Games I like: Spore

Written by Phillip

Ah! This game.

Does anyone still play this game?

Well, I do. I guess some people do, sometimes. Otherwise creations wouldn't still be popping up in the Sporepedia all the time.

I guess I can't just keep rambling on without an explanation for those who don't know what this is. I'll give you two options: one, just go here for the official site if you don't want my <sarcasm> totally professional perfect explanation </sarcasm>, or just read.

So. This game is an evolution-style simulator game, where you create life with creature building tools and can create anything from

...whatever the heck that is

to

THAT

LOOK AT THAT

DANG

WOW

Maxis, you good.

Anyway, in the game you progress through five stages of life, which are:

The Cell Stage

Basically, you're a little microorganism swimming around in the ocean fighting to survive. Before the game starts, you choose to be a carnivore or an herbivore (and later you can become and omnivore, by adding the mouth opposite of what you chose or the omnivore mouth later), which effects the way you play the whole rest of the game.

The Creature Stage

Here's where things really start happening. You've reached land and grown some legs, and now it's time whether to kill everything in your path, make friends with everything in your path, or do a little bit of both at everything in your path. You'll encounter hundreds of other creatures, whether you or other players made them or they came with the game.

The Tribal Stage

The principals are the same as in Creature Stage, but now you have a whole tribe to command. Gather food, kill enemies, make friends with enemies, so long as you survive and ally or conquer everyone else.

The Civilization Stage

Well, the images just keep getting bigger and bigger, don't they?

Now you've got an entire city to take care of. You can build houses, entertainment halls, some strange place where you actually get work done, airplanes, boats, cars, you name it! Well, except for one thing... but that comes later.

The Space Stage

Ooh, there goes the size.

Yep. You're in space now.

Remember how I was talking about later a bit ago? Now is later.

You can build spaceships.

Conquer the galaxy. Get to the center. Fend off the Grox. Don't destroy them because then they'll never be present in any more of your games because of a glitch. Find some odd blue-green planet for sale.

I love this game.

Who knows, maybe when I buy it again soon, I'll do a psuedo-let's play thing here...

Science! 1

Alright everybody, I said I'd do a post about the Myo, but I think I'll expand it to just generally cool science stuff that I've been hearing about in the vastness of the interwebs.

The first order of business, as previously stated, is the Myo. Developed by Thalmic Labs and worn as an armband, the device allows the user to interact with electronic devices such as tablets, phones, computers, etc. with an advanced form of motion-sensitivity. If you watch the video, it makes it look like you're using the force to control the devices around you. I cried actual tears when I watched the video. Maybe I'm just a loser. At any rate, this device not only uses motion sensors to accomplish its intended purpose, but also monitors the shifts in muscle along your arm as you wear it. This way they can get around programming individual gestures for everything and just use base poses and go from there. The developers project that at its most advanced stages the Myo will be able to allow players of videogames to play them by actually acting out the actions they are called upon to perform. For example, loading your gun no longer requires the pressing of a single button, but instead the removal and replacement of a cartridge. This, in collaboration with other devices such as the Oculus Rift, could give gamers a full virtual-reality experience. And also PTSD.
But the point is that full-on virtual reality seems to be on the way. I don't know about you, but I've been waiting for this for years.

Beyond that, I recently came across a software called Spritz, which is designed primarily to increase the reading speed in wpm from and average of 220 to any number you'd like. I tried it for about five minutes and got up to 500. It seems silly and a little over-the-top, but it's pretty neat stuff. While 500 wpm was a little uncomfortable, I did fine all the way up to 450, and that's twice the average reading speed.
My understanding of the purpose of the software is that it is designed to increase both the reading speed of the user and also the retention rate of the user. I have no idea if it works because they really don't have anything substantial up on their site. It's all just blurbs about why Spritz is great. It seems to me that it works, though, and I'm very excited to see where it'll go in the future. I hope you will be too.

I plan to have Science! posts up pretty regularly. I think you'll be able to expect them about once every two weeks or so. No promises as of yet because we're only just starting, but I'll do my best.
Avante!

Poop Ninjas and the Samurai of the Cute

Do you know why I like dogs more than cats? I have both. Dogs aren’t Poop Ninjas.

You heard me right. Poop Ninja.

My cat is a Poop Ninja.

You may be wondering what that means. Have a story. (WARNING: Story may not be 100% accurate.)

The other day I was laying on the couch playing my Pokémon game, my sister was on the computer doing what she does there, and my dad was sitting at his computer doing whatever work-y things he does. Dad was looking around, I guess, and he saw the wall. There was a little brown thing stuck to it.

“Um... is that poop?”

I looked at the wall, too, but, without looking, my sister said:

“No, that’s just Tessa’s ball toy.” The other other day she had seen it down the hall and thought it was a pile of poop. She had me come over to verify her fears, but she was wrong.

“No, Susannah, that’s not her ball,” I replied.

She turned around in her chair and looked at the wall.

It was poop.

And we, Susannah and I, cleaned up the wall poop. And so began the journeys of the legendary Jack, Poop Ninja. Well, maybe just famous. No? How about “well-known”? Mysterious, maybe? That sounds cool. Oh, wait... he’s a cat...

Anyway, later we found some more poop on the carpet behind the router, and we found even more over on the hardwood floor by the kitchen table. The theory is that when Jack, Legendary Poop Ninja, went to litter box he got some dung stuck to him, and later, when he decided to zip around the house at extremely high speeds like cats do, sort of flung the poopiken (play on “poop” and “shuriken”: get it?) around everywhere. Like Legendary Poop Ninjas do.

And so ends the journeys of the... legendary? well-known? mysterious? Jack, Poop Ninja. I feel like “Jack, Poop Ninja” needs to be the name of some really stupid YouTube kids movie parody or something. The kind of stupid that is so dumb that young boys find it hilarious.

While cats are Poop Ninjas, however, little cute adorable puppy-doggies are more like... maybe... Samurai of the Cute, and they are the best little things! They jump around and attack your face with kisses and prance through the grass and cuddle with you and play and chew on your fingers and they’re so cute! Nom nom nom! I could chew on Tessa’s little ears all day long!

Don’t let their adorable act fool you though. They are actually highly trained and specialized warriors, adept at sniffing out Poop Ninja spies and swiftly exterminating them. While they do sometimes break out in skirmishes among themselves, when they band together nothing can stop them.

Now I want to see a battle between the forces of the Poop Ninjas and the Samurai of the Cute. A huge, full-scale war zone battle. Army against army, Poop Ninjas using their speed and agility to trick the enemy and then strike from behind, Samurai of the Cute using swift attacks and swordplay intelligence to win the battle.

Wait, wait, wait. Dogs can use swords?

Yeah, totally. Why would I ever think otherwise? Puppies can do anything they want! (music note smiley face cuteness)

I really do like both animals, it’s just that I like dogs more. There is no cat that will ever come close to the greatness of a dog. They both have their pros and cons. Cats are freakin’ insane and will run around the house destroying everything in their path (and may possibly jump over you while you are peacefully sitting on the couch reading, which is the most terrifying thing ever), but when they do it’s just so funny! Watching them attacking their toys, rolling over and batting at them, and then jumping onto the underside of the arm of the couch... my gosh. Likewise, dogs will bark and sometimes poop in the house if you don’t take care of them, but they’ll also cuddle up on you and give you kisses, and they’re much happier to see you when you come home than a cat could ever be.

Also, all cats are working together to overthrow the human race and take the planet as their own. Of course, they won’t stop there.

Dogs, in general, are also about five billion times more obedient than cats. This, I believe, has primarily to do with intelligence; for example, many cats do not even know their own name. My cat doesn’t. He just knows to stop doing something when we start yelling.

I don’t think I have much else to say...

Post Number Three! Or Two? Who Knows? Numbers are for losers anyway. Here- Secondary Introductory Post. There.

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Aim for the Cat, a humor/entertainment/media/what/commentary blog hosted by myself, Tomás González, and my brother, Phillip Leon. As I mentioned in the title, this will serve as a secondary (albeit slightly more complete) introductory post. Secondary to the post my brother ran recently. I will give brief descriptions of both of us, as well as dictating what I imagine will be the content of the blog.
My name (again), is Tomás González. I'm known here and there as CommanderZel and I run a few things, like a tumblr and a couple of youtube channels, to which I shall post links. This will be my first foray into the grand world of... Well... Journalism, essentially. I have come to see blogs more as amateur reporting on current events and the like than anything else. Whether others share my views or not, that's where I stand. So these will be documentations of my life, my brother's life, our worlds, the worlds of science-fiction, fantasy, gaming, and whatever else we feel like writing about.

So now I'll get into serious introductions:

I am Tomás. Again. Still. Whatever. I am an eighteen-year-old entity (I'm male and identify that way, I just feel weird calling myself a MAN because it seems so masculine and socially expected and stuff and I just don't really gel with that image, being an actor and singer and stuff. But we'll get to that) who lives in Northern California. That might seem like a lot of information, but I'm an adult and I feel comfortable with it. I won't give my brother's information because that's his business. At any rate, my hobbies include: Rock climbing, reading, acting, singing, playing guitar (terribly), gaming, and lazing. My brother enjoys the same things sans rock climbing and playing guitar, as far as I know. I like music in general, but specifically metal and Irish music. I listen to a lot of Prog Rock and Prog Metal, some heavy electronic music, a bit of symphonic metal, fantasy metal, whatever. Lots of Irish folk, a huge amount of classic rock, and a tiny bit of current pop. My brother likes the Tron Legacy soundtrack. That's about all I know. Although it's a fantastic soundtrack and if you haven't listened to it or seen the movie, I strongly suggest you do both.

In high school I did a lot of performance art. I took three hours of assorted performance art my freshman year, four hours my sophomore year, and five my junior and senior years. My brother's on the same track. Now I know it sounds like I probably got beat up a lot in high school, but my school actually had this really phenomenal arts magnet program which basically made our school the biggest high school in CA north of San Fran in addition to giving arts students of every kind a fighting chance. I received a college-level education in two performance arts for free, what with my school being a public school and all. It's an amazing school and I had a phenomenal time there.

I do have a girlfriend. I'm saying this in case she comes up in future posts (I have no doubt that she will). I won't name her in consideration of her privacy, but this will serve as a sort of introduction for her. She loves Disney in all its' forms and she loves to sing. She genuinely has the most beautiful voice I've ever heard in my life and I really do believe that she could be a broadway star or something someday. I also have no idea if she'll read this.

Apart from all that, there is one thing that my brother and I cherish above all other things:
NERDDOM
My brother and I are massive dorks. In our spare time we hypothesize about Star Wars and other sci-fi wonders, we geek out about things like Myo (I'll be writing a post about that next week, I think), and we talk about movies like The Lego Movie, which was fantastic and if you think otherwise you should leave.
To put things into perspective, I wear a lego earring.

I think that adequately prepares you for the chaotic mess that will soon be our blog.
Avante!

True Post #1 (really #2): My Introduction to Blogging: Wait, what? Why happen?

Written by Phillip

Uh...

Wait, what? Why happen?

(Did you notice my cleverness with sneaking in the title of the post in the post itself? I’m so great.)

Are my brother and I actually starting up a blog? Pfff. No. Never. Not going to happen.

Right?

Wrong?

Oh, okay. Um... I guess this is happening then.

Ah, beginnings are always the most difficult part, aren’t they?

Uh oh. Now I sound smart.

Okay, this thing with the new paragraph every sentence is starting to bug me. Hopefully I’ll be able to make at least this long enough to break the pattern. Oh look, I did.

And so begins the aimless ramblings and sudden topic-changes of a very strange child. Possibly two very strange children, if Tomás is also strange. Of course, I have no doubt that he will be. Seriously, his last name backwards is Zelaznog. Sounds cool, but also kind of strange.

I just realised that if you switch the “n” and “m” in “name” then you get “mane”.

Do you see what kind of crap is going to be on this thing? It’s going to be this way for me, at least. Not sure about Zelaznog Ramal Sàmot. Did you see that? I even flipped the accent mark over the “a”. Chuckle chuckle laugh laugh.

Speaking of him, I don't even know when he's going to get a post up... co-blogging *rolls eyes*

So you may be wondering: what exactly is the point of this? Ah, there’s none really. I’m just sort of saying hi. To the world.

Hello world!

Hmm, I should probably say that again at the very end of this post, just to make a point.

I will say, before I say any more, that I have written a blog post before. Sort of. My dad asked me to write a post for him. I have no idea whether he used it, why he asked me to, or anything about it. Maybe it was just a test for this.

I still don’t have any idea what I’m doing. I probably won’t for a long, long, long, long, long, etc. time.

Hmm, speaking of periods and abbreviations, do you put another period after U.S.A when it’s used in the middle of a sentence? I’ve never been clear on that. Has anyone ever been clear on that? I bet people knew how it was back in the 1600s or something. They knew everything back then.

See what I did there? America wasn’t a nation back in the 1600s. I’m so clever. No I’m not.

Speaking of me not being clever, due to my and my brother’s (I assume) complete ignorance on the subject of blogging, I don’t believe that this blog will ever have any sort of theme or anything.

Ha ha ha. I lied. The theme is...

Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Also, don’t panic. Yes, that had significant meaning there.

I think I’m going to have a few little mini-series running at once. That’s just me, though. Tomás may have different plans. I don’t know what he does.

I just noticed that this blog post mostly isn’t informative in any way. Too bad. You’ll have to wait for those. Maybe one about me and what I like to do, how that post would be incredibly narcissistic if it existed but then again who isn’t incredibly narcissistic every now and then, how this sentence has degenerated into incredibly horrible comma grammar which I’m pretty sure isn’t actually a thing, why the heck Google Docs says things are misspelled when they’re not, why my favorite musician is the best thing ever and why his stuff is the only stuff I listen to, and the exact level of strangeness in my family and friends.

Is my humor actually humorous, or am I making an incredibly sad attempt at jokes and general funniness that isn’t working? I have no idea. You know how writers are with their own work. You do, don’t you?

Well, if you don’t, you can get a taste of it here, at my dad’s blog. He’s a writer. He suggested that this exist.

http://strangepegs.blogspot.com/

And if you don’t want to go there (you shouldn’t, it sucks, you should just stay over here with me (in case you didn’t get the sarcasm, it doesn’t actually suck)), writers are generally very critical of their work.

Hello world!

(Oh, yeah, my name’s Phillip Leon. Almost forgot about that. It’s kind of like Andrew Leon, who just so happens to be my father...)

Hello world again!

Post #1 (sort of): Review: Transformers: Age of Extinction

Written by Phillip

So. My first review...
I went with my dad to see Transformers 4 at the midnight showing on the 26th. I was super hyped about it because all the trailers and all the posters and all the everything were showing off huge amounts of DINOBOT! action. DINOBOTS! Oh man. And while the DINOBOTS! were cool, the rest of the movie wasn’t that great.

Anti-Spoiler Mode Review:

I liked it a little. There were a great many storytelling issues, like little tricks to make you think something was happening when it wasn’t (that wasn’t cool), a bunch of things left unexplained, and situations when they brought something in super abruptly when there was no point, buildup, or anything. I probably give the movie a 1 out of 5 star, the one star simply because the DINOBOTS! looked frickin’ amazing.

Full-Spoiler, Super-Detailed Mode Review:

WARNING: Do not read if you do not like spoilers and have not yet seen the movie.

This is where I start listing all the things wrong with the movie:

1. Optimus Repair

All right, this one isn’t very big, but it’s still weird. At the beginning of the movie one of the characters, Cade Yeager buys a beat-up, completely destroyed truck that he believes he can break down for parts for his inventions. It turns out to be Optimus Prime, who needs Cade’s help in repairing himself. Once he’s a bit better and after a big battle with some humans, Optimus takes Cade, his daughter, and her boyfriend to look for the autobots, who can completely repair him. Unfortunately, they had just killed off Ratchet, the repairman, so they just had Optimus scan a passing fancy truck and suddenly he was all better. Fixed and everything. Wut?

2. Dinobot trick

Early in the movie, they zip over to some place in the arctic or something and show a dig site that had just uncovered a huge fossil. It wasn’t a normal fossil though. It was a fossil from when some Transformers came 65 million years ago and turned every living thing into transformium (that’s what they call it in the movie. ugh.) Guess what dinosaur it was? A T-Rex. Guess who it looked frickin’ exactly like? Grimlock. Guess who didn’t turn into dinobots 65 million years ago when Transformers came and turned everything into living metal? Dinosaurs. No, they just had the Dinobots come out of nowhere from a ship Optimus stole way late in the movie, with no buildup or anything, under the name “Legendary Warriors.” What the heck is that? They’re not even called Dinobots. Nope.

3. Transformium

Still don’t like that name.

When they first talk about this stuff in the movie, they describe it as a “rare earth metal.” Right after that, they go on to say: “we’ve unlocked its genome.” What the heck? IT’S A ROCK. It may be a sentient, living rock, BUT IT’S A ROCK. It doesn’t have DNA.

The other thing about this stuff is the way it transforms. When the humans make their own Transformers out of this stuff, instead of transforming the usual, normal, realistic, plausible way, (this is even though they’re made out of the same stuff the same way) they fly apart into little cubes with wires in between and reform as something else. What’s up with that? Also, if they do that, couldn’t they technically take any form they want? They’re not confined to only two different forms they want! They have limitless possibility! That’s even shown right after the movie introduces transformium, where the owner-of-the-company-guy takes a refined chunk of it, turns it into a music thing, then turns it into a gun! So these new Transformers could be whatever the heck they want now that they’ve been given independence, but nope! They don’t use their massive, MASSIVE advantage when fighting the autobots. They just stay in a single form the whole dang time. Doesn’t make any sense.

4. Lockdown stuff

Who... who is this anyway...? Just some character from the Transformers: Animated series that they decided to put in...? I don’t know.

But then there are a bunch of things left unexplained about him. He was sent by the Creators to catch Optimus Prime. Not just him, but a bunch of other Transformers, including the Dinobots. What? Creators? What Creators? And why, WHY, did he keep all of his collection in his ship until he had completed it instead of taking them one by one back to these “Creators?” And why did he not only keep them all in his ship, but in a separate, DETACHABLE section of his ship? And how did he not notice or even bother checking when Optimus stole it? Just what?

Also, what was all that fancy armory stuff in his ship that seemed to have some sort of importance but didn’t really? Just before we went to the movie I saw some toys at Target depicting a “Silver Knight” Optimus Prime. That was cool. He had shining silver plating and was holding a giant frickin’ sword. He was awesome! And he wasn’t even in the movie.

5. Seed go boom location

So after the humans worked with Lockdown to capture Optimus, he gave the humans a thing called a “seed,” which was a missile that would explode and turn every living thing into *shudder* transformium. Still hate that name...

Anyway, the humans were planning to go to the biggest city and detonate the seed in the center. And kill everyone in the city.

That doesn’t even need to happen.

The seed turns EVERY living thing into transformium. So why not just detonate the seed in a really, really big forest? Or under the ocean? There are any number of places where you could detonate the seed and not kill your fellow humans. I mean, optimal would be nothing dies, but I guess it is business...

But why kill thousands of people just to make things? The world would probably arrest you for mass, mass, mass, mass murder. It would give your company a bad name. Like, a REALLY bad name. So bad that... well... nobody would buy any of your stuff, for a start.

So, yeah... that movie pretty much sucked. If you’re only a casual Transformers fan or not even one at all, it’ll be fine (except for some things that are just stupid even outside the Transformers universe), but if you’re even a little bit hardcore (like me, I used to watch the Gen 1 stuff all the time, not so much anymore), either don’t see it or see it to see how dumb it was.