Tech Smartly

It seems like I’m noticing more and more sources of low intellectuality, which is pretty much a waste of time and gives me very little entertainment or usefulness of any sort. Let’s take digg for example. The very first item is:

Calvin and Hobbes on the Financial Crisis

Nothing wrong with it, except I saw it earlier in the day before I managed to read this (This came out 5 minutes ago). This is a relatively new story, so there aren’t many comments at the time of the writing. Nothing inherently wrong, but this is only the first news article. However, there isn’t anything interesting for another 8 news articles, until you get to:

Top 10 Things to make Good Games Better!

Also, there’s no point in reading the comments because the whole commenting system is infested with people with bad grammar and spelling who can not articulate an idea further than a sentence. In fact, I counted about 5 comments that actually try to articulate and express an idea properly. I’m not expecting an essay, but reading the comments is kind of like crack. It’s very quick, and gives you very little entertainment.  I admit, there are some good comments. There are fleeting moments of discussion. However, nothing ever really gets discussed more than 4 comments deep. It’s always very superficial and of no real benefit other than a way of killing time. I gained nothing through reading the comments, and I pretty much just block everyone who can’t even use proper English, because I don’t want to deal with it. Just because this is the internet doesn’t mean that you can forgo everything you learned about English. Sure, everyone makes mistakes and we sometimes mistype, but I’m talking about deliberately missing punctuation and not caring at all about spelling. If you want to type like a child, I’m not willing to read it.

You might see this as elitist, that I’m expecting too much from everybody. This is not true. I’m expecting enough, and people supply too little. Digg is no longer part of my life, I will not use it every again. You’re welcome to submit my stories, but I won’t know until I check where the massive influx of traffic came from in my logs. Now, compare Digg to a website like Slashdot. There is no comparison, Slashdot blows Digg right out of the water. The reason is simple. Digg is too popular. What this means is that it is now flooded with the “average” person. There is no niche, you have everything from sports to entertainment to science. It’s a website for everybody, a place where someone can say whatever they want to say, whether it’s right or wrong. Slashdot, on the other hand, targets a demographic that is smart. More specifically, nerds. The first article is about touchscreen netbooks in CES 2009. Touchscreens are cool, that’s something interesting. But more importantly, what about the discussion in slashdot going on about it? The first comment is from a troll, but it is likewise voted by the members as a troll and hidden from view unless specified to be seen. Digg’s system is very easily abused people people who disagree with you. I’ve seen many comments that are worthwhile and raise a valid point that have been voted down on digg. Not a problem on Slashdot.

More importantly, however, is the fact that the discussion is meaningful to the topic at hand. It is both useful and entertaining, and allows me to understand the subject at hand better. It’s not just a matter of something having to be useful. It can be entertaining as well. The next article is about Microsoft billing 1$ an hour for leasing Microsoft Office. The very first comment is a joke. A proper joke, written properly so that I don’t have to reread it just to understand it. Nothing kills a joke worse than having to first interpret what the person is trying to say. Here on Slashdot, I don’t have to deal with the same amount of trash that exists on digg.

Yes, people say useful things on Digg. But why search through a pile of trash when I have slashdot? This is an important point, because in every pile of trash you might find something useful. If you go to digg, you’re spending your time looking through trash. On slashdot, there is no trash. You’re looking at a fridge stocked to the brim full of food. You’re not wading your way through junk to find a half rotten but edible banana. There is no comparison. Digg is the equivilant of channel flipping on TV, trying to find a show that interests you in someway. This is the internet, you shouldn’t have to subject yourself to this. You can schedule your life around the TV, finding shows that you like and think are interesting on different channels. On the internet, it’s even better. Find some blogs that are relevant to your interests. Find a news aggregation website that is relevant to your interests. I use Slashdot as an example, because it’s a website that posts articles that I find interesting, as well as having a smart and intelligent community. Find your own hub. Choose a niche that is relevant to you, and minimize time spent on trash.

Update: I wrote this with one goal in mind and ended up with a different final product. I ussualy try not to let hate get the better of me, but this is what I ended up with.

I was writing my next blog post ( I’ve been rather busier nowadays, and will continue to be so for another couple of weeks), when I looked at recently cleaned up desktop. I had one picture on it, the first picture on my computer. Unfortunately, I did not realize at all it was a picture. Why? Because it had the quicktime icon on it! I didn’t remember putting a video file on my desktop, so this was very puzzling. Since I have a semi fresh install, I don’t have any pictures at all, except on my back up drive, which I don’t look through since I don’t need anything. It didn’t take long to realize who was at fault here: Apple.

Why must you always seduce people with your nice looking products? I admit, Macs are better at some things with windows, but again there are some drawbacks to macs. Not only that, but it seems like people forget that OSX, despite being all pretty is intuitive, is still a closed down OS using proprietary formats. My knowledge of Mac is quite small however. I only ever use macs when I go to the mac store to browse to anti-mac pages such as here, or here, even not everything I link to is entirely true. I’ve done this about 5 times, and one out of those five times the mac crashed on me. Of course, it could have just been a chance encounter, but aren’t they supposed to just work? Anyway, enough Mac-bashing. I don’t want people emailing me saying how wrong I am. I don’t like macs, and I’ll never use one without malicious intent. The fact is, Apple seems hell-bent on getting everyone to use what they think is best. You must use their ideas of what they think is good for you. For a grandma sitting at home, this isn’t all that important. But for a person who wants to make things work the way they want it to, it becomes a problem. So tell me Apple, why must you extend your influence to my windows partition?

I have a pretty clear Idea how this happened. I was installing iTunes, which installed quicktime. There was some little check box or list that I didn’t looked completely through. But why did Apple decide that it should force upon me it’s terrible software by automatically checking one item among so many? Granted, it’s not a big a problem as it wanting to install safari. in fact, it has a very simple solution. But that’s not what the problem is. I’m not complaining that Apple changed PNG’s to open with some program that crashes when I try to use it. I’m complaining about the fact that Apple is trying to feed me it’s own slow software on my computer, try to deceit me and hide from my watchful eyes. This is poor on Apples part. I want iTunes so I can sync my iPod (with rockbox!), and it also has to install quicktime, and change my settings so that it tries to open the pictures. Hopefully songbird can become good enough for my daily usage soon, so that I can rid myself almost completely from iTunes. I however still have DRM on some songs which I need to get rid of. Apple earns my big red mark of shame, which does not actually exist, but you get my drift.

I just recently bought the id pack on steam, which includes every game ever made by id. The famous doom, wolfenstein 3d, commander keen, all of those famous games were in the pack. Even all of the quake games and mission packs, and expansions were included. Unfortunately, having a 24 inch monitor at 1920 to 1200 meant that many of the old games looked terrible. They still look terrible anyway in today’s day and age, but it is incredibly stretched out when on such a high resolution. Of course, what is there to expect of a game that ran on DOS? However, I’m here to talk about doom 3, a much more recent game which came out in 2004.

First of all, the graphics of the game are pretty nice, just don’t expect Crysis. I really do like the ambiance in the game, as the sounds never stop. Wherever you go, there will always be ambient noise which can be rather unsettling. Also, there are many different audio clips that play when an enemy is about to attack. As far as I know, there is never a moment in the game where the sound is ever distracting, or does not fit the game at all. However, in a game, it’s not the tech that is most important, it’s the amount of fun that is obtained from the game. Different people think different things about what makes a game fun. To each his own, unless fun is derived from how the game looks on maximum settings.

Fun is the one thing this game seems to lack in certain departments. One of the most glaring and obvious problems is the flashlight. You’re left alone in dark corridors, never fighting with anyone else, shooting things in the dark. Many times in the game, you’ll be left fighting in places like this:

Now in this situation, what would you do? Of course, you would take your gun out and shoot him! ok…switch weapons…What’s this??

Edit: This is why you don’t hotlink! Warning for all future bloggers.

Bam Bam Bam! Is he dead?

I think you see what I mean. I don’t have a problem with having a challenging game. I do have a problem with artificial difficulty. Come on, do we have to shoot in the dark? I understand making the game scary, but if it requires clamping down on the user’s control in a limiting way, then obviously it’s going to frustrate the player. The usage of darkness is very good, but the way the player interacts with darkness is frustrating. Luckily, someone made a mod that allows a smaller flashlight that works with the machine gun and shotgun. The constant switching between the flashlight and the gun meant that the player had to choose between being ready to shoot, or knowing where to shoot. Whenever I walk up to the door, I’m always thinking about what I should have ready. It doesn’t make a difference however, as there is always an imp ready to jump on you as soon as the door opens. This brings me to another aspect of the game that it relies too heavily on.

Boo. Did I scare you? if yes, this game is not for you. This game relies heavily on cheap thrills. Every room you go into, there is bound to be something that is going to claw/bite/throw fireballs at you . This ties in with the flashlight problem, as you always have to keep your gun ready for every time something pops out to kill you, but you can’t see it. At least this game is realistic enough to provide some light when you shoot your gun. The scare tactics are used so much that they almost become a parody of themselves. For example, when there is armor laying near a wall, sometimes it turns out to be a door which the constructors of the place seemed to build only to house an imp. A small jump in fright, then I proceeded to mow it down with my chainsaw. In the small compartment that opened up, there was more armor. The exact same thing happened again! This had never happened before, was totally unexpected, and I ended up laughing at what had just happened.I heard that the expansion relies much less on this type of thing, but I have not tried it it yet.

This game is great in so many aspects, but it fails in so many others. This game seems to rely heavily on horror and tense environments. And it does well with things such as the ambiance and the way everything looks. It falls flat however, when the scare tactics start to become overused, and the player becomes desensitized to all the monsters that pop up. It would be much effective if it happened much less. It feels like it’s trying too hard. I have the feeling that if it was a game that was playtested and polished extensively, such as what Valve does, these issues would have been fixed, and given much more polish. Everything would combine effectively to create a great but scary game that would not have been so imperfect.It was a good job, but could have been much better.

edit: Well, I just learned what hotlinking is, and why not to do it. Seems like the pictures are down.

edit 2: pictures are back up.