I'm no average woman and I don't have an average woman's interests. In this blog I hope to share my interests with the readers, so expect posts about society, computer games, literature, movies and TV ... and a few others, probably.
As I mentioned yesterday already, my computer’s graphics card is done for. So I went to my favourite computer shop this morning, arranged everything and took my computer there. Tomorrow afternoon or early evening I should theoretically have it back.
I’m currently working with my notebook (a thing I thought I’d rarely need, but have found quite some uses for) and will continue doing so until I get my computer back (which is soon, I hope, I’m not really used to the notebook keyboard any longer). Still, it’s not that bad.
I’m really waiting for my computer right now; I want to see how much better my games will look with the new graphics card.
You might have realized I didn’t do my usual post when I reached post 900. I realized that, too – a few posts later. So, as everything is slowly turning back to normal with my blogging, I will do a post about post 908 instead.
This is post 908, we’re approaching post 1,000 and I’m really excited about it. When I started this blog in October 2006, I never thought I would still writing for it in 2010. I didn’t think I would add two more blogs to it, either.
Looking back at the past of my blog, I have to admit I’ve come a long way. At first, most of my blogging was driven by pure rage at the system and the society. I still get this rage up, sometimes. When it comes to things that seem so outright stupid everyone can see they are, I find it hard not to blog about it. But my blog has been mellowed by now. I write about myself, my hometown and my hobbies, too. I think that this has made my blog better. Outsourcing topics about Feminism and writing also was a good idea.
Post 908, who’d think I’d make it … I surely didn’t.
I tend to take a look at the forum over at Big Fish Games to see what’s going on. One of the recent discussions is about occult topics in games and why some people would like to stop Big Fish Games from publishing them.
I know that the occult is a difficult topic for some people. Religious people tend to see everything ‘occult’ (whether it really is occult or not) as pure evil while others merely consider it a fraud.
My own point of view is somewhere in the middle, to be honest.
The bible frowns on magic of any kind (but it also frowns on many other things that are quite normal today), considering the users evil. Mostly, though, it frowns on harmful magic (you could call it ‘black’ magic, too) that is used in order to gain advantages over others or in order to harm others. But I’ve never been very religious, so it’s not my problem whether or not the bible frowns on something. And even if you don’t practice any occult things, there’s no real problem with playing a game with occult themes or reading about them or seeing a movie with such themes.
On the other hand, I have been using tarot cards since my early teens and I’m quite good at it (though I usually see the cards as a way to see a problem from a different angle). I also was able to hypnotize someone some years ago (I haven’t tried it since, I’m not really trained and I don’t want to harm anybody). I have read a lot about parapsychology and know my facts about the most well-known cases of ghosts and haunted places.
What enraged people in the discussions, though, is not the occult as a such. What enraged quite some of those who partook in the discussions is the censorship. And telling someone not to publish something (whether it’s a book, a movie or a game) because it skirts a topic that they are not comfortable with, is censorship. They are not forced to buy or play games with occult ‘seasoning’ (they’re mostly hidden objects games which profit from the dark and spooky). Therefore they shouldn’t try to take such games away from people who have no problem with the topic and still want to play.
If you are faced with media on a topic you don’t like – the occult, Darwinism, Creationism, whatever –, just ignore that media instead of trying to take it from everyone else. That’s censorship and shouldn’t be used too freely.
For all I know my graphics card has been dying for quite some time. It’s almost dead right now.
I can still start up windows (most of the time, that is) and it works fine with word processing and other things that don’t need too much graphics power. Games, however, are almost completely out of the question. A few casual games (like “Plant Tycoon”) still run, but everything else (even the second season of “Sam & Max” I just bought online on Friday) causes a severe failure of the system.
Tomorrow (it’s Sunday as I write this), I’ll have to organize a new graphics card (ATI, I think) and get it in. I’ll visit the computer shop of my choice, I think, because I have the nagging feeling I’ll also need a new power converter…
For today, after some false starts getting the system up and running, I’ll keep the computer running until I go to bed, then tomorrow I’ll organize everything (I just hope it doesn’t take too long – I have a notebook, too, but it’s not exactly a perfect replacement for my desktop).
I should have had the graphics card replaced when the rest of my system croaked last year…
It’s weekend (and a holiday in Germany) and this is what I’ll do mostly: defrag my hard disks. The program has been running yesterday in the evening and the whole night already and it’s still not finished. But I do have a notebook as well, so I can play while the defrag is running.
DVD to watch: “Midnight Panthers” an anime
Book to read: “Philip Maloney” by Roger Graf, a collection of funny mystery short stories in Switzerland
Game to play: “Sam & Max”, season 2 (downloaded from Telltale Games yesterday)
And I’ll defrag … and defrag … and defrag … and defrag…
