How is Everyone?

It's been a while since I've posted an article, how is everyone? I'm great. I've been pretty busy lately with band things and such but I should be able to post more articles now that I have more free time.

Anyways lets talk about the homeless. I know I should be more sympathetic toward the homeless but I really believe if you're homeless, then you sort of deserve to be. Now I didn't always believe this, but after watching a few documentary's on the subject it seems like some of the homeless have better living situations than some of the working folk. They have endless resources to use at their disposal such as free food, living arrangement's, welfare checks (it's easy to get one) free clothes, showers, baths, even free yoga classes. All this for the homeless, and you still see people living on the streets. Why? Why would you choose to live on the streets when you have all these resources available to you? I understand these resources aren't available everywhere, but if you're living on the streets wouldn't it be in your best interest to move somewhere they are available and take advantage of them? Anyways I don't want to make this too long so I'll end it here, what's your opinion on the subject?

Why You Should Play Team Fortress Classic

Team Fortress Classic is easily one of the best games I've ever played. It has so much variety in its game play styles it blows my mind. From offensive engineers to supportive medics, this game can offer something unique to your style of game playing. I've been playing TFC since it first came out, over ten years ago and I'm still not bored of it yet. There are so many map types and mini-game-maps to play on, you could practically play forever. Out of the many types of maps, one in particular has really caught my attention. Concing. Conc maps are where you use your concussion grenades you get as a scout or a medic to propel yourself through the obstacles and to the end of the 'jump'. It's such a unique style of game play that I have yet to find anywhere else. If you find yourself getting bored of concing, there are many, many more different styles of game play on countless custom maps you can check out. Check out this video I made a while ago of me doing some of the harder conc jumps. Keep in mind this is an old video and these jumps aren't really considered hard anymore.

I'm going to list off the different styles of game play available in TFC - This wont be a complete list but it will give you an idea of just how customizable this game is and what it can offer you.

CTF - Capture The Flag is what TFC was made for. Steal the enemy's flag and get it to your capture point. Pretty simple.
A/D - Attack and Defend is another popular style where the attackers try to advance their flag to the capture points while the defenders try to stop them. Teams will usually switch off between one round of attacking and one of defending for each.
Escape - Escape maps are basically co-op puzzle maps where you and your teammates try to work your way through the map to get to the end. There is usually a story to go along with the map to give you a reason for escaping. There are literally countless possibility's for escape maps.
QR - Quad Rocket maps are maps where you use the rocket launcher you get as a soldier to shoot yourself through the obstacles or 'jumps' to get to the end. Again there are countless possibility's for maps for this style of game play.
Sniper - Sniper maps are usually two bases where snipers try to take each other out.
Mini-Golf - Mini-Golf maps are where one player is a 'ball' and has limited movement but bounces off the walls and slides along the ground very easily. The other player is the 'golfer' and is usually a sniper. The golfer will charge the sniper rifle and shoot the ball player (usually civilian class) and try to get him into the hole.

I won't list any more but there are plenty more. This game has countless possibility's. The mapping system is one of the most freely customizable mapping tool available for any game to date. You can make anything in the Valve Hammer Editor Tool, I even started a blog about it where I'll be posting articles related to mapping and helping people learn about the different tools in VHE. Simply put, you need to play this game if you haven't already. The only downfall to this game I would say is the skill cap. There have been times where I've dominated teams of 5 or more by myself, and getting beat that hard by 1 player can be very discouraging to anyone regardless of how good they are or how long they've been playing. Newer games seem to make it easy for a person to just pick up the game and start winning. I don't personally like it but I can still enjoy the games that turn out like this.

Simply put, TFC is a great game that deserves your attention. Give it a try if you haven't, it's about 5 dollars on steam.

More about Documentary's

So I'm sitting here thinking about what to post an article about and all I can think about is more documentary's. I've always been interested in film and gaining knowledge so I guess that's why I love them so much. Anyways I wanted to talk about a documentary I saw a few weeks ago which is still fresh in my mind. It's about the Large Hadron Collider. The documentary is called "The Six Billion Dollar Experiment" and if you haven't heard about it I HIGHLY suggest you watch this documentary right now.

You may be thinking "why should I care about some crazy science experiment?" well this experiment will give us a complete understanding about everything. It's designed to collide particles at a speed at 7 times that of light, re-creating events of the big bang. They hope to discover how mass is made, the last key in a complete understanding of everything. From which we'll know if there are other dimensions and possibly how to access them. There are a lot of theory's which I can't really cover but I think this documentary does a fantastic job.

I think it would be sweet if there were other dimensions that we could access, think of the possibility's! The laws of physics in one dimension could be completely different in another. Crazy stuff to think about. Anyways, this documentary will really make you think and give you great insight. Highly recommend.

Another documentary I wanted to suggest is The Worlds First Time Machine. I know it may seem like non fiction but it is very real. I think his theory sounds pretty legit, like it could actually work. Take a look and leave your thoughts below.

Drugs and Documentary's

I know not everyone watches documentary's, but I personally love them. I love documentary's about drugs, don't ask me why but they fascinate me to no end. The most recent documentary I've watched was called "Ben: Diary Of A Heroin Addict". It's about a guy named Ben who records his life as a heroin addict. He carry's around a camera with him and shoots up every day.

It's pretty amazing how people let themselves get completely dependent on a substance like that. I understand how it can be hard to quit because of the cravings once you're addicted but to get addicted to me seems like a foolish and totally avoidable thing. I don't really believe in that whole "once and you're hooked" line. I've had my curiosity about drugs and have done many at least one time including heroin purely for experimentation and understanding of the drug and while they were very enjoyable, I still could not see myself waking up every day and literally needing it, why would anyone want to live like this?

I know it may seem foolish of me to experiment with drugs, but hey I was curious and I would be wondering for the rest of my life if I hadn't tried it. I am not in any way saying you should go out and try drugs, but if you are as curious as me, watch the documentary's first and do your research on the drug. Before I try anything I do hours of research on it and determine weather it's safe for me to do or not. Erowid is a great website for useful information on drugs if you're interested in reading more.

Steelers defeat the jets and head to the superbowl!

The Pittsburgh Steelers will advanced to their third Super Bowl in six years after defeating the New York Jets this sunday with a final score of 24-19. They'll go head to head against the Green Bay Packers