Dressing up is a crime against humanity

I'm somewhat joking here, although it is a true fact that I don't like dressing up. (I'm a computer programmer. What did you expect?)

Dressing up for formal occasions goes back about as far as since the invention of clothing. Since then, people have worn clothes considered 'formal' by society. This was often done for respect and also for people to trust this person. (Calling all con-men) People often feel confident and well prepared if they are in formal dress.

Consequently, the needs of society in 2012 are far much more different than those back in the Stone Age. There's the invention of the Internet which has replaced actual human contact with something much, much better (huh, I really am anti-social). there is no purpose for society to approve of anyone anymore. All people really care about is having a good time.

Voluntarily choking yourself with a piece of cloth (I've always wondered about this invention) in an intricate way (hey, it's tough to tie a tie) has no use at all! Furthermore, we as a society need to realize that the best form of clothes are the ones that are casual and comfortable. People don't need to show respect to other people.

None of these people look like they want to be there

Dressing up shows a sense of submission to the "Man". Take a look at the late Mr. Kim Jong Il. Unlike all of the people who work for him, Mr. Kim does not have to dress up. He is probably one of the most influential political leaders of his time. Kim has nobody to submit to. He is his own boss. That guy doesn't even care about the most powerful country on the Earth. Surely, you would think that if the former president of the United States showed up at his front door step he would throw on some nicer clothes. Then again, he doesn't need to, unlike all of the other people who have strips of cloth wrapped around their necks.

In short, don't dress up. Why give in? Life is short. I work in IT and I know that wearing a Tshirt and jeans is a pretty good way to live (I also like my computer, but that's another story).

The State of the Internet

The internet is a vast pool of information. Everything from facts to hoaxes can be found on the internet. My blog can be found on the internet. Yet, despite all of this information on the internet, it feels that the information is still being limited in many ways. There is still more and more information coming out all the time but never seems to end. Through popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, people are actually making their own mark in the internet. Before, the only websites on the internet were either techies who knew some basic html skills (think Netscape 4.0) as well as some mega-corporations who had websites. All censorship and control should be removed from the internet. It's the smart thing to do.

I wish that this oasis of wonderful information was actually unregulated. There's regulation everywhere in this mess. Some people don't want the free flow of information. Many publishing companies call Wikipedia 'bad' or 'unreliable' simply because the majority of people in this world (who I'll admit are probably not too knowledgable on a certain topic) can write whatever they want on a website. Then again, that's the beauty of it. I feel that the only way for the world's population to move forward as one homogenous species is to allow no barriers to what people can know or access on the internet.

Internet censorship is often criticized in the news. The irony is that news is censored (this blog is not though, but I don't really post nor talk about much). It seems that the entire world is on a double standard. One for self and one for the rest of the world. By stripping all censorship from the internet, people will now know what is truly going on in the lives of people from all around the world. Perhaps this way we can all live in a better happier world. I sure hope so. Otherwise we might all be living in the book 1984 by George Orwell. Besides, Big Brother is already watching each and every one of you.

Copyrights also influence the spread of censorship around the internet. The record labels and the movie produces keep a tight grasp on the free distribution of their content. These people are so control-freakish that they are attempting to pass an insanely controversial bill through Congress. I want to pass a bill through Congress too. My bill would be to make every person on earth give me $1 for being alive on days that end in the letter 'y'. It's a shame that I don't have the money to get this bill passed. Democracy? For the people who can afford it perhaps. For the majority of the world's population, being able to access all information with minimal inherent costs would be the most ideal. It feels the record companies are still recording their music on vinyl while the film industry is still using film.

Anyway, SOPA and all restrictions applied onto the internet to restrict the free flow of information is a joke. The internet is true democracy. This isn't democracy in the form of a republic (aka. puppet government). This is democracy like Stack Overflow and Wikipedia.

Well, I got to go now. Bye!

And work continues...

I'm going on a brief hiatus on app development for a while. There probably will be more posts here. Life has been pretty busy.

There probably will be some opinions of mine posted on this blog. If there's something on the news I might comment on it and (possibly) talk about my views. No matter what I write, I won't actually have an opinion on the problem. Also, the evidence I use probably won't be true either.

Since I'm typing this on my phone and blogger does not support landscape, I'm going to end this post now.

Yep, the holidays are over

New Years isn't the same without Air Farce

Every New Year's Eve, I spend the night watching Air Farce Live New Year's eve. Since they stopped producing the show, the cast gets together each year at new year's and makes a special. I just finished watching it* and I have to say that I'm very sorry that the show ended a few years back.

Times have changed when I first started watching the show. People seem to be quite obsessed with Justin Bieber now (the show portrays him with a female). I looked at the US Copyright site and searched 'Bieber'. Amazingly enough, I discovered that 'Beiber Fever' is trademarked! People have gone far too overboard with celebrities. Just a year ago, I had no idea who this stupid idiot is and now he's like the most popular teenager of all time. Crazy how that works.

Anyway, life is doing good. I'm trying to tie up all of loose ends I left before Wednesday. I've finished some of it and there's still quite a bit more to go... (Un)Fortunately, most of it involves drawing or filling stuff out. I'm not really good at drawing; I much prefer typing up code or sitting on a warm sandy beach drinking a mango smoothie.

On another note, I'm trying to get my new business up and running. It's going to be a great year!

*Did anyone notice that the post date for this is new year's day and not new year's eve? Well, those hockey-obsessed Canadians decided that it hockey was more important.

Happy New Year

Welcome 2012! I have so many goals and plans for this year. There's so much going on and I don't know how I'm going to get everything done...

But no matter what happens, 2012 is a new year. All that's left of 2011 is some old memories, for good and for bad, it doesn't matter. The future  is always bright. You can never predict the future (otherwise, I would be working in Wall Street) so there are always going to be new surprises.

I'm going to start porting Ellipsis to Android. (Depending on time, I'll get this done anywhere between the end of January to the beginning of July) It should be pretty easy since I'm using Cocos2d instead of directly writing out the graphics rendering code. The nicest thing about Android is that it uses Java, which has Garbage Collection. This means that I don't have to worry about Segmentation Faults and Memory Leaks commonly found with C-based languages such as Objective-C and C++.

I will also port a few other apps to Android as well. This is going to be an interesting year no doubt.

Besides selling apps directly to the App Store, I will most likely be working with other people on their apps for internal or App Store sales. I can't wait !!!!!!!!!@

Goodbye 2011

Well, it sure has been quite busy these past two months! I have finished up two iPhone apps, Ellipsis and Azure Nose. (As of this writing Azure Nose is still waiting for review, the link doesn't work yet) Ellipsis is a bit different than what I usually do. Instead of troubling myself with the annoyances and infexibilty of directly writing OpenGL, I used Cocos2d. Cocos2d is easy to learn (I figured it out in 30 minutes) and allows me to separate game logic from the underlying graphics rendering code.

The screenshot that you saw in the previous post was an early version of Ellipsis. My original goal for the app was around the end of 2011 like right now. Since the app was going so quickly with Cocos2d, I thought I might push the release date forward. That didn't work out since the music for the game was unfinished and various levels in the game needed rework.

Here's another look at Ellipsis (the actual music for the game is not piano):


The best part about Ellipsis is that it's free! If you have an iDevice you can download it today!

The first screenshot

Well, here it is.. (I know it's not much but I don't want to reveal too much of the app right off the bat)

This is going to be part of the new game I'm developing. Although it will probably look far different (as of this posting, I've already changed it), the idea is still going to be the same. I'll post more updates in the coming days as I begin to finish up design and layout work for the game.

It's all going more or less on schedule. I'm not trying to force stuff to be on time but I don't want it to be horrendously late. There are a few things that are going to be left out from the first release of the game but I hope that they will be added on in future updates. Over all, it should be a pretty interesting app.

You know what the best part is? It's FREE!!

Bye for now

Ben