sega actually improved the gfx further in the Championship Edition, but I don't own it.

Next up is Sonic 3D Blast. I am so used to playing this with the Gens emulator that I give this a slighty better score now that I used the Nights 3D controller. So it got bad reviews. That's because it wasn't very expensive to make. Back then Traveler's Tales were new to the industry and was working cheaply, and Sega had to do money elseware such as Shenmue (stupid Shenmue!) and Panzer Dragoon trilogy. I liked the music of the second area. It seemed too easy.

I did play 8 minutes of Nights into Dreams. This game is way to cutsy for me. There are colors, and you go around loops, and the gameplay is so dated now, that Nights into Dreams 2 (while got 6.5 on Wii) probably plays a bit better. It's just that crazy Sega fans will always be biased towards the best selling US Saturn game.

It also had Guardian Heroes, Shining Force 3, and Panzer Dragoon Saga that never got played by many people. I played Guardian Heroes and Panzer Dragoon Saga via a PC-based emulator. My last bought Saturn game from now on will be PD2 Zwei.

Too Poor for Ebay

I paid too much money offline for JRPGs, and my parents refuse to use Paypal, because I can't put my bank account number on the internet despite I'm 22. I would put too much money into Ebay, that I couldn't pay for other things. My parents dislike virtual money and don't want to get into internet fraud. I'd feel funny asking my Uncle Jim to buy me Valkyrie Profile.

Games I paid too much for:
* by the ones I own
** Own for PSP

Playstation

* Grandia: Offline $50 | Ebay: $30
* Lunar the Silver Star Story Complete Offline $70 |Ebay $30
* Lunar Eternal Blue Complete Offline $60 | ebay $40
** Valykie Profile Offline $120 |Ebay $50 (own for PSP)
** Tales of Destiny 2 (Tales of eternia) Offline $80 |Ebay $35 (own it for PSP)
* Alundra | Offline $50 offline | Ebay $40
* Brave Fencer Musashi Offline $50 | Ebay $30
* Persona 2 offline $50 |ebay $30
*Arc the Lad Collection offline $110 |I paid $40 | ebay $40

Saturn

Panzer Dragoon Saga $180 | ebay $80
Dragon Force offline $100 | ebay $50
Shining Force III Disc 1 $130 |ebay $50
Guardian Heroes | offline $100 |Ebay $40

I'm unemployed again [for 2 weeks minimum], because the website server isn't working at Computer Network Services. I add products to a online store for them. I also was hoping to install Suse 10.2 Rieser file system over a corrupted EXT2 partition so I may install Fedora Linux 7 again for their Fedora Directory Server. It's not guaranteed to work, and I would be unpaid.

Monday, June 18, 2007

Dream Job

This is my dream job that a network specialist person like me aims for…the higher level of excellence of network specialist I thought it would be. Right now I’m working at an excellent job. I would like to be networking a super computer like Blue Gene L for someone. First off, I would be networking the US Department of Energy or Defense systems at North American Aerospace Defense Command in Cheyenne Mountain by having a Cisco Certified Network Professional certification and making $40 an hour someday. I have an idea that I’m suppose to place network of fiber optic cables to and from the super computer. I could also want to control MPEG4 Advanced Video Coding (codec, not abbreviation), streams coming in and out, because in my opinion compression is neat. Maybe I could be working in the space control center or the command center. I could be one of the 1,100 military and civilian personnel working in it.

I know supercomputers have virtual on-the-fly efx3 file system compression or NT (NT is NT, not abbreviated) File System compression depending if it’s UNIX (not Abbreviated) or Windows, MPEG4 (codec, not abbreviation), JPEG2000 (codec, not abbreviated), monochrome Institute of Electronically and Electronic Engineers video standard.

However, I liked the idea I was in a tape library room at Assurant that is similar to a super computer. State-of-the-art tape drives held 2 Terabyte when virtually compressed and had a physical size of 1 Terabyte. Most of the obsolete tape drives held a couple Gigabyte and were thrown away. That was only eight months ago and the first PC type Serial-ATA (ATA isn’t abbreviation) 1 Terabyte Desktop hard drive came out last month for $750.

So I would like to network with a Cisco Certified Network Professional degree and be in charge of compressing all the stuff in MPEG4 AVC (codec, not abbreviation) for people even if it has nothing to do with Cisco Certified Network Professional.

If I choose web designer, I would like to be able to summit my design to a big company such as right now I’m doing an online store for PC Network Services. My videogame pages weren’t hugely complex nor popular so I thought webpage making as a hobby.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

The Giver - The End

I believe that Jonas becomes the leader of the village who saved him at the bottom of the hill. The village is full of refugees from the other communities that escaped death, because of their physical disabiliies. The villagers use more items superior to the Giver's communites like videogames [ps2, xbox] and internet pc. The village would be communities with the House of the Old and The Elders filding clues in the forest and possibly kill them if undercover spies found where the physically handicapped refugees were living at. It'll end of to be a civil war between the communities over spies, distrust, and control over natural resources. After it ends, the communies become a imperfect United States again and the truth is well known.