-AT16

I can only say that my trust in other drivers is very shaken and I hope that I do not turn into one of these people. Hoping to learn defensive driving, I hope I can avoid these problems.

Telling it like it is,
- AT16

Click here to view the embedded video.

Since I’m a drummer, I would just love hearing this in the morning right before music class. It’s like inspiration right before school.

The video is here on youtube.

Wishing you all a happy holidays/new year ,
- AT16

Shoot for the brightest star?  What does that mean? Man has always looked at the stars for inspiration, whether it was finding their way home or trying to land on the Moon. We as a race have always had an affinity for the stars. When I say the brightest star I mean it as the brightest star is the most perfect. We as infants are nature’s attempts to create a perfect being. While you may say that perfection is unattainable, however we all aim to be perfect in one aspect of our lives. We see that in our jobs, a math teacher aims to teach a class where no one makes a mistake. An engineer aims to create the perfect machine, by using his knowledge. You see our attempts at perfection surround us, even when it does not seem so.

As we try to attain perfection we may achieve it or not, that depends on your drive. I would like to share a story of my friend’s own attempts at ‘perfection’.

Last summer I entered a local mountain bike race, as many heats went ahead we all tried to beat the lead lap time of 2 minutes 4.2 seconds. My heat went ahead and I finished a respectable 2 minutes and 8.02 seconds, I moved on to the finals. As many people went ahead, I saw no one beat the 2:04.2 time. I said to myself over and over again I’m gonna beat that, I’m gonna beat that. My turn came; as I lined up on the starting line I imagined getting that impossible 1:50 lap time. As the whistle blew I worked my legs and my gears furiously attempting to get up to speed. The rest of the track I spent trying to perfect each corner, and never use my brakes. I was completely focused on the apexes of the corners, and pedalling as hard as I could to keep my speed up. I hammered the pedals as hard as I could and my mind completely set on the 1:50 lap time, I didn’t care for the brakes and safety I just wanted that time. With the finish line in sight, I pushed the pedals with so much force; I felt the wheels losing traction as I accelerated hard for the finish. I crossed the line and ripped my brakes. My legs feeling like jelly and my body aching for rest, I made my way to the official’s table. After what seemed an eternity I got my time, the card said a clean time of 2:00.6 minutes. I jumped up and down in happiness; even though my original goal was not reached I still beat the 2:04.2. Even though my time was beat thrice by other riders, I didn’t really care. I had achieved as close to perfection as I could that day.

You see when you reach for an unattainable goal, you push yourself father than you ever would with a hard but attainable goal. Your body and mind awaken to the challenge and I think the harder the challenge the harder we work. Why can’t we do this with all of our goals? There is no reason not to. So for everything you do, every challenge you take. Set an outrageous goal, see how far you get. When you aim for the brightest star, you might just hit another star; not quite as bright but it’s still a darn bright star.

- AT16

Troy Dixon, the actor who played T-Bag on Pure Pwnage died in a car accident in Arthur, Ontario on the 6th of this month. He will be remembered for the great person he was. No matter where he was, he was an entertainer. Whether it was the local comedy club, in front of a camera, or rapping to a beat, he was tremendous. His death was a terrible blow to all that knew him and those who saw him perform. I was fortunate enough to meet him once, and for the 30 seconds I talked to him he never looked away from me like I was unimportant. Troy will always be remembered for the great man and performer he was.

With this sad news I would like to bring a little awareness to the fact that our lives on this earth may end at any moment. Death may visit us anytime and we cannot do anything to stop him. So, seize everyday and live it like it was your last. Never let there be a dull moment, embrace every second of life we get, because with every second we live our potential only multiplies. Work as hard as you can, and never give up, no matter what. Because in the end we all go, and when we go we don’t want anything unaccomplished or unfulfilled. Live everyday to the fullest, ‘Carpe Diem’, Never let anything hold you back.

And now I leave you with one of Troy’s own quotes, one he posted on his myspace, and a picture that I think really shows who Troy was and how I would like to remember him.

“You have no purpose in life but to work hard, become successful. Make your money, etc. Everything else will come after. I’m sure we all go through hard times, but if you simply surround yourself around the people you KNOW will be there for you down the road, as well as your family, everything will be okay. The people that really love you, really KNOW.”

- Troy Dixon

Troy Dixon

You walk in to you local EB Games and watch a person playing a Halo 3 demo,
the person who just walked in comes up beside you and watches, next he blurts out: “Look at those graphics, sure beats the crap out of the Wii.” If I was the first guy, I would want to either turn around and knock him out, or start the debate of Graphics vs. Game-play.

Many people including myself praise “Crysis” for being so realistic, and visually appeasing. However, because of this reason certain people (not including myself) automatically think the game is great for it’s great visuals. An example would be the PS3 vs. the N64. Many games on the PS3 look amazing, yet most of the games that look amazing fail to immerse me in their game-play as much as the prehistoric N64 game “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” which relatively bit the dust in terms of graphics. Specifically “Lair” for the PS3, the hype for the game was amazing, boasting real-to-life graphics, but turned out to be a “beautiful disaster” (Gamespot) because of horrible controls, cataclysmic camera which zooms everywhere you don’t want it to be, and most importantly shallow and unimpressive game-play. This would be a prime example of a beautiful looking game which fails because no effort has been put into game-play.

So we’ve established that gameplay is number 1 in importance in a video game. However when do bad graphics make a negative impact of the quality of the game? There is a very dimple answer to this question, graphics make a distinct negative impact on game quality when they make the game unplayable. Example: When you play an FPS with such horrid graphics when you cant tell where his head begins and it ends or where the heart is. Or when you play a game where you must find a specific object, and the specific feature of the object cannot be displayed because of horrible graphics. However there are games where graphics do not matter per se, such as Pong, when would you need high definition where you are hitting a square over a straight line and using rectangles are rackets. Therefore, horrible graphics make a negative impact on the game when the graphics interfere with the objective of the game.

In conclusion, game-play is extremely important as it is the game, and the underlying purpose of the game. However graphics are not as important as gameplay but they are a necessity depending on the objective of the game.

Now discuss, you are allowed to disagree and also when you make an argument on the comments explain your opinion. NO PROFANITIES (comments containing such material will be removed).

Discussing age old topics,
-AT16

The Macbook has been upgraded both visually and internally; the whole body is now a mixture of aluminum and glass. The new body is toxin free, and is much more durable than the older plastic body. The body is now machined out of a single block of aluminum, and the screen is now glass and the design is similar to the iMac. Every hate not having enough room on the touch pad because the button gets in the way? Apple has solved your problem, the touch pad is the button and is ‘clickable’ anywhere, and it is manufactured out of etch-proof glass. Now we have covered the exterior lets look under the ‘hood’, First thing one will notice is the simplicity in the design of the components to decrease the margin of error. Also there is a new graphics card, the old graphics card (Intel GMA X3100) would be comparable to say a old Ford, the new Nvidia 9400M is comparable to a Porsche. Catch my drift? The graphical capabilities have been upgraded (5x to be exact). And the new 13.3-inch display is back lighted by an LED, that means instant turn on and less power usage. And the miniDVI is now a Mini DisplayPort where one can use several adapters for use. However one thing has been subtracted the FireWire slot. All in all the additions far outweigh the subtractions leaving us with a surplus.

The New and Improved Macbook

And the second new Macbook is the Pro, and it truly is Pro. The old aluminum chassis has been updated with the same upgrades as the base MacBook, and the display is available in a 15-inch size. However there are 2 differences under the hood, the graphical capabilities have not just been upgraded they’ve been professionalized, the new graphical cards are an Nvidia 9400M and an Nvidia 9600M GT with 256MB-512MB depending on which graded you buy. Also the FireWire has not been left out unlike the base MacBook. This time there have only been additions and that’s just plain awesome.

The New and Improved MacBook Pro

The prices for the Macbook start at $1 399CDN and the prices start for the MacBook Pro at $2,149.

Staying updated with everything Apple
- AT16

The press invitation

What will become of tomorrow’s conference? Lets find out as “the spotlight turns to notebooks”.

-AT16

Ever see an economy car such as a Toyota or a Hyundai, which has been modified? The fact most people see a Ricer. A Ricer by definition is a car that has been modified aesthetically, and nothing has been done to increase performance. This is something I hate with a passion, I may be walking in Markham, Ontario and every Honda Civic on the street has either a 2-foot (60 centimeter) high wing spoiler on the back, or it has an atrocious body kit that rivals the art work by a dog using its own excrement. The only thing they don’t realize is they are adding unnecessary weight to the car. The body kit just lowers the car and basically makes it a brick moving through air=LOTS OF DRAG. Lastly when you attach that huge 2 foot spoiler to the car you’re not making it any more aerodynamic or faster, because in a front wheel drive car (Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic, Hyundai Tiburon) THERE IS NO REASON IN THE WORLD FOR THAT MUCH DOWN FORCE ON THE REAR WHEELS ON A FRONT WHEEL DRIVE CAR! The moron doing this to his car, is actually lifting the front wheels of the car off the ground and lowering traction, increasing the chance of hydroplaning (front tires ride on thin film of water, causing driver to have no control of the car), and making the car look like a dog turd on wheels. Lastly while the huge obnoxious spoiler is looking “cool”, it makes the car not only looks like a turd on wheels, it is also very dangerous as he obscures his own vision to the back of the car, creating yet another blind spot.

Ricer

^What not to do to your car^ Note: The huge rear spoiler, huge exhaust that looks like it belongs to NASA however it does nothing but make the car louder, an the brick body kit that increases drag to truck level, and lastly the one tonne rims which look horrid rounding out the weight to an approx. 10 tonnes. Okay that wasn’t fair to the ricer, 9.9 tonnes. The only thing this thing lacks is huge quantities of cool vinyls from companies they don’t have parts from because they are too unintelligent to use their money on actual performance parts.

When they show off their car they leave the hood down and hope no one notices that is it stock engine with an extremely heavy body for that particular engine. Some people even invest in “special Mufflers” to make that stock naturally aspirated Toyota 4 cylinder engine sound like a super car, and to increase the effect remove their catalytic converter, they are not only killing those lovely baby seals in the arctic, they are also killing us by forcing us to breath in toxins that would normally be filtered out by the catalytic converter and the muffler.

Even more so to public insanity, they load the back of the car with about 70 extra speakers and more subs than the queen of England is old. This adds even more weight to the back of the car, giving an increased effect of down force on the rear wheels, which is completely unnecessary in a front wheel drive “tuner” car. Not even mentioning the fact that when it is used, it’s played at full blast on the highway, with the windows down, with very annoying rap music; as someone who has to deal with this on the 401, it absolutely drives you insane. They seem to think that the sound waves increase their horsepower.

All in all if you have some extra money to spend on your car, do away with the brick body kits, and the huge obnoxious wing spoilers. Instead I commend you to buy some nice tires, maybe upgrade your suspension system, install a turbo or two or even swap your engine, better to have a street sleeper (an innocent looking car which actually is a monster under the hood), than a ricer (a car that really looks like a street racer but doesn’t have the ability to out run by an old lady’s mobility scooter, and also weighs the equivalent of a cement truck).

Hating Ricers,
-  AT16

NOTE: Inspiration taken from an article on the site http://ManiacalTyrant.personallog.org.