John McCain has finally picked a running mate... Alaska Governer Sarah Palin. That's right. A woman. At least this little move should prove to all the Democrats with fingers in their ears that Republicans really, really, really don't care about gender or race when it comes to political figures. On the other hand, I don't know a whole lot about her, so I don't know if she's actually a good candidate as far as voting records go. It'll be interesting to listen to Peter Heck and Rush Limbaugh in days to come. (In fact, may I remind you that this is the woman who, after having genetic testing on her baby before he was born, learned he had Down's Syndrome and vehemently decided to keep him and says she has no regrets... In this day and age where a child with Down's Syndrome is a prime candidate for abortion, this merits major points in her favor.)

What I want to point out is the fact that when CNN got wind of McCain's pick, they launched into full attack mode and whipped out a very familiar negative point: Inexperience. That's right. CNN is pulling the Inexperience Card. After all this time of trying to tell us all that inexperience doesn't matter with Barack Obama, they're now trying to say that Sarah Palin is a bad choice because she's only been a governer for a couple of years. Do people not see what's going on in the mainstream media? They're so blinded by hate for conservatives and blinded by the messiah complex they've encouraged in the liberals that they don't know how to say ANYTHING objectively anymore. They have, quite literally said: "Obama's inexperience is a good thing because he won't fall into the same paths as previous presidents," and then turned around and said "Palin's inexperience is a bad thing because a VP needs to be able to step into the presidency in a time of emergency." Of course, they also took this opportunity to rage on McCain's age, or, as I like to put it, MASSIVE LIFE EXPERIENCE.

Obama has been in the US Senate for only 3 years. The mainstream media is working overtime to dispel the belief that so many people have that his inexperience with politics in general is a bad thing. They're working overtime to come up with reasons (albeit very shallow reasons) as to why his inexperience is a good thing. Yet, when the Republicans, their opponents, picks a VICE President who's been a governer for 2 years, they immediately, and I mean IMMEDIATELY launch into talking about how her inexperience is a bad thing, because she won't know how to run the country should something bad happen. See, she's not even the presidential candidate. She's the vice president! She's the backup! Somehow, Obama is perfectly capable of being the PRESIDENT of the United States with only 3 years of experience as a Senator and Palin is NOT capable of being the VICE President of the United States with only 2 years of experience as a Governor.

There's only a few ways to interpret this, and none of them are very good for liberals:

1. They're out of touch with reality. Think of it as like Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field. The idea that once Jobs gets on stage and plugs a new product, the Apple masses will clamber to devour it. The liberals and mainstream media see their prize candidate and throw out all objectivity and reason and will blindly defend that candidate from even his own blunders, not to mention "attacks" by others who try to point out why he's not a good candidate. But common sense seems to kick in when the Republican party displays a fault that their own candidate does, and when they see one, they are able to see the issue and call it out like it should be, but are completely helplessly incapable of seeing the very same issue in their own candidate. That's not politics... That's almost what I'd call a cult. They blindly follow someone regardless of anything negative, because they simply can't see it, but then they're perfectly capable of seeing the negative points in someone else. Hypocrisy and ignorance at its finest.
2. They're sexist. Yeah, this is a stretch, but you KNOW the mainstream media would pull this up if the sides were switched. The liberals are either out of touch or sexist because they think Obama, with his paltry 3 years of experience is somehow not an issue, but then they think Palin's 2 years of experience is a bad thing. What, do they think that because she's a woman that she's incapable of being as experienced as Obama in the same time frame? Do they think it's impossible for a woman to learn as quickly as a man? It's a serious question... A bit of a stretch, but one can only imagine the uproar that would be caused if, in some freak alternate universe, Hillary Clinton only had 2 years of experience and the Republicans had a candidate with only 3 years of experience and the Republicans were saying Clinton shouldn't be nominated because she's too young.

Either way, the media is displaying a very obvious sense of bias in this regard. They've defended Obama's inexperience and twisted it all around to make it look like a good thing, and they've made such a huge deal about Clinton being a woman has nothing to do with her skill... Their state of mind can only be described as "blindly biased against opposing viewpoints" or "sexist". Choose your pick! Personally, I'm going to give humanity the benefit of the doubt and say that racism and sexism doesn't play nearly as big of a role in today's society as it used to... Not when it comes to important things. I mean, sure, we have all the race-defense associations going out looking for examples of racism to stomp out, like with the black-furred pets going on sale, but people who didn't vote for Clinton aren't sexist... They just didn't like what she stood for. People who don't vote for Obama aren't racist... They just don't like what he stands for. Same goes for Sarah Palin. If I don't support her, it's not because she's a woman... It's because I don't like her ideas. I don't know any of her ideas yet, because I don't live in Alaska, so I can't honestly say I support her or not. But yeah... I don't go for the sexist reason. I think people are above things like that in matters of importance. My choice is firmly entrenched with Reason 1: The liberals and mainstream media are all blindly biased for Democrats that anything they do is a good thing, and so blindly biased against Republicans that anything they do is a bad thing. It doesn't matter if they're doing the SAME THING. Democrats are still good and Republicans are still bad.

Now, I do think inexperience is something to be worried about. But, to be honest, I think it's something you should worry far more about if the candidate is going to be the president. Vice president is still important, but it's the president that influences the general direction of the country. The vice president will usually follow in the steps of the president if they're given the chance to do something. There's absolutely zero sense in having a vice president who will do the polar opposite every chance they get... Anyway, I'm just saying. Inexperience is an issue, but less so in a VP than a president, but the media is going the flip opposite. Inexperience in the Republican VICE President is a bad thing, and inexperience in the Democrat PRESIDENT is a good thing? Yeah... Not getting how people can still say the media is objective.

So... After some encouragement and a 50% Off Sale on Steam, I decided to buy the game Beyond Good & Evil for 5 bucks. Those of you know I'm not a fan of Ubi Sucks Soft, and that's primarily been the reason I never bought it when it came out. Of course, when it came out, Uru Live was still fresh on my mind and I didn't want ANYTHING to do with Ubi Soft. Still, I really don't want to see their name pasted all over the games I play. I remove their logo videos whenever I can... Anyway. I bought Beyond Good & Evil and in a stretch of boredom lastnight, I decided to play it. Boy, was that a mistake.

Let's start at the top, shall we?

I installed it a couple days ago, so I went in and started the game from Steam. It chewed on a few things and prepared the files for a good 5 minutes like Steam usually does when you run a game for the first time (I need a faster computer) and then... "Beyond Good & Evil not properly installed. Please install Beyond Good & Evil." Er, what now? It's not installed? Steam says it's finished downloading... I mean, it takes a while to get a program fully installed, but once it is, Steam is usually right when it says it is. I immediately took to Google and the SteamPowered forums. I found a thread in no time, which makes it seem that this is a very common error. After some theories that it might be copy protection or unverified game files, someone came on and nailed it: It wasn't creating the necessary registry settings. Apparently, it manages to create the entry on Windows XP systems, but not on Vista systems... Which is obviously what's the matter, but is absolutely rediculous for any application to do that. I've never once had a problem with old software not being able to create registry entries. I've even installed (and successfully ran) both Myst for Windows 95 and realMYST with no effort. (Which leads me to say that if you DO have a problem running either one, then YOU are doing something wrong, not Vista.) Both naturally create registry entries and they both naturally work. Why Beyond Good & Evil manages to utterly fail in this simple act, we'll never know... Wait! I know: It's by Ubi Soft! By the way, here's the registry walkthrough, just in case the forum goes down, for some reason, in the future and the link breaks and this post becomes pointless. (Cleaned up a little by myself, though.):

I had this problem when I tried to run SettingsApplication (Steam\steamapps\common\beyond good and evil) before running the actual game (on XP). After I ran the game once I was able to use SettingsApplication and successfully play the game. I think it might have something to do with the registry and the way BG&E might try to create a registry item that it can make on XP but not on Vista. Could you guys check if you have a registry item after running the game once? It should be in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Ubisoft\Beyond Good & Evil If not, make those directories in regedit and then add a REG_SZ called Install Path with the following value: c:\program files\steam\steamapps\common\beyond good and evil (change the directory to apply to your situation). Easier way to do the above:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Ubisoft\Beyond Good & Evil]
"Install Path"="c:\\program files\\steam\\steamapps\\common\\beyond good and evil"

Copy and paste the text above, change the install path to your situation, save file as .reg and double click on the .reg after saving. That should create it for you. Hopefully that's the only problem.

Alright, so after I actually hacked the thing to run the way it should from the get-go, I managed to get the game started. There I am, navigating the main menu... I hit New Game and a cutscene starts. Normal right? WRONG! The cutscene is over in about 5 seconds and is on to the next scene... And the next scene... And the next scene... And the sound is still merrily playing the audio from the FIRST scene. What on earth? Audio desync in a GAME? I don't believe I've ever had that happen before... Video files to watch in VLC? Yes. Games? No. Well, it turns out, according to this thread on SteamPowered and this thread on Ubi Soft, that it has to do with modern computer processors adjusting their clockrates on the fly. Basically, in layman's terms, they actually slow down and speed up in order to save power when programs aren't using all the strength available. Apparently, BG&E for Windows was a port from the console version, which was designed for older processors that don't adjust their speed. When they ported it to a PC game back then, computer processors were the same way... But now with an increased usage of laptops, which adjust their speed dynamically, and the Core 2 processors that ALSO dynamically adjust their speed, a critical bug has surfaced. When you start the game, the processor is mostly idle and in low-power mode... Meaning that it's actually running slow, too, but you just don't notice. When the processor gets a work load, it asks for more electricity and the clock speed ramps up and everything goes faster. This is what breaks BG&E. When the game starts, it manages to (foolishly) lock itself to the current clock speed of the processor before a load is applied. Then, when the game actually starts throwing the processor things to do, the processor speeds up and the video, which is locked to slower clock, is suddenly extremely fast. It's like... Recording the footage on a slow record setting, and then playing it back at normal speed.

To be perfectly honest, the last game I played that linked itself to the processor in such a way? An ancient ASCII graphics game called Kingdom of Kroz. Think of it like a Rogue clone that's actually FUN, and a ZZT that you can't actually create maps for. Awesome game... But, like I said, has been impossible to play on computers sporting the 486 and up since it ties itself into the processor so tightly. You'd have to install a DOS emulator that emulates a slower processor... They exist, but it's too much work for Kroz. (Especially when you can't even find Kroz anymore.) But why, after all this time, BG&E is stupid enough to pull this trick again is beyond me... To me, there's simply no excuse for a blunder like this, as other games from the Windows 95 work JUST FINE. I don't know anything about programming games, but it's obvious that people have been able to cope with the evolving processor enough to compensate for stuff like this for a long time already... And then BAM! BG&E doesn't and now we have to work around it because Ubi Soft is much, much too lazy to actually fix their own problems.

How DO you fix this problem, anyway? Well, it's "simple", so the threads say. You run a processor intensive application on low priority in the background so that your processor is always going to register full speed, but not allot so much time to the intensive application that it detracts from the game's performance. Did you get that? Yeah... Probably not. That's my point. If you have to do this to play a bargain bin game, not even the price of 5 bucks is going to be worth it, because the majority of people aren't going to understand how to get around all the MAJOR flaws in this game that Ubi Soft should fix, but won't. However, if you visit the link to the second thread I linked up there? (Or here, if you're too lazy to find it again, hah!) They offer a download for an interesting little program that will do all that automatically... It'll launch itself as a low-priority program that's designed to make the processor run 100%, then start BG&E and hopefully, but not always, make the video sync with the audio. But see, I don't have a multiple core processor... If you DO, then you'll need to follow extra instructions that consist of doing all this PLUS tabbing out of the game after it's started and using the Task Manager to manually set the game to use one core of the processor... It's called setting the Affinity. Here's a quick how-to for those of you with a Core 2 Duo or Quad:

After about an hour of twiddling bits, I've finally got mine working on Vista x64, dual core.

1) I downloaded and am using the "Full Processing.exe" program found here. (You stick it in your BGE folder in steamapps\common, and run it instead of BGE.exe.)

2) I forced V-sync on for BGE.exe in Nvidia Control Panel.

3) My Compatibilty Settings are as follows:
[_] Triple Buffering
[X] SSE
[_] HW Vertex Processing
[X] Multi vertex stream
[X] Mipmapping
[_] W Buffer
[_] Fastflip
[X] Autogen Mipmap

4) I turned my power options to "High Performance" mode in Power Settings (but I don't think that this did a whole lot.)

5) Once Beyond Good and Evil is running, I Alt-Tab out, open Task Manager, and turn off Core 1 in Affinity Settings.

After taking these steps, everything runs smooth; video is sync'd, and there's no flickering/artifacts. Hope this works for other people.

By the way, I mirrored that "Full Processing" program they keep referring to, once again in case the original link location goes down and we're all stuck with nothing. Here's the link to Full Processing.exe, and here's the link to Full Processing.jar. JAR is for Java, and if you don't know what that is, then go ahead and get the EXE version instead... They both do the same thing. Put either one in the folder with the BGE.exe file or it won't work.

Also, notice the compatibility settings? Triple Buffering and SSE and all that? That's not Windows Compatibility, that's something in BG&E's own configuration program. You'll have to go wherever the BGE.exe file is again and run SettingsApplication.exe and use the Advanced Tab to set all those. I took the initiative to set compatibility before playing again, so I can't vouch for any texture malfunctions if you play with default settings, but I can tell you that there are no texture problems after doing that. I would recommend changing the settings, too... But if you want to try without, then the worst that'll happen is that you have to quit and change them afterwards.

Isn't this just... Amazing? This isn't limited to just the Steam version, either. It's the PC copy, period. I just happened to be using Steam. Now, the registry might seem to be related to Steam, but the fact that it works in XP and not Vista seems to indicate that it's BG&E itself once again. Steam can install all kinds of other third party programs just fine... I had BioShock (which also has terrible bugs of its own that makes it unplayable on my system) and AudioSurf and Defcon and Darwinia... They all worked fine. If Steam was having trouble making registry entries, then nothing would work. No. Steam is just the distribution center. Any problems with a program that isn't made by Valve is strictly the fault of that third party. In this case, it's Ubi Soft... I'm seriously ticked off that all this is happening and they're just sitting in their little cubicles churning out the latest re-re-rehash of Prince of Persia, Far Cry and Rainbow Six. And people wonder why I don't like Ubi Soft? It's not JUST for Uru, even though that is a major, major contributor... It's because they're just a BAD PUBLISHER. Period. BG&E is the perfect example. At least the games that EA charges for actually start, eh?

Now, what do I think of BG&E after it actually started running like something resembling a game? It's pretty darned fun, actually... I don't really go for the whole hovercraft combat scenes, since I'm bad at racing and thus even worse at shooting WHILE racing, but the whole taking pictures of animals to make money thing? That's FUN! I'll be walking along through a mine, minding my own business and BAM! A nasty creature leaps out at me and tries to maul my face off and I'm going: "WAIT! STOP MOVING! Someone hold him still so I can get a picture!" And this entire time, the monster's gnawing my leg off or something... Yeah, pretty neat, actually! Even got 3000 credits for snapping a picture of a boss monster, haha. I'm only just an hour or so through the story and I've already got something like 15,000 credits after 3 rolls of film. As for combat? Eh. Reminds me of Twilight Princess or Starfox Adventures, where you kinda swing things in the general direction of the monster and your character does the rest. I mean, that's all well and good and fits well with the theme of the game, but I much prefer strategic realtime combat... Sniping from a distance or lobbing a grenade over a wall. Gears of War kinda stuff. But still, it's pretty fun. Not too complicated, so you don't spend all your time figuring out combos for that one way to kill something. As for story? Well... Haven't really got into any story, so I can't judge, yet. So far, though, it at least hasn't actively chased me away from playing like other games have... Which have been, coincidentally, Ubi Soft titles.

However, based purely on the technical problems with modern computers? I don't know if I can recommend actually purchasing this game... Unless you're prepared to work and cheat your way through things that should have been patched a LONG time ago. I feel cheated, to be honest, because nobody warned me about these problems to begin with. These aren't things you could even think of happening on games today. Not booting up because the registry didn't get changed? Video unwatchable because its linked to the clock speed so tightly? These are blunders you'd expect from games over 10 years ago... Blunders that won't get fixed.

Whatever you do... If you have a post you've written that needs changed? Even if editing the post to add a link might not let WordPress follow it as a trackback link? Whatever you do, DO NOT delete the post and repost it. Not only does it screw around with RSS feeds, but the trackbacks that DID go through the first time are now completely invalid, and people using those links to get to your site will meet up with a lovely "post can't be found" message that'll leave people wondering what in the heck happened.

Luckily, all trackbacks were to my own blog, so I was able to go back and change them so the links work, but I apologize to all my RSS readers... You're going to see a duplicate post soon, but just remember that the oldest of the two is no longer there. (Or, if that doesn't work, then just look for whichever one is there... I mean, not that there's any need to actually visit except to read comments, but you know... Just to let you know. One "Vaccination Rant" post isn't going to work.)

Yeah... Live and learn, eh? I need to take a shower and go to bed before the sun rises.

NOTICE: This post will be edited as the conversation continues on the other blog...

No, I'm not ranting about vaccinations... But someone on MystBlogs was. I'm going to warn you now; it's not a pretty post. Whoever this person is (a very recent addition to MystBlogs, it seems, or at least someone who hasn't posted in a long time), they've decided to take it upon themselves to call every parent who doesn't give their kids vaccines an idiot... It wouldn't have necessarily bothered me, because this, after all, is some random person with absolutely no stories to back up their claims. It's all a rant to let the entire planet know what they feel, whether it's right or wrong. They don't care... Just another typical personal blogger. Give someone a microphone, an audience, and total anonymity, and they'll make fools of themselves every time. (What? Hey! Stop looking at me like that... My political commentaries are rooted in fact. I provide links to sources and everything. This guy? Not so much. And as far as my anonymity goes, I just want to make it clear that I don't have personal contact information up on my site because I still live with my parents... I have always planned to release some real-world contact info once I get a house of my own. Anyway, on to the task at hand!)

Now... I don't usually take these posts so seriously, but, guess what? I'm a parent who thinks vaccinations are probably the single worst thing you can do to a child. Well... I'm not a parent yet. But I've discussed, on two separate occasions (here and here), my personal experience with vaccines. Basically, I was very sick with some disease that our family doctor couldn't diagnose for months, and when I wasn't getting better, was referred to a specialist who immediately recognized my condition as HSP, and I was immediately admitted to a hospital. Once I got in the hospital, it was only 2 days and then a long period of recovery, but I was sick for a very long time before then. According to sites, as I've mentioned before, there are two ways to contract HSP: One is "nobody knows how", and the other is "vaccinations." It was either measles or smallpox... I don't remember, but if anyone's interested in knowing, I can consult my parents. (But they're asleep right now, so you'll have to wait.) My brother was started on the standard progression of injections and displayed allergic reactions... Basically, his blood pressure went through the roof as a DIRECT result of the vaccines. My parents then made the decision that they wouldn't give us any more vaccinations. Three more babies later, nobody's had a single vaccine and we're all doing just fine. No serious health issues.

Now, to make what could be a very long post short, here's the comment I left for the person in question:

It was difficult to read through your... Tactless ranting. Did you even bother to search for news articles discussing the possibilities of autism being linked to vaccines? Try this Google Link for starters: autism linked vaccination. It's not exactly some brain-dead parents' foolish misconception of how medical science works... There's some real articles out there that go well beyond "crazy parent syndrome". To be honest, I don't blame anyone at all for balking at the idea of vaccines with all the reports of problems we've had over the years, and for someone to call them irresponsible is just wrong. They made a judgment call in what they think is in the best interest of their own children. If you want to take the chance with injecting your own children with mercury, that's fine with all of us, but I'm personally thankful that my parents stopped giving me injections... In fact, I contracted a health problem called HSP that only occurs as a delayed reaction to one of the few vaccinations I DID receive. My brother was given injections at a very young age and he displayed an allergic reaction to them. It's not all crazy people being afraid of rumors... There's some hard facts and experience behind these ideas.

Having done a fair bit of research on the effects of vaccinations myself, I find it very discouraging that people like yourself would post something like this without anything to back themselves up. But, then again, this is a personal blog, isn't it... Heaven forbid that anyone does any fact checking for a public journal that's intended to tell the world what you think, whether it's right or wrong.

Now, having said that, I want to refer you to an older article about a certain family and chain of events that seems to have been buried as quickly as possible by the mainstream media. The father was a neurologist and the mother was simply referred to as a doctor... Either way, these two people know something about medical science. You know what THEY said? They successfully won a settlement that claimed their daughter developed autism BECAUSE of the vaccinations she was given at a young age. These aren't just some witless parents who are afraid of some rumors flying around... These are medical doctors we're talking about. Let's also not forget that the court also agreed with their assessment that the vaccinations caused autism. The court agreed with the two doctors... The two parents who noticed their child started displaying austistic traits after receiving vaccinations. That sounds a little above and beyond hysterical morons, wouldn't you agree? Tell me... Do you still adhere to the belief that parents are idiots for thinking autism can be caused by vaccinations? It sounds to me that they're listening to some very solid evidence that supports that thought.

So yes... I just had to make a comment because it's my hobby to point out when people are wrong!

EDIT 1: In response to a reply comment to my own, I have further expanded on my own opinions. I encourage you to visit their site and read what they said, though. I won't post their own comments here, because I think that since this is a conversation that began on their site, people should at least be willing to visit and drum up the hits for their blog, too. But I WILL, however, post my own comments so that you can see the broader picture of where I'm coming from:

Interesting... So you're still calling them morons for hearing about a study (and a huge court case that went in favor of two doctors who said the vaccines caused autism) even when nothing is "proven"? Isn't that just airing on the side of caution? Isn't that called making an educated decision until proof DOES come out? In either case, pumping someone full of mercury and other odd chemicals simply can't be good for you... You said people think austism is a bacteria when nobody has said anything of the sort. They're saying that the increased amounts of mercury, in some cases, have been shown to increase the chances of autism. Mercury affects the mind and nervous system... How is that not something that could exacerbate and even cause autism at a very young age where things are still developing? I still think you have some facts mixed up and are basing an attack off not nearly enough evidence. There's enough evidence out there to show that there's something up with vaccines, and some parents are taking the initiative to stop having them done until more information is out. I don't call that idiotic... I call that caution and concern for the health of their own children. If you don't see anything wrong with it, then you are by all means free to keep the injections going, but you specifically called everyone a moron for thinking vaccines could be dangerous.

It's therefore odd that you think people being shunned from society for this is ridiculous... I mean, you made a pretty heated post telling everyone how dumb they were for thinking this. Unless you've managed to calm down and think rationally, it seems you're part of that group of people who thinks it's better off for parents to just fill their kids full of junk and darn them all if they don't think it's right.

Also, if you read my own blog, you'd see that I've made it a hobby of mine to address things like this. Controversial subjects of a more or less political nature. It's what I do... and I read MystBlogs... and when I saw this post on it, I had nothing to do with my time, so I decided to make a comment. I wouldn't call it "feeding on negativity", because I'm not angry, as you were so apt to point out. Coming across as a self-proclaimed Christian conservative, I get many a comment addressed to my controversial posts. Personally, I have absolutely no issue with someone who returns to have a civilized conversation, only with those who show up to tell me how wrong I am without ANYTHING to back themselves up, and then run away when I rebut them with more information to the contrary. I've grown used to it, but I've come to realize that my controversial posts are the most interesting to the world at large... Sure, there's some people who feed off negativity, but I also tend to think that nobody finds posts about my personal life interesting in the least bit. It's like me not caring in the least bit about your other posts because I don't know you. Those posts mean nothing to me... But you finally made a post I could relate to, I felt I should comment on it, and then you think it's weird when people DO comment on it. Wasn't this entire inflammatory post intended to stir up conversation? People shouldn't write this kind of stuff if they don't intend on people seeing it and stopping by to give you a piece of their own mind, especially after seeing you give THEM a piece of YOUR mind. It takes a while to get used to, but expect only your closest friends to read your blog regularly if you're just rehashing your life, and then expect the floodgates to open when you make an opinion piece about a hot topic of the day. There's a slight difference in target audience when you do that, and the target audience WILL respond.

So what does a sick wolfie do on Sunday? There's nothing to do. Wasn't feeling well enough to go to church, eat, or any other activity that requires moving around... Poked around some old games, but I needed to DO something. I needed to wrap my mind around something and actually DO something. What did I wind up doing? I checked out the Guild of Writers Wiki! Not the lightest reading there is... But, for some reason, reading everything Paradox has been posting lately has got me in the mood to read up on Age making. So I reinstalled Python, Blender and the whole trove of Uru building tools and decided to go on an entirely new crash course!

The last time I tried this was almost exactly last year... August 19, 2007. I managed to churn out a pathetic excuse of a dinkwad Age and then kind of let it all go to the back burner for some reason. (Think I tried to shoot for my second attempt at buying a computer... Something which failed then and also failed this time. My primary source of income decided to stop being an option so I've been without anything to do, but that's another post entirely.) Starting over from scratch again, I managed to remember a few things that made it a little easier to get Uru and Blender up and running and ready to export my artwork. Behold, "Age 3" in all its initial glory:

Why, yes... Age 3 IS a reference to Gehn's method of naming Ages. In fact, Age 1 and 2 were the only two other attempts I ever made at creating Ages (Age 1 being pictured in the post last year) and I no longer have the source files (or Age files) to them. So for all intents and purposes, I burned the last two Books I wrote because they were mangled beyond repair. This one, however, is far above the quality of my last two Ages, even without textures. The sky was really fun to do... Well, if you asked me then, I would have told you that UV Mapping is probably the single most insane thing I've ever had to work with, but in hindsight, it was just plain fun. The next several hours consisted of me building collision barriers so that your avatar would at least realistically not be able to scale cliffs without the proper climbing gear, and turning that brilliant white terrain into a lovely rock:

I even managed to brighten the sky a considerable amount without using lights. (In fact, I made the sky emit light...) I would say the traversable terrain is roughly the same area as Myst Island, but obviously devoid of any life, plant, animal or otherwise (excluding me, of course), and was proudly generated using Terragen. It took me an incredibly long time to get the rock texture to look natural like that... My first attempt was all jumbled up and it looked like... I'm not sure. "Noisy teeth" is what comes to mind. But this time it's all smooth and beautiful. The textures provided on the GoW Wiki are really amazing.

My grand plan is to at least put dirt and grass textures down in the valley where people can actually walk around. Rock for the mountains and the "go away" places... I'm theorizing about trees, too. Nothing fancy, and most likely the ugliest things ever seen, since they'd mostly be tall poles with two flat textures to give the (glaringly fake) impression of 3D branches. I have my own sand and grass textures that I've used for a 3D scene I printed out for 4-H a long time ago, so I'll probably experiment with those and not rely so completely on the walkthrough. I'd already been able to import terrains into Blender, so I was at least able to personalize the Age a little bit.

I'm not even really a member of the Guild of Writers... Or maybe I am and don't know it? Not sure. I mean, I wore the shirt in Myst Online when it was on Gametap, and I registered on the forum when they got that up and running, and I followed the "guild politics", so to speak, but I don't figure there's a whole lot of people there who'd enjoy seeing me around, so I haven't really made my presence known. Haven't run into any problems yet, though... There's so much stuff I can read right now, so I don't really need to bother anyone.

Thought I'd just make an entirely new post to announce this, so it gets sent out to everyone who only reads me via RSS. (There's a few! Not a whole lot, but I'll bet more than those who visit the actual site.) Anyway! Vectorform, where my friend works, posted an article on Digg to try to drum up some traffic to their Surface blog. If you're a member of Digg, I kindly ask you to check it out or at least just give it a Digg up, or whatever they're calling it these days. Everyone else seems to be getting a spotlight for just opening the darned shipping crate, but these folks have actually been making things for the thing... Far more important and far more interesting!

EDIT: I guess the Digg article was removed? Wonder if it was Vectorform's idea or if Digg decided it wasn't "appropriate" for a developer to post articles about their own stuff... With Digg's general unfounded negative feelings toward Microsoft, it's hard to say. Regardless, it's gone. Nothing to see here!

Behold! The Microsoft Surface in all its glory... A friend of mine (who will remain nameless unless they want to take credit themselves) works for a company called Vectorform who has been working with the Surface for a while now, judging by the dates of the posts. They kindly pointed me to the site they've just now put online to showcase what they've been doing with it. Apparently, they've had a Surface SDK all this time and have been working on testing the limits! Pretty awesome, if you as me... What I would give to see one myself.

But yeah, not a whole lot to say... I mean, it's the SURFACE. I don't know why, but I'm really excited about it. I don't think people realize that Microsoft actually does invent stuff on their own. Everyone has to. Here, check out their Research page. The cool thing is, Microsoft makes a lot of neat little tools and then shares them for free, so be sure to take a look at their Downloads section. I remember stumbling across a voice-over-IP application they built long before Skype took the spotlight. (Heh, I'm looking through the downloads right now and came across a BitTorrent Simulator designed to show how torrents utilize network bandwidth. See? All kinds of neat stuff...) Anyway... Point is, you should check out the Surface and what Vectorform is doing with it, plus, you should check out all the freebie applications Microsoft has up for download on their Research site. Some of that stuff looks really interesting!