It’s passed it’s use by date, it’s finished, no longer associated with the purpose that it was created for, now a depressing wasteland of ‘wannabes’ and dreams. Facebook is the network that use to be a cool little place where you and your friends could catch up, talk, post photos and excite each other with the comment notifications. But now Facebook isn’t like that anymore, this was 2 years ago, before the user-base suddenly jolted into the 500 millions and every school-kid left MySpace to clog up Facebook’s arteries.

Now there is so many people on Facebook, that there’s no longer anything social going on, the social sponges that live their life in their little huddle of popularity, get along just fine with their gang of 20, 25, despite the fact their friend count reads 1000+. But for those that want that easy going friend-hangout… Well you’re time has come and gone, now Facebook grants you access to more people than you want to acknowledge. It doesn’t matter if you don’t add heaps of people, if your friends have heaps of people on their list then you’ll be lucky to hear anything from them at all. With the news feed clogged up with statuses and quiz games from constant-Facebook-accomodants you no longer get to see anything from you’re actual friends. Because we’re all adding people we know these days, but not the people who we actually KNOW.

I used to be rather happy when I got a notification telling me  that someone has posted to my wall, now I just delete the email and forget about it, because the only rubbish that’s ever posted on my wall is, “John answered a question about Ben! Click here to find out what he said!” how ridiculous, if you were to click on that stupid box then you’d open up the app, allow it to access your personal info and then answer questions about each of your friends 10 times before being able to read what the ruddy question was. It’s a stupid luring trick designed to get more people using their app, and people are that stupid to use it that we’re all getting, ‘…answered a question about you!…’ posts on our wall. I haven’t had an actual person post anything on my wall at all, probably for the past 4-5 months, just ‘question about you’ apps, viruses designed to trick ignorant monkeys and the occasional: “Jeff sent you s@#& in farmville!”

Hmmm, why do I keep using names that begin with a ‘J’ for all my examples?

To say the least, it ‘sucks.’

I don’t go on Facebook as often anymore, because if anything it just makes me sad. Just saying that line sounds like a Play School host asking kids questions about their emotions, but then again, Play School never insists on answering hundreds of questions about friends in order to get one answer about you in return, which turns out to be: “What is Ben’s favourite colour?”,”dunno.”

Yeah, yeah, okay, so I tried it once, but now I ignore just about anything on facebook that ‘offers’ me something, because they’re all the same.

Where was I? Oh yes, Facebook makes me depressed is depressing, it’s just bland, nothing ever happens on there that actually makes me feel happy anymore. I feel better when I’m not on Facebook, or when I don’t bother looking at it. My friends hardly post anymore, it’s just a constant clatter from all those people that just sit on Facebook their entire life, just posting whatever comes to their mind, in a short space of time…[No, I’m not changing this post into a Dr Seus book] and I said in my post Activities of the Lively, these people then tell me that I don’t have a life, simply because ‘I do nothing’ and I’m ‘not social.’

Here me now, Facebook is no longer social, I’ve been more social on Nation Of Design than I have on Facebook, ever since Nation Of Design has it’s own mini-social-network, but it’s not clogged up like Facebook, it has a nice home-styled community of really great people, no stupid questions to answer, no farmville to chip-in, just doing what we love, graphics and art.

Facebook is just a big long list of people saying: “backstabbing slut”, “feeling prime for the weekend” and “like for a like”. It’s all boring useless rubbish.

And I’m sick of it.

Yours Ever So Truly,

Ben

Hello!

Now I was a bit late to post this the other day, but I’m going to post it NOW.

Basically Apple announced the release of iOS 5, Mac OS X Lion and their new iCloud service sometime during September. Now If you know me, you’ll know that I’m a bit of an Apple Fanboy but stop there! You can’t bag me out for being an Apple fanboy if you have an iPhone, iPod, iPad or iMac . . . because unless you have android . . . uh . . . nevermind, I’m going crazy.

Anyways.

What I’m most looking forward to this September is iOS 5, which adds a better notification system (yes, I know, Android’s had a notification system since forever . . . sigh), it makes the iOS completely independent, meaning it won’t need a computer to sync with anymore, it brings some new built in apps and the iCloud service which means you can download all the stuff you’ve already purchased FREE for no extra charge. Which is great.

The other things that are new are only minor, (in my opinion) like built in Twitter, crop and image controls in the photos app, better Safari, WiFi sync . . . wait, I quite LOVE THE IDEA OF WIFI SYNC . . . *cough* sorry about that, heh . . . just burst out all of a sudden. My apologies. No seriously though, I was using the WiFi sync when my iPod was jailbroken not too long ago, it takes longer, but if you just have your iPod lying on your bedside table during the day it will sync all your songs and stuff right over to iTunes, which is really handy, and automatic.

Apple’s iCloud service, at this stage, only shines a few benefits for me, being able to download purchases for free. That’s probably the only thing I’ll use that for, because I don’t like the idea of syncing all of my personal data up to some hard drive in the sky, especially with all the hacking that’s been going on with the websites like Sony, Code Masters, phones and  government websites.

This has been a short post, but the reason is, there’s really no point in me repeating everything that’s on the Apple website. If you go to any news website everything that they have about iOS 5, Lion and iCloud is all the same stuff that’s on the website, it’s pretty stupid.

So go check out the Apple website here, and find out more about iOS 5 if you’re interested.

Thanks,

Ben

Hey folks, don’t expect a really, really large heartfelt-post . . . I’m doing the equivalent to a dine and dash, except no laws are broken and no one leaves farting like trooper because they were forced to get up and go while all the gases were swirling around insi . . . yeah, okay that’s really crossed the line. Sorry.

No what I was going to tell you about is my involvement in the website Nation Of Design, I should be producing a series of tutorials for the site soon, just giving some basic graphics tutorials and so forth. If you’re already a member of Nation Of Design you can find me here. I go by the name Benagain, you know, it’s basically, “Oh no, it’s Ben . . . again.’

That’s where that name originated . . .

[important]Anyways I just uploaded some Nation Of Design wallpapers, which you can see the topic for here, or you can download the Nation Of Design wallpapers I made right here.[/important]

Well! That’s it, a quick micro-blog . . . hmmm maybe I should use twitter after all.

Thanks,

Ben

Well for those that don’t know, the E3 gaming event is an annual convention for the announcements of new gaming technologies, this year it’s held on the 7th of June right through til the 9th, and already what’s been released/announced has been pretty exciting.

343 Industries, the company that is now responsible for the Halo franchise after Microsoft put an end to Bungie Studios, has announced the release of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary on the 15th November 2011. This ‘new’ Halo title is a complete remake of the first ever Halo game released, just with revamped graphics, high def-audio and it also looks as though there will also be the assassination abilities from the most recent Halo title Halo Reach. In my opinion though . . . it doesn’t actually look that better.

Here’s my first complaint for 343 Industries . . . WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MASTER CHIEF? As you can see above, the original Master Chief kicks the remake’s ass. The new armour looks ridiculous, his helmet just doesn’t look the part, now that 343 Industries has taken control are we playing Halo anymore? Or some try hard echo of what Halo use to be?

Anyways, the campaign has been completely reworked, as you can see I’ve laid out the original, followed by the remake for reference. You can definitely see the Halo Reach engine coming into play, especially with the one below, which has gone from a block-like . . . block . . . to the sleek-shiny metal that we’ve seen in Halo 3 and Halo Reach.

My major problem with what they’re doing, is the fact that they’re remaking  a historic landmark, not that it’s a bad thing, but when you try and do a remake of a legacy there’s a huge expectation. Yeah doing up all the graphics is good, but the legacy is what it is, because of . . . what it is. At the end of the day, people will still go back and play the original Halo Combat Evolved because it was the first Halo game, the sole reason, is because it’s the first Halo game, they want to go back and play it old-school and see where the franchise all started. It’s like all us gaming-geeks that still have the Duke Nukem and Legend Of Zelda games, we play them because they’re classics.

Screenshots (Click to enlarge)

A familiar level? Is it not?

This is the all new look of the level “The Silent Cartographer.”

The maps appear to have been revamped pretty well, the campaign has been completely regenerated, along with all of the multiplayer maps.

Hello, how are you going.

The last thing that I should be thinking about during the school holidays is, well, school. But it just so happens that I’ve been eager to talk to you about the stuff we’ve been learning during math class (no, I’m not losing my mind.) The main reason for my sudden story-telling urge, is that my math class is in fact being taught by . . . wait for it . . . by the Master Of The Universe.

You heard me correctly! The Master Of The Universe is teaching my math class! Isn’t that exciting? In fact so exciting that I’ve just ended 3 sentences on one line just by using exclamation marks and a question thingy-ma-bob. Anyways, when I say the Master of The Universe I’m simply going by what he said, I don’t know if he can actually bend time, mold black holes into the shape of Kyle Sandilands’s career (which isn’t that hard) or even compact the swirling storms of Jupiter into the space the size of a 5 cent coin just by winking.

I honestly don’t know, but he said that he’s the Master Of The Universe, and he’s a teacher, so he must be telling the truth. (Just in case your thick . . . I’m joking, I don’t seriously believe that he’s the Master Of The Universe, that role is already taken by me. (Just in case you’re really, really thick, that was a joke too.(Gee, look at me using brackets like a programmer…)))

What I want to talk about though, is what we’re learning, trigonometry.

In trigonometry you have a hypotenuse, the longest side, an opposite, the side opposite theta, an adjacent, the side below/next to theta and then you have theta.

Theta is a Greek numeral, but it’s used in trigonometry a bit like a pronumeral, it’s essentially an unknown value. It is the number of degrees in that corner of the triangle, in this case theta is 40 degrees.

Opposite isn’t a Greek numeral, it’s simply a value opposite of the theta sign, you’ll need to know where the opposite, hypotenuse and adjacent is when figuring out trigonometry questions.

Adjacent is the value below the theta sign. Remember if you are working with a triangle which has been rotated, then you’re adjacent might not be below theta.

Anyways! The one I wanted to mention here was the hypotenuse it’s the longest side of a right-angled triangle. But why am I talking about the hypotenuse? Well, it just so happens that I misread it a few times, and referred to it as hypo-tennis-shoe which is exactly what it looks like when you read it quickly, well, not really . . . but it sounds like it if you read it ten times reeeeallly fast.

[important]Hypo-ten-u-se, maybe it looks more like tissue, or hypo-ten-use . . . but it’s actually pronounced ‘hi-pot-en-youse’ . . .[/important]

Anyways! Back to the Master Of The Universe!

Our math teacher, a relief teacher who I won’t name the name of because he goes by the title “The Master Of The Universe”, has an interesting way of teaching. He’s always drawing these really weird pictures to explain things, along with using weird analogies such as sunbathing and nighttime-snooping to describe tangent and adjacent.

It’s rather exciting to say the least, each math lesson TMOTU (You know what it stands for . . .  I’m getting sick of typing it) comes up with so many weird and wacky stories, that Paul Jennings or Steven Moffat would go into shock, throwing their careers out the drain because they simply can’t compete with the mind that is TMOTU.

To the right you can see a ‘re-enactment’ of one of the wacky pictures TMOTU drew, as you can see, to find the opposite you have to imagine a man standing at the tip of the triangle where theta is and looking right through to the other side. The opposite.

I tried to re-draw his masterpiece as best as I could, but my drawing skills are no match for the Master Of The Universe…..

Imagine I came into your house at night and shone a flashlight from above directly down into your face, and you screamed out ‘aaaaaah!'”

– The Master Of The Universe describing the adjacent side in correspondence to the theta symbol.

Now I don’t intend to bag anyone out at all, I think that even though his methods seem rather strange and bizarre, they actually work really well. Because us, being the kids we are, take the funny gobbly-goop that he says and pass it on, which is essentially teaching heaps more people, take a look at all the stuff I said about trigonometry above . . . It’s proof that even though he comes across as weird, I think that he’s actually doing it on purpose. A deceptive plan for educating the youth, he’s the Master Of The Universe after all, he knows these things.

Well, I’ll be seeing you later, I’ve got some pretty interesting posts to do during the rest of the holidays, so stay connected.

Thanks,

Ben.