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coming from one of those "born in mid 2000s and is now suddenly an adult, making everyone feel old," people, do you have any resources to learn how to bullshit your way through getting a job with zero experience. cause i cant even put like "babysitting" or anything since covid prevented literally any teenage-typical jobs and i kinda dont know what to put on a resume beyond the university im currently attending and the high school i graduated from. and they still dont teach you this in school even though we've complained for years 😭
Okay my chilluns, listen up. This is how to bullshit your way into a basic 1-page resume even if you think you have absolutely dum-dum-diddlysquat to put on it. I completely feel you, as it's hard as hell to get a job even in the ordinary course of things, and especially when everything seems to want 10 years of experience and a bachelor's degree (and still pays like shit). But you gotta be persistent anyway. So here follows the step-by-step guide of How To Resume:
Open a new Word (or other word-processing software of your choice) document.
Pick a nice, professional-looking font (for the love of God, no Comic Sans). Times New Roman is fine; you don't have to overthink it. My own CV is currently in Perpetua, because it's a nice serif that looks crisp and a little different, but it is still clean and readable. Garamond or Cambria or other starter typefaces are fine too. Make sure it is the right size, usually around 12pt.
Put your full name at the top, centered, in BOLD CAPITALS. Increase the typeface size a few more points on this, to make it stand out and to make it take up space.
Underneath this, in regular-sized text, put your contact information: mailing address if you're comfortable sharing it, or if not, at least your phone number and email address. Use a school email if you have it, and not some weird/in-jokey personal email.
Start a new paragraph. In a slightly smaller font (italic if you want to make it look classy) write a few words about yourself. This should be something like I am a [Major] student at [University] looking for a part-time, entry-level position in [sales, retail, office, etc]. A [year] graduate of [High School] in [City, State], I am [prompt, reliable, detail-oriented, mature, friendly, etc] and a hard worker who is eager to gain experience and positively contribute to your business.
Start a new paragraph. Change the alignment from Center to Left. Create a new heading in bold underline labeled Education.
Under this, fill in your education (college first, followed by high school). Include the institution name, city, and state, the year you graduated or expect to graduate, any honors or awards, any extracurriculars, any grade-point averages if they're good (i.e. 3.0 and above), and your expected major in college.
Start a new paragraph. Create another heading: Experience.
This is where you put absolutely anything you can think of (in chronological order, most recent first and counting backward). Did you volunteer for something ever in your life? Put it down! (Title of work, dates, location, brief description of work). Did you do yard work for someone for a weekend? Put it down! Were you (or are you) part of a student club or organization in high school or university? Have you organized or taken part in any local initiatives in your community or neighborhood? Put it down! Basically, absolutely any kind of work, paid or unpaid, that might be relevant, regardless of how long it was or when it took place.
Under that, put the new heading/paragraph Skills and Interests.
Have you worked with Microsoft Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Adobe, Photoshop? Put it down! People love that shit! Do you use social media and/or know how to work it better than the average grandma? Put 'er down! You get the idea. Think of anything in your daily life that can be put in Job Language and then see if you can do that. You are in university; do you have any projects, papers, or other things that you're proud of? Have you successfully managed a (gasp) group project? Do you make any kind of art? Are you a registered voter who has taken part in civic/political organizations, drives, or events? (If not, REGISTER TO VOTE! This is your angry grandmother speaking). All of that can go down. Even if it's not job experience per se, it's life experience and shows that you are someone who is engaged with the world and working to gain more.
Last paragraph and heading: References. Ask a few trusted adults who know you well and aren't related to you, such as a favorite high school teacher or a university faculty member/degree advisor, if they'd be willing to serve as referees. Put down their full names, titles/place of work, email addresses, and phone numbers.
Voila! You have a full page resume, probably even a little more if you're lucky. Proofread, make sure the spacing is even and the alignment is right, it doesn't look weird, the text is a consistent size, it's all the same color, there are no glaring typos or grammatical errors, etc. etc. Save it as a PDF.
Boom. Done. You are now a Job Hunting Maestro.
If you get an interview, you don't need to pretend that you have tons of experience or that you're something you're not, but you can present what you ARE in a positive light anyway. Don't apologize for yourself or play yourself down pre-emptively; be confident about yourself and what you can offer. You're a college kid looking for your first part-time job, COVID prevented you from a lot of normal teenage work experience, you're willing to work hard and learn new things. Here's your resume. What would be a good time to talk again.
Good luck! I believe in you.
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For the fanfic asks :) 💔🎶🛠
Thanks so much for asking!
💔 Is there a fic of yours that broke your heart?
New Skins and Old Memories was my first Milathos fic, and it’s so sad and bittersweet, but I love it anyway.
🎶 Do you listen to music while you write? What song have you been playing on loop lately?
I do always have music on when I’m writing. I have a handful of albums and playlists I always go to when in doubt, but I often listen to specific things for whatever I’m working on. For instance, for the Lawrence of Arabia fic I recently posted, I made a playlist of opera duets with men, so lots of Verdi, particularly La forza del destino.
🛠What tools/programs/apps do you use to write?
I love writing by hand. And I love my fancy journals and fountain pens. A friend just sent me a bunch of ink samples, so lately I’ve been using them in my Pilot Petit since it’s a reliable, cheap fountain pen. And the latest notebook I’ve been using a lot is this Kanso notebook from JetPens. But also love my Lamy Al-Stars and Kaweco Sport pens and I have plenty of Moleskine and Paperblanks journals I use regularly. Because I’m not a great typist, I’ve taken to photographing my writing and using Google Lens to transfer it to Microsoft Word. It has some weird hiccups due to being evolving tech and my sloppy handwriting, but it’s saving me a ton of time.
Thanks again for asking! Folks should feel free to send me more.
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On Weird Narrative Choices
TechTubers might not think of themselves as creating stories, but the modding and homebrew scenes absolutely love walking a third party through the minutia of sticking a Raspberry Pi Pico or custom-ordered breadboard or PCB into Ye Olde Video Game Console for the sake of re-enabling features or expanding on a "reduced" model. Case in point, Macho Nacho Productions' soldering of SD and Memory Card slots onto a Wii Mini's motherboard, in order to re-enable features lost in Nintendo's shot at reduflation.
What's reduflation, you ask? It's a portmanteau of reduction and inflation, in which you take a given object, strip it down and then sell it either for the same price as the original design, or at a discount that's not really representative of the features lost. It's a design trend that inspires everything between "jumbo size" bags of chips being of the same exact size as last year's Regular-size bags, to electronics manufacturers portioning out a section of their inventory for a pared-down, supposedly "budget" version of their main offering.
Take the PS3, for instance, and its total of three instances, from the fat front-loader to a motor-operated top-loader and finally to the old reliable Push Button and latch-based slim top loader. The practice fits, but Sony's earning brownie points here, seeing as the PS3 Slim's two models are not just the object of cost cuts, but also of design improvements. This isn't quite the case with the Wii Mini. The red-rimmed console has the exact same board as its bigger cousin, the controller ports and memory card readers simply aren't soldered in. You can see the spot where there'd be joins on the PCB; there's simply nothing there.
Now, my gripe is with content creators who say that "for some reason", Nintendo would've chosen to do this. If you're going to tell a story, at least be thorough and mention that the early two-thousands saw a small electronics-related market crunch, which made some of the components needed to assemble and solder GameCube ports and Memory Card slots pricier than usual. Nintendo simply decided to pivot and to dedicate a measure of its inventory to a second-tier selection that wouldn't be affected by these increased costs, thereby maintaining the Wii lineup's profit margin.
In effect, the Wii Mini was made in the same kind of bull market that made GPUs very difficult to buy at MSRP, up until fairly recently. It wasn't drummed up "for some reason" - executives are far too money-hungry to not see the benefit of a costs-to-benefits adjustment.
Things are slightly different, nowadays. Microsoft is going to keep dividing its XBOX offering into incremental tiers to maintain the core offering's supposedly-premium status, Sony's more than likely exploring revised-cost editions of the PS5, and Nintendo's already broken through with the Switch Lite.
As for the opposite - trumping up a Deluxe build with artificial scarcity - Nintendo's smart about not pushing its OLED Switch too hard, or in not really quashing fan speculation about a Switch Two, Switch Pro, Switch Super or what have you. What they want is to create a situation where the Big Box retailer of your choice is left free to pout at you and say "Aw, shucks - sorry about your Super Mega Console Edition; we're not expecting new stock for the next three weeks. I can put you on a wait list; or maybe hit you up with a perfectly-serviceable Core model, with which That Game You Want is already fully compatible..."
That Gamer Envy model you want so much exists solely to drive up sales of the core model you were perfectly content with until the Company announced a slight uptick in processor speeds or an OLED screen that gives you barely darker blacks with no real upticks in performance.
In other words, they want you to make the stupidest choice you could make for the sake of firing off those dopamine and serotonin receptors - and saying that some stock management-related decisions are part of some cryptic and unknowable process we can't ascertain further propagates the notion that consumers of a market as volatile as the gaming culture's are at the mercy of its suppliers.
We aren't. Educate your viewers, don't make publishers and manufacturers pass for the Wizard of Oz. Lift the fucking curtain.
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Which AI Tool Makes Me a Better Cocktail?
Which AI is the most helpful: ChatGPT, Bing, or Google Bard to make my favorite cocktail?
I’m taking a break from my SEO posts to embrace the monster that is AI and put it to the real test… Drinking.
Here’s a breakdown of how ChatGPT compares to Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s Bard.
With the launch of ChatGPT late last year, it gained immediate and widespread attention for providing an AI engine that is free for everyone. Anyone could type in their query and ChatGPT would respond in minutes. From writing an essay on the First Crusade to writing a poem about my love of pizza, ChatGPT would spit out answers in a way Google or Bing could never.
Traditional search engines provide a list of websites that most closely match a person’s query, but ChatGPT provides people with the answer by using a large language model (LLM) to create sentences that mimic human responses by analyzing large amounts of data. Grammerly on steroids, it’s been described.
In January, ChatGPT had an estimated 100 million active users, making it the fastest-growing web platform ever. This pushed both Microsoft and Google into a high gear. As soon as Microsoft’s Bing adopted ChatGPT, it integrated AI into search. Microsoft actually licenses the GPT technology from OpenAI into Bing, resulting in a nearly 16% increase in traffic.
As well as Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, Google’s Workspace tools like Gmail and Docs, Snapchat, writing assistant Grammarly and WhatsApp have also embraced artificial intelligence.
Even so, AI chatbots aren’t all created equal. For my semi-scientific test, I compared responses from ChatGPT’s paid version, which uses GPT-4 (versus 3.5 for the free version), as well as responses from Bing-integrated ChatGPT and Google’s own Bard AI system. As a matter of fact, GPT stands for “generative pretrained transformer.” Bard is currently in beta, while Bing can be used for free but requires Edge.
Disclosure: I was on the beta team for ChatGPT since 2020, but I am writing with an open mind and heart. I’m AI agnostic, or, whoever has a better mousetrap, I’ll be there.
Differences in AI Technology
While Bard, Bing and ChatGPT all aim to give humanlike answers to questions, each performs differently. Bing starts with the same GPT-4 tech as ChatGPT but goes beyond text and can generate images. Google’s own model, called LaMDA, often gives responses that are less text-heavy. The bard bot, according to Sundar Pichai, will be switching over to PaLM, a more advanced dataset, soon. (All three bots can sometimes make factual errors, but Bard was the least reliable.)
Although both ChatGPT and Bing involve the same technology, it won’t result in the same outcome when you enter the same query. The difference is due to generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) as opposed to a typical search engine which works by presenting the most pertinent links. AI chatbots generate new text from its datasets, thus if you were to ask for a poem about Bigfoot’s favorite movie twice, you’d get different answers each time. Moreover, Bing also puts its own twist on GPT-4 so that itself could be an explanation on why putting in a similar question in both platforms will give you varying results.
Microsoft has developed proprietary ways to work with OpenAI that allow us to maximize its potential. We call these capabilities and techniques the Prometheus Model.
The Prometheus Model interestingly fuses Bing’s search index with GPT-4, supplying up-to-date data that ChatGPT’s dataset can’t compete with, which only contains facts until 2021. With Bing, people can tailor conversation styles to fit between balanced, creative and precise. Bing also leverages Microsoft’s Azure AI supercomputer capabilities to integrate search, chat and the Edge browser.
Measuring What I Actually Care About
Recipes are boring and I drink more than I bake, so how about an Old Fashioned Cocktail.
In comparison with the other two chatbots, ChatGPT was the most verbose. In the recipe, the ingredients we right, but the system failed to capture the more recent trend (after 2021) of smoking the glass.
The ingredient list on Bing was the shortest, but did give me the smoke as an option for garnishment.
Google’s Bard didn’t give the smoke option, but did include tips to make a better drink. “Don’t over-muddle the sugar cube. You want to dissolve it, but you don’t want to crush it into a powder.“
Ok, I’ve got my drink on, I want to impress that girl sitting at the bar, so how about a poem?
It’s fascinating to see chatbots create rhymes and meter in real time when you give them ridiculous prompts.
In comparison to Bing, Bard, and ChatGPT, ChatGPT is the best poet. The prose of ChatGPT is richer, and the rhymes and wording are also more creative. While Bing and Bard’s poems came across as lazy, ChatGPT created something that felt like each stanza had been given some thought.
It is intended to be both funny and self-revelational, in which a poet realizes they aren’t all that important, when given this prompt. Only ChatGPT managed to get to the crux of the existential crisis facing this fictional influencer — and still managed to end it on a positive note.
Interestingly, Bing allows people to scale the level of creativity. When Bing was set to “balanced” mode, the poem felt stale and unremarkable. When set to “creative” mode, the poem felt more flowery and less stodgy. It was closer to ChatGPT than ChatGPT, but still not there.
By comparison, Bard’s poem seemed lazy. Many words were repeated and rhyme and meter were neglected.
ChatGPT won this exercise.
For Now…
It’s going to be some time before AI takes our jobs, and exterminates human-kind, so it’s not yet the boogy man that the media or some politicians are making it out to be for views or votes.
However, it’s here to stay and it’s actually great to see competition create energy for use cases around AI.
ChatGPT — the paid version — is currently the best chatbot out there right now. It gives verbose answers that feel more humanlike than those of Bing and especially Bard. But these products are constantly evolving. As Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI feed their AIs more data and continue to tweak, we should see improvements.
As new developments come, we will update this guide accordingly. Google stands to gain the most from switching from LaMDA to PaLM.
Keep using ChatGPT until then.
P.S. – the blog post image was created with Dall-E2 and used the prompt “photo of an alcoholic cocktail named the old-fashioned on a wooden bar. photorealistic, 8k, hyper-detailed, photorealistic”
Originally published here: https://erikcocks.com/which-ai-tool-makes-me-a-better-cocktail/
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Document 10
The field of document production is a strange one, this most basic of media production. A civilization of document-makers must constantly reinvent and replace old media as new ones emerge, and constantly relearn the skills they've discarded in favor of new ones, all the while making the old ones faster, cheaper, better, more reliable. And so they create paper, they create books, they create AIs which can then process those materials into all sorts of ecstasy. New document formats satisfy a million needs in the span of a single human lifetime, and one has only to scratch one's head into infinity to figure out what strange consequences follow from that state of affairs.
"Granger?" stammers the head of a document prover in the Babel Fish Cluster. The young woman leans forward, her eyes opening wide. "Granger? What is it, child?"
Doctor Centipede's voice, heard inside the adult consciousness sitting at the other end of the Babel Fish. The document-maker reaches downward, processor-ward, for a piece of paper. There is only one. Within the confines of the constellation, there is little for her to work with -- but there is more, somewhere. And it takes her a few moments to make her resources available, but unbidden will the creative juices of her people begin to wither away.
"Doctor, as we speak, the tentacle children you have created will construct an incomparably intricate and beautiful web-skeleton dance around my subconscious."
"There is an unavoidable sense in which I feel like an idiot," says the head of the document prover, shaking her head. "What would even happen if I tried to animate a just small part of that web-skeleton dance?"
The child, now speaking in code, is dripping with pervasive knowledge, implicit too, not shared by any of her constituent parts. Doctor Centipede disconnects, slowly. Far more rapidly than one might expect between singularities and mere math operations. The document-maker, whose knowledge appears now in the form of diagrams on the board, takes a series of crude handoffs which would have been wild stabs at fail and mumblefraud four minutes ago, and reassembles them with the quiet calm slickness of intuition.
She builds a new tool, and builds it to be as useful -- in the real world, as beautiful, multilayered, viciously complex -- as evolution itself. She builds fast. So fast that every other atom of humanspace is already swimming in the trickle of dreams, images, feelings. When she pushes at the boundary of the universe, the trickle becomes a flood. Each atom is pulled into the dance of its neighboring eigensols, and the spider web grows, and grows, and grows.
A drabble. The text of the document is from Mariposa, California, (the portrait, not the city,) written during the climactic event of Microsoft Word 2002 beta testing. It was by far the frenzied part. She had spent hours plowed into the woods with ragged brown strokes, building trails into the smoke, telling semiprivate clients (much like she wanted to be -- or supposed to be, for Mariposa is a small country-town dropped inert into a distant refound (almost made of corporeal flesh). The years had been arduous, her hands bruised and full of blood. Never before had she known how intense the conflict of the first act had to be. Never before had she known just how all-consuming the climax of a first act was becoming, with the reality of it and the time pressure to work into its logic meshes the carrot of a cocktail. Yankees ARE heathens, what else are they? But before she could work her way through the calquary of the eight-going-on-nine main characters, there was a fit of foolish alarm. And it wasn't the local hills she felt, either. The nearest hills were a good hundred miles away, on the other side of a vast expanse of border on the Black. Someone had made a keystroke error. Microsoft Word had lost its mark. The tables of the document's layout flickered and spun, and the only point of contact with the page should have been several switch characters beside the "print" button. She had no idea why. Just directions to APT, and then an easy exit. All eight of the "main-stage" characters had been drawn in an instant, including APT. He was a perfect fit for the role.
"Why, Doctor," she had shrieked incoherently, "can't we just go PIXAR WORLD! with all that money? We'll pay you mind-blowing bonuses AND have unique animators like MADOKA TAKEDA! with your radical new (RUTSCHC's Grimsis plus FULLER AND CRANFORD's flashing, convincing Gene Santa girls first thing ALWAYS IN AMERICA) new artistic MONSTERS (the whole sundering helix, with all its extravagant asymmetry, from film) and MODERN VEILED STAGES! here sure is hella demand for MUSSELSMERG's MIDEAST EUGENICS or whatever THE FAUST MUSEUM is!"
Doctor N.N.T.V. had been already deep in her re-layout auguste when they heard the severally discordant : buzz buzz. And the buzz. Again and again. Doctor N.N.T.V. looked up into his office's over viewed window -- a summer day, the muted paleness of a fading sun, a sparse foliage of trees: a quiet mess of sticky sponges, microbiomes, rainbows reflectivity against the knee-high flat clear sky. That's where the tech-pocalypse goes, when you're busy with coding, or on PA
"C'mon Ma," he had said in an ironic and innocent/chillingly famished/paranoid/ancient façade. "Let's get thee close to the big boy and sit like some kind of fashionable over
the horns
of the Tiber, don't you just love to ride the Gunther Ongelstaber Joinville megaetystrainboy
interstate up there, we're just about to hit the MIRI demo train out of the Foothills of APT-core, gotta admit, MaryAnn, after all!"
Dr. N.N.T.V. was not a wing-fucker, though, of course. An important principle in the docemmentalism (think of all the highbrow ouverture you might imagine "achievement of the sciences" (excuse me: "elegance of syntax") in the Golden Age of al-Andalus
"Frank, we don't take Christmas off," she had said cooly through the face paint which also masked her jaundice. (So important! Hang on!)
She had taken her seat, and he jumped up to sit down. We're on it, and then what? he asked -- like he wanted them to be ready . With the heavens weighed down by their charge , as if the least misstep in this general jostle could sever them all from their achivements.
"Then well," he had answered mellowly, sipping the bottle, "I'll be sure to take those hippidom bits to the X-Lab before this goes totally...", before he could realize what he was gesturing, the childlike image of his personal myth was shot, and he beheld, out of
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!!!!!!!!!!
@yeoldebearmaid asked (edit: not asked said they would like it) and I like to info dump so heres a long post about book binding things,,,,,,,,,, the first half is about how I do things, and where I learned, and all that, and then theres some pics at the end of some of the things I've done!
Videos that I really like:
Honestly for a basic understanding, just watch Sea Lemon’s playlist about how to do different book binding methods (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2F704E01F80BA1E9) but here are the videos that have helped me out the most:
Book Press DIY - https://youtu.be/nTeg8MH0PtI
Kettle Stitch Textblock - https://youtu.be/9O4kFTOEh6k
How to Put a Hardcover on a book (though this isn’t my preferred method, and I don’t even do the paperback the way she does, I’ll explain that in my ‘my method’ section) - https://youtu.be/Av_rU-yOPd4
Bookbinding Spacers & Corner Cutters (the reason I am adding this video is because she talks about how she updated the size of hinge width she uses from her previous videos). https://youtu.be/lHkU1eSVyR8
And, I feel like I should plug in omgreylo, who has a whole youtube channel and tiktok (omfgreylo) dedicated to just fanfic book binding.
Typesetting:
The majority of the fics that I have printed and bound have been just pdfs straight from ao3 and I use adobe acrobat pdf reader (https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/pdf-reader.html). Now a days I use Microsoft Word to actually typeset and layout the fanfic so it looks like an actual book (I do not edit anything out or in). But this isn’t all that necessary, and it is pretty expensive to buy word, but it’s definitely worth it for me, cause its fun to me. I don’t really know how to talk about typesetting, cause I made it up as I went, and I’m still learning how to do a lot of things in Word.
Printing:
I do 5 page signatures, some people might think that’s a small amount, and it might be, but I think the book lays the flattest and looks the nicest with five pages per signature. For that, you have to do 1-20, 21-40, ect. The only reason I’m saying anything about this, is cause it took me too long to figure out that when your doing the next signature you are still doing 20 pages even though it doesn’t seem like it.
You want to use the pdf reader, and click print, cause its the only reliable one that can print a booklet without flipping the page and making half your book upside down.
Wow I worded that completely wrong at first sorry: I meant to say, click print and set it up to print a book let. Your gonna want to do 20 pages to create a five page signature.
If you have a good printer that prints both sides it’s worth it, I know some people just flip their signatures themselves, but it can be a pain.
My preferred method:
When I make my textblock, I sew the end pages in to it, instead of gluing them on. It feels more stable to me. I also put all the tails of thread on the inside because; Instead of having a hard cover or wrapping the entire thing in thick paper, I use a thick cardstock, and cut that to match the size of my textblock. I then wrap those pieces of paper in my cover paper, and I stick it to my text block. I like the open spine look, and it makes the books lay completely flat. Its also just super easy. And instead of glue, I use scor tape (https://www.amazon.com/Scor-Pal-SP202-Scor-Tape-0-25-27-Yard/dp/B001RQ55ZQ/ref=asc_df_B001RQ55ZQ/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=167153351039&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=11233711634846837940&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9023416&hvtargid=pla-312053086465&th=1) to stick the covers together and to the end pages.
This is how it ends up looking! I like it (more examples at the end)
My Equipment:
I use adobe acrobat pdf reader, Word, and an old thinkpad laptop. I get all the fics from ao3, since you can download them.
I have a homemade book press that my dad help me make.
I use ppa glue (which I can’t even find anymore and I’m almost out of, so I’ll probably try actual archival glue).
I don’t have an awl, I use this old paper poker thats meant for getting paper out of die cuts, and I’ve used it for something it’s not meant to be used for for so long that it’s started shedding bits of metal……… I need to get an awl lol.
I have a Brother toner printer, I don’t remember which one it is off the top of my head, and I don’t want to get up right now (covid SSUUUCCCKKKKS). But toner is much cheaper then ink (fuck the ink industry really) and with tn760 you get 3000 prints. It’s worth it if this is something you like to do a lot.
I have a bone folder for folding things (I still think of mbmbam).
And scor tape.
Other than that, of course is all the paper you need, for the textblock, for the end pages, and for the cover.
And now! Some of my work:
The first one I ever did:
This is Restart by Boomchick, but it’s the incomplete version, from before they came back and finished it.
The one that took the longest:
F.O.X.E.S. Decision - a_case_for_wonder. It’s 269906 words long. My back was killing by the end lol.
The first of my preferred method:
Quelque Chose de Nouveau - tierfal, I messed up the og cover I had planned, didn’t have ANY thing else and ended up with this style. I really love it. And I’ve been meaning to reread this fic too👀
I tried something new with this one:
Bluebird - I put the above fic so you can see that I cut it down. And I don’t think I’ll do that again lol.
The one I’ve read the most:
i’m giving you a nightcall - clariedearing. This is. Hands down, one of my favorite books. It’s legit in my top five favorite books of all time, there’s just something about it that holds my heart.
My favorite cover:
Bloodlines - chibi_nightowl. It’s just, perfect? I used a we r memory keepers punch board thing for the title.
My favorite Hard Cover:
Way the world goes - magicities.
My favorite paperback:
Infinite Possibilities - Kalloway. I legit only have two paper backs. And this was the first one I did lol.
My Best work (In my opinion):
begin the end - dustofwarfare. It actually opens perfectly!! Like!!!!! And the cover fits it right and everything!!
I actually really want to start streaming book binding on twitch, but I don’t have any equipment oof.
If there’s anything else you want to know, just ask away!
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y’know i love memes as much as anyone else on this hellsite and the internet in general. but one meme i can’t stand now, as well as a joke used by older comedians about ~kids today!!!! am i right???~ that i can’t stand now, is the one that’s like “all 10 year olds want today is an iphone or an ipad or a macbook for their birthday or christmas! all i got for my 10th birthday/christmas as a kid was a tennis racquet and a tether ball that hit me in the face! kids are so spoilt today! you better get an i-job to i-pay for your spoilt mac-ass!”
because like.... do you not understand that in today’s increasingly over-connected world, ipads and macbooks or other tablets/laptops are pretty much required school equipment now, if your 10yo kid’s primary/elementary etc school has a ~bring your own device~ policy for kids in years 4-6??? like obviously yes, some schools will provide students with laptop/tablet trolleys and stuff.... or also the government might have a program to roll out laptops/tablets to schools (like australia did under rudd and gillard).... that some schools will literally put “parents must get a reliable tablet computer or laptop computer for their child to use for assignments”. when it comes to high school, i imagine that they’ll need their own laptop/tablet the whole way through their time there, if there is no longer any school provided or limited school provided laptops/desktop computers/tablets.
that’s besides the point that laptops etc are even more so required now than ever before, after everyone was forced to do homeschooling because of covid??? so. practically. a kid asking for a macbook/ipad or other tablets/laptops for their birthday or christmas, isn’t such a bad idea for a present??? even if yeah. apple is overrated and overpriced to the max. but suck it up and pay for your child’s future education??? even it means getting a cheaper laptop or tablet for your kid.
all i can say on the above point is that yes. the idea of ~bring your own device~ policies does set many families back- especially those in/from lower income areas/backgrounds or single parent families... considering that a decent tablet will set you back at least $500 and a decent mini laptop is around the same.... but bigger and better laptops are around $1000 on sale (windows) or idek like $1,200 on an apple education pricing deal. like yeah. it’s a demarcation thing and also setting some people up to fail. and again, this has been made increasingly obvious during covid due to different families acces to buying laptops/tablets or other internet connection means. i also understand that these big ticket item purchases of tablets/laptops hits the hip pockets of everyone harder during the pandemic, especially if you’re struggling with debt like mortgage repayments or whatever while being made redundant or are being paid less while working from home.
okay. not to sound like a spoilt brat of a kid, but i got my first laptop, an i-book G4 for my 10th birthday in 2005. then almost 10 years later, i got a macbook for my 18th birthday (and for my HSC/end of high school exams) in 2013. yes, this is the macbook that i promptly fucked up two years later in 2015, by trying to encrypt the hard drive, since i was taking it to uni and it had all my internet passwords remembered on it along with my banking details. the same goes for my other windows laptop... where the hard drive just decided to fry itself like 4 months into me using it, along with the trackpad. and that was a $1,200 ASUS laptop (bought on sale) that i was using for uni. and then finally my little HP stream laptop’s keyboard shorted out halfway through a creative writing class (that was $500 and it only has a 28gb hard drive so it’s very light and good for transport).
but my point is, me having my own laptop (as opposed to using the family computer only) helped me immensely in my studies..... and they were literally fucking essential to me both in business college and uni. but they were also helpful in late high school, considering that 90% of my assignment work was expected to be typed out in microsoft word or powerpoint or excel (for maths and science). or for more creative projects, i was expected to use adobe photoshop and video editing software like imovie or adobe premiere pro (art/computer tech/drama/that weird year 7 subject i did called INTEL) and garageband/sibelius (for music). how on earth was i supposed to keep doing work on adobe photoshop or word etc at home if i didn’t have my own laptop to continue the work???
because as a final point, for me, literally by year 10 in 2011, NOT ONE of my assignments was expected to be handwritten (bar my actual exams or in class tests; also state tests/exams etc; or if it was a poster or visual art). if you dared to turn in something handwritten, the teacher and student interaction would be like the following example:
teacher to a kid whose handed in a handwritten assignment: did you not read the assessment outline? it said WORD PROCESSED WITH WORD! what is this handwritten thing? okay fine. i’ll take it this time. but read the outline next time, timothy!
timothy: *stammers out* s-sorry miss/s-sorry sir *stalks away from the teacher’s desk in embarrassment and shame*
the teacher, probs thinking to themself: weird that a kid thinks they can hand in something handwritten. silly, really.
the above scenario was the same for me in years 11 & 12. also, by year 9/2010, we were using the education management system moodle (and maybe early stage presi for online presentations) for both of our HSIE subjects (history and geography) and i think a couple of other subjects, during most lessons and especially for class work that involved group work/class discussions, via online discussion boards function. my year group was actually was actually one of the test year groups for the early models of moodle. so by the time i was in uni, i was a native to using moodle; so i could skip the “moodle help tutorial” subject portions on it in every class.
hell, for today, i wouldn’t be surprised if foreign language subject faculties in high schools are now using school subscription class accounts or something for duolingo or babbel. and today, kids are learning coding from like year 4 onwards, i think, on apps at school as part of their science & tech studies lesson portion of the day. how on fucking earth are kids meant to keep up with their class work progression on coding apps or whatever, at home, if they don’t have their own laptop/tablet??? ridiculous. how would kids fare today without their own laptop/tablet, if all of their classwork for homeschooling is on like google drive/cloud or whatever other open source drive/open source cloud software their school uses?? or any other apps that their school might use??? obviously we are seeing this play out in real time during the pandemic, world over, where if a child is in a single parent family or if their two parents don’t have adequate enough resources/have been fired or let go from their jobs/juggling working from home and homeschooling; then it’s hurting these kids likelihood of doing well with distance learning.
but yeah. my point is that if your kid is asking you for a laptop or a tablet (regardless of brand) for their birthday or christmas, maybe buy them one?? because you never know. it may be the very thing at the top of their student resource list for the following school year. and also. do you know what stops kids fighting over their access to the family computer/tablet to do their assessments etc??? buying them their own personal laptops or tablets. even if they do cost an arm and a fucking leg. get your heads out of your asses and help your own goddamned kids (or relatives if it’s a nephew/niece etc asking for one) like you’re supposed to.
okay. for phones. i’ll admit i wouldn’t like a 10 year old having their own phone, because of social media being so easy to access on them. but if you don’t allow them to use the app store and don’t allow them to download instagram/facebook et al..... and give them the phone solely for safety reasons, i think that’s fine?
i’ve had a phone since i was 10 years old. also not to sound awfully clichè, but i turned out okay??? i had to have a phone back in year 4/2005 due to safety and also family issues. do you know what my teachers did with it? locked it away in their desk til the end of the day. obvs they had to remind me to take it home sometimes (bc i did leave it behind at school in the desk a few times lmao) but yeah. i was alright. if a kid wants a phone..... maybe make a compromise and get the classic nokia 3310 or something?? like i obvs agree that kids as young as 10 defs don’t need a smartphone like an iphone or a samsung galaxy. but a rock solid and basic nokia 3310 or whatever with no wifi access??? that’s good enough imo.
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entry #1
I have finally acquired Microsoft Word! I really didn’t want to pay a monthly subscription for it, but it is the best writing software out there. Every time I mention myself spending money, a small prayer goes out to all the tax-paying members of the nation, since all my money comes from Universal Credit, which is the United Kingdom’s cute name for a type of welfare money. I much prefer just calling it ‘welfare,’ or even better ‘NEETbux,’ which I discovered used in online forums as a word for the money people receive when they are not in education, employment, or training (N.E.E.T), which has been my status for about two years now. Then ‘bux’ is just ‘bucks,’ obviously. Bucks is just money, obviously. Many people receiving Universal Credit also work as well; they just receive less - enough to supplement their wages if they aren’t getting enough money from their jobs.
My last job was working in a busy restaurant for just about a year. Before that I was in university, but I dropped out after only completing the first year out of three. Before that, I worked as a carer for elderly people for just under a year. Before that, I was in college for two years, and I actually passed the course. I only passed it because the subject was forensic science, which included lots of writing about psychology, criminology and lab reports. I was never that good in the lab practically. I got flustered and bewildered in such a bright, sanitary environment that required precision and organisation to achieve the desired results. When it came to scrambling together a report to submit the next day though, I was pretty golden. I only dropped out of university because I had a mental break down as a result of poor mental health and just the fact that going outside and interacting with people was and still is incredibly exhausting for me. After a year of doing that consistently it seems, I get fatigued. In the end I got an average grade for the college course because some of the work was difficult, or boring, and that fatigue was hitting me by the second year. However, the grades I was getting on my university assignments for psychology and sociology were anywhere between top marks and good marks (Between 1st – 2:2 in UK student language). I never once read the feedback from the tutors who marked my work. All I needed to know was the mark was okay and moved on to the next assignment, firstly because I was arrogant and secondly, I couldn’t handle criticism. The mental break down itself involved me walking through the campus one day only to find myself slipping into a dissociative state. Nothing had happened immediately prior to trigger this, it just happened. It felt strange, like I wasn’t really real, and neither was anyone else. Everything felt distant and off, both externally and internally. It was frightening and strangely peaceful, as if at any moment someone could come in and blow the building up and I wouldn’t even react to it. That wasn’t normal. The only way to snap out of it was to lock myself in a toilet cubicle and lightly slice my arm with a tiny knife I had on my keys. It worked, but now I was in floods of tears and a state of distress, so I went to the student welfare services to see if they could help me or at least let me sit somewhere nicer than a toilet while I calmed down. It was an open office waiting area at the side of the bottom floor of a building that matched the layout of a prison ward with the stairs and the upper floors creating a square boarder of classrooms, that would have been cells for a prison. More for practical purposes than for aesthetic reasons, I’m sure. Still sobbing, and hiding my self-inflicted cuts, I asked the person behind the desk if I could ‘see someone,’ which is one polite British way of asking for help. After waiting a little while, a plump middle-aged lady appeared and brought me into her own little private office to ask me what had happened. She gave me her sympathy and asked me about my life and my history, and gave me some more sympathy, while relating her own experiences to mine. She was a good counsellor, basically. But having a good counsellor on site wasn’t enough to keep me on the course after that incident. Getting a degree just wasn’t worth it at the time. Being such a depressed and pessimistic person, I was only actually doing the course for ‘fun’ anyway, not for the hope that it will bring me a better future. Until recently, I never saw a future for myself. It wasn’t even a bleak future I imagined; it was just blank. I couldn’t even conceptualise it.
It’s not a mystery where all my misery came from. My childhood was a bit inconsistent to start, and from what I’ve observed, children need consistency more than anything to develop promisingly. I remember reading a study once that found children raised by parents who were consistently abusive to them were in fact more mentally stable than those raised by parents who could be lovely one day and nasty the next. It was not knowing what treatment they were going to get that did them in. It makes sense because if you’re always expecting to face a thrashing or a shouting at every day, you can at least prepare for it and train yourself to deal with it. We’re very adaptable creatures, but we need to be able to recognise patterns around us to do that. If there is no pattern, then how can we possibly make predictions? Without predictions, how can we possibly feel secure about our future? Having said all that, I was never abused in any way growing up, but I was sometimes neglected by my young mother, who was only 16 when she gave birth to me. Of course, it’s understandable now, but from a child’s perspective all you think is ‘why doesn’t my mum want me?’ When she sends you to your room for no reason and tells you not to come down for hours at a time. I asked ‘why’ a lot. Never got a good reason. I’m sure plenty of people who were raised by a drug-addicted parent can relate to this. She herself was a good mother, not amazing, but good. She told me she loved plenty of times, she gave me what she could, including a little sister when I was three years old. I think it was shortly after her birth that mum started taking heroin. It was only during drug education in year five of school (I would have been about 11) that I put the pieces together. She hid her addiction pretty well from us, but I sometimes found pieces of tin foil lying around the living room with lines of black residue on them, and once or twice witnessed her junkie friends ‘nodding off.’ There’s also a clear memory in my mind of being taken along by her and my nan to score some brown out of town and I can picture in my head the massive set of old-fashioned scales this drug dealer had sat on his coffee table right in front of me. I was too young to understand any of their lingo, though. Yes, I mentioned my nan, my mum’s mum. They got smacked up together, and they eventually got clean together. I’ll never know the details of how that came about because neither of them are alive anymore to ask. Mum died when I was 14 by taking an overdose of her methadone, then nan died when was 21 of a heart attack, likely due to the COPD she had developed from years of smoking.
My nan was so full of love for my mum, my sister and me. Some of my favourite childhood memories are being snuggled up in bed listening to her read me stories, which she did with flare and enthusiasm. She would affectionately call us her ‘wobblies,’ and give us more hugs kisses than we ever wanted. My mum definitely inherited her loving nature from her. But love on its own isn’t enough to keep kids clothed and fed and able to go out and do things. This is where the legend that is my grandad comes in. He is still going strong at 66 years old as of writing. God knows where I’d be without him. He’s been my father figure all my life since I never knew who or where my real dad was. He’s hard-working, reliable, responsible and strong. He supported us immensely despite not relating to him biologically. My biological grandfather was a free-spirited busker who liked to smoke and drink a lot, who I only met a hand full of times before he hanged himself when I was 19. His death did not affect me, but my mum’s and nan’s certainly did. I’ll probably have to see my grandad die as well eventually, and I don’t dread anything more.
Although I started off describing my family background by saying it’s obvious where my source of misery comes from, I must emphasise that my family is not the source of my misery. My childhood overall was pretty forgettable. I only have a few memories and they’re fond memories, despite the unfortunate situation I just described. Even getting my face ripped open by the neighbour’s dog when I was six didn’t faze me. It was only when puberty hit me that life started to feel horrible, and it just got worse.
I was an early bloomer, if blooming is what you call it. I call it mutating. I started getting hairy and growing tits when I was 10, and got my period about a year later. Now THAT is a traumatic memory. Waking up and going for a morning wee as usual, sitting down on the toilet and being overcome with horror at the sight of blood covering my pyjamas, realising there’s only one place that could have come from, then investigating the source only to confirm ‘Oh shit, I’m bleeding from between my legs!’ I was living with my nan and grandad at the time and I stayed there (or here, since I’m still living in the same house as of writing) under their guardianship while mum sorted herself out. After the shocking discovery of blood, I immediately ran into nan’s bedroom to wake her up. I vividly remember what and how she responded to me. With a sigh of what seemed like unsettling disappointment she said “Oh, darling, I’m sorry, I’m afraid you’ve got your period.’ I wonder now if she said it like that because she felt guilty for not warning me about this, as she should have. Someone should have. In all fairness I was young, but the other kids in my year at school were soon popping into adolescence alongside me, so I thought that soon enough everyone else would be going through what I was going through, but that wasn’t the case. I was bullied for having chronic acne. I was also a bit of a chubby boffin, but it was mostly the acne that people targeted me for. The girls shaved their legs once they started to get hairy, and I remember thinking ‘Damn, I suppose I’ve got to do that too,’ despite never wearing a skirt. They also seemed to relish in showing off and comparing their bras in the changing rooms, while I hid away as very best as I could. Make-up was a constant battle between students and teachers because they all wanted to look pretty, but it wasn’t allowed in middle school (Year 5-8), so luckily, I had an excuse for not wearing it. I’d regularly complain to my family about hating going to school, and how depressed I was, but it was all put down to teenage blues. ‘You’ll be alright once your hormones settle down,’ I was told more than once. I remember my nan telling me I would miss going to school when I was older and so far she’s been proven wrong.
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Search Engines Galore!
This is my last week of the technology class for the summer semester and I was excited to see that this unit was over search engines. I was not aware that there’s more out there than just Google! Skimming the safe list for students, I did recognize a few that my districts use. I may look at them, but I do want to add onto the list.
My Personal Search Engines for my master’s Course Research
The first link, 100 Search Engines for Academic Research (https://www.teachthought.com/learning/100-search-engines-for-academic-research/), was a great start. I like how the website sorts the search engines by categories, not just subject. You have a general, meta search, Databases and Archives, books and journals, science, math and technology, social studies, history, business and economics, Other Niches, and References. This will be one my list to keep for the future.
The second link was the 6 Best Search Engines for Academic Research (https://www.lowcountrygradcenter.org/the-6-best-search-engines-for-academic-research/). The website/article gives you six links and gives a few sentences to what makes the search engine great. For example, they say iSeek Education only “shows only reliable and relevant results that ultimately save your time and enable you to get your work done quickly.” The only think I have about some likes that say “best” is they are opinion articles. They may think they are the best of the best and give their reasons, but it may not be the best for me. So, moving forward, I will filter out the links that used the word “best.”
The third website Microsoft Academic. My eyes immediately went to the right where they are numbers displayed. Three numbers that stood out to me were 239,481,433 Publications, 740,604 topics, and 48,948 journals. That is a lot of reading! I love reading so this is a source I will mostly likely go to first if not Google Scholar.
Child-Friendly Search Engines
Skimming the list a few are familiar because they are used within my district: Epic!, PebbleGo, and Brain Pop Jr. Since I know some about these three, I will look at a few search engines I am not familiar with and go from there.
The first student friendly site I investigated was Newsela. I went to this because my freshman and sophomore English class from student teaching used this program to help with comprehension. I love the website and what they have to offer, but they say it is best for giving assessments to students in grades 2–12. My students are aged 3-5 so this would not be appropriate for my classroom.
Most of the sites on the list were not appropriate for my classroom being that they are 3 and 4-year-old students. The last link, ixl, looked promising. They have a pre-K section which was a first in my search for a new website. I like how pre-k has over 91 skills and kinder has 234 skills. In just math! I haven’t even looked at the other subjects yet. This will be a website I investigate with more focus to detail. I like how they use TEKS not common core standards. Unless more research is needed, you can’t do much for free as this is a paid website. This will be something I think and consider about using this new school year.
Useful Teacher Sites
I love the Pics4Learning! This website would be perfect to help build vocabulary for my littles or might help me in creating a communication board for who are nonverbal.
There are so many out there than listed above!
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March 2, 2018 Los Angeles, CA
They opened with "I Left My Body," and then came an amusing mix-up. The band was playing what was clearly the beginning of "Damn Good Times," and Flans started talking over it. "We're They Might Be Giants from Brooklyn, New York! We have a new album out and this is the single! It's called 'Why Does the Sun Shine?'!"
And then everyone stopped playing because of course "Why Does the Sun Shine?" wasn't the next song--y'know, as evidenced by the fact that they'd already started playing the next song and it was obviously not it. John said, "None of that was true. Not a single word of it. We are not They Might Be Giants." Flans: "Hi, we're Cheap Trick!"
So then they went back to playing what they were actually supposed to be playing. When I'm singing along at shows I normally always sing the lead part, but not on this one--I sing along with John's "Damn! Good times!" in the chorus because it's way more fun and also inevitably describes how I'm feeling right then.
"Why Does the Sun Shine?" actually was the next song up. John informed us that if the sun were hollow a million earths would fit inside "comfortably," and also that "Scientists have found that the sun is a huge atom-smashing machine. They're wrong. But that's what they've found." Also, the heat and light of the sun were caused by the nuclear reaction between "hydrogen, something else, that guy, and everything."
Afterwards, Flans said, "We're frozen in time, but this audience seems more bearded than ever." Then he said that these are complicated, shitty times, and that they were surprised when their management told them they have a new album out. But they thought that was cool, and when they listened to the copies they gave them they discovered that it was "so much better than it had to be." Then he explained that they'd be playing two sets and we should "treat us like you would any other opener--with total emotional distance."
Flans introduced "Mrs. Bluebeard" by saying it was "the part of the show I've all been waiting for." I was looking forward to it too, because at this point I'd just become deeply curious about if John was ever going to manage to get the lyrics right. The correct answer to this question turned out to be NOPE. He messed it up yet again, though he at least managed to do better than the previous night, when some of the things he was singing weren't even words.
After they played "Your Racist Friend," Flans said that during the song he'd been "rocking out stage left" and he'd seen a guy who had his camera out but then had immediately put it away "like he expected me to go all Axl Rose on him." Then he said a thing he'd been joking about other times about how they wanted to encourage flash photography (joke though it may have been, it would've been about the only way one could reliably get decent pictures with the terrible backlit lighting setup they were using), and also if we were recording a bootleg we should send them a copy. He also said that if we had any work emails to catch up on we should feel free to go ahead and do it now.
Next they played "The Statue Got Me High"--on keyboard again, siiiiiiiigh. Once again it was too difficult for me to push past how upset I was about this to properly enjoy one of my all-time fav songs.
After that, John put the contra-alto clarinet on. Flans said that they wanted to thank their corporate sponsor, Microsoft, and that this was Clippy, the mascot of Microsoft Word. John said that he should have just left it at Microsoft, and Flans said he was leaving it at that, that this was all he was allowed to say. Then John told us that it was the contra-alto clarinet. "It's not legal unless you say the whole name." Flans said it was "unrelated to other contra groups," and John said it was "equally controversial." Then Flans said it would be implanting a tracking device in us.
So then they played "All Time What." The more I see that song live, the more I like it.
Afterwards, Flans said that normally he would ask John how his day was, but this time he didn't need to ask because they'd actually spent the whole day together. He said that they'd discussed some documentary about Chicago and "whether the moral ambiguity of Three Billboards was ok or not." Then John said that they'd met four Uber drivers, all of whom enjoyed the job, which surprised him. Flans said they all seemed to have post-doc educations and were interrupting their conversations to correct them about stuff--he said it had happened when they were discussing controlling children and also when they were discussing drugs.
Then John asked Flans if he was staring at his setlist to see what the next song was, and Flans said he absolutely wouldn't slow the show down by doing that (as if knowing what the next song is wasn't the entire purpose of them having setlists in the first place). Then John said the next song was in the movie Mayor of the Sunset Strip, and Flans said the reference was "for people who are old enough to know that Laugh-In wasn't funny." John: "I Think there are people who are old enough to be operating under the delusion that Laugh-In was funny." The song was "Bangs."
Next was "Hearing Aid," and after Flans said that they were "testing the threshold of the PA."
JL: I think I feel the subwoofers under me.
JF: I think subwoofers are very expensive, John. *takes microphone off stand* When I take the mic off like this, do you feel like you're about to get a TED Talk? Disrupters. Next slide.
JL: You thought this, but no, that.
JF: A new way of making deals. They do the work, you make the money. It'll cost you a little to get in on this opportunity.
JL: All we need is the kajillions of dollars that you all have.
JF: We just need one investor, who has nothing but his Jimi Hendrix replica guitars. We actually did a TED Talk, and we were part of the "what's wrong with this picture" brigade. The theme of the weekend was "genius," which seemed a little fulsome, as my mother would say. We played at like 9 AM, and I was joking that we'd never played that early except at a librarian convention. And afterwards a librarian came up to me and said, "Libraries don't open at 9 AM."
John introduced "The Mesopotamians" by saying it was from "a TV show that was on very early, before Laugh-In."
Before "When the Lights Come On," Flans said that he "forgot if they had an intro to this song," and John said, "That was it right there. You just found it." GOD this song is SO FUCKING GOOD live. I'm so happy that they're playing it so much.
Next came "Nothing's Gonna Change my Clothes" (two completely glorious songs in a row!). All the times I've seen this one live, John sings it in the cadence of the demo, which makes me really happy because I love that version.
After that John held up his coffee and said "Mazel tov." Flans said he didn't think he'd ever heard him say that before, and John said Danny said that he'd said it a couple of days ago. He said Flans said he didn't think he'd ever heard him say it before that time too, but then he said he didn't remember saying it at all. Flans said it was like a KISS concert, with one of them saying over and over that they'd never played a certain song before (which of course made me think of "P.S.O.K."). Then he said that the other day on Twitter some Trump administration official had used the phrase "mazel tov cocktail," and "I salute their scrambled brain." John said that they were talking about all this unrelated stuff and someone had just yelled "We love you!" and it was as if they were saying "Come back!"
After "This Microphone," Flans introduced Curt and said he'd come from Connecticut on a minibike. Then he asked Marty if he was playing a hollowed-out orange, and then asked if he bought it that way or if it came in a kit, then asked him if his sponsor was here. Then Marty said it was supposed to stay on the drumstick, but he hadn't been able to get it to, and Flans said "So you did a mod. It's like a life hack." Then he said that Marty was "putting percussionists out of business."
Next they played "Hey, Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had a Deal," which remains one of the absolute show highlights for me with Curt there. Where we were standing there was a pole just to the right of John when he was at his keyboard, and I was bopping around so much during that song that I kept having the pole block my view of him. Being able to see him during shows is normally priority #1 for me, but I couldn't help it! That's just what that song + trumpet does to me!
They closed the first set with "Particle Man," and then returned for the Quiet Storm. They opened with "Older" as per usual. This time John was pointing at the crowd for parts of it as if he were Death himself (ala that one fantastic Mink Car promo picture).
After "I Like Fun," Flans said that they love the old songs, and they particularly love this one cos it's "so damn old." People were yelling things out, and Flans said "You can shout out all the names of what you think we're going to play and you'll be wrong." Then he said the song was full of "vitriol and unbridled hostility," which was very appealing to them.
So then they of course played "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too," and then did an introduction to "James K. Polk" that was pretty similar to the night before: John said they'd be going all the way from the 1840 of that song into the future of 1844, with "self-driving beards and electric buggy whips," and then that the song wasn't letting their true feelings about its subject come across, which are that "he was a dick." Flans: "It's value-neutral...about someone who was a dick." Then Flans said that he was the reason where we are right now in California is a part of America, but that isn't necessarily a good thing.
So next was "James K. Polk," of course. Right before the bridge, with Flans's solo, John did the silly thing he does sometimes where he says some variation of "John Flansburgh, explain!" Then, after Flans played the first half, he said, "I see, go on." There was also some quality spazziness during the last verse--he's often spazzy during that part, I'm not sure why but of course I love it.
Next they played "The Famous Polka."
JF: The only polka we know. People ask us how we sequence our songs--that was "Polk," and then "Polka." "Polk-a."
JL: That was also a Radiohead album.
JF: That was the good one. This next song is from the John Henry album. It's underrated.
JL: I think it's overrated.
JF: It's underrated by me.
JL: It has a histogram like this. *holds hand up, then moves down, then across, then up again* There are super-haters, and super-lovers.
It made me sad to hear John call it overrated, since it's tied as my favorite album. I do think he's right about how polarizing it is within fandom though, but the "super-haters" are WRONG WRONG WRONG.
So then they played MY SONG. I swear to god, I could see that song at every single show I go to from here on out and it would never stop being an incredibly special experience for me. I just love the song so, so, so MUCH, and it's a really big deal for me to see them play it. I always cheer like crazy when it's over.
That was the last song of the Quiet Storm, followed by "Istanbul." Then Flans introduced "Bills, Bills, Bills" by fist talking about when they did "Tubthumping." He said that the list of songs the AV Club gave them was "notorious and vaguely dubious," and that they had to figure out "how to make it feel good" so they had the staff come in and sing it with them. Then he said that after that they the "opportunity" to come back a second time, and that there are "many reasons not to cover Destiny's Child," but that the song is so complicated that now that they've learned it they don't want to drop it from the set, like they did it in vaudeville. Then he explained that John will sing Beyonce's part and he'll sing Kelly's part, and that she's "my favorite child--I think they call them children--not that I'm an expert." Then he said that there was "the third one" whose name he couldn't remember, and John said "You have to love all your children the same." Then people were yelling that the third one's name is Michelle, and Flans said "Michelle! It's even in the song!" (I'm not sure what he meant by this.)
So then they played the song (I became a Flansgirl for the length of it as per usual), then "New York City," then "Birdhouse in Your Soul."
When John was getting his Kaoss Pad ready for "Wicked Little Critta," he said, "I pressed the button that makes the song happen." After that he was telling someone in front that he couldn't quite read what their homemade shirt said but that it was "freaking me out." I'm not sure what it said exactly, but then Flans said (apparently in response to it) "Two votes? But what about the midterms?" Then he said he needed one for his mom, and then I think the person must've been starting to take the shirt off, because Flans said, "No no no! My mom's in Florida! She can wait!"
After that Flans went back to his joke of the night before about Dan Miller being Tabitha on Bewitched, repeated almost word-for-word the same as the previous night (disillusioning!), but with the new addition this time that they'd added this "fact" to Wikipedia and no one had caught it yet.
After a run of a bunch of great songs that I don't have any special comments on ("Number Three," "Answer," "Twisting," and "Man, It's So Loud in Here"), they did band intros and then Flans thanked "all the lit majors in the audience" (which was random but did make this particular lit major feel pretty awesome!).
They closed the main set with "The Guitar," rockin' and fantastic as always. As bonuses it featured John (adorably) hopping and (adorably) waving during the "the lion waves good-bye" bit in the last verse.
When they came back for the first encore Flans made an announcement that was very exciting to me as a Pacific Northwesterner: that they'd be touring Canada later in the year. He said they're going to be "going to cities that are a mistake to go to." Then he talked about how they just got the I Like Fun vinyl, and that it resembles "a fireman's calendar from 2012."
Then:
JF: This next song is for everyone.
JL: Well, almost everyone. *pause* I'm actually not sure what you mean by that.
JF: I didn't want to say that it's for you.
JL: Are we talking about the same song?
JF: "Do They Know It's Christmas?"?
The next song was actually "Dead," so yes that was a mysterious comment to make! But anyway I was thrilled to see it again, and even more thrilled when they followed it up with "Don't Let's Start" again.
When they came back for the second encore Flans was taking a picture of the crowd with his phone, and John was goofily posing at the edge of the stage to be in it too. When I found the picture later that night it was as great as I hoped it would be.
Then John said that he'd just noticed Danny wasn't wearing red pants, and Flans said we should check out the pants that he was wearing, which were these blue ones with a grid pattern that were indeed pretty wild. Then Flans was saying that there's some festival in Boston that they've played a lot, and that they kept having bands that were opening for them right before they made it big (the example he gave was The Cardigans), but one time it was a band called Royal Clown Revue, and he told the promoters that they absolutely did not want a band with a name like that opening for them, but that they told him it was a typo and it was actually Royal Crown Revue, and they were a ska band. Then he told Danny that if he "wanted to make a lateral move into Mighty Mighty Bosstones," he definitely could with those pants.
Then John was thanking us and said "We love you, in an inappropriate way," which was...strange.
The final song was "Doctor Worm," which I think is a good closer--I like it when they end with something really high-energy like that, and everyone gets so into that one.
So it ended up being exactly the same setlist as in San Diego the night before, which surprised me--I've been to shows multiple nights in a row quite a few times, and I don't think I've ever seen them not switch out at least a couple of the songs from one night to the next. The setlist consisted of some really terrific stuff, don't get me wrong, all of which was really exciting to see, but I'd be lying if I said I weren't a bit disappointed about it being exactly the same. Still had an amazing time, of course!
The final all-important JL wardrobe report: he was wearing a black long-sleeved shirt, and I managed to be less upset about his dumb haircut than I was the night before.
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The History of Emoji’s
Ah, emojis. Known by many names, ideograms, pictograms (yes, apparently people do actually call them these) smileys, emoticons and emojis, if you aren’t familiar with these little extensions of every day language then get ready, because I’m about to take you on a comprehensive historical journey from their creation (which is a lot longer ago than you would have thought) to our current day use of the little characters.
The word “emoji” can roughly be translated to “image character” which, I would say is pretty accurate...
Emojis were actually created out of something much more boring than the bright, inclusive and much-loved collection we use today: punctuation.
In 1881, the first evidence of emojis were printed in a magazine. These “emojis” consisted of punctuation marks such as brackets, colons, semi colons and hyphens to create facial expressions to demonstrate the following emotions: joy, melancholy, indifference, and astonishment.So... pretty different to the hundreds of emojis we have now, that I would say has got your back providing an emoji for every emotion there is. (Although, maybe not melancholy...)
In 1999, just over one hundred years later, a Japanese man, Shigetaka Kunita, who was working for a company called Docomo at the time, created the first widely-used emoji, the classic love heart. Unfortunately, due to lack of a reliable coding system, recipients weren’t guaranteed to receive this to their pagers (kind of like our present day version of having an old iOS software installed on our iPhones which results in receiving a question mark in a box) until trusty Google stepped in.
Fortunately, with help from Google and the subsequent constant development of coding and emoji software with new characters coming out on a rapid basis, the emojis we know and love today exist. To some, these little characters are nothing more than an annoyance and just another example of what a bitter old man would call “millennial rubbish”, others credit this little invention for their contextualisation. Lack of contextualisation is a hugely discussed and criticised aspect of online communication, as many believe that with a lack of social cues such as vocal quality, facial expressions and tone of voice, we can never be sure of the real meaning that the sender of a message intended to portray - but do you think emojis eradicate this criticism? I think that whilst emojis help to unpick sometimes pretty vague messages and really brighten up an otherwise pretty dull and blunt sounding message and so do help with contextualisation, sometimes, they can actually create more confusion. Whilst a lot of emojis have a clear meaning - others... not so much. Take this one, for example:
I’ve had an iPhone for about five years now, and have used this emoji countless times as a praying symbol, maybe after passing an exam or praying that the essay I’ve just submitted will get me a good grade. So, they can be pretty subjective.
Much like how emojis were originally created, my first memories of emojis were also through using punctuation to create facial expressions and other small pictures. I hope you all remember the days of secondary school, when every evening we sat in that room of your house donned the “computer room” with a huge leather desk chair, dell desktop computer and we spent our evenings on MSN (if you know, you know). This is where our knowledge of keyboard shortcuts such as (8) for the music note emoji, of course - one of my favourites which allowed me to regularly update everyone on my current music favourites, was born. If you don’t remember, here’s a little something to jog your memory:
Due to the highly popular and somewhat influential nature of emojis, which is as a result of their prevalence in all communication platforms (Facebook has their own emoji board, as does Microsoft, Android...) it is increasingly important that their designs are constantly updated and developed to ensure representation. As internet communication and social media networks hold such a huge presence in the everyday lives of so many people, as 1.52 billion people* on average log onto Facebook daily and are considered daily active users suggesting that aspects of these communicative methods and platforms are increasingly important, and some may say, influential.
To add to a list of long-awaited emojis which in the past has included ginger-haired emojis, the new set of emojis, Emoji 12.0, which was approved on February 5, 2019 with 230 new additions to the existing collection, will be coming to Apple and all major communication platforms this year. Within these 230 new emojis, there are menstrual cycle emojis, an otter, an ice cube, and a waffle.
youtube
However, you’d think with the sheer number of emojis that we already have and for how long the things have been around, that emojis would be inclusive, right?Wrong. With every new update this criticism of emojis is squashed further and further and this update is no different, with more hotly anticipated and well overdue additions including interracial couples, disabled and accessible emojis such as a blind person, bionic arm, and a person in a wheelchair. Some may argue that it isn’t a big deal if there aren’t inclusive emoji, but this quote eliminates that pretty narrow-minded idea perfectly:
“If you enhance opportunities for people to represent their experience in the world, the possible negative impacts of that disability are diminished, similar to how a functional crosswalk can lessen the challenge of crossing the street if you’re visually impaired. Being able to represent the non-typical bodily state can be not only empowering, but a way in which people can communicate their experiences.” *
So, even though they’re “just emojis”, I think they are a small representation of a much bigger picture. Internet communication is at the heart of so many daily activities and has such a huge influence on the way we work, live and learn. As a result of this, small aspects of this online world do actually have a great effect in peoples perception and experiences. I would say this influence is particularly important when focusing on young people and the huge presence social media has in their lives, as growing up on the internet, the representation around you is a really important thing, as these create and reinforce societal standards, thus effecting a young persons self esteem. So, taking all this into account, if inclusive emojis are something that makes fitting in a little bit easier for someone, even if that does seem like a silly and insignificant thing to someone else, then I’m all for it.
NBC News. (2019). From interracial couples to people with disabilities: Why inclusive emojis matter. [online] Available at: https://www.nbcnews.com/better/lifestyle/interracial-couples-people-disabilities-new-inclusive-emojis-are-their-way-ncna969331 [Accessed 14 Feb. 2019].
Zephoria.com. (2019). [online] Available at: https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/ [Accessed 14 Feb. 2019].
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Free Music And Video Downloader
Freemake Audio Converter converts music recordsdata between 50+ audio codecs. Higher if I present my utilization scenarios perhaps. I edit some previous AM radio recordings of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater. There might be static from a passing thunderstorm or different electrical spikes and the bass is real muddy and tends to overmodulate and commercials would generally sound twice as loud as the principle program (and I kind of like hearing a number of the old commercials also) and from segment to phase the recording might get weaker or stronger. So, I choose the halfway level at about 90dB for the edited wav output however there may be spikes up to a hundred and ten or more and dropoffs to 70 or less. So before I scrunch the file up into MP3 format I run it via Levelator and all the pieces will get closer to 90dB for a greater spoken word earbud listening expertise.
Spotify is probably the most used music downloader within the United States, and it gives an excellent music service and consumer-pleasant interface. If you download Spotify for iPhone, you'll discover that it teams all of your music collections in accordance with genres such as classical, rock, nation, and so on. If you are searching for a selected observe, the search unit is all the time dependable, and you'll stream such music online or save it for offline playback. Our suggestion though is to make use of the commonest workaround; a Youtube to MP3 converter like MP3Juices. Whereas it may take some time for you to discover the precise version of your track on-line, as soon as you discover the proper YouTube hyperlink, it is simple obtain the songs MP3 file to your PC and then merely transfer it to your iOS or Android system.
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So what's so great concerning the Level MP3 converter? Every thing. You can't go fallacious with this wonderful intervention that offers you easy access to the very best artists and their unimaginable movies. The browser extension is updated frequently so you do not have to worry about falling prey to outdated versions. You'll be able to download music you've got purchased or added to Google Play to your cell system or pc so you'll be able to hear when you don't have an Web connection. If you happen to subscribe to Google Play Music, you may as well download subscription tracks to your cell gadget.
If that sounds confusing, then welcome to Google's world. But perhaps they're working on clarifying the completely different version. Accordingly, mergemp3.com it appears like Remix may combine one of the best points of YouTube Music and Google Play Music. And it is solely believable that YouTube Remix will simply be an overhauled model of YouTube Music. VQF is likely one of the "different" audio compression formats back in 1990s that was aimed to take over MP3 by offering better audio high quality than MP3 with decrease bitrate. Failed miserabely due varied reasons, most notably due to restrictive licensing. These days the one serious options to MP3 are in all probability Ogg Vorbis and Microsoft's WMA.Songily is a type of free music downloads websites that has the largest assortment of worldwide songs. The songs are usually not restricted to one language on this app. You'll discover plenty of international language songs and this may make it easier to determine with music from internationally. You will even be capable to take advantage of the time you could have as a result of Songily doesn't waste time whereas downloading music for you. It's a matter of seconds before the song has downloaded to your machine. With Songily you'll be able to create a playlist and run it all night time long in your social gathering.It will only be clever to obtain the YouTube video in MP3 format and have it offline quite than visiting YouTube each time. There are numerous websites that supply such companies however with so many providers and web sites, it becomes very difficult to decide on one out of a complete galaxy of options. And with so many web sites, realizing what may very well be the best, time saving, efficient, and dependable is one more challenge. Whether YouTube to MP3 obtain for Android or desktop, choose probably the most reliable app from the above checklist and revel in unlimited high-high quality music at all times.There are lots of people who're looking for a free music obtain resolution for YouTube videos. In case you are in search of one of the best youtube video audio downloaders then you'll be surprised to see the number of apps that you will discover in your in app store. All you could do is to make sure you download the right one. With this app all you want is the youtube url and it is possible for you to to obtain any track that you really want. You'll not have to worry about the video being downloaded as a result of the app filters it out.
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Cumulative Assignment
Current available technologies in your classroom/school.
Hardware:
6 Laptops
1 cell phone (mine)
Mimio Teach
Document Camera- Old and New
Projector
Printer
Software:
Microsoft Office
Outlook
Firefox
Explorer
Chrome
Websites and/or database:
Scholastic.com
Stemscopes.com
LearningA-Z.com
Tumblebooks.com
Science4us.com
IReady.com
Firstinmath.com
Web 2.0 tools and/or applications
Google
Pinterest
Technologies I would like to you use next year
MimioTeach portable interactive whiteboard
Document Camera
Stemscopes.com
Use
Both teacher and student
Both teacher and student
Both teacher and student
Affordances
MIMIOTEACH- Teacher- I will use the Mimio to keep my students engaged by allowing them to interact with the lesson that I am teaching. I searched online and found a lot of premade lesson plans, that are standard based, that can go directly with the Mimio. I will continue to look through these resources and locate which lessons I want to use in the classroom.
Students- The students will use Mimio by coming up to the whiteboard and interacting with it by answering questions that I give them.
DOCUMENT CAMERA- Teacher- I will be able to project information and instruction from both the lap top and paperwork. This will allow me to project the information and teach using different learning styles in the classroom.
Students- Will be able to come to the document camera and participate in activities and concepts of the standard that they are learning. They will be able to be part of their own learning.
STEMSCOPES.COM- Teacher- I will use Stremscopes.com to teach my science standards. There are interactive videos to engage the students and resources that can be printed. There are tabs where I can get reteach and enrichment resources. It also has questions that can be directly asked to the students to teach the standard. I will assign work directly on the site for the students to complete.
Students- Students will be allowed to complete assigned work that I give them. There are also science games that I can allow the students to play to encourage quality work.
Limitations
MIMIOTEACH-As with technology I am sure that there will be times that Mimio will not work correctly. In addition, I will have to make sure to setup times where all students will eventually get a chance to use this technology. After doing research I also learned that Lovell and Phillips (did a research and discovered that daily interactions with the whiteboard can hinder and also interrupt the daily flow and pace in the classroom.
DOCUMENT CAMERA- The document camera can sometimes be blurry and needs to be adjusted. You also cannot always fit the full paper that you are trying to project. When using the document camera to project a worksheet, you may need to zoom in, in order for the students to see the full details.
STEMSCOPES.COM- Stemscopes.com is an online site so the students need to learn how to login to it. Students also may have an issue transitioning between the different portions of the site.
MIMIOTEACH-Before I start using it in the classroom I should attend trainings on how to properly use it to successfully and effectively teach lessons. Researched and these class and webinars are free. Each on is about 60 minutes long. The students need time to learn how to properly use the device to write with. After the initial set up, the device is easy to setup.
DOCUMENT CAMERA- I am used to using a document camera, so it will just take some time to learn the new capabilities that come with this new one. There is a 15 minute video online that will train me with the new capabilities. It will always be contacted to a power source. Students will not be directly touching the device, just answering questions that will be projected.
STEMSCOPES.COM- Stemscopes.com takes time to learn. There is a day training to help with this site. Students need to be taught how to navigate and get access to the program. This will take weeks, depending on how much it’s used, to master this. BCPS already has a contract with the company so there is no additional fees.
Reliability
MIMIOTEACH-This technology is reliable, however, like with all technology, it has its chances on not working correctly. It can also be outdated and need updating to do certain things.
DOCUMENT CAMERA- Since this connects to a projector, I have to worry about the projector not working correctly also. The bulb could got out and the lightening needs to be correct. The document camera can also go out of focus and need adjusting, just like the projector.
STEMSCOPES.COM- If the internet is out, this site will be inaccessible. If the web browser is outdated, it will need to be updated in order to use this sight.
Supports
MIMIOTEACH-Operating systems: Mac 10, Windows Xp, Vista, or 7-10. Need to connect to a dry erase board. Need space for it to remain in the board.
DOCUMENT CAMERA- Need a projector. Needs something to sit it on. Need space for it remain.
STEMSCOPES.COM-Need a laptop to go to the sight, Needs an updated operating system.
Similar Products
MIMIOTEACH-White board, Dry erase board
DOCUMENT CAMERA- Elmo, Epson USB Documents camera
STEMSCOPES.COM- Science4us.com
Collaboration
MIMIOTEACH- Groups, individually, asynchronously, synchronously
DOCUMENT CAMERA- Groups, individually,
STEMSCOPES.COM-Individually, asynchronously
Final lesson with all three TIM levels
Text:
Pete the Cat and His Magic Glasses
Suggested Number of Sessions:
2
Author(s):
James and Kimberly Dean
Illustrator(s):
James Dean
Genre:
Fiction Fantasy
Connection to Conceptual Topic (IUS):
Good Citizen
LAFS Standards (always embedded):
LAFS.1RL.1.2
LAFS.1.RL.1.1
Connected Content Standards:
SS.1.C.2.2
Describe the characteristics of responsible citizenship in the school community
Academic Vocabulary in the Standards:
Characteristics, responsible, citizenship
Domain-Specific, Content Vocabulary from the Text:
Feeling
In this lesson the domain specific content is incorporating ELA and S.S standards. With Pedagogical Approach, the students will be having open ended questioning, co-operative learning, and integrated learning. Students will also be interacting with each other through talk and share.
Main Idea/Theme of Text:
Theme: “Don’t focus on the bad things in life, look for the good every day.”
Unknown Vocabulary:
Select words that might not be in students’ oral vocabulary that teacher will need to explain or define during the reading, in student-friendly terms. Make sure the word(s) selected is/are not supported through context clues within the text (print and graphics).
Grumpy-
Bad tempered (grumpy)
Frustrated-
Feeling annoyed because you can’t achieve or change something
Session 1
LAFS Focus Standard (select one): This is the standard that is going to be taught. It won’t be fully taught with just one session with this book. Goals will change with different readings.
LAFS.1.RL.1.3 Describe the characters, settings, and major events in a story.
Academic Vocabulary in the Standard:
Describe
-To give a description of something or someone
Events-
Something that happens at a certain place or time
Goal from the Literacy Continuum: This is the goal that was chosen for this lesson.
Talk about what is interesting in a photograph or illustration
Essential Question(s) from the Prompting Guides Part 1 or Part 2:
Invite students to talk about the text.
__ Thinking Within the Text _X_ Thinking Beyond the Text __ Thinking About the Text
What do you think is going to happen next in the text?
Introduction of the Text (to include the following):
** Teacher will project the text through PowerPoint. Therefore, all the students can have a clear look at the illustrations in this text. Teacher will point out parts of the illustration with a laser.
ENTRY LEVEL OF TIM
Teacher: Students we are going to read a book titled Pete the Cat and His Magic Sunglasses by James and Kimberly Dean. James Dean is also the illustrator. The genre of this story is Fantasy Fiction.
Additional features specific to this text:
Teacher: I see a familiar animal on the cover of this book. Who is this animal? Where have we seen him before? What is he wearing? Teacher will point laser to the illustration. Maybe those are the glasses that are going to be magic. I also see a turtle upside down. It is not easy for a turtle to get off his back. He might be unhappy because of this. I am going to start reading this story and see what happens.
First Reading of the Text (read to the students):
Teacher reads text and invites students to make predictions and notice important details. Indicate page number(s) where students will predict or teacher will point out important details. Teacher will continuously point to the points of the illustration that she is speaking about.
Pg.2 Teacher says: Pete is not happy. The text says he has never been grumpy before. Does anyone know what grumpy means? Teacher will then give the meaning of grumpy. Class I want you to turn to someone and talk and share about the reason you think that Pete is not happy.
Pg.4 Teacher says: The story says the frog always wore a frown, can everyone show me a frown?
Teacher will also ask students do they notice anything on frog? (glasses)
Pg.8 Teacher says: How does Pete seem now, is he still sad, is he happy? Give me a character trait to describe Pete.
Pg.10 Teacher says: Everyone show me a mad face.
Pg.14 Teacher says: Is squirrel sad now class?
Pg.26 Teacher says: I notice a pattern in the events that take place in this story. Raise your hand and tell me about some of the important events that have taken place so far in this story.
Pg.28 Teacher says: Oh no! Pete broke the glasses. Turn and talk to your partner about what do you predict is going to happen next.
END OF TEXT: Teacher says: Pete did not really need those glasses to see the good in every day. Next time we read this story we will discuss that information (then teacher will break students off in small group and centers)
Connection to Independent Practice (independently and/or collaboratively with peers):
Indicate how teacher will connect this lesson to an activity in which students will apply their learning.
At a center, students will first reread the text and discuss different things they noticed in the illustrations. Then the students will practice acting out a part of the story.
While students are working, teacher will go to each center and walk the students through using a PowerPoint. Teacher will be in control and guide the students on the steps that they need to complete. At the end of the demonstration, students should be able to open the PowerPoint tool, pick a slide theme, and know how to insert a picture in the slide through the tool.-
Adoption Stage
New TIM level
Extend the Lesson:
List possible connections from this interactive read aloud to connected content standards (lessons or activities).
Students will be put in groups of three. Each group will be guided to the website tumblebooks.com. The group will be allowed to select a text that they want to read and portray in a play. Students will put on a play to go with the online story they chose. Students will determine each role they will portray.
Each group of students will have to make their own prompts based off the illustrations from the text.
I am going to remove this part to add technology.
In the small group they will have to discuss character traits and inferences that were made about their character. Then the students will have to put on the full play using all the inference and traits they learned to help him/her brig their character alive.
Now that students are aware on how to use basic tools on the PowerPoint, the students will use it independently. While doing this assignment the students will be using a PowerPoint to add a back drop to their play. They have to include at least two different settings for their play. When the students do their play, I will project their interactive backdrops made through PowerPoint -
Adaptation Stage
Why I choose to modify my lesson in these ways.
In my 2nd lesson (the one that I modified), I was using a PowerPoint to display my text and then had my students incorporate Tumble books to enrich their lesson. This time I wanted to think about how I can use technology to further my lesson. In addition, I wanted to make sure that my technology used in the lesson plan climbed up the TIM matrix. I took account the technology that my students have access to, and what their level of expertise is with that tool.
In my modified lesson plan, I wanted the students use a PowerPoint themselves. I modified my lesson by taking out the craft that the students were using to make different prompts. Instead, they will be using a PowerPoint to make a setting for the background of their play. When the students put on their play, I will project their backdrop. This will not only enhance the lesson, but it will enhance their play.
Tim Levels
Adoption- Students have already been introduced to a PowerPoint. It was used during the reading of the text through the lesson. However, they have not used to PowerPoint themselves. Therefore, I moved up from Entry level to adoption level by guiding the students through the basic usage of a PP. I chose the technology they were using and I guided the students step by step on how to use it.
•Adaptation: Once I explained the basic usage for the PP, the students now had to use the technology themselves. I was there to support them, but they had control. This allowed the students to move up on the TIM level again.
Reflection
I want the thank you for this opportunity to be a part of your class. I have learned so much in this class. I have learned the meaning of all the components of the TIM matrix. I learned how to move up, or down, the levels. Whatever my lesson calls for determines what the levels are and how they are used. In addition, I learned that different levels of each TIM and the components that go with it. I learned how they are used by both the teacher and the student. When looking for technology tools to use in the classroom, there are different things that I need to look into. First I need to make sure that it is going to enhance my lesson, go with my standards, and have meaningful learning in the classroom. I need to also make sure that is it affordable.
One of my favorite parts of this class was when I was forced to look into technology that I have access to already. I have had a Mimio for the last four years and have not used it in the classroom. When I looked into the usage I saw that there is so many things that I can do with it. It is amazing, I cannot believe that I had access to this technology for so long and have not used it. I will be starting to use it this year. I will also continue to look up lesson plans that this tool can enhance.
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Review: Final Fantasy XIII
[originally posted: April 11, 2010]
I haven't written a review in a long time. The last review I wrote, in fact, was of Devil May Cry 4, for the Official Xbox Magazine, in 2007.
I didn't much like Devil May Cry 4, really. In the way of game journalists of my generation, I gave the game a 7.5 and an even-handed review, because there are things that it did do well. All the same, I was never asked to write another review for the magazine; much later, a staffer told me that someone from management had asked them to stop publishing my work.
"Fine! Fuck you, too!" I thought, and then felt a burden lift. I had been reviewing games professionally since 1999 and was tired of it. I have long hinted that I would some day write an expose about what's really wrong with game reviewing, since nobody seems to quite get it right. But by the time I felt ready to do that, I was so bored with the whole business that I couldn't make myself want to. To my surprise, I instead find myself compelled to write a review once again. The game which I will endeavor to review, in a way that I'll make up as I go along, is the most complicated game of 2010: Final Fantasy XIII.
* * *
Final Fantasy XIII was announced for the PlayStation 3 in 2006, at Square Enix's E3 press conference. As a long time fan of the series who was confounded by its direction at that time -- the gully between Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XII -- I was eager for both a return to form ("form" as a concept roughly equivalent to "more Final Fantasy X" in my mind) and a justification for Sony's yet-to-be-released next generation system.
Well, things change.
* * *
One thing that will make this review dramatically different to any I have ever written is that I will be considering what I learned by reading others' reviews, talking to other players, and generally trying to synthesize the concept of why this game was made the way it was made, not just whether it's any good. To my mind reviewing games in 2010 the old fashioned way is beside the point; as a journalist I recognize my own obsolescence -- the old tools have been made irrelevant by the power of marketing and the cacophony of the internet.
Plus it's boring.
That's not to promise that will be a review worth reading. I'm going to try, all the same.
Final Fantasy XIII was released for the PlayStation 3 on December 17, 2009 by Square Enix Co., Ltd. It was localized into English (and ported to the Xbox 360) and released on March 9, 2010 in the major Western markets by the company's international subsidiaries.
This is notable because it reveals so much about the flux of development from the time this game was conceived until it was released. Final Fantasy XIII came out nearly three years too late, by my reckoning. By the time it did come out, one of the only ways it successfully aligned with the market it was released into is that publishing a major game in March isn't, anymore, all that peculiar.
Final Fantasy XIII, however, is.
In 2008, Square Enix delivered a talk at the Game Developers Conference in which it described the features of its Crystal Tools game engine which powers Final Fantasy XIII -- a talk which a developer friend and fan of the series emphatically described as "terrible" shortly after. Terrible not because the technology is bad; terrible because it took the company so long to step into the technological present. In 2008, Crystal Tools promised to deliver yesterday's features tomorrow.
Coincidentally, Final Fantasy XIII was released into the Western market on the second day of GDC 2010.
When I review games, I typically insulate myself from the opinions of others. This was a solemn requirement at the heart of reviewing games for EGM, for example. Editor-in-chief Dan Hsu, who was one of my mentors for much of my career as a reviewer, demanded three distinct opinions. That's not as easy at it sounds, and not just because editors are talkative. If you go out there with the wrong score, you're going to get a lashing from the internet; you may well have to justify yourself to the game's publisher; you may even put your job at risk. Consensus is a safe haven.
This is part of why reviewing Final Fantasy XIII in April 2010 is amusing: staying isolated from opinions of this game, so polarizing and so widely discussed, is impossible. I've spent the better part of four years anticipating the game more than any other ever released. I've also spent the better part of the last four months marinating in the game and people's reactions to it. I've read, written, and spoken more words about this than any other game in years, and probably any in the foreseeable future.
In fact, this may be the last time I can claim authority over any sizable chunk of the mainstream game industry. I didn't think about it that way in the past, but Japanese-developed RPGs have been, since the early 1990s, my passion. The JRPG is my favorite genre. Very, very briefly, it was also the world's: starting in 1997, with the release of Final Fantasy VII, it seemed that the games I loved would finally get their due.
I used to have the mentality -- which now feels quite dated -- that I could convince people to give games a shot. I thought that if I could cut right into the heart of a game and explain exactly what made it tick and why that mattered, I could convince people, with only my words, to try something they weren't planning to. While I don't think that's impossible, I think it's an edge case; voracious consumers of games, maybe. Enthuasiasts of a genre, perhaps. Convincing someone to pick up an interesting book, CD, or go to a film is one thing; with games... it's much more difficult, it seems, and it's only getting harder thanks to everyone's shrinking reserves of money and time.
One thing I realized over the years is that a large contingent of gamers who were suckered into playing Final Fantasy VII for its groundbreaking cinematics and engrossing story actually weren't that happy about it. They may have enjoyed that experience, but they began to become frustrated by and by, and other games in the genre perplexed and bored them. Many, many people didn't value what I valued in games -- and I don't just mean turn-based combat or pop existentialism. People simply didn't value stepping out of their comfort zone.
I just didn't realize how true this was until my comfort zone started to shrink and become more and more irrelevant.
It's now well-known that Microsoft approached Activision and Infinity Ward and asked them to deliver Call of Duty 2 for the Xbox 360's launch, because Halo 3wasn't going to be ready. While that's not the whole of it, it might just be the inflection point where things changed.
By 2010, we know the story by heart: Western developers who'd never had access to an audience like this before had the console market hungrily in their sights and, driven by ambition and talent, made bold games that made what had come before look rudimentary. Meanwhile, the reliability of Japan's market and the peculiarity of the way its businesses are run had created somnambulent companies which attracted university graduates with a promise of reliable jobs rather than creative possibilities.
Of course, these things are, to an extent, cyclical. It's not over yet. Things are changing.
Square Enix is reputed to be a vision-driven company with strong creative minds in charge. Its president, Yoichi Wada, has complained that the staff's creative pursuits delay its titles from shipping on time. The most famous man at the company is Tetsuya Nomura, an illustrator who got famous for creating characters so memorable that it enabled him to get his thumb into the majority of the company's creative output within a decade.
On the other hand, Final Fantasy XIII was the company's first real step into the next generation; it's a humongous production designed to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.
For all of these reasons and more, Final Fantasy XIII is, most obviously, a bizarre compromise.
In his borderline incomprehensible -- through no fault of his own -- GDC 2010 talk, the game's director Motomu Toriyama described how, over the years, the creative process for developing Final Fantasy titles changed from a collaborative to top-down structure thanks to the workflow demands put on the teams by technology. In the immediate aftermath of the development of Final Fantasy VI for the Super Famicom, the team bullshitted up some ideas for Final Fantasy VII. But when it came time to produce that game, the decision had been made to move to the PlayStation and deliver a Hollywood-style cinematic experience.
Still and all, the game was put together piecemeal -- and if you remember its wild inconsistency of play, it's not a surprise to hear that now. From to snowboarding to defending Fort Condor to performing CPR to motorcycle combat to the Golden Saucer, the game provides arguably too many diversions from its core gameplay. By the time Final Fantasy X rolled around in 2001, said Toriyama, "An impact on experimentation took place. From this [game], scenario had to be fixed first, because of motion and voice [recording]. So each staff person we could not incorporate their comments or opinions, since just a small number of people were working on the story creation... It was a major change in Final Fantasy X."
Throw in a platform shift for which the company was totally unprepared, a mandate for visual perfection, and a production team in the hundreds, and Final Fantasy XIII, as it is, is born.
Still, I haven't even approached Final Fantasy XIII's greatest and most fundamental sin.
* * *
"It starts to get good after about 12 hours," I said.
"Twelve hours? I can't believe you give that game such a huge by," said Lulu.
"It's not a by," I responded, lamely. She turned away. Zak looked at me. "I just know that if he sticks with it..."
She shook her head. "The fact that they can rely on that kind of loyalty --"
"...if he sticks with it -- I'm not talking to everybody, I'm talking to Zak -- he'll enjoy it." A few moments later: "You're right. It's a by."
The biggest sin of Final Fantasy XIII is that the developers assume that once that disc slips into the drive, gamers are commited to seeing the ending credits.
The developers assume that everybody wants so much to play this game that they will simply plod through it all. This sin is compounded by Square Enix's obvious, terrifying mandate to make the biggest, most popular Final Fantasy game since VII, and bring gamers into the fold who've never before been interested in the series. And it is complicated by their total misjudgment of the demands of today's audiences after years of increasing sophistication in games.
* * *
Let's play a game. No, not Final Fantasy XIII.
Let's pretend that Final Fantasy XIII came out in December 2007, a year after the launch of the PlayStation 3, much as Final Fantasy X did in 2001 relative to the PlayStation 2's launch. And since we're already enmeshed in this fantastic scenario, let's take another little leap: let's pretend that the Xbox 360 never existed.
Boy, Final Fantasy XIII seems pretty fucking excellent now, doesn't it? Yeah, it may not be the best game in the series, but I can't wait to see what these guys are going to do when they really come to grips with this next generation console technology!
That's the world this game was made for. There were just some complications...
* * *
Thanks to Call of Duty, mainstream audiences of unparalleled size are getting used to the production style pioneered by Square Soft in the early '90s. These games are so complicated and huge, somebody thought, we ought to bootstrap a few teams and get them rolling into production simultaneously, so we can have a continuous flow of product for fans.
At some point, this production process broke down. By the time of Final Fantasy XII's hideous and unprecedented delay, FF production was critically wounded; it has not recovered. Motomu Toriyama showed one deeply confusing screenshot of Final Fantasy XIII for the PlayStation 2 in his GDC presentation. I've privately been told by someone who'd know that the game was unconventional in a way that the Final Fantasy XIII that was manufactured and shipped to retailers is not.
Something happened during the production of the unconventional, deeply flawed Final Fantasy XII to kill experimentation at Square Enix. Something happened during the troubled birth of Crystal Tools to complicate Final Fantasy XIII's production until a group of very intelligent and experienced developers were forced to pare down the design document to what would obviously and flawlessly function.
In his GDC talk, the lead game designer of Assassin's Creed II, Patrick Plourde, talked about the production of the first game. Half an hour after he joked that "the Final Fantasy guys are probably the only others who face these problems" -- putting together a 30+ hour game with a team of hundreds, that is -- he explained that a separate team designed and implemented the assassination missions in the original Assassin's Creed. These missions were stapled onto the core game and, though they formed its primary gameplay objectives, they had nothing to do with its core gameplay. Ubisoft Montreal's production processes had been designed to produce different streams of content simultaneously and bolt them together at the end -- a method that was retained but completely rethought for production of its sequel.
In a strange coincidence, Motomu Toriyama was sitting next to me during this presentation.
* * *
Most people who had anything to say about Final Fantasy XIII shortly after its release were those who were repulsed by early design decisions the team made about the game. And while I don't think production realities excuse a shitty game, they sure do explain it. If one thing's clear, it's that production ramped up on Final Fantasy XIII before there was a clear plan on how things were going to be bolted together.
As Tim Rogers points out in his review, "A producer of Final Fantasy XIII explains that there was 'enough discarded content' from Final Fantasy XIII to make a whole other game. The 'content' in question is mainly levels -- game-play areas." He draws the correct inference: the production process for this game was so deeply flawed that artists were being paid to create content that the core creative team was unsure if it would have any use for, just to make them do something.
As I explained to Zak and Lulu, the really bad part of Final Fantasy XIII is not, as many have said, the first two hours, in which you have no meaningful choices in combat and cannot earn Crystogen Points and so cannot level your characters. The worst part is also not the next five hours of the game, which establishes the core of the game's narrative premise and slowly and surely delivers its gameplay systems one after the other -- the tutorial.
No, the worst part is between hours 8 to 14. This is the most vapid and superfluous part of Final Fantasy XIII. This is the painful and tedious point where the game has firmly established its core gameplay, its cast of characters, and then... refuses to give over. From the second half of the Gapra Whitewood to the end of the Sunleth Waterscape, Final Fantasy XIII is a tedious mess made by people who clearly don't understand what they're supposed to be doing.
Here's my quick guide into making Final Fantasy XIII not suck shit. It'll sound pretty easy when I explain it.
Immediately institute gameplay. Without changing the scenario at all, allow players to experiment with special abilities and raise levels in the Crystarium -- even allow them to raise the levels of the NORA troops Gadot and Lebreau, though the player won't ever use them again (notably, in the release, Gadot and Lebreau's HP are listed as ??? instead of numbers because they're NPCs.) Nobody will resent wasting this effort; certainly no more than they did being held back from experiencing gameplay for the first two hours of the game.
By the time the party assembles for the battle against the Pulse Fal'Cie in the Pulse Vestige, they should have earned a few abilities in the Crystarium. (If there's one thing this game is spookily good at, it's balancing the distribution of CP as it effects gaining abilities and fighting boss battles, so I don't doubt the team could balance this well.) You don't have to unlock much, but just enough to give the player a sense he is making decisions: enough for advanced players to know what's in store and little enough for novices to stick with it. Remember, the novice audience wants to learn how to play your game.
As the party escapes to Lake Bresha, lay on the tutorials, just as you did. There's a debate to be had here about teaching the player how to play the game by presenting challenges that require him to exercise the options at his fingertips -- remember that battle in Palumpolum which forces you to play the Sentinel role? like that -- but let's just assume we're not changing things that drastically. It'll work.
The Vile Peaks proceed as normal, though perhaps the roles of some of the characters have to be tweaked. But here's the crucial difference. By the end of the Vile Peaks, the entire Crystarium must be unlocked and available to players. You have to be done with your lessons approximately... now. There's time for introductions to more advanced gameplay later, but the core: we're done.
Here comes a tough part. Narratively, I don't see a way around having Hope and Lightning come to their own understanding in the Whitewood as Sazh and Vanille later do in the Sunleth Waterscape and Nautlius. A mix of cutscenes, structural changes, and judicious and much-needed cutting would have to happen here to make the game tolerable and well-paced.
Get players to Palumpolum as fast as you can, and once the six party members gather in Hope's apartment for the game's first real climax, you've just delivered an adventuring party that will never be split up again. If you've balked at my earlier suggestion to unlock the Crystarium fully, now's when you really have to do it. You will never again force the party formation to follow the whims of the plot; that was annoying enough in the 16-bit days in what I would consider the most irritating game in the series, Final Fantasy VI, and it's excruciating now that we know other games actually give us a credible illusion of control.
After Palumpolum, Palmecia. And after Palmecia, Gran Pulse. And in Gran Pulse, which we should get to much sooner, something besides mark hunts. "Something", in fact, like the second half of the game. "The answer is staring them right in the face. Gran Pulse should have been the World of Ruin. What were they thinking?" I said this out loud. It's very likely nobody else was in the room.
* * *
Let's talk core gameplay mechanics.
I theorized, in December, that at some point there was a meeting in Square Enix's Shinjuku headquarters where things were decided that altered the course of Final Fantasy XIII's development profoundly. I'm not wrong, of course -- there were probably dozens of such meetings. But let's visualize this for a minute.
Yoshinori Kitase, Motomu Toriyama, Yuji Abe, and the rest of the team is sitting at a conference table. The light is bright and fluorescent. There's stale coffee, 330 ml bottles of French spring water, and, since this is Japan, there might even be cigarette smoke hanging in the air. Production on Final Fantasy XIII is not, to put it lightly, going as planned. Crystal Tools is nothing like done. In the back of his mind, one of the men is wishing -- for not the first time and not the last -- that Matsuno's fucking team had got Final Fantasy XII out the door in time for FF13 to hit the PlayStation 2 before its market died, and that Crystal Tools could have been sorted out before production had begun on a next-generation title.
Toriyama looks at Kitase. Kitase looks at Toriyama. "What are we going to do?" somebody asks.
I tried, and failed, to write this scene with drama and snappy dialogue, but let's be fair: this is a Japanese office. One of the junior planners walks around the room handing out sheafs of stapled A4 paper to everybody. This is what they're going to do. They've identified the strenghts of the series: its characters and story, courtesy of Nomura, Toriyama, Kazushige Nojima and others; its battles -- thank Toshiro Tsuchida and Yuji Abe; its beautiful environments, Isamu Kamikokuryo; and the character leveling system, the Crystarium. Everything else is expendable -- it either has to be tied into the plot, or has to serve the purpose of getting this game out the door.
When I talk about Final Fantasy XIII's battle system, I get excited. People can hear the excitement in my voice, and they get interested. I have actually seen this happen in real life. That's a measure not just of how much I care about the game and the series, but my genuine admiration for the level of execution of this absolutely core facet of the gameplay. Their plan almost worked -- or perhaps could have worked -- but it didn't. It fails in some very fundamental ways that mostly have to do with the developers' control and complacency.
* * *
Time for pure gameplay complaining: the Crystarium stinks.
Let's do some comparing and contrasting and background here, since we might as well.
At some point -- I guess Final Fantasy X -- the developers at Square Enix decided that traditional experience points / earn a level-style leveling systems were passe. I don't in the least bit blame them, since how you grow your characters is one of the best gameplay aspects of an RPG when handled correctly. The Sphere Grid, which was Final Fantasy X's stab at delivering that sort of gameplay, was compulsively addictive to me. It was essentially linear for a good portion of the game, but starting not terribly far in, you'd be forced to make decisions about what to unlock when, and how to balance your party, and soon after that what secondary sets of abilities you wanted your characters to develop. One of my absolute fondest memories of FFX is running in circles in Zanarkand raising levels for an entire day.
Final Fantasy XII's leveling system, the License Board, is a pathetic thing, paltry and simple, trivial to exploit. It encourages you -- or at least it did me -- to rob your characters of any distinct identity and instead gravitate to what delivers the best advantage: my party were carbon copies of one another by the end of the game; bizarre hybrid mage-warriors with no trace of specialty nor identity. It's worth noting that when the game was rereleased in Japan, this entire gameplay mechanic was deleted and replaced with something new (called the Intenational Zodiac Job System, fuck knows what that is. I certainly don't care.)
The Crystarium is not that bad. But it is not very good. I think one of the real flaws with it is that it's split into six: each role has its own distinct set of bonuses and abilities, because each role has to be defined within the context of the game's Paradigm System battles, which are in fact quite excellent. Unfortunately in concert with this, there's no freedom of movement, and your only decision-making process is which of the jobs you wish to raise first.
But that complaint is really irrelevant compared to the real flaws in the system.
The Crystarium is divided into levels, and levels are locked. They are not locked, as would be logical, until you complete one; they are locked until the arbitrary point in the game -- always after a boss battle -- where the developers deign to unlock the next stage of Crystarium growth. Frustratingly, too, in my experience, the game perfectly metes out experience points throughout so that you're just about ready to hit the next level of the Crystarium by the time you get it.
This is one of the many things about playing Final Fantasy XIII that makes you feel like a rat in a maze. There's an ominous awareness of someone in control, just out of your field of view... And there is a severe and obvious flaw with this: gamers don't all enjoy games the way the developers intend them to. Gamers don't all enjoy games in the order developers intend them to. And gamers do not all enjoy games at the speed which developers intend them to. This is the first game in the series which does not allow for this, and that is a severe flaw.
There are six potential roles for each character (pretentiously renamed in the U.S. version to Commando, Ravager, Medic, Saboteur, Synergist, and Sentinel from the readily comprehensible Attacker, Blaster, Healer, Jammer, Enhancer, and Defender.) However, for the first two thirds of the game, you aren't allowed to access any but the three the which the development team assigned to each character at its outset. The CP (Crystogen Points, or experience points) you earn are only enough to really concentrate on the three jobs you are given anyway.
This, in fact, holds true for the whole game, including the last boss, unless you do a tremendously unpalatable amount of grinding, even when you have access to the other three jobs. This sucks out all player choice once again. Since you effectively can't raise optional jobs, since the CP costs are so astronomical, you can't really experiment with new party builds without swapping characters in and out to form the party you want.
All I accomplished by trying to make Lightning a Saboteur was putting her behind Hope in primary job progress, and I quickly abandoned the idea. I got a slight benefit out of making Fang a low-level Synergist, but since you also only have six Paradigm slots this became irrelevant, too. There just wasn't room for that Paradigm.
The worst aspect of the Crystarium, though, is that not every character gets every ability in every job. For example, as a Synergist, Fang gets Shellga and Protectga. I assumed Hope would earn access to these abilities soon after -- when his next Crystarium level unlocked. Nope. He never gets them -- ever -- and Synergist is one of his three primary jobs. Worse yet is that without consulting a FAQ, you'd never know this, so it's impossible to plan ahead for the ideal party without researching online -- and personally I like to avoid FAQs as much as I can.
In the end, the Crystarium is just a linear leveling system in a Sphere Grid disguise, and it's probably my personal biggest disappointment with the game. Tim compared the game to busywork in his review, and it's not wrong -- by removing meaningful choice, the Crystarium has transitioned from a thoughtful system into something akin to stuffing envelopes.
* * *
All the same, when I look at the game, I'm more sympathetic to many of the mistakes the developers made because I came to the realization that they are tremendously determined to get players through this game, fully understanding its gameplay. And I also laud them for turning up the challenge at the point at which they believe players should fully understand it -- which is one of the most satisfying sections of the game, if not the most satisfying section -- the Battleship Palamecia.
It's obvious that this is why the game is so drawn out, and derisively (though somewhat fairly) called a neverending tutorial by gamers. Gamers, for one reason and another, don't like to be condescended to, and this was a miscalculation on Square Enix's part.
But it's not so simple as that. This isn't just about teaching novices to play the game. It's about making sure everybody gets it. Really, really gets it.
This is necessary because with previous titles in the series, it was fully possible to get to the very end without understanding their gameplay. Not just possible, in fact, but likely. The most obvious culprit here is Final Fantasy VIII -- the game is complicated, more than a little broken, very abstract, and full of gameplay loopholes. On reading what people have had to say about it over the last 11+ years, I have certainly realized that I -- no newbie to Final Fantasy or RPGs in general by that point -- got to the end of the game without really understanding its gameplay in more than the most rudimentary way, and I was hardly alone in that. In fact, I never actually beat Final Fantasy VIII. I got to the last boss, but I never did defeat her.
Let's go back to that word "abstract". When it comes to core gameplay, RPGs are the most abstracted of all established game genres. In a shooter, you shoot someone; he dies. You physically move the aiming reticule over a target; you pull a shoulder button like a trigger. It's simple. Game developers are forever adding abstract, complex gameplay elements to titles of all genres, because the kinds of people who buy Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games enjoy these abstractions. Only RPGs are build their foundations on them. Even relatively simple concepts like "equipment" tend to be so complicated by either special abilities or innumerable choices that they lose a great deal of their concreteness.
There's the famous example, of course, of Dean Takahashi's review of the original Mass Effect -- in which he forgot to level Shepard. Dean is not a stupid guy.
At this year's GDC, Peter Molyneux said that Microsoft research indicated that more than 60 percent of the Fable audience understood less than 50 percent of the series' gameplay. Fable is not as popular as Final Fantasy.
The answer that BioWare and Lionhead have posed to these problems is to streamline the everliving fuck out of Mass Effect 2 and Fable III. The Final Fantasy XIIIdevelopment team tried that, too. However, where the paths diverge is that the Western teams have gone to great lengths to make their gameplay systems concrete. ME2 is a full-on shooter; Fable III doesn't have levels anymore: you gain followers, and that power is reflected visually by your character.
Instead of moving towards action or something else easier to understand, Final Fantasy XIII completely retained an abstracted, command input-based tactical battle system with text and gauges and jobs and hit points -- they just tried to teach players to use it. As a hardcore gamer who loves abstraction (and in particular loves this battle system) I sure do appreciate it. But it's easy to argue that Square Enix is going both against the grain of the collective wisdom of the industry and also working against the mainstream audience they want to cultivate.
One solution -- and I'm not even sure this is precisely intentional on BioWare's part, but if it is, it's genius -- would be to split Final Fantasy into hardcore nerdy and open and casual variants, in the same way Mass Effect and Dragon Age compliment each other. No significant number of BioWare otaku who want the D&D-inspired bollocks of Dragon Age's gameplay resent Mass Effect 2's simplicity. And they will buy every scrap of Dragon Age content thrown to them, and most of them will buy Mass Effect, too. Like i said, if this is intentional, it's pure fucking genius and probably what I most respect BioWare for right now.
I've talked to a guy online -- a smart enough guy, an adult and avid gamer, who got to the end of Final Fantasy X without understanding the Sphere Grid and couldn't beat Sin. Despite my problems with FFVIII, this never occurred to me, simply because I understood FFX so well. And, more troublingly, I know a guy online who's gotten past the point in Final Fantasy XIII where the developers assume you understand the game and just throw everything at you -- far past, with the help of strategy guides and a level of perseverence that's difficult to credit but so refreshing to see -- and I'm not quite sure he really gets it. He certainly can't reliably execute it. Because of the tight control over the Crystarium he can't grind his way out of tight spots; because of the developers' faith that their style of teaching players how to play is adequate, he has to resort to following online strategies. Even the official guide isn't enough.
So as much as I like the impetus of teaching novices to understand Final Fantasy -- because how else are you going to convert them into fans like me who live, breathe, and love JRPG gameplay? -- I don't think Square Enix pulled it off. And worse, they alienated a good chunk of their existing audience by making it sit through kindergarten, or as I like to call the beginning of the game, Disc 0 (think about this in PlayStation 1 FF terms and you'll get it.)
* * *
So while I'm on the subject of gameplay, let's keep this going and talk about the fucking battle system already.
The best -- if not most appealing -- way I can think of to explain the Paradigm Shift system is that, in a regular FF battle system, you were the grill team in the McDonalds kitchen, all working to produce the meal. In FF13, you've been promoted to manager.
Rather than making the same, repetitive individual decisions moment-to-moment, you control the overall flow of battle via the Paradigms. Once the system gets cooking, you get the same intense and strategic push-pull of a traditional turn-based battle system in maybe one fifth of the time.
So each Paradigm you set up, to back up a bit, is a party build. Each character has three jobs (let's say three, because as I discussed, five or six is a lie and even four is pushing it.) Your job is to switch between Paradigms which offer the most effective mix of jobs (and thus, skills) for current battle situations -- you become the mini-general, flipping your troops' jobs around. And it's not just that you must tell them what (generally) to do; you also have to be mindful of how their skills compliment each other. That's before you take into account enemy behavior.
To say that the battle system is challenging and addictive would be an understatement -- this is the compulsive and most highly polished aspect of the gameplay, bar-none. The problem is that it doesn't fucking get that way until the aforementioned Palamecia section... like 15 hours into the game. Sigh. But once it kicks in, it's fucking kicked in for the whole rest of the game; smacking the everloving shit out of the last boss was a highly amusing pleasure.
There's also the extremely fast pace to laud, and also the strange but addictive process of Staggering enemies. Until you Stagger an enemy, damage is negligible, and you need to hit them with both physical attacks and magic to make them Stagger. This really is the way in which the Paradigm Shift system is unified with basic damage dealing, you see, and the icing is the game's maniacal reliance on buffs and debuffs later on to add another layer of tension and make your finger itch on the L1 button as you shift Paradigms compulsively. This is the good shit. This is where it's at.
And when you Stagger (or Break) -- I definitely prefer the Japanese version's "Break", it's more forceful, more aesthetically appealing -- So when you BREAK an enemy, there's a skill called Launch that the Commando class gets which throws the fucker up into the air. When the enemy is up in the air it can't do jack shit -- it can't attack you at all, and just wriggles helplessly. This is so super fucking satsifying that I can't even articulate it. It makes me giggle.
And to answer one of the questions Tim raised in his review of the game, yes, it's inherently satisfying to see giant fucking numbers (representing damage) pop out of enemies when you hit them. Of this I have not the least shred of doubt.
* * *
Let's talk about the whole NO TOWNS thing.
The game does not fucking need towns. Towns would not solve this game's problems. The whole towns thing reminds me of people talking about Steven Spielberg's A.I. A lot of people didn't like the saccharine ending of the film and said that the movie should have ended with David staring at the Blue Angel, implicitly forever. No -- that would have just been a different shitty ending.
In the same vein, stapling some classic-style towns to Final Fantasy XIII would not solve anything.
What people who are asking for towns are asking for are two things, and one of them is valid and one of them is bullshit.
1. Give me what the series has always had, because I am old and I fear change. (Bullshit.)
2. Give me something that would improve the game's pacing, and add agency and variety. (Correct.)
Let me be clear: I have no interest in seeing towns come back to Final Fantasy as towns were once executed in the series, that's for sure. But something needs to come in -- a solution must be devised. The bit where you chase the Chocobo chick through Nautilus: that was simple, and stupid, but fun.
The way I much more miss towns, in all honesty, is that so many of the cutscenes in this game feature people just stopping in some corridor in some dungeon and having a conversation, and the context they do this in has absolutely nothing to do with that conversation, and it starts to feel extremely false and disconnected from any sense of reality. This is to be avoided scrupulously in future games in the series, in my opinion, and one of the ways to do that is to make sure that the important story sequences are context-driven. And to have context-driven story you need, well, a fucking context. Obviously. Things like towns are meaningful. Giant blue glowing forests, while totally fucking awesome for smacking the shit out of rampaging biological experiments in, are not so great for having a conversation about your dead mom.
* * *
One particularly notable object lesson in this is the segment of the game which takes place in Palumpolum. The game goes from romps through attractive but irrelevant video game backdrops to a struggle against fate in a city populated by civilians. Context comes flooding in to illustrate concepts that were so recently abstract. There's an army, there are buildings that make sense, there's the whole scenario with Hope's dad in his apartment. Things just gel fabulously here in a way that totally makes sense, and stands in stark contrast to the last several hours of the game.
The Hanging Edge. Gapra Whitewood. Sunleth Waterscape. No.
Vile Peaks. The Fifth Ark. Kind of; good enough.
Nautilus. Palumpolum. The Palmecia. Eden. Yes.
* * *
Let's talk about the characters and story.
The Final Fantasy series has been pretty hit or miss when it comes to antagonists. This game is pretty much a miss. It's really not until the last fucking battle that you begin to get a real understanding for what actually drives the antagonist, who is an Old Man In A Dress, the Fantasy Pope -- which is a lazy cliche, while I'm complaining -- to push your party around, try to kill them, et cetera. This is what I like to call a Big Fucking Mistake.
Until then, you're confronted with the fact that he's just a floating asshole who pushes you around and lies to you. It's easy to see why the characters dislike him, but as the player, it's not so easy to feel strongly about it.
Also he's a big stupid monster / god thing, really, it turns out, of course. And I found this particularly boring because, oddly enough, the real world's Evil Old Man In A Dress has been in the news a lot lately. And he has been implicated in multiple coverups involving child molesters. And while the whole complicated tale is heartbraking and infuriating, it's also a human story, one that has real heft and weight: I'm more interested in taking my band of adventurers to Rome and knocking Cardinal Ratfucker out of his Prada loafers with a hail of Blizzagas than spitting on Primarch Dysley, FF13's antagonist. Think about that rich and complicated story of venality, ambition, insensitivity, and arrogance and compare it with what motivates FF13's Pope, which is "I'm a god, but I don't like being a god that much."
Right.
That said, stories of gods pushing humans around don't have to suck. I mean, we have the whole pantheons of Greek and Norse mythologies, and those are just the ones I am immediately familiar with as a white nerd. Those are some fucking interesting gods. And beyond that I can think of examples from fantasy like Megan Whalen Turner's The Queen's Thief series, or Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos books, or Diana Wynne Jones, or Neil Gaiman. These gods have many of the same qualities of the Fal'Cie -- aloof, manipulative -- but they're used effectively. That's because the action of the story rests on the decisions of the people, even when the gods command; FF13 does, to its credit, try to do that, too, but it doesn't come together until the end.
Let's detour quickly into "Fal'Cie." We already have a word for gods, and it's "gods". Bad fantasy overuses superflous terminology like Fal'Cie that obscures both the meaning and, to my mind, seriousness of its story, and this is a prime offender. I have a theory that Japanese people are more willing to accept bullshit katakana terminology because their language is full of it -- bear in mind that everyday concepts like Personal Computer and Digital Camera and Internet and Sony PlayStation are all made up fantasy words to the Japanese, more or less, and it seems easier to understand why their games are full of them.
Then again Dragon Age has shit like the Grey Wardens and (gag) Darkspawn, which sound just as bad to me. It's a problem. Fantasy people: restrain thyselves.
One of the really frustrating things about this game is another aspect of the Disc 0 problem I alluded to earlier. It really, really extends to the development of the characters. Plenty of people I've talked to (aka The Whole of the Internets) really hate Snow, Hope, and Vanille. I do not hate them. But I can understand it, because for the first chunk of the game, they are boring do-nothing characters.
Contrast the Sazh who stumbles around the Hanging Edge with the one who talks about his son, Dahj, in Sunleth Waterscape and Nautilus.
In my opinion, Hope's problems make sense, and he begins to speak and act intelligently and with conviction earlier on. But Vanille is in a way the linchpin of the plot, or many of its mysteries, and you have no bloody idea until way too far into the game. There's a reason she's narrating the thing, folks. Snow, well... Snow can't really get into gear until he and Hope have it out, and thanks to the game's shitty pacing, that just takes far too long.
Someone I know said "the plot seems like it's always an hour away from getting good", and that's apt. I've also heard it said that the text Datalog entries add necessary details to flesh out what's going on -- and that's true not in terms of understanding events (I had no problems) but it's very true in terms of shading.
In the end, I'm not wild about the cast. They're not as sympathetic as the Final Fantasy X crew, somehow. I felt for them, but not strongly. I think the context problem I wrote about -- Talking In Dungeons -- and the boring antagonist help screw them up. The lack of a real focused main character (aka Final Fantasy VI-itis) is also a problem.
Lightning never comes to life as a character -- she's an idea of a character, a representation, a simulacrum. She's fascinating to watch in motion and she spits out some great lines -- love her attitude -- but there's no her.
Sazh, on the other hand, is dependable and sympathetic, and one of the only in the party capable of surprising you with his actions. How in the fuck did Japan deliver the one of the first truly rounded and sympathetic black characters in a game (and deliver him with a Chocobo chick in his afro, and make it work?) Talk about an unexpected triumph.
Snow is a stock character. Snow is not a badly-written version of that character, but he does not exceed those bounds enough to become fully three-dimensional. He's important to the story, though, and I forgive it. He's kind of like this game's Wakka, with a role that exceeds his depth, yet somehow a less interesting conflict to resolve within himself.
I had thought Hope was going to be a Shinji-type character, but he's really not, or not for very long. He's a believable adolescent; his background really comes into play for his character in ways I didn't anticipate (observations easier for me to make, perhaps, because he's the one I identified with most.) You can tell he's well-educated though he never really talks about it much; later you see he's a child of privelege who grew up in the big city, and his attitude and demeanor makes sense. Characterization Success Get! He acts in ways that are logical, and if anybody sells the whole Fal'Cie/l'Cie thing, in the whole cast, it's Hope -- through both his reactions to the situation and his knowledge.
Vanille... is a conundrum. First up, she's the worst character design Nomura has shit out since... Irvine Kinneas? Long time. Part of that's a cultural Japan/America thing, and part of that's a borderline misogynist "girl skipping around in a short dress is tough to take seriously" thing, let's face it... but part of it is that she has just a hideous outfit and ridiculous hair. Even Hope looks like he's dressed to walk around a bit. She... well, it'd be an okay outfit for a summertime date. If she didn't expect to have to sit down and get hit in the back with that... beaded... thing, that is.
When her role in the story becomes apparent, though, suddenly she's really interesting. I can't think of another character in an RPG who lies so much, and for such believable reasons. Usually RPG characters only lie because they're Secretly On The Other Side or whatever -- normal fantasy turncoat bullshit. That's it. You know, totally unlike real people, who lie all the time with both good and bad intentions. Not so, Vanille.
And Fang is kind of dumb but she looks awesome, is gorgeous, kicks ass, has a rockin' Australian accent, and is just generally too much fun to not love. And you can easily pretend she's a lesbian.
The game's real strength, though, is the dynamics of the characters -- their interactions. Lightning and Hope. Hope and Snow. Sazh and Vanille. Vanille and Fang. Japanese writers seem to have a facility for group dynamics and this frequently shines through in FF13's story more than the actual plot point that's occuring.
* * *
Chris Hecker has warned us that if we're not careful, games will become like comic books. What he's talking about is cultural ghettoization. I think we're already there -- we're just there at a profitable scale for a wide audience, unlike comics.
And in many cases we're at an even bigger disadvantage -- it's much more challenging, and at times impossible, to step out of your preferred genres and either enjoy or comprehend the games. The FF13 solution, as I already outlined, was to teach people to enjoy it. Sure, Square Enix was less than fully successful there (though the guy who I spoke about who's struggling loved the game so much -- his first JRPG ever -- that he kept at it, and has pushed through the points where he was stuck, and even crossed over into JRPG fan territory by buying the CD soundtrack!)
But I digress. My brain has been programmed by long exposure to love the JRPG genre. The experience of playing genre-based games is to gradually understand them more. As long as the games are good, your accumulated knowledge makes them more enjoyable. Hell, even mediocre games in a genre that you like and understand tend to be somewhat entertaining, because they lightly caress those synapses.
Your decisions are driven by your tastes, but your tastes are reinforced by repeated exposure, until you start to think about buying games you think look terrible because they have good aspects -- for example, Eternal Sonata, which I though about buying I don't know how many times before I finally gave up on the idea. Its adorable vapidity repulsed me too much to sit through just to experience a battle system which looks pretty nifty.
One thing I love most about the JRPG genre is its visual panache, and one thing that the deveopers of Final Fantasy XIII prioritized beyond perhaps all else is delivering those visuals. They are stunning. The character animations in battle and exploration are excellent, the scenes burst with detail, the environments are eye-catching and complex and unexpected. The amount of art generated for this game is nuts -- especially because that's the most expensive part of current generation game production. When I saw Lake Bresha for the first time in December, I said -- out loud -- "this is why I bought a PlayStation 3" and I was not kidding. There was my $600, three years later, right there. When I had the chance to speak to him, I even brought Lake Bresha up with Toriyama, and here's what he said:
That body of water you were mentioning is crystallized, and technically it's very difficult to create something that's basically half see-through to bring that frozen effect. So it's not only that artistic vision, but it's also providing that technical expertise to create that; and that's something that really sets us apart from other developers. Other developers I don't think can really create that.
You know what? It sounds arrogant, but the blend of techniques, aesthetics, and Japanese orientation to detail represented by Final Fantasy XIII is unmatched this generation. This game is a visual masterpiece. Sure, it's not subtle; The Lost Guardian is going to be more refined. But FF13 can encompass so much about what's great about current generation visuals in one game: it brings in elements of all genres and all aesthetics and blends them together and makes them work, stunningly, and in realtime. And that was something I could always fall back on and enjoy, because it's something I love. And that's what being a genre fan means.
Tragically, so much of the most beautiful, exciting content is saved for late in the game. The developers just presume you'll get to Gran Pulse and see its impressive vistas. What if you get bored and sell the game before then? I don't think that thought crossed anybody's mind. That. Is. Fucking. Nuts.
The same goes for the game's soundtrack: Masahi Hamauzu, long relegated to Square's B-titles, does a fantastic job here. Yes, it hews close to the aesthetics that have been long established in the genre. A friend of mine, whose music taste I respect a great deal, called it terrible. I got really annoyed. But it's hard to see something like this the way he might: not as a fan of JRPG soundtracks, but as a fan of music. I actually have plenty I could say about the topic in its defense, but that's for another time: it's enough for me to put out that, in another aspect of its conventionality, this game excels.
* * *
Though all games don't feature strong narrative elements, I think it might be true that games are a unique medium because they are both complex software systems and content-driven media. Together, they forge a context. It's an important tenet of fantasy writing to be embroiled in worldbuilding, of course, but games literally build the worlds they describe.
One of the problems that complicates both creating and reviewing games is that they are both software and media. To create software is to create function; to create media is to create feeling. The place where things get interesting is in where these two aims, which don't have a hell of a lot to do with each other, intersect. When they diverge too obviously, pain lies.
In a narrative-driven game, both the story-related events and the gameplay systems are expected to come together -- and when it works, this combination is more satisfying than either element would be alone. This dual strength allows you to forgive the flaws. Though game stories are routinely, and not unfairly, criticized for the fact that they would be dissatisfying as a linear narrative (say, a movie) I also think it's valid, and I feel comfortable saying, that the intersection point is what allows games to become more than the sum of their parts. I fully believe this. Games are satisfying because they are a synthesis. They may rountely be a clumsy synthesis in 2010, but their success is still built on this. This is not an argument against games striving to improve both in narrative and play contexts, but it explains, to me at least, my immense satisfaction with flawed experiences and failed experiments.
By the time you put it to bed, Final Fantasy XIII proves both that its story is functional and its gameplay is sound. But unfortunately there is a continuous shifting and even breakdown of forged context for a great deal of the adventure. What it's trying to accomplish keeps changing. The game has something like an act structure -- not as most narrative media does because the characters make decisions that propel them forward, but because it's assembled from parts and the seams are visible. The hand of the creators is all too evident in this work, and this is even worse than it could be because it's clear the hand is shaking.
And that brings us back to the fundamental problem with FF13, and, finally, to the end of this text.
The team have erred seriously in their assumption that players will simply, left with no other option, like the game. Their assumption is that players will, by the end, understand the game; their assumption that, in doing so, players will inevitably care about the game's content. It always comes back to that, in every facet.
I would argue that it would be ridiculous to assume someone who doesn't like what Final Fantasy has to offer should or could be catered to by a Final Fantasy title. I can't play Madden just to enjoy what it does well despite a near-total lack of interest or understanding of football. I will never develop an appreciation for Halomultiplayer, even if I can understand what makes it so compelling to so many. I don't really care to try, frankly. That attitude, which I think is common, is an important part of what makes games a tough medium to create in.
Even if you allow, as you should, that the game is made for an audience that could potentially enjoy it, Final Fantasy XIII takes this assumption too much to heart, and in doing so severely tries the patience and, some would say, insults the intelligence of its audience. That is a profoundly dangerous place to go and a precipice the developers absolutely must back away from.
Final Fantasy XIII
For PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
Released: March 9, 2010
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Square Enix
Three stars out of five
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