Hey Ma, I’m on the Internet!

Warning! Possible Spoilers! 

the story 

  When this book was first written, big, fat books were considered good in Russia. If someone saw a large book, they thought it would be a real page turner. Anton Chekhov was an amazing writer, and one of his best books was the short story The Bet, at only 5-7 pages long.

   Basically, The Bet is about two men who are never named, the banker and the lawyer. Early on in the book, the lawyer and the banker both attend a party. When the party guests began talking about wether Russia should continue using capital punishment, the banker chimed in, expressing his belief that it would be better to die immediately rather than have your life slowly whittled away in prison. The lawyer had a different view, believing life in prison is better than no life at all, and the government had no right to take away something they could not give back.

   The foolhardy banker makes a bet with the lawyer for two million rubles that the lawyer wouldn’t last five years in prison. The lawyer accepted the bet, saying he could last fifteen years in prison.

The Relationship

  The power in the relationship belongs to the banker at first- he has the lawyer in his house as a prisoner and controls what the lawyer can and can’t have. However, near the end the lawyer soon gains power over the banker because the lawyer learns how to manipulate the banker’s emotionships, which actually saves his life.

   Usually, the one with the power is the one in control. Those without out the power will usually bend to the whim of the more powerful person. This usually puts a strain on the relationship. When power shifts in a relationship it mostly further sours it.

  Power corrupts. A character with power gets to call the shots. No one wants to be involved with a power-hungry maniac, but they often don’t have a choice. If someone has power, they can do whatever they want, which can be for better (Ghandi) or for worse (Hitler). With power comes responsibility, and with responsibility comes stress.

I’ve finally finished my Voicethread. It was actually completed a week ago, but I didn’t know we were supposed to link to it- I had thought we were supposed to embed it.

If you’re still here, go click the link.

  Haha, a poor lolcats reference. Go me!

  You might have noticed my sweet new banner I made with the photo editing program GIMP. GIMP is like a superpowered version of paint. A very powerful tool, but I’m just learning how to use it.

   Any ideas on how to improve on the banner?

-Brandon out.

  Playing video games in class? No, I didn’t suddenly wrestle control of the class away from Mr. Fisher. Mr. Fisher is letting us play Simcity 4 in class. This site has all the information you could ever need about the game, so I don’t need to explain the details. Basically, Simcity 4 is a tycoon game where you take control of a city and watch your city prosper while watching your cruel and merciless budget. By no means is it an easy game, as the budget is incredibly restricting.

  Mr. Fisher beleives Sim City teaches us how a government’s relationship with a town. A prime example of this is you have no control over what buildings are built (Excluding schools, hospitals, fire stations, etc.), but you get to decide where they’re built and what category of buildings is built there. The categories are Residential (you live here), Commercial (Mcdonalds and such) and Industrial (Farms, factories, and so on) just like in real life.

  Basically, the game is all about balancing your problems. If you build too many schools  and such, spoiling your little peons, your town is going to go bankrupt really fast. If you build too few your sims will be dumber, in danger and unhealthy, and few will want to move in, including the higher class businesses (I think that’s how you spell it…) which bring in tons of cash.

In short, Simcity is an excellent virtual reality game that does a superb job of accurately portraying the job of a mayor. As usual, Maxis succeeds to deliver.

Fun fact: Simcity started on the SNES.

 Dismissing the myth

  In Social Studies my class is doing governments and societies. I can hardly talk about civilizations and societies without mentioning the Norse. You may know them better as the Vikings. It’s not like I don’t know anything about them, I went to a site in Newfoundland where the Vikings might have landed.

  Contrary to popular belief, the Norse were not barbaric savages. They were actually simple farming folk with rather advanced rights for there day and age. Women had more rights than most parts of the world and only in the later span of the their culture did they go off and plunder villages.

Viking mythology

  Viking mythology is extremely interesting. Basically, everything that ever existed was created from the corpse of an enormous frost giant and the universe consists of 9 worlds supported by a giant tree. The gods themselves live in Valhalla, which can only be reached from a giant rainbow bridge. It sounds sort of like something from the mind of Tim Burton and I often juggle my feelings of critiscm and intrigue towards the subject so much to the point where it becomes a joke. However when asked I deny it.

  Different kinds of Norsemen worshipped different gods. The farmers worshiped Thor, god of thunder and champion of the gods. They often wore hammer shaped jewelry (Thor’s weapon of choice). Warriors and soldiers worshipped Odin, king of the gods. Odin knew and saw all, and sacrificed one of his eyes so he could drink from the fountain of wisdom. Sailors mainly worshipped Njoyr, god of the seas so he would protect them storms and other dangers one faces while on the ocean. Later on, less people worshipped Odin and the gods of old as Christianity became more mainstream in their culture.

Their lives

 Vikings were expert seamen and used their water navigating skills to discover North America and Greenland, as well as gain success through raiding villages on the coasts of other countries. Through plundering they became known as the infamous Vikings. Their ships, known as the Longships, could move fast and could make swift turns to evade enemies.

  Most Norsemen lived in shelters called Longhouses. Longhouses were warm buildings that were immune to the harsh climate the Vikings lived in. Communities would often meet at the Longhouses and sing and dance to keep their spirits up through the cold winter.

  In short, the vikings were strong, hardy people who endured the hardships of their day and age, as well as the harsh climate in which they lived. Not only were they skilled warriors and expert seamen, but they also beleived in equal rights and knew how to enjoy themselves dispite their daily lives.

  It’s been two days since 9/11. Where were YOU when the terrorists crashed a plane into the Twin Towers?

 In other news, I’m totally stoked for the must-have game for the Christmas season: Super Smash Brothers Brawl. The previous games in the series tought me an important lesson: Any joke can be made funnier with a well placed dinner for two Falcon Punch!!

Everything about this game looks awesome. Characters now have a “Final Smash” (Essentially some sort of omnipotent super-nuke), you can customize the music and character status conditions for each battle, and characters that should have been in the second finally get their time to shine! *cough* Diddy Kong *cough*.vTwo things I hope are added are some sort of Dogfight Mode in which every character flies around the arena, and adding the character Captain Olimar from the Pikmin series.

  On the Sony side of things, Sony has sent out Lair reviewer’s guides with the PS3’s 1.92 update, as nearly all of the reviewers were giving the game sub-par scores. Sony is getting a little desperate. I find it amusing, but hey, I’m a Nintendo fanboy.

  Microsoft has announced a sequel for the critically aclaimed Bioshock which according to the developers is going to become a regular video game franchise. Who saw this coming? I did.

-Brandon out.

I’d like to first note this post wasn’t made with my laptop (I forgot >_>), so don’t expect any humorous .gifs. Sorry!

Differences

Probably the most important difference between writing on a blog and writing on a paper is that a blog grants the user anonymity. As basic math skills have taught me, adding a normal person + anonymity = Jerk. Writing on paper does not give the same feeling of invulnerability that the internet gives you, so the writer often doesn’t express their same feelings as often as online.

One of my favourite differences between the two forms of text is that blogs let you post links to other articles or websites on the ‘net and post pictures. You can’t provide links to other pieces of writing on a piece of paper, now can you? Writing a picture is possible, but you can’t animate it. Who has time to draw a new picture every time they make a new piece of writing? Hermits, that’s who…

Unlike blogs, pages of writing can be taken anywhere. Blogs require a laptop to be taken elsewhere, and even then you need an internet connection.

Similarities

In both blogs and written pages, grammar is not only encouraged, but necessary to develop a positive audience. I’m not saying you have to sound like a professor, but please don’t post nonsensical crap like “Lolz u seen my picaturezzz?” I might have exaggerated a tad, but you still understand what I mean.

Both forms of writing require a basic ability to read and write, but that’s a given. You can show both to your friends. You can still get cramps if you do either long enough. Both forms of writing are easier to continue when you start as well.

I’m a a little biased towards blogs myself, but that’s to be expected, this is a blog after all. Don’t expect it to be 100% accurate!

This, or this?

You decide.

G’day…. this is a blog I made for Mr. Fisher’s Class. He’s a big self-proclaimed computer nerd and is my first teacher who let me bring my laptop to class. I know what you’re thinking: Another Newb blog! You can panic now.

About Me

My name is Brandon. I’m a big video game fanatic (Nintendo in particular) who wants to pick up Flash one day. I’m Canadian and lobster is my favourite food, but who can afford it these days? That’s right, Bill Gates could…I live in Some Town in the Bush, Manitoba. Low crime rates and no traffic ftw. (b’.')b We don’t have a Wal-Mart or anything so I’m often craving new games. My school, Joseph H. Kerr School, was voted one of the 30 most innovative schools by Canada’s Schoolnet (Quoted from Wikipedia.).

My Summer

This summer I went on a trip to BC, courtesy of Junior Canadian Rangers. I met plenty of people, and had finally experienced the rush of jumping off a cliff into a lake, the joy of flipping other people’s canoes, and the pain of getting a splinter under my fingernails. For the rest of the summer I hung out with my friends, including but not limited to Tyler, Micheal, Scotty, and Darren.

I’m updating the site occasionally, so bare with me as I figure out how this “blog” works and make failing attempts of comedy.