Rassie’s Doghouse

I guess I’m now stuck in the blogging business forever. Previously, none of my friends blogged — some were ignorant, other paranoid or just plain lazy. And now this: an old friend, who literally pinged me for the last eleven years because I’ve been lazy enough not to send a message to good old Riga, pushes me to the edge, demanding a list of games I play. Oh well. Since modern communication is just a matter of trackbacks and comments in a blog, I guess I’ll make this public.

Geez, games… Computer games… I just don’t quite know what to write about them, since I haven’t been playing much in the last seven or eight years, I’ve willingly missed every single gaming fashion in the last decade. I’ve seen and played a bit of "Counter Strike", I’ve seen people playing "Need for Speed" or "Grand Theft Auto", I’ve talked long hours about psychological problems concerning "World of Warcraft" without having played or seen a minute of that, I’ve heard about Lineage and wondered what that might be until I’ve researched and found out it was a russian "WoW" competitor. I’ve been excited about and haven’t played a single minute of "S.T.A.L.K.E.R.", damn, even "DOOM" has been a game I’ve played three years too late. I’m a gaming failure and I admit it. Not that I’m ashamed of it…

It’s just that I find hacking my linux box, creating little scripts and reading a lot of articles and books on computing topics vastly more exciting that gaming. I’ve saved a lot of money by not buying the best graphic accelerator on the market, by not upgrading my workstation to the greatest, by not arguing about 1200dpi mice vs. 1500dpi mice with or without a battle mouse pad. I’m not an energy drink addict. I’m not into battle strategy, neither in "Counter Strike" nor in "Warcraft". I haven’t felt the need to imagine myself being a dwarf with a +8 power hammer. I’ve never been to the coma-drinking festivals called LARP. Sorry, I’m boring. I can spend the whole day and night reading about virtues of classical vs. prototype-based OO, my feed list in Google Reader is at 86 feeds at the moment, 814 entries unread — and most of them are really interesting. In fact, I’ve been going on like this since late 2000 and I’ve got every single job I’ve had since 2002 because of this. I love educating myself, so I’m doing this most of the time.

Coming back to the topic, I’m sometimes tempted to play something. Sadly, my games selection is somewhat limited by my OS, I’d have to reboot to play most of the games, so this is one more reason I’m not an active gamer. But still, sometimes I play and these are my top 3 games I’ve found entertaining recently and actually played long hours (apart from Free Cell, that is ;)):

1. Prince of Persia This one game — or better, three games since I’m talking about all three modern PoP games — is a masterpiece. The original "Prince of Persia" has taken a lot of time playing it, kids on the block talked about having saved the princess in 20 minutes, about how to kill the reflection prince, about Jafar etc. It was the game at that time, excellent in gameplay and graphics. When the second "Prince" came out, it was a kind of disappointment, as it wasn’t that much better. Still, we played it. The third one, "Prince of Persia 3D" was a extraordinary failure and still, I tried playing it. When "Sands of Time" came out, it was like a legend coming back, stronger than ever. I’ve been telling my friends that this should have been the original "Prince" if we had 3D graphics at that time. Excellent animation, intuitive controls, extraordinary fights, it had it all. Then there was "The Warrior Within", which was just as mindblowing — combining "The Matrix", "Mortal Kombat" and "Prince of Persia" has been pure genius. The same can be told about "The Two Thrones". The game was fun to play, it was difficult enough not to fall asleep, not too hard not to be turned off and long enough to have about two weeks of continuous fun.

2. Frets on Fire This is a new game on the block and it’s a free (as in speech) "Guitar Hero" clone. Being an extremely simple concept and providing no story at all, it’s still more fascinating than many other games currently on the market. Just play the guitar and enjoy it!

3. Pro Evolution Soccer Well, this one is pretty simple. I like soccer, I like playing it and I like playing it on my computer. Not that I was good at it, but I still can enjoy it. PES has a hard stand against EA-produced FIFA-branded game series, but it’s nevertheless a simulator with a better game feeling. I’ve actually bought a gamepad a long time ago to play it.

Apart from these, there are some games I still know from my childhood and which can take any number of hours of my free time. These are the Monkey Island series and Alley cat. Particulary the latter is a gem of arcade gameplay, being the only game known to man that looks great in CGA, running at normal speed even on current quad-cores despite its age (try that with Digger!) and providing a simple, but fascinating aim.

I also remember playing Moorhuhnjagd a lot when it first came out and also a great night spend at a friend’s place playing Mortal Kombat and a Tron clone that whole night. By the way, Armagetron is one great game, the best implementation of the tron-principle I’ve even seen.

That’s about it, there is not a lot more to say about my gaming preferences. Hope you had fun reading this stuff :)

Spammers are the ones who drive the progress. They are the ones who think of most kicking way to promote their products, we actually should respect them for the quality of their work (marketing, that is) if we weren’t so pissed about it at the same time.

I’ve had some very interesting comments in this blog in the last few days, which are obviously spam (because of the links to "naked celebrities" websites), but they are both filter-proof because of the content and are also reflecting on 90% of blogs’ content. I’ll just leave them uncommented for now, they are glorious by themselves.

It is one of things I can never understand … how people can think that way. It’s so illogical that it can only be based upon moronity.

Computers have already revolutionized the way we live and work. Have they changed the way we think? After reading all posts I think they have. People, why do you write what you hear somewhere, not your own thoughts?

Well this is depressing. Stop writing like that, your posts are spoiling your reader’s mood. Boring.

This blog is simply smashing. In my humble opinion of course. As this post is rather debatable I don’t think all your blog visitors are going to agree with it.

It has been a long time since I’ve last been to sneak previews at the movies. Today I’ve bit the bullet and told myself I had to go, just to vent a bit. I was lucky: out of all possible movies I’ve had "21", which I wanted to see anyway. Of course, it’s a "popcorn" movie, but Kevin Spacey was excellent as always, so it was quite enjoyable. I’m no film critic, so I won’t write a complete review, but it’s a nice movie without much moral preaching, so if you happen to go to the movies, "21" might be a good choice.

However, several topics which has been mentioned but not really analyzed or emphasized in this movie were quite disturbing. It’s mostly about how smart guys who don’t have the money usually don’t stand a chance in this society. The protagonist has been working for five years since he was sixteen to earn his A+ in high school, to get the best grades at MIT, he’s bright, talented and smart and still not good enough for some people, mostly the ones who decide about who wins and who loses by granting or not granting scholarships for those who need it. Being good at what you’re doing is simply not enough in this world. You need to be perfect. Or rich, that’s the second possibility.

Sixteen-year-old spend days and nights learning stuff they won’t need and trying to get a hold of the best grades they can get. Soon you’ll need to provide performance reports from the elementary school just to get a place at a college. Even slightest mistake in your youth, smallest performance loss and you are out. You haven’t been a normal teenager since you’ve been working hard to get somewhere you’ve always wanted to, then you fail a class and you are out. You are weak, you don’t belong here, only the strongest survive. Better luck in your next life.

What kind of crazy world are we living in? We are supposed to perform like machines from our childhood on, work 70-80 hours per week and then probably just die at the age of 50 — you’d be too old for anything anyway by then. If you don’t want this — well, it’s your choice, but your chances in this world are pretty slim then.

I’m actually one of those who worked hard for what they are. I’m 25 and I’ve been self-training for the last 14 years. I’ve learned a lot, I’m at least a bit gifted, not a genius, but still someone with "good potential". I didn’t have good grades, mostly because I’m lazy and had to work in my free time to earn at least some money for some decent life. I’m actually quite content with the life I have and which will follow: I’ll probably have a decent job, which will get me the money I need for life, family, wife, kids, I’ll have it all. I won’t be the greatest, I’ll just be a quiet good one.

But it’s sad to realize that many of extremely talented guys and girls might not get a life they are worth just because they haven’t been to the best college, haven’t had the best grades, haven’t got the money, hadn’t worked since they were eight or just had bad luck. This whole system is flawed, it’s taking from the poor and giving to the rich. Or at least making it really difficult to talented people to prove their talent.

Sometimes I really hate this world.