SabreXTs Journal

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Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in the "SabreXT" journal:

April 6th, 2012
05:29 pm [Link]	Primitive Dentistry It's been a week now since I visited the dentist about the tooth I mentioned in my previous entry, the one where the enamel popped off. The guy seemed nice enough, about my age maybe younger. He told me there was nothing they could do, and would like to refer me to another clinic to have what's left pulled out under general aesthetic. He also seemed to be updating my dental records. Handy if I get murdered and the body burned. Anyway, I won't go into the specifics of what happened. Afterwards though, I was filled with sadness and I don't know why. I was also angry with a simmering rage that continued long after the sadness had gone. Simply put, why is dentistry still a pokey stick and a drill? Also, why so keen to remove a tooth that, while bad and already worn down a fair bit, still functions to some degree. It's like if you injured your finger, but you can still use your hand, just not to the degree you could before, and they decide to cut your hand off. What sense does that make? Was there a plan after the teeth were pulled, or was the plan just to pull them and that's it? Were the plan to pull the tooth and replace it with something, I likely would have said no, but it would at least have made sense. Somewhat interesting side note. The building seemed fresh with a crazy layout. My guess it had been refurbished in the last decade or so. The pain was neutral colours and crazy artwork everywhere. From my limited understanding, this is to keep patients calm and to lessen anxiety. (Leave a comment)
March 20th, 2012
10:56 pm [Link]	An unusual tooth loss My track record with teeth has been a bad one, but today would have to arguably my biggest loss, and most bizarre. In short, the crown of my right top fang popped off, and I mean that. It was 10 hours ago and I still have a hard time believing it. Bit into a chocolate bar, at which point it felt funny. When I bit into a burger, the enamel crown just popped off, leaving a perfectly shaped, mini version behind. It's such a perfect removal I could just slip it back on. Really weird. I thought of having it glued back it, but don't have a dentist. I thought of getting a home dentistry kit and doing it that way, but I imagine it popped off for a reason and I really don't want an infection. As usual with my last few losses. No pain, but I also haven't eaten while I weight up my lack of options. The dentine is really soft. It's also a big loss because you use those front teeth all the time, and it shows when you smile, so I'll likely look like a yokel. I also learned I have this occasion habit of biting my lip because I'll go to do it, but don't have the reach any more. Likely it will rot or wear down fast. Then capping won't be an option. Could get a bridge if pushed. It could also leave me with bad breath. Not alot I can do unfortunatly. As said, it is soft, and I could try a home dentist kit and risk infection, but then what would I do? I've got little choice but to leave it for tonight anyway. Will avoid solid food and see what happens, maybe talk to some friends and see if there is any practical advice. As for the why, best guess is to imagine a cone wide side down, unshiftible. Cut a bit off the side and you could snap it that direction. I'd imagine that such a thing happened either when I bit into the chocolate or just over time, until it formed a an almost perfect ring, and enough to just slide the cone off. Tags: teeth (Leave a comment)
October 3rd, 2011
07:29 pm [Link]	Points Are Pointless Even as a kid, I was never one for high scores, but even those that used to love them seem to have given up on high scores. Despite plenty of games proudly boasting about having leaderboards as if it's still a big deal, no one seems to care. There are various reasons why I think this is the case. First and formost, internet leaderboards are pointless. In fact the game that inspired this rant serves as a perfect example. Toy Soldiers: Cold War has leaderboards, but the first 3 or 4 on each board are one extremely high, and vary specific, number such as 27,254,258. It's clear that a lucky glitch, or more likely hacks, have allowed those players to get that number. Just below those are a few dozen perfect and near perfect runs at about 300,000 or whatever the highest score is on the specific map. In the face of this, everyone I know, myself included, see that they are 250,000th in the world and say "Meh, that's good enough.". Not that there's any point to leaderboards. It's not like people will know your name and women swoon as you walk down the street. The few who do mention their leaderboard positions tend to come off as liers or arseholes. But what about friend leaderboards? Those are good right? Well, not really. It's the same problem but on a smaller scale. I keep my friends lists small a freind having the game at all is a bit of an event. Even if that isn't the case, having them care is a problem, and all this assumes equal skill and will to play. Be honest, when was the last time you booted up Geomatry Wars or PacMan DX at all, let alone to beat a friends score? Toy Soldiers also shows another common problem, most games are not the right material for leaderboards. So games like Geometry Wars are fine, but Toy Soldiers is a very short game that uses leaderboards as an excuse for that length, as you should "replay missions for higher scores", but you are ultimatly limited as the near perfect set up is just a google search away. Once that peak is hit there is no where to go, as such, no one cares. Then we get to the biggest shame of all. Xbox acheivments. When these first appeared, it was good. I didn't own a Xbox at the time, but people were comparing gamer scores, making friendly rivalries over who could hit 10,000 first. It made high scores matter again. Then the crap happened. We all know the easy acheivment games from back then. Avatar: The Last Airbender, King Kong, TMNT, and after a while people realised that it was faster and easier to raise your score not through skill or 100%ing games, but by getting all the quick, easy, early acheivments in games, meaning that the key to a high gamerscore was deep pockets and quick turnaround. People still raced for "first to 1000" in indervidual games for a little while, but that quickly died down. The problem is not one that can be easy fixed as it would take to much effort and money to keep cheaters off the boards and to balence achievments across all games. Unless that happens I don't think people are going to care about high scores. Tags: games, rant (Leave a comment)
June 25th, 2011
12:08 am [Link]	Finding People So, a few weeks ago I started looking up old friends. People who I knew, but grew appart or stopped talking due to something stupid. While I'm still looking for an old school friend (people say facebook is good for that) I managed to find an old Xbox pal I used to talk to and get on with regularly. I recently found him. How? Turns out Halo keeps track of all the games you play, and who with, so with a little detective work, I found his XBox Live name and discovered he was on FA. Small world eh? We stopped talking, I kid you not, over what Xbox game we would play one day. Hopfully that silliness is water under the bridge. It's also worth noting that bit of drama was the insperation for Max Failure. Max was a character who Sabre was always around. Sabre having to put up with his petty behavior and stupidity. He was often a stand in for the general public to as well as anyone I found annoiying. Until now, I kept this a secret not wanting to upset the guy or pick on someone. Since I don't draw comics anymore, the character will likely be dead and burried. Whatever happens, this is one more part of my life I can close the book on as if it was that leather backed bookmark I got from Beamish when I was kid. Tags: comic, life (Leave a comment)
May 23rd, 2011
07:16 pm [Link]	25 And Done I haven't posted for a while. I will explain why as well as my current status. On March 23rd I turned 25. Since then, I have been doing alot of thinking about my situation, my life and the future. Being 25 is the last posative milestone. Unlike most, I have never had a big party at the major milestones. It's not like I had a say in matter, just the way things turned out. Along with those parties I also lack the typical life experiences. First drink, first car, first kiss, I have done none of those. Now I am 25 I am now starting my decine. This is a problem. Never having a girlfriend at my peak now means my chance of getting one are almost zero. I don't have the looks, charisma or money to attract a nice lady the usual way, and I have no experience in wooing ladies which effectivly elimates me from the running. Not that there is anyone left to get. The only single women I have met around my age are single for a reason. Love and social life- 0 Career and ambision wise I have nothing either. I'm smart, no question, and I spent my time in college doing work rather then chasing women and getting drunk. At the time I thought that was the right thing to do, but as explained above, that killed my chance at love. Even so, after college I quickly learned being smart and skilled is not what employers want. They want connections. Being born into a working class family and having worked through college rather then partying means that I have no connections. Career and ambisions- 0 One thing that is strange is that over the years I was always told I would do great things, because of how smart I was. I was also told not to waste my times with 'fads' and 'silly non-jobs' such as games or animation. Now look how much those things are worth. Even those who conspired against me did nothing in terms of preventing me from going places. It was my lack of friends. So, my future is going no where meaningful due to my past experiences (or lack thereof) I am now stuck in a rut. As such, there is nothing to write about. When I started this blog years ago, I vowed that it would never become a "got up and had a piece of toast" type blog where people just chronicle there boring day-to-day activities, but that's all I have now. Even if I was to type my day to day activities it would just be a daily copy paste of "Got up, brushed teeth, played games, fish fingers for tea, bed." It's gotten to the point where a trip to the shops is concidered an exciting break from the norm. Over the last few months I have become more and more apethetic and things aren't as fun as they used to be. I occationally find myself lying in bed for a whole day just staring at the ceiling. This is just what I've noticed, I'm guessing it's had a bigger impact then I perceive as my friends have stopped talking to me. They give some crappy excuse about washing the dog (That's a joke of sorts. A mixture of the 2 crappy excuses of "I'm washing my hair" and "I'm walking the dog") and never call back despite promises. So, with my life being a variation on groundhog day, what is their left to write about? My game projects perhaps? A while ago I discovered game maker. A program that handles all the horrible stuff and makes it quick and easy to make 2D games. It allows me to make the games I want to make. Even so, the games I'd love to make, my magnum opus-es, are 3d and complex in comparison and as such are not realistic for someone to make on their own in 1 life time, not yet anyway. The 2D games are just games I'd like to make, but not that much. As such when the going gets tough/tedious my desire to make the game is outdone by the effort required. As such, I doubt my current projects will ever be finished. If I do finish them, they will likely be to crappy to release and will disappear into all the other crap out there, assuming they aren't so embarrassing that I wouldn't admit to making them. So, that's what's happening in a nutshell. As such, there is nothing really to write about. I might post updates from time to time, but don't expect much. Current Mood: Nothing Tags: games, life (Leave a comment)
May 21st, 2011
01:47 am [Link]	A Quick History Of "Paw Day" May 20th 2011 has just passed by. If you browsed the art sites, particularly the furry sites like Fur Affinity, that day you might have noticed alot of images of animal and anthro feet marked "Happy Paw Day!" or something similar. Since I couldn't find any other site that explained what it is, where it came from or why, I thought I would give a quick history of it. It all started on May 20th 2010. An anti-muslim protest in the name of free speach called "Draw Mohammed Day" appeared in responce to the threats of violence from Muslims towards anyone who drew anything they considered offencive. The day was a big success and blah blah blah. At the same time a furry artist and foot fetishest called Herro, for whatever reason, didn't want to draw mohammed. So he/she made the same day, May 20th, Paw Day, where artists would draw paws, paws being anthro feet, and the artists having an anthro and/or foot fetish. Whereas draw Mohammed day was a one off or very least had extremely decreased participation in 2011, Paw Day was very niche and if anything has gotten more popular. Tags: furry (Leave a comment)
April 21st, 2011
07:48 pm [Link]	Limited I saw a film on Tuesday called Limitless. It's a film about a man who takes a drug that makes him super smart. Pretty good, worth seeing. However, while it was a good time the one thing that bothers me about it is the way everyone loves him, when the reality is quite the opposate. Now, this is not to bash the film. Suspension of disbelief and all that. I am also aware that what I'm about to say will make me sound egotistical and narassistic. I'm pretty smart. It's a side effect of my autism. I'm smart, some might even say a savant. I have great memory compared to most able to recite books and films almost perfectly from memory, or so I'm told. In school I was way ahead of everyone else, I was smarter and more knowlagable on college IT subjects then my tutors, and I didn't even have a PC at the time. I have never studied for an exam. I got it all first time round. I even have the enhanced awareness the limitless guy has. True, I'm not AS smart, but I'm closer then most. I mention this because in limitless, when he flexes his super brain women are swoon (even jumping into bed with him) and everyone wants to be his business partner. In reality such actions get you called a geek by the ladies, and people don't as much want to work with you as much as keep at arms reach. You are a threat to their career, and being smart doesn't mean good looking, so the women aren't interested. Even ones that claim to like brains end up with idiot joe 6 pack. In Limitless, most of his brain is used to make money, escape from dangerous situations, and then to change America for the better. His interlenct is applauded, the reality is that people love it until you turn it on them. People love to watch me give honest opinions or tear down peoples arguments right up until it goes against their beliefs, in which case I'm an insensitive idiot who doesn't know what I'm talking about. The big problem is the title. Spoilers, but in the film he goes from down on his luck writer to the american president/senator in about 18 months, as well as made some very powerful friends along the way, he virtually has no limit to what he can achieve. Me on the otherhand, I went from boy genius the man genius who never moved out his pairents house. I was held back by self rightious idiots. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the point. Smarts made him limitless, in a way, my smarts limited me. Funny that. Tags: film, life (Leave a comment)
April 5th, 2011
01:45 am [Link]	April Fools 2011 It's that time of year again. So, what do we have in April Fools sites this year? Here's the notable stuff in desending order of greatness (best at the top, worst on the bottom) As always, Blizzard delivered the goods with Crabby, a WoW helper similar to the microsoft paperclip. Very funny advice and some hillarious quotes. I even appeared on the pages of the site too. Not far behind that the patch notes for Starcraft 2s next patch that inluded stuff such as "Fixed bug that mean Terrain players could lose". Also they showed a Kinect version of Starcraft 2. There was other stuff such as a iphone app Transmute app isn't as good, but still fun. Youtube added a 1911 button that makes any video sepia tone and replaces the soundtrack with piano music. Great with trailers. Metroid Database had a good post about recovering the mythical Metroid 64 complete with screenshots. A trailer for a Halo film as a Bollywood movie. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4DHllroiqM Steelseries, the game perifial company, "released" beer headphones, like a bear hat, but headphones. Sven co-op had a ok one where they claim they have market researched the game into blandness. Krystal Archive had a pretty poor showing this year. Previous years included such things as changing the site the Renamon Archive or putting the whole site into the made up language Krystal speaks. This year the admin basicly posted "I've got a job with retro studios so I'm shutting down the site" The big 'why did they bother?' stamp of shame though goes to fur affinity with a ego stroking so called "joke" which can be summed up as "OMG the staff characters swaped species abgdeurghed!" There were plenty other this year, but most of it was not worth noting. Tags: april fools, funny (Leave a comment)
January 14th, 2011
04:48 am [Link]	That One Scene and Sex in Games I don't like Moviebob's Game Overthinker and Extra Credits. For those who don't know, Extra Credits is a series of rants by a group of college students with nebulous ties to the games industry. (eg. One is a 'graphics designer', but that could be making the game graphics, or designing a letter head) The gist of which is to take games seriously as an artistic medium. They do rants on how games need to be less sexist, how indie games should be funded, free speach in games ect. Moviebob is an internet film reviewer who became famous (at least with people I know) for this hillarious Transformers 2 review. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/797-Transformers-Revenge He is also did a series called the Game Over Thinker, which is very similar to Extra Credits with rants where he says we all have to stop being mindless, unthinking halo fans. Alot of their stuff (imo) is condesending, old news, nieve wishful thinking, hyporcritcal, ignorant of the subject matter, simply wrong or all of the above. A perfect example of this is Moviebobs recent video where he accuses Halo of promoting fascism and racism. Fans of them though hold them up as infalible and do a service to gamers by giving a voice to the more thoughtful gamers. However, just because I disagree with them 99% of the time does not mean I instantly hate anything they say simply because I'm against them, and this is one thing I want to talk about. In one of Moviebob's videos he reviews the film Black Swan. If you've not heard of it, think of it as the lesbian version of Brokeback Mountain with a ballet and horror themes. In the review he raises the point that going to see a film for the one super sexy scene is no different then seeing a film for it's twist ending, or a cool fight scene, ect. This goes neatly with the idea that adult games are the most juvinile, and sex in games is limited to women with big tits and porn. This got me thinking. What is the differece between playing Bioshock for it's atmosphere, playing Mass Effect for it's story, and playing DoA for the boobs? I have played a bunch of really dumb games recently. Alien Shooter, Aliens Vs Preditor (2010), Frontlines, arguably Halo counts. However, while they are frowned upon by most, I've had much more fun with said games then I ever had with Braid or The Void. Some say games should takle polatics and gay issues more. Why? Blacksite and Iji did polatics and philosphy and came across as really dumb because of it. What's wrong with the Halo/Bioshock method and having that stuff as a part of the narative without beating the player round the head constantly? As Livejournal user Siege said "Those games which do tackle politics and social issues without breaking immersion (provided immersion is a goal of the game) do so by not focusing specifically on cramming the content in your face; rather, the content is always there in front of you, and the design of the game has you work your way through it for yourself rather than telling you outright what conclusion it wants. Just like a written story built on obvious moralizing isn't as readable as a story where the decisions and consequences make sense (despite an outcome where the bad guy actually looks like a bad guy by the end of it)." Given the option between 2 games, one bad but full of gay rights issues, or a good game about nothing in particular, I know which I would have. Tags: art, deeper meaning, games, indie, rant (Leave a comment)
December 30th, 2010
12:55 pm [Link]	Post Christmas Card I got a Christmas card in the post yesterday. However, it's post Christmas and the decorations are down and back in the loft. Question. Open it now or wait until next year? (2 comments \| Leave a comment)

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