700 Billion Dollar Bailout

As you may know we have a crises on our hands.  Big businesses and banks are in huge financial debts and will fail if the government doesn't bail them out.  Is that fair to the average person?  First of all the government is taking our tax dollars to bail out these big banks and corporations.  Second, when banks didn't give a shit about who they lent money too and did it under adjustable rate mortgages without educating the loaners that the rates could jump to unaffordable costs.  This caused a domino effect across country, where home owners couldn't afford when the adjustable rates jumped up to 6 and 7 percent, which caused for closers to sweep millions of middle class Americans.  

The deal is that it does not affect us as college students right now, BUT it WILL.  There is a great chance that millions of Americans will lose there jobs.  The economy is far from stable and people of lost billions in the stock market. 

SO PLEASE get educated on this topic, and study both sides of the political spectrum before you vote.  I promise you... this is one of the BIGGEST and most IMPORTANT elections of our lives.  

The Burn of Life

   The end of September never seems to have anything special in the real life, but in Second Life, it's the week of Burning Life( Second Life's tribute to Burning Man). Users everywhere come to see all the unique creations of other users. When I went to go check out the area, the computer kept locking up so I couldn't observe most of the creations and lands, but I was able to go to the area of mutant vehicles. It had stuff from random giant bikes to a rubber duck car and some things were actually able to be copied. I also noticed some more "creative" ideas such as the monster potty, yet not everything that I was able to look at was so different. Some areas had buildings that resembled tents, tarps , and umbrellas to give it a flea market-like theme but none of the items were purchasable.   After I was able to finally get to look around, there is a lot more to see then what I had originally said. All of the users take ideas or icons from movies,shows, and what not and put it in a form that we can view in Second Life. The wireframe sculptures are very well made and can almost simulate real wireframe artwork in the real life, although in Second Life, they choose to actually make it have an image projector as well or sparkles or something to make it pretty come out. Along with sculptures, the area had what looked like a fantasy carnival and buildings with scenes and props from movies, one such was the Back to the future set, with anything and everything that went through the time stream. But, the greatest of all was the "Church of Techno", which someone said it resembled a colorful Water Cube. It had the history of techno, some free items and a dance area with a dance ball for dances and music to listen to which created a great feeling of a rave. Most of the event I couldn't fully see given the short amount of time and the grand size of the event. The image below was only one of many I took when exploring the areas.

   The Burning Life received it's idea from the real Life event of the Burning Man, which is held in a desert each year to show the creativity of others. There is no buying or selling there, other than required items such as water and coffee and the like, but it's a place to bring your bike and view the unique creations of others. Burning Life does almost the exact thing as the event, even having a giant wooden man to be burnt at night just like in the real event. 

burning life

Ok burning life was intresting. I cant really say I experienced it that much because I havent been on second life like I  useally am. From what I did experience though it seemed like it was a a fun event. Taking from what was going on I think that I was enjoying my self because of the fact that no one stopped what they were doing and yelled out GODZILLAAAA. which is kind of annoying sometimes. but enough of that let me tell you about what I did at this event. First I ended up in a monster porta-potty and then I ended up in babbal and finally I ended my day at the church of technoo. Dancing all my cares away with my classmates and the professor. Then after that I went and wandered around and talked to some people before I jumpped on a hot air balloon and rode that for a while. Then I jumpped off and that was about it for my burning life adventures. any way I will come back with more about other intresting stories and pictures.

newest poses

Ok now its time for you to see how I died....I died in the first one from an axe in my back and then I died from being hanged. the last one isnt showing death I am just lounging about by the pool in second life while I worked on my tan.  lol....( full metal dragons cant tan.) but any way 

i am working on more intresting pictures and I have more to show so hold on while I post them up with theis one ok...now the one of me as a ( male) elf ( I say male because one of my classmates thought I was a girl but I AM NOT ) sitting in a tree. then after that one I found this avatar and I have been sticking with this one for two main reasons. The first one is because my name is godzilla and the second one is because it is so cool. ^^ yeah and I also like the fire that I can breathe.  oh and the girl that I am with is one of my friends. she goes by then name of black rose. She is a pretty cool friend of mine.  Any way its time to get to class so I will talk to you guys and girls later. 

 Godzilla

Chaos Theory

So I was really bored today and decided to play a game I haven't played in a while... Splinter Cell:Chaos Theory. This game is so ahead of its time, it was released in 2005 but it is still one of the best looking games I have played. If you don't know what Splinter Cell is ill bring you up to speed: You are a spy for the U.S. government in a secret branch called Third Echelon. The game starts off with an American ship sunk by a North Korean missile and its up to you (San Fisher) to find out who ordered the missile launch. The gameplay is incredibly fun, all the missions are at night or in a building and its your goal to sneak through the shadows and past guards to get to your objective. You have a bunch of really cool gadgets that actually exist in real life and you have to use them to get through without being seen. The main gadget is night vision, if you didnt have this the levels would be really hard to see. You also have two different guns, i silenced pistol, and a special gun that shoots out rubber bullets, sticky shockers to knock out enemies and sticky camera to look around corners. This game is just plain awesome and even if you start playing it today it wont seem like an outdated game. 

The Legend Of Dragoon

Well currently I am playing a great game called the legend of dragoon. this awsome game was made in 2000 and has really good graphics for the time. It follows the story of a young man by the name of dart and his adventures throughout the world Endiness. The game is four discs long and if your dedicated and play until 2:00 in the morning you can beat this game in about three days. any way this game is really good because of the unique story line, the plot devices and most importantly the four discs for the playstation one consol. That was never done before on the playstation consol and I guess never will be because the playstation has evolved since then. lol.........I Godzilla is playing the game right now in my room with me...our friend Allison is watching him play and he is on the forth disc and almost at the end of the game so now I am going to watch him.

Weekly Blogg: Spore

Spore is a game that I just purchased and is made by the creators of the Sims. It takes what was the original aspect of the game and advances it way beyond that. In this game, the player is allowed to create a creature and evolve it through Five time periods. The periods start with the Cell, Creature, Tribal, Civilized, then lastly Space. The First two stages allow for the player to evolve his or her creation and the last three are about creating alliances with others or creating the ultimate empire. The player has nearly endless options for costomizing the creation the player makes. Once the player enters the more advanced stages, Creation of buildings, cars, planes, boats, and even space ships is allowed. The last stage even allows for the player to explore the Milky Way and colonize planets and even destroy them. There are endless ways to play this game and I see it lasting for a long time into the future.

Second Life video

The movie that we watched in class was kinda dull in my point of view. But, Will try hard to not focus on the negative in this post but rather what was good. I think the way the game designers set up the game was very creative and unique. The ability for game players to do what they want with the land they have is very interesting. This allows for player to be creative and do what they want with their creations. This is what I believe to be the key aspect of Second Life. With out this feature, Second Life would be another online game that attempts to mimic real life Socialization.

Reaction to video

I was really surprised by the space that Second Life would take up on an actual CD/DVD. The fact that it would take up multiple terabytes amazes me. The reason that I am so amazed by this is because most of those multiple terabytes of information are all user created objects, buildings, and land. It is mind blowing that the game started out very simply and grew exponentially in terms of byte usage, all because of the users that play Second Life. Adding to the mind blowing-ness, all of the objects that are created, can be extremely detailed, and the process that one has to go through to create such objects, I find, is extremely difficult and time consuming. The fact that an online game like Second Life could grow to the size that it is now in such a short time is almost too much to comprehend. This is what I found most interesting about the video.

the video from class

the video wasn't very intresting but I did find the part about how they turned the atoms into prims. That was pretty sweet but I am not really in to all of that technical talk. I also liked the part about how they left second life totally in the hands of the players and didnt create all of the buildings for the players. I also liked how they talked about making the world's sky move continuously. Which makes the world feel more realistic then worlds like WoW.

Internet = A new creative outlet?

In middle school I discovered something: I could express myself creatively through the internet. No longer was I limited to email and IM, it was then that I discovered forums. Through this I was able to learn how to post pictures of my own creation. And now I've had a lot of practice with creating graphics directly through the computer. The internet allows us to express ourselves in a variety of ways, whether it be through music or art. There are tons of art and music sites that focus on the everyday person, rather then a celebrity or someone who is famous. For example, one of my friends has a guild on GaiaOnline that is entirely dedicated to art. All aspects of art! From drawing to music, and design to writing. Along with this new talent is discovered, a long with a realization that some of us lack talent. -_- But instead of looking down at this I believe we should use it to improve ourselves. I think that posting our creations on the internet allows use to get instant feedback from people who otherwise might be biased because of their like or dislike of us. These people, who don't know us, are able to look at our art from a less biased viewpoint. Unfortunately with posting your works on the internet comes a major risk: stolen art. I always find someway to mark my art but hows that supposed to stop a person from claiming it as their own? If you can accept this risk then posting your creative work on the internet will have and does have a lot of benefit.

The picture is something I created on a whim one day in a program called Gimp. The gif animation is something I created for said friend's art guild.

Always Growing...

One of the concepts of the video that I found the most interesting was the idea of Second Life always growing. In the video he mentioned Second Life started out looking like a ‘shanty town’, this I find hard to see. There are so many different sims, and I haven’t stumbled across one that looks the same. Along with these areas there are items created by the users and put together by them too to create a believable environment for your avatar to explore. The possibilities when it comes to creating are almost endless as you manipulate prims to your liking. I enjoy making something entirely abstract from what started out as a simple geometric shape. However, there is some limitations. Many of the areas having building disallowed to prevent griefers from littering up their sim and causing them to put a lot of work in keeping it tidy. If you want to build I suggest looking for a place that offers building like a sandbox or group land. Here are a couple of things to keep in mind as you build: First, respect the land and the people in it. If you don’t then you might just get booted from it and second, clean up when your finished unless you have permission to leave your creation in the land or you own the land yourself. This helps the sim look clean and tidy for other users, and frees up prim space.

The pictures are from land owned by Trilegy Corporation, that allows its members to build in it's provided free land.