Xenodreams

So I don't usually use this blog for "personal" posts, but eh, I needed somewhere to write this.

Like most folks, I forget most of my dreams. Occasionally, however, I remember a long on with surprising clarity. When that happens I usually feel compelled to write it down somewhere, so let's see how that goes.

The dream started with a remake of Xenogears (an old but awesome PS1 game) with voice acting and 3D characters rather than sprites, but somehow I ended up watching/playing Xenosaga (its 3 part PS2 successor). As it often goes in dreams, I eventually ended up inside interacting with the characters, sorta.

So we were at this enemy space station fightin' one of the big bads. We beat him back but realize he's not beaten for long and we need to make our escape (which is similar to what happened in the actual game). The party finds a bunch of fighters and we commandeer them to make our escape. I ended up being co-pilot for Jin Uzuki, the main character's brother, which is weird because he wasn't even in the game that scene was from, but he's a cool guy so I didn't complain. Once we got our helmets on and the cockpit closed and figured out the flight controls we were off on a whirlwind big city adventure.

Neither of us were experienced with the craft, but being the smart fellows we were, we figured we'd learn as we went along. We sort of did, but we also sort of flew into some sort of anomaly that sent us flying back in time.

We ended up in like, 1940s Detroit or something. There were a bunch of teenagers cleaning up a park nearby, and for some reason Jin hopped out and started helping. Nobody seemed to question the fact that a middle aged Japanese man with a giant Katana and a futuristic flightsuit had just appeared out of nowhere and grabbed a rake.

Our ship appeared to have mysteriously developed cloaking ability, so I wandered around a bit before returning and hopping out as well. The party seemed to have finished their project, so Jin and I joined a few of them to go awanderin'. We were a bit irked at having landed in an age without many of the technological conveniences we were used to (by the standards of the far futurey space age, brick buidings were like mud huts) but we tried to do our best to settle in. After all, there were far worse times we could be sent to.

We got along well with some of our new acquaintances, but we were still thrilled when we learned that the Zohar (a mysterious, powerful and important relic that plays a large part in the Xeno* games) was being used in experiments in a nearby lab. This didn't make much sense since the Zohar should've been in Africa at the time wouldn't be discovered for like 100 more years, but whatevs. Dream logic.

Figuring that this might somehow have our solution, we took our little ship and broke into the lab, sneaking/crashing our way to the Zohar. Jin worked some magic which looked deceptively like mashing buttons and hoping for the best, and us, our ship and 2 unlucky security guards who happened to be nearby all got sucked into a flash of light and ended up in a desert somewhere.

Our new companions seemed a bit upset, so I used the ship's external speakers to say "So while it's perfectly reasonably for you to be upset, we ARE all stuck in a desert together, so it might be wise to stop banging on our ship so we can all work together." That seemed to placate them, so we set about the business of finding food and shelter. I found some scrawny bushes that would do for kindling, and Jin went off to find food while our guests tried to stop wanting to kill us.

Eventually Jin radio'd that he had found food, a herd of sheep (in the desert, go dream logic), and he was off to the east of us. Of course we had no idea if it was really east, but we'd seemed to have made an unspoken agreement to pretend that this planet's sun worked like Sol and did the whole rise east/set west thing. Our guests wandered off in the wrong direction, but I managed to catch up with them and set 'em right.

After a bit of wandering in what we though was Jin's direction, we found . . . an inn. In the middle of the dessert, a quaint little building like you'd find in a quiet country town. So we went in (except for some reason I crawled in through a window) and found Jin sitting at a table. The "meat" was, uh, unusual and I began to suspect that, considering we were potentially on an alien world, "sheep" had been an approximation. Nevertheless, it wasn't bad tasting and it didn't kill anyone, so it seemed to be ok.

At this point the necessities of eating forced our two guests to remove their helmets, revealing that they were not the burly angry stereotypical guard dudes I'd been expecting, but actually were two very attractive young women. It seemed we'd been able to set our differences aside and we had a more or less pleasant dinner chat. (It's worth noting that the girls were wearing high tech body armor like ours, despite having come from dream-1940s.)

Eventually we were visited by the locals, an elderly woman dressed all in brown. We tried to communicate with her, but despite trying greetings in every language we know (which for my part seemed to include a LOT of D&D languages), we were unable to find common ground. I was about to try Abyssal and Infernal but decided against it since I didn't know what kind of place this was, and what effect speaking the words of such fell tongues would have. Plus I doubt that would've worked either.

She wandered off and we went back to contemplating our food, when one of the girls heard someone calling her name. I forget what it was, which irks me, but I think it started with an M. Marika or something? We'll go with that. I advised her not to wander off alone, since we had no idea what this place was and that was more than a little bit suspicious, but she would not be denied and rushed off to find the caller. I followed her cautiously, since I didn't think my suspicions were unwarranted.

It seems I was right, as she wandered into a dark room, and some beast lurking on the ceiling snapped down to bite her. I pulled her out of the way just in time (dream hero, go!) and produced an energy blade with which I cut the creature in two, presumably killing it. We carefully made our retreat from the room and . . . I woke up. That was the end of that. Alas. Oh well, maybe I'll get to see the end of the story when I fall asleep next, though that seems unlikely.

MMO Adventures

So a buddy of mine asked me the pros and cons of EQ, EQ2 and WoW. I decided to blog 'bout it, and add a few more games. I'm also adding a "niche" for each MMO, which is universally neither pro nor con, but could be either for specific people based on their specific interests.

EverQuest
Pro: Tons and tons of content. Some of the most interesting and complex raid encounters in the MMO industry. A fairly mature community and extensive legacy.
Con: Old. Though it does have a huge amount of content added over the years, and the devs have done a good job of keeping it up to date, much of the content is still outdated, and a lot of the older content is desolate.
Niche: Hardcore pve.

EverQuest 2:
Pro: Beautiful graphics, an amazing soundtrack. The coolest crafting system I have ever seen in an MMO. Tons and tons of quests, and while it is guilty of having bland "kill 10 of these and collect 5 of those" quests at times, it also has plenty of really cool ones.
Con: I'm actually having trouble thinking of one. Honestly, the only reason I'm not playing EQ2 right now instead of *shame* WoW is that most of my friends play WoW while everyone I know who plays EQ2 quit. The raids are much smaller than in EQ1, which could be a con to some depending on preference, though I haven't actually done the raids myself so I can't comment on the quality.
Niche: Casual pve, crafting. It's one of the few games where crafting is more interesting than "have components, press button, receive item."

World of Warcraft:
Pro: Polished content, frequent content updates, phenomenal attention to detail for both gameplay and lore.
Con: A fairly immature community. Before I played WoW, I heard my friends complain about the community and thought "Oh they're just exaggerating, it can't be that bad." Then I played and realized it wasn't. It was worse. There isn't as much room for skill in playing classes as in other MMOs. Skill does make a difference, certainly, but not nearly as much relative to gear as in other MMOs. (For example, I can regularly outdps players in far better gear than me on my EQ1 Magician just by staying on top of things and using a better spell weave, but that doesn't really happen in WoW.)
Niche: Very casual pve with a bit of pvp thrown in. Despite the unique gimmicks that most fights have, there are very few encounters which will truly challenge skilled MMO players, so it is a nice game for casual players who just want to beat up a few zombies with friends but won't appeal to hardcore powergamers as much.

EVE Online:
Pro: The most amazing economy in any MMO in the history of ever. Dynamic and player controlled world. Shifting territory wars, huge battles, complex strategies and all sorts of shiny things. While classes in most MMOs boil down to "tank, healer, dps, crowd control" EVE boasts a far greater variety of possible roles to play in fleets.
Con: It's a pvp game, and pvp at attracts jerkfaces. While there are plenty of cool people in the world of New Eden, there are also plenty of griefers intent on ruining your day.
Niche: Hardcore pvp. Strategic combat. Trigonometry for fun. Spreadsheets in space. Or just playing the market. You can make a healthy amount of ISK (the game's currency) without even undocking if you know how to study and manipulate the market.

Rift:
Pro: A very interesting class system. Neat public group and raid encounters (the Rifts for which the game is titled). (It automatically forms a public group with anyone near the rift, so you can just jump in and have fun without having to organize a huge raid.)
Con: Ultimately just a WoW/War hybrid. It has little original other than the class system. The rifts are cool, but not as dynamic as I was hoping.
Niche: People who sorta like WoW but got tired of it.

Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising
Pro: A really cool squad system that lets you command a customizable team of NPCs. Also an evolving player owned estate that changes as you complete quests to upgrade it.
Con: Not much else. Sadly the population is very low, and nothing about the game other than the squad system is very noteworthy. Yes it has a big world and lots of quests and customizable character talents, but that's kind of expected in MMOs nowadays. The squad system is the only thing that really hooked me.
Niche: People who like to have lots of characters on screen. The squads open up a lot of possibilities for people (like me) who like that sort of thing.

City of Heroes:
Pro: The coolest character creator ever.
Con: Little else of note.
Niche: People who like superheroes? Admittedly I haven't played this one for some time, and I hear they've added some fancy new stuff since then so my spartan review might be a little unfair.

Dungeons and Dragons Online
Pro: Tons and tons of dungeons. Also a cool system of dungeon bonuses. Each dungeon has mini achievements (smash X crates, kill Y monsters, don't die more than Z times) that boost the xp gain of the dungeon run.
Con: Not solo friendly at all.
Niche: People who enjoy dungeon grouping. Hopefully you have a group ready.

Forsaken World
Pro: Free to play. Beautiful graphics.
Con: Similar to Gods and Heroes. It's not that it's bad per se, just that it doesn't have a unique hook to it. It has quests, and talents, but again you find those just about everywhere nowadays.
Niche: Hard to say. People who like free games I suppose? =p I'd certainly suggest trying it at least once, especially since it's free and easily available on Steam.

The Passage of Time

So I feel old. I was looking up something on imdb and realized Men in Black came out 14 years ago. Wthax. Also Men in Black II was 10. Also also they're making a Men in Black III which doesn't make me feel old but is pretty exciting.

Anyway, this reminded me of another little "wow time goes by" anecdote. I have learned that teaching makes me feel older than ever. Some of my students were making accounts for the software we were using, and I noticed one girl appended 98 to the end of her name. This led to the following conversation:

Me: Does that mean you were born in 1998?
Her: Yep.
What I said: Oh. Ok. Carry on.
What I thought: Holy shit, what? My *oldest* and most advanced student (Well, in that class. I had older kids in another one.) was born while I was in middle school, but is now old enough to sit in my class and make video games. I know that's not *that* extreme, but it was like a "woah, epiphany" moment as I realized how long ago my own childhood was and became more acutely aware of the passage of time.

On a mildly related note, earlier in the season I'd been discussing with some other instructors what kinds of tv shows and movies we could show the students. Someone suggested Ren and Stimpy and I mentioned "I'm not sure that'd be appropriate for some of the younger ones." That caused another internal "wthax" moment as I realized "I just said that. I am the person who says that now. What has time done to me!?"

Anyway. There wasn't much point to this post I guess, I just felt the need to record this little ramble somewhere. We'll be back to our (ir)regularly scheduled rants about social flaws and general dumbery when I make my next post in a month or two.

Rolling of Rick

I seem to have done a pretty poor job of keeping up with BEDA. Oh well. Back to our regular schedule! (Or lack thereof.)

Today I'm going to talk about Rick Rolling. For those who don't know, Rick Rolling is the process of giving someone a link to something (generally a Youtube video) and telling them it is one thing when in fact is a video of Rick Astley singing Never Gonna Give You Up. It's a neat song, and Rick Rolling done right can be hilarious. Unfortunately, "done right" is apparently quite a challenge.

Now that we've talked about what Rick Rolling is, let's talk about what it is NOT. Simply hearing the song does not mean you have been "rick rolled." A few years ago at ACEN a guy was walking around with a stereo playing the song, and people would exclaim "ahaha, he just rick rolled you!" No! He didn't! That isn't how this works! I know I'm being an internet pedant right now, but we all have our values and this is mine. =p Use the term right! It is only rick rolling when you deceive someone into clicking a link to the video that they think is something else. Get it right. The life you save may be your own.

Science!

Have you ever stopped to think about how awesome science is? I mean, periodically I hear people complain about something silly like "It's 2011, where are my flying cars?" Sorry dude, your argument would sound a lot better if you weren't posting that comment on an international digital communication network using a handheld device capable of multiple forms of data exchange and communication, global position and a slew of other features.

Like, srsly, smartphones are probably more advanced than tricorders and communicators from Star Trek. The only thing they can't do that tricorders can is scan someone to tell if they're alive or dead, but hell, someone's probably working on an app for that. Yeah, we complain about not having space ships, but if you showed an Android to someone from 50 years ago they'd probably burn you for being a witch.

And the internet, man. People take it for granted since it's been around for a while, but holy shit, have you ever stopped to think about mind blowing it is that I can just press a button and be talking to someone in Australia as if they were sitting across the table? Even the old days of clunky text chats were pretty impressive, but now we have VOIP and video chat, it's pretty wild.

As for cars, sure they don't fly, but you can hop in a car in New York and be in California within a few days. That used to take months, and half your party would be dead by the time you got there. Hell, you could get in an airplane and be there the same day. There's your flying car, what?

However, nothing that mankind ever has or ever will do compares to the technological awesomeness of this:

This post is new so it sucks

One thing that continues to irk me is the trend of insisting that everything that is old/classic is awesome and everything that's new sucks. I see this often on the various websites and forums I frequent, and applies to virtually every medium of entertainment, as well as other things.

Just today in fact, I saw a post on Reddit demanding to know "Why doesn't Disney make movies like this anymore?" and showing a picture of a scene from Fantasia. Sure, Fantasia was pretty neat, but to insist that Disney hasn't created anything of note lately is . . . what?

Sure, there are some pretty horrible songs/books/movies/games these days, but there are some awesome ones too, and there were horrible ones "back in the day." However, there is such a pool to draw from that it's easy for people to practice selective bias and list a bunch of, say, good bands from a few decades ago and a few unpopular or "bad" (I hesitate to use bad in an objective sense for something that is really up to personal taste and preference, but you get what I mean) ones from today, stubbornly ignoring the fact that it could easily work both ways.

I guess that was kind of vague, so perhaps another concrete example: as anyone who's known me for more than 30 seconds knows, I am a huge fan of the fantasy MMO Everquest. EQ is an old game, and as such has gone through a number of evolutions, now boasting 16 expansion packs and countless smaller patches. Obviously, the game today is wildly different than the game that launched in 1999. Now, while I don't agree with every change the developers have made (devs, Y U nerf jester of Bristlebane illusion times?), for the most part the game has gotten better and better over the years. Even some of the changes I disliked I can begrudgingly admit were probably for the better, it's just impossible to please everyone in a game where if you ask 10 people what they want, you'll get 20 different answers.

Got a bit rambly there, didn't I? Anyway, despite the progress and improvements in the game over the years, there exists a steadfast niche of players who insist "the good old days" were the best, and EQ was "ruined" by all the expansions and additions (casually overlooking the fact that with no content additions everyone would have gotten bored and quit ages and ages ago). Now, as I said before, everyone has a different opinion, and I don't expect everyone to like all the same things as me, but often the arguments are just irrational appeals to emotion with no real factual evidence (and not just for classic EQ, but for a lot of these "it was older back then" arguments).

"It just felt more real." "You weren't there, you wouldn't understand." (Used regardless of whether or not the other party actually was "there" or not.) "It's just not the same."

Yes, there's some shitty music today, and I'm not a fan of a lot of movies nowadays but guys, that's nothing new. For the most part, I think, entertainment (and society in general) is moving on up. I mean, I have my share of complaints of course, but we don't burn people at the stake for being witches anymore so hey, progress right?

Things I like

To counter yesterday's post, I'll make a cheerier one. Things that make me smile:

Apple Pie

Brownies

Pixar Movies

When someone I haven't talked to in a while texts or messages me just to say hello and see how I'm doing.

When a pretty girl smiles at me as she walks past.

Cats. Usually.

When one of my students solves a complex problem on their own without needed to turn to me for help. While that makes me feel a tad superfluous sometimes, it's good to see the problem solving and research strategies I taught them working.

Finding out a good friend (or attractive girl! =p) and I have a previous undiscovered common interest that we can talk about for ages without getting bored.

Discovering that one of the web comics I enjoy has an update. This may be unusual, but I remain intentionally ignorant of their update schedules so I can enjoy a pleasant surprise every few days.

A complex piece of code compiling and working as intended on the first attempt.

Getting a compliment or recognition you weren't expecting. The second week of camp this summer, one of the 10 year-olds made a poster saying how she loved the camp and listing all the instructors names. My name had a #2 next to it (considering how many of us there were, and how much she liked her #1 instructor, a #2 was not at all bad), which totally made my day.

Other stuff. I couldn't possible capture it all in one list, so I'll cut it short here