I have to admit that once upon a time I really liked Avril's music and considering I'm a sucker for the Punk genre I also liked the attitude she was selling her music with. But I haven't been blind to the reports over the years about her behaviour, earlier I just blew it off as immature but considering she now is over 23 that can't really be done any more.
I recently read an article in the Globe and Mail about her that is well funny. It is a well written piece about her as a person and quite frankly I'm a bit surprised that the kids are still interested in defending her behaviour. It's one thing to kick the media, the industry and what ever else kind of establishment with some sort of power over things but to sign your autograph as eff you and spit and scream at your fans is just not acceptable. It's not cool, it's not rock and roll and it's not fucking funny. If you can't be nice to your fans, the very people that made your life what it is, then you don't deserve what you have. What you do deserve though is empty arenas, people trashing you all over the internet, no more sold albums and nobody shouting your name (since she apparently thinks that's cool).
So Avril, go fuck yourself will you. You once had a chance to be somebody but now you are just a fucking brat that deserve all the shit that you get.
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
Rambo in a wheel chair?
I have to admit that "Rocky Balboa" was actually a pretty decent flick and although Sly felt old in the beginning his age was well fitted in to the story line but come on, "Rambo"?
Sly is 62 years old this year and he will be doing the role of John Rambo, the special forces dude that kicks all kinds of ass. Judging from the trailer it doesn't seem to be a mellow film with lots of reminiscence in either. So my question is, did he pull it off?
According to Brian Lowry over at Variety he doesn't pull it off, neither does the rest of the film crew apparently. On the other hand it did gross about 18 million on it's opening weekend, which isn't all that shabby. But to be totally honest the box office is rarely a good measurement of whether a film is good or not. Judging by Lowry's review it lacks in most aspects except in the department the Rambo films has made them self known for and that's body count.
Considering action is pretty much what one wants out of a Rambo film I have to say that I'll probably watch this one too even though I sincerely hope that Sly chooses to play something else on the screen in the future. We all know that he can act (Cop Land anybody?) and I really thought that the first Rocky was pretty good so he can write a script too. So why the need to play roles where he has to show his biceps? You are to old for that Sly.
Sly is 62 years old this year and he will be doing the role of John Rambo, the special forces dude that kicks all kinds of ass. Judging from the trailer it doesn't seem to be a mellow film with lots of reminiscence in either. So my question is, did he pull it off?
According to Brian Lowry over at Variety he doesn't pull it off, neither does the rest of the film crew apparently. On the other hand it did gross about 18 million on it's opening weekend, which isn't all that shabby. But to be totally honest the box office is rarely a good measurement of whether a film is good or not. Judging by Lowry's review it lacks in most aspects except in the department the Rambo films has made them self known for and that's body count.
Considering action is pretty much what one wants out of a Rambo film I have to say that I'll probably watch this one too even though I sincerely hope that Sly chooses to play something else on the screen in the future. We all know that he can act (Cop Land anybody?) and I really thought that the first Rocky was pretty good so he can write a script too. So why the need to play roles where he has to show his biceps? You are to old for that Sly.
Me and my cell
As I mentioned in an earlier post on this blog I'm taking a course called Information retrieval and new new media and so this post is also an assignment in that course. Just so you that happened upon this blog get an idea of why I would sit around and write about my cellphone.
I've got a couple of cells but the one I'm currently using is a SE K750i. I bought it a few years ago because I don't own a digital camera and neither do I own an mp3 player and this phone has both. It was the first phone (to my knowledge) that was sold, in Sweden, with a 2 mega pixel camera and so I hoped I'd be able to use it to take pictures with. As it turns out I underestimated the need of optics and so I hardly ever use the camera function other than to document things on the fly so to speak (it's sometimes useful for taking notes of whiteboards in school with as an example).
The phone takes Memory sticks up to 4 GB (I only have a 1 GB though) which comes in handy when you want to use it as an mp3 player, something I do on a regular basis. It also has the ability to play FM radio and mpeg-4 videos, two things I don't use quite as often.
There are a bunch of features I never use on the phone such as GPRS, Bluetooth, modem and mms. Most of those I don't use since I can't afford to activate them. Bluetooth I don't use since I don't have any in my computer and I haven't found any other use for it either. There is also an IrDA port (something I've never used either) and the ability to connect the phone to a USB port. That should cover all the communication abilities of the phone, except of course the basic abilities of calling and sending text messages.
The phone also has a slew of features to long to list here but there is a longer list over at gsmarena.com that might be interesting to check out for specially interested.
One thing that I thought could be interesting to note though is that it supports WAP 2.0 and MIDP. Something that means that the phone could be used for quite a lot of things. There are, as an example, already a whole bunch of games to buy and download to the phone. Other than that my guess would be that only the imagination is the limit of what you can do really. As an example people has started using cell phones with WiFi as a wireless mouse. I'm definitely not sure that can be done with my phone but considering it has Bluetooth and Java support I don't see why it shouldn't be possible.
Well, that's pretty much it. To finish off I can say that the features I use most on my phone (except for the telephone part) is the phone book, the mp3 player, sms, the alarm clock (otherwise I wouldn't get up in the morning), the calendar and the timer (very useful when cooking or doing laundry).
I've got a couple of cells but the one I'm currently using is a SE K750i. I bought it a few years ago because I don't own a digital camera and neither do I own an mp3 player and this phone has both. It was the first phone (to my knowledge) that was sold, in Sweden, with a 2 mega pixel camera and so I hoped I'd be able to use it to take pictures with. As it turns out I underestimated the need of optics and so I hardly ever use the camera function other than to document things on the fly so to speak (it's sometimes useful for taking notes of whiteboards in school with as an example).
The phone takes Memory sticks up to 4 GB (I only have a 1 GB though) which comes in handy when you want to use it as an mp3 player, something I do on a regular basis. It also has the ability to play FM radio and mpeg-4 videos, two things I don't use quite as often.
There are a bunch of features I never use on the phone such as GPRS, Bluetooth, modem and mms. Most of those I don't use since I can't afford to activate them. Bluetooth I don't use since I don't have any in my computer and I haven't found any other use for it either. There is also an IrDA port (something I've never used either) and the ability to connect the phone to a USB port. That should cover all the communication abilities of the phone, except of course the basic abilities of calling and sending text messages.
The phone also has a slew of features to long to list here but there is a longer list over at gsmarena.com that might be interesting to check out for specially interested.
One thing that I thought could be interesting to note though is that it supports WAP 2.0 and MIDP. Something that means that the phone could be used for quite a lot of things. There are, as an example, already a whole bunch of games to buy and download to the phone. Other than that my guess would be that only the imagination is the limit of what you can do really. As an example people has started using cell phones with WiFi as a wireless mouse. I'm definitely not sure that can be done with my phone but considering it has Bluetooth and Java support I don't see why it shouldn't be possible.
Well, that's pretty much it. To finish off I can say that the features I use most on my phone (except for the telephone part) is the phone book, the mp3 player, sms, the alarm clock (otherwise I wouldn't get up in the morning), the calendar and the timer (very useful when cooking or doing laundry).
Thursday, 24 January 2008
The Witcher Review
Finally I found somebody I can agree with regarding the Witcher and again it's Yahtzee Croshaw over at The Escapist that both agrees with me and does his Zero Punctuation thing that he does so well. Even if you don't play computer games but do have a slight idea of what it is watch it because the stuff he does is pretty funny.
Anyway, my point is that everybody I know (and their mothers) have said that the Witcher is such a great game, that it leaves Oblivion in the dust and that all other CRPG should use the Witcher as a model from here on out and so on and so on. Personally I have to say that that is a load of crap. The Witcher is a really boring game that is shopped to pieces by cut scenes and loading screens. For starters the back story is just yawningly boring, the intro movie is well done and looks cool but who the hell wrote the story for that piece of garbage. So after you've suffered through the absolute first bit you are launched in to the part of the game that I guess has the intention of giving you a chance to learn the controls, it's just that the game never really lets you control the avatar because the whole experience is cut to pieces by a gazillion different cut scenes.
But ok, after three sessions on three separate days (something that is pretty much unheard of in my case) I finally get passed the "intro" part of the game and arrive at the first village where I can choose my own quests and start unravelling the story. After playing for a couple of hours I realize that all I'm doing is running back and forth, back and forth, etc between NPCs and I say to myself "Hey, wait a second I recognize this game mechanic ... it's in every fucking MMORPG on the market!". So what have the developers done? They have created a single player MMORPG that is riddled with cut scenes and loading screens. Fuck yeah, that's a great idea! No it is not, you stupid fuckers. I really expected more from a game that wears the BioWare logo.
Personally I'm so disappointed with this game that I wouldn't even recommend it to my worst enemy ... wait a second ... why did my friends recommended it to me?
Anyway, my point is that everybody I know (and their mothers) have said that the Witcher is such a great game, that it leaves Oblivion in the dust and that all other CRPG should use the Witcher as a model from here on out and so on and so on. Personally I have to say that that is a load of crap. The Witcher is a really boring game that is shopped to pieces by cut scenes and loading screens. For starters the back story is just yawningly boring, the intro movie is well done and looks cool but who the hell wrote the story for that piece of garbage. So after you've suffered through the absolute first bit you are launched in to the part of the game that I guess has the intention of giving you a chance to learn the controls, it's just that the game never really lets you control the avatar because the whole experience is cut to pieces by a gazillion different cut scenes.
But ok, after three sessions on three separate days (something that is pretty much unheard of in my case) I finally get passed the "intro" part of the game and arrive at the first village where I can choose my own quests and start unravelling the story. After playing for a couple of hours I realize that all I'm doing is running back and forth, back and forth, etc between NPCs and I say to myself "Hey, wait a second I recognize this game mechanic ... it's in every fucking MMORPG on the market!". So what have the developers done? They have created a single player MMORPG that is riddled with cut scenes and loading screens. Fuck yeah, that's a great idea! No it is not, you stupid fuckers. I really expected more from a game that wears the BioWare logo.
Personally I'm so disappointed with this game that I wouldn't even recommend it to my worst enemy ... wait a second ... why did my friends recommended it to me?
Life on Mars?
Really there is!
Or maybe not. It really depends on your level of imagination and possibly wishful thinking. BBC have an article today that discusses the topic that is apparently making some of the corners of the interweb buzz with excitement over proof of extraterrestrial life.
At first glance I have to admit that the picture does awake some imagination and deep hopes of that the proof is finally here but rather quickly I have to say that I do agree with Badastronomy.com, dimension is the key here. Without digging to deep into the subject a quick look at the original picture will make you understand that what people are talking about is about a pebble in size.
So yeah, sure it does look like a humanoid but personally I can say that I've seen Dragons in the gravel in my backyard. If that means that there really are Dragons in Sweden or that there are tiny aliens on Mars that is up to you I guess.
Still, it's an amusing thought and story :)
Or maybe not. It really depends on your level of imagination and possibly wishful thinking. BBC have an article today that discusses the topic that is apparently making some of the corners of the interweb buzz with excitement over proof of extraterrestrial life.
At first glance I have to admit that the picture does awake some imagination and deep hopes of that the proof is finally here but rather quickly I have to say that I do agree with Badastronomy.com, dimension is the key here. Without digging to deep into the subject a quick look at the original picture will make you understand that what people are talking about is about a pebble in size.
So yeah, sure it does look like a humanoid but personally I can say that I've seen Dragons in the gravel in my backyard. If that means that there really are Dragons in Sweden or that there are tiny aliens on Mars that is up to you I guess.
Still, it's an amusing thought and story :)
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
The Me and Media
To make this a bit more reader friendly I'll try to refrain from just listing stuff from top to bottom and instead write a bit of a biography (in lack of a better word) of how I use and partake in different kinds of media. Mostly because I personally think it's more interesting to read it like that.
So where to start? Well I'm older than most people studying so lets start there.
As most people older than the internet I grew up reading comics, books and newspapers. I watched TV a few hours every day (which during the 80s was considered a lot for a Swede) and listen to radio about an hour or so a day. I bought LPs and listen to those and when the CD player started to become a big thing in Sweden me and my bro bought one together. I like all my friends borrowed and copied CDs and LPs of each other like crazy (something that is fully legal in Sweden I might add) when I was younger.
When I was about 12 years old I got an interest for computers or more precisely computer games. It started with text based games on a friends ABC 80 and pretty soon after that I got a NES (the first Nintendo console). During my early teens I bought a Commondore 64 (a computer) and while I mostly played games on it I also did a bit of programming in Basic. In my late teens I got other interests (girls and beer anybody?) but my interest for computers stuck with me in some ways and when I was in my early 20s I bought my first PC, a 486. This time my main reason for getting a computer was not to game on it but to learn about computers and to program. I took a couple of computer hardware courses and software developing process courses. Of course I ended up playing more games than doing anything else in the end though.
I didn't get an internet connection at home until 2001 so I'm actually fairly new to the whole internet thing considering I could have been much more involved with it. I was "online" for the first time back in 95 or possibly 96 (memory fails with age and so on ... ). Before that I had connected to various bulletin boards with a modem together with a mate during the late 80s. During those days they were pretty much a substitute to heta linjen (sorry if you don't speak Swedish but I'm not really sure what it compares to in other countries), a place that people connected to to communicate in a very childish manner (typical for teens). Anyway, my point is that when I finally got a connection from home my interaction with people and activities almost took over my life. I got involved in several game oriented communities and I spent a lot of time online playing various games.
So today I use my computer for most of my social interaction be it via phpbbs forums, Google Talk, MSN (or actually WLM), Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, Facebook or what ever. In some instances it's actually gone so far that I interact with people that live in the same town as me over the internet instead of meeting them in person. Of course I still go out and meet people face to face and talk about things that has nothing to do with media, games or computers. Actually it happens fairly often that I do that. But the majority of my time is spent in front of some kind of screen, be it the computer screen or the TV. My TV is today hooked up to my computer to enable me to watch videos on my telly and also to listen to music while I do other things on the computer.
I also use my computer for studying and some web coding. When I code I use a lot of the knowledge that people have gathered on the internet in different places. Most places I find good tips and tricks are actually in blogs. There are tons and tons of blogs dedicated to web programming in different ways out there so because of that I read quite a lot of blogs but very rarely the same one. My internet use is based around my game communities (links to them can be found on this site to the right) and those I visit daily (many times). Some other places I visit regularly can be found here, just don't look at the rest of that horrible thing of a site. To my defence it's only a skeleton of what I'm currently working.
Internet has also given me the chance to interact with people from all over he world, though they are mainly situated in English speaking nations but I have friends both in Australia, Japan, USA and people spread out through EU. These people I mostly interact with via the for mentioned methods but mostly through forums because of time difference.
Except the computer and TV I also interact with people through my cell phone mostly by calling. I actually avoid using text messages as I don't like it as much as using my voice to communicate but it happens every now and then that I both receive and write text messages on my cell. The most use my cell see today though is it's mp3 function. I will dive deeper into the usage of my cell in an other post on this site.
Other types of media, such as those I mentioned in the beginning, has almost vanished from my world. I still watch TV occasionally and I actually listen to quite a lot of Radio today but it's all web radio stations (I use Screamer and my favourite station is one of SomaFM's stations). I read the occasional web comic and rarely open a newspaper (except for a tech paper I get delivered at home every week NyTeknik) but I actually do still read books. Probably much more today than I did when I was younger. I'm currently reading Steven Erikson's Garden of the Moon and Stephen R. Donaldson's Fatal Revenant, which will probably lead you to make an incorrect guess about what genre I'm most interested in.
Well, that should be it. I think that explains what the me in media is. Oh, one more thing. To people without the knowledge of me taking a course called "Information Retrieval and New New Media" this whole topic and post might seem very odd. But read the information about that course and you might get an idea to reason behind this post.
So where to start? Well I'm older than most people studying so lets start there.
As most people older than the internet I grew up reading comics, books and newspapers. I watched TV a few hours every day (which during the 80s was considered a lot for a Swede) and listen to radio about an hour or so a day. I bought LPs and listen to those and when the CD player started to become a big thing in Sweden me and my bro bought one together. I like all my friends borrowed and copied CDs and LPs of each other like crazy (something that is fully legal in Sweden I might add) when I was younger.
When I was about 12 years old I got an interest for computers or more precisely computer games. It started with text based games on a friends ABC 80 and pretty soon after that I got a NES (the first Nintendo console). During my early teens I bought a Commondore 64 (a computer) and while I mostly played games on it I also did a bit of programming in Basic. In my late teens I got other interests (girls and beer anybody?) but my interest for computers stuck with me in some ways and when I was in my early 20s I bought my first PC, a 486. This time my main reason for getting a computer was not to game on it but to learn about computers and to program. I took a couple of computer hardware courses and software developing process courses. Of course I ended up playing more games than doing anything else in the end though.
I didn't get an internet connection at home until 2001 so I'm actually fairly new to the whole internet thing considering I could have been much more involved with it. I was "online" for the first time back in 95 or possibly 96 (memory fails with age and so on ... ). Before that I had connected to various bulletin boards with a modem together with a mate during the late 80s. During those days they were pretty much a substitute to heta linjen (sorry if you don't speak Swedish but I'm not really sure what it compares to in other countries), a place that people connected to to communicate in a very childish manner (typical for teens). Anyway, my point is that when I finally got a connection from home my interaction with people and activities almost took over my life. I got involved in several game oriented communities and I spent a lot of time online playing various games.
So today I use my computer for most of my social interaction be it via phpbbs forums, Google Talk, MSN (or actually WLM), Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, Facebook or what ever. In some instances it's actually gone so far that I interact with people that live in the same town as me over the internet instead of meeting them in person. Of course I still go out and meet people face to face and talk about things that has nothing to do with media, games or computers. Actually it happens fairly often that I do that. But the majority of my time is spent in front of some kind of screen, be it the computer screen or the TV. My TV is today hooked up to my computer to enable me to watch videos on my telly and also to listen to music while I do other things on the computer.
I also use my computer for studying and some web coding. When I code I use a lot of the knowledge that people have gathered on the internet in different places. Most places I find good tips and tricks are actually in blogs. There are tons and tons of blogs dedicated to web programming in different ways out there so because of that I read quite a lot of blogs but very rarely the same one. My internet use is based around my game communities (links to them can be found on this site to the right) and those I visit daily (many times). Some other places I visit regularly can be found here, just don't look at the rest of that horrible thing of a site. To my defence it's only a skeleton of what I'm currently working.
Internet has also given me the chance to interact with people from all over he world, though they are mainly situated in English speaking nations but I have friends both in Australia, Japan, USA and people spread out through EU. These people I mostly interact with via the for mentioned methods but mostly through forums because of time difference.
Except the computer and TV I also interact with people through my cell phone mostly by calling. I actually avoid using text messages as I don't like it as much as using my voice to communicate but it happens every now and then that I both receive and write text messages on my cell. The most use my cell see today though is it's mp3 function. I will dive deeper into the usage of my cell in an other post on this site.
Other types of media, such as those I mentioned in the beginning, has almost vanished from my world. I still watch TV occasionally and I actually listen to quite a lot of Radio today but it's all web radio stations (I use Screamer and my favourite station is one of SomaFM's stations). I read the occasional web comic and rarely open a newspaper (except for a tech paper I get delivered at home every week NyTeknik) but I actually do still read books. Probably much more today than I did when I was younger. I'm currently reading Steven Erikson's Garden of the Moon and Stephen R. Donaldson's Fatal Revenant, which will probably lead you to make an incorrect guess about what genre I'm most interested in.
Well, that should be it. I think that explains what the me in media is. Oh, one more thing. To people without the knowledge of me taking a course called "Information Retrieval and New New Media" this whole topic and post might seem very odd. But read the information about that course and you might get an idea to reason behind this post.
Introduction
This blog is created for one purpose and one purpose only. To learn about blogging.
I'm currently taking a course at Linköpings Universitet called "Information Retrival and New New Media". One aspect of that course is to learn about blogging. Both about creating a blog and getting people to read it and comment on it. Something I obviously need help with ;)
I'm currently taking a course at Linköpings Universitet called "Information Retrival and New New Media". One aspect of that course is to learn about blogging. Both about creating a blog and getting people to read it and comment on it. Something I obviously need help with ;)
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