Prepare for a sore head...

This could be the most thinking you do these holidays, it certainly has been for me. I suggest you take some Panadol, because you're about to have a headache.

During the endless hours that Dale and I have been spending playing Halo 3 (brilliant game) we got to thinking (somehow) about chaos theories, which in turn lead to this:

Over an infinite period time anything that can happen, will happen. So anything with a probability of happening will happen. In other words, anything with a probability of more than 0 of happening will happen.

At first I disagreed, but eventually Dale managed to convince me otherwise. An example was if you are given a bag of marbles with a million black marbles and one white marble, and an infinite amount of times to pick a random marble, you would eventually choose the white one. But then I got to thinking, in the case of life there is always an infinite number of things that could happen at any one time, so that means everything has a probability of 1/infinity, and does 1/infinity equal a number between 0 and 1 or does it equal 0. Of course that depends on how you think of infinity. Is infinity an ever growing numeric figure? Or is it something that cannot be given a number? If it it's a growing numeric figure then technically by dividing 1 by infinity you should come out with a number between 0 and 1, but then if it's not a number you can't divide 1 by it, so therefore you can't get a probability. So, does something without a probability have a probability? Or is it's chance of happening just undefined?

I don't really know what I'm going with this... Basically all we've (Dale and I) have concluded is that any fixed probability (eg 1/5) will happen given an infinite amount of time or chances to happen. The thing we're confused about is whether something with an infinite number of possibilities given an infinite amount of time will happen. So will 1/infinity ever happen of an infinite amount of time?

Post your thoughts if your head hasn't exploded already and if it has then... well... sorry.

The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

When I first heard about this latest addition to the Elder Scrolls series I thought that I would never play it, simply because I could not imagine any FPRPG (First Person Role Playing Game) being any good. Fortunately though, a friend of mine bought the game and lent it to me to have a go at. Not even an hour after installing it I was already addicted.

Being new to the Elder Scrolls series the first thing that amazed me was the customisableness of the game. I spent over an hour just choosing my characters race and making his face as pretty as can be. And as well as being able to customise your character's looks you can also customise their class and what skills are major and minor for them. This makes the game far more replayable than most other games, as you can play the whole thing again as a different class, or even the same class with different major and minor skills.

After finishing the creation of my character I was thrown right into the story, and what worried me most, the first person view of the game. Being new to the Elder Scrolls series, first person RPG was something that was unheard of to me. How can you fight with swords, bows and magic while in first person? Well, quite easily actually, as I soon found out. Being in first person was far better than I had expected. The fights were more intense, conversations more interactive and best of all, I could make sure I was right on the face of my fallen enemies when teabagging them. Although I did enjoy the first person view of Oblivion, I do think Bethesda could have made a better effort at incorporating an optional third person view. They did add one in, but it was pretty crap, and was barely useful except for the odd occasion where you might wanna check out your player while roaming across the map. I guess it just would have been nice to have the option of a well designed third person view.


Once I had gotten used to the new view, and had escaped the imperial sewers, I was thrown into the massive world of Oblivion: Nine different cities to visit, all with their own quests and unique characters, and heaps of dungeons and caves to explore. 21 different skills to upgrade, each adding completely different styles of play. There was much to do, so I got straight into it. I tried to follow the story line for a little bit, but there were too many damsels in distress needing saved to be doing that. I ended up doing probably 15 different mini-quests before I even ended up taking one more step along the main story. When I did end up taking that step though, I was pleasantly surprised with a reasonably in-depth story.


The story is like this: You are in a prison cell (you decide why), just minding your own business and trying to get through your sentence, when all of a sudden the emperor, Uriel Septim, barges into your prison cell and tells you that you will be very important in saving Cyrodil from destruction. That's a pretty intense prophecy, but as you soon find out it's nothing short of the truth. Uriel is killed by the Mythic Dawn, but before his death he entrusts you with the Amulet of Kings - the one thing that can stop the Mythic Dawn from destroying Cyrodil and it's inhabitants. This is all pretty crazy for the first few minutes of playing, but it gets crazier as the game goes on when you have to clear Oblivion gates, defend cities from the evil Daedra and even do battle with Mehrunes Dagon himself. The story is most definitely one of the greatest parts of the game (as it should be with any game), and this is definitely worth the buy just for the epic story.




One other thing you'll wanna buy this game for is the graphics. I wasn't even playing the game on full and the landscapes still looked quite impressive. It might even be worth splashing out on an 8800GTX just so you can experience the game at it's finest. But of course, all good things come with their downsides, and Oblivion is no exception. Though the graphics are good, the caves and dungeons always look exactly the same. You could explore a dungeon as far east as you could go, and then explore one as far west as you could go and every time, without fail, they would look exactly the same. It was kind-of disappointing considering there had obviously been a lot of effort put into the outdoors. Sure, it would have been hard to make over 100 dungeons and caves look completely different, but it would have been nice if they could have at least tried to give each dungeon or cave a unique feel.





The other downside I found when playing was that the game is quite glitchy. Often my game would close down abruptly after scrolling through menus with the mouse wheel (???), and other times I would start quests only to find broken triggers halfway through so they couldn't be completed without reloading long before the quest began. They are very minor glitches, I know, but it would have been nice to have a completely glitch free experience.

So was my first try at at an FPRPG a success? Sure was. I was easily converted into a fan of this playing style, and of this series. I'm already hoping for another Elder Scrolls title sometimes soon.

Pros
Awesome graphics
Excellent story
Heaps of extra quests and places to explore
Mega-customisable characters

Cons
Occasional glitch
Crappy third person view
Dungeons and caves too similar

---

9.1/10

The Future

I've just been reading about degrees in gaming lately and it's been rather disconcerting. I've always had an interest in games - playing them and the work that goes into them - and my dream job would be one that involves being on the production team for games, but after reading about what a job on a production team for a game requires I'm feeling like it's not gonna happen. You either have to be artsy or mathy and I'm definitely not artsy. I could be a maths master if I wanted, but I don't want, and being a maths master is what is required if you want to do programming for games. The only other way I could get a job in the gaming industry would be to write for a magazine or something reviewing games. For me that would be as much a dream job as producing games, problem is my writing isn't actually that good when I look at it. It's hardly the kind of thing someone would put in a magazine.

Of course, if I don't get a job in the gaming industry I could easily do something just with computers. I'm good at most things that involve a computer, problem is I don't really know what I want to do on the computer. I could program, design websites, fix computers (which could be hardware or software) and the list goes on. I wanna do all of those, but I'll never have the time to do courses in all of that stuff.

On top of all that I want to be a world vision guy or someone who helps the poor and people stuck in prostitution/slavery as well. I wanna be someone who makes a big difference to poverty etc. I don't just wanna go to Africa for a month and help, I wanna do as much as it takes to make a big change. I wanna end poverty.

And as well those things I wanna have a family too, and I can't have a family if I'm in Africa, or if I'm spending most of my week developing games.

There's just so much stuff I wanna do in this life that just makes me so nervous about leaving school. Will I get to do any of this stuff? Or will I end up being too indecisive and waste 10 years of my life? People aren't kidding when they say life is short. I've only got a year and a bit to decide what I want to do, and a year and a bit isn't long.

Girls

I just thought I might write this blog on account of the message I heard at Merge (which is youth group, for those of you who don't know) the other night. Basically what Ange (the lady speaking) was trying to point out was that girls actually have life a lot harder than boys in general, and I have lots of facts to back that up.

Read through these facts. I think you'll be very surprised.

Girls going through school are significantly more likely to feel sad and hopeless almost every day for at least 2 weeks.

More than half of teenaged girls are, or think they should be, on diets. They want to lose all or some of the forty pounds that females naturally gain between 8 and 14. About three percent of these teens go too far, becoming anorexic or bulimic.

Almost half of normal-weight 8 to 12 year old girls say they want to be thinner; a third have already restricted their eating to lose weight, and 78 percent say they are very afraid of becoming fat.

92% of teen girls would like to change something about the way they look, with body weight ranking the highest.

75% of teenage girls felt 'depressed, guilty and shameful' after spending just three minutes leafing through a fashion magazine.

Nearly 1/4 would consider undergoing plastic surgery.

Only 2% of women describe themselves as “beautiful”

While only 19% of teenage girls are "overweight," 67% think they "need to lose weight"

18% of married women would rather give up 10 years of their lives than be obese.

A majority of 5-year-olds would rather lose an arm than be fat

More than 60% of teenage girls skip breakfast at least once a week and nearly 20% skip it every day.

74% of girls say they are under pressure to please everyone

During adolescence, girls' self-esteem drops about twice as much as boys'

Girls are harassed more often than boys with 83% saying they have endured sexual comments—including homophobic remarks—teasing, touching or rumors.

The next few facts also prove some of what I said in my Relationships blog, as well as this:

Teenagers between the ages of 12 and 14 who use media with high sexual content are up to 2.2 times more likely to have sex by the time they are 16 than those who use less such media.

3 in 10 girls become pregnant as a teen

3 million teens (in the USA) become infected with one or more STDs each year.

41% of girls said that, on at least one occasion, they had sex when they didn't want to.

10% said that their boyfriends forced them to have sex. 38% of those girls also admitted to having unwanted sex because they were afraid that their boyfriend would be angry if they said no.

Girls who experimented with drugs and sex were 2 to 3 times more likely to become depressed than those who abstained.

1 in 2 teens who have been in a serious relationships say they've gone against their beliefs in order to please their partner

Nearly 1 in 4 girls who have been in a relationship (23%) reported going further sexually than they wanted as a result of pressure

1 in 3 girls between the ages of 16 and 18 say sex is expected for people their age if they're in a relationship; half of teen girls who have experienced sexual pressure report they are afraid the relationship would break up if they did not give in

Basically, what these facts say is that:
A) Guys are often the reason girls diet unnecessarily.
B) Guys are often the reason girls have unwanted or forced sex.
C) The media affects girls much more than it affects guys.
D) Girls face much more social warfare than guys.

And in general, teenage girls deal with a lot more than guys do, and women do too. I don't think these facts are because girls themselves are weaker. I think they're because we are still living in a sexist world where outward appearance comes first.

So, Who's fault is it?

It's our fault - the guys. We are the ones that want girls to look like this. We are the ones that want them to be like 40kg when they should be 60*. Our lust towards girls is the reason that so many ads with scantily dressed girls exist. And not only do those ads make us wanna buy stuff, they also make girls wanna look like the people in the ads. There are so many other things that us guys do that make girls think they need to be skinnier than they already are.

Girls:
Just because the people on T.V. and in the magazines look like that doesn't mean you need to. Those people don't represent a real portion of the population. They are entirely fake. To try and achieve the looks they possess is impossible. You would need to be highly underweight, and be able to photoshop yourself in real-time.
You are beautiful no matter what. You don't need to starve yourself or pack on the make-up. You don't need to look fake for the guys - we shouldn't be choosing based on looks anyway. Your personality should be your pride, looks should be secondary.

Here's a video which sums everything up quite nicely (a lot of you will have seen it):




*56-59kg is the ideal body weight for a female with a small frame of about 170cm height. This weight was calculated at http://www.besthealth.com/besthealth/wellness/ideal_weight.htm

Hardout pictures

On the way home from work on Saturday I saw a really amazing looking sky. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of that so I decided I would just put some photos of hardout sunsets and lightning here.



















Anyone else think those are unbelievable? Especially some of those lightning ones. Some of them look too hardout to be real which, I might add, they all are.