We’re Moving!

Starting today, Reid! is becoming Reid My Blog, and is moving to http://reidmyblog.co.cc/. Why are we moving? Well, we’re moving so we can take full advantage of WordPress, with tons of plug-ins and new themes. We hope you continue to Reid My Blog! So if you’ve bookmarked this page, be sure to move it to boomark http://reidmyblog.co.cc/! Thanks for your support!

Hey Facebook, What The Hell?

[WARNING: Major Rant By A Guy Who's Really Angry At Facebook Today Ahead, Proceed With Extreme Caution] Seriously Facebook. What the hell? You used to be so pure and simple and now… now I don’t even know what you are. You’re a mess. You’re in shambles. You’re overcrowded by useless apps and stupid online games about farms and the Mafia. You’re no longer Facebook, you’re the disabled, mentally challenged, and deformed child of Myspace and Twitter. Facebook, you suck.

First of all, I would like to explain why I feel the way I do. Facebook (originally called The Facebook) was started in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes as a way for college kids to connect. Back in 2004, MySpace ruled the social networking scene, but the times were ‘a changin’. The Facebook soon gained steam because of it’s ease of use and it’s clean and simple design. The Facebook dropped it’s name in 2005, finally able to purchase the domain http://facebook.com. It expanded to High Schools in 2005, and opened up for everybody in 2006. And since then, Facebook has taken off as the largest social network site on the internet.

And this is where the fun begins. Here’s a slideshow of Facebook’s profile evolution from 2005 to 2009. Tadaa! Notice a trend? It gets more and more complicated all the way up to the last one, which is Facebook Lite. Lite is basically a copy of Twitter, but we’ll get to that later. As you can see, up to 2006, Facebook’s profiles were simple and easy to read. Then, in 2007 the interface becomes extremely cluttered. Apps start appearing, the navigation bar is confusing, and it’s just way too complicated. 2008 brings no more improvement, just making Facebook more complicated. In fact, it sparked a whole controversy about how Facebook changed it’s UI suddenly and without warning. Zuckerberg was able to contain the damage, but only barely. Over 7 million people joined groups to change the UI back to what it was, demonstrating Facebook’s inability to communicate with it’s users. So, pretty much, Facebook’s profiles were messed up from 2007-2009 (they still are). But, a new type of profile was shown in the last slide, Facebook Lite (http://lite.facebook.com/). Facebook Lite is basically a “we give up” scream from Facebook to the guys over at Twitter. Facebook Lite is Twitter. It’s got the same feel, same look, and same function. And I hate Facebook for it. You don’t copy Twitter and get away with it. That’s not the only thing Facebook has stolen from Twitter. Just today, @ replies, the same ones you see in Twitter, are being released on Facebook. You can now link to an account on Facebook in the same exact way as you can in Twitter. This cannot stand.

As you can see, I hate Facebook. Copying Twitter isn’t the only thing I hate Facebook for. Remember the whole Terms of Service fiasco back in February? Facebook wanted to have the rights to any and all of the content you posted on Facebook. Of course there was public outcry, and the Terms of Service was changed back to what it was. But with this change, we can safely assume that it will be rolled out once again some time in the near future. Once again, this illustrates Facebook’s horrible public relations and how it doesn’t really care about it’s users.

The final thing I loathe about Facebook is the endless amount of apps and quizzes. I @#$%ING HATE QUIZZES! They bombard your notifications with “So and so took the quiz. Compare your results now!” The games are no better. Your timelines are filled with things like “Joe found a Lonely Black Sheep. Oh no!” Why do I care that Joe found a Lonely Black Sheep? Does that inform me? Does that enlighten me about anything? Does that make my day better? No, it just tells me that Joe is a loser because he spends his life playing Farmville and taking Facebook quizzes about when he’s going to die, the first letter of his true love, and what Twilight character he is most like. If Facebook doesn’t get rid of quizzes and games showing up in the timeline, it’s going to gradually lose users to another social network, be it Twitter or something that has yet to be founded.

The name of the game for social networks or any website is simplicity. If you’re website’s not simple, it’s going to fail. Take Twitter for example. It’s the simplest website out there, but it took off and now is also one of the most popular websites. Originally, Facebook was simple. It was simple enough to take away MySpace’s audience, because MySpace had become too complicated. But now, Facebook has become too complicated, and Twitter looks poised to take away it’s audience. Facebook, your time has come. You have copied Twitter to the point of becoming a virtual clone of Twitter. You’ve neglected your users and cluttered your interface. You’ve allowed yourself to be filled with useless apps and ads in every empty space. I’m sorry Facebook, but it’s over. Facebook, you suck.

Why Scribblenauts Is Going To Change Everything [Updated]

[Update] It turns out that a “Hafenschweinswal” is a type of dolphin. Thanks @wondroushippo!

On Tuesday, September 15, the game that has been awarded E3’s “Best of Show” by Gamespot, Gamespy, and IGN, as well as E3’s “Most Innovative Game,” “Best Original Game,” and “Most Pleasant Surprise” by multiple other gaming websites will be released. It’s not being released on the PlayStation 3 or the Xbox 360. The PC or the Wii will not be graced by it’s presence. It’s called Scribblenauts, it’s being released on the Nintendo DS, and it’s going to change everything.

Your first thought coming to mind right now is probably “Why is Scribblenauts so special?” Well, you control a guy, named Maxwell, whose objective is to collect these objects called “Starites.” Sounds like a generic side-scrolling game, right? If you thought that, you’d be wrong. It may sound like a normal game from what I’ve told you, but Scribblenauts has something no game has ever had before; you can summon any object you want. Say you want to summon a Robot Hamster. All you have to do is write, either with a keypad or the stylus on the DS, “Robot Hamster” and it will appear on screen. And no, “Robot Hamster” isn’t the only thing you can summon. You can call the “Flying Spaghetti Monster” and a massive “Mecha” robot to duke it out on screen. You can summon “God” to fight a lowly “Atheist.” You can get a “Hafenschweinswal” (I have no idea what that is either) or a “Kleinuhringar” (an Icelandic donut). In fact, Scribblenauts has over 22,800 words you can call.

This seems great and all, but how is this going to change the video game market? First of all, this could propel portable titles to be thought of with the same prestige as home console games. This was the first time in the history of gaming that a portable title won E3’s “Best of Show” award by not one, not two, but three of the largest and most respected video gaming sites on the internet. With the popularity of games on cell phones, coupled with this prestige for portable titles, it looks like gaming on the go is going to finally get the respect it deserves. Scribblenauts will also affect the video game market as a whole. It’s going to revolutionize the market the way LittleBigPlanet wanted to. For those of you who are not gamers, LittleBigPlanet was a PS3 exclusive title that allowed users to create their own levels and share them with the rest of the world. This was great in concept, but the “LittleBigPlanet” where you shared you levels became crowded with levels about giant dicks, levels that just helped you get all the trophies in the game, and horrible half-finished levels about nothing. Being a PlayStation exclusive wasn’t helping LittleBigPlanet either; it only sold around (insert number of copies sold here) copies . It wanted to let creativity run free, and it failed.

Scribblenauts, on the other hand, has got a lot more going for it than LittleBigPlanet. First of all, it’s for the Nintendo DS, not the PS3, so it’s got a much larger audience. As of August 5, 2009, the Playstation 3 is 24 million strong worldwide. Compare that to the Nintendo DS, which has over 107 million followers worldwide. That’s over 4 times as large as the PS3’s install base. That give Scriblenauts an infinetly larger audience, and the potential to sell way more copies. LittleBigPlanet sold around 1.3 million copies, which means that 5.5% of PS3 owners bought LittleBigPlanet. If Scribblenauts matches LBP’s 5.5%, that would mean they would sell 5.885 million copies. That would be an incredible figure for a portable game to reach, and would net a hell of a lot of sales for the developers of Scribblenauts. But more important than the money (wait, there’s something more important than money?) is that it will reach so many more people. More people will be exposed to what you can do in a video game, and developers will be forced to create more innovative and creative titles, because the public will demand it. Scribblenauts could usher in a new era of gaming creativity, and put an end to the generic FPS game or the standard platformer.

Of course, I’m being way too overly optimistic. Scribblenauts could also only sell 500,000 copies, lose all the hype, and not do anything to the gaming market. Whatever the outcome, I know is that Scribblenauts is going to be awesome, and I am definitely picking it up when it comes out on Tuesday. Will you?

If you want to check out Scribblenauts’ full dictionary, complete with all of it’s 22,802 words you can write in the game, go to here.

I Want That Old Time RTS

I love real time strategy (RTS) games. I love the thrill of building up an impregnable fortress; watching your villagers expand your economy, attacking an enemy with a well rounded army. Those are the things I crave in an RTS. When I was young, I constantly played games like Age of Empires II, Starcraft and Rise of Nations (I still play them today), as well as Empire Earth, Command and Conquer, Homeworld, and Age of Mythology. Those games define the “classic” era of RTS games. Nowadays, the classic RTS games are impossibly hard to find. It seems that the industry has hit a slump. Sure, there are some bright spots (like Sins of a Solar Empire), but overall there are very few RTS games on the market. How did the RTS market come to this? How did a flourishing genre suddenly grind to a halt? The answers are very unsettling.

Before we dive into the story of the real time strategy game, I would first like to bring those who have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about up to speed. The concept of Real Time Strategy is actually very simple. The RT of Real Time Strategy consists of Real and Time, which means that the entire game happens in real time; enemies, allies, and you all play at the same time, there are no turns like the Civilization and Total War games. I’m not saying that turn based games are bad, but I find the RTS genre more appealing. The S of Real Time Strategy is Strategy, which means that you actually have to think while you are playing. The basic template of a RTS is you have your town center which produce villagers. Villagers can construct buildings or collect different resources which are needed to create buildings and units. The normal three resources are food, wood, and stone. Depending on the time period, some games also add other resources such as oil. You have three basic types of military units; infantry, cavalry, and archers. They use a rock paper scissors like system; archers can kill infantry easily, infantry can cut down cavalry, and cavalry can decimate archers. There are usually multiple ages, and with each age comes new units and unit upgrades, new and improved buildings, and more advanced technology. And that is your basic RTS.

For years RTS after RTS changed up the formula for an RTS game a little bit to make each game different and enjoyable in their own right, but not so different that someone who has played an RTS game before would have a difficult time adjusting to the different gameplay. Soon, games like Rome Total War took elements of the RTS genre and the turn based strategy genre and blended them together, and this was all fine. But soon, companies were trying to fit a full RTS on a console with a controller instead of a PC and a mouse. This was a horrible mistake, and soon extremely simple RTS games for consoles disgraced the RTS name. Gamers decided that rather than thinking during a video game, they just wanted to kill people mindlessly. The RTS market was all but destroyed by the FPS (First Person Shooter) and TPS (Third Person Shooter) genre(s). And then, the RTS genre suffered it’s biggest blow; Ensemble Studios, the makers of the Age of Empires and Age of Mythology series closed it’s doors. It seems like the era of RTS games is over.

So I sit here in anguish, distraught that my favorite genre is on it’s last legs. The RTS game is slowly withering away.  A genre that prided itself on strategy and superior thinking is dying because of our increasing laziness. Instead of thinking, we just want to run and shoot. And with the RTS, so goes the pride of intellectual gamers.

The Decline and Fall of Grammar and Spelling on the Internet

It’s something most of us loathe, but is essential in this modern world. Some people forget to do it, others just flat out refuse to participate. No, it’s not taxes; it’s those things called grammar and spelling. For years the social mind has been slowly eroding grammar and spelling’s grip on the world and has now reached a point where it has become almost irrelevant, and the youth of America are actually forgetting how to do it. The cause? The rise of the internet. Without the internet, spellar (which I will now refer to spelling and grammar as) would still be in a very strong state. But, instant messaging, email, and the need for quick communication have upset spellar’s power in the world. Sometime in the near future, spellar may even cease to exist.

But how did it all come to this? How did spellar end up in the sorry state it is? Well, it all started on a single piece of paper in 1961. A one Leonard Kleinrock wrote a paper on packet switching, an essential part on making the internet work.  DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) developed the first working model of an internet, using it to share research materials between universities and defense research facilities. It was called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency NETwork). A few years later in 1972, Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf invented the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), the means of which data moves across the internet. Tim Berners-Lee made a standard way to program in HTML, the language of the internet soon after. After the standardization of HTML, the internet boomed in the 1990s. This was all well and good. Email was invented in 1969 in the ARPANET network, and allowed fast communication between two or more people over the internet.

Then, the beginning of the end came in the form on Instant Messaging in 1997. AOL made it’s AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), that still remains king today. Instant Messaging offered a new form of communication, one in real time, like a telephone conversation. The need for speed in these conversations gave birth to new acronyms and abbreviations for words, like lol (laugh out loud) and brb (be right back). As Instant Messaging got incorporated into multiplayer gaming, new words came to light, like noob (a combination of newbie and boob) and pwned (owned, but with a p because people pushed p instead of o on the keyboard). These words then spread to normal English language. Periods on Instant Messaging became obsolete, and certain letters were shaved off words to make them shorter and easier to type. Numbers replaced certain sounds, and capitalization became useless. Grammar was not even existent. This was all fine, until people got so used to typing in this new slang writing that it spilled over to other things. Emails were no longer formal and were filled with abbreviations, acronyms, and grammar mistakes. Status updates, tweets, blog posts, and other things on the internet are just black holes of spellar. Now, it’s even spilling over to real life. Signs like “Car Stereo’s” (why is there an apostrophe, I have no idea) and emails like “Want to a house here” fill our world every day, and make thousands of people cringe at it’s stupidity. Another factor to this bad spellar is the fact that people have just stopped reading. Why, I have no idea, but most people just flat out don’t read anymore. Without being exposed to any form of proper spellar, they just automatically write in this IM slang. Spellar will someday collapse under the pressure of the internet and IM slang. I just hope it’s not soon, because the world will be a very annoying place once it does collapse.

For more amusing grammar mistakes, check out the Grammar Police. Thank you WikiAnswers for your comprehensive history of the formation of the internet.

Why iTunes Should Become the Next Steam

iTunes. Almost everybody has iTunes installed on their computer. It is an amazing digital distribution platform that allows you to buy music, videos, and applications for your iPod. The only thing that is missing from iTunes is video games. There already is a platform for digitally distributing video games, and it’s called Steam, which is run by Valve. The only problem with Steam is that it is Windows only, and many people don’t know about it. If iTunes started to distribute video games over the iTunes Store, it would make a staggering amount of money.

Apple is not stupid, they know how to sell things. iTunes has become a phenomenal success, and is a huge money maker for the company. If Apple were to put games on iTunes on both Windows and the OS X version, they would add even more money to their bankroll. With games, iTunes would easily overpass Steam in game sales simply because everyone has iTunes. And, iTunes would be the only distributor of games on OS X, giving iTunes a virtual monopoly on OS X in selling games digitally. I would actually be surprised if we don’t see games on iTunes in the near future. iTunes is the perfect platform for video games, and needs to take advantage of its popularity to become the next Steam.

The Weekly Top 5

I have decided to start a new thing I’ll post every Sunday. It will be a list of the Top 5 things I was either obsessed about or really liked during the past week. So, here it is!

1. Tweetie for Mac-As you probably already know, I am obsessed with Twitter. (My username is conorreid, so follow me on Twitter). I have been using Tweetie for the iPhone, which is fantastic, and TweetDeck for my MacBook. Recently, Tweetie published a desktop application, and immediatly TweetDeck was deleted from my system.  I downloaded Tweetie, and fell in love. It’s beautiful, intuative, and slick. Give it a try! http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac/

2. Snyder’s of Hanover Hard Pretzels-I love pretzels.  They are the greatest food to grace the planet earth. And Snyder’s of Hanover make the best pretzels you will ever taste, ever.  Their best type of pretzel is the Hard Pretzel, which are just a bundle of amazingly good tasting pretzels. I could go through a box of these a day because they are that good. If you like pretzels of any sort, taste these. Your tastebuds will thank you later.

http://www.snydersofhanover.com/en/products.php?cat=1&id=16

3. Metal Gear Solid 4-Hideo Kojima’s magnum opus, Metal Gear Solid 4, was a stunning achievement, both for the Playstation 3 and video gaming as a whole. It showed the world that not all video games were just for kids, and proved that people like complicated and intricate stories in video games. I played through the game countless times, and recently started playing it again. I’ve gotten sucked back into the incredible story of the Metal Gear games, and I don’t want to get out. http://www.konami.jp/mgs4/global/index.html

4. Jupiter The Bringer of Jollity by Gustav Holst-This amazing piece of music, along with the rest of the pieces in Gustav’s masterpiece, the Planets, is an extraordinary song. It is truly wonderful to listen to. It uses so much instrumentation that it is impossible not to like. If you haven’t heard it, listen to it. You won’t be disappointed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planets#Structure

5. BNO News (@BreakingNews)-I know it’s weird putting a Twitter account in my Top 5, but BNO News is special. It gives you news that is so fast most of it is ahead of any major news agency. The reason I choose to put it on my list is because it has been helping me keep track of the whole Swine Flu story without ever going to an actual news website or turning on my TV. Thank you BNO News! http://twitter.com/BreakingNews or http://www.bnonews.com/

What Has Happened to Real Music?

Music.  It’s such a common word, but what does it actually mean? Merriem-Webster says that music is the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity; vocal, instrumental, or mechanical sounds having rhythm, melody, or harmony. Does music today really have unity, continuity, rhythm, melody, or harmony? Music is, unfortunately, a dying art. Don’t believe me?  Think about it.  We spend more time on what an artist wears or their personal life more than we do the actual music.  It still baffles me on how Miley Cyrus is even considered a musical artist.  The Rap and Hip-Hop genres make absolutely no sense to me, and sound more and more like garbage cans bouncing up and down with an electronic voice booming in the background about how he’s going to shoot somebody. It’s atrocious, and it needs to change right now.

Music started as a beautiful art.  Classical music and opera ruled the theatres, and everyone loved it.  Prodigies like Mozart, Beethoven, Vivaldi (my favorite), and Handel popped up and created truly amazing pieces of music that everyone knows, even today. The music of old set up the music genre for all other types of music, and all was good.  Then music evolved, and singing became a primary component of music, and all was good. Rock band challenged the norms by including instrumentally heavy songs, and created some of the greatest songs ever written, and all was good. Pop began to take over, and by the 1990s boy bands ruled the charts, and all was not good.  Yes, I said it.  The downfall of music started in the 1990s.  The 1990s was a bad decade for music.  Many of the old rock bands were either dying or falling apart, and boy bands were taking over.  Boy bands were one of the first to mutate music from a vocal or instrumental art to a show about clothes, strange poses and dancing, and electronically enhanced voices.  Artists no longer needed to be a good singer or show creativity, they just had to be able to dance.  And then, we get to today.  Rap artists rule the charts, and more than 3/4ths of them can’t sing, even remotely. They create songs that make absolutely no sense, and have no uniformity, no harmony, no continuity, no melody. In fact, they don’t even write their own songs, people are hired to do that for them.  And then we have the other side of the music industry. The side where a TV star (I’m looking at you Miley Cyrus) can become a national icon and have no singing talent whatsoever. Disney, the largest maker of TV-music stars, just takes their stars on their hit TV shows, writes them a song, tells them to sing it, and then digitally enhances their voice.  Then, they release a music video of the music on TV, and everyone loves it.  It just doesn’t make sense, how music can go from such a sacred art that only the musically gifted and truly visionary people could participate in to a thing where anybody can have a song of their own thanks to electronics.

What will the music industry be like in 10, 20, 30 years?  As more and more kids listen to the crap that’s called music today, they will go away from real music, and nobody will like it anymore.  Led Zeppelin, The Who, Aerosmith, and numerous other bands including, yes, the Beatles, will cease to be popular.  Classical music will (sadly) not even be talked about in the future, and only a select few will know true music.  It will just become a cheap way to make money, and the most sad part about it is that most people don’t even mind.  Most people don’t care if music is just about the money, as long as they get to hear catchy songs or really loud drums.  Music, one of the greatest things that has ever graced mankind, will cease to exist as an art form.

What Does Candy Have To Do With Easter?

As I woke up this morning and munched on my delightfully delicious SweeTarts Chicks, Ducks & Bunnies (which they only serve around Easter), I pondered why I was eating candy.  What does candy have to do with Easter?  Why do people eat bucket loads of chocolate around Easter time?  Did Jesus subconsciously tell his disciples when he rose from the dead to make sure the world enjoyed jelly beans and Marshmellow peeps on the day of his Resurrection? I can understand the Easter bunny, and how he represents Spring and new life, but what in the world does candy have to do with Easter?  I did some research, and found that America spends about $1.9 billion on only Easter candy. $1.9 billion! So how did candy come to rule Easter?

Well, it all started with a monk; a monk by the name of Father Thomas Rockcliffe.  Father Thomas Rockcliffe started to give out Hot Cross Buns to the poor on Good Friday in 1361, and a tradition was started.  On every Good Friday from them on, Hot Cross Buns were given to people.  Naturally, these Hot Cross Buns were able to sneak their way into Easter, starting the tradition of sweet treats on Easter.  But, not all Easter foods were sweet; pretzels were also a popular food to consume on Easter because of their shape, it resembled hands crossed in prayer.

Starting in the 1800s, chocolate was overtaking the timeless Hot Cross Bun as the Easter snack of choice.  As people ravenously ate chocolate on Easter, they realized that they had to come up with an excuse to be eating so much chocolate.  They decided to shape the chocolate in the shape of an egg, the symbol of rebirth.  Soon, chocolate evolved to becoming the shape of anything remotely associated with the egg; a bird, a duck, even a bunny! By the 1960s, the chocolate egg was well established worldwide.

In the 1930s, a new contender for the Easter crown stepped on the stage; Jelly Beans.  Jelly Beans were “in style” in America; they were handed out in thousands of glass jars in candy shops across the country. Jelly Beans, with their natural egg shape, instantly associated them with Easter.  They became so popular that today, over 16 billion Jelly Beans are produced today.

In 1953, a purchase was made that would change Easter candy forever. Just Born, a large candy maker, bought a local company called Rodda Candy Company. Rodda was working on a new type of candy called the Peep, a marshmellow like candy that was shaped like a chick.  In 1953, it took Rodda about 27 hours to make just one Peep; by the end of 1954, the entire process was mechanized enough to bring Peeps to the national market.  They became an instant success, and today over 700 million Peeps are made each year.  Peeps have become rooted in out Easter culture, just like Hot Cross Buns were all those years ago.

So, now that you know the history of Easter candy, can you tell me why the hell is candy associated with Easter? Because quite frankly, I have no idea what was going through Father Thomas Rockcliffe’s head that Good Friday, but he created a tradition that still has no relevance to Easter at all.  Damn monks…

Thank you Failed Succes for the comprehensive Easter candy history!

Hello World

Hello world.  I’m Conor Reid, and this blog is going to be about… well… anything I want it to be about.  It will mostly focus on games, computers, and general tech stuff.  Have fun!  If you’ve got any ideas, you can email me at solidreid@gmail.com or check out my Twitter at http://twitter.com/conorreid