Christmas Music Blog!
Enjoy.
Enjoy.
This blog tracks the epic of kick-starting a whole writing career, with spies and thrillers, now saints and vampires. I cover the creative process, stuff that blows up, history, philosophy, and theology. If you like any or all of the above, you'll like this one. We talk about comic books, movies, music, and writing. Usually, all at the same time. [Note: All Amazon links here are associate links. Which means nothing to you, but it means Declan Finn gets a few pennies for the sale. Thank you.]
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Lindsay Stirling's "What Child Is This"
Christmas Music. After yesterday, I might only do these for a while.
Enjoy.
Enjoy.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Guns, Sandy Hook, and political parasites.
I am not going to discuss the Connecticut shooting. The day of the shooting, Facebook was filled with so many left-wing anti-gun @$$h0l3s trying to politicize dead children that I had to point out that the bodies were not even room temperature yet, and the political parasites were trying to stand on their still steaming bodies.
There was even someone on Facebook within six hours who stated that, yes, he would have rather that the children has had all been set on fire, because at least then they wouldn't have been shot. He said that. I cannot make this crap up.
Do you want to know what's worse than killing children? People trying to make political points off of their dead bodies. These people make me violently ill.
And the worst thing? There are already people making excuses for this murdering psycho -- "bright," or "autistic" or "Aspergers," and other exculpatory or complimentary words are being thrown at us to excuse mass murder, as though blaming the guns for the slaughter. Again while at the same time defaming innocent civilians, painting 94 million American gun owners with the same brush of mass murder.
People make me ill. And I've made myself sick just writing about this. Notice, I haven't said one thing about the shooting itself, just the aftermath.
The people of ancient Carthage were a money-worshiping people. To sacrifice to their god, they would toss the biggest drain on their pocketbooks into a fire. They would throw in their children.
If you were someone who spent time online on Friday talking about monsters who own guns instead of passing along prayers, then look in the mirror. You already threw the baby into the fire for your political points. Enjoy.
There was even someone on Facebook within six hours who stated that, yes, he would have rather that the children has had all been set on fire, because at least then they wouldn't have been shot. He said that. I cannot make this crap up.
Do you want to know what's worse than killing children? People trying to make political points off of their dead bodies. These people make me violently ill.
And the worst thing? There are already people making excuses for this murdering psycho -- "bright," or "autistic" or "Aspergers," and other exculpatory or complimentary words are being thrown at us to excuse mass murder, as though blaming the guns for the slaughter. Again while at the same time defaming innocent civilians, painting 94 million American gun owners with the same brush of mass murder.
People make me ill. And I've made myself sick just writing about this. Notice, I haven't said one thing about the shooting itself, just the aftermath.
The people of ancient Carthage were a money-worshiping people. To sacrifice to their god, they would toss the biggest drain on their pocketbooks into a fire. They would throw in their children.
If you were someone who spent time online on Friday talking about monsters who own guns instead of passing along prayers, then look in the mirror. You already threw the baby into the fire for your political points. Enjoy.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Monday, December 3, 2012
Video Games: the Next Generation?
I try not to make this a blog for solely my own personal opinions, I have another blog for that, but I read an article last week that kinda annoyed me. I deeply appreciate the artwork, the graphics, and even the storytelling of some games. The graphics of the upcoming Lara Croft game, or the storytelling of the Mass Effect trilogy, could go toe to toe with movies, and could certainly replace some actors. I mean, seriously, look at the video below.
How long did it take you to see that this was NOT live action?
But for all that, there’s been an ongoing debate in the video game community that goes something like this – the last round of major video game consoles came out in 2005 (the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3), and the technology has advanced soooo much since then, surely it is time to move on.
You might smell a bit of burning rubber at this point. That’s my brain hitting the brakes hard and going “huh?”
When the Xbox 360 came out, game companies needed to increase their hired programmers tenfold as games transitioned to HD. The PS3 came out at the same time, and it came out in Blu-ray, which was even higher definition, and made the costs of making games so prohibitive that it took years before the PS3 had a solid roster of games.
But now the game companies themselves insist that the next generations of consoles must come out, so they can use the latest and greatest technologies. Their logic is that they’re losing money because their games are not as shiny as they could be.
Really, everybody? First, I quite literally don’t know what I’m missing. So I can’t see how I can be biased against your games because there’s something better out there – because, as the companies themselves have noted, there isn’t anything better than the current generation. Is there really a problem with getting the most out of the technology we have?
Let’s take a look. To the right, this is the original Xbox game Halo: Combat Evolved. Dinky by today’s standards, but I remember when I saw it and said, “Awesome.” It’s still a nice looking game.
Fast forward ten years. There was a rerelease of the original game with Xbox 360 technology, and it was called, to no one’s great surprise, Halo: Combat Evolved. Anniversary.
You can see the difference. The position of the body isn’t as stiff, the graphics are more detailed, the colors are richer. It is visibly better.
And now, finally, we look at Halo 4, using the exact same Xbox 360 graphics. It already looks like they’ve gone through another generation already.
Here’s a side by side or two, just to make it even clearer.
I’m hard pressed to imagine how anyone could think that we’ve hit the limit of the current generation of gaming technology, since Halo 3 and Halo 4 are the same generation. Will the next round look even better? Of course. My question is – is there a rush?
Second, could there be another reason why companies are losing money? Let’s think about this a moment. Their video games are $60, or $70, brand new. They’re not cutting costs on the games, and with gaming seasons that have over a dozen new, top-shelf games coming out at the same time, do they seriously expect people to drop over $700 on their products? Does anyone have $700 just lying around anymore?
I think I would rather pay $14, or even $30, on a used game – games that the distributors like Gamestop make money on, but the original publishers don’t. There have been so many games played that way, there has been talk of making video games non-sellable my giving out a one-time code that make the game unusable to anyone else. If you want to trash the video game industry, make it impossible to play used games.)
So, what is the problem with the current generation of consoles? Well, let's see -- coding has filtered down to street level. Anyone who knows what they're doing with a computer can probably start putting together their own game -- and anyone with a Kickstarter account can finance it. Low-rent competition is good for the soul.
Maybe I'm just a backwards Catholic, who acknowledges that progress is cumulative. You can't get to point Z while simultaneously jettisoning point A-Y -- Catholics throw out nothing. Don't believe me? Look at the Vatican archives sometime. But most atheists, so-called "progressives" (of all sides of the spectrum), and now the video games, try throwing out everything from the past, and hope really hard that no one else will remember it either -- be it how many atheist regimes disintegrate, or how truly dark the "Dark Ages" could have gotten without the Catholic church.
I prefer to get the most out of what's there than try to move on and pretend that last console (or, on the larger scale, the last few hundred years) didn't happen.
How long did it take you to see that this was NOT live action?
But for all that, there’s been an ongoing debate in the video game community that goes something like this – the last round of major video game consoles came out in 2005 (the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3), and the technology has advanced soooo much since then, surely it is time to move on.
You might smell a bit of burning rubber at this point. That’s my brain hitting the brakes hard and going “huh?”
When the Xbox 360 came out, game companies needed to increase their hired programmers tenfold as games transitioned to HD. The PS3 came out at the same time, and it came out in Blu-ray, which was even higher definition, and made the costs of making games so prohibitive that it took years before the PS3 had a solid roster of games.
But now the game companies themselves insist that the next generations of consoles must come out, so they can use the latest and greatest technologies. Their logic is that they’re losing money because their games are not as shiny as they could be.
Really, everybody? First, I quite literally don’t know what I’m missing. So I can’t see how I can be biased against your games because there’s something better out there – because, as the companies themselves have noted, there isn’t anything better than the current generation. Is there really a problem with getting the most out of the technology we have?
Let’s take a look. To the right, this is the original Xbox game Halo: Combat Evolved. Dinky by today’s standards, but I remember when I saw it and said, “Awesome.” It’s still a nice looking game.
Fast forward ten years. There was a rerelease of the original game with Xbox 360 technology, and it was called, to no one’s great surprise, Halo: Combat Evolved. Anniversary.
And now, finally, we look at Halo 4, using the exact same Xbox 360 graphics. It already looks like they’ve gone through another generation already.
Here’s a side by side or two, just to make it even clearer.
I’m hard pressed to imagine how anyone could think that we’ve hit the limit of the current generation of gaming technology, since Halo 3 and Halo 4 are the same generation. Will the next round look even better? Of course. My question is – is there a rush?
Second, could there be another reason why companies are losing money? Let’s think about this a moment. Their video games are $60, or $70, brand new. They’re not cutting costs on the games, and with gaming seasons that have over a dozen new, top-shelf games coming out at the same time, do they seriously expect people to drop over $700 on their products? Does anyone have $700 just lying around anymore?
I think I would rather pay $14, or even $30, on a used game – games that the distributors like Gamestop make money on, but the original publishers don’t. There have been so many games played that way, there has been talk of making video games non-sellable my giving out a one-time code that make the game unusable to anyone else. If you want to trash the video game industry, make it impossible to play used games.)
So, what is the problem with the current generation of consoles? Well, let's see -- coding has filtered down to street level. Anyone who knows what they're doing with a computer can probably start putting together their own game -- and anyone with a Kickstarter account can finance it. Low-rent competition is good for the soul.
Maybe I'm just a backwards Catholic, who acknowledges that progress is cumulative. You can't get to point Z while simultaneously jettisoning point A-Y -- Catholics throw out nothing. Don't believe me? Look at the Vatican archives sometime. But most atheists, so-called "progressives" (of all sides of the spectrum), and now the video games, try throwing out everything from the past, and hope really hard that no one else will remember it either -- be it how many atheist regimes disintegrate, or how truly dark the "Dark Ages" could have gotten without the Catholic church.
I prefer to get the most out of what's there than try to move on and pretend that last console (or, on the larger scale, the last few hundred years) didn't happen.
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