Bedtime Monsters

Lawrence had stopped crying. Despite the yells of anger, and the sounds of thrown objects on the other side of his bedroom door, he was silent.

When he was barely five he came into his parent’s bedroom and told them that there was a monster in his closet. When his father ordered him back to his room he began sobbing.

He had bruises for almost a month after that. Fallen from a tree branch was what they told everyone, you know how boys are, always climbing things. Lawrence may have been only five, but he knew when to keep his mouth shut.

There was another crash from outside of his room. He sat quietly on his bed, staring at the door. Out there, out in the house, he could hear his mother sobbing in-between his father’s yelling.

Once he had screamed when he saw eyes in the closet. Woke everyone in the house up, even his baby sister who started to cry from her room. His mother had gotten up and tried to quiet the baby. His father did not ask what was wrong.

One day his mother was late coming home from work. Lawrence’s father pounded on the door. Lawrence was forced to choose between his father and whatever lived in his closet.

He chose the closet.

That day his father had not found him, despite searching the entire house. His mother came home and calmed him down.

After that, Lawrence retreated to the closet every time he heard his father coming. In there he was safe.

He was almost seven now. His teachers told him monsters are not real, that they are just in his imagination. Monsters couldn’t hurt you, they’d say.

None of them suspected that Lawrence’s monster was real.

The noise outside stopped. It had never stopped before. Quieted after time, interrupted by the phone or football, once even the cops. Never stopped though, not like this.

Lawrence never took his eyes off the door as he crept backwards to his closet.

The door opened slowly. Lawrence’s father stood in the frame, his eyes glazed over with anger.

“Your turn now, boy,” he said to the room. There hadn’t been enough time though, and the clothes still swung left to right in the closet.

Inside, in the darkness, a large arm wrapped around Lawrence and pulled him closer. Lawrence buried his face in its fur, watching the shape of his father move closer through the small opening in the stacked boxes.

“Don’t you worry,” It said softly. “I have a surprise for you tonight.”

As Lawrence’s father made his way closer to the closet, something Lawrence had never seen before slithered out from under the bed, and wrapped its tentacles around the man’s legs. There was enough time for one last scream.

You see I’ve been without a connection to society for the past week. Not that I was isolated, far from it. Rather I was without computer, did not watch television, did not even find myself near a newspaper for any amount of time.

This self imposed information exile was for a simple purpose: to enjoy my vacation. Obama and congress would fight. Technology would be announced. Video games reviewed. Movies leaked. All without my careful vigilance.

Instead I wandered around the country side climbing mountains visiting wineries and meeting people. Was it a life changing event? No. But it was not intended to be. Instead it was what I wanted: vacation.

When I land the world will still be there awaiting me. No doubt it rotated as it should have. No doubt there were meetings and phone calls. There were emails and questions. But the world and I showed we could spend a few days apart and not fall apart. Something maybe we both needed.

I have a theory about the “Parallel Universe”

It isn’t a parallel universe. It is now. the Now Now.

Ok, so it goes like this, the one group bounces around time, ends up in the ’70’s working for Dharma, yes? They are going about their lives like everything is dandy because the island at some point will do something. But three years goes by and it doesn’t.

So they decide to do something. Specifically Jack, but the others decide it is a good idea. What is this something? Why they are going to detonate a nuke. Pow! right at the center of the magic energy of the island. (Yes you can picture Gandolf there)

So they get the nuke bits in place, drop it down the hole, Juliet hits is and BOOM white screen, lots of LOST fans cursing and throwing things and some even crying in each others arms that the season was over.

Season starts. Now remember something very important: the nuke went off in the 1970’s. Not the present. The island was still in the past. This is important for two reasons: 1. This means that EVERYTHING timeline wise has now changed from that moment on and 2. everything we know about the ‘present’ has changed.

The ‘alt’ timeline IS the timeline. The nuke went off, the energy went, the plane never crashes, Jacob never shows up and does whatever he does, life happened as if Oceania and all of us had never been on the show. Err, affected by the island. So the ‘alt’ timeline is reality. This is now, the present (or a few years ago, but close enough). There are no others, there is no island, they are all free of their destiny (and those numbers).

In the ‘alt’ timeline the island is underwater. What does this mean? Well it means the island isn’t in the present. It can’t be. So where is it? Hell if I know. I do find it interesting that the people are still draw to each other, maybe this will work itself in. But the way i see it now? LA timeline has the real people and the ones left on the island are in purgatory.

Otherwise you have one of those paradox things that Daniel would need to awkwardly explain for at least two episodes.

Let’s just get one thing out in the open: I pre-ordered this game. I half wonder if I was the only one in the world to do so.

I was on amazon ordering Modern Warfare 2 Mobilized when this game, called Marines, came up. The game, listed as Marines: Assault on Terror, had a box cover that looked like it was modeled after… well Call of Duty Modern Warfare.

I laughed, the game was obviously trying to sneak in under the Modern Warfare 2 radar and get picked up by some unsuspecting parents. Still, i was curious and looked it up and did some reading.

The game is not new. It is a port of an XBox game released in 2005 called Close Combat: First to Fight. The developers met with actual Marines, first it seems to make a training simulator, but then also to make this game.

So I looked up THAT game. Well, Gamespot gave it a 7.3, IGN gave it an 8.0 overall. Not too shabby for a FPS, I thought. The game was going for $30, and I thought what the hell. So I ordered it with MW: Mobilized.

That was back in November. The game was supposed to be out the week after Thanksgiving. Then the first week of December. Then the second. The release date changed at least five times before it finally shipped to me. It arrived today, 28 January, 2010.

So that is how I came in to possession of Marines: Modern Urban Combat, Assault on Terror, Close Combat: FIrst to Wii.

(The game is called Marines: Modern Urban Combat, which is what the box cover art said all along, but not the Amazon listing.)

Now on to the review.

Another confession: I really wanted to love this game.

Marines MUC takes place in an alternate reality (history?) Beirut. A rebel faction has started a civil war and we, the USA, are there to try and stop it. The plot is told through mock news reports from INN, the International News Network.

The game is a squad based game. You and three of your Marine friends travel together through each level. You start by clearing streets, then move to buildings and what not. As squad leader you can give commands to your group, but they are pretty basic.

The controls are pretty standard for Wii FPS. There is no jump, but you can kneel and lie prone. Reload has you move the Wii controller down, then back up. Being an FPS this is an awkward motion, as it takes the camera with it.

Remember this game is an XBox port, and it looks like it. The graphics have not been updated, which isn’t bad, but obviously last generation. But that isn’t the problem. The problem is the refresh / redraw rate. There were times as I turned that noticeable parts of the screen were not keeping up.

And load times. I mention this was an XBox port? I haven’t had load times like this in years. It makes you appreciate how Metriod and some other games will work past the loads as much as possible.

The AI of the game is more impressive than the graphics.The bad guys will hide behind things and even wait for you to move before they shoot. It is not a run and gun, which is admittedly my preferred tactic for these sort of situations. Your squad mates are actually useful, rather than being mobile targets you have to keep alive. The formations they will take are very realistic, and although they will kill baddies, I’ve noticed at times their aim is downright pitiful.

Not that I am one to talk.

The Wii added controls are just not as fluid as I am used to. You can adjust both the dead space and the controller sensitivity. I played with both through the time I was playing, but couldn’t find a good medium. Perhaps there is one and I haven’t found it yet. As for now, it is hard to aim with precision with any sort of urgency. Enemies that were fairly close to me could be hard to hit. Reaction time of the controls was slow and seemingly inconsistent. Using the scope helped some, but slowed down the motion even more.

The thing about this game is that I could see that 7.3 – 8.0 game in it as I was playing. There is a good game in this and it deserved more than a speedy port to cash in on Modern Warfare 2. Rather a slower polish, and applying the same attention to details that brought the original to this one would have resulted in a fairly strong title, even with the XBox graphics.

Instead it is a shadow. Playable, yes, but not what it could be. I’d drop this from an 8.0 to a 5. The game did not start off life as shovelware, it didn’t need to be reincarnated as it.

First there was… uh… whatever MS works saves files as. That was back in the Windows 3.1 era. That sucked. Then we went to Word… MS Word, and MS Word would not open MS Works files. Go figure. So there was the lovely time of opening files, ripping text from 50 pages of bad binary translation and putting them in Word.

Ok, so after Word I found Wordperfect. No, not that crappy blue screen one either, I found the joy, the wonder, the amazement of Wordperfect 8. To this day, it brings a tear to my eyes. Wordperfect opens Word, great! Absolutely nothing opens Wordperfect except, Wordperfect. Not so great.

Then later I got a copy of Lotus Smart Suite. LWP files baby. Used that for a while, mainly because of Approach. Office 2000 came out, tried that (yet again MS changes Word file formats. Meanwhile WPD files can be opened by any version of Wordperfect after 6…)

Then on to WordPerfect 9. oh, how I miss thee.

There was even some StarOffice in there, and OO.o version, uh… something. (did they do an 0.9 release? Maybe it was just 1.0.. )

Ok, then I go to a Mac.

So after much crying and pouting and general sleepless nights I get MS Office. Thank the Gods that MS Office for the Mac opens MS Office for Windows files. (Yes I was worried, don’t you remember Word 6 -> Word 95 issues? But they are the same… NO THEY ARE NOT!)

But.

Yup, what the hell do I do with SWF, LWP, WPD, WKS (i think) various Quattro Pro and 1-2-3 files (we don’t even think about databases, we learned that lesson from Access 2000)??

Well, again, there was crying and screaming.

Out comes NeoOffice (OpenOffice.org for the Mac). With it comes along ODT. Sounds great, sounds wonderful, sounds like another file format… And I realized that for 99% of my stuff i don’t need all that crap. (it is really just crap) What I need has been in front of me the whole time.

RTF

So that is my new fixation, moving everything to RTF.

Now now, you wait, Mr ODT, I ain’t saying nothing bad about you. In a way you are the next hope, possibly the next RTF. As an open standard there is hope that ODT will find itself on any platform out there. That would rock. Then you could get all the crap in there too. (and spreadsheets would be nice, I like spreadsheets.)

But for now, RTF (and even maybe TXT as back-ups) will do just fine. The goal is the future. A future where I don’t have to find a PC to install Lotus on to get a file that I swore I had backed up somewhere else in WPD format which Neo opens now, but I didn’t so NOW I gotta find a find one.

And do you know how hard it is to find a PC in a Mac house? Sheesh.

But what of these programs for writers? You’ve seen them in the stores: WRITE YOUR NOVEL NOW! and has some author you’ve never heard of saying that they’d not have been able to do anything without Program X.

Now why would I need program X, I’d always say, when I have a word processor? What could it do beyond, you know, typing?

Then I got an email from Mariner Software about Storymill, which is their program X. Since I have and like Mac Journal (using it now to write this entry!), I went and took a look. Now my thoughts were, what can this thing do that Mac Journal or NeoOffice can’t?

The short version is nothing. My word processor and some folders can do anything Storymill can do. My word processor and Mac Journal can do anything Storymill can do. Hell, text edit and some proper file names can do all of this. So why did I find myself drawn again and again to Storymill?

Presentation and packaging which has to be the software equivalent of “Location, Location, Location.”

Storymill provides a single user interface for writing of scenes, which are then grouped into chapters, of character bios, place descriptions, even outside research. All of these can be tagged, marked and labeled with ‘1st draft“, ”final draft“ etc.

This organization allows you to have all your information right there in front of you. ”Now what color was that dudes hair?“ We’ve been there before. You just click on the characters tab and find him and there he is. Scenes can be marked with who is in them, so you can at a glance see which characters are in which scene.

The scenes are then put into chapters. From there you can read through in the chapter the scenes. This makes moving scenes around easier. Decide you want to talk more about the good guys in the coffee shop before you show the bad guy again? just drag the scene order to how you want it.

There is a timeline feature which lets you tag scenes with a specific date and time. Then you can seem then laid out on the time line arranged by character storyline. This will help keep you from having a character in two places at once.

It even has a ‘progress’ meter. Say you have a daily goal of 1000 words, or writing for 20 minutes? You put that in, and the meter up top will let you know when you get to your goal.

My only wish is that it worked better with Mac Journal. I already start small ideas, even have written a short story or two in MJ. It would be nice if i could link say a research entry in Storymill with a journal entry in Mac Journal so it was updated from either program.

Is this better than NeoOffice? in the end it is all about how you work, how you use these things. In the end, the words on the screen are the important part, now how many bells your software has (well, unless you are writing software, but that is another post I suppose).

I can see myself using StoryMill to write and organize, but at the same time it falls into the previous entry’s issue with too many programs taking notes. In the end I still need to be properly organized with my information so that it can be found. (hence wishing it linked up with MJ)

There is something I have been thinking about, and wanted to share with you. In class we talked about your piece, “Good hair, bad hair – thank you Toni Morrison!”. Its not so much the piece that I have thought much about, although it was very well written, and has entered my thoughts at times. Instead, it was a phrase you used when you were talking about it: “Intended Audience.”

I work at a bookstore, and I get questions that you wouldn’t even be able to make up. There was one day, a woman came up to me and asked where we kept the black authors. I didn’t understand the question, so I asked was there a book in particular she was looking for. She replied she was looking for Jerome Dickey. So I took her to fiction, to the D’s. Thanking me, she then re-asked her original question, do you have a section of black authors? Still a little confused, I replied that we had an African – American cultural studies section, but that authors were only separated by the content of the book.

My naivety aside, the question still sits in my head. If (”when” , say “when”) I get published, I don’t think I would like to be separated out but my colour, origin, shoe size, whatever.Shouldn’t my work be above such things? Words are not linked to skin colour, why should sentences, or paragraphs be?

Which goes back to another thing we talked about in class, “What does it mean to be a Black Writer”, and I was asked if I thought of myself as a white writer. The answer I gave was awkward, and long. But this too I have thought about.

When someone creates art, there is a part of them in that work. Sometimes it can be obvious, like a Dali, or Hemingway. Other times you have too look deeper, but it is there. So, if there is a part of me in everything I make, all of my art, from poetry to web graphics, what part of me am I showing?

But a discussion of race and writing is not where I am headed. This is not to be a letter from a white boy to a black girl, but a letter from a writer to a writer. Nothing more.

These two points, the lady in the bookstore, and the discussion of being a black writer lead directly back to that phrase you used. “Intended Audience.”

What part of me, that is in my work, would exclude someone from that group? Is there something about me that inherently creates an “intended audience”?

To me, intended audience says if I am not in that group, this piece will not mean anything to me. When I read your essay, I didn’t feel to be outside of some secret group. Quite the contrary, I felt as if I were being brought into a group, learning something about someone else I would have otherwise never known.

“Intended Audience” didn’t apply to the words in that essay. But it came up in discussion.

Take this piece, for example. It can be argued that you are the only one who this letter is intended for; that you are the “intended audience.” Does that mean that no one else could read it and gain something from it?

I guess what I am saying, is don’t sell yourself short with phrases like “intended audience”, and don’t hide a damn good essay behind them either. Your words speak for themselves, don’t limit them. Don’t limit yourself, plenty others will do it for you, putting qualifiers on you; black writer, woman writer, young writer, American writer, DC writer, blah blah blah. Let them worry about that. You worry about art, your art, because that is what an artist does. Adjectives are just semantics.

And phrases like “intended audience” sound too much like justification. Something the nothing I have read of yours needs.

-jacob

From the front end, the system would be identical to any other cloud computing solution. The user could make calls to retrieve or store data from the web (or other applications).

On the back end, the system would differ from a standard cloud system in that instead of being an array of centralized servers, the system would use a P2P method of distributing the data and loads throughout itself.

Let’s take the example of incoming data.

Data is sent to the cloud. This data is then processed by the RAID software and divided as required (RAID 5, 7, ETC). The distributed part then takes each part of that raid split, call them bits (not those bits) for this paper.

Now each bit will be distributed to multiple clients via a bittorrent like P2P system. One bit would then be copied on 2, 4, 8 nodes (however many deeded needed for reliability).

Then when the data is called, the raid will call the data just as it would normally. However, the system will retrieve the data in this bittorrent fashion by calling it from the available nodes. Nodes that have dropped out or are slower will be tagged and recorded, the data will be pulled from the better sources.

Once assembled by the bittorrent, the bit will be presented back to the RAID as desired. The RAID will assemble the file as required and present it back to the web request.

As stated, the nodes themselves will be tagged and recorded for performance when needed. Highly reliable nodes will be called on more frequently than lower reliable drives. The system would ensure that bits lived on a certain percentage of higher reliability than on the lower reliability. The bittorrent client would use this data to shift bit data onto different nodes, populating data as required.

Lower reliability nodes are not completely useless. They can be used to help with this repopulation as well as for storage of lower requested data. This logic would be based on available cloud space, amount of traffic, even peak times and peak availability.

Now the question is: Why? Why divide this system up into all of these nodes and introduce another step in the process over the current system? The answer is that this is not the current system. This is where the ‘distributed’ part comes in.

For the nodes we create a client program. This is installed on a computer and allows for configuration of amount of space, location, etc. Then this computer is now a node. So instead of setting up a huge server farm, node software can be installed on multiple computers spanning anywhere there is an internet connection.

Imagine if all the computers in a college computer lab donated just a single gig of space to being a node. Then maybe all of the computers in an Apple store or a Best Buy. A PS3 or XBox client could be made to contribute. Even an iPhone or Blackberry client offering as little as 10megs of space could be used.

This would significantly reduce outside influences on data availability. Things like power outages, natural disasters, even high traffic load due to sporting events could be worked around by spreading the data geographically both on an individual node level and on a node collection level.

The space would be tallied, prioritized by various parameters and prepared for use.

Security will be a concern of people using this. How do I know that my data is safe out there on someone’s personal PC? First only a small part of any one file would be located on any one node. The next upstream information available to the user is the bittorrent client which only knows where other copies of the bits are. The user would have to go up an additional step into the RAID and then back down through the bittorrents to find a usable chunk of any one file.

This is the same argument for the security of the node provider as well. For example, should a pirated movie be uploaded to the cloud, the nodes themselves would get parts so small that none of them would have enough for a reasonable argument that it was known to be there.

Extra security could be imposed by making the node into an encrypted image. This would further ensure the security, but may have negative impact on the speed of the node. This would need to be investigated.

This distributed cloud computing allows for a more robust system by decentralizing the hardware as well as allowing for expandability beyond boundaries such as building size and electrical power. It would take the one last part of open source cloud computing, the cloud itself, and allow it to be open as well.

A system such as this could be used in a grand scale, one large cloud, or in smaller forms, several small clouds that could be specialized. Just like bittorrent itself, there could be multiple gateways (torrent trackers, or cloud cars?) into the cloud.

Here is a great article on SMS bandwidth charges.

http://gthing.net/the-true-price-of-sms-messages/

The short version: we are getting ripped off.

Here is where Twitter comes in. Or could, I should say. The intranets were abuzz a few months ago because there was a rumor that Apple was going to buy Twitter. (and about eight other companies, but topic at hand) This got me thinking. What in the hell would Apple want with Twitter?

SMS.

And no, Apple didn’t buy them, and no, I don’t think they are planning this, but this was the idea I had, the thing I reasoned out as to what value Twitter could have to Apple. Here is the idea: Twitter replaces SMS. Instead of sending a text message to someone, you send a direct message to someone.

Now, granted, this is a better idea for the data plan phones. Blackberries, iPhones and Androids all have a data plan and could add on a Twitter client to have this functionality (and should, damnit!). The normal phones would need some help.
 
The idea would be that a normal phone, one that would have to use SMS anyway, could SMS Twitter, something that can already be done, to bridge the gap between an older SMS phone and a newer Twitter phone. This isn’t as easy as it could be though.

The connection between the address book and Twitter still needs to be made on most of the platforms. I need to be able to find “mom” in my phone book, and hit message. Not what I’d need to do currently, which is find “twitter” and then type “d momstwitter message” If twitter clients could make this link, then sending a DM would be as easy as sending an SMS.

Then this provides all the advantages of SMS and all the advantages of Twitter at once. Need to contact someone? Just send a DM. It will act as a tweet and as an SMS at the same time. You can text someone (twext?) from your computer, and likewise they could answer from there. (something Google Voice is working on)

You’d have a telephone number independent way of mobile communication. Walk away from your carrier, your phone, hell, even dare to go out of the country without impunity. Your twitter account is still yours. 

Then as more and more phones have data plan options, more phone users can get off of SMS. With SMS plans as high as $20 a month and data as low as $30, the advantages that SMS brought once are slipping away. New phones will be more internet capable and features that were once only for expensive phones will be as common as cameras are today.

And maybe this won’t save us all, but it would be a step in the right direction.

http://help.twitter.com/forums/59008/entries/14014

Oh, and if you have a smart phone, email, IM, anything but SMS when you can.

When I first found out about In This Moment I thought I had found a small slice of heaven here on this Earth. A metal band with a chick singer. And not just a chick singer, but an “I’M GONNA RIP YOUR FACE OFF” chick singer. I heard Daddy’s Fallen Angel on the radio and couldn’t get to the record store fast enough.

I got the album and was not disappointed (well, except for the fact it was short). Daddy’s Fallen Angel definatly woke up my neighborhood a few times, and Circles became my own ironic workout song.

So when The Dream came on Tuesday (30 September, 2008), I got it. No questions, no reviews, walked in and bought it without thinking about it. I put it in my car stereo and turn it up ready for it, waiting for it. The first song is an intro similar to what “Beautiful Tragedy” had. This was a bit more of an Indian/Middle Eastern sound, like something you’d hear on a Delerium album. I was ready for it.

And what I got was a bit different than what I expected. Rather than the deep crunch of the first album what came out took me by surprise. My first reaction was “what is this?” The album was slower, softer, and seemingly more radio friendly. This was not what I was expecting, not what I wanted. Don’t get my wrong, it is still metal, but more of a Metallica metal, rather than a Lamb of God one.

I didn’t just dismiss it, though. I left it in my disc payer and listened to it a few times more. I found a solid, well made metal album with a much more refined sound than its predecessor. The band that made “The Dream” had come into itself more than the one that made “Beautiful Tragedy”. I thought to check changes in writers or producers, but in the end it is what comes out of the speakers that is important. “The Dream” delivers, even if it is a different package than “Beautiful Tragedy”. I found myself turning it up loud, and perhaps even shifting for emphasis during several of the songs.

The verdict? Buy it. Really, it was great. Yes, I still put in “Beautiful Tragedy” and wish for its spiritual successor, for ITM to turn it up again, but “The Dream” delivered an album experience I can’t turn off.