Ghosts?

Ghosts?  Do they exist?  Probably.  Is there proof or evidence?  It's hard to say.  I'm sort of agnostic on the subject.  I'm a healthy skeptic that can take in explanations.  There's an explanation for many of the so called "evidence" that's out there.  But on the other hand there's the thought of life after death.  After all I believe in a heaven.  Are there spirits that haven't crossed over to that special place?

Orbs?  What's the deal.  The simple explanation is that it's nothing but dust particles in the air that reflect light when the picture is shot with a flash.  Even without a flash, what little light there is can be reflected back into the lens.  Some see face in them or any other thing.  We can call this pereidolia.  We humans see things in patterns.  So if you were to look at this  :)  sideways you'd see a face, right?  Maybe ghost like faces in photos and mere orbs look more like faces than simple dots and a curved line.  But really, that's what much of it is.  Coincidence.

EMF?  Some speculate that spikes in electrical energy show evidence.  But there's electrical signals all around us like radio waves, cell phone waves, digital tv waves, etc.  Some of these electrical impulses stay for many years.  A radio show was picked up once that hadn't been played over the air in years.  But why bother here. TV shows and internet sites claim that most of these EMF detections are not near any electrical source and in places where signals would not likely show up, especially in such huge spikes.  But that is tv.  We don't know if it's for show.  I mean after all, if they didn't find anything where they went, then they'd have no show, right?

That brings me to EVP.  Electrical Voice Phenomena.  This could easily be voices outside or voices from signals picked up.  Or it could be that you're just listening to intently.  But is it really?  They seem to be in response to people's presence, if this is not for show.  EVP seems to be the strongest evidence if it's not staged and many experts say that it can't be so easily.

Here's what I believe about it.  There is a heaven and hell and then there's our world.  When we die the electrical impulses from the brain do not die, just like radio signals do not die out.  Where do they go when the body dies and decomposes?  Wherever they want or can.  Maybe they're afraid to face god and don't go towards him.  Maybe they have unfinished business that they must inevitably let go of.  But as for whether we can detect them, maybe sometimes we can, but I think most of it is faked or imagined.

Hold Your Wiimotes Skyward!

Ok, I just made it to the front of my first dungeon.  I haven't gone through it, but I've fought map battles, learned to fly on the back of a bird, and completed my first task of finding 4 kikwis.  Therefore I think I'm in the position to make at least a small judgement on the game thus far.

The biggest thing of all is the controls.  Gamespot.com did a real disservice to fans by giving it a 75.  It's a terribly inconsistent score with all the other reviews out there being 90s to 10s.  An inconsistent score usually is a bad indicator on the reviewer or reviewers, because obviously they're not doing something right.  In this case it seems they were judging it based on the controls.  First Link's responses to your swings and other such actions with the motion controller are near perfection.  However there is just one flaw.  It's precise to a fault.  This means that when you swing your sword and it doesn't go precisely the direction you planned, that you were a little off.  That's just a little off, not a lot.  The margin of error is there.  However, this being the first little bit that I played, I think I need more practice.  My biggest problem with the controls was flying.  Flying is not explained well and could have used a pictorial or video segment on how to gain altitude.  I had a rough time getting my bird to flap its wings.  Shaking the remote doesn't do it.  Neither does flapping your arms with the nunchuck or wiimote.  >.o  It's not something I can explain, but when I did get it right, I finally finished the race in the beginning.

For the most part the controls are very intuitive, take practice, but altogether work well.  This is the first time Nintendo has truly shown off what the wiimote should be about.  It takes full use of it and does it right and with style.

The graphics look like something ripped from a Disney cartoon.  Literally, when I look at much of the graphics, the faces and etc, I think Disney.  The detail is very nice, but not even a close look and you can notice that they were really trying to do the best they could with the limited hardware.  Jut think what it could have looked like if the Wii had better hardware.  All in all though, the art is very admirable and the best the system has shown so far.

The story takes a different direction, but as this is a Zelda game, there really isn't much to say about it.  It's all about the puzzles and how fun it is.  Nothing more.  Other features are your typical Zelda fare things, such as a bow and arrow, sling shot, and many more, along with a few new ones that I have yet to see in the game for myself.

This is a great Zelda title and gets my high adoration.  Good job, Nintendo!

Do away with video copy protection!

Video formats change every few years.  We had VHS years ago and now we have machines that can convert your VHS tapes to DVD format.  Awesome.  Now we have Blu-ray disks.  The market is ever changing, though.  These will soon be replaced with a digital downloadable format from the internet.  The disks, especially blu-ray, and the downloadable videos from iTunes and wherever else are protected from being copied.  So what happens when we go all digital and store all our movies on hard drives or even in the cloud?  How can we copy our disks to the next format?  I mean, the players that play disks won't last forever.

And now what about these downloadable videos from iTunes and various other places, like Amazon Video.  They're all copy protected.  They'd be fantastic if you could play them on any player you wish directly to your TV, but depending on what place you buy these from you have to have a different box to play them on.  So, what if we have to have a computer hooked to our TV?  Why do that if all we want is just to watch videos we bought online?  The one answer is to stream it to your favorite media box.  Even I can't get that to work most of the time, how do they expect your average Joe to do this?

If we could only get rid of the protection, so we could put it into a format we can actually play on our TV boxes, we'd be all set.  Copy protection makes things way too complicated.  The music industry learned this a long time ago.  Now we have music we can play and copy to ANY player we want.  No complications.  I completely understand the industry's frustration of copyright violations and I understand they want that kind of control over their media, but copy protection makes things complicated for those that want to be able to play what they bought.  Sooner or later they need to come to trust people with your media and content.  People already have found ways to copy things they shouldn't.  The point of copy protection is lost when people find ways around it.

In conclusion, we need to end this digital copy protection that is on all media, now.  It complicates things and the point of it is defeated already, therefore lose the protection and sell the media unprotected just like music. It's time we move on.

How Do I Control Rage Attacks?

I've been having rage attacks for as long as I can remember. In high school it was bullies. They push my buttons and even the mere thought of them still gets me on edge. It was my way of surviving the experience. To just scream at them and tell them how wrong they were was my only option at the time. No teacher could ever get through to me.

Back then there was little knowledge of Aspergers Syndrome and I didn't have a diagnosis of any kind back then.

Years later after forgiving the whole entirety of the school for it, things still get to me. Right now it's video games that are the big problem for me. My family is starting to get fed up with all the yelling and cursing.

I've figured out this much of it. I get mad when i get stuck in the same situations too many times for me to handle. Case in point, Super Mario Galaxy. I ran through the course repeatedly with only some success. I kept repeating it because my determination kept me going. Determination can be good, but there's a point at which it becomes stubbornness. At this point I have hard time controlling my feelings towards it. So if I can limit the number of times I go over something, that'd be the key.

The next day after having finally given up the day before, it took me approximately three tries to get that star in Mario Galaxy. That showed that I got practice in and that my more calm and cool attitude towards the level paid off. The more tense I am, the less likely I am to succeed.

Overthinking

As aspies we tend to over think a lot of things, don't we?  Does this person like me?  Do they not like me?  Did I say something wrong?  I'm confused by the signals this person is sending.  Or is this person not sending me any signals at all?  Was she/he being sarcastic just now?  What does that mean?  What does this mean?

It's tiring.  I've had to sort through a lot of these, it occurred to me.  It's a classic thought process of all the over thinking that aspies typically do.  And again I confront myself with the "yes, I do do these aspie things."  We ask these questions to ourselves.  We weigh things out.  We analyze the context of everything.  And we end up still with so much doubt.

Some of us have learned to ask outright what is meant.  Some of us, like me, have decided that silence is the best policy, because you're supposed to know by NT standards and it would just seem too embarrassing to ask.  "Mind blindness" was something brought up in the movie "Adam."  I think what all that was was that Adam, from the movie, has to ask out right what a person is thinking or feeling, because the person didn't want to keep wondering.  An NT can tell certain things from looks on their faces, audio clues given in inflection in another person's voice, situation, and other body language.  It's just not so simple.  I mean, I may see things and I may hear things, but my mind often questions whether I'm wrong or right.  I've done this all my life as far back as I can remember.  I don't ask, because I've been wrong so many times, so long ago, that the embarrassment just hasn't been worth going through to find out.

I guess just knowing my diagnosis that in the very least, without necessarily out right saying "I'm mildly austistic," I can just say that I'm just a confused person that needs stuff pointed out to me more bluntly.  At least with me knowing this about myself, I can ask in just the right way without being too embarrassed.

Who has the problem?

To people who are bullied in or out of school there are some observations to be made.  One observation is that you are not the only one being bullied by this person.  You may have noticed this a long time ago and may have made social connections between you and those peers that have also been bullied.  Is it because you are all freaks and outcasts?  This is probably what you are thinking consciously or subconsciously.  That's the thing that brings you together with the others that are bullied.  If you take a closer look at them you'll see the differences between you and those others.  Or you may not.  It's not a bad thing that this has brought you together.  I am merely pointing out that you are not a freak and they are not freaks and that is because you all are different from each other in various ways.

Now what if you see this same bully doing wrong to one person and then the next day or later that day, they're on someone else's butt.  What do you think about this bully?  You'd think they had a problem and that's exactly what it is.  People who are not bullied are actually seeing the bully as a messed up person.

You may also note that this bully does only one person at a time normally.  He/She does not point to one person, one second and then walk down the hall and only a few seconds later point at another and bully them.  They don't go from one to the other, randomly so quickly.  This is one of their tactics.  If they can bully one person, then that's enough for them for a little while.  Not only that, but if they went so rapidly from one person to the next, they know how obvious they look as far as having a problem.

They do bully groups, but not each individual so quickly.  If they see a group of goths or emos, they may pick on them, because they're so easy to group together.  They know everyone else will see those people as a sort of organized group of people.  They know those people have things in common.  But never will you see them pick on one individual and then the next so quickly.  It's one group or one individual at a time.

Bullies don't want to make themselves obvious.  However they are obvious to some not bullied.  If you're bullied right now, then it's time to open your eyes to their tactics and their obvious flaws.  It is not you, it's them.  If you saw them bully you, then a second later bully a person that you have no idea who is and they do this rapidly, then you'd see the person has a problem.  They make it look not obvious.  They play tricks on your mind to make it look like you are the problem or those you hang out with are the problem.

In the end I think you should carefully observe them and process every move they make in a completely different way than you do now.