How about donating a measly $.99 and buying my small app? I got something better on the way, but I need some funds, so please buy!

Also, a free update is coming that will add sound to it.

Whatever could this be?

I challenge EVERYONE to a FLASH-OFF!

ASHTON SKRIP 3 POINT OH!

http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/99 7106

Do you think you can code an AI better than anyone else? Do you want to practice your AI programming skills?

Then join the TRON AI FLASH-OFF BATTLE CHALLENGE!
http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/99 7106

CONGRATULATIONS!

It is rare that a TV commercial infuriates me every time it comes on. Now, I dislike a lot of commercials out there, and think a lot are stupid, and I wonder who is the idiot that gets paid to come up with some of those ads. I get tired of ads that show between every commercial. There are even some ads that I like. However, this ad that is showing recently has actually convinced me to rant about it on the internet. Gasp.

This is a lawyer ad. I'm assuming it's a divorce lawyer, based on the content of the ad (so I guess it does tie into the current topic in English). The ad depicts a couple sitting on the couch, who's only vocabulary is the word "whatever". They obviously aren't happy with each other and are ready to call it quits. Then they see an ad on TV for this lawyer (an ad in an ad) which has a woman going "My husband handed me divorce papers and ruined my Christmas. So, after Christmas, I called Mike Gallagher, and I ruined his New Years". Then the couple watching the ad both jump for the phone at the same time and start fighting for it, presumably because they want to be the one to ruin the other person's life and not the other way around. The voice over at the end goes "I'm Mike Gallagher. Call me if you need help."

Anyway I've never seen a commercial that rides completely off of hate. You can't even feel sympathetic for the girl in the ad in the ad because she acts all happy about ruining her husband's life. Most other divorce lawyer commercials show the testimonials with people crying and going "My husband took my money and went and slept with a whore... on my birthday. This lawyer helped me get my life back" or something similar. Not for this guy though, it's pretty much "wahhhh he filed for divorce. Yay I ruined his life cause of it! That'll teach him to try and end a marriage that probably isn't working well in the first place!" Seriously, I feel more sorry for that bitch's husband than her.

Anyway the next part of the commercial where the two unhappy parties in question fight to be the first to make the phone call to presumably ruin the other's life is even worse. I mean, getting a divorce is probably the right decision for those 2 people in the commercial if they are that upset with each other that they have to fight to see who gets to file for divorce in he first place, but the way that Gallagher comes off in his following statement, "Call me if you need help". I can see you acting all nice about that if the other person actually does need help because they're a victim of abuse or whatever, but the commercial definitely implies that the only way that you can feel better is by making someone else suffer, and that this jerk of a lawyer should be the one to make the other person suffer.

This commercial really ticks me off because of how much it relies on hate. There's no sympathy involved, and they don't even try to make you feel sorry for anyone they show on the screen. Every other lawyer commercial I've seen expresses an opinion, and while it might be biased and probably fake, they try to make you feel sorry for the person and it tries to make them appear like a victim. Not this one. It's just hate hate hate hate ruin people's lives hate hate and more hate. I don't like lawyer commercials, but this one I hate.

Speaking of hate, I hate King of the Hill. I looked up from my computer and noticed it on during Fox's run of new episodes right now (speaking of which Family Guy is coming up), and their "new episode" is making fun of MySpace. Does anyone even use MySpace anymore? I thought everyone migrated to Facebook like... last year. Get with the times.

And the new Family Guy is coming up so I'm going to wrap up this blog entry and get it posted. If you read the whole thing I feel sorry for you.

Another day, another blog entry. I was watching the news the other day, and they were talking about the dangers of letting your kids go trick-or-treating. Ya, I understand stuff like watching out for poisoned candy and razor blades in apples, but they didn't even cover the whole "check your candy" part of the Halloween danger. They didn't cover the one thing that could actually be a risk. What did they cover then? They warned parents about sexual predators that are after their kids and living in their neighborhood.

It got better too. they interviewed a "concerned mom" and she basically said, in the traditional stumbling through words accent of the type of people they interview on the news, "I knows da apeal of trick-or-treating and why ma kidz woud want to go, but I just dunt think that itz safe en-e-more in todays soc-i-ety. It wuz safer in da past but it aint no how no mo safe like it uset da be."

Really? Is it really any different today than it was years ago? Sexual predators existed in the past too you know, it's not like they suddenly came into being when you started watching the news. I feel sorry for that lady's kids, who have to miss out on getting free candy because their overprotective mom is afraid that the moment she blinks while walking them through the neighborhood at night they will be swept up by the hundreds of predators stalking her kids while they, and 500 other people, are walking house to house getting candy.

If anything, Halloween is a safe night to be out. The streets are well lit, and there's a lot of people out at the same time. As long as people stay in a group and in public then they will be fine. I'm sick of people thinking that the world is a more dangerous place today than it was in the past. The only real difference is that the news has found better ways to scare people.

I need to write a little more this week cause I skimped out on entries last week. I had a pretty bad cold the past few days. Well it was bad for a cold, not life threatening or anything. Took a lot of vitamins, stopped eating dairy products, drank a lot of tea, and ate a lot of chicken soup. That's how I was raised to deal with colds and while it doesn't provide immediate relief like some medicines do it will get me over the cold a lot faster.

Anyway yesterday I was just slouching around being sick and watching TV, and I had the sudden urge to try something different to flush out the cold. I brewed 6 cups of very strong coffee and drank it all at once (at around 2:00 PM). Then I sat still and watched TV for the rest of the day whilst on my computer talking to people and reading things about programming. The coffee had multiple bursts of effectiveness throughout the day, followed by periods of tiredness and periods of feeling hyper and exhausted at the same time, and also going to the bathroom about every half hour.

I drank the coffee at 2:00 PM and by the time I was able to fall asleep it was 4 in the morning. When woke up the next morning I was feeling better though, coffee works wonders. Maybe I'll try that with teas today to kill the lingering effects of the cold.

Hey You! Ya, you. You don't have flash player 10 yet!

Go to www.adobe.com and pick up flash player 10

Then maybe you can watch special fp10 games and movies like my recent experiment, a synthesizer made in flash

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
466032

It's almost like it talks... there's so many weird combinations of sounds in this thing... give it a try.

PEACE YO

I got my election ballot in the mail today. I'm registered in Washington State even though I lived most of my life in Massachusetts. I've watched enough TV to see what the major positions and their candidates are (there's more governor commercials than president commercials over here). I'm voting for Barack Obama because we've had enough old white guy presidents over the years. Obama is also a much better public speaker than McCain, and has a lot more charisma and charm to him. Oh and least importantly, I support his policies more than McCain's. Every other office that I don't know about but have to vote for, I'm just voting for the Democrat running. There's just too many minor positions out there to go and research who's running and I honestly haven't lived here long enough to care who is in charge of the department of transportation in King County.

Anyway enough about who I'm voting for. It really doesn't matter too much cause this is a blue state. It might make you wonder what the point is in voting though. Here's the point: The youth demographic is generally pretty bad about voter turnout. Old people vote more because they have nothing better to do. The result of this? Candidates typically campaign towards older people because there's more to win there. Look at McCain. He's an old fart, and who does he appeal to? Old war veterans. Most older people I know have fought in some war or another; it was the happening thing to do back in the day.

Of course, those people are now old and senile, and as young people we shouldn't really want to leave decisions up to our grandparents who think that rock and roll is the devil and that technology is voodoo mumbo jumbo which will pass over in a few years like it's some sort of fad. Why bother to learn how to e-mail when the postal service still exists? The internet is just a fad, and therefore we should just turn a blind eye to everything that goes on there.

When candidates begin to realize that younger people have a voice too, we will start seeing more campaigning though mediums that appeal to us. I see a lot of ads for Obama all over the place. He has a Facebook app and an iPhone app. McCain admitted that he doesn't even know how to use a computer, he lets his wife do that for him.

It doesn't matter who you cast your vote for though, as long as you cast a vote. As long as they see that younger people care, future campaigns will cater more towards younger people. We are the future, so why let the seniors run the country?

Hmm it seems I went a bit too long without writing a blog. I guess I forgot or just didn't think of anything to write about. Now I have a few things to write about, but this one is going to be a rant about the concept of an ego or being egotistical.

First of all this is a warning: This blog entry might make me sound like an egotistical jerk. If you actually listen to what I have to say, however, you should realize that what I'm saying has a lot of truth to it.

First of all, what exactly constitutes as bragging? If you win the lottery and jump up and down and call all your friends, is that bragging? It's natural for someone to want to share the good things that happen to them with the people they care about. If you win an Oscar or an Emmy, you are going to tell your friends and family about it. Who wouldn't you? If you win a skill based contest of moderate significance, you are going to tell your friends and family about it. None of this is bragging. Even if you win a lot of contests and tell people about them, it's not bragging. Bragging would be dwelling on those wins and bringing them up all the time to try and prove yourself the better person, or trying to make someone else feel like crap by rubbing accomplishments in their face all the time.

Bragging is what constitutes an ego generally. People with an ego tend to think that they are better than they actually are, or that it's impossible for them to improve, or that nobody could possibly be better than them at a certain skill. They also tend to put a value on skills that can't be measured accurately, like niceness or the quality of themselves as a person. Thinking that you are overall better than someone else is egotistical, because there is something that the other person does better than you.

Then there's the converse. What about skills that can be measured? Programming for instance. It's pretty easy to look at 2 programmers who aren't closely matched in skill and pick out who's the better of the 2. This may be a dangerous thing to say, but I am a better programmer than a lot of the people I know. Is it egotistical to say that? I'm not trying to rub it into people's faces or make them feel worthless or anything. In fact, I spend a lot of time trying to help other people out who are having trouble. Is it even possible to help someone without being better than them at the skill you're trying to help them with? I wouldn't want to be taught by someone who knows less about what they're trying to teach than me. Also, besides this blog, I've never gone out of my way to tell someone that I'm a better coder than them. Do I think it? Ya. But I also know my own limits and I'm not afraid to admit them. I know who's at around my level and I know who's above my level. I know where I am, and I'm not going to pretend that I'm somewhere else just for the sake of being what some people consider "modest".

If I was to act that definition of "modest", I have 2 options. I could not talk at all (which is a definite NO because I love communicating), or I can pretend that I'm stupid at everything. I hate seeing people struggle. I love helping people with stuff. How can I help you if I'm pretending to be stupid about it? And, if you don't want help, then just say so. Don't take it as offensive is I or someone else offers help, we're just trying to be nice. Some people appreciate the help. I might need you to return the favor some day, because I'm not perfect at everything, and I will never say that I am. I know my limits. I'm not going to try and make myself seem better than I actually am, and I'm not going to try and pretend that I'm worse than I actually am (for quantifiable skills at least).

The same people that would label me as egotistical for saying that I won something (Hey, I'm proud of what I've done. That's different than an ego) are quick to come and say something that they accomplished at some other time. Everyone does it. "I beat that really good kid at ping pong!", "I got a quadruple killing spree in Halo the other day!", "I just beat MegaMan 9!", "I got accepted into _____ university!", "I got an A on that tough quiz!", etc. That's not an ego, that's pride. Pride is a good thing generally. If you aren't proud of what you do, then what's the motivation to keep on doing it? Why continue doing something if you aren't proud of the results? Why do something if you don't ever plan on being proud of the results? Pride can turn into an ego though if you aren't careful with it, but simple examples like what's above are just pride, and no ego. Pride can also turn into confidence, and confidence is a very good trait to have. You won't get anywhere without the confidence that you can.

There's a fine line between ego, pride, and confidence.