Parents who really shouldn't be - A Rant

About a month ago, I was on the train, when a guy and his son got on. The kid was something like 4 years old - not particularly old, or... sentient. Basically, not old enough to know - all blame for the following story is laid at the feet of the useless father involved.

The kid begins running amok on the train. The train wasn't particularly full, but I was sitting on the steps that lead up into the carriage proper, to allow people who need the neutral seats more to be able to use them. People such as parents who are taking care of their kids, or old people, or whoever.

The child starts banging on the glass door of the train. Running in circles. Banging on the thick glass separating the edge of the long bench from the area where people who couldn't get a seat stand (and hold onto the bars so they don't fall - something which is important when we take into account the fact that these are CityRail trains...).

This, I can deal with. Whatever. I had my headphones on, and wasn't hearing the child anyway. What annoys me though, is that his father just sat there, watching him. But whatever, its not my place to do his job for him - he's the parent right?

But then it got worse.

The child started pressing the emergency button. This is a big red button (that everyone wants to press, but its not a good idea to) which connects each carriage to the driver. Pressing the button gives the driver a warning, and connects him to a speaker on the carriage the alert came from, so that he can find out what the problem is. It's designed to be used in emergencies. For example, if someone gets deathly ill on the train, like has a heart attack or something.

This kid was pressing the button repeatedly. His father continued to watch and simply do nothing. This is the point where I take off my headphones, since I knew this wasn't going to end well - and since I was the closest one to the speaker (and noone else seemed to have noticed this) it was going to end up my mess... because some dude can't be bothered parenting his child. Then the driver answered.

"Is there a problem are are you just mucking around?"

I reply, telling him (quite loudly) that there was a child in the carriage running around, and he was the one who pushed the button. No, there wasn't a problem. No, he wasn't my child. His parent is sitting on the bench, watching and listening during this entire exchange. When he noticed that both I and the driver were getting annoyed at this, he eventually calls the kid over to him.

You'd think that would be the end of it wouldn't you?

Of course not! The kid starts running around like a headless chicken again, banging on things and generally being obnoxious. Again, doing kid things. It doesn't really surprise me. But then, again, the child returns to the big red button, while the father watched him, still not moving from his seat. At this point, the kid had been rampaging for about 30 minutes worth of travel, and the guy had not moved from his seat once.

The kid tries to push the button again. This time, I intervene by grabbing the kids hand. Well, we can't have him messing with the emergency button can we? When the father sees this, he calls the kid back over again, this time holding him for the rest of the trip, and sending me an angry glare.

I can't remember what he looked like, but it was probably like this

What is wrong with people? Why is it that he can't be bothered to take care of, or God forbid discipline his own kid?

Can I chlorinate the gene pool now?

Rage Comics

Recently I have become addicted to Rage Comics. For those who don't know what they are, they are meme-like comics using faces which were originally drawn in MSPaint (or at least look like they were) along with an attempt at some form of humour. A lot of them tend to point out the stupidity of some people, others have extremely random situations, and others are simply crass. However, I can't seem to stop looking at them! It's like they're infectious or something.

Problem?

I suspect that a lot of these images originated on that hive of scum and villainy known as 4chan. I cannot back that up, but its the feeling I get from some of the art. Considering I stay away from that corner of the Internet (I know what's good for me) I cannot say whether the rage comics have taken off there - however, one place which they seem to grow in number daily is on Reddit - to the point where they made a complete subreddit for these comics. It is aptly abbreviated to F7U12.

The reason these comics are called "Rage Comics" is that, more often than not, they include a rage face. However, they don't always. I suppose its the law of the internet - things start one way but get corrupted, though somehow retaining their original title or name. Its quite odd, isn't it?

FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

I even have multiple iPhone apps that deal with this. One is the Rage Faces app, which is simply a large set of rage faces and the means to copy and paste them into the SMS app (which I enjoy annoying people with occasionally nowadays). Another is the Rage Comics app, so I can look at some of the stuff from Reddit in a decently readable format when I'm on the go.


I have no idea why I'm so addicted to these. Possibly because they are so stupid, and quick to read when I need a moment's break.

Airplane rage

Are you guys addicted to any particular Internet memes?

F.E.A.R it. Again.

I started playing the second F.E.A.R expansion yesterday. Cryptically titled "Perseus Mandate", it seems to have very little relevance to anything.
Heck, in my post the other day about the other expansion, I even pointed out that the expansions are disregarded by the sequel that I plan on playing at some point. So, the first question is, why bother?

This would be because, as much as the prior playtime angered me, I was intrigued. It did leave off with your character having just taken a helicopter explosion to the face, then turn to see the entire city in flames. Kind of an interesting hook to continue playing - even if all the gameplay that lead up to it was boring as hell.

So I began the Perseus Mandate. And it seems the chapter or so I have played has been totally NOT worth it, as predicted.

For starters, you start playing as an entirely different character, from another F.E.A.R squad. This means that the hook of the nameless character I have been dragging from one empty warehouse to another being left alone on top of the hospital with fire everywhere has been instantly removed, in favour of giving me a new, slightly less nameless guy, with a full squad.

And why does this new guy just happen to have the same slo-mo bullet time power that the other guy, who reportedly has this power because he's "special"? As a good friend of mine pointed out in his blog - once everybody has superpowers, they're not superpowers anymore. They become typical. Normal.

Not to mention that the enemies and locations are - again - identical to the two games prior. Generic clone soldiers, generic not-so-clone soldiers, and the ninjas. Admittedly, the creepout sessions have gotten more disturbing, but this seems to be through virtue of simply having lots more gore and death involved, than being suspenseful in their own right.

Oh, and the game seems to have had most of the first chapter in well lit areas. Brightly lit places tend to not be scary. And the ninjas attacked again - way too early. And in a well lit room. Sure, they're still hard to see since they've stolen OTACON's stealth camo, but they're much less scary to fight in a room where you can see more than 10 metres in front of yourself!

As my girlfriend arrived at my place last night to rescue me from my self-imposed videogame-born hell I had reached a new type of enemy. Finally something new! Except that they're a different type of generic soldier. With better guns. Of course, the better guns advantage is quickly lost when I take said gun from the first one that goes down - the rest serving as obstacles to my ending the drudgery, and slight ammo stockups.

To sum it up, one of the squad members, shortly after encountering the ninjas said "That's new". "No, no it isn't new" I answered, quite vocally. To the utter confusion of my brother.

Is it bad that I'm talking to a game? Probably.

Either way, I will finish this stupid game sometime next week most likely - and then move onto something infinitely more enjoyable. I won't touch F.E.A.R 2 right away, because I;d rather not rip my soul to shreds more so than it already has been.

Nothing to fear but F.E.A.R. And ninjas.

I recently finished F.E.A.R Extraction Point - the first expansion to F.E.A.R. For those who don't know, F.E.A.R (First Encounter Assault Recon) is a first person shooter crossed with a horror game. Except that it didn't quite work.

Note that huge spoilers will follow. But really, the plot, while it has its moments, seems fairly disposable.

The original game begins with you being the new recruit / pointman of F.E.A.R, which is never really explained well to the player through the game, but is essentially S.W.A.T for paranormal/supernatural things. Which is a horrendous idea in the first place. Since when have ghosts and other paranormal activities been susceptible to assault rifles? Oh right, they aren't. Even in this game, they're not.

No, the main bad guy, Paxton Fettel if my memory serves me correctly (and if not, I'll call him that anyway because his actual name was at least as ridiculous as that) is some... random guy. You get to watch him eat people at the start. Kinda creepy.

Somehow, he has some kind of clone army, which he directs to kill people. Your squad shows up to figure out what's going on, and to "eliminate" him. There is also the small matter of some insane little girl (as it always is in horror) with supernatural powers making weird shit happen occasionally.

You will literally receive visions occasionally - usually completely harmless, but sometimes less so - of weird stuff. A hallway with blood down the walls, the hallway itself stretching as you attempt to walk down it. Or maybe the entire world around you becoming black except for a circle of flame, with ghouls flying at you in an attempt to eat your soul, and drag you to the hellspawn pit from whence they came.

This sounds cool doesn't it? Well, this is all that about the game that is different - or even mildly interesting. And its not even scary.

Well, its creepy the first few times, but it happens quite a lot, so you kinda get used to the idea that your character is possibly losing his mind for brief periods, before being returned to whatever warehouse he was in, to continue on his merry way killing generic soldiers.

And that's exactly the problem. In the original game, I seem to recall a grand total of two types of enemies. Generic armed forces (because guns don't hurt ghosts, they had to give you something you could fight), and ninjas. I shit you not.

There are random ninjas which appear, and attack. Usually from behind. A shotgun blast usually deals with them well enough, until the next 3 attack simultaneously...

The major problem with this game is that EVERY LOCATION IS THE SAME. SERIOUSLY. It leads you through abandoned warehouse after abandoned office to abandoned parking lot to abandoned lab to abandoned office... every building looks the same!

F.E.A.R itself, wasn't so bad. It retained some form of interest, particularly with the giant explosion near the end, and the ending itself, where your helicopter is dragged down by the creepy little girl.

The expansion, however, was much, much worse. The reason being that it is THE EXACT SAME GAME. For some reason, the telepathically controlled clone soldiers reactivate themselves (even though their creator / controller is dead - and the reason he can still control them is never explained. The character himself even tells you in a vision that this makes no sense), and you are forced to try and regroup with the surviving member of your squad, after the helicopter crash.

Never mind the identical plot (you spend a large portion of the original trying to regroup with your squad, as well as chasing Dudeface McGee in between being driven mad by visions), this one's completely different.

How, you ask? BY KILLING OFF EVERY REASON YOU HAVE TO CONTINUE PLAYING. You early on link up with one of the survivors, who proceeds to fight with you for a couple of levels, and then gets himself killed in an admittedly creepy possession-type scene. His last words are to find Jin - the only other survivor.

You spend the entire game trying to get to the hospital where she is, traipsing through (stop me if you've heard this before) abandoned office buildings, an abandoned subway, an abandoned parking lot, and then, eventually, said hospital. Except that when you find her, she's dead (as expected).

Your mission then becomes "get to the extraction point on the roof". When you get there, the helicopter you are about to get in... explodes. Then the credits roll, you see a buring cityscape, and are told to go play the other expansion.

And will it be worth it? No, no it won't. Particularly since Wikipedia clearly states that both expansions are completely disregarded for the sequel F.E.A.R 2: Project Origin.

The moral of this story is that the F.E.A.R games are not scary. Particularly Extraction Point. The visions occur often enough that you begin to expect them every 10 minutes or so, the grisly scenes you come across where soldiers have been decimated become same same, and the only times in the game where I was creeped out involved the ninjas appearing behind me without warning, and a particular vision where the hospital became a completely different locale. And the reason that vision creeped me out was because it proved to me that the game's artist's were capable of texturing walls a colour other than white.

Also, why do you have bullet time? I never really understood that...

Rambling

I can't really put together a coherent post today. Something about there not being much happening at the moment, and such, so today's post will be a bunch of random thoughts I've had lately so that I stay in the habit of writing things.

The other day, someone mistook me for Jack Black when I walked into their convenience store and bought a drink. This is not the first time, though it typically happens when I don't shave for a few days (though to be fair, that happens most weeks because I shave Mondays, then get too lazy to do it again until either Friday, or the following Monday). It's tempting to run a social experiment to just stop shaving for a while, and see how many people approach me. Perhaps see how long I can keep the illusion up (probably just long enough for them to realise that the man doesn't wear glasses. Well, not ones to allow him to continue to see anyway...)

I recently started playing around with HGE (Haag's Game Engine) in C++ in preparation for an event I've applied for entering called GameJam. GameJam is an event for insane people where you spend an entire weekend making a game from scratch. Little to no sleep. To enforce this, they give you a topic and a set of keywords, which aren't revealed until the event begins. You are allowed to use whatever libraries you like, however, and so I started getting back into C++, since iPhone programming isn't very conducive to presenting the game on stage at the end of the event.
Anyway, I noticed that the HGE tutorials have only some of the WORST CODE I HAVE EVER SEEN. Its rife with magic numbers, global variables, and cryptic math that makes me want to find whoever wrote that tutorial, and shove a programming practices book down their throat, which will likely have the same effect as sunlight has on vampires (not the Twilight vampires, they're not vampires, they're sparkle fairies).
The engine itself isn't that bad, and it's possible to salvage it, but those tutorials... it physically hurt me to code like that. Once I get a bit more of a handle on the thing I'm totally gonna write a basic framework for myself. Well, less of a framework more of an organisational thing.

Today, I had breakfast for the first time in ages. I used to never be able to eat solid food before 10.30 or 11am, because if I did I would be sick all day. It seems this was a side effect of my undiscovered Coeliac, since typically breakfast foods (cereals, toast, etc) are filled to the brim with gluten. This morning I woke up early (accidentally), and decided to give that gluten free cereal Mum found a go. I didn't feel particularly well as I headed into work today, but by the time I got there the feeling passed. Though having brekky didn't have the utterly electric effect on my energy levels that I've been told it would. Science lied to me?

I have been sleeping utterly horribly lately. No idea why. This might be contributing to my acting quite crabby when I get home from work. I'd apologise, but right now I probably wouldn't mean it :P
So damn tired...

Dead PC

I was playing WoW the other day, when my PC decided that it would be a good idea to turn the screen mostly purple, and freeze.

Naturally, I was annoyed about this, but I rebooted and decided to load up WoW again and continue. 10 minutes later, the same thing happened again.

I reoobted again, and was greeted with funny coloured lines across the BIOS screen, then a's with the ' mark above it all across another loadup screen, and when it reached the Windows loading screen, it was in a much lower resolution than my regular 1900 x 1200. Oh, and it refused to get any further than that - I could not open Windows.

Safe mode loaded for me, and looked fairly odd with purply blue lines through the screen. Apparently Windows decided I had not done anything on the computer since I got it that was worth creating a restore point for, so there were no points for me to try and restore the computer to, so I let it try to auto-repair... which failed.

Taking a photo of the issue and passing it to my girlfriend, who then posted it on the omni-present Madboards in an attempt to get help yielded the diagnosis which had crossed my mind, though I had fervently hoped it was untrue - my video card was fragged and I needed a new one.

Having planned a full computer upgrade early next year, I took it upon myself to simply move said upgrade to now. I asked some friends for help (since I know very little about hardware. Sure, I know theories behind how a lot of stuff works, and when some of the newer stuff is explained to me I can make sense of it, but I am a programmer, not a hardware junkie), and placed an order with MWave - a computer store not too far away from my home, that offers reasonable prices, and quite quick delivery. Seriously, I ordered a G15 keyboard from them one day, and it arrived the next. Scary fast!

Escept that I had missed the ordering cutoff for delivery before they closed down for the Christmas Holidays by about 5 minutes. So here I am without a working computer for about 2 weeks (they don't reopen until January 5th - which means that for my entire 2 week holiday, I am without a computer since on the 5th I'll be down the south coast!)

So, posts will be much less frequent during the next couple of weeks until I get my computer repaired/upgraded/replaced and working again.

Merry Christmas (for yesterday) and Happy New Year, catch yas all when I can :P

I will have no fingers by the age of 30

I want Rock Band 3. However, I will likely not get the version of Rock Band 3 that I want. If I do, then I will destroy my fingers playing it!

Today, after completing my Christmas shopping with my girlfriend, I stopped off at the local EBGames store, having heard that they "exclusively" stocked the Rock Band 3 pro instruments. These instruments are utterly insane - a drumkit with a couple of extra pads (meh), a keyboard/keytar (cool), and a pro guitar, with approximately 140 buttons, and the ability to be plugged into a MIDI converter and be used as an actual freakin' guitar!

I want this guitar.

So I stopped off at EB, dodged the people who were asking what the difference was between Starcraft and Warcraft (Really? Can't you people read the box like a creature with some sort of intellect instead of wasting the serving peoples' time like some kind of zombie?). When I finally got to ask the attendant, she asked me if that was the "fancy controller". After I nod, she proceeds to inform me that they were on "special order" only.

I ask to put in one of these so called "special orders". She said that they don't do it any more.

Um... why tell me it was special order only if you don't actually do it anymore? This seems rather redundant, but whatever. So EBGames has failed me yet again. Remembering that I had seen a GamesMen brochure advertising the controller in question, I made a mad dash over to Hurstville on the way home to try and acquire it.

Due to getting lost on the way (I rarely drive around the Northern beaches, it's completely foreign to me), and then being caught behind an accident on the main road back (seriously, don't people know how to drive anymore?), I found the shop... closed.

Upon reaching home, I did some research. Turns out the shop closed at 4pm (so I would have NEVER made it, leaving the Northern Beaches at around 3.30pm). So I turned to the typical online shopping options.

PlayAsia has none in stock. The GamesMen has the controller on its own for $250. That's a LOT of money just for a controller. Even if it doubles as an actual guitar. Which it does.

Ebay has about the same prices. Amazon has it for $150 US. Considering the current state of the Aussie dollar compared to the US one, I figured that's the way to go.

Except that Amazon are being racist and not actually shipping these controller to Australia, for some inexplicable reason. I would be perfectly fine to pay extra shipping charges due to it being a large item, and that was the only real caveat I could find about shipping to Australia.

So my options appear to be to spend half a week's pay on a game and the corresponding epic controller for it (which, to be completely honest, I find a little difficult to justify right now), not bother and hope somebody reads this and gets me it for Christmas (highly doubtful, since the people who would spend such ludicrous amounts of money on me have already finished their Christmas shopping), or give up entirely.

It appears I am unlikely to be able to destroy my fingers and self-esteem on a pro-guitar after all.

Picnics, children and Oprah Winfrey

So, had a picnic in the city with my girlfriend, and a few friends from the omnipresent Madboards (the Madman anime forum) today. Was entertaining in general.

Though Oprah was trying to steal the Botannical Gardens - the venue we had selected for the picnic, which had begun planning at least a month ago... if I recall correctly. (I'm not allowed to plan things because I'm just generally bad at it - as I am at a lot of things)

So, after meeting up with Oni-5, her daughter Isis, Soul Master Kaze, KBZ and her children Beth and Zac, we walked over to the Botannical Gardens.

Well, we would have. However, with Oprah around, one cannot simply walk into the Botannical Gardens. Instead, we had to walk to the Opera House (and no, I refuse to call it the Oprah house since it existed before she did, and really, it was not built for her. Anyone who calls it the Oprah House in honour of Oprah Winfrey should be shot. In the face. With something that stings).

Then, after dodging the construction for the talk show stuff, we proceeded into the park, and ate foods.

Oni-5 made some really cute sushi. They had faces and things!

Unfortunately, my meal wasn't particularly heavy, due to trialling a gluten-free diet until I can see the specislist again, but I digress.

After food was eaten, there was a slight... disturbance in the force between SMK and Beth, which resulted in one storming off, the other looking for the first one, the first one returning, and the other being missing for a while, still looking. Yes, I'm being vague. No, this was not particularly fun.

After all was resolved, we walked around the gardens for a little while and then got ice cream, and parted ways. Quite a good day apart from the slight disturbance in the force right after lunch.

On another note, I don't see why people are so happy about Oprah being here. She was paid to come here, and she brought her own audience! Aren't Australians good enough for her show? Yes, I understand that some tickets were released to Australians, but seriously - she has her show in America ALL THE TIME. She goes on a tour, which would, theoretically, allow a different demographic to show up. And she brings her own audience. Clearly she doesn't want a different demographic. I wonder why... scared? This confuses me greatly.

Most of her audience probably didn't even know where Australia was anyway.