Minecraft: First Impressions

Hi everyone!

Over the course of the last month I had heard a lot about the game Minecraft. I had seen my friend Eric play it and wondered the whole time... What on Earth is going on? Everyone is ranting and raving about this game composed of a bunch of 8-bit blocks!

I'll tell you what's going on... Minecraft!

I've been playing for the last hour and a half. Currently you can only play by yourself unless you set up a server, and I'm not sure how hard that is to do, nor could I connect to another server when I tried, so I guess for now I'm just sticking to single player!

This game is a time-sucker. Definitely for breaks only, unless you want to lose plenty of homework time! It is a sandbox game that you can basically do anything you can imagine in. You use the blocks that you get to craft things which can be used to build shelters, mine resources faster, or slay monsters harder.

The first half an hour I played I was more than confused. I was also slain by monsters in the dark. My advice to you right off the bat is to do what I did the for the second and third half hours that I played. Watch a tutorial on Youtube. Just look them up, there are tons of them.

Once you get the hang of it it's pretty simple. Except for the whole crafting thing. I'm still having trouble figuring out what I can and can't build. Which combination makes what. And where on Earth I can pick things up that would make better a combination.

So far I have build a little cobblestone house for myself, which is currently walled up completely until:

1. I learn how to make a door.
2. Morning comes!

I've also begun digging into the ground and have gotten fairly deep. I've picked up some iron ore, and I have no clue what to do with it, so I guess that, and creating a door are my next steps.

I'd just like to point out one thing to the creators, if they were to ever read my blog. Your music, while cool, reminds me of Silent Hill. I don't like that. I'm in a world all by myself with a bunch of night-monsters roaming around. I don't want to be creeped out and depressed. Bad combo. I know you're still in Beta, so please, add some happier music. I feel like it could add a lot to your game!

If you would like to play Minecraft, you can try it or buy it by clicking --> here <--.

Thanks for reading everyone! If you'd like to play the game with me, please just drop me a message on Facebook and maybe we can figure something out!

Kiki's Delivery Service.

Okay, okay, I realize that a lot of people will have two instantaneous gripes as soon as they look at this movie.

1. It's a kids movie
2. It's a Japanese anime

Look past those things though, please, because inside was a really great movie!

I have loved Hayao Miyazaki movies ever since I was a kid. I always used to get My Neighbor Totoro from the library. Once I discovered the fact that the same guy that had made that movie had made other movies too, I went on a search to find and watch them all. Over time Howl's Moving Castle became my favorite, and throughout all of the years, the only one I had never seen any part of was Kiki's Delivery Service.

Until now, and man, am I upset that I waited this long!

The story is about a young girl who sets off to find a new home as part of her witch's training. She leaves her family at the age of 13, and goes to a big city. At first she finds quite a few enemies, but very shortly after she not only finds some new friends, but one of those friends gives her a place to stay. Her and her cat Gigi then decide to start a delivery service. Throughout the movie we see her ups and downs, and how sometimes she has to sacrifice things and get nothing in return, and she may not always be treated the best, but she learns after a while that as long as she keeps her head up and stays strong, she can do anything she puts her mind to.

The story was very nice, and I especially enjoyed the scenes where she had to leave her cat with the little boy while she tried to find the doll. The dog, Jeff, was definitely a favorite character of mine!

As I said before, this is a movie for kids, but I want you to give it a chance if you haven't seen it before. It's actually very good. If you have kids this is definitely one they will enjoy, but I think it's fun for the whole family! I give this movie a 9.5/10.

What!? You ask? Yup, a 9.5/10! I really loved this movie, and I don't care what anyone else thinks of me because of it. Take a chance on this one, and I guarantee you'll love it!

Looooong Movie... The Green Mile

I just finished watching The Green Mile. It wasn't a bad movie at all, in fact, it was pretty good. The characters were likable - that meaning, I liked the ones I was supposed to, and I loved to hate the ones that I wasn't supposed to like - and it was a pretty nice story overall. I'm just wondering WHY it had to be over THREE HOURS LONG?

I realize that they made it so long so you got the feeling that these people had been in prison for months, even years, but really, I didn't pick up on any feelings like that. There were times when I couldn't tell if a day had even passed. Maybe that's what they were aiming for instead then, the feeling of being in prison, like the days would never end.

Tom Hanks and Michael Clarke Duncan take the leads in this movie, and they both play their characters superbly. Hanks' character is a nice prison guard that wants to make the inmates on death row's final time on Earth as peaceful as possible, because he realizes that isn't an easy situation for anyone to be in, regardless of what they've done. Michael Clarke Duncan's character however, John Coffey, "Like the drink, just not spelled the same." was very different indeed. John was put onto death row for committing a double murder and rape of two girls that lived nearby where he happened to be one day. I'm not going to give anything away, but let's just say I saw the ending coming, for the most part, and they didn't need to take three hours to show me how they got there.

Overall, it was a pretty entertaining movie. Seeing the whatever miracles John Coffey would perform next was always fun, and I really loved what ended up happening to Percy - one of those characters you'll love to hate. As a rating I'll have to give this movie an 8/10.

Thanks for reading everyone!

Milk

Harvey Milk was a political right's activist back in the 1970s. He got into politics right around his 40th birthday, and he was the first openly gay male elected into public office in the state of California. I suppose I could have warned of a spoiler for the movie, but that was a pretty obvious one I figured.

The movie Milk tells of the life of Harvey Milk (played by Sean Penn) from his 40th birthday, when he decided to go into politics, and when he met his lover, Scott Smith (played by James Franco), until his assassination eleven months after he was elected into his position as a supervisor in San Francisco.

I didn't know anything going into this movie, and I've really never watched any movies that have dealt with activism, or the rights of gay people. My beliefs for the last few years of my life have been that every human deserves to be treated the same way, and watching this movie didn't change my beliefs at all, but I do think that if someone didn't have those same beliefs they may find it hard to watch. There are a few scenes which have men kissing other men, and I know that would be awkward for some people. It was awkward to me. I'm all for equal rights, but that doesn't mean I want to watch that. I'm sorry. I guess that was, honestly though, my only gripe with the movie, just that there were a few too many make out scenes for my tastes.

The rest of the movie was great! Watching the struggle that they went through was slightly upsetting, but Harvey always kept going on, and he never gave up, because he believed in what he was fighting for. It was a very inspirational movie, with a great message about how all people should be treated the same. Harvey loses his lovers, and gains new ones, and gets old ones back, and the love story of Harvey and Scott is intertwined throughout the entire movie. Sean Penn and James Franco were both great in their roles, and they didn't hold back. They did their job, and they did it very well.

Like I said, this movie was great. If you're looking for an inspirational movie, pick this one up. It's got a great message, and everyone should see this movie. I'd definitely throw a 9/10 rating on this movie.

Thanks for reading. I'll update again later, after I've finished watching The Green Mile.

Really quick link post.

Hey everyone, I just really quick wanted to drop a link to a video that a professor of mine from last year's wife took of his not-even-2-year-old son. It's really cute, and I totally think it should go viral! He knows almost all of his U.S. presidents, and he gets so excited about it! It's great! Check it out!

--> Here is the link <--

I also have been a longtime fan of the game Timesplitters, and Free Radical stated a long, LONG time ago that they were working on Timesplitters 4. Unfortunately Free Radical went under, but Crytek came along to save them and Free Radical Design is now Crytek UK. While they may have been saved, it's impossible to know if they're active or not, since they aren't releasing any information about anything that they have done in the last two years! I've created a Digg page for the Timesplitters 4 page on Gamespot. Please go to the Digg page and digg the link. Maybe if we can get the developers to see how badly we want this, they'll show us that they're doing something!

--> Click here to go to the Digg page for Timesplitters 4 <--

And if you have a Digg account, and feel like doing me another favor, feel free to click digg on the link to my blog!

--> Click here to go the Digg page for my blog <--

And if you'd like to follow me on Twitter,

--> Click here! <--

Thanks! Bye!

Pokemon - Hardcore Mode!

Do you consider yourself to be a hardcore Pokemon player? Well, have you ever tried this?

I was talking to my friend Zach last night and he said something about this variant of the Pokemon games that he had heard of called 'Hardcore Mode'.

What could be so hardcore about Pokemon, you ask? Well, probably nothing, unless you play the game like this:

Start off the game with any Pokemon. Here's the catch; once you've started, if any of your Pokemon faint, you aren't allowed to ever use it again, and it must be released into the wild! That means if your Pokemon faints before you've caught a second one, you must start over completely. 

Play the entire game this way and see how far you can make it. This will require a lot of grinding (which I talked about in my last blog post), and it may stink at times, but I think it'd be a lot of fun. I've also heard of variants where you must do the initial quests after getting your starter, and then releasing your starter into the wild once you've captured your first Pokemon. This actually doesn't sound fun for me though, because the starters are some of my favorite Pokemon in the game. They look the coolest! Especially their evolutions! You also cannot have any more than six Pokemon at a time in this variant. You can play it as you wish though! Just trying to throw some newness into the game!

All of this hype lately about Pokemon really makes me wish I had a DS so I could play Black or White, which just came out on Sunday. Unfortunately, I don't even have a job right now, so I'll have to keep dreaming! I think I'll just go play the older Pokemon games now instead.

Thanks for reading again everyone, sorry if you were disrupted by my two simultaneous posts!

Grinding! My Favorite Past-Time!

Grinding is so much fun! Sometimes I wish I was able to do it all day long. It's so nice to just sit back, and mindlessly duel monsters for hours.

Confused yet? No, I'm not talking about the way that teenagers dance. I'm speaking of grinding to level up your character!

I am a big role-playing game fan, and one of my favorite things to do is just adventure out into the wilds where I can continuously romp on the enemies that pop up. Games like Pokemon, Final Fantasy, and tons of other JRPGs allow you to train your characters like this, so that when you finally do decide to move on in the game, all that time you spent training can transfer into easily beating the next part of the game.

Pokemon is one of my all time favorite series of games that do this. You can spend your time in the wild grass trying to level up your Pokemon, which can lead to rewards such as new abilities for your Pokemon, or even an evolution if enough time is spent. Grinding your Pokemon like this can also make the next gym leader, or the next section of the game a lot easier! Sometimes all of that time spent in the grass can also lead to discoveries of rare Pokemon that show up very infrequently in any such area. I remember in the first game that the section of wild grass that led to the Elite 4 could be accessed before you even went on to the first gym leader. This grass was filled with Pidgeys and Rattatas, but if you took your time in this area while grinding your Pokemon to higher levels, you could also find some Spearows, some Primapes, and some Nidorans or Nidorinas. The reason I love Pokemon so much is because it allows me to have these mindless hours and hours of fun!

Games like Final Fantasy also require that you spend a little time grinding. There are actually many cases where you can't get by in a game like this without grinding, unless you are some kind of strategy guru.

This is the case with many JRPGs, and this is probably why I love all of them so much, but here is my plea to the American game creators:

Please, I beg of you, stop making games with linear stories that require that I continue on through my game before my character is able to level up again. It doesn't really make sense to me! Oblivion, sure you can grind, but if you go to sleep, and level up, the entire game gets harder! That's awful! I didn't spend all of my hours laboring away just so I could go take a one-hour in-game rest and have it all go downhill! Then there are games like Dragon Age: Origins, which you are able to level up your characters in, but it requires searching and digging around for quests. Why can't you just let me come back and forth to an area filled with some darkspawn? That's all I ask of you!

And to continue on with my plea, even though I really doubt this will do anything:

Dear creators of Elder Scrolls,

     I really do love your games, trust me! I'd just love them even more if you could make Skyrim a game where grinding actually does something for me, instead of making me toil away at leveling up my character, and being left in the dust whenever I go to take a nap in a bed. Yes, I realize that I could just avoid sleeping, but then quests that are only available at level 20 will never become available to me, and this would make me sad! Maybe you could just tune the game so that the harder quests are only available to the higher leveled people, and they get harder as you go, while at the same time having monsters in one area being fairly weak, for when my character is just a wee-little noob, and then when I stretch out across the lands, you can make things harder for me! Do that instead of punishing me every time I level up and making the entire game harder. Please, just find some way to reward grinders for their time. I'm sure we'd all enjoy that.

Thank you,
Brent Johnson

Thanks for reading everyone! Have a great day.

Collections?

I'm back again!

I've been playing Oblivion since I made my last blog post, and I've been spending that entire time searching for something called a Nirnroot.

Once you get your first Nirnroot you are given a quest. You must go to find an alchemist, whom will direct you to another alchemist, who will tell you what they can be used for. There are a total of 310 in the game (according to the Internet). So far I have found ten, which I brought to the alchemist, and he's making this potion now. This potion increases a bunch of your stats for like five minutes of play time, and after he's made it for you once, you can go back to him and buy more of that variant, or you can continue to collect Nirnroots and bring them to him and he'll give you stronger and stronger variants.

Now, after spending the last hour collecting these Nirnroots (I may or may not have used guides online!), I have spent this whole time thinking about collections. Does anyone collect anything?

When I was a kid I was an avid Pokemon card collector. My shiny Lugia card was my claim to fame. I'd also always wanted to get my hands on a Charizard card, because everyone that knew how to actually play the game, which was probably about twenty people worldwide, knew that the Charizard card was one of the strongest cards you could get.

One collection that proved to be of great value to Lauryn, Andrew, and myself was my Uncle Jim's CD collection. Why? You ask. Because when I spent a week at their house a few summers ago, we played the game Monster Rancher 3. Anyone that has played this game will know that if you want to get some of the coolest monsters in the game, you need to test out different CDs with the monster generator. It was all pretty cool, and it couldn't have been that cool without Uncle Jim's CDs, especially not his old Weezer and R.E.M. CDs. Go Uncle Jim!

My brothers also collected baseball cards. They each had huge sets, and cards which I am sure are worth tons by this time. My questions to you all are, have you ever collected anything? Does your collection have value to only you, or would it have great value if you tried to sell it? What are some cool collections you've heard of?

I remember a few years back on MTV they had some True Life episode about how a kid's dad was obsessed with collecting Star Wars memorabilia. This kid was so ashamed of his father, and I never understood it! The collection was amazing! Seriously, there were few things at that point in my life that I had seen that were cooler!

Answer my questions in the form of comments! Thanks for reading everyone!

Day #3 of Spring Break

I'm really in the mood to make a blog post right now, so here I go!

I really miss my girlfriend. I'm so used to spending so much time with her that all of this time receiving only a text or two per hour feels like I'm growing apart from her! I know she misses me too, so that should make our reuniting that much better. I can't wait, and I'm sure it'll be filled with hugs and kisses galore! I don't want to start sounding like a sap, but I really do enjoy all of the time I spend with her. Sometimes we just sit there and don't talk, but being able to turn around every once in a while to see her can make whatever I'm doing at that time that much better.

I planned to watch a lot of movies over Spring Break and so far I've hardly watched any. I think it's just because I'm so used to watching them with Rachel. I've tried watching The Big Sleep, but I just decided to stop, because I felt unfocused, and some of the reviews I read before watching it said that focus was key in a movie like this, because there are many characters, and it's all part of a huge plot-line with subtle twists that can leave you in the dust in the end if you've lost that focus. Maybe I'll try again later. I also tried watching Big with my mom last night, but thanks to the wonderful work of Frontier, our Internet connection died about half an hour into the movie. This is just not a good week for movies and me, I guess.

However this has been a good week for video games so far! I've been playing lots, and it's really nice to be able to do that! I played Oblivion for a few hours the other night, and quit after it froze on me, and I lost all of my progress. However, I didn't give up, and yesterday I redid everything I had lost, making sure to save it once every ten minutes or so. I also played Witch Hunt, which is an expansion for Dragon Age: Origins. It was kind of fun, since I hadn't played that for a while, but the expansion was short, and ended very abruptly. So, I just accepted my achievement points, and moved on to playing some NBA 2K11. I really enjoy playing the 'My Player' mode, and I had to start a new character recently because, much like Oblivion, my save file was corrupted. It was probably a good thing I did so though. I changed my position and I'm now a center, and because I got used to it very quickly, I was able to get an A+ grade in my last draft combine game, allowing me to unlock the achievement for being drafted in the first round.

Today I went to the casino with Zach, and broke even. I was kind of bummed about this. I don't know what I was expecting. Just a nice boost of luck would be nice. I really want one of the new Nintendo 3DS systems! However, like I said, I broke even. Otherwise, my day has been very uneventful.

It's nice being able to see all of my friends, and get time to play as many video games as I want, but as I stated earlier, I really miss Rachel. I guess I've just grown accustomed to spending all of my time with her, and I don't really know what to do without her. It'd be really nice if she were here, or if I were at her house. I really do love spending time with her family!

I think I'm going to continue playing Oblivion now. I want to make sure I beat it to a great percentage before Skyrim comes out this November! Thanks for reading everyone, and have a great night! Feel free to continue to help out my group on Free Rice some more! Thanks as well to Keith Graham for helping me get the group an additional 8000 grains last night! If you need the link again, --> here it is! <--

Goodnight!

P.S. - My friend Hannah writes a blog for her class on feminism, and other issues relating to the LGBT community. She's very fun to read, and her blog can make for some entertaining discussion, please read her blog if you have time! The link for that is on the left side of my page, and the name of her blog is 'Finding Feminism.'

Last week of classes before Spring Break, and the Beginning of Spring Break!

Hello everyone!

I have a lot of catching up to do, so here I go! This post will be about To Save a Life, Gnomeo and Juliet, Stand By Me, and Die Hard, among other things, such as Free Rice updates!

In my classes on Monday and Tuesday, I took tests, and I'm pretty sure I rocked them, so that was nice. Let's just hope I actually did do well on them. I'm sure my Film Studies test will be online sometime over break so I'll be able to find out.

I guess now that I think about it, my week was pretty uneventful until Wednesday night. On Wednesday night I watched To Save a Life, and then I went to Buffalo Wild Wings with my friend's fraternity group.

To Save a Life was actually pretty good. I had sat down when the group started watching the movie just to kill the time, and I got up a few times during the movie, but I only missed about 10 minutes total. Afterward the group took time to reflect on the movie and ask a few questions. One of them included a reference to the fact that a lot of Christian movies are pretty cheesy.

I think this movie had it's moments, but overall, it didn't really fit that catagory. It really stepped out to make a few of it's points. There were drugs, there was alcohol, there was cursing, and there was suicide/depression. All things that usually aren't included in a Christian movie, maybe just talked about briefly and forgotten. It gets the point in, but it doesn't get it across like this movie did.

The movie starts off with a young boy saving his friend's life. In the process of preventing a car from hitting his friend, he gets hit, and injures his leg. For the rest of his life, he is tormented with names like "gimp". Eventually, the boy who he saved the life of just leaves him in the dust, and they lose the bond they had throughout their childhood. It's pretty sad, and it really makes you angry at the main character. The rest of the movie includes messages about depression and suicide, and discusses a little why people choose to do these things to themselves. It has a message about how all of us just need someone to be there for us sometimes.

I would like to take something from this movie. Normally I'm a very friendly person, but from here on out, if I see someone sitting by themselves at a lunch table, I think I'll ask them to join me, for the sake of them having someone to talk to. I think it'd be an easy way to get everyone to feel better about themselves. (No, I'm not saying I'm some high and mighty power that can take away everyone's pains, but I can say that sometimes we all have pain, and I understand that we all need someone to talk to at times.)

Otherwise, the movie was pretty okay. The acting was a little sub-par, but they got their message across. I would probably have to give this movie a 6.75 out of 10.

On Thursday, Rachel and I went on our last date before Spring Break. We decided to go see Gnomeo and Juliet since we'd seen a lot of heavy movies lately. We both just thought it was alright. The last half hour was better than the first hour, simply because the first hour of the movie pretty much only had jokes that were in the previews, which was a total buzz kill. Basically, if you saw the previews, you saw the funny, which is really disappointing.

The story was your basic "Romeo and Juliet" story. Two lovers cannot unite because the people around them keep them apart. I guess it was an alright way of teaching the story to children, and they actually did go through with the death of Tybalt, which was very surprising to me. Of course though, since it was a children's movie, they edited the ending, and for as triumphant as it should have been, it was really hard to even care. Overall I would give this movie about a 5.5 out of 10 stars.

In class on Thursday we watched Stand By Me. This was probably my favorite of the movies I have seen in the last week. It really made me want to live in the 50s, and it really made me miss my childhood, and doing things like walking along the railroad to kill time in the day with your friends. The only difference was, my friends and I weren't looking for a dead body!

The movie is a flashback and it's told by one of the main characters from an older point-of-view. He tells the story of how he and his friends went on a journey to find a dead body so that they could become heroes in their hometown. They learn a lot about themselves along the way, and it seems like there's even a "Breakfast Club" moment at one point when two of the friends are sitting next to a fire. They discuss how one will go on to take college classes, and the other will take shop classes and be forever forgotten. I also really enjoyed the story that the narrator tells as a young boy about the fat kid. It's really entertaining!

For this movie, I'd probably have to give out a 9 of out 10 score. I really enjoyed it, and I love how it made me reminisce to, and miss my childhood.

Then, last night, I watched Die Hard with a few of my friends. We weren't paying close attention until about the second half, but it was pretty enjoyable. Since I didn't see the whole thing though I won't rate it, I'll just say that what I did say of it, I enjoyed. We also watched the first half of the third movie in that series, and I really enjoyed that, especially Samuel L. Jackson's character.

Spring Break started last night too. I've been having a lot of fun hanging out with friends from high school, and I'm actually looking forward to spending a week relaxing at home. They're even talking about another snow storm next week, and over 50 inches of snow are projected for this area over the next three weeks!

I do miss Rachel though, and I can't wait to see her again! That is the one bad part about this week, no Rachel!

Zach and I are going to play the demo now of "Lego Star Wars 3: The Clone Wars". I'll update again sometime tomorrow I'm sure, when I've watched more movies, or played more games, or just have something to say!

Also, in case anyone is wondering about the Free Rice progress, our group has 16 members, and 56,830 grains. Keep up the great work, and we'll be in first place in no time everyone! And if you haven't joined the group yet, simply join the website, and once you've done that, --> here is the link to the group <--, just click join, and play!

Thanks for reading everyone! Enjoy your day!

A Lot Parking.

Hello everyone!

All Winter long I have been very upset about one thing. It's the lack of parking due to crappy parking by others in A lot. This will be a short post, and probably just be entirely a rant, but I want to voice my concerns, and I want people, especially those who park in A lot, to hear them!

Alright, there have been instances where I have had to back out from the middle aisle of the A lot in front of Stearns Hall because my car wasn't small enough to fit in between the gap that the people had created. There was also a time where I couldn't back out of my parking space because the car behind me was so close together that I was trapped.

It especially concerns me that on multiple occasions I have voiced my concerns to public safety, and they refuse to ticket/tow/whatever it may be to the people that aren't the best at parking. I have called public safety three times now this winter, and not once have they done anything to any of these cars, and I was left in a rut once, and I was forced to park in a different lot on several occasions. Failure to respond is NOT okay. If you are called, please come and help me figure something out right away! If I come back an hour later and those same cars are still there without a ticket, it is very frustrating to me!

One last complaint is that people will take up multiple parking spots. This forces others, who are also paying for A lot, to go and park in one of the other A lots, when they shouldn't have to.

So, I ask of all of you A lot parkers: please, learn how to park when there is snow on the ground. I realize it's hard to see the lines, but just line up your car with the others. Don't park on spots where you know there are no-parking lines. They are there for a reason, and you should know where they are. If you don't, then just measure for yourself. Say, "Huh, I have a large car, and this spot is very near the sidewalk. Maybe, so other cars don't have to go around me and jeopardize their car, their safety, and the safety of others, I should be the bigger person, and park in another one of the A lots."

That's all I have to say, just something to hopefully think about for those of you who park in A lot.

And a quick P.S. -
Thank you to everyone who has joined my Free Rice group so far. We've surpassed 34,000 grains of rice, and we're still going! My goal is still to reach the top, no matter how long it takes, so I'll be working on it no matter who is with me. I just prefer that there are more of you with me! I love seeing other people with high scores that challenge my own! (And if you want a link to join my group, it's still in the last post, labeled like --> This! <--

Bye everyone! Thanks for reading!
(And I'm sorry I couldn't get you any pictures, but I'm sure if I had a picture for every time I was upset about someone's failure to properly park this winter, I'd have more than enough to fill up a page on my blog!)