"What does that make us?" "Big damn heroes, sir!"

The future.

My thoughts on what the future would hold. As in, when i'm grown up, what advances would the world have made technologically? What fantastic new things would be there?

I'd like to hope that we engage and grow as a species. That we manage to transcend the atmosphere and explore the universe. Yes, I'd love to be an astronaut; but I know it's not going to happen. I'm not nearly clever/fit/rich enough for that to happen. But to be part of constructing something like that, assisting in flight? Dream come true.

As you can tell, i'm enthusiastic about space. The idea attracts me so much; the endless depths, the uncharted territory of the universe. We could find millions of different species, minerals, sights. Ever since I was small, I loved adventure. Loved the sense of exploring a new place, loved the thrill of seeing new sights. Utterly great.

New planets also intruige me. I'd love to get a comet/planet named after me, to stay there for eternity. My life goal, that'll never ever be accomplished? First Man on Titan (largest Moon of Jupiter). I can always dream :)

Different types of propulsion also interest me; replacing inefficient combustion engines in cars and shuttles nowadays with more simple ideas - creating a small vaccum to propel it? Possibly. Pioneering companies also try and tackle this in innovitive new ways - Honda, Volkswagon and Microsoft all work towards this goal.

Ah well. Enough rambling. I've got a cracking idea for an article that just occured to me, so I might go and write a bit of that up ;). Will probably involve a lot of questioning, could be interesting. So if you're reading this chances are i'll ask you :).

Toodles for now!

Funny stuff

Particle Physics t-shirt design @ © SplitReason.com

I just saw this on a t-shirt. MUST HAVE.
That is all for now.

Review time: Scribblenauts!

Ahoy hoy! I've not been around on here for a while, so I thought i'd might as well add a new arrow to my quiver, metaphorically speaking: a new review!

Scribblenauts

Scribblenauts is a game for the Nintendo DS, and gives a simple yet challenging premise: "Write Anything. Solve Everything" This is broadly true.

The game's main attraction is it's ability to summon up any kind of object you can think of so long as it's not Trademarked, a person's Name or a specific Place Name. And that's it. Go nuts.

Example: You're in an aquatic zone. To swim underwater, you can summon up a scuba diving tank, or you can summon up a submarine, or you can summon up a bubble of air. Enemies trying to kill you? Poof; summon up God to kick thier asses. Then, equip God with a Top hat and chainsaw to fight against a Kraken. It goes on and on.

There is a proper adventure mode, as in a series of challenges that test your skill, style and speed in trying to get the Starite. To quote Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw, "It is ALWAYS Stars". For example, you want to get the star down from the tree. How could you do that? There are numerous ways of achieving the goal!
1) Summon an axe and chop the tree down
2) Summon a lumberjack to chop it down
3) Summon a ball to throw at it to knock it down
4) Summon up a beaver to gnaw down the tree
5) Summon a ladder to climb up and get it
6) Summon a jetpack to fly onto it
7) Summon a policeman and throw a doughnut up thier, and watch him scramble up to get them
8) Summon a time machine, go back to the past, ride a dinosaur, go back to the present, knock over the tree with your dinosaur

And so on and so forth. Despite the lack of trademarked things, you still have a huge array of things to summon (22,000 words iirc). So unfortunatley, no summoning Lightsabers or Davy Jones.A complaint I do have, though, is that you cannot summon up any sorts of alcohol. They let you play with rifles, bombs, napalm, nukes, swords, but draw the line at alcohol? Fairly random.

Anyhoo, a good play nonetheless. 8/10, I'd say.
Any ideas for a next review people? Can be a book, a game, a film, a TV series etc etc. Ta!

Just a quick update

Ahoy to all you folks! Just a little update :)

First up, I'm going to be contributing towards this new-fangled "School magazine" that would be set up online. The meeting we went to was rather good, lots of year 10/11s, only a couple of +16 but they loooked like a good bunch. I'm going to help contribute to a comic, and i'm going to start writing book reviews. Should be teh funz0rz! Also, i've volunteered to be one of a cylce of "Editor-in-chief". Why, you ask? On a CV; "Former Editor-In-Chief". Bad. Ass.

(p.s if you want to contribute an article or w/e annoynmously or named, just message me in some way, and it should be able to get in)

Also, I have a Facebook fanclub of sorts! Kinda crazy, because a friend of mine made it and now it has ~60 people :O :O. Makes me feel warm n fuzzy inside :)
Am loling at other people who have taken the idea for that and tried to make thier own, (including PRESTON (in-joke)).

Watched Derren Brown yesterday. Lol'd fairly much as he failed. Then I realised it -was- a setup. Someone on WikiAnswers had this to say about it;

"This was definately faked (not that I expected it to be real). It's not a secret that you can work out roughly where the ball will land at roulette if you have the right machinery as it said at the beginning or if you are insane at methematics.

It was clearly a set up because you can't just go into a bank and take out £5000 at once without prior permission. I also think it would be illegal for Derren Brown to do so. He probably took nothing out and then Derren Brown made it look like he did. He is an illusionist after all.

I also think the casino was a set up as he has a ban from entering casons and he wasn't in disguise. He was also talking into his sleeve which any guards would spot instantly.

He failed on purpose as getting it right next to the number he thought it was going to be makes it look like the theory pretty much does work but he wouldn't have to give that guy £175000 persoanlly or from the production team (which he would if the casino was fake and he won)

Derren Brown is entertaining but he freely admits everything is a trick and I think in these cases the trick has been on anyone from the audience that believes that what he did was real. "

Anyhoo, ta-ra for now!

Batman!

Well hello there! I haven't blogged in a while, and am thinking about turning this into more of a review/sort of thing, rather then grumblings about my average life.

First up;

BATMAN: ARKHAM ASYLUM

Right, well I have finally got Batman: Arkham Asylum for the PC. After jumping through various hoops such as the f!cking Games for Windows Live crap, I got it to work.

First impressions?

Fucking. Awesome.

Due to the crappiness of my PC's graphics card, I could only play it in less-than-stellar performance, but it didn't matter. The combat is frankly amazing, but can get rather trivial or complex when many things are happening at once. It devolves into a clicking fest quickly but timing moves correctly can be outstanding. The layout of the place is rather well-rendered, and the atmosphere is great. The storyline, although nothing spectacularly groundbreaking, is to be praised for its execution of the "Batman vs EVERYONE" mythos.

Gadgets and tricks are top-notch too. Batarangs, Batclaws, Explosive Gels all come into play with great effect.

In-game cinematics were not so great, what with my graphics, but out-of-play cinematics were brilliant.
Level design; rather good, although I have seen a number of the arbitrary levels; the stealth level, the sewer level, the jumping-around level, etc. Oh well.

I've only encountered three boss fights at the moment. The first not-so-boss-like mutated joker goon was a simple matter of jumping out of the way. The next, Scarecrow, was absolutley fantastic. Seriously, that level was absolutley extraordinary. Let's just say you use the Bat-Signal in a more...potent way then usual :P.
Bane was nothing special, although it did piss me off what with slow reaction times through the game.

Also, a Batcave is used (of course) but it isn't as fancy as the ones in the movies. Oh well.

Last note; is it wrong that I felt more angry with goons trying to trash the Batmobile then I did when doctors were being kidnapped?

Bottom Line; It's awesome.

There we go. Toodle-oo for now, am having to pack mule stuff to Uni tommorow. Yay?

District 9!

Well, this week has been a good one.

+16 Started, and it's turning out to be a blast. I've got fairly good teachers in all my lessons, EXCEPTION being my Physics teacher, who is freaking AWESOME. Seriously, he's like me grown up. How cool is that?

Anyway!

I went to see District 9 today. I had been wanting to see it for a while now, so it was the culmination of a lot of anticipation. I think I was the most exicted to be there at the time :P

On the film itself, it is truly, specatcularly, awesome.

I might be raving about it, but it really was great, and very much appeased my sense in films. There were emotional bits, mega-gory bits, bits that were hilariously ironic, all of it.

Oh yeah...

And a HUGE. FUCKING. MECHA.

Seriously, to quote one of my respected movie critics, "it did aliens better the Star Trek, gunfights better then G.I. Joe, robots better then Transformers and special effects better then Terminator: Salvation" - MovieBob.

This film was great. The aliens were taken with a bit of Cthulu-esque imagining; i admired the intuitive, if arbitrary way that the humans couldn't use the aliens guns.

And the alien guns were pretty fucking awesome too.

And they left a fairly blatant open-ended story ready for a sequel? District 10? Hells yes!

"Ipsa scientia potestas est" - Knowledge itself is power...

Well, i'm gonna just steal greenpanda666's idea of a summer round up too.

This summer has been a fairly good one. I have gone out furlongs more than I usually did, and achieved a fair bit. The quick rundown;

- I have managed to get some nice new clothes for the upcoming school year, involving many trips to town, which have been fun.

- I've been to various people's houses and actually gone out and done stuff for once!

- I managed to get a fairly good set of results, although I didn't do that big a thing that I would have liked.

-I managed to make a fair few thing in my garage using odds and ends that i'm fairly proud of (see pressure pad)

- Health-wise, i'm not bang up to fitness as I wanted. My plans of doing excercise was sidetracked a few times, so I still have a gut.

- I managed to read a fair number of useful classics, such as Catch-22, Neuromancer and Y: The Last Man.

- I've managed to distinguish different alcohol, and have tried vodka and moonshine whiskey. (Tastes like shite)

- I have attempted to restard Keyboard playing. It's a start, although I would love to try out a saxophone.

- My main failure this summer is that I haven't been able to get a job. Ideally, i'd like to work where there's lots of books, such as the local library or Borders. But we'll see, I suppose.

I'm still worrying a bit about the subject's i've chosen for AS. I took Physics, Maths, Computing and History, but i'm worried that instead of taking Sciencey subjects I should have picked Artsy subjects; I would have changed for English Lit, Philosophy, History and something else.

Meh.

Bit scared now, since I wish I was good at Chemistry. Lots of things I could have done with that.
A list of interesting jobs I would have liked doing;
- Physicist, of the normal sort

- Astrophysicist, or something to do with space travel (like ground control, building it etc). I'm no Astronaut though.

- Meteorologist. Looking at a book I was given with various jobs, Meteorology fits in well with my subject choices. (Meteorology=Weather forecasting)

- Communications; filming movies/TV shows, etc.

- Editor/Publisher; Something to do with books would be mighty useful.

- Pyrotechnician. I would have loved to do this, but unfortunatly it requires high levels of Chemistry (Pyrotechnics are the fire displays in movies, gigs, etc, so the explosion guy xD)

- Programmer; Working on physics engines for games?

- Inventor; this is an outlandish and unpractical one, but hell its interesting.

- Pilot; very difficult with glasses.

Anyhoo.

I had a haircut. It's short. My stupidly long hair is gone.

School tommorow! Let's hope that I can keep organised this time, eh?