Motorstorm: Pacific Rift Update

The 450 MB update to Motorstorm: Pacific Rift is out. Most noticeable feature is the addition of Microbadges. You can select any three accomplishments and have them show up under your name when you are online.

Other new features? I couldn't find any. I expected more from an hour and a half download.

Who I Think I am.

StumbleUpon drove me here.

If you haven't heard of it, leave it alone. Stumbleupon is the part of the internet that you were looking for. But stay away. Trust me.

Anyway back to our regularly scheduled programming:

Just remember when you read these two that both of these archetypes need a pre-exisating problem to work on.

These are from: TechRepublic

The programmer I think I am:

#5: The Ninja

The Ninja is your team’s MVP, and no one knows it. Like the legendary assassins, you do not know that The Ninja is even in the building or working, but you discover the evidence in the morning. You fire up the source control system and see that at 4 AM, The Ninja checked in code that addresses the problem you planned to spend all week working on, and you did not even know that The Ninja was aware of the project! See, while you were in Yet Another Meeting, The Ninja was working.

Ninjas are so stealthy, you might not even know their name, but you know that every project they’re on seems to go much more smoothly. Tread carefully, though. The Ninja is a lone warrior; don’t try to force him or her to work with rank and file.

#8: The Paratrooper

You know those movies where a sole commando is air-dropped deep behind enemy lines and comes out with the secret battle plans? That person in a software development shop is The Paratrooper. The Paratrooper is the last resort programmer you send in to save a dying project. Paratroopers lack the patience to work on a long-term assignment, but their best asset is an uncanny ability to learn an unfamiliar codebase and work within it. Other programmers might take weeks or months to learn enough about a project to effectively work on it; The Paratrooper takes hours or days. Paratroopers might not learn enough to work on the core of the code, but the lack of ramp-up time means that they can succeed where an entire team might fail.

I Forgot I Had This

Well, I completely forgot I had this. It's been many years since I updated it. I have a few things I think I can talk about but that will have to wait for time when I haven't been up all night. I need to sleep, doing a computer mash-up with a friend this afternoon. Fun, fun.

Just finished watching a Law & Order episode were they convict a video gamer for murder. His defense was that he didn't know he was in real life; though he was still playing the game. They were obviously alluding to Vice City.

That got me to thinking. I don't really like Vice City as a game, I found no entertainment value in beating up hookers and passerby. I did find enjoyment in stealing cars and driving them around the city at high speeds. I found the best enjoyment when I ramped a car of a bridge, jumping out just before the car left the roadway. Do I think that destroying a car and endangering the lives of the other drivers on the road is fun? Sure, in the virtual world of pixels and bytes. Would I do this to my own car, with real people in the world? Absolutely not.

I thought further. What games DO I like to play? Well I love RPG's: Slaying orcs and demons, watching the blood fly from vampires and werewolves. But wait. Is it proper to take enjoyment from the death of even pixelated beings, entities that defend themselves with every hit? My mind slipped to the ever enternal conflict of racism. Is it fair to say that Orcs and Goblins, Kobolds and Giants are inherently evil and much be wiped from the face of whatever planet and time they live on and in? Is this not genocide in the virtual world? My avatar, my virtual being, does not understand the ramifications of his chosen profession. Benefiting financially from the death of beings he does not understand. I wonder, as the director in this macabre play, directing this avatar, do I hold some deep fear of cultures that I do not understand? Is there a suppressed beast inside my real world self that would wander the streets with sword in hand destroying those that would stand before me? No.

I know that the virtual world and the real world are still seperate. If I use the controls of a console system to drive a car of off a bridge in a video game, I have not endangered the lives of real people, nor myself, nor my bank account. When I control an avatar in an RPG and direct him/her/it to slay "evil" without a second thought to their families, life goals, or society, that does not mean I will roam the streets of the city and wipe out muggers, gang members, fraudsters, child molesters or internet child porn traders. The country at large and the social taboos as well as my own moral code do not allow for these actions. But, that's me.

BLOG Lemming

Well, I've decided to jump over the cliff and start my own BLOG. A lot of close friends of mine have been doing it for a while. Seems like it's what all of the cool kids are doing.

My plan is to blog my thoughts on technology and how it relates to my life and yours. This will not be a forum to bore you with the mundane aspects of my daily life. Although, you may get a glimpse into the bits floating through my neurons.

I should be doing actual work right now so I'll sign off for the moment.

...end transmission...