Rants, Россия, Riddles and Raves
See the world through 21 year old glasses

I went to see Avatar (in 3d of course) with my family recently. And during the whole movie I couldn’t help but keep thinking that it was extremely similar to Pocahontas. When I got home I decided to poke around on the web to see if I was the only one. Turns out, I’m not! Someone was clever enough to create the following.

The below contains spoilers of the plot, so open at your own risk! It’s a little small, so you’ll probably have to zoom in to read it, or click on it for the full size.

…unless you really want to.

Here’s a game I found  kind of interesting, and it might hold your attention for a little bit. It’s Tetris with a twist.

Give it a try if you have some time to kill.

(Requires Flash player)

That last quiz made me want to play one of the US states

http://www.ironicsans.com/state22.html

It gives you 10 minutes instead of 5, to see how many states you can name. I was disappointed I wasn’t able to name all 50, I got 46.

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also here is my room in St. PetersburgI misspeak when I say “World Cup”. I should have said “Euro Cup”

This was towards the end of our trip, so our rooms are a mess getting things ready to be packed. Also, for those of you that remember our room drama, this is the second room (301), where me an my roommate were the only people there, not the first room (201) with the chinese roommates.

A quick fun waste of a few minutes. How many countries can you name in 5 minutes. No cheating!!

I got 44, how well can you do?

Supposedly the average is 56 or so, but it states that “Some people take it many times”

P.S. Use the common, English name. Spelling counts. Has to be a sovereign nation, so Scotland and England don’t count, etc…

I scaled Mount Olympus, and came upon three Greek goddesses who were sitting in a row in an old temple. Their names were Truth (who never lies), Lie (who always lies) and Wisdom (who sometimes lies).

I asked the one on my left, “Who is sitting next to you?”
“Truth,” she answered.
Turning to the middle one, I asked, “Who are you?”
“Wisdom.”
And finally to the one on my right, I inquired, “Who is your neighbor?”
“Lie,” she replied.

Clearly, who is who?

Not quite Greece, but me in Palace Square. Это не Греция, это я на Дворцовой Площаде.

We’re coming down to the final minutes here, in this election. A poll of 1,019 registered Arizona voters had shocking results. 46% said they were voting for McCain, 44% for Obama, and 9% were undecided. This is extremely close for a state that regularly goes red in the presidential election. Not to mention an Arizona senator is one of the two major candidates.

So make sure you get to the polls this Tuesday to vote (if you haven’t already mailed your ballot in)! Whoever you support, your vote might make more of a difference than ever before!

The whole story can be found here.

If you want to find Barack Obama these days, you might have to do nothing more than turn on your Xbox. As we head down the home stretch of the election, Obama’s campaign is trying to do everything they can to ensure voter turnout. They’ve even lately been advertising inside video games.With technology increasing as fast as it is these days, video games are getting more and more complex. Life-like physics, being able to play with anyone in the world over the internet, breathtaking landscapes, and realistic artificial intelligence, are all being implemented. This is causing an ever increasing standard of expectations in gamers, and to meet these expectations game makers are forced to constantly invest more and more money into these games.

But somehow, the price of video games hasn’t changed all that much over the past several years. Even though it takes years and large teams to make these games, companies are still able to sell them at a relatively stable price.

“How?” you ask. Advertising. While generally frowned upon by consumers, I am thankful for advertising (at least in some of the forms it is in now). What kind of free TV would we have without advertising? None. What about radio? None. And forget about $60 for a video game that took two years and millions of dollars.

The type of advertising in these games is non-invasive, and actually blends itself well to the demand to make games more realistic. Lately, games have started having billboards of real ads in their worlds, or, for example on an NBA game, an ad underneath the announcer’s table like you would actually see in real life. So if Sony pays to have their billboard in my game, I get it for cheaper, Sony gets some advertising, and the company has a game that is more like real life than ever before. Negotiating at its finest.

The Obama campaign has recognized the potential of this new advertising medium and has jumped on it. The aim is to target young males, ages 18-34, a demographic that is “typically hard to reach”, and encourage them to vote (preferably for Obama).

I for one have no complaints about the current state of advertising, but I fear with the further inevitable rise in the cost of making a video game, we will start to see more invasive advertising, or a rise in the cost of games. And neither is something I’m too excited about.

Here is one of the ads in the game “Burnout Paradise”.

The full story can be found here here.

Attention technology enthusiasts!

A few weeks ago a friend of mine guided me over to an amazing website. This website features a new product every day (usually electronic/computer/technology related) for a very low price. In fact as I’m writing this, the special of the day is a brand new plantronics bluetooth headset for $9.99 plus $5 shipping. A few days ago they had a 4g micro SD card for $5.99 plus $5 shipping. They’ve even featured laptops, desktops, and monitors.

Greatest of all is the ease of shopping, because if you don’t like the item of the day, that’s it, you’re done. There’s no clicking through pages of products If you do like it, you can order up to 3 online, and they’ll be shipped to your address. To check it out, head over to Woot.com and check out the item of the day. A warning though, they have a limited quantity, so items will sell out if they’re popular. Also, they operate on central time, so if you’re in Arizona and it’s 11:30 and you want to buy the item you saw earlier in the day, too late!

Also, for you wine aficionados, you can check out Wine.Woot.com. The item there changes every few days, instead of every day, and is usually a multiple bottle offer. For you Arizonans though, don’t get your hopes up, they won’t ship here due to legislation.

And lastly, I’m not sure if I’m the only one still regularly wearing T-shirts, but if not: There are a couple sites to check out to buy t-shirts from, they have the same one item a day deal. On Shirt.Woot.com, they go for $10 including shipping, and on TeeFury.com for $11 including shipping. (For the more affluent readers, you can check out the more lucrative DesignByHumans.com, which also features a new shirt every day. Their shirts cost over twice as much when you include shipping, but they don’t stop selling shirts after one day.)

So if you find yourself seduced by the lure of online shopping, you might find value in spending less than 2 minutes a day to check out the featured items. You never know, you could be one click away from seeing the item you’ve been dreaming about getting for a very low price.

P.S. I don’t mean for this to sound like an ad. It’s just that I’ve had a very positive experience with a couple of these sites, and wanted to share them with all of you.

Me in the light rain in front of The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood. Я в Храм Спаса на Крови.

Okay to (hopefully) lighten your day, I thought I’d throw some Tom Swiftys in here.

If you don’t know what they are, here are a couple examples:
“Pass me the shellfish,” said Tom, crabbily.
“Can I go looking for the Grail again?” Tom requested.
(The number of spaces correpsonds to the number of letters)

So there you go! You’ve got your sword, now set off and conquer these ones!

[1] “But you don’t deserve an A,” said Tom, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ his student.
[2] “Oh, I’ve dropped my toothpaste,” said Tom, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .
[3] “OK, I’ll send the code again,” said Tom, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .
[4] “Oh no, I forgot to pay the electric bill again,” said Tom, _ _ _ _ _ _ .
[5] “Look! This chicken has no beak!” pronounced Tom, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .
[6] “Never, never, never force-feed a lion,” declared Tom, _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .
[7] “I’ll have the chicken soup with matzo balls and gefilte fish,” said Tom, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .
[8] “Alright! You can borrow it again,” _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Tom.
[9] “This food tastes like Plutonium,” Tom said _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .
[10] “They had to amputate them both at the ankles,” said Tom, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .

Me in the city of Pushkin, in the gardens where Pushkin spent a lot of his time, and wrote some poems. Я в Пушкин, где Пушкин занимался и писал поэмы.

My apologies.

There is simply no valid excuse for having disappeared these many months I was gone. Sure, for superficial conversation’s sake I can try to make excuse after excuse about being consumed by moving,  my birthday, starting school, being in school, relaxing after my trip, etc. But somehow all of those just seem to stop working once you hit the four month mark.

Also because they’d all only be partly true.  Once I got back from my trip (hold your horses, i’ll write more about it another day) I took a little time to relax and decompress. Then it was up-and-at-em as we went homehunting. We saw many houses for rent and sale, and after several days were able to settle on one hopefull. We put in an application and offer, and after more waiting, we got the location. As my birthday approached, I was spending time getting textbooks and other things in order for school. So by the time my birthday finally came, I just wanted to relax (starting to be a running theme here). Then school started and as each week went on, the air got thinner and thinner, so I found less time to post.

Now it would be an extreme overexaggeration to say that i never had any time to post, as I’m sure I could have squeezed out a post somewhere in between the studying and sleeping. Truth be told, i have multiple half-written and almost finished posts that I never got around to posting, simply because I thought they would not live up to what you readers have earned after waiting so long. The only problem was, after about two weeks, it starts to become difficult to write an appropriate post. I feel “at this moment I don’t have quite enough time to write an appropriate post, so I’ll do one later”. Except that doesn’t work when the next time it comes up is a week later. Slowly I felt the water rising up to my neck with no end in sight. I imagine anyone who has been through debt will have some understanding of what I mean. After one month, you feel it is hard to do, and writing one post wouldn’t really do much or be appropriate, so you don’t. Next thing you know, you’re two months in the hole, and things seem even more bleak. And so it continues until you have to file chapter 11 (in a blog sense) . Because nothing I can say in posts can make up for and un-do what I’ve failed to post. Or remove the disappointment you felt at constantly seeing a lack of updates. There were many times i wanted to post something, but i figured without first touching on the subject of my long absence and covering long necessary posts, i wouldn’t be able to just get on the post the ideas I was having. (hopefully this will change that)

So here it is, my last ditch attempt to try to get back something that was once mine. I loved having all of you read my thoughts and posts, (and i even more loved hearing your responses) and I hope I was of some amusement to you, or at least a place to come to argue with family members. I’ll start posting again, and hopefully in time I can bring back the consistency you had at one time come to expect from me.

Derek

Alas, yet another apology is due. I’m sorry for the quality of this post. I figured it was time to own up and take whatever judgement has been thrust on me, so I wanted to just get this posted. But as I’m quite tired, it is probably riddled with mistakes and typos. But those aside, If you’d have me, I’d love to be back.

Me in Red square. Я в красная площадь.