Morals

Question: Pretend if you had a wife/husband, now lets say someone would give you a hundred dollars to cheat on your wife/husband would you do it? No, you wouldn't, however what if the reward was increased to one million dollars with the guarantee of nobody knowing. Would you now?

Yes - There are several possible reasons for opting yes for it. For example if you were poor, in this way not only would you have money now to pull yourself out of financial burdens such as credit card bills or taxes. Not only that, if you told your wife/husband or your wife/husband ever somehow found out, you are poor... Think about it, she/he will (hopefully) understand. Further more, there is a guarantee that nobody will ever find out, so that's basically a free million dollars.

No - Blah Blah Blah GUILT... Anything more to say?!?!? I mean, the guilt could lead to depression,insanity or whatever. Immorality is another thing, a person's honor happens to be a valuable thing and often, they decide correctly when defending this. Such this is because the person in question feels 'dirty' for accepting this offer. However what if, your wife/husband needed surgery and this was the only opportunity to be able to afford this expensive surgery. You would probably accept the offer, your wife/husband would likely understand. If you say no, you're trying to hard to do the 'right' thing. Life isn't always about being the better man/woman, sometimes you have to do an underhand tactic to get what is required.

Argument - Everyone would always say no first, when asked this question. To look like a moralistic character etc... But with the real deal people are broken and circumstances change. You cannot be sure you would never take the offer.

*Everyone has a price* - There will always be a way to persuade or bribe an individual. Nobody is immune to this. Whether it is torture or harming your family, there will always be a way. Bribery doesn`t necessarily need to be money, it could be protection, etc... Which finally boils down to: there is always a limit any individual will endure before their morals are lower than their needs and or priorities.

English Class...

I don't know about you, but when you were small many of us liked to read. For reals. While I still read, I'm not as an avid reader as I was before. However, there is one thing I have to disagree with about the Novel Studies that we do during English Class or otherwise known as Language Arts. These 'Studies' involves an 'indepth' look at a novel. While usually these novels are of a decent entertainment value, the way they are presented suck out it's interest factor. Because I was an avid reader I still appreciate books however, many of people won't thus, presenting them in an utmost boring educational matter is not helping people get into reading, neither is the way you want us to analyze the text. It almost pretending the book is a riddle comprised of symbolism and allusions put into the literature by the author in a thoughtful and meaningful way. However, while I do know and believe that some of this symbolism and allusions were thought of purposely, I think that the author's instinctual mind have set the other allusion automatically. English class needs to focus more on creativity of writings rather than indepth analysis of brain dead topics.

Emotions

Whether it is the feeling of happy, having a bad day or the feeling of anxiety. Humanity has always had to deal with these feelings. But do they benefit us, or are they a binding which keeps us from doing the correct action. I believe that while emotions do induce fear, torment and anxiety they are what makes us human. Emotions have taught us morals, for example the feeling of guilt overtakes a person who has stolen belongings or murdered somebody for selfish reasons. If we are sharing or helping others the feeling of ‘charity’ perhaps for lack of better term will lead us as humans to believe that these are the correct actions to take. On contrary however, emotions can lead to our own downfall, as emotions happen to be balanced differently in each person. Certain people have an overwhelming greed feeling which will lead to their own wrong doings. I conclude that while emotions both teach us and lead us to bad intentions, without having these ups and downs of life, life would be a series of meaningless events.

Gaming Intellect

Often, gamers will become an IB/AP student. While people often question how come people who value entertainment so much end up doing so well at academic learning? Well I'm here to answer your questions through a gamer's standpoint.

So, what are games, really?
I tend to define games as an activity whether it be virtual or not which induces 'fun' entertainment value.

And fun is defined as?
The act of learning. Why? Well I'll tell you why, if you go to the roots of fun; the basis is that you're learning. Don't believe me? Well consider this: how are puzzles games entertaining to you? That's right, you want to solve the puzzle. This in turn means that you end up learning how to more efficiently do the puzzle and finally beat the game. Now, the obvious question is how do action games incorporate learning then? Well I'd have to say, finding the weaknesses of your enemies and how to navigate the terrain is pretty much the same thing as a puzzle game. Killing the enemy is essentially solving the puzzle, finding his weakness if just finding the most efficient way to solve the puzzle. Why is killing everything fun then? Well, while I don't have a concrete answer for this, I admit, I figure that the most logical course of action is that. It's fun because you're actually learning how it would feel like to be a person of such power. However, this gets boring quickly because your mind eventually cannot learn anything new. Same thing with grinding, it's not fun because you've learned how to kill this enemy several times already and your brain does not want to function to do such a repetitive task. Same thing with exploration, it's fun because you learn about the world around you.

So why is school boring then if you define 'fun' as learning. The fundamentally boring aspect school comes from how it's being presented. Inside a virtual world everything is exciting and the information comes to you in controlled 'spoonfuls'. Whilst during school you are force fed the concepts rather than exploring it. If you don't understand correctly, learning in my terms is defined as: "The discovery of new things". In video games this is discovering how to kill an enemy, seeing a new area etc... However in school, you're not discovering anything, you are being presented with information. This is not 'learning' per say, it's just trying to make your brain recognize this information and process it. Since the discovery element is not in play during school, we naturally perceive school as boring.

Why are so many gamers academically capable? Well that lies within the learning process of gamers. From gaming we know that learning is usually straightforward or out of the box. Straight forward games involve the simple hacking and slashing of multiple enemies while out of the box encompasses usage of switches, levers and in game mechanics to get to the next area. The very best games are a balance between the two. Because gamer's always take two different approaches to learning it is easy to see why they can absorb the information. gamers tend to take the information and remember it because of knowing this information can lead to further discoveries. Consider mystery games, gamers need to take note of everything they see so they can solve the case or puzzle of the game. Many games require you to be environmentally aware to accomplish in game tasks. What does this mean? Gamers remember things because the brain is in the habit of remembering information for later use as it may become important in completing something elsewhere.

Gamers who use the pc are even put in a greater advantage than your average gamer. They will normally have experience in coding. Because at some point a gamer's mind will be curious of how a game works. Normally this leads to the eventual knowledge of a coding language of some sort. Coding and programming in general includes lots of trial and error. Because trial and error is an important skill to know for academic success. For example, figuring out what caused the error in the program will let you more easily identify the same error if it occurs again. This is how studying works. Finding out what causes your errors and get into the habit of no longer making them. But because gamers will eventually develop this skill on their own accord through an entertaining hobby it becomes much more thoroughly developed as it was developed by doing something you enjoy, which acts like a catalyst for this skill. You know what I mean, you learn a certain subject better because it's more enjoyable then the next one; demonstrating my theory, of which you learn better if you enjoy doing it. That's the core reason gamers tend to be more intellectually fit. Furthermore, pc gamers will have to deal with viruses, errors, etc.. that they come across while using the pc. The process which they take to solve these problems are often the same process they will use whilst solving a problem at school. First attempt a straightforward way, and if that doesn't work, try something a little 'random' per say. Eventually you find the problem through all these random extentions from the straightforward process.

There are a couple of disadvantages of this style of learning however. The way your brain works in this stage makes you more of the logical type. You want solid concrete answers rather than arbitrary assumptions with evidence. You'll struggle with language arts especially. When you're trying to prove something you'll be driven crazy by the fact that you will rarely be able to back up your argument 100%. This sense of doubt will be your downfall. Often we end up only leaving in the points where we know we can back up 100% thus leaving a lot of gaps in our work. So I suggest that you try and forget that philosophy just for language arts class. It also a well known stereotype that gamers are somewhat uncreative. I believe this arose from how much we spend in a world created for us rather than day dreaming or something of the such of our own virtual world. However, gamers are equally creative, think about it. Gamers often ask themselves in video games: "I wonder if I could...". This ideology leads to the ability to think outside the box when solving problems which is a useful skill. I think that gamers which are left brained will have the greatest affect in their academic career. They will enhance the already logical mind while also prompting the brain to think about what ifs.

Finally, I think the most valuable skill you learn as a gamer is persistence. Because we sometimes try many, many times to succeed in a level or get a max score. our brains have that feeling of needing to do very well, and if that means you have to try several times, it will. And because we are gamers this skill is very well developed.

Just so you know, I disagree with everything that politics has said about video games. They always like to link video games to violence and miss doings these days. Particularly related to the FPS genre and GTA series. While I do agree that some people may get ideology from video games. The amount of people is almost negligible. Half the time they forget to factor in the many other sources of ideologies these days. The internet, movies, books, tv shows, etc... Which can also factor into this. Most of all however, is that fact that it isn't their entertainment values which lead them into their own wrong doings, it's often peer pressure or parents which just abuse their child. You cannot blame virtual worlds for the decisions of real people. It's the decisions of the person(s) to do crimes. And even if you did blame video games, they have ESRB ratings. I's not the developer's fault that parents give their 6 year old child CoD: Black ops.

[Game Review] - Osu!

This game is a beat based point and click game based of the Japanese Nintendo Ds game: Osu! Tatakae! Quendan.

Which eventually led to the release of Elite Beat Agents in north america which is based upon the game Osu! Tatakae! Quendan. Osu! Tatakae! Quendan also has a sequel titled: Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Quendan 2.


Let's begin with the core game play mechanics of Osu!. There are a few different ways to score points in Osu!

Hit Circle: This is also commonly referred to as a 'beat'. These are circles which you will click to score points. The only way to successfully score however, is to make sure that the outer ring [called the approach circle] is as close to touching the hit circle as possible.

Sliders: These are displayed at two hit circles with a path which connects the two. The goal is to hit the 'head' or start of the slider [the hit circle which displays the combo number]. And then hold your mouse click whilst the a ball appears called a slider ball. While this ball rolls down the path you must also keep your mouse within the ball's 'slider circle'. If there is an arrow at the end of any given slider you must follow the ball back along path in reverse. Additionally along the path of a slider there are small white dots which are called 'slider ticks'. These are the equivalent of a hit circle, by increasing the score multiplier. However only give 10 points per tick.

Spinners: Like the name suggests a dialog which says: "spin". When this occurs the player must spin the mouse around the center point of the spinner. A approach circle will appear and once it reaches the center the spinner ends. If the player has reached the threshold to pass the spinner [gauged by the bars on each side of the spinner] the player receives 300 points and any additional spin counts after the threshold gives bonus score.

In addition there are a couple more terms and mechanics which relate to score:

Score Multiplier:

The number which appears at the bottom right corner of the screen. This number rises as each successful hit circle / slider / spinner. The number pertains to the amount your score is multiplied by: for example a 12x score multiplier will multiply your points received by 12x and then increase the multiplier to 13x. If you miss a note this number resets to 0. Missing a slider tick does so as well.

Geki: Referred to as a Beat! in Elite Beat Agents. This is a type of score which significantly regenerates the life bar. It is done by having an entire combo [hitting all the notes in succession of the same color] hitting only 300s.

Katu: Same as Geki, however at least 1 100 score was obtained with no 50s or misses.

There are 6 different ranks you can achieve in this game for each beat map: D, C, B, A, S and SS. Going by ascending order. Each is determined by how accurate you were. However S requires no misses and less that I believe 2% 50s. And an SS requires no misses in addition to a 100% accuracy. If multiplier mods are included, such as flashlight or hidden, the S or SS may become platinum/silver in color rather than a gold hue.

There are two additional modes in Osu! Such as Taiko which originates from Taiko no Tatsujin. And catch the beat, which basically has your character holding a plate above his/her head. Of which you catch 'beats' which are fruits in this game mode.

Multiplayer exists as a lobby system where you enter a menu which lists available multiplayer rooms of which you can join. The game can be put into teams or individuals which also allows the ability to lock rooms with a password. It is worthy to note that importing a song as the host can cause you to go back into single player mode if imported while browsing for a song to play.

Osu! feels like a very smooth game, props to the creater, peppy, who pretty much programmed and created the visuals for Osu!. Thus most of the game you have smooth rendering and tons of rhythmic fun. However I personally experienced some lag at the start of some maps; but, that is probably the fault of the beatmap creator since some of the beatmaps can be quite complex with videos or story boards. Another positive thing I found about this game was the fact that all the beatmaps are largely user made. With moderators to approve submitted beatmaps to filter out the WIPs and the completed and polished beatmaps. The in-game editor of beatmaps is a really useful tool and is actually quite complicated - in a good way. In which it has many different function to help you along the way. I fell the strongest aspect of this game is the ability to completely recreate the GUI for the game to match the current beatmap being played.

I'd give Osu! A Gamer's Tag of 9/10.

When your friend...

...is hanging out with people you personally hate.

So one thing that bothers me sometimes is that one of my friends ends up hanging out with people which are generally retarded idiots. While you may first criticize me for this point of view and not getting to know the guy; trust me, I know this guy enough. All that matters is that this guy's opinion is so radically stupid it boggles my mind. While I don't generally mind so much that my friend has other friends and wants to hang out with other people. Even if it's people I hate. But the fact that this specific douche always wants to hang out with my friend that it's almost like my friend is his only friend. The fact of the matter is, whenever my friend actually is in the skype call with me and my buds he is often interrupted by his friend calling him through phone/skype/whatnot. My friend is great and all but he doesn't know how to tell someone that maybe he doesn't want to do something. Further more his friend actually lives ridiculously close to my friend, as a result if my friend doesn't pick up, he eventually gets a doorbell ringing instead. But you have to wonder whether or not you're friend enjoys your company more or less than other's company. While there is no way to find out, you just have to assume that he enjoys company of both equally well. Finally, the last thing I have to say is that my friend's friend  is hated by my friend's brother. Why keep a friend who your brother hates because of how much of a retard your friend is?