Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder

So I thought today I would write a review on the most recent, as well as final Futurama DVD which was just released. This is mostly because I finally got a chance to watch it last night.

All-in-all it was an amazing movie, as well as a great finale to Futurama. This turned out to be the best of the movies, barely sneaking by a better score in my mind than "Bender's Big Score". The only reason it almost didn't was because I was far more tearful watching the first movie.

I personally watched "Into the Wild Green Yonder" on Blu-ray, and all I can say is that the visuals were just gorgeous. The design of the episode was amazing and they way everything was incorporated was stunning. Never in my life would I have thought that I'd pause a cartoon to examine how the animators decided to depict tin foil.

The music and sound effects were as always very nice as well. This movie featured a new rendition of the classic theme song, performed by Seth McFarlane of Family Guy fame.

The last thing I can say is that the story was great as always. It tied up the most important plot point of the entire series and gave a great send off to what is in my honest opinion the best show on or off television. With an ending as amazing as they gave I conflicted if I want to see a return of the series or just let it end as beautifully as it did.

Citizen Journalists

A citizen journalist is an interesting concept and one more readily seen in today's media. I personally first noticed this trend at first around September 11th. This was mostly due to the fact that there were just so many people there all with cellphones and video cameras documenting the chaos and tragedy of that day.

The idea of a citizen journalist has continued to be a popular source of information for people looking for a more independent take on the events of the world. To most it's better to go to someone with little to no bias. With a lot of the mainstream media they become biased to a certain political party, movement, religion, or any other thing based upon the station they work for. In the realm of blogging this isn't much of a concern.

Obviously everyone has their own opinions and bias, but it's nice sometimes to read a report of something where the only bias is that of the author and not of the corporate shadow looming above.

Boredom and How to Alleviate it...

So I made this longish rant last weekend about how I was going to take this blogging more seriously and work harder to make more regular posts. Now here we are exactly a week later and all I've done is removed the obnoxious poll from the sidebar.

I don't know what it is, but even when I'm bored and desperate for something to do I don't come on here to write. Writing is supposed to be my passion, and hopefully the source of my income in the future, yet here I continue to sit dreading the idea of putting pen to paper...or finger to keyboard as it were. What is it about me that doesn't allow me to enjoy what it is I enjoy.

I've actually decided that this needs to change and have found a secondary solution on top of the existing one of this blog. I belong to what's called a guild in World of Warcraft; I won't go into details and definitions at this time simply cause I have no patience for it. I've decided that I'm actually going to make updates on our forums with "tales" of my character in game, and stories of his life. This to me seems a great way to jump start my passion, while at the same time staying true to my sci-fi/fantasy roots of sorts.

Depending how they're received and if I actually go through with this I'll probably post them here. Until next time though....

Change is a good thing?

Well that's sort of a misleading subject line I put since of course change is a good thing. Societies need change to grow. Well actually not everyone might agree, but that's a discussion more suited right now for a Sociology class. Speaking of which I really need to make a post on the discussion board over there.....wait getting distracted again.

The internet has progressed a long way since I was a child and first began to explore it. My earliest memory of using the internet was spending time at my Dad's house downloading "themes" onto his computer. For those who don't know themes originally were a compilation of icons, mouse pointers, a background and overall art style used by Microsoft Plus to change the look of your desktop and assorted folders. The reason I remember this is because back then it took around 3-5+ hours to download one theme pack for something as simple as the Coca-Cola Polar Bears. These files for reference were never more than 1-3mb usually as well. Fast forward to today and most of us are downloading single pictures, music, or videos that are double, triple, or quadruple the size, and even bigger in a fraction of a fraction of the time.

This to me is the biggest difference between the internet of then and the internet of today. It incorporates actually so well into the world's slide into heavy impatience. The whole I want it now motif of life has become so wide spread in that.

The heightened download speeds are also important though because it facilitates every aspect of internet relations, and no not that version of relations. For someone like me who spends anywhere from 6-16 hours a day gaming online, while simultaneously reading forums, doing homework/research, and watching videos this is an amazing things. The amount of power required to do all that is staggering by the standards of 10-15 years ago; especially when you take into account that I live with 2 people who are usually doing the exact same things as I am.

When you get right down to it though I'm sure in another 10 years, assuming the world has that long left to live, we'll be looking back and feeling surprised that we were not always able to download 5tb files in 42 seconds on a "slow" connection.

Of In-game events...

As I've mentioned in the past, I'm very addicted to video games in general, most especially right now World of Warcraft. This addiction has become far more prevalent in part due to the inclusion a few months back of achievements. Now achievements are essentially a point score given to you that shows things you've done in game. This could be something as simple as beating a boss or something thats just completely insane. Now these simple things can also get you cool ingame rewards. Anything ranging from a kickass mount to a neat companion pet to a title like the one mentioned earlier.

Now though Blizzard has recently added a series of achievements based around the in-game events they've had around for years. These events range from Hallow's End to Brewfest. Some of these are based off real life holidays like Winter Veil, a "knock off" of Xmas. The cool thing about them is that for finishing off a large series of achievements for each event you'll get one step close to the 'ultimate' reward, a Violet Proto-Drake.

The reason I bring this is up is due to the fact that I've been working my ass off to finish these events as they pop up, which at this time of the year is fairly regularly. In such I'm realizing my gaming addiction has taken on something similar to actual work, but you know...can't say I'm complaining.

Ranting Cat is Ranting

I never quite realized how difficult it would be to maintain a semi-weekly blog. I mean blogs are nothing more than just the rantings of any random being, or at least they usually are. Ranting is what I do best, even about things I know little to nothing about. I excel at it in most cases.

So why is this so difficult for me. It's not like I haven't tried. I sit sometimes for hours staring at this page wanting to write, but instead I just sit and become mildly upset that nobody has left me a comment. Which who can blame them when there's so little to comment on. My best guess on why suddenly writing rants has become so hard to do is that once something I enjoy becomes an "assignment" I lose interest.

But no more!

From this point on I promise to post insightful, amusing, and highly entertaining pieces of literary amazingness!

That or plagiarize a site for lolcats.

Just kidding.

Visual Blogs-Week 2

Well for this week we were asked to discuss how visual media (i.e. pictures, video, etc) embedded into ones blog can change how people read it or even feel about it. The problem with doing this assignment is that sadly all the blogs we need to analyze are featured on our class website, which is featured on ASU's website. Since this past Friday it seems as if all of ASU's web related things have been down, which is making doing assorted assignments quite difficult. In light of this lovely technical difficulty I've decided to just go with a fun little analysis of the idea of visual media in a person's blog.

Personally I don't intend to use anything more visual than the writings, and rantings, I put on this page. For me a nice clean crisp page is all the more interesting compared to what sometimes amounts to a "picture book" of jumbled images. Though there are plenty of blogs out there that do a good job with their imagery and even with it entice their readers to a greater level of interest.

A fellow classmate of mine does an interesting job of including visual media into their blog "I'm out like a Russian Monarch after 1917". At the start of, and sometimes in the middle of every posting she makes Apryl includes some kind of visual cue to the reader. Sometimes its a picture of the news event she's discussing, other times its a loosely abstract representation of an idea related to what she's discussing. All in all this can be very enjoyable and insightful into how she thinks about things.

There are many authors who work their blogs in this way, but I still prefer just plain old text. Though since I'm made this statement I'm sure we'll be having some sort of assignment now in the coming weeks to use a more visual approach to a blog.