I had quit HoN for nearly a year because I had a serious addiction to the game (2,000+ hours played in less than 2 years).

This is how I felt after getting a Dota 2 beta key. (by KaiserMazoku)

The following is a short story I recently wrote for an assignment in my Science Fiction class.

Save The Princess

The last blade clanged to the floor, accompanied in perfect harmony by the thud of the body. The final captor lay slain; only one task remained. Razor’s boot connected square with the door, and its hinges burst from the frame. The room inside was dark and hazy. In the corners, a black mold crept up at the base of the walls. The wood that made up the floor was damp and rotted out, and the air smelled of sweat and urine. “Such unbefitting quarters for the Princess; what brutes her captors were,” Shadow thought to himself.

In the center of the room sat a small, delicate figure. Her pale skin shone, even in the darkness. Her cherry-red hair was dishevelled and knotted. Her face stared down at the floor, blank and emotionless. Razor brought his axe down hard and the rusted shackles severed with ease. He squatted down and gently seated her on his back, locking his arms under her legs. Shadow threw his cloak over the Princess’s naked body. They could not risk others seeing her in their possession. “We’re off.”

The two of them bounded back out of the hut. Just a few meters in front of the entrance lay Comet’s lifeless body. He had taken a bolt between the eyes as he led the initial charge. Neither man even made a glance at him. They all knew nothing mattered at this point except returning the Princess to safety. Razor made straight for the woodline. Shadow circled a wide perimeter around them as they doubled back through the forest. His spear also acted as a javelin, and he still had two rounds left for his pistol, making him perfect to engage any threats from a distance before they could close in on the group.

The journey was incredibly tense. A light snow had begun to fall overnight, making it much easier to track the group. Although the men knew that very few people still remained in the area, they recognized that the pair of them could not fend off more than a couple of enemies while still safeguarding the Princess.

After a day of travelling, the party finally reached the river. It had frozen over in the winter air, but the ice was still thin. There was no other choice; the group would have to cross it if they wanted to reach the safety of the village. Razor set the Princess down and tied her hands to a leash. Their combined weight in one spot would surely break through the ice. Shadow, being the lighter of the two, crossed first to test its strength. He skittered across the river and made it to the other side with ease.

Razor was next. He tugged on the leash to encourage the Princess to follow him. She reluctantly stumbled along about ten meters behind, as if she would fall forward on her face at any moment. The crossing was slow and nerve-racking; Shadow could only watch and pray. Just as Razor reached the three-quarters mark, the ice beneath him split and he fell through to the frigid water. Shadow dashed back to him with his sword drawn. Razor was pulling the leash along with him as he sank to the bottom. Shadow lunged and cut downward with his sword, splitting the leash just as the Princess slid to the edge of the hole. He hastily threw her over his back and made a dash for the bank. He lunged and landed on solid ground. All that remained was a short hike to the safehouse. He was now the village’s last hope.

The structures that still stood were dark and empty, just as they had left them. All the other groups in the land had finally died out, so it was unlikely anyone else would stumble upon the village. She must have been the only Princess remaining for hundreds of kilometers. A single cabin lay hidden in a rocky depression behind the other buildings. He entered the front door and set her down beside the furnace. She was weak and shivering from the extended exposure to the cold. It would make the rest of this much easier.

As he placed the Princess’s arms and legs in the restraints and lit a fire, he wondered why the other group had left her to rot in that cell. Perhaps she had proven useless, and they had given up trying. Hard to believe though; she must have only been twenty at the oldest. Maybe they were zealots, and sought to protect her from the other groups. If so, it was their village’s loss. Shadow’s mission had always been clear from the beginning, and he would not deviate after coming so far all these years and discovering another Princess. He had failed to keep guard on the last one, and one night she managed to suffocate herself in the restraints. They were all selfish like that; perhaps that is why his people called them “Princesses.” They cared nothing for the survival of the species. This time however, he would not fail. This time, he would need to repopulate his village if he ever hoped to carry on its lineage and save the human race.

Shadow positioned himself on top of the Princess and began to undo his belt. He placed one hand around her waist and another on her cheek. She stared straight upward into nothingness. A single tear rolled down her face and touched his fingertips. He hesitated; for a moment, he thought it felt even warmer than the flames.

Also, new blog design incoming soon.

I am a rather cynical person. It’s an aspect of myself I try to downplay, because I am not particularly proud of that fact. I tend to be a complete “buzz-kill” in social situations, and I would rather not continue to have a negative effect on the attitudes of those around me.

With that said, it does not help that our culture nowadays insists on beating jokes and concepts to death, and then purging them with salt and fire, just in case they might have still held any value. This trend is particularly apparent in the internet meme department, where every joke is run into the ground faster than Kim Kardashian’s marriage.

Here is my personal list of things people just need to shut up about (or mention only on a yearly basis):

Dark and Gritty Retellings

It seems everywhere you look nowadays, some part of your childhood is getting the dark and gritty treatment. Batman, The Legend of Zelda, and even Mickey Mouse have all fallen victim to the entertainment industry’s attempt to grab the attention of the macho action movie fans by cutting out all the imagination and symbolic imagery that is behind many an artistic venture. You know, the stuff 90% of people are unable to comprehend, mostly because they would rather not attempt to out of fear of catching the gay. The most common traits of these re-imagined versions of popular media are:

• Applying a nice coat of gun-metal gray and dirt brown over everything, maybe a little rust to give that neglected feeling
• A tacked-on tragic back story for the main protagonist, usually in the form of their parents decomposing in a box for the last untold number of years
• Characters in the story spouting obscenities with every other word like Irish is the new national language and everyone is excited to try it out
• Brooding, endless brooding. Scowling too.

Tim Mother F-ing Tebow

I barely know who this guy is. All I know after looking up some videos of him is that he is really good at kneeling, or inspiring others to be professional kneelers, and he makes an unsuccessful living pretending to be a quarter back on National television a few weeks a year. The only football I watched this season was at Thanksgiving, when changing the channel to anything else might might as well have been asking for a mid-life circumcision from my relatives, and somehow, this guy still managed to leak into my daily life, where articles about him on tech sites were every day occurrences for a few months back around Christmas. If I had to take a guess, I’d say he’s only second behind Ron Paul in the ironic internet-sensation presidential candidate race, but I suppose he’s still preferable to Herman “Gotta Catch Em’ All” Cain.

Everything Out of the Norm Is Made By Someone On Drugs

“Awwww, dude, this is awesome, the person who made this must have been stoned off his ass.”

This is the standard response you hear nowadays to pretty much anything that used to be classified with the term visionary. Apparently everyone is too afraid nowadays that some other person out there just might be capable of transcending the traditional human thought process of 1.) Get Drunk, 2.) Screw, 3.) Captain Morgan pose; but as hard as it is to believe, there are some incredible artists out there. Just have a look at this beauty:

Judging by the bright colors and creative concept, one would think this is the result of some species of mushroom, but lo and behold, this image was not created by someone who was burning through their meth stash like Puritans burn through suspect women; this is simply what happens when a imaginative and talented soul meets Adobe Flash.

Modern Military Games

Two wars just is not enough to satisfy the majority of the gaming demographic in this country. It makes me miss jumping on bad guys’ heads to kill them. This isn’t really anything people talk about, but it still grinds my gears that a ton of game studios are just trying to see who can animate the highest resolution ironsights to fill up half the screen with.

Women Jokes Involving Sandwiches

Anytime a woman tries to speak up about anything, especially on the internet, she is immediately met by an influx of “Get back in the kitchen and make me a sammich!” Thanks to the cult following that Taco Bell and McDonalds seem to have these days, it seems everyone has forgotten about food that isn’t smashed between two pieces of bread (or taco shell).

Guys, guys, guys, what has happened to us? Is this really how we look at our women nowadays? I don’t know about you, but it’s the 21st century. We have the internet for crying out loud; and my lady better be on it all day while I’m at work, trying to find better recipes besides just Ham & Cheddar on Rye. Pan-Fried Swordfish, Chicken Alfredo, Sushi Rolls, she better have the works ready for me when I get back. It’s time to hike up our pants and start enforcing the standards in our households once again.

Zombies

Need I say anything about this topic? Hmmm, yes apparently, I do. The theory is that the modern-day fascination with zombies stems from an increasing number of basement-dwelling archetypal nerds stroking their long-awaited fantasies of getting back at all those jocks, douche-bags, Wall Street investors, and “perfect 10” women who never gave the time of day to try and understand how much better people they are than all those sexy supermodel guys.

Zombies act as a perfect target for venting these frustrations. Killing them provides all the satisfaction of driving down to Jersey and throwing that nearest spikey-haired man-child through a car windshield, then tossing his orange Guidette of a wife to the ground and curb-stomping whichever body part of her’s still hasn’t been cosmetically altered. With killing zombies however, there is about as much guilt involved as… well, throwing a spikey-haired man-child through a car windshield.

As a wise man once said:

Let’s face it - However most of you would imagine a zombie apocalypse would give you a new lease on life, we know most of you would be talking suicide pacts if the internet went down for more than a fucking week.

— Yahtzee Croshaw

rjville:

Designers vs Developers

…and I am my own little circle in between those two.

Only weeks after declaring my personal approval of Internet Explorer 9 as a capable web browser, this goes and happens. Below are some comparisons of how our project renders in various browsers:

Internet Explorer has a nasty habit of randomly deleting closing tags on objects, causing them to all render within eachother, thus forming a single tiny button with EVERYTHING crammed into it (this doesn’t even scratch the surface of all the CSS “gotchas”).

When you hear people duking it out with each other over their web browser of choice, this is usually why Internet Explorer never gets brought up. Go out and pat your local web developer on the back, give them a hug, and wipe their tears away for them. Life is difficult trying to cater to the vast majority of Internet Explorer users.

I’m guilty of almost all of these, which is why I want to pass my knowledge on to the next generation, since children are our future, and I totally have a huge following in the 11-20 age demographic.

• “There is no reason why this shouldn’t work.”
  In about five minutes, you are just going to prove yourself wrong anyways. No need to look like a fool while you’re at it.

• “This project would be a lot better on <insert favorite operating system here>.”
  Work time is not when you should try to start a flame war. Chances are you are not the only person with platform gripes, nor are you the only one crying at night when you realize you have to get your website to function correctly in IE 6; so suck it up and eat your specification like a good little engineer.

• “Trust me, I just watched a tutorial on YouTube about this.”
  YouTube for coding problems is right up there with Yahoo Answers for teen pregnancy problems. A lot of the people posting these kinds of videos on YouTube have no idea what they are talking about. There is little quality control because any software developer with a brain is elsewhere, like on Stack Overflow or MSDN. Many of the coding videos on YouTube are made by teenagers who recently discovered how to use Fraps and a pirated copy of DreamWeaver in the same week.

• “No, I didn’t test it before I committed.”
  Assuming that your commit broke something, one of your teammates is probably shutting the door right now. Another one is unplugging nearby security cameras. And another one is grabbing a role of duct tape. It’s time to start believing in an all-powerful creator, because in about sixty seconds, you’re going to meet them.

• “Someone else can figure this shit out. I’m gonna go watch Jersey Shore instead.”
  Code, tan, laundry, bro.

Despite my many social profiles, I know this is the case.

I am a big proponent of HTML5 and CSS3. I love the idea of doing away with bloatware, such as plugins and external libraries like jQuery, which are required to do things that are commonplace on the web today; and while I understand that those two will be around for a long time to come, I look forward to the day they are no longer required to do basic things like display media files or perform a transitional color animation.

Lately however, the response to these new technologies has been a little disappointing. Many developers, myself included, and even basic internet users, have called for the immediate destruction of flash. Looking back on my own initial reaction to the news that HTML5 would make Flash obsolete, I would like to apologize. The web has grown up a lot since the start of the millennium. What was once a bunch of text-based pages with annoying flashing backgrounds and animated images all over the place is now a series of dynamic web pages that display text, audio, video, and even full-blown applications, all within a browser.

A huge contributor to this evolution was the ability to embed media and games into web pages. Suddenly, the internet was more than just a bunch of newspapers turned into a digital format; it became a primary source of entertainment and interactivity that everyone could easily connect to. Of course, which technology made a lot of this possible? Why, it was Adobe’s Flash (technically, it started as Macromedia’s Flash, but that’s besides the point).

So with all of this in mind, I would like to say thank you. Thank you, Flash, for making much of the web what it is today.

Thank you for letting me discover audio and video using the power of the internet. Thank you for the creation of the viral video.

Thank you for teaching me to defend my castle.

Thank you for making me the man now dawg.

Thank you for proving that cats are the greatest entertainers in the world.

Thank you for making machinima possible.

Thank you for showing us that web pages could be more than just a bunch of static objects.

Thank you for letting me zoom in to the street level on a map.

Lastly, thank you for being there these past sixteen years and helping the internet to blossom into something amazing. While it is time to make way for the upcoming generation of web technologies, we should still respect our elders. You were not the only multimedia plugin out there, but you were the most popular, and probably the best at what you did. And to that, I salute you!