Ok, so maybe I'm not much of a journal writer. I just keep to myself programming line of code one after the other. Although I have found that LJ is a great place for keeping in touch with people as well as propagating interesting material to other who might enjoy it.

On today's menu I present this link.
http://n-europe.com/special.php?sid=gamerpals&page=19

Nashoba was the original one who posted it to me. If you are anywhere near game development you will know that this is actually how the majority of people who want to produce games think. This is one of the down sides to games being so popular at the moment, luckily I fell I bit justified in the fact that most people are turned away when they realize that to make a game they actually have to do some work. :P

- Kiro

P.S. When I will I post next... Looks at his previous post, who knows.

I love the concept for this, although the voices are kind of annoying. The creators have made three so far, I'm hoping they do more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNDGs44mV6o&mode=related&search=spongebong

Let the power of Christ heal your wounds!

http://www.mcphee.com/items/11657.html

This is hysterical, and one of the most sportiest adhesive strips ever. ^v^

Please sign this petition to support the cause.
http://www.petitiononline.com/stopgod/petition.html

I was first introduced to doing activities barefoot when I was in boarding school. It all started with my never ending attempt to go into the least demanding sport, which this particular semester turned out to be rock climbing. Ralph was already going(Friend, and strait guy I kissed in front of his parents), and it was going to be taught by Mr.O(Cool yet mysterious teacher). So in my mind it seemed like a good choice. Our basic equipment was loaned to us, harness, rope, carabiners, and helmets. They explained early on that it's near impossible to climb in boots (I tried it once, and never again), and that we would most likely want to get climbing shoes. I was poor though, I mean I lived in boarding school with no job. :p So I was talking to Mr.O and he said that it is not uncommon for some people to go barefoot, and so I did. I admit I had to get used to it, although because of it I could do more on the rocks then most others. Overall I had a fun time.

Now I'm out of boarding school, real life comes in, and I live in Columbus. I'll spare you those details for now. Ever since I've moved down here I've felt a little trapped, cold, and not in control. I'm not trying to say my life is horrible, I'm just tired of living in a basement, and I need some friends I can be around. I can explain a lot of this because the lack of a good job, for a time I even had to begin selling my things to pay the bills and gas.
Recently things have been looking up though, and I feel it's time to begin to think about my life and how I want to live.

I'm still trying to discover why, but I have been online gathering all the information I can on barefooting. Barefoot hiking, barefoot lifestyles, anything that has credibility to it. I'm not sure why, but it has always had some strange pull. Amidst all this information gathering I ask myself a questions, why would someone walk barefoot, why should I walk barefoot, and the more I learn the more I am pulled to, why not.
This really begins to raise questions in my head, because I never though I would give a barefoot lifestyle an actual consideration, and is a completely new way to think about things.

This is where it seems to come together though. Why would I consider this? Of course there is health benefits, and sometimes the risks of wearing shoes seem more dangerous then the opposite. Although barefooting has always been in the back of my head, almost representing my past as a time where my ideas could run free with many friends. Maybe somewhere that is why I have come back to the subject, my thoughts not letting go of the past. I also think it is harmless self expression, when I say that I don't mean to others(I could care less what others think), I mean I'm trying to express who I want to be to myself. Maybe making this choice of a barefoot lifestyle is more of a physical way for me to communicate with my subconsciousness. Almost a self inflicted physiological impact, a placebo to put it lightly. Put in yet another way, I'm saying that maybe it really has nothing to do with being barefoot, it's just that being barefoot is what my thoughts have manifested into.

I know some of this may seem confusing to you. I know I have more thinking to do, since there are many questions un-answered. What ever I choose I hope that my friends realize why I change, and more importantly myself.

I have been listening to an audiobook that is unlike anything I have heard before. The title is "Free Culture", and it speaks about creativity, innovation, the law behind it, and the affects all of these have on our culture.
It has captured my attention into today's legal system involving intelectual and creative property, and in turn I'm realizing just how permission based today's world is, among many other things.

Here are a few good points that the book points out, that after a bit of my own research I have come to agree with. Yet there is much more to this book, so don't completely judge it by what I state here.

By U.S constitutional law, Congress has the power "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". Yet in 1976 the Senate passed into law the "United States Copyright Act of 1976". This act did several things, some I agree good as well as bad. As a benefit it was the first legal document to explicitly define the "fair use" rights to all citizens. Yet in the bad it extended the original copyright term to the length of the creators death plus fifty years. Then again in 1998 the Copyright Term Extension Act was passed into law which extended the maximum copyright term to the creators life plus 70 years, 20 years longer then it had already been.

But what does this all mean you might ask? Well in short it means the in a short period of time the copyright protected granted in the U.S has almost tripled from it's original maximum time of 56 years. Say if someone wrote a book right as this law came out in 1976, and lets say he lives for 75 years. That means that because of the pre-exsisting perpetual copyright extensions that book would not enter the public domain until 2112! This is also assuming that the U.S. does not increase copyright protection for an even longer period of time.

But if their dead how can the copyright go on? When a person dies the copyright can be held by many different people, family, publishing companies, ect...

But why is this bad, shouldn't copyright owners be able to control what happens to their works? I agree that anyone who creates creative content should be able to control what happens to their works. In addition, like our founding government had originally intended, I also agree there should be a balance of personal power for those works between the creator and the public. The key word here is balance, because if any side of the argument is ignored then we are doing more harm then good.

Here is the turning point, and where this book began to explain something I have never though about before. Our culture is based on the content from our past, and without a creatively free culture there is no where for our culture to build.

Then I began to look at history in my head, realizing the commonality between free cultures and a growing society. They grew because of many reason, although one that I would like to point out. It's because they lived in an environment in which people are allowed to learn, enrich, and further themselves because of what is around them. It is free culture, and I only grow more aware of it's power.

Here is an example that I believe many can relate to. Think about all the Walt Disney films you have seen, as a kid, teenager, I think most of us have. Now think about how that has affected you in your growth, how it has helped you become who you are today. Did it peek you interest in anything, do you love thinking about the story, did it show you a world that you had never seen before?

Did you know that most of "Walt Disney's" (Excluding Pixar) films are renditions or other people's stories? Think about it...

Lion King - *Some people say it is a derived work*
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Pinocchio
Cinderella
Alice in Wonderland
Sleeping Beauty
The Sword in the Stone
The Jungle Book
The Little Mermaid
Beauty and the Beast
Aladdin
Pocahontas
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hercules
Mulan
Tarzan
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
Robin Hood
Oliver and Company
Treasure Planet
Dumbo
Bambi
Peter Pan
Lady and the Tramp
101 Dalmatians
The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh
The Black Cauldron
The Great Mouse Detective
The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe
Even Walt Disney's first piece "Steamboat Willy" was a parody of a Buster Keaton movie.

This is what I was able to gather from an article, although there are more.

Walt Disney built a media empire from public domain, but are they criminals for nor paying a cent for %90 of these pieces? You may say yes, but
think about this. Should only companies with enough money to pay for these right be able to use works like this, do you as a creative individual not get to
touch them until 2112 at least?! Was anyone really harmed for it? Did you as a child not grow because of these films? Walt Disney did not start out rich, and most other people do not either.

I hope that this book has helped me better understand the world around me as a whole, and I also understand that there is much reflection and research I need before I can devote my life to an idea. I can promise you that this will not be my last post. ^^

References
Free Culture http://www.free-culture.cc/
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org
How many Disney movies are actually original stories? http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1227624

So I have begun to get into the deep and dirty design aspects of my latest game VirtualX. At first I aimed for it to be a side scrolling deathmatch, although as of recently it has turned into a top-down 3D real time strategy. I decided this because it will finally give me the platform to program AI and other similar technologies into a visible product. I have not told many people this, although the reason I became so interested in computers and programming originally was because I loved to concept of AI and dynamic computers. It was both a heavy influence from a man named Mark Tilden and my own curiosity as a teenager. Enough about that though, here is a link I stumbled upon in my research, you might want to take a look.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/May05/selfrep.ws.html

And here is a video to go with it

http://www.mae.cornell.edu/ccsl/research/selfrep/video/4x4ht4a.wmv

For now,
Kiro

I guess I really haven't posted anything important in a while, although not many explosively exciting things have happened. Christmas was a bit of a hassle at first because of the travel up to Cleveland, although I was still able to have fun at my parents house. The time I spent with Nashoba and Zeppy was the best though, fooling around and having fun like normal. For Nashoba I got him a Wacom Intous3 6x8, a really nie piece of equipment. Then Nashoba and I got a Warlock guitar for Zeppy.



Both Nashoba and Zeppy got me a metal red octane pad. ^v^

After Christmas I have have really just been programming most of the time, trying to get a few projects done. Once I get some utilities
programmed I will really be able to go into full production with my VirtualX game idea. I will hopefully post more about that later.

For Now,
Kiro