Videogames

Published
by
V
on August 18, 2008
in Life and Random
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I think I failed to mention in my previous post that I’m going to play more during my time off. It’s been more than a whole year since I last played any tipe of videogame. I think it was during the summer of 2006/07 that I played Need for Speed: Underground 2, and I think I completed it.

But the game I played the most during high school was undoubtedly Warcraft III… What an awesome game! We would spent lots of nights playing with my best friend Ayrton. We even got to move our computers around (before we had laptops) and make silly 2-PC LAN parties, but we would get tired after a while.

Since I left the city for college and everything, my best friend started playing Counter-Strike. When I was in my first or second year of high school everyone was psyched for that game. We had 40-minute long lunch breaks, and my classmates would cross the street and go to this cybercafe so they could eat while playing all sorts of war games or FPS (first-person shooters) such as (if my memory serves me right) Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament (2004?), Soldier of Fortune II, and many more, I think.

But I didn’t play. At least not on a regular basis… I would play with them maybe once in two months. There was no space for my criticism about explicit violence or how lame they looked when they played those games.

So last week I went to my best friend’s house and installed Counter-Strike. The first game I ever installed on my laptop (my 8 month-old HP Pavilion DV2425). Luckily, it runs smoothly (it’s a 5 year old game!).

And just today I got my hands on Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, which I’m going to install tonight on my dad’s new computer. It’s my little experiment: I’m going to try and install every videogame that comes out with insane requirements on that computer.

I really hope this is going to be my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet the requirements of almost every game. It’s a Core 2 Quad with 3 GiB of RAM, 500 GiB of HD and a GeForce 8600 GT under the hood.

So that’s it for now… Oh! Also, I installed Iron Man, the videogame based on the movie and… It sucks.

.-

Fun as in ‘breathing’

Published
by
V
on August 14, 2008
in College, Life and Projects and Work
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I just took a tough decision. I’m at the bus stop, I have to go downtown. I’m having a meeting for a website I’ve been working on for the past year and a half. It’s a website for an organization that deals with AIDS, focusing on its prevention by making workshops and informing people on the subject.

Now I’m on the bus. The decision I took was to stay here in my home town for the rest of the year. Now why would I take such a silly decision when I had a 3 Mb broadband connection in Buenos Aires and a malfunctioning 640 kb here? Good question, I know, but not everything depends on internet connections! Come on!

I had already started thinking about staying here during the last weeks I spent in the city but more as a way to deal with my ever present depression. Well, amazing as it sounds, I’m not really taking this decision as a way to deal with that.
In fact, I know I’m not completely (nor partially) over that yet, but it’s OK for now, as long as I don’t start hurting myself or thinking about being a ghost (damn Armor for Sleep!).

What’s leading me to take this decision is my long awaited vision of the future, as in finally seeing myself somewhere in the future, doing what I like.
“You need to have a plan if you’re staying…” my father said today after lunch. Well… Dan said we need to ‘plan to be surprised‘ (you should be ashamed if you still haven’t seen Dan in Real Life… Go watch it now!)

So that’s what I’m planning after all! I’m putting my formal studies on hold until next year (formal as in the sense of university studies), but instead I’m going to: (here we go)

  • · Read more. Some people I truly respect have suggested me tens of books along the years so I think it’s finally time to read them. I need to finish reading (for the second time) “A Brief History of Time” by the awesome Stephen Hawking,  get my hands on all the Ray Bradbury books I’ve been collecting since I was 10, and probably read as many books as I can to make my brain bigger.
  • · Write more. Yes, and no. I’m not talking about (only) blogging, I also have some (some as in tens of millions) of ideas I’d like to take from my brain and put down on paper. And yes, I may start writing more here, but only time will tell.
  • · Study more. I’m taking my interests to the next level. Programming, physics, guitar, singing, maths, anything. But as I learned in the past, I can only study by myself: it’s the only way it works for me.
  • · Smile more. I know that smiling isn’t cool right now, I mean, what’s “in” right now is to feel bad all the time and just avoid being happy. But let me tell you something: I was into depression way before it went mainstream and started being so trendy. I’m a pioneer on feeling bad, people. So now I’m gonna try swimming against the current, I’m gonna be the happiest guy alive.
    OK, point taken: it’ll probably won’t work that way, but you get the point. Wish me luck on this one.
  • · Watch more movies. For the past two years I’ve collected over 80 films (including documentaries and silly TV specials) that I wanted to see. I think I’ve barely seen 10 of them so I’m going to put some of my time on watching them. Movies are one of the things I enjoy the most, and now it’s time for me to do things I like. At first I thought of naming this one “Watch more movies while eating ice cream”, but then I realized that I would quickly get overweight.
  • · Work more. I’m not getting a job at a shoe factory, but still… This is a tricky one. Work can stand for both paid work and work on my personal projects or endeavors. I want to finish most (if not all) of the things I started to work on the past few years. I want to do whatever it’s needed on my baby websites (AlwaysFallingDown.com, TheresNoSolution.com, Proyecto Burbuja, valenzine.com, my web design company MonstersInvisible.com, etc), finish any current work I have and make my ToDo list a bit thinner… I want a clean start for next year.
    Also, I’ve started to work with my dad on some of his own work, and that is keeping me thrilled with learning better ways to work.
  • · Drink more. I’m not really sure about this one but I think it could be one of the suggestions my friends would make when finding out about these news.
  • · Enjoy more. So it’s time to stop thinking about dying and rather start thinking about living (as logical as it may sound, it takes a lot to get to this conclusion).
    People that wanted to show me a brighter side of my life had a really good point when they addressed the fact that there are a lot of things I can whine about my life, but even more facts about it that I shouldn’t ignore: the things I shouldn’t complain about, such as still being able to breathe, having a family and friends that care for me and so many other things. Pretty self explanatory this one is.

And that’s about all I could write using my cell phone on my way downtown and then my way back.

.-

Chocolate crunchy

Published
by
V
on July 16, 2008
in Random
. 1 Comment

Right now I’m eating an ice cream.

.-

Lock the doors and slide behind the unlit shades

Published
by
V
on July 12, 2008
in Random
. 1 Comment

I’ve been listening to +44’s album since I woke up this morning and used it as background music while studying. It does a pretty good job keeping me focused, although I couldn’t resist and jumped to grab my guitar and play along 145 (acoustic version of 155) and Cliff Diving.

I can’t even remember the last time I played those songs, but they made me remember that I never learned their guitar solos. Damn.

Fre, my girlfriend, is coming in less than 20 minutes. Last Thursday she told me that she would be coming here: she lives 50 km (30 miles) away from here in a small city named La Plata. I have some of my best friends living there as well so I go almost every weekend and spend it with them.

But this is the first time she’s coming here! I’m so enthused that I even swept my bedroom’s floor, ordered all my books, and put all my dirty clothes in their place (the bag for laundry, of course).

I can’t believe that I only slept 4 hours last night. And just for your interest, mixing coffee with energy drinks will only get you an aching stomach and will not make you hyper-intelligent and get all your work done in 30 minutes.

+44’s CD keeps spinning and she’s at my door.

.-

Dear Criminals

Published
by
V
on June 27, 2008
in Random
. 0 Comments

.-

[Music Video] Paul McCartney - Ever Present Past

Published
by
V
on June 26, 2008
in Downloads and Music Videos
. 0 Comments

It’s music video fever!

This time I have Paul McCartney with one of his latest videos. I love this one, just watching this guy dance to the beat and prove that he still has what it takes makes you want to live. Or at least smile.

Along with Dance Tonight (coming soon?), another wonderful video directed by Michel Gondry featuring Natalie Portman, this video is even cool for a 65 yr old that keeps showing that he has what it takes to write a song… I mean, the guy was in the Beatles!

My favorite song off his latest album, Memory Almost Full.

Directed by : Phil Griffin
Format : AVI
Codec : DivX
File size : 56.9 MiB
Play time : 2mn 56s
Bit rate : 2698 Kbps
Width : 640 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Preview : YouTube
Download : MediaFire

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[Music Video] Linkin Park - Leave Out All the Rest

Published
by
V
on June 23, 2008
in Downloads and Music Videos
. 1 Comment

Almost a month ago Linkin Park released the music video for “Leave Out All the Rest”, the final single from the acclaimed “Minutes to Midnight”.

This is what they said of the video in an interview with MTV.com:

Linkin Park spent last weekend standing in front of a green screen in a warehouse in Van Nuys, California, shooting the video directed by the band’s DJ, Joseph Hahn, who also came up with the video’s treatment. The clip depicts a day in the life of Linkin Park — that is, if they all lived in a futuristic flight vessel, floating somewhere in outer space.

“Joe wasn’t even going to write a treatment for this song,” MC Mike Shinoda told MTV News on the set. “We’d [received] a number of treatments, and we were kind of bummed out, because we weren’t connecting to any of them. And then, out of nowhere, we get a treatment from Joe in an e-mail, and we just loved it. It was random, out of nowhere, and it fit the song perfectly. I really like this video, because it’s different from everything else he’s done with us before. It’s this sci-fi thing, which is fun. We’ve never really done that, and when I walked onto the set, I thought it looked like ‘Battlestar Galactica.’ ”

In the video — which features no performance footage — the band lives in a rundown, artificial habitat that’s making its way across the galaxy. At first, the boys are seen passing the time performing mundane tasks, but then gravity is lost onboard the vessel, sending the guys floating about.

“We’re explorers in space, just like when we go on tour,” said Hahn. “We’re leaving our home life behind, and I guess it kind of ties into ‘Leave Out All the Rest,’ in that we have to leave things behind in order to do something better.”

According to Shinoda, it was Minutes to Midnight producer Rick Rubin who first realized the song’s potential as a single.

“When we were in the studio, working on the album, this song was one of the ones that I was personally pretty attached to,” said Shinoda. “I remember Rick, of all people, who never says stuff like this, because he’s more of a guy who either likes a song or thinks it can be better, and usually it can be better. I don’t know if it’s just that he sets his standards so high, but he never says things like, ‘This is a single.’ But when he heard this song, he said, ‘This sounds like a massive single.’ For us, when we write a record, we don’t think in terms of singles. In our minds, every song is a single.”

I absolutely love music videos that are unique, just like this one. I think that live videos for singles are cheap. Even if they cost several thousand dollars for making it, they’re cheap. Come on, you just go out there and play while someone gets that on tape and then you get someone else to edit it and BAM! you got yourself a music video.

I love videos that have any sort of a storyline or acting, just like “Jesus of Suburbia” from Green Day (if they did a live video for that song I would have killed Billie Joe Armstrong), “Dammit” from blink-182 (the only video from them that actually relates to the song), “There Is” from Box Car Racer (well, it doesn’t feature that much of acting or whatever but it does feature some imagery that really relates to the song), and the list could go on forever, I might as well write an article about music videos sometime in the future.

For now, enjoy this epic music video by Linkin Park.

Directed by: Joseph Hahn
Format : AVI
Codec : XviD
File size : 64.9 MiB
Play time : 3mn 24s
Bit rate : 2649 Kbps
Width : 728 pixels
Height : 310 pixels
Preview : YouTube
Download : MediaFire

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Modlife is up and running: Tom pwned us all

Published
by
V
on June 22, 2008
in Music
. 0 Comments

This is from an interview conducted back in March, 2008:

You just released that whole Modlife thing online a little while ago. What’s the story behind that and how has it been going so far?

Modlife is amazing. It’s blown my mind. It’s an idea I had that took a lot to come to fruition, and we’re going to launch it to the world this summer. It’s an operating system to help kind of revolutionize the music industry at first, but at best it’s for anybody. Any kid, any band, any business or housewife to use a bunch of digital tools in any way, shape or form they choose to use them. For a band, they can do broadcasts, films and podcasts, deliver their records digitally – everything they want to do on a computer. For a housewife, maybe they just want to put up photos of their kids and they don’t have any records and maybe it’s free. I don’t know, but it’s probably the most futuristic, ingenious thing I’ve seen on the Internet since its inception, I think. I’m really excited about it.

The trend now is kind of leaning less towards labels and more towards other avenues.

Yeah, label’s are kind of a thing of the past.

Do you think this is going to team up with that?

Yeah, I think there’s a lot of things that are going to happen, but our goal is to be self-sufficient. To not need labels, not need other people, or be able to hire labels for specific duties, like marketing and promotion. But I think with Modlife, we’ll be able to do it all ourselves.

And now that project is coming true!

Go check modlife.com

.-

Heart possessions and year-changing decisions

Published
by
V
on June 7, 2008
in College, Projects and Work and Random
. 0 Comments

Have you ever woken up one day just to see a poster on your wall that you had always thought it was cool but never put too much attention on it, and then it happens: you notice how it was the coolest thing you’ve ever seen?

I used that lame metaphor in a failed attempt to explain my recent crush on one of my bestest friends.

I won’t go into too many details right now, I’m just going to say that I was this close to giving up on everything and then suddenly it happened. She was valiant enough to tell me something that completely changed my point of view on some subjects.

I’m sick of my own depression. I can’t stand thinking about all this negative stuff all the time, I need to change.

A lot of things are happening around me, most of them aren’t directly related to me but in some way they do, and at the same time I’m facing a lot of new things all the time.

I’m not doing really well in college… I dropped out of Mathematical Analysis and I’m considering dropping out of Physics too. In fact, I’m ditching my class right now. I did quite well on Introduction to Scientific Thinging (or IST from now on). I got an 8 out of 10 and surprisingly most of my classmates failed. What surprsises me is that I didn’t study much for the exam, I just read the chapters of the book and studied from previous exams I got online.

But I need to change. I need to focus on myself and on making the lives of people around me easier. I need to help myself and everyone around me.

And by achieving small accomplishments every day I think I’m getting closer to that. When everything you do or try to do leads to frustration, you just don’t find a purpose on anything. And that’s what needs to change: I need to find a purpose and I have to avoid getting frustrated.

Let’s start right now.

.-

The flyer

Published
by
V
on May 29, 2008
in Random
. 0 Comments

Oh yeah Nic and I did a great job.

.-