The cardinal rule of blogging is; "Thou must have a theme..or at least keep your posts within some coherence". Well, not gonna happen here. Most of the content here will probably be quite irrelevant or otherwise meaningless ramblings from me. Some of it will have some correlation to my work (EMS) and studies (patient safety). Some might even border on gaming or food. Some might actually be clever and raise thoughts. In all probability, most won't even do that.
"In 1976 two British soldiers completed the first successful all military expedition to the summit of Everest. To celebrate this endeavour, the Army return 30 years later to conquer Everest once more. The plan: To tackle the peak via the treacherous "West Ridge", a notoriously dangerous climb that has only been completed by 19 people." (from Amazon.com) This series is available via YouTube in all five parts, roughly 20 minutes each (link: episode 1/5).
This documentary chronicles not only what it takes in logistical and strategiecal ways to summit Everest but also manages to capture the intense turbulence of emotions as success, failure and tragedy hits the summit team. It's a good reminder that, as the narrator says, "death is never far away on Everest".
I started watching Breaking Bad on Netflix some time ago. It was way overdue, I've been planning on watching it for a some time now but never got around to doing it, mostly cause I had other series on hold. And man, am I glad I never did, cause now I can binge it. I have 5 (well, so far, 4 and a half) seasons to drop down whenever I feel like it. And I feel like it.
I never got around to watching Breaking Bad when it aired mostly because it didn't appeal to me. It felt a bit too much out-of-the-box for my taste. For me those serialized three-letter crime scene investigators, criminal profilers, doctors and lawyers were a safe bet; you knew what you got and it never changed. Breaking Bad just felt too raw and visceral, just not my thing. And maybe the fact that the theme is very similar to Weeds (another "family provider turns drug dealer"-thing), didn't strike my note.
Today, I love raw and visceral. Give me Sopranos, The Wire, Oz, Boardwalk Empire, Twin Peaks, House of Cards, Walking Dead and Breaking Bad any day. Sure, I still watch CSI, Criminal Minds, ER and Lost. They are by no means bad, but this here; this is what television is at it's best.
So, if you've never checked out this awesomeness and you happen to have an ongoing Netflix subscription, here's my hint: Break bad.
BTW: That fan-made poster, just really fricking cool! Whoever did it out there; wow!
I used to play the old Silent Hunter-games back in the days, but I think I was a bit too young for them then. Was happy to discover Silent Hunter Online by Ubisoft. I would prefer it not be the case, but it’s played in browser using Flash. You wouldn’t know it, because it’s really well done and flash has come a long way since Miniclip-games.
It’s free-to-play so naturally you have a bunker of submarines, two from the start after you’ve completed the tutorial missions. I just finished my first “real” mission, which had me track down a convoy of freighters and tankers and sink “at least” one ship in my Type IIA U5.
I found them, closed in and observed them for as long as I could to try to find any escort ships, but couldn’t. I switched to silent mode and came as close as I dared before firing torpedoes. All in all I fired all five fish, all of them hits. I sunk two ships and put a third on fire, but I think that ship made it as I just sat still at periscope depth, all engines at stop and watched them sail away without anything to shoot at them.
As they went out of range I surfaced and headed for home to refuel, restock and look for the next mission. I really look forward to more missions, maybe even in co-op, as there is a multiplayer “Wolfpack”-mode available, which I haven’t yet delved into.
I always had a thing for subs, and this is probably the first Silent Hunter I’m going to enjoy fully.
As a huge fan of the Silent Hunter-franchise when I was young(er) , I too share themosse's sentiment; I was probably also too young to fully appreciate the deep complexities of submarine warfare. But I still loved them as games.
Silent Hunter Online on Flash via browser? (this entire sentence is, in every way, news to me) sound like a rekindling of a beautiful friendship.
The day finally came, when Takedown: Red Sabre by Serellan LLC was released. I’ve been waiting for this like a kid for christmas, and yesterday was the day. Sadly, the launch was not without it’s controversy. Some, like TotalBiscuit even called it flat out broken.
Now, I didn’t notice the issues that TB points out in the game in the three hours I played of it yesterday, but I have to say it lacks a bit of polish. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the game, but it lacks polish.
There are some issues, like graphical clipping through the walls when spectating in-game and some easy-to-fix lacking animations, like when characters are reloading and changing weapons.
Here is my wishlist for improvements, in the order I come to think of them:
Give us the ability to lock servers with a password! Sometimes you just want to play with your friends without strangers dropping in.
Improve the menu-system. It feels a bit PS1, actually. Sometimes you’re not even sure if you pressed a button or not.
In the multiplayer lobby, show us which insertion point the other players have chosen. Preferably also what kind of loadout they have, so that it’s easy to balance the team.
Although the text-to-speech chat-feature is absolutely hilarious, give us the option to turn it off. There’s probably a console-command for it but I can’t find any list of available commands anywhere, and I’d still prefer an optionsmenu to console-commands.
Give us an options-menu when you hit escape in-game.
I don’t want a minimap, but I’d appreciate a map in the pre-battle lobby, so I can get a better grasp of the layout of the playing area. I bet real soldiers get to look at maps too.
Give us to option to rename our loadouts. I have a poor memory and can’t remember which loadout I made my sniper-loadout and which one sported the shotgun, and I have way too many post-it notes on my desktop as it is.
Give us the ability to modify the loadouts in the pre-battle lobby.
The great thing is that the core game is fantastic, and most of my requests should be relatively easy to implement. I look forward to playing this some more, and I look forward to many patches to improve the game further.
As a huge fan of ye olde taktikal shooters (you know, that genre that doesn't actually exist anymore due to it's rather limited audience and hardcore nature and so on), I always loved the old Rainbow Six titles. And yeah, after playing them, I even learned to love the Vegas one..but it wasn't the same after that. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter was awesome, but my the time it went all "future soldierish", it complelety lost the ball.
My close friends have been keeping their eyes out for Takedown: Red Sabre (an indie title that's set to bring back the tac shooter), for a while and I've been keen to follow up too. It's with great enjoyment that I now read my friend themosse's comments on Takedown. I have a feeling it's gonna a be a hit at the next LAN party..
Dear Esther is a first-person game about love, loss, guilt and redemption. Driven by story and immersion rather than traditional mechanics, it’s an uncompromisingly emotional experience. Starting life as a cult mod in 2007, Dear Esther is recognised as a major title in pushing forward the boundari
A while back I got to know Darren from the Clann of Gamers. Some conversations later and he asked me to write some reviews for his site. Since the site concentrates on games developed in Europe I went through my game library looking for those games.
Dear Esther is one of them and the first I wrote a review about.
The webworld is filled with reviews and different takes on the "not-game" Dear Esther. From conventional gaming sites, the likes of Kotaku, IGN and GameSpot to more wider audience-reaching sites like Telegraph and Guardian, everyone seems to have an opinion on this indie hit, usually praising it to the heavens.
But this review, written by themosse for Clann of Gamers, is actually among the best, in my opinion. It touched upon that very essence that I found "Dear Esther" to be all about and I actually felt these were very similar thoughts to what I had felt during my journey.
Continue Magazine had a failed Kickstarter a while back, which is a real shame, as it is truly a fantastic magazine about the gaming culture, both digital and analogue gaming. It’s not reviews and gaming news, the great staff at Continue realize that these are articles any website around can beat them to. They get it. They know, live and breath this industry. Instead the mags are packed with analytical articles about gaming trends, aspects of gaming etc.
Three issues were produced last year, and they are in my opinion all worth the read. You can sample at least the first issue, and if you like what you see I urge you to support Continue Magazine and maybe we’ll be able to see more issues from them!
After reading all the three issues myself, I found Continue Magazine to be a very well-writted and thoughtful magazine. Like themosse says, it's not reviews, news and hype, but rather deep and instilling articles that touch upon the culture of gaming and gamers, stuff you really don't find at every run-of-the-mill site.
If you're a gamer or into gaming, I suggest you look into Continue Magazine (link to sample issue #1 can be found below). Support them!
Nostalgia In Games, or Why Pay To Relive Your Past Experience?
As a gamer, I have a lot of memories from my life that I'll probably never forget. I can still remember seeing my father playing Wolfenstein 3D in our darkened living room, probably because he didn't want his then-10-year old son to witness him massacring "halt"-shouting Nazi guards and barking German shepherds. In all it's pixelated blood-filled brutality, the whole thing, with it's eerie corridors and haunting music and that sharp sound of guns and screaming, was rather mystic and, even for a kid like me, it felt "wrong"; in other words, I knew I had to try it.
I can also remember the time when I first saw preview-pics (in a PC Gamer from '94-'95, perhaps?) of what was promised to be (and actually did become) the epitome of first-person shooters; Duke Nukem 3D. It was light-years ahead of what then represented the genre (which was primarily Wolfenstein 3D and Doom). A living city as the map, the possibility to shrink and stomp your enemies, paying strippers for services, snarky one-liners. Bloody fantastic it was! There was also the summer when I was eagerly awaiting to get home from the cabin, so I could try out the demo of Dark Forces. And then there was the time when me and my cousin sat in an abandoned primary school, guarding my mother's art exhibit while playing Blood with volume turned up to full. The guests were not amused. But little did we care.
All these images represent a fun moment or an excitement over something new. Perhaps they are the very reason I became a gamer, who knows? Nevertheless, today, they are all nostalgia; moments of a life lived. But nostalgia is a powerful force in the sense that we can always relive our memories through other means; when we play XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012), we might remember the time when we crawled through it's decade-old grandfather, UFO: Enemy Unknown. Or when we sit through Civilization V, we can relate to ourselves doing it back in the days of the original.
Now, nostalgia is something that sells very well in the entertainment industry, that we know. It's considered a sure investment. That's why sequels upon sequels are made of "Indiana Jones", "The Hangover", "Jaws" and so forth. Why create something new, when you can just go on with the old?
That's also why games of today strive toward releasing our inner nostalgia. How many indie-games today are made to look like 8- or 16-bit graphics from the years past? You know what I mean; Hotline Miami, Terraria, Resonance, Monaco, Prison Architect and so forth. Believe me, they don't *have to* look like that. But they do. Why? Because, through their visual apperance, they differentiate themselves from most AAA-titles, that usually look sleek, photo-realistic and ultra-detailed. Sure, it's also not possible for a small one-man indie-company to create such graphics, but it's also a way stand out. They are all, in most parts, also good examples of how to tap into our inner memories of the times when all games looked like that, and channel those memories. In my mind, these indies represent the idealists; those who dare to try something new but spice it up with something old.
Then there's the conformists; the Hollywood studio executives, if you will. Those who say; "Right, let's remake Casablanca...but do it with a 21th century twist and starring Amanda Seyfried. Call J.J. Abrams!" They are the ones who think copying an old thing and making it look new, in other words, selling us what we already have for a new price, is cool. They are the ones who make "nostalgia games"; remakes of Rise Of The Triad and Shadow Warrior with "redux graphics" and charge us 10-15 euros for it on Steam. And we fall for it. Why? Because, once again, we tap into our old memories. Seriously, would we otherwise play those kind of games anymore if they didn't carry the weight of their name?
Don't get me wrong, I am guilty of this too.
About a year ago, I bought Grand Theft Auto III for my Android phone (and tablet). And just this spring, I bought Carmageddon for them. They are well-made games, believe me, good ports and cool as heck. But..I realized quite quickly that I've seen them already..back in the days. I've experienced this already, so give me something new, some "aha"-moment. Give me Plague Inc., Angry Birds or QWOP. I don't want to pay for and replay an exact game I already played ten or twenty years ago. And I seriously think gamers of today don't want that either. Or do you?
"Although I have no degree or past education in healthcare or acute medicine whatsoever, I know better than you, because I just Googled and checked Wikipedia for my symptoms. And my dad knows a friend who knows a lawyer, so you better watch out. And besides, I pay taxes, so I'm entitled to whatever I demand. Your just an overpaid taxi driver who didn't get into med school anyway, so.."
Does this sentence, or any variation of it sound familiar to you? Yeah, then this one is for you!
This is a really good article by Thom Dick (Journal of Emergency Medical Services; June 21, 2013). It raises a lot of questions and issues that everyone of us in EMS have at some time witnessed, or even been guilty of ourselves.
I can confess that I have, at some time or another, lapsed from my morning rituals or vehicle checks due to "reasons" that are similar to the ones mentioned here. But every time I do, it's like I shoot myself in the leg. And I know it. So why do it? You may think your "saving time", being overly safety conscious or maybe just thinking it's not important enough to go through with it. But, somewhere, deep inside you know that in all honesty, it's you yourself, and perhaps first and foremost, your own patients, who are going to suffer from that.
This article may focus on EMS and ambulances primarily, but the issue is broader than that; it concerns us all on some level. So take a moment and read it, then think about the following:
- Do you feel you generally skip or "fly through" standardized routines (i.e. morning, or other, routine checks, procedural or other checklists, etc)?
- When did you last skip or "just fly through" such a standardized routine? What was the reason for it?
- Why do these routines exist; what is the reason they have been invented in the first place? Come up with 3 reasons, then return to the first question. Do you still feel the same?
Have you ever watched "Person Of Interest"? You know, that television series about Jesus stalking people, hijacking their cell phones and photographing them from afar, beating up and shooting some random bad guys while being guided by Benjamin Linus and at the end either saving his victim from certain doom, or seeing that justice gets served. Yeah, that one. It's a really cliché-ridden series with all the trademarks of it's producer, J. J. Abrams, all over it. But in all honesty, in all it's mediocrity and hyper-serialized concept, it's still quite intriguing. What makes it so, is the question of surveillance and how easy it is to accomplish these days.
Now, Ubisoft (stay away, you evil fiend!) is publishing an upcoming game with a similar theme as the aforementioned series, although in no way related to it. "Watch Dogs" is an open-world game about a hacker that can gain access to all systems and technology around him (cell phones, traffic lights etc.) and use them to aid his missions. Standard cloak-and-dagger stuff, it seems, we've seen it recurring in the Splinter Cell and Assassin's Creed brands. The theme of "Watch Dogs" is information warfare and how everything, due to our ever-increasing usage of technology, mobile devices, social media, geotagging, file sharing and so forth, is interconnected. This is all very cool and the game is, as always with most of these kind of titles, really good-looking and I am, for once, quite excited.
Now, as Ubisoft has famously shown us, they are the master of PR (that was the sarcasm alert you heard..). Now, last week, they kicked up a website to advertise "Watch Dogs" in quite a unique way. The site, called WeAreData, is actually a surveillance tool, of sorts. It "uses information gathered via Twitter, Flickr and other social and digital networks to display real-time information about London, Paris and Berlin. Viewers can check out the locations of underground trains, traffic cameras and stoplights, as well as information on specific districts' net income, commuter rate and unemployment." (Polygon.com).
Apart from being an advertisement wet dream, this is a very intuitive way to get your message through. And it's very cool. And yet, it's bloody scary. Ubisoft states on the website; "Watch_Dogs WeareData gathers available geolocated data in a non-exhaustive way: we only display the information for which we have been given the authorization by the sources". (weareData.watchdogs.com) This means that there is no hacking or unlawfulness involved; all information and data gathered is such that have been given out by the sources with their permission.
But still, what you can see and follow is staggering; you can actually read peoples' tweets, see their Foursquare check-ins, watch their Instagram and Flickr pictures and you can see the location of mobiles, traffic lights, public bicycles, ATM:s and trams. Real-time? Probably not. But close enough to make the hairs in your arms raise.
The thought that all this public data, be it however legally acquired, is made available to a gaming company to be used as advertisement for their product, is a bit creepy. I mean, it's nothing new, we know what we're doing when we click "send". But still, it's eye opening to see where it all ends up.
Then, of course, it might just all be a really elaborate advertisement trick.
There is a really good point to this image. Imagine any other line of work where the amount of data and knowledge you need to accumulate, hold on to and be able to access quite fast. And not necessarily on a daily basis, so your memory will let you down..
This is actually one the major areas of patient safety; how do we guarantee that we can have access to information and not have to rely on our own (very limited) memory.
Why I Blame The Sun For Draining My Mobile Battery
I love my mobile phone (Samsung Galaxy S2, you know, that flagship model of from a couple of years back). And my tablet (Google Nexus 7, the bestest mini-tablet there is), for that matter. If you ask me, mobile devices are the epitome of our technological advancement and one of the greatest areas of invention we've ever done.
Sure, you'll probably find a lot of lists (while surfing on your smartphone or tablet) that'll state otherwise; just Google "greatest inventions ever" and you'll find around a gazillion of them stating the wheel, plow, steam engine, toaster, coffee maker or printing press among the top. I won't argue there, without them we'd probably still look like this. But still, think about this; the mobile device is, by far, the major contributor (if not the contributor) to globalization and that whole "world is getting smaller"-philosophy that we spread around us while posting and retweeting our food pics to our relatives in France or sharing our cat videos to friends in Mumbai.
So then, if we've come this far in our technological advancement, why is it that I, every bloody day, still am bothered by a certain message (in picture or text form). I mean, if I want to read my Facebook and Twitter feed, check my email and calender, run with Sports Tracker on while listening to streaming music or play Angry Birds for hours upon end, why is it that the image I see the most is this?
Now the web is filled with millions of tips and tricks to prolong your battery life, everything from setting your screen brightness to as dark as possible (quite smart actually) to having only a black background (might be true, but I want me a nice background). Some even seriously say "stop using any apps, they drain power". Wait what; then why exactly do I own a smartphone?
The funny thing is, my battery is draining much faster during the summer than in the winter. Irritatingly fast actually, it goes from full to zero in less than eight hours, with heavy use (albeit normal use for me). And I blame the sun. Here's why:
1) It is a known fact that around 40-60% of your mobile device's battery drainage is due to the screen. The brightness of the screen, to be exact. My phone and tablet have both an integrated and an external app that follows battery use (and drainage) and they both corroborate this continuously. When I'm inside, or in any darker environment (such as winter in Finland), I can manage with around 10-20% of maximal screen brightness. But when I step outside, into the warm and brightly lit summer, I can't see squat with that. I have to set the screen brightness up to around 90-100% (and in some cases, I still can't see). That's because the sun is much brighter outside than inside (duh!).
2) Now there are some cons to this theory: I use my phone more while mobile than home, where I primarily use my tablet or laptop. And while at home, my mobile devices are automatically linked to my Wi-Fi, while on the road, it's the mobile network (3G mostly). That of course, consumes more battery.
3) That being said, if checked on a yearly basis, I use my mobile devices pretty much the equal amount, be it at home or on the road. So that kind of disproves that last part. They should, in other words, run out just as quickly during the depressingly dark winter as they do in the bright sunny summer. Which they don't.
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