Dragon Nest

Dragon Nest is an action role-playing game that incorporates elements of classic RPGssuch as Zelda, Grandia and even the Final Fantasy, a Japanese manga style graphicsattractive, and MMORPGs alike. It has a quickly-play style with a dynamic fighting combos and great visual impact. With third-person view, in combat you can switch to first person perspective. 
It can be played with keyboard and mouse or with Jostick.












As you saw the game is a hack & slash with air to Ragnarok Online (no variabilityobviously)

The game works with a system of "combos" so to speak, but not as the CABAL or othergames where you have to follow the sequence as default and press the same string of buttons forever.
The game is very fast and the number of movements that can be doneand magic skills, allow us to attack non-stop and in the sequence we pretend.

This type of non-stop combos is what, for me, diferences this game from all the others, because you can keep enemies or characters (PVP) bouncing off the floor unable to defend themselves.
Obviously that PVP is not as easy to keep the combo infinitely.

Each server has a number of channels, such as the world map, the Coliseum (PVP) with ladder system / equipment and other maps that have not yet come to explore.







The Game 1997


Original Title:  The Game
Duration:  128 minutes
Genre:  Thriller
Director:  David Fincher (The Social Network, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Fight Club, among others).
Cast:  Michael Douglas, Sean Penn, James Rebhorn, Deborah Kara Unger.

Personally I think a thriller is good when it keeps you in suspense all the time and you don't know what's coming up next. That's why i belive this movie is brilliant: It has all the necessary ingredients for a good movie including unexpected twists in the story.  It will keep your ass on the chair from the minute 1 until the end.

Synopsis:

Everything begins when a lonely and embittered millionaire named Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) receives as a birthday gift from his younger brother (Sean Penn) an invitation to a sort of an exclusive club where it is promised that will change your life. Giving up to curiosity, Nicholas visits CRS (Consumer Recreation Services). Rapidly after that he discovers that he has been enrolled in a game - "a profound life experience" that begins quietly but soon erupts in a rush of devastating events.

The slow motion sequence at the end is also well done and this has got to be one of the best endings of all time.

Trailer:


Cornell Notes

This wednesday i'll start going to college so i thought that i should improve my study methods (i'm really desorganized and lazy =( ). Surfing the internet i came across with the Cornell note taking system, and i found that it could be helpful so i decided to share the knowledge of this system to everyone that never heard of it.


A little wiki intro: 
The Cornell method provides a systematic format for condensing and organizing notes. It was devised in the 1950s by Walter Pauk, an education professor at Cornell University. Pauk advocated its use in his best-selling 'How to Study in College'.


Divide and Conquer!


  • Note Taking Area: Record the lecture as fully and as meaningfully as possible here using brief and concise telegraphic sentences. Try to abbreviate common-long words to save time.
  • Cue Column: You should write here after the reading. Here goes all the main ideas, questions that actually makes you think (try to predict the exam items), important relationships between pieces of information and reminders. The main idea of this column is to write down info that help connect ideas listed in the notes section. When you're studying, you will look at these cues to help you recall the salient facts in your notes, so keep that in mind when you create your cues.
  • Summaries: Write a summary of the main ideas using your own words. 



Examples:


Cornell Method PDF Generator: http://www.eleven21.com/notetaker/
Very useful tool to create your own 'custom' Cornell Page.


Creating an Ad-hoc network - Windows 7

I'm really sory for not posting daily, last week was a hell for me. I was really busy and i didn't had time for anything.
Today i'm making a mini guide to create an Ad-hoc network to share internet from one pc to another without the need of nothing more than a wireless adapter.

Asuming that you have already installed the drivers the first step is crating a new network on the pc that has internet.

Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network and Sharing Center



Click on:
'Set up a new connection or network'.

A new windows will pop-up. Choose:
'Set up a wireless ad hoc (computer-to-computer) network.'


Here you should choose one of the 3 options. I'm going to chose an open network (there's no need for any security since this is only an example and i'm not going to use this network. You should asign WEP/WPA2).

So we created the network, but it' is not displayed in Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network and Sharing Center.

Why? Well since this is a computer-to-computer network you'll need that someone else (other computer) connects to the network. Lets do it. 

Go to the computer that does NOT have internet access. 
Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network and Sharing Center > Connect to a Network. 
I named the network Guide-Blog.

Windows XP GUI

This is how it looks like in W7

Ok we've created the network and both pcs are connected to it. What's next?

On the pc that already has internet.
Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network and Sharing Center 



Click on : 
Wireless Network Connection->Properties->Sharing (the network that provides internet to that pc)

Check the box: 
'Allow users to connect through this computer's internet connection.'


Click 'Ok' and the without exiting the other windows click on 'Details'.


Write down the DNS Server adress.

Now same thing but, with the other network. (Guide-Blog).

Wireless Network Connection->Properties->Internet Protocol V4->Properties.


It should look something like that. Remember the IP Adress: 192.168.x.y 
Where 'x' is a value between 1-255.
Where 'y' is a value between 2-254.(1 is reserved for the network adress, and 255 it's the broadcast adress).

Ok it's all done with this pc, lets go to the other one.

Same thing: 
Wireless Network Connection->Properties->Internet Protocol V4->Properties.



>IP Adress: It should be the same that the other computer's adress but the 'y' value must not be the same!. 
>Default Gateway: The other computer's IP adress. 
>DNS Server: Do you remember the adress that you write down before? Goes in here!.


If you have any question, i'll be more than happy to help you!


Music Videos

Besides of the fact of sharing with you my muscial taste, this post has the purpose to intoduce a few videos that i belive are worth to watch. Without further ado, the videos!:


Weapon of Choice - Fatboy Slim (2001)




Possibly the best fucking moves i've ever seen. The video won multiple awards at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards and earned a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Video.


Do the Evolution - Pearl Jam (1998)



The first time i watched this video i was amazed. It represents so well the essense of the lyric.


Losing my Religion - R.E.M. (1991)



This is my personal favorite. R.E.M. is a band that i sort of inherit from my father. One of the best band IMHO.

The Scientist - Coldplay (2003)




The music video for "The Scientist" was very popular with its reverse narrative.  In order for Martin to appear to be mouthing the lyrics in the reversed footage, he had to learn to sing the song backwards, which took him a month to do!.


One - Metallica (1989)




This  was the first Metallica song for which a music video was created. Great debut in the film industry :D.


Ok no unkwown or new bands in this post, just old classics. 


Bitcoin


What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is a digital currency designed in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto.

What makes this new currency great?
>There’s no central authority managing it.
>You can transfer them to anyone that has a digital wallet, for free (in any country). Ther's no third party involved.
>Your account can not be frozen.

Damn Bitcoins how do they work?!

The first subject I will talk about is transactions: In order to give and recibe bitcoins(BTC from now on) you will need the official client (download link is below). Once you got this, and it connects to the Bitcoin network, it performs two primary actions:


>It generates a pair of unique keys. One public and the other one private (both mathematically linked).
An example of a Bitcoin adress: 1GkNSJurCKkv2jj2Ajcwf2So1JKt639qcV.
>It downloads the hole public log that contains all the transactions ever done.

When you send some bitcoins to someone, you create a message (transaction), attaching the new owner's public key to this amount of coins, and sign it with your own private key. After this is done, the transactions is broadcasted to everyone in the network (clients that are not involved in the transfer).

This way all the clients verify the integrity of the message: they check that this transaction is legit (uses the public key to confirm that the true owner of the pair sent the money) and that the person that sends the money has the BTC to spend (they can check this with the block chain).

Some of these clients (a.k.a. miners) are in a race to solve some sort of a cryptographic puzzle so they can add a new block to the block chain and this way be rewarded with BTC.

"Bitcoin transactions are broadcast to the network by the sender, and all peers generating coins collect them and add them to the block they're working on."

When your software receives the updated log it knows your payment was successful.

Glossary
>Block: Data is permanently recorded in the Bitcoin network through blocks. Each block contains all recent transactions, a nonce (random number), and the hash of the previous block. A block is "solved" (published and considered valid by peers) when the SHA-256 hash of the entire block is numerically below the current target.
>Block chain: A full copy of a currency's block chain contains every transaction ever executed in the currency. With this information, one can find out how much value belonged to each address at any point in history.

How do I get started?
First of all you need a digital wallet . You can either download the official Bitcoin client from here: http://www.bitcoin.org/ or you could use online wallets such as: InstaWallet or MyBitcoin (I’ve never tried this, use them at your own risk). If you choose to get the downloadable client make sure to back up the .dat file frequently.

After that you can get 0.05 BTC for free from here: https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/ to get started with.

How do I get moar of this awesome coins?
You can: Purchase or Generate them.

Generating BTC: Mining
I owe you this section, it's a little bit long and i'm thinking to make a new entry explaining it since this is just an intro to Bitcoin.

What’s a pool?
It’s a server where multiple clients contribuite in order to generate a block. After it’s done the profit is shared among all according to the power of process of each client (Mhash/s). 

This is a list with a few pool’s that I’m aware of:
Swepool.net: http://swepool.net/
BitcoinPool: http://bitcoinpool.org/ << I belive this one is down.
Simplecoins: http://simplecoin.us/


Online webs to buy/sell BTC

BitcoinMarkethttps://www.bitcoinmarket.com/                                                                       ConBitcoinhttp://conbitcoin.com/
BitMarkethttps://bitmarket.eu/
TradeHillhttps://www.tradehill.com/
Mtgoxhttps://mtgox.com/



These are the prices according to mtgox.com. 21/07/2011


OK, now I have 1 BTC. What can I do with it?
Sell it.
Save it.
Purchase things in markets that accept BTC as payment. (I’ll try to make a list in the near future).

There's no need for 1 BTC exactly, if i'm not wrong it supports 8 decimal places.

I’m leaving here some links that I belive can be useful if you are interested in BTC and want to want to get more knowledge about this subject:

And a couple of videos


The last one starts at 0:41:52.


Movie's SoundTrack Selection #1

I tought i could make a section dedicated to epic songs used in movies.


Lux Aeterna composed by Clint Mansell for 'Requiem for a Dream (2000)'
Perfect song, played in the most epic moment of the film.

Derezzed by Daft Punk for 'Tron Legacy (2010)'


It was really hard to pick only one track since they are all awesome!

There is a light that never goes out by The Smiths. '500 days of Summer (2009)'

What can i say? I love The Smiths and Zooey Deschanel too <3.

Besides of the music i recommend the 3 movies. I hope you like the idea, i'll be posting more sountracks in the future =)


Object Oriented Programming Books

Well in this new entry i would like to share with you a few books that i've read about Object Oriented Programming (OOP).






Object Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications by Grady Booch: This is an excellent book to begin with. Not only illustrates the fundamentals of OOP (in a very clear way through lots of examples, btw), but it tries to teach you how to think in Objects and how to design programs following the OOP principles.
Besides this the author also teaches you an introduction to UML(he states that if you want to go deeper you will have to read an UML book) and there's one chapter that covers how to apply this in your work and how it works (software development lifecycle for example). The las chapter of the book if full with applications (there's a problem to be solved, a series of diagrmas in UML notation, and finally the "solution" in OOP).
The only thing that i've heard against about this book (i did not felt this way when i read it) is that it's a lillte bit dense. Still it's a great book you don't have to speak english as your mother tounge to understand it and it's full of useful information.


Applying UML and Patterns: An introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and the Unified Process by Craig Larman: This one has a newer edition. I've enjoyed this book too! It has (at least for me) a very clear explanation of the UML notation and the Unified Process what i belive is a very useful tool to work with. Craig gives a few examples of the situations where he used it and the consecuences (favorable ones, of course) and introduces a new concept, at least for us, the Design Patterns. I am stopping right here and to talk about another 2 books:


Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John M.Vlissides (All toghether known as "The Gang of Four") and Head First Design Patterns by Elisabeth FreemanEric FreemanBert Bates and Kathy Sierra. Both excellent books in the subject and they complement each other really well.
The first one it's like a cook-book in wich you have the recipe of all of the 23 patterns.It shows the what, how and why's of every pattern so it's a really good reference book. On the other hand we have a non-traditional book that has a particular way to teach (these "technique" that is used in this books is also used in all the "Head First" books) and i won't tell you how it's written because i'm falling asleep. I agree that it's not for everyone but it worked well on me, it made a really enjoyable and fast reading of the book.
I'll tell you what i did: every time i finish the reading about a design pattern in the Head First book i jumped to the explanation in the Gang Of Four book.


All these four books will give you a strong base to start thinking and solving problems in OOP, but reading will be meaning less if you don't practice, so do it =)!
I'm open to sugestions for new books and opinions and i hope you find in these books a reason to keep learning all those things that you feel passionate about.
This is all for tonight (hopefully i will post more of this in the future), sorry for not posting and extense review of each one. The point of this post is to bring to your attention four excellent books.


Trust 2010

Yesterday I saw Trust:


It's the latest movie directed by David Schwimmer(the actor who played Ross Geller in Friends). In the movie a 14-years old teenage girl Annie (Liana Liberato) meets Charlie (Chris Henry Coffey) a "16-years old" boy through internet. I don't know how to tell you the plot without spoiling you the hole move, but the thing is that everything goes wrong for Annie and specially for his father (Clive Owen) who has no idea how to handle the situation that his doughter goes through.
My personal opinion is: this movie is great, even if you don't like the genre. Clive Owen is an excellent actor and he won't let you down with this movie. It was the first time i saw Liana Liberato, and i must say i'm really impressed with her. Both great actors and a good story (it really looked like this could happen to me or anyone). Pheraps the only thing that i didn't like is the fact that all happens too fast!. Besides that is a movie that i enjoyed and recommend you all.
8/10

I'm leaving the trailer here for those who are interested in the film:


First Post!

I miss those old days playing JUS with my friends.


For those who have never played it you should give it a try!It´s possibly the best fighting game on the nds. Here is a video:

The point of the game is to build a "page" of a manga using playable and non-playable(support and help komas) and fight!. There are a lots of combos and strategys that can be made. I can only find 1 flaw to this excellent game: The amount of playable characters! It's incredible that you can play with Majin Boo(Dragon Ball Z) and there is no CELL! or any andriod. =(. Similar things happens with all mangas (in Naruto you can play as Sakura but no Rock Lee, Gaara, no one! and naruto CAN use Rasengan, so it should have most of the Shippuden characters at least).
Too bad there isn't a newer version with more characters, but still it IS a great game and i hope you could play it and have fun!.