What's wrong with the world? Well, money...

We are the only animals on this planet that use money, we are the only animals on this planet who suffer due to money (with the exception of our pets). Why?

Eve Online

I have been playing a game called Eve Online. To describe it would take forever, for now I will simply say, this game kicks ass. You are able to do almost anything in this game. It is a game for the complex player, it is not simple. You can do anything from managing a corporation of thousands of players to managing a planet and gathering resources. You are able to manufacture things with the resources which allow you to build addons for your ships and also anything that you could possibly want within the game. This game takes time and is not for the average gamer.

Ultima Online

I have been living in a fantasy world, a world I have lived in on-and-off since 1992 when I bought my first real computer game Ultima VII. Now this game that I played was like a world in which I could escape my every day existence and adventure in an unknown land with magic and strange languages I had never seen and meet people and creatures which fascinated me, but above all else, what I loved about the game were the books. The books in Ultima VII were fairly simple, but there were literally hundreds of them, found in all sorts of locations across the lands.

Now I should explain a little bit about Ultima VII, it came in two parts, well, four really, Ultima VII - The Black Gate with the Forge Of Virtue expansion, and Ultima VII - Serpent Isle with the Silver Seed expansion. The games were set in two different lands and with two different story lines. Ultima VII was set in the lands of Britannia and Serpent Isle was of course the Serpent Isle.

Anyway, one thing that stood out in the game was the various signs and books which were written in a strange text that I could not read at the time but which I quickly learned to. I learned that they were called runes and that each rune represented both a letter and an idea, also within the game world the runes each had a name or sound which when spoken aloud would have a magical effect.

I have an old website that I'd almost forgotten about, it's at http://geocities.com/vardath. I have kind of a shrine to ultima there, the runes of which I speak are here for you to learn if you wish.

THE RUNES OF ULTIMA

Now I must mention, that these are almost the same translations of the runes as are used in J.R.R.Tolkien's The Hobbit and Lord Of The Rings books, the main difference being that the letter H and the letter W are backwards here, as should be obvious by simply looking at them.

So, what does any of this have to do with the game Ultima online? I answer, history. I find it important to know why, I have always found it important to know why. Why are things the way they are, why have they changed, why were they how they were, why is this person rambling on and on and on about a game I've never played...

Ultima Online was the final creation in a long list of creations by a man named Richard Garriott, or Lord Brittish as he liked to be known. Lord Brittish was the name of the king in the land of Britannia. There have been 12 games with the name Ultima attached to them and about 3 other games with the same play style and similar if not the same characters. I could list them all here for you, but I won't, I'll simply let you know that I have played all of them, I have copies of all of them and I love each and every one. If you are interested enough you will seek them out and find them.

So, I haven't really said much have I... I should start mentioning all the things you can do in these games, but I'll be a bit more specific, I'll start mentioning some of the things you can do in Ultima Online.

Some of the major things I find interesting and time consuming in the game are the trade skills, the game allows you to become whatever you wish to be and create almost any object that can be found within the game, you could be a tinker and create tools for any of the other trades along with some interesting items such as a telescope which tells the phases of the moons Trammel and Felucca, a globe which looks kinda cool, a clock to tell the game time, etc. You could be a blacksmith and make your own weapons and armour, a Tailor to make clothes and armour and items, a Carpenter to make furniture, containers, beds, bulletin boards, ballot boxes and more, you could specialize in resource gathering as a miner or lumberjack or a fisherman.

In addition to the trades there are a lot of other interesting abilities to use such as magic, animal taming and tracking, musician skills and you can even buy blank books and fill them with your own writings or copy other books you find in the game.

The fact that the game is online means that you will be dealing with other people who play the game. This opens up a whole facet of play which I have yet to fully understand. The game works a bit like this in relation to player interaction, you are able to steal off another person if you join a thieves guild, but it is almost impossible to get your stealing skill to the point where this is possible. You may kill other players, but each time you do your murder count goes up, if it reaches 5 kills you will be marked red and will be freely attackable by other players, in addition to this if you are a murderer your virtue system will no longer activate. This facet of murderer creation brings about two seperate cultures within the game. You will find that there are blue players who band together and join guilds of blues, they do this at first to protect each other and then later to organise raids and retalliations upon red players who attack them. Red players may band together or stay alone. There are benefits to both facets of play, the reds will gain loot from killing blue players, while the blue players are free to wander around towns without fear of being attacked and have the ability to level up their virtues.

On that note... The Virtues:

There are eight virtues within the world of Ultima online and they spring from the Three Principles of Truth, Love and Courage. The eight virtues are, Honour, Honesty, Humility, Valor, Sacrifice, Compassion, Justice and Spirituality.

It is possible to level up your skills in each virtue within the game, but it is very difficult at times and I will not go into full detail here. Suffice it to say that each town within the land of Britannia, or Felucca or Trammel as it has become known, is aligned with a virtue.

I could keep writing... There is so much to say, and the more I say the more I want to write, and perhaps I will, because I keep thinking I have forgotten something, left some small detail out which will inspire you to play this amazing game for yourself. But for now I must sleep. I hope that if you do play this game, that you will play Ultima VII and experience the full glory of the land of Britannia as it was before it was invaded online by hordes of people from this world.

Bone Carving

I have recently discovered my calling, one of them anyway. It's symbols and their meanings. There are a lot of different symbols in the world, all used by different cultures at different times. Each symbol has a meaning relevant to the culture of origin.

So, what does this have to do with bone carving? I have been into many a spiritual shop and have found that there are a lot of different symbols carved into various things from stone, crystal, to bone and wood and metal. One other thing I have found is that all the symbols from one shop can be found in the next.

Living in this world of infinite possibilities I looked at these symbols and I wondered, why aren't there more symbols with different meanings?

I have decided to start carving my own symbols (which are a mixture of all the old ones and some new creations made from blends of meaning and shape) into something, and for me, a beginner, bone seems the logical choice.

So what did I do? I went down to the butcher and asked for some cow bones, they assume I'm feeding them to a dog (I don't have a dog). They gave me a small bag full of rib bones and charged me $2, I'll have to source some free bone somewhere. So today I got them home and threw them in a big saucepan full of water and boiled them to make getting rid of the meat easier. Then I took them downstairs and poured cold water over them to cool them faster and I ripped all the meat off. There is a fair amount of fat residue left on the bone. I am leaving them out in my back yard to dry in the sun and to be picked at by living things for a couple of weeks in an attempt to clean and bleach them naturally and without chemicals.

I plan to repeat this process every week so that I have a steady supply of bone for carving.

I did find online however, a couple of forums dedicated to bone carving. There are a lot of different methods for cleaning bone and removing marrow, some include beetles, maggots, chemicals, etc. I read through the list of options and I realized that what I am attempting may not be the best way of preparing bone. This will not stop me from trying it for myself.

What I've found from the forums about my method is this, boiling the bone degrades it (not sure how detrimental it will be) and the fat will leach into the bone producing stains. The suggested methods include using vinegar (an acid which will leach calcium from the bone and is thus not the best method), soap which will remove the fat residue, and using a knife and a bottle cleaner to get the marrow out. They also suggested that instead of boiling it a better method would be to soak the bone in soap water for a few days, after scraping off as much meat as possible, then once the fatty residue is gone scrape the marrow out. There were also suggestions that taxiderists know the best methods for cleaning bone. Then there are people who eat the meat off the bones then feed to their dog, then leave in the sun for a week before using them.

I believe there is no best way, just preferred ways, I will attempt my way and see what happens and then I'll update this post or add a new one.

As for the carving of the bone itself once it is ready, I plan to simply use a knife for carving and shaping the bone. I also have a soldering iron which I will try out, not sure how effectively I can use it with bone yet but I have a sneaking suspicion that after carving base symbols into the surface of the bone I will be able to scar/char the symbols so they stand out more and look cool.

Well, anyway, I'll get back to this topic when I know more.

Money For A Cause

I created another blog, http://moneyforacause.blogspot.com

It's a site dedicated to making money for me. Have a look if you haven't already.

I also made a video to go with it, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UBOInzolqI

Connecting XBox360 to PC

I have had much trouble in connecting my xbox to my computer, first thing I tried was to use the xbox wireless adapter to set up a network... This worked to some extent, the program Vuse actually detected the xbox and I was able to watch videos from my computer wirelessly. However, this was not my main intent in connecting my xbox to my pc. Doing this, I was not able to transfer music or pictures, only video.

I then bought an ethernet cable, thinking that I would be able to connect using that... I plugged it in and lo and behold my computer detected a connection. However, I could not see my xbox from my pc, nor my pc from my xbox. So, I did a little more research on the net, it turns out I need a crossover cable.

A crossover cable is different from an ethernet cable, they look the same but they do different things.

An ethernet cable connects a device to a router which then connects it via another ethernet cable to another device. Both ends of an ethernet cable have the same wire setup.

A crossover cable connects a device to another device directly with no need for a router, the wires at the ends of a crossover cable are arranged to cross over the signal so that each device can send and recieve on different channels/wires rather than trying to talk on the same channel.

So, it turns out that the only way to successfully connect my xbox to my computer is to either buy a router and another ethernet cable (which seems pointless as I only have two devices), or I could buy a crossover cable.

I had the idea to get a program that emulates the crossover with an ethernet cable, however, so did a lot of different people on various forums I looked at, there seems to be no program out there that can do this.

I was really hoping xbox360 to pc connections would be easier than this. I have spent almost a year trying to do it, unsuccessfully so far. I would like the wireless network to simply pick up the xbox and know what to do...

I'll update this post in a few days after I get the cable and see what happens...

How The World Works

The world works like this.

Thought, ideas, images, etc. flow into awareness, what one is aware of then is felt by the emotional center, when this happens we become the imagination of the thought, and the thought gains frequency, gains a field, then that thought is released into the energy of the world (the world being made completely of energy). Because the imagined thought has a frequency and a field, it is attracted to frequencies and fields that are similar to it.

Once there are enough people imagining the same thing, the imagined thought comes together, the field becomes stronger, and it is then possible for it to manifest as matter (remember that all matter is energy)

So, basically, that's how things come into existence, that's how magic works. Because we have a combined consensus of imagined thought that an orange is round, is coloured orange, and tastes bitter sweet, the oranges in our material world vibrate at that frequency and the field is strong enough for them to become matter and be eaten by us.

If one person had a completely unique idea, a completely random idea, the field and frequency of that idea (and i'm not saying this is always the case) is not strong enough for it to manifest. However if the person told enough people about his idea, got enough people to have the same imagined thought, the imagined thought would pick up enough 'material' energy to manifest in this world.

I don't mean to go on and on, I'm just trying to share my ideas on how magic works because I have done a lot of study in this area, I used to be a Chaos Magician and a Chaos Scientist, (it's basically quantum physics in practice...)

I have also had experience with ghosts, though I personally don't understand them 100%. One of them once threw a book off my bookshelf while I was at my computer a few years back, i ate the ghost. Don't know if it was a good thing to do or not, but I had stomach cramps for a week.