Empire of Sports Website
So, here it is, my first ever review. It's of a game that's yet to come out, but still... It's called Empire of Sports and it advertises itself as the world's first true multi-sports MMORPG.
After getting beta access the first thing I had to do was download the client. All of it. Even on my speed of around 2400 kbps, it still took almost half an hour.
When you actually get to play the game it's not that bad. The graphics are brilliant and the sports mechanisms are simple and engrossing. It relies quite heavily on reactions so this could lead to severe differences at the start, and you also need fast, accurate touch typing for some activities. But, with practise, it is really fun. There is great variety, but with similar systems making it simple to pick up. A lot of the missions (their name for quests), tutorials, guides, etc. Still need programming but what there is at the moment looks highly promising. There is skiing, bobsleigh, tennis, shooting, dancing, track and field and gym available at the moment with football and basketball coming soon. With tennis you need someone to play against which can be a bit of a problem, I haven't played yet! You only earn money for skiing, but you need it so much that this can also be problematic.
Bug wise I have only found one, but I have reported it and it wasn't too big anyway. The problems I listed earlier are all going to be sorted out before launch, or so I believe, so rest assured that you will be able to go to the medical centre, visit other cities and shop!
To conclude, this could be a brilliant game which I feel has been launched to beta too early. I like the theme of 2028, but would prefer it to be set in todays society and there to be more sports. I am giving it 8/10 at the moment but expect it to reach 10/10 upon launch.

Next week - Runescape!

A simple list of what I consider to be the most interesting events, births and deaths on this day in history. If you feel I have missed out anything spectactularly important please tell me in a comment on this post.

Events:
98 - Trajan becomes Roman emperor.
1343 - Pope Clement VI issues the Bull Unigenitus.
1606 - The trial of Guy Fawkes and the other surviving Gunpowder plotters begins.
1785 - The first public university in the United States, the University of Georgia, is founded.
1939 - The first flight of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning.
1944 - The two year siege of Leningrad is lifted.
1945 - The first troops from the Red Army arrive at the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp - Today is International Holocaust Rememberance Day.
1967 - Spacecraft Apollo 1 catches fire during pre-launch tests. The three astronauts, Virgil 'Gus' Grisson, Edward White and Roger Chaffee are all killed before they can open the command module hatch.
1967 - Over 60 nations sign the Outer Space Treaty, which bans the use of nuclear weapons in space.
1973 - The Vietnam War officially ends and the last recorded American casualty of that war, Colonel William Nolde, dies.

Births:
1756 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - composer.
1832 - Lewis Carroll - writer.
1850 - Edward Smith - Captain of the Titanic upon sinking. He shares his name with another Edward Smith who was the youngest VC recipient of WWI. He also got the DCM during that conflict and died in action (possibly friendly fire) in 1940.
1859 - Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany - Kaiser who led Germany during the First World War.
1933 - Mohammd Al-Fayed - Businessman, whose son died in the infamous car crash with Diana, Princess of Wales in Paris, 1997.
1980 - Marat Safin - tennis player.

Deaths:
1901 - Giuseppi Verdi - composer.
1967 - Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee - astronauts (see above).
1973 - William Nolde - last American casualty of Vietnam War (see above).

It's a question we've all been asked. Sometimes it's just continuing in the humour in a self-deprecating manner. At others it is honest, an expression of confusion. But what really is funny? Why do we laugh?
I'll start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. This week in my French class the teacher asked me what book I was reading. Quite honestly, I answered a book about the role of a branch of the British Secret Service dealing with Prisoners of War, Escapers and Evaders during World War Two. A slight ripple of laughter went round the class. Then, one person said 'I've read that too, it's a good book'. I hadn't even said the title and everyone knew it was taking the mick out of me, but everyone laughed. I, obviously, did not find it funny, but neither did it annoy me too much. The teacher, however, asked for who had said it. When they owned up, he gave us a five minute, highly enjoyable lecture about why it is not 'funny' to laugh at another persons expense, sentiments which I had held long before the incident. How can it be funny to laugh at someone? What is funny about racism, or sexism, yet this makes the backbone of many modern jokes. It is never acceptable to be racist say many people, so why tell jokes about Jews, or the French, or whoever. Because it is cheap and easy humour? That's pretty pathetic. If the only way you can attract girls is by making them laugh and the only way you can do that is by being racist, then you're not clever or witty, you're racist. I draw the line between racist jokes and innuendo. Strong innuendo is, again, stupid I feel. But mild innuendo is okay. But being racist is not. Why, oh why, do so many shows these days deal only in that sort of humour. I also see the difference between the extreme (and pretty pointless) violence of the Young Ones and Bottom and racist jokes. But, then again, if the only way you can make the audience laugh is by sticking an axe through someones head, what does that say about humanity?
So, to conclude, why does modern humour have to revolve around slacking someone off? Can people just grow up and write some decent comedy. You may say I just want Morecambe and Wise, Dad's Army, The Goodies and the Muppets back and you'd almost certainly be right. Well, are you all going to learn and mature, or will I have to learn to write for myself?

Here it is, another year, and another project for me. What am I doing this time? Programming a game. Online. Multiple users. Ah. That sounds like a lot of hard work. And if there's one thing I hate it's hard work. On the other side of the spoon the one thing I love is work, so it's not all bad. But, I am not going to reveal the intricacies of the game yet. I'm not giving you lot all my ideas. No way. Instead I am going to discuss the technologies I am using to make it. In particular, a specific set I am using, which I am calling WGP.
WGP:
It stands for Web Game Programming. And it refers to a simple, quick and easy way to create online, multi-user games, using standard technologies that most website coders know already. It is a combination of XHTML, JavaScript, CSS and PHP. I will explain each technology in turn and how it is used in the game.
XHTML:
eXtensible Hyper-Text Markkup Language is the newest version of the standard HTML language which has been used for years to code web pages. It is simply HTML, written in XML (eXtensible Markup Language) which is becoming the new standard. But as XML isn't fully supported yet, I will use the older technolgy. This is simply to produce the pages and to markup the text.
JavaScript:
This is used to produce the functionality and the interactivity. It is how we go from room to room (yes, they won't be seperate XHTML pages, they will be individual divides within an overall XHTML page). This will also control interacting with NPCs (Non Player Characters) and objects, quests, etc.
CSS:
Cascading Style Sheets will be used to style the pages, and in a more innovative way. It will be used in conjunction with JavaScript. The code I am using creates a toggleDisplay function, but without a certain bit of CSS, all the content would be displayed at the start. We need a 'display: none;' line in the CSS for certain 'div' elements to get around this problem.
PHP
PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor is the final technology used. It is utilised to store user data and statistics for their characters. This means that there is less time spent communicating with an external computer, thus speeding the game up.

Useful Links:
I am going to be writing my own introduction to each language in due course, in the meantime these links will be of use:
XHTML: http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/ ¦ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML ¦ http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/
JavaScript: www.javascript.com ¦ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript ¦ http://www.w3schools.com/js/
CSS: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/ ¦ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_Style_Sheets ¦ http://www.w3schools.com/css/
PHP: http://www.php.net ¦ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP ¦ http://www.w3schools.com/php/

http://www.hotscripts.com/ - good general programming site.
http://www.csszengarden.com/ - another good css website.

Note: I am not responsible for the content of external sites, or any damage they might do to your computer.

Okay, so I will start the new year with an apology (great, already!). I have not been very active blog wise recently and I am sorry. My RS lessons turned into tests so my main material source dried up and homework stepped up a gear in the new GCSE year, so I haven't had much time. That and grandparents deaths, etc, have made me become very lapse. This will, hopefully change.
This year I am not going to cover RS and philosophy every week, but once every four. The other weeks will be taken up by reviews, history and my life and times respectively, hopefully this will give me more material and mean that you get more to read!
So, sorry again and a happy new year, I look forward to sharing it with you all.

We all want it. Some of us have got it. But what is it? What drives us towards it? What does it actually mean?
OK, so I admit it, this is based on the assemblies given at school this week by my form tutor. Well, some of my own ideas, and definately my own words, so more... inspired, I think. Anyway, I'm going off on a tangent.
'I want to live forever... People will see me and cry "Fame!"'
That's how the song goes. I don't like it. I've got several bad memories of singing it in my primary school's choir. It seems just a set of lyrics. Or is it? 'I want to live forever'. Isn't that what we all want. I for one remember dreams, of not too long ago, where I lived forever. Everyone else died, just me, I saw what happened. Everyone wants to see what will happen in the future I think. Everyone wants to see how they are remembered. It would be 'fun'to read your own obituary, wouldn't it? To see what people think of you? But then you realise that you don't want it. If everyone else died you would know noone. You would be a stranger, and outcast. If you were talking to your great-great-great grandchildren, who themselves were now grandparents, could you cope? I don't think so. We need change, but not too much. We need to inhabit our own space and time and then leave. I think this is where the idea of an afterlife was born. we all knew it was best that we died. But we didn't want it to be the end. So is that what fame is about. The quest for an afterlife? To be remembered after you are long dead. By that reckoning Caeser is one of the most famous people ever. But is he? How do you define fame? The Chambers dictionary definition runs thus: public report or rumour, renown or celebrity, chiefly in a good sense - to report. I feel I should have chosen a more up to date dictionary. Does that satisfy me? No. It feels in part like a thesaurus, in part like they didn't know how to define it themselves. Let me have a go: to be known, to be recognised outside your immediate consequences. Okay, I don't think that Oxford will be employing that any time soon, I've used the word 'you' for goodness' sake! But it is good enough for me.
So, after all that, what actually is fame? Is it your face on the cover of all the tabloids and a women's magazine once a week, or is it a lasting contribution to society. Most people would say that Paris Hilton is famous. No she isn't. She's a celebrity. She hasn't done anything. Does this need to be added to my definition? To be remembered for a contribution, positive or negative, to society outside one's immediate social circles. See, I've even changed 'you' to 'one'. That's a bit long winded though isn't it? Surely something more short, sweet and succint is required. But I have diverged again. Back to Paris. I would say that if you wanted someone who was truly famous then you turned to Einstein or Hawkings. But, surely the original meaning of fame was to be widely recognised. So Paris, Channelle and all that lot truly are famous. But I don't agree. They haven't done anything. We have been changing and manipulating the definition, but so has society. The thing it is describing now comes in two forms as well. So is fame just an upshot of our modern, consumer-based society? No, I think it has always been around. But we now have so many ways to do it. With so many academic subjects it's easy to find your niche. The web is such an evolving medium that for a moment you can be held up in the limelight and clamed as famous for making a certain site that is forgotten completely five years later. 'Reality TV' allows anyone with absolutely no talent at all to get their 15 minutes. We plaster ourselves across profile pages. We add anyone and everyone to MSN and MySpace. I, for one, have a MySpace, Facebook and Bebo accounts, not that I use them much. I have created several websites, most of which have collapsed in a heap. I am on several forums. I'm on MSN. I'm on Yahoo. And goodness knows how many other sites. I keep a blog. That is fine for me. That is enough. The fame given by this. By knowing that someone, somewhere, outside my normal social circles may just have drawn an ounce of pleasure from reading my ramblings at some time or other. If this url is given to just one person I am famous. If just one person thinks about, or discusses what is here then I have got my fame. And I'm human. So I would love to be told!

The Jean Charles de Menezes Shooting
On the 21st of July 2005, there was a bomb scare in Central London. Coming as it did, a fortnight after 4 devices had been detonated to major damage and several deaths, the police mounted a response on a massive scale and London was placed on high alert. The next day, however, this was to go tragically wrong. An inocent Brazilian man was mistaken for one of the suspected suicide bombers and shot dead at Stockwell Tube Station.
Then, just last week, the Metropolitan Police was found guilty of gross negligence, or something. Anyway, that doesn't matter. What does matter is who is getting the blame. The Chief Commisioner, Sir Ian Blair. Why, oh why, oh why? He was not connected to the case. Yes, he put the city on highest alert, but with blooming good reason. He didn't give the intelligence that it might be one of the bombers. He didn't give the order ot detain that man. He didn't pull the trigger. So why should he get the blame? And why has an inquiry into the shooting only just started? It is two years after it happened. Witnesses can vanish or die. Memories can fade, change or even be changed. People can talk to other people. Things can be said. Why don't they do it immediately? Why has an inquest into Diana's death only just started. For that matter, why is it happening at all? They almost certainly had some alcohol in their bloodsteams. They almost certainly were speeding. They almost certainly were being chased. And the one person wearing his seatbelt survived. It could have been a campaign to get people to wear safety belts. It could have been a campaign against driving immediately after drinking. But instead it turns into this. Great!

That, as you may or may not know, is a quote from Terry Pratchett's brilliant and highly successful series of Discworld books. But when, you ask, might that come into play in real life? I actually have done this twice in recent weeks. One time I created the mischief, another time it was someone convincing themselves of something that was not true. I describe them both below.

'Where's he gone?'

I was in the beautiful town of Chester during the Octobe Half Term holiday. It was gorgeous, the sun was shining, the birds were singing and we were going back to a car park. My dad and brother were some way in front and my mum, my gran and I were walking along talking. The conversation had got onto some topic, I can't recall what, but it didn't really include me. So I decided to try something. I dropped behind, as if to let them talk easier. Once or twice they turned around to say things to me and I mumbled a reply. Then I dropped even further behind, and even further. And they didn't seem to notice or do anything. Then, I crossed the road. It was quite and the car park was on the other side. And they still didn't notice anything! So you can melt into the background. You can be put entirely out of memory. They only noticed me, after all, when a couple of minutes later they too came to cross. They turned to face the road and, as traffic was coming along at that moment, said that I must have seen it was clear and crossed all by myself, how clever and sensible I was. I kept my trickery to myself although I am guessing a smile did flash across my lips. It had worked!

The Missing 10

My second observation comes about a week later. We had been doing some work in French that the teacher wanted to mark, so he took our books in. He had already explained the mark scheme. The next day we got our books back. I had got 26. One of the people in our class came up and said '26 out of 30, that's good, well done'. I thought this strange immediately. It was out of 40! I told him this and he replied 'No, it's out of 30, no-ones got higher than 30.' I wanted to leave it there. But this was obviously wrong, he had convinced himself of something based purely on what he had seen. And it was completely wrong. I explained the maths to him. There were 13 questions, 3 marks for each make 39. He then said he'd give all of us a bonus mark. It's out of 40. He still kept on that it was out of 30. I left it there. But it is interesting, isn't it. The way that someone puts the memories out of their mind. They don't think. They just look and assume. Well, I found it interesting anyway.

First, an apology, I wrote this last week but completely failed to upload it to this blog. Sorry again, anyway, here it is:

Once again I have lived up to my reputation for picking highly contentious issues to deal with in this blog. I had better explain that by fertility treatment I am refering to various methods of allowing infertile couples to have a baby using scientific method. Certain methods involve a third, or even fourth and fifth parties in the pregnancy.
For ease I have only dealt with In-Vitro Fertilisation or IVF. This is because the arguments from method to method vary so wildly.
In the below I have stayed well away from religious reasons for and against fertility treatment. You could, for example, claim that God is the creator and by using fertility treatment we are playing God which is wrong. These sort of arguments lead to large and complex debates so I have stayed with scientific and moral principles only.

Fertility Treatment is RIGHT:
1. Everyone should be able to have a child (if they want).
Infertility is a highly distressing experience for those that it involves. For many people one of their most heartfelt ambitions is to have a child so being unable to concieve naturally can be highly upsetting. It also means that for those who have their reproductive organs removed (for cancer, etc) they can still have the chance to a child.
2. Screening for possible illnesses.
This is particularly useful for families where there is a history of life threatening diseases. When eggs are produced outside the womb they are much easier to screen to see whether or not they ahve a chance of developing a particular condition.
3. The ability to save one child by having another.
Sometimes a child can be born with certain conditions that can only be rectified by having a blood transfusion or similar operation. Unfortunately, the immunological match has to be so similar that only a sibling will do. Screening prior to implantation in the womb can lead to a second child which has the ability to act as a cure for the first.

Fertility Treatment is WRONG:
1. It can lead to dangerous multiple pregnancies.
In IVF it is against common sense to implant only one embryo as the chance of each embryo taking hold and developing is so slight. This means that normally multiple embryos are implanted into the womb. This is fine if only one starts growing. But if several start growing various factors come into play. The more babies a woman carries the more chance there is of complications for her and her children possibly leading to certain disabilities, conditions and even death.
2. What if multiple embryos develop?
This is a stage further back from the above. With IVF you take several eggs from the woman and sperm from the man and mix them before implanting some of the resulting embryos into the womb. But what do you do with the spare embryos? Do you throw them away? This is hard because certain philosophies believe that from conception onwards that is a 'life' and it shouldn't be taken away. Do you implant them all? That, as stated above, can lead to increased risks for mother and child(ren). This is an intricate moral dilemna, and one which is hard to resolve.
3. The childs sense of self.
What will the child think about himself. If one of the parents is infertile you might involve the eggs or sperm of a person outside the partnership. Under current English law the child would not have the right to find out who their biological father or mother was. This could lead to identity problems later on, confusing the child and making them depressed.

My Opinion:
So, what do I think? I am personally all in favour of fertility treatment. A lot of the arguments against it are religious and don't really impact on my overall view much. The remaining 'pros' then far outweigh the remaining 'cons'. I feel that people should be able to have a child if they want one and that the ability to prevent or cure diseases is a remarkable and highly comendable one. I think the child's sense of self is the strongest argument against but normally does not come into play through IVF. This is why I am in favour of IVF but not so sure of my position towards, for example, AID or Surrogate Motherhood. As for the dangers of multiple pregnancies? They exist in any pregnancy and the chances are relatively slim so I would be happy to take the risk. As for getting rid of embryos I wouldn't feel much guilt as I don't believe it is a 'person' yet. But that is for next time...

So, I've been writing this blog, properly, for over a month now and I feel that it is surely time that I told you all a little about myself.
I'm Robert, I'm 14 and I love in the West Midlands. I go a grammar school and am in Year 10. I am in maths and quiz teams at school. I help out in the library and am taking part in a young co-operatives scheme. Outside of school I enjoy tennis, table-tennis and badminton as well as walking. I like reading, my favourite author being Terry Pratchett. I lead an active online life running multiple, unsuccessful, websites and have a good knowledge of HTML, CSS, etc. I have too many projects on the go at the moment to name. These include, lovely thing irony, game making, computer programming, a Discworld fan fiction and the family tree.

Religious Views:
I was born a Christian to a Catholic father and Protestant mother. I was baptised a Catholic. Neither of them are very religious and neither am I. Following a discussion on this blog into my views I became an atheist. For further information read my series 'The Existence of God'.

Political Leanings:
I am a left-winger. More than that I am not sure. I was a communist for a time and felt that in pratice it could work. I now have mellowed a bit in opinion. I approve more of Labour but disagree with the war in Iraq, etc, being a pacifist. I currently lean towards the Lib Dems but feel that they have lost their way slightly. Besides, they are a bit too central. I am definitely against Tories. I found it highly interesting that as soon as there were rumours in the press of a general election they came out with all their policies. Brilliant! And yes, I admit that I am one of those who picked upon Cameron cycling to work. He still had several cars trailing him and a helicopter overhead but he cycled to work! Rubbish. To save my own neck I am not going to talk about the BNP and Monster Raving Loony Parties.

So that is a brief, and badly written, introduction to me.

What can one expect on this blog in the future?
- Religious and Psycological debate
- Recreational mathematics
- Historical discussion
- Political analysis