Author Archives: breinke12

Final Project, hope you enjoy

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jerQ83q0hA[/youtube]

Just wanted to say a few things about the class and my experienced throughout the course.  First of all I want to say I enjoyed all of the conversations we had over the past semester.  I had a really great time getting to know everyone and listening to everyone’s perspective.  I really felt like this was one of if not the best course I’ve ever taken.  All of the content was extremely interesting and got me thinking in ways I would never had of thought before this course.  I look forward to seeing everyones final projects and I hope everyone comes back to look at them even after the year has ended.

My favorite part about the course was viewing everyones projects and seeing a little bit more of what everyones about in a different way.  I feel you can learn a lot of things about someone through their art that you wouldn’t be able to see or learn otherwise.  Everyone seemed to put a little part of themselves into each of their projects which was really cool to see and I hope everyone continues staying as creative as you all are.

Lastly I would like to say that Professor Fitzpatrick was one of the most interesting and engaging professors I have ever had.  This class wouldn’t have been half the class it was without her teaching it in the way she did.  I hope everyone continues to take media classes because I definitely will be next semester.  See you guys next year,

Peace,

Bryan

I found this reading very interesting since I had never really thought about gaming to this extreme depth before.  Many of these thoughts have passed my mind while either playing a game, (usually when I feel like I’ve been playing it way too long), but I had never analyzed it critically.  I was mainly interested with the Vice City topic and the topics on Sims since they are games that I have played before.  The ideas within the text were interesting, but I had mixed feelings about the way they were presented.

I would have liked the ideas to have been a bit more concrete as I felt I was reading something less informational and more artistic.  While I was able to draw on most of the parallelism to the real world as with the utopia, I feel like a more concrete analysis would have been more suitable in some parts.
The format itself was interesting also and I enjoyed the different pages, but I think the text could have been a little bit better and possibly organized into not so big of chunks.  I felt like 1 giant pages was slabbed over 5 slides with no real distinction in some slides as to why is should be separate from the previous.

With that said, the idea that Vice city is limitless and yet has boundaries almost seemed like a paradox.  I had never really compared games to the real world in depth before as I said though it has crossed my mind, especially in rpg’s.  In vice city you really have no limits within the world itself to go anywhere as long as you advance through the game, but you can’t escape the world itself.  In a way you are the master of your own universe.

Something else that I had thought about before that ties into this is when you are able to acquire the helicopter (which may not have been in vice city but in one of the GTA games).   Here you are really able to push your boundaries to the limits and really access any area within the game you would like.  This is where you really gain the sense that the world you had been running around in isnt as big as you thought it was afterall.

This got me thinking about games such as WoW or any other game in which there is a world to explore.  I think part of the reason we are so initially intrigued by these games is the world they create, but I;ve also noticed that this interest dwindles  after you’ve explored and have become familiar with the world.  My theory is that there is a peak point in which enjoyment within the game is reached as you have explored a certain amount or even all of the game.  If you think about it, when you first enter a game with a decentl sized world, it seems kind of overwhelming at first, maybe even discouraging.  As you play, you are able to become a little more familiar with the world and can move around freely, but still have the sense of exploring an unfamiliar ground.  This combination of unfimilarness with the the ability to move freely is what I think can make a game very interesting.  However, once you’ve become so familiar with it, the game loses it’s sense of excitement is certain aspects and it is played more a long the line of just wanting to play the game where you do not concern yourself as much with your surroundings.   If you were to graph this, I think it would look something like a bell curve.

This is just a theory and I would be curious if anyone would agree with me on this though I think it’s something everyone does subconsciously with almost any game though the degree changes depending on the type of game.   In Wow this process lasts much longer I would say than maybe Vice City.  However, the process for this would last longer in Vice City than let’s say an old Mario game on the gameboy.

Hope you enjoy the book (namely the content), unfortunately I couldn’t get the links in my table of contents to work but all the music / videos should work nicely.  Lemme know what your think of it, all the beats are work in progress, but they were all made this week.     http://pages.pomona.edu/~ber01925/Causmicsophie.pack.s2

Link UPDATE, hopefully this file can open properly…

Haseeb ‘Futuristic’ Patail is a sophomore at CSU Northridge graduating the same year many of us will.  However, where he goes after college will hopefully be somewhere much different than anything  any of us will ever be able to experience.  The birth of a real emcee on the microphone is truly a beautiful thing to watch and is something that keeps my spirits and hopes high for the future of not only hip-hop, but the world.  With a whole lot of rappers out there saying not only a whole bunch of nothing, but a whole bunch of garbage, it’s emcees like Futuristic who will  keep the battle for a rich hip-hop culture a live.  It is also what inspires me to make my own music.

I first learned about Futuristic when he performed in a very small club in San Bernardino.  He was one of the opening emcees for Binary Star.  I wasn’t quite sure what to think at first, but just a few moments after he hit the stage I could tell I was in for something special.  This was confirmed after I looked over and saw One Be Lo of Binary Star with a giant grin on his face standing to the back of the stage singing a long with the lyrics.  Every song he brought had great lyricism, energy, and the beats themselves were good on their own.

After the show, Binary and many of the other artists all stuck around and talked for a while, signed things, etc.  Have you ever seen any top 100 arists stay after a show to discuss music and chat? I think not…I had already been friends with Senim Silla on facebook of Binary Star who’ve I’ve talked with several times, but I was surprised to see that I had a friends request a few days later from Futuristic.   This was especially surprising since I’d never even spoken to him before though he must have seen me talking with Silla on Facebook.  A couple days ago he randomly started talking to me online and he shared a track with me that he decided to leak of his mixtape.  This brought my respect for him even higher than it was before.

The track, called ‘Cold Chillin’  blew me away a little.  The lyrics are different from how Lo, Silla, or I write which I thought would be a little more similar, but his style has a lot of substance and a positive message.  His flow a long with his laid back and creative lyrics contrast with the beat to form a style that encompasses what it means to not only be hip-hop, but to live your life on this earth.  A lot  Ungerground hop-hop is meant to stimulate the mind and make you pause and think what it is you’re really listening to.  Futuristic does just this and then some.  Above all, I can see that he truely loves hip-hop and life with the bottom of his heart, and that’s more important than anything.

His mixtape is due to release the 4th of next month.  He told me he is going to have a kick of party for it somewhere in Pomona if he gains enough interest for it to happen.  I strongly encourage anyone who enjoys hip-hop or just enjoys good music and lyrics to give him a listen.  If you like his music and what he has to say (really listen), spread the word, I’m sure we could get him to perform here and maybe bring some guests…

Here’s a link to his Cold Chillin track….http://limelinx.com/files/020fd7aba71e529e6c97cb97028bd47b

Here’s one to his facebook…I’m sure he’d be more than happy to friend you…http://www.facebook.com/haseeb.patail?ref=ts

There are many artists out there who I would like to see grab a lot more attention than they have, but they are only getting older.   With people like the RZA from Wu-tang being in the game for 20 years now, I hope we see more people like Futuristic arise.  Our world is a changing place, and I think people are just only now starting to realize that much of what they listen to on the radio is not just crap, it’s negative.  Underground hip-hip is more than just music, it’s a culture that bring positive energy to the world and emcees like Futuristic will hopefully be able to spread this message much wider than it has reached thus far.

There are many things I like and don’t like about FriendFeed though I do believe it to be a very useful tool.  As mentioned in the article, it is intended to be a central base for all of your data from sites all over the web.  The concept itself seems like a great idea but I don’t think anyone is thinking of the implications of this.  Though I would prefer to have a centralized system in which I can be identified than a microchip in my body (we is being considered so that we wouldn’t have to fill out forms when you go to the hospital), it still has flaws.

First of all, I don’t know how comfortable I would feel with anyone but me directly owning everything there is to know about me (or at least a great deal).  Yes Facebook gives away a lot of information, but when you combine it with twitter, youtube, and many other sites, Google and Facebook will both know SO much more about you.  If you you interests in your profile give them indicators, if they can monitor where you go and what you do on a daily basis, the picture they can paint will be much more clear.  This can be good and bad, but I don’t know how I feel about our population becoming one big marketing tool.

Next, what if someone were to log into your account?  Someone would essentially be you in the digital world, a perfect set up for fraud.  I’m sure there will be strict security measures, but still, that hasn’t stopped anyone before from stealing anything they pleased.  Even if they didn’t steal anything, someone could find out a lot about you.  Is it really necessary to have all of that information in one spot?  Have we not done fine without it?  Will we ultimately be forced to have to be apart of this site if it continues as a trend?  I’m being as critical as I can because I see potential in this idea, if it is done properly.

I’ve always been a strong user of Wikipedia and I’m sure many many other people are as well.  I feel that as a first reference, you can’t really look to any better place.  When many people first thought of Wikipedia, I feel (and this is completely speculation) that there first inclination was to view it as a source of factual information about history / as a general encyclopedia.  However, I feel like that this is readily and drastically changing and it is becoming a common source to look for information about any and everything you would want to know about.  The first thing that shows up in Google often times is a Wikipedia article related to your search.  Because of this I feel like people are led or pushed towards reading Wikipedia as a means of learning about just about anything.  This is why I feel Wikipedia is an awsome source, however, this can also makes it somewhat dangerous.

I love Wikipedia because I can search just about anything.  From the most obscure old cartoon show that I once forgot about to The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster; it’l have some sort of information you are looking for.  While I do not feel like there is much danger is using Wikipedia for well known subjects that’s already been well researched (you can pretty easily re-check facts), I do see a danger in articles about more obscure subjects.  For example, an article written about a lesser known artist could be false and we would have no way of telling if it is or not.   However, I do feel as though that this is compensated for since the person doing the research and adding the Wiki article probably has some sort of self motivation to want to do it in the first place.  This means they likely have some intensive to get the information correct, though this could also give teh article a biased voice or feeling.

The last point that I really liked was the idea of Wiki as recorded history, but not just history, culture as well.  Wiki is constantly evolving and things that are currently happening are constantly being updated to older articles.  For example, my favorite artists One Be Lo is on Wiki who is a very unknown but one of the most talented lyricists of all time.  As his career progresses, I expect the article to ultimately reflect his career and hopefully get updated with his latest achievements, upcoming projects, and future plans.  So not only do I know what has happened in the past, but I get a glimpse of what we may see in the future.

I Found it funny that amazon was actually the original website to start this idea of linking related products since it would have been the first place I would have noticed it.  I remember back when I would either buy books, video games, or movies I would always click through the related products just out of curiosity not even thinking of the marketing technique behind it.  Now that I see it, I always have a sense of Amazon trying to get me to buy something, but in all actuality it’s quite helpful.

Youtube has greatly expanded my musical horizons.  I’ve discovered a great deal of music through the related videos and I only see this expanding in the future.  As the months and years go on, I think Youtube will ultimately become and archive for music rather than just for new music.  Lot’s of people post old music ranging from the early 30’s till the 90’s.  The library is essentially being built from both directions.

There have been copyright issues with this which may be a problem, but the rate at which  songs are posted and as long as guidelines are followed, the library will continue to expand.  It’s a great way for unknown artists to get known though which are ultimately the ones who would want their music discovered on youtube and would likely not care too much about copyright to begin with.

I’d never given written text verses hypertext a great deal of though until this article.  I’d never really thought about the differences and I think the reason may have to do with Microsoft Word.  This is one of the first programs I ever used as far as I can remember or at least the most frequently used.  Going from word to paper, the two always seemed to be the same entity, and I suppose in a way they are but not in the way I had assumed.  The fact that hypertext takes up no physical space is in itself a very big difference.

In my opinion, hypertext seems to be a lot more efficient, malleable, and creative.  Being able to engage actively in the text is also another major difference.  User responses to a book are limited without the internet or hypertext for instance.  A book club is a form of reflection, but that reflection can be taken to a much larger scale in hypertext.  Because of this, it can take away from the value or the legitimacy of the text since just about anyone can “publish” anything.

I don’t think this is a bad thing at all.  Everyone should be able to express themselves and people should have the right to choose what they deem to be important or legitimate.  If someone posts some article claiming to be the Messiah, I’m obviously either not going to read it or take it with a grain of salt.  I do see potential where it can be abused though to spread rumors or false information.

In all, hypertext makes works more accessible to everyone and allows those who don’t have access to a printing press or music studio to produce works.   I don’t think however that written text will ever be completely replaced because novels are to me meant to be read much differently than reading anything digitally.  I would never want to read a book hunched over my computer straining my eyes and distracted by youtube.

First of all, I would just like to say that it’s really hard for us, or for at least my generation, at this point to really comprehend and fathom the powers of the .  When I was growing up, the internet was something normal and I had no impression that it was this new amazing technology.  The closest I can get to imagining the feeling is to think of the internet as a man made infinite universe.

Next, after reading the beginning about communism, all I could think about the whole time were those countries that don’t currently have internet though they have the capability to do so.  North Korea really has no internet or television what so ever, at least that of which would connect them to the outside world.  I suppose that’s the only way to really control activity on the internet at all, cut it off completely.

When thinking about the internet as a government structure, it’s a bit funny to think about.  People can attempt to control the internet as mention by Lessig, but ultimately the laws created are broken  by those who choose to with no real re precautions for doing so.  In a way I think of it as a universe in which everyone is their own god who can become more powerful by learning more about the internet.  In a way it’s a bit paradoxical because no one person can really completely eliminate the other and yet one can be more powerful than the other…

Well anyways Lessig proposes a lot of things that really got me started thinking, and I didn’t like some of what it was.  It was all very interesting, but the idea of the internet becoming more like real life frightens me in certain areas.  Such things like web cams, voice chat, and other things that simulate real life are all great, but having stronger consequences for actions made on the internet could turn into a lot of misunderstandings.  An anonymous internet, in my opinion, would quickly turn into utter chaos.  Not having people know who you are on top of not being able to be easily traced could be a formula for sheer abuse.  I think the internet needs to remain as free as it can be and is currently just fine as it is though some changes could be made.  I feel it is a place where people can come express themselves in an infinite amount of ways and anything that could put a limit on that could be very dangerous.