ThanksGiving

Hey everyone I decided to take a couple minutes out of this crazy week to sit down and write this little thing on Thanksgiving. This great holiday brings the family together and reminds us just how much we care about one another. We are reminded to be thankful for things that normally we take for granted. Its a day of great food, telling stories, and its the day before people decided to go crazy because they remember that Christmas is just around the corner. What I am referring to is Black Friday.

Now before you yell at me for being racist, Black Friday has nothing to do about race. Unless you count the races for the best prices of the year which many people literally kill over. Seriously. Its called Black Friday because its the day where stores can come out of the Black and continue being a store. Like say this blog was my income. No one (or not enough people) reads my blog all year long. I'm just about to shut down the blog because there is no point wasting time/energy/money on it. But then from no where the day after Thanksgiving EVERYONE reads it. Suddenly I have my reading quota and I am safe for the rest of the year and don't have to shut down my blog! Thanks in a basic sense what Black Friday is. For some reason people get so caught up in the Thanks part, they forget about the Giving. Until the next day when they decide to go nuts and trample people to GET that thing before someone else does so they can GIVE it to someone else. People are crazy.

Well thats my big Thanksgiving post for everyone. I know its not much, but I hope you learned a little about Black Friday, considering I spent more time talking about that than actual Thanksgiving. But I digress. Happy Thanksgiving everyone and be sure to not only be thankful for people in your life, but remember to give them something too. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for reading my blog. Special thanks to those of you who have stuck with me from the beginning. I know things have changed a lot, but I hope its just as good or better as before. Thank you and Happy Holidays!

-Zam

Twitter

So guess what? I'm back on Twitter. I don't know if I am more scared for what I will become/what it will do to me, or happy for the entertainment and such that comes with Twitter. For those of you who don't know (you and 3 other people apparently) Twitter is a website in which you write "Tweets" which are short (140 characters) updates into your life. Some people use it to tell everyone in the world what they are doing, every, second, of, their, life. There are people who just re-tweet funny tweets that famous people make. There are people who are actually funny. There are people who use it for news, and so on.

I feel some of the spin-offs or make-fun-of sites are often better than the actual Twitter. One of my personal favorites is Tweeting Too Hard which is a site that makes fun of people who take life to serious and post about it on Twitter. Sometimes its so pathetic what people tweet. No offence to anyone but seriously. The number 2 tweet on that site when I was writing this was as follows "Ugh. Friend on Facebook tagged me in a note saying 'hey guys, I've been away 8 months, please send me parcels!'. So. Attention. Seeking." Alright you can't not look at that and feel sorry for this person. Or laugh at it. Yeah I'm going to go with laugh at it.

The language of Twitter confuses me to no end. I feel like I am just starting to grasp what things mean. The first thing you need to know about Twitter language is the whole @ thing. So just like you have your profile, you also have an @ address which is how people mention you or find you on Twitter. For example, say I want to write a tweet that has something to do with my friend *(NAME WITHED FOR OBVIOUS REASONS)* I would not type his name into my tweet. I would write @ and whatever his @ address is (I think it has something to do with BS(Bull Sh*t)) and type my tweet. The next thing is the # symbol. Apparently there are "trends" that people follow on Twitter and use those to continue though trends and show people that they are cool for following the trends. For example, I could write something thats obviously stupid like "Lost my keys but found them on the hook" after that I would write something like #dontjudgeme which is a trend and basically it labels me as a trend follower and thus more people will continue that trend. I have no idea what RT means (*Editors note, I found out it means Re-Tweet).

Twitter has many functions and uses. It has let us mortals take a peak into the lives of great people. Twitter can be used for good, or it can be used for evil. Maybe I'm just really tired from having that Red Bull and don't know what I'm typing about. Nonetheless, if you feel the desire to join Twitter, by all means, enjoy. If you find the need to follow me for some obscure or weird reason (stalker?) go ahead I guess. I can be found at @ZamShadow. If that does not work, someone let me know and I will fix it, or something. Anyway yeah. Man Red Bull never does this to me. Maybe I should tweet about this...

-Zam

P.S. I'm actually going to tweet about this...

Minecraft

So many of you might have heard of a game called minecraft. It has been sweeping the internet nation. I played it when it first came out last year when no one knew about it, then recently it has almost become the most popular game on the internet. I recently gotten back into it and I enjoy playing on my own, and with some friends. The game is divided into two different games in a way. Minecraft classic and Minecraft Alpha.

Minecraft classic is the game that came out last year, the one I played originally. It is free and anyone can play it right now. Basically you appear on a island with the ability to click and remove any block you see and place any block you see (including bookcases and dynamite). There is no danger, no way to die, just freedom to do whatever you want. There is no day or night cycles just daytime all the time.

In Alpha its much more restricted, but much funner in a way. For one, you have to actually "mine" and "craft" object to acquire them. If you want to place some dirt, you need to go dig up dirt and then place it. If you want to mine stone, you need to cut down a tree to get wood,

craft it into planks and a workbench and then craft a pickaxe. So in a way its more realistic. Also there are whats called "mobs". There are neutral mobs like chickens, cows, sheep and pigs that wont attack you but have resources that help you. There are also evil mobs like zombies, spiders, skeletons and creepers. They attack you but only come out at night. The world in which you live is practically infinite. The more you explore, the more there is to see. The absolute max size of a map is 8 times the surface of the earth. Thats massive. You will never run out of the materials you need, trust me.

The multiplayer modes are limited right now but soon will be fully supported. It is lots of fun to play with a friend. You can mine together, craft together, fight zombies together and survive together. Once on a friends server, I built an entire island of fire. It was lots of fun. There was so much you could do when you have another person. You can mine a precious ore in an infested dungeon while they keep the mobs at bay. You can build a house in half the time as it would take normally. One person could even build while another collects materials for the building. There is even supposed to be a survival mode at some point where you just try to survive against hordes of mobs with your friends for as long as you can.

You have probably noticed from the pictures that the game is very blocky. Thats a major appeal to the game. It shows that you can have fun without having the most realistic graphics there are. I love the colorful blocky style. It keeps things fun but still makes it creepy when night falls. Also many people are making mods that change the look of the game. Some are really cool! I mean look at the picture above!

Many people out there are putting up videos of creations and experiences that have been made in minecraft. One of my favorites is the Fan-Made Trailer. Another is a poor sap who lights his house on fire. Yet another is a "Interstate" that takes you through some of the beauty of the game.

Overall the game is amazing. Its simple but has a underlay of complexity. It has a steep but low learning curve that once you hit, you got it. It is just such a fun game. There is beauty in it and I (like many others) love the game. I would highly recommend trying it out. And don't just play classic, you need to try alpha as well. Its a very different experience.

-Zam

P.S. Episode two of the Walking Dead was amazing!!! Thats all.

The Walking Dead

This Halloween I did something I had never done before. Not go trick or treating. However I did watch the world premier of The Walking Dead on AMC. Oh my that was amazing. Let me warn you right now, this is a violent seres. The amount of blood and gore is disgusting. However there are many other reasons for watching this show.

The story is simple yet effective. The writing staff does such a good job of keeping things real, dramatic and scary without it becoming cheesy. From the blocking to the actual duologue, its hard to not believe whats happening on screen. The cast of characters really helps the mood and they each fill their role perfectly. I'm even enjoying the slight mid-western accent the main character (Rick) has. I thought the cast and writing aspects of the seres are amazing.

The Zombies in the show are scary realistic. If zombies were real, I'm sure thats what they would look like. From the gory and bloody realistic flesh wounds to the look in their eyes and animistic actions, its hard to believe they used to be human. The make up team working on

this show does such a fantastic job. In fact there is a contest going on where you can win a chance to have a "stagger on role" where you get to be a zombie in the show. I think that would be tons of fun. Though I.won a contest when I was at PAX earlier this year where I'm going to be a zombie in their video game. I'm waiting for that e-mail guys! But I digress. The zombies in this show are so amazingly real and I cant wait for the rest of the zombies.

As you have probably noticed from my writing so far, the show is incredibly realistic. From the sad family troubles to the bloody and gory realism about life, its hard to not look at this show and not believe its real. Now obviously zombies are not real, but the way they are portrayed in this show makes it really realistic. If there was a zombie outbreak, I feel this is one of the most realistic possibilities for that doomsday scenario. From the easiness of humans to revert to primal beings (willing to loot and ignore laws), to the difference of fighting to survive/giving up easily, to the zombies feasting on the flesh of the living, The Walking Dead gives a realistic image as to the possibility of Zombies.

Overall The Walking Dead is one of the best TV shows I have watched in a long time and if you can hold your lunch, this is definitely a show for you. If you enjoy zombies, this is the show for you. If you just like amazing story and/or blood and gore this is the show for you. I will continue to watch this show because it is just so amazing. I can see some flaws, but I wont talk about those ha! I hope this helped form your decision about this show. Thanks for reading and feel free to comment!

-Zam