When the macroing gets tough, the Jagex get random event-ing. Alright, bad play on words. That line of 20 macroers behind the Lumbridge castle? The woodcutters at the Draynor willows? No more! I have come up with the solution: Even MORE random events! They’re not just any random event though. These events will require the thought and intelligence of the mind. Take that, you stupid autoers!

• The Crazed Scientist and the Word Filter: In this event, the player helps the mad scientist by deducing the meaning of several phrases that are obscured by the word filter. For example, “******* **** *****!!!!” would be solved as “Fucking shit phone!!!!” The player would type in the correct answer to receive his/her prize: boots.
• Evil Genie: This is no ordinary generous genie. He is the evil twin brother of the Genie himself! In this event, you are teleported to the mysterious land of Xegaf where you must correctly identify which Jagex employee would successfully win a round of paintball against a pure, a noob and a ch00b. Prize? 25 shiny gold points.
• Thessalia’s Fashion Fiasco: Thessalia has picked up a young orphaned princess off the street and is now fixing her up for her wedding ceremony to her arranged husband (aka “The Ball”). The skin tone and hair colour will be random for each instance of the event and the player will have to determine which season her skin tone is and which clothing will compliment her complexion. Those who can properly identify her skin tone (winter, autumn, summer, or spring) along with dressing her appropriately will receive a poisoned kebab.
• The Four Drunken Dwarfs of the Apocalypse: The player is teleported to an empty bar..it seems to be empty.. oh wait, what’s that behind the bar? Four mangy drunken dwarfs! You must keep the dwarfs calm by feeding one of them food (famine), killing one (war), curing the other (pestilence), and promising to kiss the ugly step-sister of the other (death). The catch is: you must feed the first dwarf 60 shark, kill the level 220 war dwarf, cure yourself of the infectious poison that the pestilence dwarf passes to you, and successfully give the ugly step-sister a son. This may seem like a long event, but 30 minutes of your time is hardly a price to pay. Your prize? Purple sweets.
• The H.A.M Poetry Jam: During this event, you are teleported to the most secret part of the H.A.M lair! You notice several H.A.M members milling about around a stool set on a stage. They’re beckoning you to sit down and recite a poem! For this event, you must successfully compose a simple ABAB rhyming poem in which the first line ends in “orange” and the second line ends in “purple”. Should you manage to find a word which rhymes with “orange” and “purple”, you will be awarded a H.A.M cloak. Fancy!

I sincerely think that this will cut down on the number of macroes, poorly dressed players, and bad poets on Runescape. Did I forget to mention? These randoms would happen every 30-45 minutes. Enjoy fair gaming, guys!

I’ve been debating with myself for the past few days and I still don’t quite have the answer to my question: Does it make any sense to be proud of your race? Before I start, I’m going to clarify what I mean by race. Race, in my opinion, is defined by physical appearance (skin colour, hair colour, eye colour, facial features, etc.) along with the origin of one’s ancestors. There is somewhat of a debate as to the true meaning of “race”, but I’m using this definition since it’s simple and easy to understand. So, there are the black (Negroid and Australoid/Pygmy), white (Caucasoid) and yellow (Mongoloid) races that make up humanity more or less.

Now, it’s one thing to say that you’re proud of your heritage. I’m proud to be Russian, specifically western (Caucasian) and eastern (Mongoloid) Russian. However, I’m not proud of the fact that my skin has less pigmentation than someone who is black. One of the main arguments of pro-White organisations is that the white race is “dying out” due to mixing with other races. The way I see it, this is inevitable.. Now that we have airplanes, cars, and boats, the mixing of races is going to happen no matter what. However, it’s not entirely wrong of a person to not want to have children with a person who isn’t of their race. Some people believe that their race is superior to others and while there really is no biological evidence of this, they have the right to choose whom they want to marry.

However, I see pride in one’s race as being pointless. If people want to stress equality between races, then things like “Black History Month” are as meaningless as “White Pride”. Let’s celebrate our skin pigmentation, eye colour, and facial features!! It’s things like this which negate the possibility of equality among races.  Favouring a race by granting it special social handouts (”Affirmative Action” in the US where minorities are able to gain clout based on their race) only create animosity with other races. This whole idea of letting a minority race “rise up” through these social programmes is ridiculous since it only leads to reverse-discrimination. Races achieve equality by working their way up to the same socioeconomic status as other races, not through handouts from other races who feel pity for them. According to the logic of Affirmative Action, the black races has had 40+ years to work their way up in society, yet they’re still considered the most poor (as of a 2004 study) of any other minority. More than Hispanics, Asians, etc who have been in the country a lot shorter of a time than they have. Granted, there wasn’t much of a means to live off of after slavery, but still. I don’t see why the US government continues to toss money around like this.

So my question to you all is.. are you proud of your skin colour..your race?

Warning: For your own safety, I ask that you do not visit any of the websites advertised in the YouTube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjXc7Nx1grc

Look at this child. Seriously, just look at him. Brad, this kid is now a part of the WoW community.

Circle of Flames by ~nemina on deviantART

Hey, it’s not dogs giving each other massages, right?

You and I are civilised people, right? For the most part, we pay for membership each month so, for God’s sake, why can’t we say “phone”? We’re sensible people, are we not? We’re not going to get ourselves abducted by some internet stalker for giving our address out and our mothers aren’t going to come chasing after us with a bar of soap if we swear. Why doesn’t Jagex trust us to make our own decisions?

Let me ask you this.. are you ten or twelve years old? No? Neither am I. In fact, I’m 20 years old and I’m quite capable of knowing that giving personal information out on the internet is a bad idea and swearing at people isn’t that nice of a thing to do to people you don’t know. But the fact is, Jagex isn’t censoring words for us. They’re doing it for the thousands of players who have not reached the age when their judgment is fully developed.

Why do Jagex care if a bunch of children swear at each other anyway? Well, in order to understand this, you have to sort of assume the fact that Andrew and Paul probably grew up in a household where children didn’t say things like “L0L FAUCK OFF U NOOB”. There’s been a censor in both RSC and RS2, but nobody really understands the big picture of why it’s there. Maintaining this word filter isn’t as much of a lockdown on free speech as people make it out to be, though there are exceptions. Jagex maintain somewhat of a social responsibility to their younger members by doing their best to protect them from vulgar and predatory people.

If you don’t swear and you don’t break the rules, then is the filter really that bad? Sure, there are those briefly annoying time where your words are falsely turned into asterisks, but you get past it eventually. My point is that we older and more mature people need to realise that swearing isn’t the means to get things done. The only reason we ever talk rudely to people on games is because the internet gives us that veil of anonymity.

To sum it up, I think that the benefit of the filter outweighs the drawbacks. Yes, it screws up. But.. I’ve always felt like an older sibling to some of the kids who play. I wouldn’t want them to be sworn at, I wouldn’t want perverted people saying nasty things to them, and I wouldn’t want someone giving them a link to a site which keylogs them. Considering that most of the people who play RuneScape are little more than children, is having a word filter a bad idea? I don’t think it is. Jagex are doing more than most companies in ensuring that children have a safe environment to play their game.

I’m really a man

No, really. The Secret, as I mentioned in my post below, is a self-help video which seeks to empower people through the “Law of Attraction”. Now, I admit to watching this film for the sake of picking apart and laughing at it. But, I must say that there were parts of it that I believed were genuinely true. If you intensely put your mind on something you want to achieve, you are more likely to get it.

However, I draw the line when it comes to a bunch of philosophers, metaphysicians, etc telling me that the universe is a free for all. The truth is, they don’t know any more about the universe than we do. It’s like having four doctors, lawyers and scientists telling you what God wants you to do. They don’t know either. For people to seriously compare the universe to a genie is a very thin line to walk. This film, although wonderful in inspiring confidence into people, suggest that they can accomplish things that are sometimes not possible.

Example: If I tell myself that I will get “straight A’s” in all my classes, but I don’t bother to ever study or pay attention in class, then it’s not possible for me to do well.  Some people can get away with it, but I can’t. If I told myself that I will stay thin, but I eat fried chicken and chips all day, then that’s not possible either.

This film sets people up to believing that they can achieve things with little effort. That all they have to do is “ask, believe and receive”. I was always taught, and I still firmly believe this, that if your wants stay in your head..they will only manifest in your head. This film also forgets that negative things might happen in order for the “universe” to give you what you want. What if I wanted a lot of money and I went through all the “Secret” techniques to get it. And..then my husband (k, I don’t have a husband but whatever) dies and I get his insurance money. Wouldn’t that suck? I don’t think the universe has compassion enough to say “Ok, we won’t kill your husband”.

Other than the whole bit about the universe wanting to giv meh fr33 st00f, a lot of this was sort of common knowledge. I KNOW that if I think positively, I’ll be likely to reach my goals. This film left me with a mixed feeling. The producers of this obviously wanted to dress-up common knowledge with something that is “secret”. After all, doesn’t everyone want to know a secret?

Thanks, Shane, for uploading this sexy layout for me!

So, I actually named my blog. I was going to add the word “swashbuckling” somewhere in there, but I decided against it. Too many words in a title, don’t you agree? Anyway, this one is a lot easier to look at (the old one was somewhat hard since everything was different shades of green + grey). Let’s see if I can successfully get my Twitter and Digg badges on here without any help

I rented The Secret. I’ll watch it tomorrow and tell you all what I think of it. In other news, I’ve been working on goal sigs for RSBANDB. There will be a set made to match each stat signature and also another more minimalistic set. Thanks to Poison for giving me his set of vectored skill icons to use. Here’s what I have so far:

Tell me what you think!

EDIT: Oh dear, I broke the sidebar. Oh yay, its fixed.

EDIT2: Aww XD Don’t you like Creepy’s new outfit?