Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Epilogue

I'm not sure why I created this, but watching the film for the first time in ages just got my creative side working.
Plus I love making epilogues. They're just so randomly fun.
So, here we go:

- Half of the Oopma Loopmas decided to rebel against Charlie's new scheme of running things and left to pursue their dreams of making the world-breaking highest human pyramid. Believably, most efforts have proved futile.
- Augustus Gloop created a new cologne which smelt of chocolate, taking inspiration from his now inescapable odors. Sales plummeted after German children starting eating each other.
-Violet Beauregard was sued for copyright infringements after the creator of the Smurfs and the band behind "I'm Blue da ba dee" ganged up on her. Resultingly, she opened her own gymnastics club to pay the bills. "Fruit Punch" is yet to gain any members...
- Verruca Salt was forever avoided due to her 'Garbage' smell, and after confronting a few squirrels in her local park, a new-found phobia was fully released. She is now resting in children's mental hospital.
- Mike Teevee was shunned by world media by encouraging the 'size zero' debate. So instead he partook in a Hide and Seek championship. All victories so far...
- Willy Wonka, in his later years, became convinced that his Chocolate Room wanted to eat him. Up and Out function was used yet again, and the beloved chocolatier is yet to be found.
- And Charlie? Well he was a ten year old who agreed to live with an old man in his chocolate factory. What do you think happened?

Nope, you're quite wrong. He left to fight in a great war for our freedom.
Bet you thought your answer was really funny.
Jerk.

[Told you it was random. Still, had fun creating all these. Peace out!]

Bio-Shocked

Sometimes in life, something is much better than you thought it would be. SuckerPunch, a new series of Top Gear, or recently for me, Jekyll.
But one thing I have recently discovered and quickly fallen in love with is BioShock. I knew of it, through random trailers and mentions. And after asking my good old gamer friend Dan, who responded positively, I got Bioshocks 1 and 2 for my birthday.

And oh my god. So much more than what I was ready for.
Essentially, the world's best and brightest get swept up by Andrew Ryan, owner of the underwater Utopian city named Rapture. At first, everything goes swimmingly [ho-ho], which new sciences being developed and brand new important discoveries.
But as is expected, in a way that 2K [BioShock creators] portray beautifully, being cut off from true civilisation soon leads to insanity. Small girls are experimented on and turned into drug wielding Little Sisters, protected by massive and terrifying baddies known as Big Daddies.
The drug in question is ADAM. Extracted from dead bodies, Little Sisters harvest it and Big Daddies protect them from Splicers, who want the power of ADAM to give them artificial super powers, like Incinerate - the super-hot flame-creator, Winters Blast - freeze your enemies and shatter, Electro-Bolt - speaks for itself. And to power your ADAM-acquired powers, you use EVE hypos to recharge to keep using these "plasmids".
So that's the background. People want drugs which belong to Little Sisters, but can't get to them because their massive Big Daddies just drill them to bits. [Not a misprint]

So where do we, the audience, come into it?
Our plane crash lands in the Atlantic Ocean, right by the Rapture Access Tower. So with a plane on fire, and nothing better to do, we enter, jump in the transport known as a Bathysphere and proceed on in.

Hell breaks loose. You need weapons and plasmid powers to survive. You need money, you need ADAM, you need EVE, you need to be prepared and, most of all, you need to not be squeamish. My sibling once walked in as I was studying a dead Splicer with scissors embedded in his eyes. My sanity, as a result, has been thrown into question. Again.
But trust me, give it a go. The storyline quickly enfolds you and urges you to keep going. The desire for more ADAM and plasmids keep you fighting those Big Daddies as best you can.
And the want to find out who 'Atlas' really is kept me going as well.

Overall, the animation is perfect, graphic tip-top and the entire time I played it, it didn't freeze or fail to load once. Bearing all in mind, it's no wonder it was voted Game of the Year.

So I recommend and urge you to play this game, and like me, you'll find something that might just be much better than you expected. And small moments in life like that are what we need to keep us going.
Ok, I'm getting philosophical.

On one final note, throughout the game you'll be given the choice to "Harvest" or "Rescue". No matter what you hear and what you may know, Rescue. Always Rescue. In the long run, you'll thank me for it.
Peace out.

(Above is a picture from BioShock that caught my interest pretty damn quickly. How the Big Daddy/Little Sister partnership came to be)

The 'Dumbing-Down' debate continues

For those of you who are unsure, or haven't studied media, the 'Dumbing-Down' debate is essentially the view that today's TV shows, films, books and whatnot are being too simple, and less intelligent and thought-provoking, thus lowering the intelligence of the users or 'dumbing' them down.
As a through-and-through gamer, along the years I've always thought that the video game industry was exempt from this. But today, after a little nostalgic moment, I sadly had to admit that it isn't.

Today I bought Ultimate Sega Mega drive collection - essentially a large database of retro yet brilliant early arcade games that have been adapted and you can now play on the PS3.
As Sonic 2 was my all time favourite, that was the reason I bought the game, and was the one I played for the majority of today.

And it is insanely difficult as you go on. The fourth to last level is stressfully difficult. The penultimate levels boss is borderline impossible. And the final boss level IS impossible.
So while I was getting more and more annoyed, that I still couldn't complete my favourite childhood game nearly 10yrs later, I had time to think.
None of my current games are this difficult, and don't make me as annoyed. In the good old PS1 game days, I used to get angry nearly every time I played a game.
But modern games like Call of Duty with endless lives, or LittleBigPlanet with fewer deadly obstacles, or Batman Arkham Asylum with constant in-game hints. They're all so much easier.
Not like the logical Abe's Oddworld or infuriating Croc's World both on PS1. Croc's World was sometimes so bad it could have you spitting with rage at his constant deaths and failures.

So, there you have it really. Games are becoming easier and 'dumber'.....or gamers are becoming cleverer....or game consoles' controls are simpler.
Either way, I'm still glad to have Sonic 2 back. No matter how maddening it is.

Have I been asleep for two years?

Less than two years ago, I was sat on a smelly, cramped 6-wheeled double decker bus my way to the first day of college. I was with Charlotte and Stacey - who was bugging Charlotte with the "yellow car" game.
That was day 1.

Today was the last day. I had an  English exam, a driving lesson and ate a kitkat.

Everything else in between was essentially a brilliant, yet unfortunate blur. College, going against what so many others are saying, was brilliant. And fantastic, great - all the positive adjectives you want. And I recommend Symonds to absolutely everyone. From there I recommend media, and then you gotta hope you get a teacher called Lucas. He's awesome.

Anyway, I wanna take a moment to thank everyone who was friends with me throughout the years. I won't name specifics because then I'll be accused of favouritism.
All my new friends and great teachers made Symonds so unforgettable, and so much fun, it's probably why there two years went by so fast.
For any younger readers, really focus at college. You'll probably get this a lot, but nothing prepares you for the speed of it all.

I am sad to leave. The independent side was nice, the fact that I dropped maths and sciences forever [Woo!] and just generally how fun it was.
Except exams. They can go and die :P

So, conclusively. College was 2 excellent years of my life, and I am sad to be leaving.
I recommend Symonds to everyone. Be prepared for time flying.
And have fun. Just have 2 great years :D

[PS: when I share this on facebook, like the link if you agree]

4 words never to say to me

A few of my closer friends may have picked up on the fact that if they say to me jokingly "It's all your fault", I immediately act defensively and tell them to not say that.
I think it's about time to explain why; on here, because blogs are good listeners. One warning: it's by far not a happy read. If you wish to be happy for the remainder

I'm five years old. It's the 2nd of october, 1998. And not far past midday, I get summoned to the headmaster's office, to be told that my father has passed away.
So, yeah. Life changes forever, psychological episodes probably set in and our family becomes sadly unique.

Less than a week later, the nightmares set in.
A monster, or a demon, or a devil or whatever has my father in a cage, suspended over spikes, lava, water, acid anything. I am set one or more truly impossible tasks - the true details are sketchy.
I always get back not in time to save him, but in time to see the monster or whatever declare that I failed, and releases the lever, releasing the cage.
My father dies, and an assortment of voices, coming from relatives, friends or just truly terrifying possessed voices bombard me with "it's all your fault. it's all your fault. it's all your fault" again and again, echoing about my mind, sometime even after I woke up.

It's horrible what your own mind can do. But you can see how a scary psychological episode in your childhood like that can stick around for a while.
So, 4 words that I don't like. Just one of those things.

Leet Speak FTW

Well ladies and gentlemen, nerds and geeks, it’s another parent nightmare – teenagers have found yet another way of speaking that is incomprehensible except between themselves. What they’ve done now is upgraded their original grunts and murmurs and entirely remade it into a new way of speaking online:

“7|-|15 15 4|\| 3><4/\/\PL3 0Ph L337 5P34|<”

Understand any of that? No, neither did I. This is what that phrase reads in what I like to call English: “This is an example of leet speak”. Leet is a new form of language, coined by teenagers to use online (on Facebook for example) so parents are none the wiser.

Parents will never know that “Last night I ‘PhU(|<3D’ my girlfriend” or “I have just |<1LL3D somebody”.

Leet apparently originated within 1980s systems where having some sort of “elite” status on the system allowed the user access to file folders, games, and special chat rooms.

With me so far? Just a little bit more info and you can read on about some lovely issues surrounding this.

Anyway, leet was once the reserve of hackers, and has since entered the mainstream. It is now also used in a mocking sense, laying into “newbies” (noobs) in gaming communities”.

So there you have it. In short, it’s a new hacker influenced language that is only familiar between the users.

You can see why hackers would use it. You wouldn’t want to be on a chat-room, saying aloud blatantly “I plan to hack into the United Nation’s accounts, and need help”. It’s like playing Monopoly and asking to go to jail.

So the clever little nerds, with their endless (and downright irritating) virus knowledge, speak in this series of letters, numbers and symbols so the President of Cambodia is none the wiser when he opens an email expecting to win the Iranian Lottery and actually he’s accidently bugged the entire network. Ideas like these make me believe that one day nerds will inherit the Earth.

Anyway, I myself have seen this L337 online. As my more faithful readers know, I’m a gamer at heart, and my time is sometimes spent online PlayStation Home -  essentially a built-in online version of Sims, which gamers can use to go online and meet people and chat. Even on my first day, I was walking past groups of people speaking and every now and then you’d find people speaking like the way above. I honestly thought their PlayStation keyboards were broken or they were foreign and had different keyboard layouts. Never did it occur to me that a 3 can replace an E, an H can be written as symbols |-| or the phonology of the simple word “of” can change altogether into “oph”.

This language has even coined new words like “powned” (pronounced poon-ed or poh-n-ed) to mean “ha-ha, I just beat you/killed you/shot you” or “noob” to define a “newbie”, a newcomer to the game who is inexperienced. If you’ve ever played Modern Warfare 2 and heard someone say over their headset “Hey, let’s pown the noob!” you’ll know what I’m on about.

I just found it amusing and left them to it, and made friends with people who spoke normally. But as I allowed them to happily get along in their own technological world, this confusing new coinage has led to many controversial difficulties.

Once you scratch away the top soil of opinionated people (“Leet speak is for nerds! For people who want to sound cool but don’t”), then you actually dig up people who are scared of this development.

Parents, for one, are no longer in the loop of their offspring’s happenings; if they wish to find out if their ‘little angel’ has done their homework or just gone out and done their own thing (“get pissed”, as I believe the youths are saying these days), they can’t. They find out that their child has gone and got PI553D; which could just as easily be a court order.

The inability to understand their children really does have parents worried. You know parents; they like being in the know. Especially when it comes to finding out why their car is wrapped round a tree, the house smells of alcohol and so does their teenage son.

Blissfully unaware, I thought a person speaking like it was the new ‘fashion’. But with further research, I do find it a rather scary proposition. I find it rather difficult to comprehend a teenage slur, grunt and mumble at the best of times, but trying to work around this keyboard-banter is nigh impossible. Try it yourself; imagine being confronted in a dark alley and being asked to “hand over your backslash-backslash-backslash-backslash 4 L L 3 7”. (Wallet = \/\/4LL37). You won’t know what to do, and possibly end up getting murdered by this computer-speaking mugger.

Now, my faithful ones, you will be used to my prescriptivist (disliking language-change) views but for once I’ll be fair.

This new language (despite the scare tactics) is still a rather interesting proposition; I try to keep an open mind about these things. Well, I mean if you turn ‘water’ into ‘wa-uh-er’, I will slap you.

But I think that turning ‘water’ into ‘\/\/473r’ is actually rather clever, and the levels of dedication need to create and learn a huge, confusing second language are just inspiring. I mean, sure, Maths or English might have been a better thing to learn, but you could always get a job in an IT profession!

Leet is just another example of an anti-language. They are variations that are only familiar to the people in the know and complete gibberish to others. It’s a completely natural thing part of language; just basically people choosing their own ‘codes’ for speech and settling into them. Like buying a sofa really: choose your own, settle in, get used to it.

Anti-languages are an unavoidable occurrence really. Teenagers don’t want their parents knowing what or who they did last night but still want to ‘accommodate’ other youths with their words; the army use codes so the enemy don’t know what the plan is – that’s all fine. The appeal and basic idea of it is there and fairly understandable.

But leet also creates a sense of identity almost. If you ‘pown noobs’ or say clever words like ‘paradigm’ as “P4r4D19/\/\”, you are a gamer (and to the rest of the world, a nerd) at heart. Sure, you’re cholesterol levels may be a tad high, and your constantly-exposed-to-screens eyes may be on the point of suicide (speaking from experience here); but you’re loyal and a gamer through-and-through. And nothing will change that.

That’s the identity idea. Seen before by the Martha’s Vineyard fisherman as studied by Labov: the fishermen spoke in their own ways to create a sense of ‘fishermen’ identity, much like teens use language for a less-safe ‘street’ identity.

Language is constantly changed and manipulated in personal ways so the users can feel unique and exclusive and…well, whatever else they feel. They can do whatever they want.

Anyway, we can draw some conclusions. Leet is a complicated new language that requires a small degree and a large amount of patience to master. Gamers stole it from hackers to enjoy it for a small sense of identity and exclusivity.

And teenagers have copied an idea from some American fishermen. Lovely.

Well, I hope this small guide to L337 $P34|< has proved useful. So I say to you on an ending note: 70 4LL 7|-|3 |\|3rD$ 0U7 7|-|3r3 - $|-|0\/\/ /\/\3r('/ \/\/|-|3|\| j00r d4'/ (0/\/\3$ .

(Have fun figuring that one out!)

 

Things that confuse me

This'll be a long post. Plus I'll keep adding to it. Drop in and out as you please =]
In no real order, here we go:

1. Sciences
2. The Internet - the general concept escapes me
3. The guy who discovered milk ("Think I'll go toss off that cow and see what happens")
4. Radiators
5. Car-carrying-trucks which tow cars behind them
6. The DaVinci Code
7. The appeal behind TV chat shows
8. Time-travel related films. So many plot holes!
9. Advanced Maths
10. People who want to do Advanced Maths
11. Mrs Dalloway
12. How Traffic Wardens are still alive
13. Golf
14. People who love golf
15. Darts
16. People who love darts
17. Football [see numbers 14 and 16]
18. Rugby
19. Cricket
20. Lord of the Rings
21. The telephone
22. The Golden Compass
23. Gavin and Stacey. It isn't funny, the end
24. Current Affairs. Mainly because I don't watch the news
25. Science vs Religion
26. The point of Religion
27. The appeal of Religion
28. How the Pope is still alive
29. Political Correctness. The truth should win out
30. Hypocrisy
31. Shakespeare's work
32. Why they keep making more 'Call of Duty's
33. TV series that don't shut-down when they become crap
34. The appeal of the TV shows 'skins'
35. Difficult concepts from QI
36. Twats who make viruses
37. How some celebrities keep their popularity
38. Hill starts
39. How life can sometimes be so unfair
40. Moths. Light bulbs hurt - learn!
41. Why college enforces 'General Studies'
42. Traffic reports being shown on TV
43. Cash-plans with 2000% APR
44. The overall dedication of online gaming nerds
45. How America represents the British
46. Why the Hiroshima Bomb was nicknamed 'Little Boy'
47. Pointless movie sequels that only seem to exist to link the ones before and after it
48. Good films with bad endings e.g. War of the Worlds, I, Robot
49. Cockroaches. At what point did evolution decide to come up with that?!
50. Why Citizen Kane is considered so important.

[50 will do for now. More coming soon!]

Learning something about myself

An annoying girl (who shall remain unnamed) in one of my college classes (also remained unnamed) has inadvertently lead me to have an.....epiphany?

Anyway, in my AS Media class, I was arrogant, boring, over-opinionated and downright sarcastic that was just pointless, unnecessary and, as I've recently discovered, annoying.
Now, at the time, I just felt I was essentially being myself.

But now, this year when I've matured slightly and dropped stereotypes, I meet this girl. And she is the female version of me in AS Media.
When she goes off on one of her endless monologues, full of opinions and endless, pointless knowledge, the class is muttering amongst itself for her to "just shut up" and other, possibly ruder variations.
And I realised I was like that in the previous year. And also realised what the previous year class was probably doing in the background, just like we do.

So I learnt something. I'm a hypocrite and probably have an entire AS Media class after my blood.
And now, I apologise to all of them, I apologise for my hypocrisy and lastly I offer advice:
<Unnamed-class-member>: Before you speak, shut the hell up.
Otherwise you'll regret it next year. And I'm a perfect example of that happening!

Peace out!

Life advice

The film AntiChrist.
Don't watch it.
That is all.

Drving round in circles

Ever had that reason that some attempts of yours just don't seem to go anywhere - revision? Building a house of cards? Starting afresh? Chasing a fly with a spatula? - any of these.
Well mine is, quite annoyingly, driving.

I approach every lesson nervously, and then just get on with it.
It can go well, and Vaughn [the instructor] is impressed.
It can go ok-ish - do well some places, break down (not literally) in other places.
And once or twice, it has just been catasrophic.

Today wasn't that bad, it was ok-ish. Last week was actually pretty good, which is even more infuriating. I have a good week and think "Hey, y'know what, I could be ready". Erm.....no.
I will say this: Hill starts can get fucked. Stupid, annoying and easily cocked-up things which sometimes I can do, and sometimes I can't. Oh joy(!)

So there's my big problem. I'm inconsistent. This is the really annoying thing. I approached this week hopeful because last week went well. And then I come away disappointed because I didn't do as well.
Just endlessly asking myself "why can't I do this?" And it doesn't help that everyone around me is doing pretty damn well. I'm still proud of Kaysey. Really proud, really really happy for her and it's a great thing.
Just deep down you think: She got it, Stacey got it, Rob got it, every one's getting it a helluva faster than me.
Why? Why can't I just do this? :/

A depressing post. Sorry!