You’ll have noticed that I haven’t posted for a while, this is because this blog has been surpassed by a far greater and more superior one hosted on rented servers. From now on I will be writing at:

http://www.occupationalthoughts.com/

I will not delete this blog because I have much content invested in it. I will retain it for linking back to every now and then.
I was not able to import my old content to the new blog.
That is all.

Democracy works.

Here’s the bit where I get all worked up about democracy because Sarah Brown replied to a tweeted suggestion that she not use the acronym WoW to describe the Wellbeing of Women charity. She’d already had the piss taken out of her by a Daily Mail journalist idiot who didn’t understand Twitter so ambiguous tweets which may or may not be referring to World of Warcraft should be dealt with carefully so as not to catch the attention of dim-witted journalists desk zombies.

This use of Twitter to facilitate dialogue between people in power and citizens is encouraging, and it gives me a big ego boost to get recognised by Mrs. Brown. This experience doesn’t however change my views on Twittter not having any true purpose.

blogging in my pants

I just finished going over a sketch I drew of Peter conducting a skype interview, seeing as the interviewer cannot see the bottom half of your body I emphasised the fact that he could be in his pants but since the interviewer could only see the suit and tie he thinks Peter is one of those people who wears suits. On a side note Peter does not look well in suits, he looks like he’s trying to conceal a beer belly which doesn’t show up when he’s wearing anything else. It’s relevant to me because some days I get out of bed (or off the floor) and slink over to my desk and knock out a post in my underpants before geting dressed and having breakfast.

I was hoping to use this sketch as an avatar for my new Media Studies Blog, I’ll see if it’s a good match.

I’d also like to highlight the wisdom of one commenter on Mailwatch, the front page Daily Mail article was:
“Sadists who maimed two innocent boys to be given lifelong anonymity
TORTURE BROTHERS WILL BE FREE AT 18″

Which prompted the response:
“Maybe if the Heil didn’t print hysterics like this the “torture brothers” wouldn’t need anonymity?”

Politics is the control of resources.

Seeing as I haven’t actually handed in my definition of politics and I still have time to write (despite the chaotic return to school) I’ll go back and explore an alternative view briefly mentioned in my first lesson: Politics is about power, the more resources you control, the more power you have, politics is about resources.

The term ‘resources’ covers a fairly general and vague territory: gold, land, water, food, electricity, oil, iron, wood… the list continues but I’ve already explained that it covers almost anything.

Politics is about how these resources are managed.

In other news I need a new blog specifically for Media Studies as the exam moderators probably don’t care about my reflections on life as a teenager, which is fair enough I suppose.

I received my debit card and will soon go buy server space and move this blog to it’s very own domain. You read that correctly: I am going to continue to support this blog.

The Flip Video Ultra HD pocket camcorder arrived in the post after about 2 weeks stuck in the throes of the postal service. I still however support the local industrial action within the Royal Mail lead by one of the comrades at the SWP. I used it to film a Counter-Strike match with friends at my house.

FLQ fundraising

I’m posting the last one as I’m in a free period so I went home with a classmate. This is technically not allowed but… it’s not like I’m going to do anything at school anyway.

It’s probably a bit shocking to think that one of their sources of income was stolen bank money. But it seems to make sense with the economic climate and attitude now against banks (and bankers) who are as Adair Turner says “Socially Useless”.
I’m going back to school for media studies now.

Green Party Fundraising

Today’s comic was supposed to be outlining how much the little fundraising events are completely overwhelmed by larger scale ones. I might have missed the point a little but hey, at least you can admire my Gmod skillz:

Apologies for the late posing, I didn’t bother posting this morning (because I was busy with tomorrow’s comic) and I realised I had some German Grammar exercises to do this afternoon. Exercises which I still have to do.

School tomorrow!

Twitter marketing

Here’s another Twitter-bashing post which coincides with my using Twitter a lot more than I did before. Of course I’m not using it as a micro-blogging service like what it’s meant for but that’s a story for another time.

My new reason to dislike Twitter is the rise of annoying Spam. Yesterday when complaining that the Xbox was broken I wrote the message “Xbox broken again”.
Because my Twitter posts are redirected to Facebook I got some questioning and sympathetic comments from Andriy and Nate. And then at 3:11 this morning it was announced that James Muddyman was following me. Out of interest I went over to see who he was, he had done an @reply to me with the message “xbox on the fritz? http://www.electronicwarran… can help you out.”

Again out of interest I followed his link, it took me to a commercial website which sold warranties for electronic goods. Then I noticed that his tweet had come from TwitterHawk, my interest has been severely piqued by this point and I take a gander around to see what it’s all about. On the press page I find 3 articles debating whether this site generates Spam or not.

What TwitterHawk does is search for keywords and generate @replies based on those keywords. I assume it found the words Xbox and Broken so it automatically posted a reply with a link to that website which sells warranties. So to boil it down even further: it sends unsolicited messages which mean to sell products targeted at you. Wikipedia defines spam as:
“The abuse of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately.”

Some users in the past have set up an account with one tweet containing a link and set about following as many people as they can. Oh some media executive prick can sit in his office smiling confidently about how he’s bringing marketing to Web 2.0; in reality he’s alienating his audience with invasive slimy disguised marketing which will ultimately drive people away from his products or even Twitter itself.

Following this advice, I’m going to post a tweet full of kewords and see how many automated @replies I attract. Wish me luck!

New Labour fundraising

Yesterday I put dialogue to 2 comics, and I plan to put in the dialogue for a 3rd one this afternoon.  I’m posting one comic a day for the next three days to spread them out a bit. All these comics are on the theme of fundraising.

On a seperate path I notice that Il-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey and Arma II have quietly crept onto consoles. These are both the continuations of a 1st generation of military simulations which I bought a while ago. It seems now these simulations have moved to a console audience and although I haven’t played them, I fear they might be dumbed down to appeal to a wider audience. This is a good thing because I found the complexities of both first games frustrating.

Matthieu phoned earlier to say that Halo 3: Orbital Drop Shock Trooper comes out in about 2 weeks. This is good news:

1. I consider Halo to be a benchmark for console shooter games with an unpredictable story, wonderful settings and lots of fun. More of the same would be much appreciated.
2. The Halo 3 map packs come with the game.
3. New Firefight multiplayer mode.
4. Get to play as Sargent Johnson if you preorder.
5. Continuation of features introduced in Halo 3 such as Theater and Forge.

The bad news is:

1. It costs £40. This is an enormous amount of money to spend on any video game… even if it’s Halo.
2. I have school soon. School tends to replace video games pretty dramatically.

What is politics?

First off I’d like to say that this is a really really annoying essay 1-page explanation to write, why? Well because politics broadly crosses so many other fields: Philosophy and Economics are the main ones but it spills over into numerous other areas as well.

It reminds me of an Arabian folk tale in which a crafty bread thief asks the wise judges to define “What is bread?”; the wise men each come up with contrasting definitions and the clever thief walks free. And I apologise, but I do not have a link to that story.

The most obvious place to start is to look at other people’s definitions, Wikipedia defines politics as:

A process by which groups of people make decisions.

That’s the most broad yet concise a definition I’ve found so far. In fact instead of writing all this I could easily just leave it with that definition there.

Dictionary.com defines politics as:

The science or art of political government.

Fair enough, although not as clear as Wikipedia.
And then it goes on to state that politics can also be used as a verb, used often (incorrectly) by Christine when describing the people at Blenheim palace:

French: Ils font de la politique
English translation: They do politics

Which loosely follows the definition given by Dictionary.com, that to ‘do’ politics is:

To deal with people in an opportunistic, manipulative, or devious way, as for job advancement.

So, I’m splitting up the definition of politics to mean both ‘the practice of good government’ and ‘the practice of gaining power’. These terms overlap when a politician who is good at the power-grabbing aspect of politics uses their skill to maneuver themselves into a position where they can govern. A good example of this is a member of the executive board of a company doing politics to become Chief Executive Officer. People become disillusioned in politics because they fail to see the ideological battle behind much of the scrambling for power.

Such people may even claim to be apolitical. This is false as although they may not identify with any strain of political thought, they are in fact supporting the prevailing ideas of the society that they exist in.
Politics is sometimes presented as a two dimensional tug-of-war between the left and the right. This view is also false because politics also encompasses issues other than the class struggle for example: the environment, civil liberties, the peace movement, the abolishment of copyright, ect… The way those issues are dealt with defines your government.

That’s my slightly disjointed definition, although feel free to browse the mind-map I drew on the subject:

Hayabusa

Over the past few days I’ve been systematically going through Halo 3 and looking for all the skulls. For those of you who don’t play Halo 3, the skulls are a set of game modifiers, probably better known as handicaps. The twist though is that you have to search around the maps in the game to find these skulls, sometimes you have to bring about certain conditions which make the skulls appear. Achievements and their gamerscore (10 each) are awarded for finding these skulls but the real satisfaction comes with new armour available to use online called Hayabusa armour, it looks a little like a samurai costume. It also just gives you the excuse to play the game again and watch out for the small details.
As with every other person who gets new armour on Xbox LIVE, I am incredibly proud of it as a symbol of my rank and superiority over those small people who don’t have samurai armour. Sure I won’t run around screaming “I HAS EPIC NEW ARMER FTW!!!”, but I did take some photos celebrating the occasion:

Despite this, I still hold the belief that the Mark V helmet looks better than the Hayabusa one, so I’ll revert back to that one in a few days.
There is a sword which can be gained for the Hayabusa armour by completing all the achievements in the game and getting all the available gamerscore. This task however appears far too difficult so I’ll either just not do it, or wait until I have a whole day free with nothing going on and no homework outstanding ect…

An achievement I would like to do is the Vidmaster Annual which involves getting 4 players over Xbox LIVE playing the last level of Halo 3 on legendary difficulty with the Iron skull turned on. Andriy and co. have already done it but Matthieu’s friends look set for a try, I’ll have to organise it sometime.

And should you ever want to know what each skull does, here’s a handy guide:

• Iron skull: If you’re in co-op and one player dies, the whole party goes back to the last checkpoint, if all players die then the level is restarted.
• Black eye skull: Your shields don’t regenerate automatically, in order to bring them back up you have to melee an enemy.
• Tough luck skull: Enemies dodge grenades better, are more likely to go on suicide rampages towards you and never run away (normally most Grunts and Jackals will run away once they’ve lost their shields or their weapons).
• Catch skull: Enemies throw far more grenades than usual, they drop 2 grenades when they die.
• Fog skull: The motion tracker on your radar is disabled.
• Famine skull: Dropped weapons only have half as much ammo as they should have.
• Thunderstorm skull: All enemies are promoted to their maximum rank (I never really thought that the covenant forces held ranks within the member species so I don’t understand this one).
• Tilt skull: Enemy strengths and weaknesses are amplified which forces you to chose your weapons carefully.
• Mythic skull: All NPCs have 2x health.

And of course there are a few other skulls which don’t gain gamerscore and don’t have such a wide impact on gameplay but are still needed for the Hayabusa helmet:

• Blind skull: I got this one in Halo 2 as well, it turns off your HUD and makes your weapon invisible.
• Grunt birthday party skull: When a grunt is shot in the head it explodes into showers of confetti.
• Cowbell skull: All explosions have a larger blast radius and inflict more damage on everyone. I’ve found this to be fantastically useful with frag grenades.
• I Would Have Been Your Daddy skull:  Did this one yesterday and it’s quite hard to get, it unlocks large amounts of extra dialogue.