Hmm…

Everyone knows those guys. The ones who crowd around the television screen feverishly pressing buttons while swigging whatever the cheapest beer happened to be at the gas station earlier that night. They yell when they make a wrong play and cheer when they one-up their opponent. Exams, girlfriends, family pets, and all others get left in the dust that is caused by the Madden obsession.

I’m no stranger to gaming myself. I own various systems beginning with the Atari and advancing to the popular Sony Playstation 2. I’ve been addicted to helping Mario save his princess, committing Grand Theft Auto, street racing in Japan, and leading the Bulls to victory but the one game that I can not stand is Madden. I’ve tried it but I have to say I absolutely hate it. In fact, I don’t know of a single girl that is a Madden fan. They might be out there but I’ve never encountered them. So for the next 30 days, I’m sentencing myself to my personal hell, 60 minutes of daily Madden.

Will the addiction overtake me? Will I too become one of those people who neglects everything around me to play Madden? I guess we’ll find out as I blog daily about the game, the people I know who play it, and video game obsessions in general.

To keep everything easily separated from the rest of my posts, I have set up a blog account at http://whenmaddenattacks.blogspot.com/ which I will use only for this project. This is the first post from that blog which was posted on March 17.

Tags: nms_umw_08

When I was younger, Archie comics served as my constant companions. I was hooked on Betty, Veronica, Archie, Reggie, Jughead, Moose, Ethel, etc. and their drama filled story blocks. I actually still have all of them in boxes under my bed at home. Comics are just easier to understand. Not only do you have the dialogue but like in movies or television, you also have the picture to go along with it.

Comics also help with the visualization of a novel. Due in part to my comic obsession and the blessing of an overactive imagination, I can read a book and completely picture the story and characters in my mind. I can create the movie adaptation of the novel in my mind. It allows me to really delve into the story because I can see the two kids walking down the road.

Sometimes, comics can be used in the academic realm. In 295, we read a novel that was actually in the form of a thick comic book. It was about a boy and the images that he conjured up in his imagination. Think Calvin and Hobbes but smarter. It was one of the easiest novels that we read because you could really see what the boy was thinking. If it had only been in traditional text form, most of what was happening would have been lost.

I think the same idea comes across in novels that have little pictures in them. Not photographs or cartoony pictures, but rather those little pencil drawn, etched things. It also for some basis of visualization for everyone who is reading the novel. It ensures that everyone is on the same page.

Perhaps we give children picture books in order to teach them the art of visualization. A small child goes from books with all pictures to books with text and pictures to books with only text. It allows children to prepare their minds in order to visualize and fully understand what their reading later in life.

Tags: umw_nms_s08

Apparently our class aren’t the only ones who are still fond of the Oregon Trail….Click here to play an Oregon Trail-ish game that I happened to run across while randomly surfing the internet

Tags: umw_nms_s08

So I’m reading all of this fun stuff about kids programming robots and I’m feeling a little left out. We never got to do that kind of stuff in my schools. We did have a pet gerbil that ran around in one of those balls and a bear that the kid of the week got to take home, but sadly no robots. It wasn’t like we didn’t have computers. My elementary school had a large computer lab and every class had time in which they rented out the lab. The computers where huge! They were the old school kind that took those gigantic floppy disks where you slid them in and the pressed that lever down. Then the computer would make this loud noise and sometimes you would have to switch disks in between games. The sound quality was really whacked out too. It wasn’t really so much music as it was a bunch of different notes that made sounds. I’m feeling kind of old now…. Even in first grade, we would be able to go in there and play things like Oregon Trail, Dino Park Tycoon, Word Munchers, and Number Munchers but we never played with robots. It’s crazy how far technology has came since then anyway. If I described my old elementary school computers to an elementary school kid today they would think I was crazy or ancient. I remember reading in my Weekly Reader (did anyone else have those?) that some day everything would be run by computers and every home would have one. They were completely right (and incidentally, they seem to have correctly predicted numerous things). I hope I’m not going to be one of those people where the technology passes them by. I don’t want to be calling in my grandkids to set the clock on my VCR….

Here is the link to Virtual Apple 2 where you can play the Oregon Trail (the old school version that I played in Lee Hill)…Enjoy!!!

Tags: umw_nms_s08

I would agree that television is addictive. Everyone gets hooked on certain shows, like Lost or Grey’s Anatomy. Or some get sucked into reality television like Flavor of Love or Dancing with the Stars. Think about American Idol. Without viewers, that show wouldn’t exist. Look at the people who have won AI but whom didn’t have the support of the people. They weren’t the favorite to win so they haven’t been as successful. Several have any lost their recording contracts like Taylor Hicks or Ruben Studdard. Their big winners, Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood were the favorites to win so they released their first albums already having a band of followers. Kelly Clarkson has successfully escaped her AI identity and has formed her own identity as a musician. I’ve read some interviews with her where she has remarked on how hard that has been to achieve. Notice that she doesn’t show up on AI like some of the others.

Also, the video touches on how their is no privacy is the US. I would agree with that as well. Society is addicted to celebrity gossip. Videos and pictures are posted on the internet and published in magazines creating a million, possibly billion, dollar industry. People enjoy the lack of privacy. They want to know everything no matter if its their business or not. If this were to happen to regular people, chaos would ensue. Everyone wants their own privacy but its ok if someone else’s is taken away. I guess Myspace is a way of getting rid of personal privacy but with that, you can choose what is known about you or who sees it, just like Facebook.

Some of the things that this man is theorizing are far out. Especially the thing about booze and natives. I feel like this is a 70s video so maybe there wasn’t as much backlash from saying something like that as there is now. Television has altered the perception of teenagers??? Interesting….

Tags: umw_nms_s08

The article below is from Foxnews.com. Here is the link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,3313…

When does gaming go too far?

DELHI, La. — A call mistakenly made by a victorious video gamer led to his arrest on an outstanding warrant.

Authorities arrested Thomas Ballard, 29, of Delhi, early Monday after a woman reported receiving a late-night call from someone saying, “I have killed them all.”

Ballard’s number showed up on the woman’s caller ID; he’d called by mistake, meaning instead to get a buddy to talk-up his success in an Xbox game, said Sgt. Julie Lewis, a spokeswoman for the Louisiana State Police.

Authorities following up at the address, to investigate whether there had been any foul play, found no evidence of wrongdoing, she said. But they did find, in the process of identifying Ballard, that he had a 5-year-old warrant out of Baton Rouge, charging him with failure to appear on a possession of cocaine charge.

Ballard was booked into the Richland Parish Detention Center for extradition to Baton Rouge.

“It was weird the way this all came down,” Lewis said Tuesday. “This isn’t something you could just make up.”

Tags: umw_nms_s08

I can’t remember if it was in this class that we talked about schools regulating student’s usage of the internet or not. The conversation was about how schools would give students computers to use but the computers were so locked down that they could barely use google. I found some articles today on the regulation of blogs. Back in 2006, a huge uproar was caused in an Indiana school district when the schools decided to try to regulate what students do on the internet when they aren’t in school. The schools had a problem with Myspace and worried that things posted there would affect the dynamic within the schools. Currently, this kind of thing is coming into the news again.

Students from some of the largest colleges and universities in the country are fighting back against CampusJuicy.com, a website where bloggers can post gossip and pictures about other students. The website boasts that its posts are 100% anonymous and the posts are usually degrading and embarrassing for the students that they feature. About 57 schools are currently featured on the site and many are starting to ban it. Unfortunately, under the law, CampusJuicy bears no responsibility for its content and protects its users from libel through its anonymity. On the actual site, according to the Washington Post article, it states, “our terms and conditions require users to agree not to post anything that is defamatory, libelous, etc.” But a few paragraphs later, the blog implies that it will rebuff anything short of a public safety query: “If your school calls upset about some girl being called a slut, we’re not handing over access to our server data. If the LAPD calls telling us there is a shooting threat, you better believe we’re gonna help them …” Seems to me like sometimes the internet goes to far. I know people are obsessed at this campus with Facebook but what if everyone suddenly became obsessed with CampusJuicy instead. Would our campus resemble the dog-eat-dog world of the paparazzi filled LA? We have a group on Facebook already that gets close to this type of surveillance called “Overheard at UMW.” While that seems innocent enough, I’m sure it would be easy for it to get out of hand.

Also related, Myanmar is cracking down on blogging as a country. They are monitoring the internet, blocking blogs, and arresting people who use the internet as way of expressing their frustrations with the government. How would this work in our country? How many people would go to jail for criticizing the government? Thinking about all of the anti-Bush people out there, I think the jails wouldn’t be large enough to hold them all.

I’ve attached both links to the articles below in case you’re interested in reading them.

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con…

 http://www.ibnlive.com/news/myanmar-step…

Tags: umw_nms_s08

Anyone have anything narrowed down for their project? Anyone working on their project yet? I’m still in the brainstorming mode myself. I have tons of ideas but no focus currently. I think theres a lot to be said for the current Writer’s Strike and its effects on new media. Internet based shows like Quarterlife are taking off right now because there isn’t anything else new to watch. Maybe something can be done in that realm. Blogs are also huge right now with people like Perez Hilton becoming well known for blogging his celebrity gossip thoughts and doodling on celeb photos. There are also tons of interesting programs that could be mastered and used to create something. I think I just have to keep brainstorming and I’m sure something will grab my attention.

I saw a comic today in the Washington Post that refers to this class and its topics in many different ways. In short, it was perfect. So I’ve decided to add it here for everyone’s benefit.

Tags: umw_nms_s08

This is something that I started noticing when people would bring in the Asian magazines. It goes for any cultural magazines. The ads are always different. It might be the same product that we have here but the company tries to make it appeal to the consumers of the magazine. Here is a Japanese version of the Mac vs PC commercials. What is really weird is that the two men even kind of resemble the two men in the American version.

Here is also a Japanese Fanta commercial.

If these don’t show up on the blog, click on the heading and it will take you to my blog page so you can view them.

Nicholas Cage in a Japanese commercial

Jack Bauer advertises CalorieMate