The Scribner's Hovel

 Just to know, I haven't been as busy for the last two weeks because I recently resumed school. For the mean time, I will try to post a short review on a number of YouTube Playables I had checked out recently.

  Director: Paul Verhoeven Cast: Casper van Dien, Clancy Brown, Neil Patrick Harris, Michael Ironside Studio(s): TriStar Pictures Release Date: November 7, 1997 MPAA Rating: R I am a fan of Paul Verhoeven's work. He made fun, campy science fiction films like Robocop and Total Recall , which are known for their satirical nature and their intermittent shock-value instances of violence. Verhoeven also made other films, like Basic Instinct  and the stripper film Showgirls  (which I am never going to see). His science fiction films are undeniably the ones he is most known for. The equally campy, nitty-gritty feel of those films give them a memorable tone. Robocop 's blood and gore really take home the idea that it is still a violent crime thriller, despite the inclusion of things like funny in-universe commercials and the very cool design of Robocop himself and the security robots. Total Recall  keeps in the spirit of the surreal Philip K. Dick style mindscrew (which that...

 What I forgot to address is that necessity, or to a more common, realistic extent, pressure from a relative/friend/significant other is another major driver to write. For the lazier folk in the world, it is only pressure from others that they could actually manage to do something useful with themselves. It is this that can cure depression and tiredness, because if you actually try to put your mind to doing something that others would want you to do, it will give you enough of a drive to go work on your craft. Pressure does not have to be forceful. In fact, it often comes from being thrown into different situations where an opportunity to fully understand what you like comes from others playfully challenging, or encouraging you, to strive. After all, Tommy only got out of his childhood funk after one Elton John challenged him to competitive pinball; it revealed that Tommy was a prodigy at that game. As a writer, I always had the knack to write well, but it was not until I met my me...

 Why should I write? This is the question every writer asks.  Is it worth it? Will I get paid for it? Those are highly varied concerns that every writer has when they start out their craft. Not every writer starts their journey early, and there are many writers who only seriously begin writing because that is what they have chosen as a career path. There are many reasons why one would write. Writing for fun is definitely one of the main reasons, especially in the youth or the older generations that were more reared by the written text rather than the TV screen or the virtual text. It is never easy to learn how to write, so it helps those kinds of people to find joy in the writing process before they jump right into the real work. For those who don't always write for enjoyment, or struggle to find time for it, how would I give myself the drive to write when I don't have the time or don't the energy for it? There are plenty of strategies. Setting Goals This is the first major...

 A problem that many aspiring writers deal with is eliminating distractions. This does not only amount to noise, but also other problems like trying to get your mind straight to focus on the task at hand. It is not an easy task; I go through it myself. But I also know that there are tips and techniques that can help a struggling writer get through this. While distractions are not necessarily the same as writer's block, they are one of the key problems a writer has to deal with in the creative process, along with writer's block itself and a lack of motivation.  The first thing to know is that distractions are intermittent problems. They are solvable and easy to overcome with persistence, though the longer-term issue of establishing a regimen is a longer-term commitment.  Distractions are always easy to address. The first thing you need to do is find the sources of distraction. Obviously, the noise problem is omnipresent, but that can  be manageable when you adjust to ...

 Recently, I heard the news that Disney will be investing a billion dollars into OpenAI. This deal will enable for Sora 2 to provide access to 200 Disney characters for users to use in their videos however they like. Let's see, that amounts to Pixar, Walt Disney Feature Animation, Marvel, Star Wars, what else? To some animation pundits bullish about the potential prospects of utilizing this technology, this sounds like a cure for the American animation industry's current creativity crisis.  Jerry Beck, co-founder of Cartoon Brew and a longtime animation affecionado and historian, thinks so. He argues that it is something that Walt Disney, a known tech and art pioneer, would support.  Yet a very quick look at a few samples of what people have made with Sora 2 proves otherwise. As a word of warning, there's a lot of these videos out there. Be prepared to see some truly wild clips in one of these many compilation videos: Let's see: Fat people breaking through floors, anima...

  Sword and Scimitar by Raymond Ibrahim is a fast read, but it is very light on the research that backs the text. It does make use of legitimate secondary scholastic sources, such as Islam and Dhimmitude by Bat Ye'or (good book, for those who want to know more about specific aspects of Islamic society), but it suffers from the very modern tendency to reduce the on-again, off-again struggle between Christendom and the Dar-al Islam (Realm of Islam) as one singular, endless war equivalent to the Cold War (which in fact is/was much closer to being a struggle between two powerful states and their supranational spheres of influence), and makes some glaring, if not intentional, fallacies in the general story of Christian-Muslim interactions.  A good enough map, but the parts conquered by Islamic polities in Eastern Europe are not totally accurate. For one thing, the Crimea and the Caucasus should be light gray, being territories once controlled by Islam but later seized by Christi...