Anyways enough about that. Decided im going to use LiveJournal more often. It's good to just sit down and engage in a systematic brain explosion in print. Also got back into Killzone 2 online after a little stint offline. So after 9:00pm when my mind ussually decides to quit focusing, its Helghan time!

Anyways i'm off to bed. Hopefully next post is more enjoyable for all who actually read it :P Night all!
 

[	Current Location	|	@home	]
[	Current Mood	|	Grrr	]
[	Current Music	|	Desert Sessions - Screamin' Eagle	]

1) The game presumes too much prior play time expecting that i'm some Arcade junky who spends his life on the various versions of Arcade machine rather than having a social life and being... normal. Reading through the combo's in the guide has all these arrows with "Charge" and the such on it with no indication of how i'm in fact meant to ACHIEVE that charge. So here i am as Chun-Li with absolutely NO idea how to pull of a combo... needless to say i got my arse kicked. Which brings me to another point...

2) The difficulty curve in this game is ridiculous! Going from Easy mode to Medium is the equivalent of going from "pansy" to "rip-your-heart-out-with-my-thumb" mode! Beating the final opponent as Ryu (probably one of the most fluent characters to use) takes multiple *like 25* attempts to finish. Also you have to deal with the heart wrenching feeling of getting your arse kicked from some INSANELY IMPOSSIBLE combo when you've gotten him down to like 5% health and you still lose. ARGH!!!

3) This may just be my retardness and lack of coordination but i hate it when i try to pull off a finishing combo and instead find myself doing some shitty move that leaves me open to attack because apparently i've missed a button in the sequence (which im pretty sure it's just not registering). It's like ultra suck town! I've been told i can rectify this with a proper gamepad though... hmmmm im not that desperate.

4) ONLINE MODE SUCKS ARSE!!! Now this was meant to be the ultra-shining moment of Street Fighter 4. However, they've really screwed up the system of PSN. Rather than connecting you purely to whoever's playing in the country on PSN (which works better in terms of connection speed), it connects you to the worldwide server. Two problems... JAPANESE AND KOREAN PLAYERS ARE FUCKING NUTS AT STREET FIGHTER!!! And you also LAG to hell. It's just not fun... in any way!

Now this is a game i REALLY REALLY wanted to like. Like alot of people i grew up with Street Fighter 1 and 2. But the more i try to force myself to like it, the more i hate it bursting into fits of rage and just really not having a good time. I have more fun playing Soul Calibur 4 and im not the biggest fan of SC. I guess i'll just go back to trying to finish Bioshock.

[	Current Location	|	@home	]
[	Current Mood	|	Irked	]
[	Current Music	|	Goldfrapp - Paper Bag	]

To this point the issue of censorship has focused around institutional control in areas such as the press. Though still democratically controversial, legitimacy has somewhat been retained arguing that oversight promotes a level of much needed media accountability to the people. However, the issue has recently left the realm of institutional censorship and exploded into the public sphere. Following the Rudd Governments election in 2007 to the Australian Federal Parliament, Labor has announced it's plan to set up a National Wide Internet Censorship initiative. Hoping to make the internet a "safer place for all", the plan involves censoring internet content at the ISP level in relation to the guidelines of the OFLC's strict guidelines. This irks me for a few reasons.

Lets start first with appealing to the OFLC guidelines as a model for content restriction. The OFLC is one of the most incompetent bureaucratic bodies in the Australian Federal Government !!! This is a body that can't even come to an agreement over how best to classify Video Games. The debate over whether Australia needs an R18+ rating for Video Games still lingers despite the building reports and support in agreement with the need. If the OFLC can not even come to an agreement over how best to classify video games, how are they going to provide an accurate model for censorship of the largest body of information ( both useful and porn - i thought it was time for a joke :P ) that we have - THE INTERNET!

Secondly, the practical argument against Internet censorship. Im going to leave the ineffective filtering of specific sites untouched to focus more on perfomance loss. Kim Beazley stated: “Last year a Government report confirmed that the technology to implement mandatory filtering by ISPs is feasible and won’t slow the internet down. “ One needs to be wary of "Government Reports". Another independent report conducted by NetAlert in corrolation with Telstra and ACMA discoverd quite the opposite. "Findings from recent NetAlert research into the use of filters in the broadband environment confirms that accessing the Internet through a content filter at the Internet Service Provider (ISP) level leads to a significant reduction in network performance. The research shows that network performance was reduced by 18 per cent for the best performing filter and almost 78 per cent on the worst performing filter." The end result saw that the only effective way to filter without loss of perfomance was through the use of a third party peice of filtering software installed directly on to the PC.

This brings me to my final point. Doesn't this contradict with promises made by the Rudd Government in the 2007 election campaign? One of Rudd's election winning policies was the argument for efficient high speed broadband for all Australians. If looking at the reports, Nationwide censorship achieves the opposite! Policy aside, another aspect of the 2007 election irks me in regards to the Rudd governments proposed plans. The Rudd government revolutionised the way Governments campaign in regards to the internet. Making use of public online spheres as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, Rudd appealed to the freedom of the internet as a space to have his word heard throughout the cyberspace. Now he's turned his back on the online community that came to his aid during the election. JUDAS! To his disadvantage, next election there may just be a chance that "Kevin11.com" may be censored as a possible gay porn website. Here's hoping!

So what should Kevin be doing? National Internet Censorship will be quite an expensive initiative requiring continual tinkering and attention and i can't helpe but feel that those funds and attention could be spent on something democratically acceptable and... worth while? Why not focus on expanding broadband to areas that don't have access to it yet before controlling it with draconian policies? Or remain commited to the initiative of increasing broadband performance. There's alot more worthwhile policies to pursue than restrict the freedom of the Australian people online.

[

Current Mood

|

angry

]

So tomorrow is my final exam. After 3 years of studying International Politics, i will finally walk away with a degree. However, i couldn't have finished Uni at a worse a time. Recently i have been applying for jobs in both the Federal and State sector of Government Bureaucracies. Around 6 months ago, getting a job would have been easy as there was a massive surplus in positions. However, thanks to the financial crisis (like everything else) and the drawing up of the state Mini-Budget, most jobs that i have applied for have had a freeze put on them until later notice. Government in most sectors have completely halted graduate positions and put more emphasis on finding experienced, long serving staff. This means, in layman's terms, as a University Graduate i am completely FUCKED!

[	Current Location	|	@home	]
[	Current Mood	|	stressed	]
[	Current Music	|	London Elektricity - Sat Nav	]

>__<

[	Current Location	|	Fighting in Uedahara	]
[	Current Mood	|	sad	]
[	Current Music	|	Air - Left Bank	]

OMG. Just watched episode 28 of the Samurai Series "Fuurin Kazan" and it's gotten to the Battle of Uedahara 1548. I can't believe it. One of my favourite characters in the series, Itagaki Nobukata, most loyal vassal to Lord Takeda Harunobu, lord of Kai Region, IS DEAD!!! ; _________ ; so sad. He died such a heroic death all for the hope of saving the Lord. I love this series soooooo much.