MySpace and Facebook and Twitter, oh my!

In the past few years, social networking sites have exploded to become a form of communication rivaling that of cell phone networks. MySpace was the first social networking site I became aware of back in 2005. Everyone was talking about it, and people were constantly asking me if I had an account. After a while I caved in and decided to see what “MySpace” was all about. I’ve been using it for four years now, and have hundreds of friends. Then, in 2007, some friends of mine were talking about Facebook. I decided to look into it as well, and soon found that some friends of mine who didn’t have a MySpace used Facebook. I quickly fell in love with the simplicity of Facebook. On MySpace, in order to see what someone’s up to you have to take the initiative to navigate to their page. While still rather simple, it gets tedious when you have many friends. On Facebook, everything your friends do (Except for private messages of course) gets posted in the “Stream” on the homepage. Recently, a new “micro-networking” site has made its debut: Twitter. Twitter is basically a place for people to post what they’re doing/thinking at any given time using 140 characters or less. For instance, since right now I am writing a blog post, I posted on Twitter that I’m “writing a blog post about Twitter on WordPress!!!” It’s a great way to keep up with what any given friend is doing at any given time.

The Lotus

I’m not into cars all that much, but this one I saw at the racetrack tonight is pretty sweet. I don’t know anything about how it runs, but I LOVE how it looks:

I doubt I’ll ever be able to afford one of these but if I can afford a cool car one day, this will be it!

Rock Band Revisited

Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten a chance to play RB2, but I did finally get a replacement disc for my Rock Band game. I played around on it today and got gold stars on 4 songs without really even trying. It’s so much easier on RB than on GH, because with GH if you miss just ONE note, you have to start all over. With Rock Band, it’s simply a matter of getting enough points (I think I heard somewhere that the requirement for Gold Stars is 1.5x the requirement for 5 stars) so if you can keep a 4x multiplier through most of the song, time your overdrive right, and whammy like a mad man, you can get Gold Stars easily! Anyways, I had a great time playing “Dead or Alive” with my little brother (He’s almost 10) and jammin out solo as well.

Maple Story Private Servers

They’ve been out for quite a while now. The first one opened (I believe) in December of 2007, the next one soon after, and then, with the public release of a different source in early March, private servers began to pop up everywhere. What is a private server, you ask? It’s basically a copy of a popular game but everything can be edited by the “host” or “owner” of the server. Experience rates, drop rates, items found in shops, you name it. MapleStory private servers range anywhere from 5x EXP all the way to 100,000x EXP. In some servers, everyone is a Game Master, and can spawn whatever monster or item they want, warp to any map they want, and be any class or combination of class they want. On most servers, though, the owner picks a small team of players to be Game Masters and moderate the regular players, as well as look out for hackers. These Private Servers are much more fun than Nexon’s versions, because the Game Masters actually exist, usually talk to you, sometimes are fun, and often throw awesome events. Events could include monsters that drop NX-Cash items, monsters that give a TON of experience (20k exp * the server’s EXP rate), monster invasion, boss runs, hide-and-seek, trivia, and tons of others. Some servers give out Wizet Invincible Hats as the ultimate prize. These babies give 999 to str/dex/int/luk, 999 accuracy/avoidability, 50 speed, 20 jump, and 200 weapon defence and magic defence. Many servers also offer the ability to be “reborn” once you hit level 200. You start back as a level 1 beginner, but you keep all your items, stats, and all your skills that you have mapped to your keyboard. For instance, if a player is a Night Lord the first time through, they can keep Flash Jump, Haste, Dark Sight, and Shadow Partner, and be reborn as a bowman. Shadow Partner works with all projectiles, so the Night Lord/Bowman will shoot 2 arrows with a regular shot, 4 with double-shot, 8 with strafe, and 2 streams of arrows with Storm of Arrows/Hurricane! All in all, Private Servers provide a ton of fun, and if Nexon could just take a few ideas from them, MapleStory Global would be MUCH better off!

iPodization

A new word is being used throughout the internet, and is quickly becoming widely recognized. iPodization is the phenomenon in which American culture is becoming more impersonal, and transferring into the virtual world. iPodization can be seen in the streets, when everyone is talking on their phone, texting a friend, listening to their music. On the bus, when there’s no one to talk to, since they’re all engrossed in their own games, movies, and other media. Some want it to stop, some want everyone to just lay down their gadgets and interact in ‘real life.’ The truth is, just as the highway, phone, and television systems brougt America closer together, and just as the internet connected the world together in one giant web, so “iPodization” is bringing everyone closer together on a global scale, although the local social system may begin to crack. Even the government is getting in on the deal, developing a system that will send out mass-text messages warning people to get to saftey from impending disaster. Podcasts, some updated hourly, keep the population informed as to what’s going on. Businesses now have a host of more opportunities to get their name out there and attract customers. New can spread around the world in a flash, via E-mail, text message, and phone calls. Although iPodization causes people to be oblivious to those three feet away, it brings millions of people to one, virtual interaction.

Transfer of Authors

I’ve created a different account for some of my other blogs and I wanted to get them all under one user, so I transferred this blog to my main account. I’m still the same guy, just under a different username. I just wanted to let you know now so I don’t cause any confusion later :D

Practicing TTFATF

I’ve been practicing Through the Fire and the Flames on Expert lately on GHIII on my X-Box 360. I’m still having alot of trouble getting the intro nailed down, my fingers just can’t seem to move fast enough. Once, I taped down the green button and made it through the intro only to fail 89% of the way through the song… <.< I know the tape is cheating but I’d like to be able to complete it at least once :P

ADD: My Anti-School

My Junior year has proven thus far to be the hardest of any in my school career. Every day, I wind up with homework assignments from at least three of my six classes. We do about three chapters a week in my Advanced Placement American History class, and land around ten assignments. In English, we don’t have quite so many assignments, but when we do, they’re big ones. In order to do well on such assignments, students must devote all their free time that particular night to be sure they get everything just right. Otherwise, something is bound to go wrong before they can turn it in. With me, juggling school, work, and me-time is hard, and since the ‘me-time’ weighs the heaviest in my book, I spend more time there than anywhere else. Sometimes, I honestly try to focus on school. Unfortunately (Or fortunately, whichever way you choose to look at it), I cannot pay attention to schoolwork for long before my games call to me, and then I get lost in Guitar Hero or MapleStory. And when I finally do concentrate on school, my brother has to pop in and play World of Warcraft, so I don’t get to use the computer for that internet research I needed to do, or that FLVS course I needed to work on. In short, I have ADD not by defect or whatever, but by choice. I just don’t want to do school! (I like to call it Junioritis)

Halo 3

Totally. Awesome. Game. My brother got an XBOX 360 for Christmas, along with Halo 3. Yeah, the campaign is short as heck, but the multiplayer offers almost infinite opportunity. Every time we have friends over they’re like “You have Halo 3!?” And then we get into a big rocket-match or a swordfight or fight for the Oddball for hours on end. I’m not that great of a player myself, I tend to come in last, although I am a pretty good team member and can hold my own in 2 v 2 matches. Even with my lack of Halo skills, I have a ton of fun, and enjoy yelling at the kid sitting next to me whenever I get killed by a head-shot right after I respawned from assassanation. Then there’s always those moments when I get an amazingly spectacular kill and my friends are like “How did you do that?!” I’d definately recommend this game to any fool person who hasn’t gotten it yet. Unless you’re not into the First Person Shooter genre. Even if you aren’t, it’s good to have to play with your buddies on occasion.

New Record!

This past Christmas, I got a DIY cube set, including pieces to build a cube, stickers, and cube lube, a liquid that comes in a dispenser that resembles a hyperdermic needle. This lube greatly decreases the friction between the individual “Cubies” that make up the Rubik’s Cube, therefore increasing turning speed. I applied some of this cube lube to my cube. At first, my solving time increased because I overshot my turns and messed up alot. After a while, I got used to the lubrication and started getting better again. The other day, my friends at my lunch table challenged me to solve it as fast as possible, and I ended up with 47 seconds, which obviously wrecks the previous time of 1:02.