Bastardisms

1 year of eXTReMe Tracking!!
Saturday, November 26, 2005

I have had this blog tracked by the good people over at eXTReMe Tracking for 1 whole year now. Here are the stats:

United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, France, Australia, Bulgaria, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Finland, Switzerland, India, Brazil, Mexico, Poland, Hungary, Spain, Japan, Singapore, Philippines, Denmark, Malaysia, Norway, New Zealand, Portugal, Thailand, Peru, Indonesia, Argentina, Ireland, Islamic Republic of Iran, South Africa, Turkey, Romania, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Colombia, Pakistan, Austria, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Uruguay, Chile, Egypt, Lebanon, Czech Republic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Luxembourg, Iceland, Lithuania, Kuwait, Venezuela, Latvia, Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka, Qatar, Jordan, Croatia, Russian Federation, Cyprus, Costa Rica, Republic of Korea, Slovenia, and Greece

Posted byJ. R. Guinness at 1:27 AM 0 comments    

The new Bond, James Bond.

I don't know if this is verified. I haven't been able to find anything about it anywhere else. On KVET 98.1's RateTheMusic Site there was a mini-article about how R&B star Usher wants to be the first black man to play James Bond.

I'm able to accept a blond James Bond ala Daniel Craig. He did exceptionally well in L4YER CAKE. I can accept him as James Bond namely because he is British. Usher, however, was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

That's all we need is a guy like Usher playing James Bond. If I were to have to recommend a black actor to take the part of 007, it would have to be someone like Morgan Freeman. Freeman is a distinguished actor who could bring something to the role that Usher or those of his ilk never could: class. Remember James Bond isn't just cool, he's classy, he's suave and debonair. He does not role up to Monte Carlo casinos in a Cadillac with spinners on the wheels!!

I sincerely hope that the Broccoli family treats the franchise right. Sean Connery started something great. Roger Moore carried the torch for too long. Timothy Dalton took the life out of it. But Pierce Brosnan brought it back from the dead and did so with style. Don't screw it up!

Posted byJ. R. Guinness at 1:06 AM 0 comments    

Gamers are people too.
Monday, November 21, 2005

I want to apologize to anyone who saw tonight's (Nov. 21, 2005) episode of CSI: Miami. While normally, this is a great show and generally very real and accurate, tonight they created a picture of videogamers that I think will only reinforce the already negative image associated with gamers. To spoil the plot, what happened was that several college students were using a video game as the basis of their criminal activity. It turns out that the writer/developer of the game was providing weapons to help them out in order to boost sales of the game: "Urban Hell Raisers".

Unfortunately, thanks to people like Jack Thompson, this has become a widespread fear for many people. Reports that criminals had copies of certain games leads to a media frenzy about whether the video game was the cause of violence and speculations that criminals may be using video games as "trainers" abound. Let me se something straight here. Video Games Do NOT cause violence. Violence is something inherent within each and every person. It has to be. Humans did not evolve to become the top of the food chain by being pacifists. Humans had to fight in order to be where we are. Individuals however may not necessarily be inclined towards violence, and human society in general is not violent, but we all have violence within ourselves. Some people more than others have a very thin layer of civility separating them from being violent while others may take a lot to get to that core. What's more is that some either cannot or chose not to distinguish fantasy from reality. However, these are preexisting conditions. Yes, video games may be the catalyst for some people to behave violently, but for others they are the a means of escaping where they can act out aggresive fantasies in non-harmful ways.

Posted byJ. R. Guinness at 11:13 PM 0 comments    

Justice upheld!
Thursday, November 17, 2005

Check this out. Sheehan, et al were ordered to pay $75 for protesting without a permit outside the White House. Next time file your paperwork ahead of time instead of crying and backpedaling later.
Sheehan says that they "weren't demonstrating" but trying to deliver petitions to the President. Sheehan maintains that she is still entitled to a meeting with the President. The only thing that I have to say to that is that if teh President stopped and met with every crackpot who wanted to talk to him a). He would never get anything done, and b). It would be a security nightmare.

The picture used above is from http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051117/ap_on_re_us/peace_mom.

To all of those who think that civil disobedience is hip, cool, trendy, etc. I would like to refer you to Maddox.XMission.com and his stance:

Neither of these picture were used with permission.

Posted byJ. R. Guinness at 5:33 PM 0 comments    

What Makes A Good Video Game
Sunday, November 13, 2005

I've been a gamer for nearly all of my life. I remember having my Atari system and loving it. Then I remember being wowed as I guided an Italian plumber across the screen when I got my first nintendo. But what really got me into gaming was computer games. Ever since I first got on the Internet when I was in the 3rd grade (about 1989), I've been into computer games. So, now, despite all of the controversy surrounding video games, I thought that I would write about what I think makes a good video game.

1. Mods. Your game must have the capability to be easily modded and to have those mods easy to play. For reference, check out the Half-Life Series. These games have spawned some of the best mods in the industry. Cuonter-Strike is an all time favorite. What's more is that you can easily play any of the mods for this series with minimal frustration.

2. Decent Graphics I understand that at every time a game is released there is only so much that computers can do. That being said, the developers need to make sure that the game looks decent and makes full use of the possibilty of what is possible. Too many time have I been disappointed by games whose screen shots look nice but the gameplay fails to live up to the hype.

This isn't a comprehensive list, but something that I will update soon.

Posted byJ. R. Guinness at 9:40 PM 0 comments