TechnoCursed part 2..

Hey Bloggy from blogspot.com,

haha, as i type this up.. i can not help but think back to the fairly humourous (i guess) article on how being online or actively surfing the internet can be a form of stress relief. The article is titled, "Internet Addiction May Be Form of Stress Management" by Excerpt By E. J. Mundell, Reuter's Health... Keyword? HEALTH..

Here's the link, http://preventdisease.com/news/articles/internet_addiction_stress.shtml

Hahaha, hmmmm i knew i felt more light headed as the minutes (cough'HOURS) passed by..

Personal Computers and Consoles

It seems like the future of gaming lays more within the hands of the consoles judging by the recent game sales trends and how major game development companies have turned their attention to making games for this platform. But what will happen then to the computer gamers?? Surely the computer will not solely become and instrument of non-gaming things, nor the console remain stagnant as simply a game specialist.

With the advent of the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, we saw a leap into a completely different realm from the ways of the Xbox (The First Xbox from Microsoft) and the Playstation 2 from Sony. Within this first generation of consoles there lay an ability to upload music from compact disc and put it onto your console to listen to it within select games as a soundtrack to your gaming experience. Which vastly improved some games' dismal repetitive soundtracks. With this new generation of gaming consoles, we have seen the expansion from simply music players, to movie players as well. This new ability has required more hard drive space which can be used for not only movies and music, but also game demos. With the Xbox live marketplace (an online feature that requires an annual or monthly subscription fee),  you can download demos of all the new games that are being sold in the store currently, or are yet to be released. This addition of video and game download has brought the console much closer to the PC as far as content. Yet it still lacks when it comes to the functionality of the PC because the PC can do a lot more productive things. What I think we will see is the mergence of Television, Home Theatre, Gaming and basic computer tasks (email, internet) all wrapped up into one package, A "Jack of all trades".

A noticeable feature of the two platforms differences is their standard control inputs. While both console and PC users can buy different controllers like steering wheels and joysticks, the standard controllers are keyboard and mouse for the computer (arguably the better for first person shooters such as counter-strike and strategy games like age of empires) and game controller for the consoles (a better all rounder). Moreover with the "Wii", Nintendos entry into the console wars, we have seen the first move towards more realistic and less abstract control input. It operates on motion sensors within the controllers that respond to your movements and translate to an action on screen. It makes you feel as if you actually are swinging at your friends face as you try to knock him out in a comical representation of a boxing ring. It will be interesting to see where these platforms decide to compromise through evolution, and if there even exists these platforms to even compromise with each-other at that point.

The consoles are making their way away from the specialist gaming platform and branching out into more capable machines, but as they become better at more things, I ask you the question, how far is this melding of specialization going to continue? Would it be ridiculous to assume that we will have one computer in our house that controls daily functions such as energy management, plays us our favourite music, communicates with our friends and enables us to play our newest games online, together?

Analog obsession

ASCII-art is art that is created (usually on computers) by combining upper- and lower-case letters and numbers, symbols and other ASCII characters. Here's an example:

Except that the above is what I would call retro ASCII-art. Why? Because it wasn't created on a computer; it was made using red and black coloured ribbons on a 1965 Olympia SG3 typewriter. The interesting thing about this sort of art is that it was inspired by new technology, but created using old technology. The artist's name is Andrew MacRae, and he has a blog with some of his artwork on it. There's a blog post on ABC.net.au called "Andrew Macrae's analog obsession" in which the author admits that he "thought it must be computer generated somehow" because it's so expertly done. The artist's own explanation of his fondness for analog is interesting, and I particularly like the fact that he points out that "There's no spell check, no internet connection, no Solitaire and no Microsoft Word paper clip to tell you it looks like you're writing a letter, would you like some help?" MacRae is obsessed with typewriters in much the same way and for many of the same reasons as people collect records or write hand-written letters to one another.

There's something unnerving about the 'perfection' of digital; analog, complete with all its imperfections and faults like the crackle and pop of vinyl or the slightly off-centre look of a typewritten page, just feels more natural. Record collectors buy records because they prefer the warmer more authentic 'feel' of the sound, as opposed to the harsh clinical sound of Compact Discs or digital audio files; people who use typewriters do so for similar reasons, I imagine. mp3s don't have that distinctive smell like vinyl does, and a laser-printed page looks the same no matter what computer or printer you use, whereas a typewritten page will always be different.