A Poem by a Very Talented Young Lady

Icicles,

Sparkle, frozen.

Falling, dashing, freezing.

Icicles are very cold.

Chilling, shining, dazzling.

Clear. Frigid.

Water.

The Short Term Change

Even though it might be against my better judgement I am going to have to get back into writing for some of the so-called content farms, guest blogging, and anything else that pays. Money is tight and if I do not do something soon then all hell will break loose. Can't have that now can we?

The problem is, and the reason why I stopped writing for these places some six months ago was because I felt it was diluting my talent. What little talent I might have that is. I felt that when I was writing various 500 word articles/essays on topics that were clearly SEO motivated I was not staying true to the reason I was writing in the first place.

Now I am not trying to say that I have some altruistic view on the world and that I am going to save everybody with my pen. No. What I am trying to say is that I at least felt that maybe I had something to say. If not that, then at least to get my stories out there. I have over 200 short stories either started, half-written, almost finished, or completed. I have been working on these for a couple years now and I wanted very badly to get these published to some degree. I thought for a while there that I was kinda on a roll. Problem is that I started having to write for money and as soon as I started doing that I got away from everything else that I was doing.

I will post an update in a couple days on how things are transpiring. If there is anything that some of you might need done or need help with let me know. I am always open for some actual writing work that can take me away from some of the dribble.

Universal Truths - A Series (at least the start of it anyway)

As promised long ago, here is something that I have been working on. It is the beginning of a series that I have put a lot of thought into. The piece that I will publish here, now, was written over a couple of days time and is in very "rough" form. I am putting it out there because I just feel like I have not put much out lately and I just felt like I should. Let me know what you think. Or don't. Enjoy.

"Universal Truths"

The universe that we know it should come as no surprise to anyone, that we have only seen a portion of what this great space has to offer. Humans are but a small piece of the puzzle and as such have only glimpsed the same. There are various lifeforms that exist and many great secrets that are known to only a few. Some of these have existed for millions of years while others are still even younger than those on Earth. The planet that humans call home is but one in its home galaxy that harbors life. Among the universe there are many more galaxies that harbor the same. 

The great question that everyone on Earth might ask if they were to be offered a small piece of this information would be, "is there something more for humans in the universe? Will they ever be anything more if for now they are but small creatures among the many larger ones?" The only way to answer such a question is to say that patience will be their teacher, and pain their knowledge. Humans have a very long way to go before they can reach such enlightenment. 

The universe itself is even bigger and full of much more than even the greatest civilizations are aware. The secrets that are exposed to some are not exposed to others, yet they all search for knowledge. This search for knowledge has lead many to their demise and still others to their salvation. There has been life and death and rebirth among the stars. Some beings have already come and gone possibly never to be seen again. There are even those who are only known to some and others known to no one. The path that lies before all creation exists for them to find and then for them to follow. Not all have been so.

The stories found in various archives have been stored for the ages. There are those who fancy themselves keepers of such knowledge and others who seek to destroy it. There are those who wish for their own power to grow greater than anyone has ever known and those who just wish to live in peace. Waring races and races forced to fight for their salvation. Sometimes the only thing  that guides ones path is where they exist and when. This has been true for some that have come before and for those then that no longer exist. Where will your path take you and yours?

The realms that are known to the great ones have been alive for many, many eons. They have long and rich, storied histories filled with pain, love, death and life. It has been their path to play a part in the bringing of these stories to where they are now. The powers that exist and that are known are not always understood by all. In some cases understanding comes at a price. 

Where is Earth in all of this? What is happening on Earth right now? At this moment? To be honest, not that much. Earth has found itself locked in almost perpetual war for almost 90 years. The resilience of the human race is the one thing that has kept them alive through everything. There are viruses and animals looking to kill them and among that, there are humans. They want to kill humans more than anything else. 

The human race has gone through a variety of changes over the years. The world, Earth, is about 300 years older than the time that you are familiar with. A lot has happened since your time. Of course the almost 100 years of war notwithstanding, scientific discoveries, technological feats, and other things that some have dreamed of and others that people have not. There have also been certain mutations to some things on Earth. Some that people have predicted and some that have not. 

I will get more into the mutations later. For now, in order to understand everything that is happening there has to be some understanding about the universe around us first. There is great beauty in death and ugliness in birth. Things that people see are not always what they might first percieve them to be. That is the first lesson that one must learn before being able to see more of what truly lies in front of you. 

There were small portions of what ancient civilizations of Earth had found or had come to know that are either part of who we are today, or have been shown to be a part of something bigger. Did they know what it was they were doing? Were they just on the fringe of a knowledge that we are still searching for? These are things that we will most likely never know. But, what we do know, and what I can share with you now is that certain things that you have been told to be a myth, certain stories that you have been told as a child, these all have a bearing of truth in them. How do things become stories in the first place? Usually these things happen, in one way or another, and at some point after someone who was there or knows of someone who was tells the story to another. This story, over time can be distorted but in many cases it is the truth that becomes mangled. It is the things that we see and believe that play havoc with what we know to be possible and what we are told in these stories. 

Of course physics and science always play a role in these stories as well. People always come about and will say that this or that could not happen because it is just "impossible". Well, what is impossible is that what we know about these "sciences" is not the entire truth. In other words, we just do not know enough. There are things that have taken place that would turn everything that we know about the world upside down. That is, if we were to really understand what it is we were seeing. But we do not. We would see it right in front of us but since we could not understand everything that is at play we would confuse ourselves with what little knowledge we do have. This "knowledge" would interfere and take what we are seeing with our eyes and tell us that we did not see what we know to be the truth. This is how people go crazy sometimes and yet how some others gain enlightenment. It all depends on where you are in your belief of what you have witnessed. 

Like I said, all of the previous stories of our world, the myths and the cave paintings, and the stories of the gods.. all of these have some bearing in truth and all of these stories have years of pollution by those who have told the stories as well. A good example of what I am trying to tell you is something that everybody wants to believe in your time. The stories of vampires. Am I about to tell you that they are real? No. Sorry to disappoint you. However, where their story came from is almost as crazy and when I am done telling it, you might just wish that I said yes. Vampires are real, because the truth is not as nice. 

The common story of vampires holds true that they need to drink blood to survive. This is probably the only part of their story that remains true from the stories told. It is likely that the stories were embellished to keep people from getting curious enough to get close. The vampire you see is actually a creature from another world. A world in which unlike Earth did not have a lot of gravity holding things down. Well, what it did not hold down was them when they arrived. You would think that if their world did not have a lot of gravity, then when they came here wouldn't our higher gravity keep them from moving around as much? Wouldn't they be almost unable to move? In a way yes. The first scouting party that came here did encounter that exact problem. However, they are a much older race than humans and their understanding of science and technology far greater. This is especially true since they arrived here during  the dark ages. 

The Earthlings they encountered were nothing like them. They were clad in armor and had no understanding of electronics or other technology. It took the creatures about 40 human years to develop the technology to allow them to live and breath our oxygen rich air and to survive our higher gravity. However, once they did they were unable to be stopped. Of course, we did not have to worry about stopping them because their own people did that for us. It became known that they were running uncontrolled on a foreign planet and they sent others to capture them and bring them home. The really interesting thing about this is that they used a large dog-like creature to track them. This is likely where the stories of werewolves came from. Large dog-like creatures hunting vampires? Sound a bit familiar? Like the stories of the long wars of vampires and werewolves?

So where did the blood drinking come from? That is a good one. The vampires found that the only way they could try to stay hidden from the large wolves that were brought from their home planet to track them was to cover themselves in human blood. So they murdered people and would bath in their blood to stay hidden. The stories of the people disappearing had to be hidden because the trackers could use this information to find them. So of course you could see how after years and years of half-truths being told and strange stories of people disappearing and being taken for their blood could turn into stories of blood-thirsty vampires. Many of the stories of our history have something to do with outside forces or are somewhat explainable by other accounts. There are many more like this. Many more that I will tell you if you want to hear them. But you must be careful how far you tread. Many of the truths are hard even for people who know more about the universe to handle. For a human to be able to do the same is unheard of. Then again, that could just be due to the fact that no one has ever told a human before. You are the first.

Federal Budget and Space Exploration

It should come as no surprise to many that the federal budget has included a bit more "spacey" items than expected. There are two that stand out in my mind and I have a feeling that many other people feel the same way. The first is the desire to put more money towards the exploration of Europa, a moon of Jupiter. The other, and I just found out about this one yesterday, is that Obama would like NASA to capture an asteroid and bring it into orbit around the moon. Now if you have not heard about these sort of plans before you are in for a treat.

The Europe portion of the budget is exciting for many reasons. However, I am going to spend this time talking about the asteroid. There will be plenty of opportunity to discuss Europa. The asteroid is a very interesting idea and one that has been tossed around for the last couple years. If you are someone who is interested in astronomy and what we are doing about space and space exploration, then you are somewhat familiar with the idea.

For those who are not, it is pretty straight-forward. We find a suitable asteroid that is the right size and location. We go out to it, grab it, and tow it back to lunar orbit. As for how we "grab it" the jury is still out. There are a few really good ideas but none that are definite winners. Regardless of how it is done, I am just happy that it is being considered or planned. However you look at it, the fact that our government is putting money into NASA and specifically programs that are aimed at exploration of things that matter and makes sense, is fantastic! This is definitely something that I will be keeping an eye on and something that I will talk about quite often.

Zero Punctuation and a Review of Killzone: Shadowfall

Over the years you end up collecting a fair amount of things that you like that others have put their time into. In other words, fun little internet pages of joy. In my case one of my favorite is a little series of what I lovingly call flash rants by a guy named Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw. He does a series called Zero Punctuation in which he reviews video games (and sometimes other things but mainly games) with snarky and well thought out comments and one liners.

His reviews are not really the type that you might be used to or even expecting but he does a fine job of going through many of the finer points in a game as well as many of the games uh, shall we say, not so fine points? Yea.. I guess we can go with that. Most of the time his reviews of the games are not really on the positive side because let's face it, there is always some sort of fault to find in many of the products put out today. Here is where this little piece gets to the point. I know, you have all been waiting patiently.

While the games developed today often have a great deal of time invested in them it is an accurate description to say that even though this is the case, there is an ironic amount of things put into a game that should not be there. What do I mean by "should not be there"? Well, a lot of things really. It can sometimes mean a game about war and fighting that has a love scene right in the middle of the action. It can mean a racing game that all of a sudden throws in a poker mini-game. It can also mean a game about killing zombies that makes you, out of nowhere, find a cure for your sisters hatred of men.

Now none of these examples are real and none of them are from actual games. But they are meant to illustrate the point that developers today will often times spend time building in pieces of a game that really make no sense to the narrative. Why do they do this? Who knows. But this is what Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw is great at finding and pointing out in his series.

If you have never had the pleasure of watching one of his videos you should do yourself a solid and find some right away. I am including one in this post that he did for a next-gen game called Killzone: Shadowfall. I am including this one for a couple reasons. For one it is a great game and it is exclusive to the PS4 which I am a big fan of. Secondly, I am including this one because even though he does he natural best and pokes fun at some of the obvious discrepencies of the story it is actually an overall positive review of the game. This is actually a rarity for him. Most of the reviews are somewhat negative in feeling and this one stands out as being quite the opposite.

Either way, enjoy the video and like I said, do yourself a favor and find some more. You can find him on the Escapist website or just search Google for his videos or his name. You are bound to come up with something. Sure, I could include some links for ya but that would take all the fun out of the search wouldn't it?

The Escapist : Zero Punctuation : Killzone: Shadow Fall

Some Issues with NBA 2k14

It has been a while since I decided to write about something game related, but there is a variety of issues in the gaming community and some of which I have no other choice but to try and bring some attention to. Today I am going to bring some problems with the next-gen basketball game NBA 2k14 to light. Now the game itself is an above average basketball game. When you also consider the fact that with the next-gen power of the PS4 and the XB1 the graphics are better than ever it is hard not to like the game. However, just because you might really like the game does not mean that you cannot find fault with certain aspects of it. 

Now there are plenty of review sites out there and most of them are great at what they do. I am not attempting in any way to take their place. My point here is to bring to light my various opinions about some of the glaring issues with the game. Plus, this is the best way that I can get my point across to developers and the community in general. All other forums that allow for messages to be posted do not allow for enough room for me to say all that I want to say. 

First of all, the various modes offered by the game are a lot of fun and one of the reasons the game stands out. It have long been a tradition among the various sports games over the years to offer different modes of gameplay such as General Manager, Season, Franchise, Team Builder, and other such modes. With NBA 2k14 these modes are included and generally the developers did a great job putting them together. That is, if you can overlook a couple glaring faults. 

Consider first of all the team building mode called My Team. The purpose is to use the virtual currency that you earn playing the game to build a custom team from various player cards that you can buy or earn. This mode has been included in almost all the various sports games for the last 5 or more years and has been increasingly popular with players. There are a couple problems that I found with this mode in NBA 2k14 but one that stands out more than the rest. 

The biggest issue I have found with this mode in the game is that there is no reward for winning. The purpose of all video games, sports or action or role playing is to win. So if winning is the point than you would expect that if you are able to do that, win that is, then you should get something. You should be rewarded for your ability to best the computer in a match up. The problem with NBA 2k14 is that there is no reward for winning. 

You are simply given points, My Team Points, for the play of various players on your team based on their level. Bronze, Silver , Gold, and Special players all have various multipliers that based on their performance within the specific game will earn you certain points. Essentially based on this metric you can win or lose and still earn the same points. There is no incentive for winning. The only incentive that really exists is to have your Bronze players do most of the work during the game. 

I think that in this mode in particular winning should be the goal and the reason for reward. It is harder to win in this mode than almost any other except for online mode. So that being the case why is there no reward for winning? In my opinion there are two major issues with this game mode and the fact that there is no reward for winning is just one of them. The other, is the type of gameplay that is forced upon the players. 

The game pushes you, the player, to work yourself into a type of rhythm. This is fine because basketball lends itself to this in real life too. The problem is that the system puts too much weight on this. Another issue that is weighted too heavily is whether or not your player is taking an open shot or not. Now this is just an opinion based on my gameplay experience and you may have a different one. If you do, I would love to hear about it. 

Here is what I am talking about. Let's say you are using Derek Rose. He is a great player. Might not be the best in all areas and I know he is no Lebron but he is a damn good player who you would think should be able to made a 10-12ft jumper. Actually you can use most players for this example. But consider for a moment Mr. Rose. He is standing about 12ft from the hoop and is open. The nearest defender is about 10ft away. Rose takes the shot (assuming release point is perfect) and makes it. No problem. 

Okay.. same example but this time there is a defender standing in front of Rose. The defender does not jump and does not contest the shot. Just stands there. Rose takes the jumper and again with a perfect release point and low and behold it rims out. Actually it bounces off the rim. There are other examples too where you can have almost any player about 10-15ft from the basket and contested or not it can be sometimes frustrating how many times they will miss. I mean, if the guy is playing in the NBA you would think he can make a quick jumper. Right?

The game puts too much emphasis on whether or not there is a defender in close proximity to the shooter. Let's face it there are shooters who can make a close shot with a defender contesting  the shot at least 7 out of 10 times. But in this game the percentages are much, much lower. Maybe 2 out of 10. This makes for a frustrating time playing and also makes for plenty of rage quits.

While my experience as I mentioned might be different then yours I am willing to bet that most people who read this will have experienced the same things. I have spent a lot of time playing  the My Team mode and was actually having fun. Most of my fun came from building my team however. Then again, it was difficult to do this too when most of the tournaments offered did not fit the teams that the available cards allow you to make off the bat. Trying to make a team or even multiple teams that fit the requirements for some of the games can be a difficult exercise. 

I am in no way advocating making the game any easier. I am and always have been of the opinion that the harder a game is, the more challenging it is and therefore the more fun it offers. This game however has become nothing but a frustration to me lately. Don't even get me started on the locker code situation. Forcing everyone to spam their friends just to get worthless codes is a recipe for disaster. Or at least for an early trade-in. 

Why Shows Like Cosmos Are Important

Not sure how many of you watched the show #Cosmos yesterday but I must say, after waiting a couple months for the show to finally air I was thrilled when it finally started. I was also not in any way let down. I thought Neil deGrasse Tyson did a wonderful job of taking over for Carl Sagan. He even paid a thoughtful homage to the great astronomer with the story of how they met when he (Neil) was 17 and a budding astronomer himself.

The show did a fine job of telling the story of our beginnings and also an small hint of where we could one day go. This is what I want to focus on here today. Our long history and yet how small that history and our lives are in this wonderfully large universe.

The Long and Short of it All

It is sometimes funny to think just how big we think we are. You can often times hear people talk about the great things they have done, or how long someone will remember someone else. While it might be true in the context of our lives, how often do you really think about the scale of it all? Consider for a moment just how long we have been here on this planet. What? We have been here for some 200,000 years and most of it we really do not know too much about?

Once you consider our time here, try and think about what it means in the lifespan of the planet. Then, once you have that in your mind, consider how long our planet has been here. Then, take it a bit further and consider our Sun and Solar System. Need some help? I can lend a hand, and I am in no way ashamed to say that I was helped a little with this from the show last night.

Our Universe is a whopping 13.8 billion years old. Now, taking that further, our solar system is about 4.6 billion years old and our Sun, 4.5 billion years. Of course, our planet came to life (along with the rest of them in our solar system) at about the same time. There is some discussion in certain circles about the age of all of these objects. They argument is whether they are 4.5 or 4.54 billion years old. But does that .04 billion years really matter?

So, after all of that have you thought about how small we are yet? Think about those time frames and the ages of the planets and universe. They are all in the billions. We barely live to be 100 years anymore. This is not even a blink of the eye in universal terms. This is a problem in my mind. Sure, we all want to live as long as possible but just living for the sake of living is not the context that I am thinking of here. Let's now consider where we are in the history of our exploration of the universe.

We have really only started to look at the solar system and the rest of space with our current views and ideas for the last 50 years. Sure, we knew that we all rotate around the Sun for longer than that (thought not too much longer) but most of what we now know about space and how it works came about rather recently. So looking forward, if we are to continue to study the universe and our planet and every other planet we can find, how much time would we need? Well, we would need a hell of a lot of it that is for sure.

It takes us humans a very long time to do anything. Before we can even get into space or send a satellite up there it takes us time to earn money, get the project approved, build something, get the people or the project re-approved, fight the people who do not want the project to take place, and if we are lucky we can finally send it up. Then again.. there is usually some other sort of delay. Now with  the time that we humans have on this planet we can safely say that for one person, say the person who is leading the project for this imaginary satellite, the time that it took to get this project from start to finish was a rather large percentage of their life.
 With  that being the case how does anyone ever get enough done to make a difference?

The short answer here is that they don't. The usual scenario is that people can get about one project like this going per lifetime. If they are lucky or good they can get multiple projects rolling. Or maybe they are in charge of others and they can use that position to help people in multiple situations. Either way, usually one person puts almost an entire life's work into a project like this and by the time it is actually doing what they had hoped and dreamed it one day would, they are old and sadly almost too old to really do much about it anymore.

This is in my opinion one of our major stumbling blocks to our exploration of the universe. The one thing that does help us however is that we can record our past triumphs and failures for the next generation to pick up where we left off. This however does require schooling and for people, kids mostly, to be interested in these subjects. This means we need teachers and people who will try and foster that next generation. Again all of this takes money and lots of it.

All of this is just one small example of how long much of our exploring and studying and everything else can take.  This is one example though of why shows like Cosmos are so important. The hope is, at least in my mind is that the show can foster a new thought in a young child's mind. That it can get people excited again about science and space. If that is true, there will be a few more kids who will dream about becoming an astronomer. The more of those we have, the better our chances of finding out more about space or the means to travel through it.

We need to give people a way to experience space and the wonders of the universe to the fullest extent. People who have a desire to learn about these things should be given every opportunity. Our lives are too short to learn everything that there is to learn. This is why our ability to record information for generations that follow is so important. We must take that information and expand on it. We must always give people who have a wandering mind the chances to do just that. And most of all, we must never repeat the mistake that we have made in the past. We must never persecute people for thinking differently, having new ideas, and challenging the status quo.

Our species is a special one. This is especially true on this planet. While this is true at home we have no idea what lies beyond the stars. There is every possible opportunity for there to be other "special" beings out there. There is nothing in science that says it is not possible. Therefore we must prepare for that opportunity and know that someday our species will meet another. It might take a million years so we must make sure that we are around that long. That will take more exploration and furthermore it will take expansion. For this we need more people to take on the role of scientist and astronomer and engineer and others like it. We need the younger generations to take an interest in these and other fields. This is why shows like Cosmos are so important. They take all the information we have talked about and they bring it to the masses. They allow new minds to think further and brighter. They will bring new ideas to people who might have been looking for a new way to explore. We need to keep these minds going and must give them every opportunity to continue on their path. Thank you Cosmos for helping to do just that!