sunset wine

www.sunsetwine.blogspot.com

This is a fictional blog I am writing. I am a woman gong to school in Berkekely when zombies attack. I haven't quite reached the point where zombies attack however, but I think my next post will start to hint a little more at zombies.

wikipedia article: Divorce your Car!

My completed wikipedia article Divorce your Car! is up and running.

Wikipedia page from scratch

I created a wikipedia article on a book entitled Divorce your Car!

The article gives a basic description of the book and then discusses the arguments presented in the book, there is also a short bio on the author.

Major Wikipedia edit: Sugar House

I did my major page edit on sugar house. There was no information on the impending construction and redevelopment so I first added a section about the history of redevelopment, including information about when "the commons" was built, and then talked about the current construction.
I also did some minor editing throughout the page, it seemed like someone had gone through and added funny but irrelevant details, such as in the first sentence which said "Sugar house (also sometimes seen as Sugarhouse) and known as SUGARHOOD!!!"

The page is entitled Sugar House, Salt Lake City, Utah. In the history section my edit can be found at 6:35, 17 July 2007 Sordan.

Wikipedia edit: Easter Eggs (virtual)

I edited the Wikipedia article Easter Eggs (virtual). In my edit, I added an example of an easter egg and I also tidied up a section, adding some bullets and paragraphs. In the history page it says my name, Sordan, and the time it says is 05:22, 12 July 2007.

10 Wikipedia rules:

1. Neutrality: All sides of an issue must be presented with equally important supportive evidence (if available).

2. Civility: Don't use wikipedia to prove a point or pursue an agenda. Politely edit pages. Don't use it as a forum for opinion.

3. Consider the other editors when making an edit. Take into consideration the previous posts and their relevancy.

4. Avoid irrelevancy, only include information that is pertinent to the topic.

5. Refer to the talk page and the edit history before making an edit.

6. Information supported by previous research.

7. Sources should be cited and should originate from reputable places.

8. Don't recklessly change the titles of articles.

9. Don't recklessly create new articles.

10. Often small changes and minor edits are better than completely new creations.

Wikipedia article

The Starcraft 2 Wikipedia article is accurate and representative of everything Blizzard has revealed about the game so far. However, it seems to be a little bit short. There are several additional units that are not mentioned in the article and the ones that are present are lacking any detail.

In general, I think Wikipedia can be a great resource for finding accurate sources, but it alone, like any encyclopedia, probably shouldn't be used as a source for scholarly papers. The power of Wikipedia is it's availability to anyone with an internet connection. Stories can be updated immediately and it is a great source for up to date information. Additionally, the sources and citations that are listed on Wikipedia are often primary sources that could be used as a reference for a paper.

I was thinking about the idea that a group of amateurs is as fallible as a single amateur, and I think it is flawed. As a psychology major, I have learned about a phenomenon where groups seem to be much better at solving problems, not because of their combined power, but because the larger the group is, the more likely there will be a really smart person in it. This argument applies tenfold to Wikipedia and Youtube. The chances of having a really talented, knowledgeable person increases dramatically as the group increases in size.

Glitching through the years

Home consoles have been around for decades, allowing people to explore digitally rendered worlds in their own living rooms. For as long as there have been consoles, however, there have been people who push the limits of games, finding holes in the code that produce odd, surprising and even humorous results. This process of intentionally seeking out programmer errors and exploiting them is known as glitching.

Mario, perhaps the most recognizable gaming icon of all time, consumed my days as a child. I would play often, and when I wasn't playing I was discussing strategy with my friends. Once, in the third grade, my friends and I were engaged in an esoteric conversation about the benefits of shooting fireballs at turtles, when a fifth grader approached us. He looked down and explained in his mighty voice that fireballs were for weaklings. Why use fireballs, he exclaimed, when you could walk through walls, become invincible, or even warp to the final level?


After a lengthy discussion and several jaw dropping revelations, the fifth grader agreed to come to my house where he would show my friends and me how to delicately circumvent the rules of the game and emerge victorious. Among the tricks he taught us was one where the player could gain 100 lives, enough to complete the game with ease, by jumping on a turtle at the right time and place. Another glitch involved walking through a wall to reach a hidden area where the player could warp to the final level. At the time I was surprised that a person could break the rules of seemingly intact games, and this newfound power thrust me into the world of glitching. I have actively pursued programmer errors ever since.




As I grew older, games became more advanced and glitching ascended to higher levels. No longer was I limited to walking through walls on a side-scrolling game like Mario, I could now explore 3D environments and exploit the physics and computer behavior of games to achieve amazing results. In the game Rush 2 my friend and I discovered that it was possible to escape from certain levels by gaining speed and hitting a well placed jump or ledge. While this glitch didn't benefit us in any way, it was fun to discover the limits of games.




I got my Xbox when I was in high school and was thrilled to be playing games like Halo, a first person shooter. My friends would come over to my house and we would spend hours competing against each other, sometimes playing one vs. one, or upping the stakes and engaging in a team battle. While this was fun, we were limited to one TV screen, one Xbox, and ourselves. However, Halo 2 came out several years later and was equipped with online capabilities. Now I could sit in my basement and battle with my friend across the internet as he sat in his basement.

As we began to play online we soon discovered that our proficiency at glitching gave us an advantage over other players. We could escape to building tops and wreak havoc on the opposing team, to their dismay, or carry extra weapons and unload clip after clip of ammo into enemy forces. By taking advantage of subtle errors in the code we were able to win almost every game. This didn't last long however, and the developer issued a "patch", or an update for the game that fixed many of the problems, as well as a warning that threatened to ban glitchers. Despite developer efforts, gamers are constantly discovering new glitches and developers are continually updating games to prevent them.

Ever since then I had refrained from glitching in online games for moral and selfish reasons (namely, that I didn't want to be banned), but in a recent game of Halo 2 I managed to take advantage of a glitch (for research only, of course) and reach a very high building with the sniper rifle, where I could kill opponents at my leisure. To me they looked like little dots far below, running in circles, but I could zoom in and have a wide open opportunity for a head shot. After several minutes of carnage and a score of 25 to 4, my opponents weren't very pleased and had this to say:

Opponent 1: "Oh my gosh, check out the glitch whore."
Opponent 2: "Yeah, that's so lame, anybody who needs to do that to win is just... lame."
Opponent 1: "Gosh!"
Opponent 3: (whiny child) "Gaaaawd. This sucks."
Opponent 1: "Every time I re-spawn I just die. Dude, you suck, I hope you die today. Go fuck yourself!"

After that last sentence the opposing team left the game within seconds, taking a loss and giving my team a win. Based upon my research, and having had been in their shoes countless times before, I am more aware of what a problem glitching can be in multiplayer games.

However, glitching is not an intrinsic evil. Like any new knowledge it can be used for whatever purpose it's discoverer intends. With that, I leave you with an example of fun and harmless glitching. This appears to be a secret that the developers implanted into the single player mode of Halo 2 on purpose, and it requires glitching. On the level "Metropolis" there is a hidden weapon with vast power located far above the regular level on a building that is not accessible unless glitching is implemented. In this case the player has obtained the overshield, making him resistant to damage. He then sets the warthog on a bridge, hanging the front wheels over the edge. By standing on the corner of the warthog and firing a rocket launcher at the ground the player is blasted up into the air, far higher than is allowed by the game physics under normal circumstances.

Glitching through the ages (not final)

Home consoles have been around for decades, allowing people to explore digitally rendered worlds in their own living rooms. For as long as there have been consoles, however, there have been people who push the limits of games, finding holes in the code that produce odd, surprising and even humorous results. This process of intentionally seeking out programmer errors and exploiting them is known as glitching.

Pac-Man on the Atari was a controversial game that displeased many fans because of it's rushed production and poor quality. However, that didn't stop people from finding a glitch that allowed a player to beat the game easily, locking the ghosts in the portal permanently.



Later, when the Atari had lost out to the next generation of 8-bit consoles, like the Nintendo, games offered a new world of glitching. Super Mario, perhaps the most popular game icon of all time, had several glitches in it's first sidescrolling rendition, Super Mario Bros. The ones shown in this video are representative of the types of glitches that were common for many Nintendo games, including walking through walls and defying death.





The Playstation, released in America in 1995, was the first console able to create complex 3d environments and as a result glitching ascended to ever more complex levels. The Playstation 2 improved upon the graphics of the PS and glitching became more entertaining as fairly realistic environments were demonstrated to be nothing but computer code.



As video games became playable over the internet and it was possible to compete with anyone, glitching took on a new role. Glitches allowed people to gain an advantage over their opponents in matched games. By finding a shortcut through a wall in a racing game, escaping to an unreachable section of a map in a shooter game, or taking advantage of physics glitches to attain invincibility, players were able to defeat their opponents unfairly.

In a recent game of Halo 2 I managed to take advantage of a glitch (for research only, of course) and reach a very high building with the sniper rifle, where I could kill opponents at my leisure. To me they looked like little dots far below, running in circles, but I could zoom in and have a wide open opportunity for a head shot. After several minutes of carnage and a score of 25 to 4, my opponents weren't very pleased and had this to say:

Opponent 1: "Oh my gosh, check out the glitch whore."
Opponent 2: "Yeah, that's so lame, anybody who needs to do that to win is just... lame."
Opponent 1: "Gosh"
Opponent 3: (whiny child) "Gaaaawd. This sucks"
Opponent 1: "Every time I re-spawn I just die. Dude, you suck, I hope you die today. Go fuck yourself"

After that last sentence the opposing team left the game within seconds, taking a loss and giving my team a win.
Based upon my research, and having had been in their shoes countless times before, I am aware of what a problem glitching can be in multiplayer games. As a result of the widespread use of glitches to gain an advantage, game developers have resorted to updating games with patches that fix problematic glitches. These "patch" up the faulty code, preventing people from gaining an unfair advantage over their opponents, and are required to play online against real people.

However, glitching is not an intrinsic evil. Like any new knowledge it can be used for whatever purpose it's discoverer intends. With that, I leave you with an example of fun and harmless glitching. This appears to be a secret that the developers implanted into the single player mode of Halo 2 on purpose, and it requires glitching. On the level "Metropolis" there is a hidden weapon with vast power located far above the regular level on a building that is not accessible unless glitching is implemented. In this case the player has obtained the "overshield", making him resistant to damage, after which he utilizes the warthog and a rocket launcher to blast himself into the air.



Remember. Please glitch responsibly.

Home consoles have been around for decades, allowing people to explore digitally rendered worlds in their own living rooms. For as long as there have been consoles, however, there have been people who push the limits of games, finding holes in the code that produce odd, surprising and even humorous results. This process of intentionally seeking out these programmer errors and exploiting them is known as glitching.

Pac-Man on the Atari was a controversial game that displeased many fans because of it's rushed production and poor quality. However, that didn't stop people from finding a glitch that allowed a player to beat the game easily, locking the ghosts in the portal permanently.



Later, when the Atari had lost out to the new generation of 8-bit consoles, like the Nintendo, new games offered a new world of glitching. Super Mario, perhaps the most popular game icon of all time, had several glitches in it's first sidescrolling rendition. The ones shown in this video are representative of the types of glitches that were common for many Nintendo games, including walking through walls and defying death.





The Playstation, released in America in 1995, was the first console able to create complex 3d environments and as a result glitching ascended to ever more complex levels. The Playstation 2 improved upon the graphics of the PS and glitching became more entertaining as fairly realistic environments were demonstrated to be nothing but computer code.




As video games became playable over the internet and it was possible to compete with anyone, glitching took on a new role. Glitches allowed people to gain an advantage over their opponents in matched games. By finding a shortcut through a wall in a racing game, escaping to an unreachable section of a map in a shooter game, or taking advantage of physics glitches to attain invincibility, players are able to defeat their opponents unfairly. As a result, game developers have resorted to updating games with patches that fix problematic glitches.