Holy shit guys, C&C 4. This is my second reaction to the news. My first reaction was something along the lines of "Cool, more flying tanks". Now that I have read the preview, I have decided that C&C 4 deserves holy shit status. See, based on the screenshots, the graphics do not look significantly better than that of C&C 3. I figured it would have just been another cool game.

But. But, the preview revealed so much more. Essentially, fans of the series are finally going to find out what has been going on over the tiberium-infested earth. We'll find out who Kane is, what he has to do with the Scrin. We'll hopefully learn how he managed to survive being disintegrated by an ion laser, slain in battle, and blown up in a volatile liquid explosion.

I was surprised that EA Games would announce a sequel to Tiberium Wars so soon. In the past, people waited for years to receive news of a game sequel. It was always difficult to tell when a new game would be announced, and when it would be released. At least, that was how it was for me. I'm sure that plenty of gaming franchises prior to PC gaming were churning out cartridges faster than Agent Smith could pull a trigger(this is actually a rather interesting topic, which I may discuss later). I know that during the lifespan of a single console, such as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, many titles received sequels. My knowledge here is limited to the bad games, unfortunately.

Anyway, it seems that fans of the C&C series can expect a drastically modified RTS system when C&C 4 comes along. Previously, we had each faction possessing a few unique upgrades and being slightly better or worse than the others in different tactics. Now, it seems, the designers want to emphasise on that. In a melding of RPG and RTS, each faction will be divided into three classes that consist of entirely different units and structures. There will be classes dedicated to steamrolling, turtling, and support.

Also, an experience point system will supposedly be present, where things that you do in-game will add to an experience pool, that allows you to upgrade your faction classes as you see fit. This means that everyone starts out with only a small variety of units, which will be added to as the game is played.

It isn't really said whether or not each different class will have its own campaign. It's unlikely, though.

The best part is probably that C&C 4 will feature a co-op campaign, like in RA3. Now that the factions are far more specialised than before, co-op is likely to be a lot more dynamic and enjoyable. I have always enjoyed playing support, using air-strikes and naval bombardments to soften up an enemy before allowing my allies to mess around with their tanks.

There are, however, a few things that I am not particularly happy to learn. One, is that EA is planning on using an interface similar to C&C Generals, rather than the rest of the C&C series. Also, resource gathering will be such that refineries will be built on pre-determined locations. This may be annoying, because I really didn't like how I couldn't make my economy boom by having multiple miners working on a resource node. It was just too slow. So... I hope they make it more like Generals, where you could swarm a resource node with collectors to gain more money faster, but at the risk of running dry before you're done with the battle.

While the Scrin will not be playable, they are going to be featured, along with other factions such as the Forgotten. These guys were mutants from the second game in the C&C series

Overall, I'm somewhat excited. I certainly do want this game. However, it seems like it might come out at around the same time as Starcraft 2... That would be a problem.


Okay, here's what's interesting about Agent Smith pulling a trigger. Actually, here's what's interesting about the entire rooftop scene in The Matrix:

An agent(probably Brown. I don't remember their names.) fires bullets at Neo while he dodges them from about eight metres away. Given that the bullets fly at around 400m/s, and that the next bullet is fired as the first bullet passes Neo, the gun is firing at a rate of uh, one bullet every 0.02 seconds. That equates to 50 bullets per second. Even assault rifles don't fire that fast. We can allow the agent to be able to move his finger that quickly, because he's hacking the matrix and everything, but the gun? He picked that gun up.

The second interesting thing about that scene is that if Neo is really moving his entire upper body and turning his neck in the time that it takes for a bullet travelling at 400m/s to reach him, then his upper body was moving at a rate of around 800km/h. He then instantly brakes, going from that speed to zero.

The sheer power of not believing in the existence of physics. Also you have to be in the Matrix.

Oh, and I've just gotten the soundtrack to Wrath of the Lich King. There are some nice pieces in there.

-Joe

How unfortunate. Total solar eclipses do not give people superpowers. It also now occurs to me that there is no way that both Hiro and the other guys could have seen the same eclipse.

It has not been a terribly enjoyable week. I seem now to be more fluent with cursing, although I seem to be going for "bullshit" a lot more than usual. There have just been a number of things that have come to light that I am really not happy about. That, plus the need to complete some very irritating project. Once again, I wonder what it would be like if I weren't here.

Motivation is running thin. Even my normal means of procrastination have lost their meaning. I would like nothing more than to sit back with a bag of chips and watch some TV. Perhaps read a book. Which reminds me. The third Dan Brown book to feature Robert Langdon, The Lost Symbol, is set for release this mid-September. Originally titled The Soloman Key, the book will be set in Washington D.C., and will once again involve the Freemasons.

I definitely do want to read this book, but the urge isn't quite so strong. Seeing as that I did not enjoy the Da Vinci Code as much as I did Angels & Demons, I'm afraid that the pictogram of focus here would not be as captivating as I'd like it to be.

On the other hand, I am looking forward to Pirate Latitudes, which will be published post-humously this November. Considered a spiritual successor to The Great Train Robbery, this book will detail the raiding of a Spanish galleon. I am far more excited about this book, as I enjoy how Crichton's novels tend to feature the products of substantial research. I can probably expect the same cinematic detail and thrill that his previous novels have provided.

Someone should make a move out of Prey. That would be great.

Or not. Now that I think about it, the monsters, which are intelligent swarms of nanomachines, would look pretty unimpressive on the screen. They start learning to mimic humans towards the climax of the story, so the move would probably suck unless this is executed with Joker-like creepiness.



-Joe

So it seems like my previous... Hundred or so posts have been predominantly negative. I don't know why. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that I somehow become more eloquent when I am speaking unkind things. Or perhaps this eloquence was developed from my extensive practice in speaking unkind things. Either way, it usually gives me a lot more to write about than if I say good things about something. When I say good things, it usually just amounts to "woah, awesome".

The common tests are over. I have a bad feeling about them. These are not the droids you are looking for. I worry that my selective negligence in studying certain topics will result in me being disappointed in a couple of weeks time. On the bright side, even if I don't do as well as I hope, they don't count for that much in the final grade. On the downside, if I do well, they won't count for much in the final grade.

Yesterday, by amazing coincidence, I met Mark on my way home. This was an amazing coincidence, because I did a number of things that day that were required for such an event to occur. First, I stayed back for lunch in school, and then stayed back some more to look at a book about dogs. I definitely do not do that very much. Second, I decided to take the longer route past AJC to the bus stop, instead of the... other one. Third, I happened to be almost out of view of the gates when Mark saw me. Had I been slightly faster, or him slightly slower, we wouldn't have even known that the other was there.

So anyway, I feel bad for the AJ bio students.

Faced with a weekend of nothingness in terms of responsibility, I started reading Neil Gaiman's Stardust. It's not a very long book, and I finished it in about seven hours or so. I hadn't seen the movie, so I can't comment on what they should or shouldn't have left out.

The book was nice. Ingenious use of magic, flying ships... some classic fairytale stuff. It had been a really long while since I read a non-Tolkien fantasy, and there are some marked differences. Tolkien's stories are all pretty epic, while Stardust was much more personal. I won't spoil the story for anyone who intends to read it eventually, but I'll say that the eighty-first lord of Stormhold is a real jerk.

Awesome.

-Joe

Marketing is the cruellest mental torture that a school could ever inflict on a student such as myself. Why does a molecular biologist need to study marketing? Maybe one day he might choose to go into business. That's what they say. What is probably really happening is that any molecular biology student who had such thoughts once is now resolutely steering clear of the business sector, now that he has seen marketing.

I can't decide if marketing concepts consist of the same thing repeated over and over again, or if they are a deadly concoction of mind-numbing buzzwords, pseudo-psychology, and pop-culture neurology. Every time I try to read something from these notes, I literally feel like someone is firing ion cannons through my cranium. The whole time I'm thinking "Kill me now. Kill me." This eventually evolves into "Kill them. Kill them." and I usually give up reading around here.

Today, I managed to cover everything that I need to know about it. By "cover", I mean that I glanced briefly through them without actually understanding anything. The reason for this is that not a lot of it makes sense. There are equations without quantities. There are names for things that are complete misnomers. I came across this exact sentence: They are just buying more for value items. What does that even mean? Are they buying more value for their items? Are they buying items that have more value? Are they buying value, that by some logical paradox contains more items?

This wouldn't have bothered me as much as the rest of the general stuff, but that sentence appeared twice.

Anyway, here is why we don't need to study marketing, and why there is absolutely nothing that warrants a second module of it next semester:

One. There are three major groups of people studying in this course. On the more positive end of the spectrum, there are those who hope to further their studies, and perhaps eventually get tenure at a university or join the industry as a researcher. Just next to these people are the ones who have a mild interest in the subject, but would rather be technical experts rather than intellectuals. Then, there are the people who have no future whatsoever in the field of science, and are going to attempt to get an arts degree once they graduate.

None of these people are going to benefit from a dry, morale-crushing module such as this. Information Technology, I can understand. We all use computers, and knowing the language of databases is actually a good thing. Communications skills, makes me want to stab myself. But at least there are a number of things that you can learn from there. Marketing does not have such obvious benefits. All that marketing does, is make people like me a lot more motivated to study the other modules in an effort at procrastinating from marketing.

I have decided not to give a damn about this module. I am fairly confident in my ability to come up with things that look and sound professional, when they are in fact disguising a rickety network of loosely-joined ideas. Thus, I will instead focus my efforts on science, which actually makes sense to me.


I really like how my science modules are beginning to overlap in content. It just shows how applicable these fields are to each other. Genetic engineering has uses that extend all the way from drug screening to improving the production of metabolites. The techniques used in cell culture are even more important. This is deeply satisfying. Another reason that I am liking this is that the actual time spent studying is greatly reduced.

Science all fits together. People usually just imagine science as a collection of great pillars, one for each major branch of science, and with minimal connections between them. This simply isn't true. Science is a paint, and mathematics is the canvas. The paintbrush, logic. Science is organic. Each field occupies a space, but this space is not always exclusive to one topic. Each pixel of information pulses and dilates, merging with other fields. Events that occur on one "end" of the painting set into motion waves and ripples, changing the face of knowledge.


This somehow reminds me of an episode of Numb3rs where there was a device that could recreate the images shown on an LCD screen based on the radiation patterns emitted. It sounds like it could be possible. All we'd need is a really high-resolution scanner, and some kind of algorithm to deal with the radiation that has already passed through the head of the person using the screen.

-Joe