Welcome traveler.
Do make yourself at home; here you will find out a bit more about myself through my digital art pieces and my posts alike; do enjoy your stay and sign my guestbook while you are at it if it suits your fancy.

Rant - The influence of Quizilla

Not an uncommon fact for Otakus like ourselves are visits to the almost legendary website Quizilla.
This fact stated (and known true), what is left is trying to dig for some answers; most notably "why?" why do people bother taking such quizzes, why is it so thrilling (in general) to find out the results, whichever they may be?
I can answer this from my own viewpoint: for a long time in my life I underwent a very serious crisis, an identity crisis and even more - a purpose crisis.
Not knowing where you should be or even why you should be or do something is a common affliction that, while mostly labeled as a teenager issue, can and will affect anyone, of any age that happens to lose sight of one's bearings.
In reality, that happens much more often than we would like to admit; perhaps our pride won't let us notice how lost we are a lot of the times and we'll keep moving forward instead.
A second point of interest that probably compells people onto answering a series of questions to have some sort of answer is the fact the human life is frail, very easy to destroy; that prospect can be deeply unsettling to many (myself included); it could explain the relative joy of being compared in quiz to say Dante Sparda, Goku or Sanosuke; exceptional in their own ways no matter how fictional they are.
Moreso, a character gotten as a quiz result will be most likely related to us in some way and represent parts of our mind that we may otherwise be unaware of and as a result be incomplete overall.
Personality quizzes are the effect of a human tentatively find as many fragments as oneself as possible - so that one can respond those questions we proposed earlier, and walk with one's eyes open in a definite direction - it being right or wrong is beside the point, only time can say, but that's a subject for another rant, another day.
In closing, I believe quizzes are our attempts to be our own psychologists, behaviorists, an effort towards self balancing and to acheive self wholesomeness; a trivial diversion containing a much more serious meaning therein.

Footnote: For those who wish to visit: http://www.quizilla.com/

Rant - My thoughts on nature, ancient and modern societies

Whenever someone hears the word astrology, its not uncommon that they will link it to supersticion and flaunt about how science can easily dismiss quite simply each and all of those beliefs of "ancient people".
It would seem these statements need more thinking before they can be held on the account of truth; let us sway ourselves from the everyday perspective we are accostumed to and raise our sight onto a cosmic scale: The Earth is old by our standards (approximately 4.5 billion years; in direct contrast a lot of humans will hardly reach their first centenary) but on a cosmically, the Earth is an infant planet. There are countless galaxies that could swallow ours whole without much of an ado; moreso the human time in the universe and on Earth is but a blink by cosmic standards (around 200,000 years ago). Do we really have the right to laugh at our ancestors and say they were wrong?
Modern human societies can give the illusion they are incredibly advanced compared to say the pre-colombian meso american peoples and hence our fellow humans tend to shun the beliefs of such others, labeling all under the ill famed tag "mysticsm"; notice it rhymes with terms such as fanaticsm and imperialism - not by some dice game of fate, they all have negative connotation unless a context proves otherwise.
The whole point is humanity didn't have the time to evolve as much as it really think it did, but even in that short term stay on Earth, its managing to break down a system that has been self sustained ever since the planet reached core stabiliztion.
It is unwise at the very least to break something you cannot fix - a child will break his/her toys out of sheer acts of discovery, anger or simply misusage - something similar is being done to Earth and certainly we cannot hope to fix it; are really ready to laugh on the faces of the ancient chinese, that went so deeply in the spiritual understanding of the body and mind that they created their very own branch of medicine (one that cures annomalies alopathy many times cannot)? are we so high and mighty that we would laugh on the face of Mayans that invented the star calender, and would know with uncanny precision when to plant and harvest without satelites and market share analysts to decide the best investiments?
Or maybe we should laugh on the proud red skin indians of North America for their dances and shamanic summons, that tried to understand the planet and receive its guidance, ending up slaughtered by the greed of few.
No friends, we can't turn our backs on what nature has taught those that paved the way for us, nor we should forget how much we need this soil we spit on instead of loving...we are even now spelling our own dooms, thinking science can solve all of our problems, and that belief in the heart of the planet, and the understanding that humans need a connection with it are just a bunch of balooney made up by environmentalistic groups.
The truth is we need to find our own way, our own way back to the womb of the planet, so we can be maybe one day be reborn as something it would smile upon seeing.

Footnote: Those thoughts are dedicated to RaineDrops, as her card "Nature" inspired me into placing them here, even if she never actually reads them
(I know realistically my thoughts are too long and boring to read anyway)

Games that should have been but never were

Today out of a whim I'll talk about a very dear game to me that is not only widely unknown (especially with consoles like Wii, X360 and PS3 around) but also widely underrated. It was a Mega Drive platformer called Pulseman.
Developed in 1994 by Sega and Game Freak (of the pokemon fame for you pokemon masters out there). Pulseman was a very fast paced game (for its time anyway) with great music and very colorful graphics (the Mega drive was always cursed for its more limited palette back in the days of the 16 bit war).
Certainly the game is not perfect, some stages have pixelated tiles to them, but overall the visual experience doesn't disappoint (it can even be fatiguing at times do to the colorfulness).
Pulseman's powers are based on electricity so he needs to dash to get electrically charged, that urges the player to be always on the move.
There are two kinds of stages: in the real world and inside electric networks (shame on you nintendo for stealing the concept to create Mega Man Battle Network).
Once electrically charged Pulseman can shoot electrical shots or transform himself into electricity to run inside wires (Volteccer mode) which can be used to traverse places or even attack.
Sure Pulseman copied concepts of other games too (evil madman trying to take over the world, an evil rival with the same powers) but overall its a game interesting enough to stand on its own, and that never got the attention it deserved (not a single sequel was ever made).

Title screen and in game screen

Rant - Digitalization and dehumanization

I find it amusing how close minded people can be when claiming machines dehumanize people; its a common line coming from concerned parents - especially towards the internet - I've heard my mother say countless times how everything about the internet is false; and that when using the internet you are relating to machines and not people.
Its certainly a contestable statement due to a very simple fact: machines cannot think. Then some kiddy thinking he's a sort of whiz about computers raises his hand frantically and yells: "What about AI!? you were wrong Ryu! duh!".
Not quite frantic kid. The term artificial inteligence, if anything, is flawed; there is an inteligence behind it yes, but its not artificial, its natural; AI codes are nothing more than programmed patterns, branch clauses (if X = 1 then do this) and so on; but how did they get inside that piece of silicon? some sort of ancient magic? no, I'd tell the frantic kid back there that a human put those patterns there because he had to so he'd have food up to his plate.
So in essence how artificial can be something made with such humane necessities behind it? the internet is the same thing - there are people behind each screen (unless of course you exclude email crawlers and such other programs, but they were first conceived by humans anyway, and for definite purposes).
And the humans behind each computer screen have their own motives, desires, aspirations, some good while others aren't, just like the people you know across the street. The lack of direct contact doesn't make the experience less humane, its all down to perception and depth (when any of you see Star Trek like teleporters attached to computer towers, do let me know).
To sum it up, machines don't dehumanize people, people dehumanize people, let someone break your heart to see how much of your humanity is swayed from you...did the internet do that? do we have evil HAL 9000's at our homes trying to kill us all? no ladies and gentlemen...the problem is and will always be humans themselves.

Functional Post #2: RNTC art display corner

This post will be solely used for art displaying as opposed to requesting; it will feature digital art pieces by myself or by visitors if they so wish; in the latter case PM me with the URL where the image is hosted so I can put it on display.