Hello all, and welcome back to 21st century live!

In our next series of productions, The most Eminent Judah will reveal his four-year plans and goals for your personal entertainment and enjoyment! After which, he will keep a daily journal of what he did that day to accomplish it! Y'all can comment if you wish, but for now, its for my benefit.

Along the way, anything interesting I think of, tidbits I find along the way, of information and insight, I give them to you for free, dear readers :p . I hope that you may find them entertaining.

Anyway, to the goals:

By the end of the year, I need a job, one that pays at least minimum wage, if not lots better. To accomplish this, I need to spam everywhere with resumes. I need to go into stores and talk to people. I need to go online and look at job sites, particularly jobs.ie, cause thats where I am going to find them.

I want 5 houses, owned and rented under my name, bringing me passive income. In the words of Robert Kiyosaki, whom I am a fan of, passive income is money coming in whether you work or not. To do this, I need to go into banks, talk to people there, check out different loan options, both from banks and other loaning engines. I need to talk to a law firm or two. I need to establish a credit line.

I want to build this blog to as big as I can make it, something I hope to do with this plan and the help of all your good selves.

Thanks, and goodnight to you all :)

TANSTAAFL- why content sites are a waste of time.

I am here to rant on content sites, this time. You know what I mean, those sites like, ehow, or writersonline, or elance, where people write random stuff and are paid pittances for it. Its been a while since my last post, and once again, I am off topic, but since I am as broke as a bent bicycle, and cannot even buy advice on how to make a better blog, I don't care. Interestingly enough, my motivation to acquire money is what brings about my writings on this. Since I am effectively stuck at home at the moment, I thought that writing for a content site was just what I needed to bolster my non-existent funds.  Little did I realise the multitude of problems I would have, and find, in my quest to make money online.

The first problem is that these sites are all free to join. At first glance this is a good thing, and also, unfortunately, completely necessary- why would prospective writers pay to gain access to a market where the availability of work and payment in not assured? There is no good reason, everyone knows it intuitively, its why the most obvious way of telling something is a scam on the internet is if it comes with a price tag. More on that later. However, the inherent problem with making entry free is it lets in the raccoons and weasels along with the dogs. There are thousands of people that simply want to make a quick buck out there, and I am one of them, and there is no real way of stopping people without any real skill or dedication to quality from putting themselves out there and purporting to be what they aren't. How does the company running the show attempt to mitigate this massive influx of posers, and non talented frauds, and promote quality? Lots of ways, but the bottom line is none really work. A site can use "tags of quality" on "good" users, it can show a potential contents providers resume, or a host of other ways, but this is the internet, complete with the blessings and curses anonymity provides. People can pose to be whoever they like, and no amount of vetting the way it is usually done will weed out close to half the undesirables.

Note I said "as usually done" in the last paragraph. I said this because believe it or not, its is not even in the average freelancing agencies interests to actually provide quality that customers might desire. This is because your average run of the mill freelancing agency DOES NOT MAKE any kind of real money on whether or not customers are satisfied. The interaction between the prospective employer and employee is where the money changes hands. Whether money was paid for a good job done or a bad job done, does not matter, because the agency doesn't really profit. The agency makes its money the same way everyone else does on the internet that doesn't have something material to sell: ads and traffic. They make money from the amount of clicks and people who access the site, not from the value that is inside. There is no reason to peruse actual resumes of people the site lets in, checking the references of the applicant and exercising due diligence, because this would be prohibitively expensive to hire people to do such a task. Instead, it is far more in the interest of the firm to try and attract as much traffic from basically everywhere as possible. The company makes its money from the market, not the actual content in the market.

The second problem is much simpler and easier to phrase: there is nothing new under the sun. The how-to you are writing, on an obscure subject, the proofread, the FAQ for a site? Someone, somewhere, has made something that if not completely interchangeable, comes close enough that with a few adjustments a low paid hiree could replace it. And they do. Thousands of people out there are that low paid hiree, tap-tapping their way to a couple more dollars, while trying to find their way to a lot more of them. The availability and low standard floods the market, firmly grounding all prices, without regard to actual quality of service provided. It doesnt matter how good you can write or present or show off your chops in real life, here it's the internet, and everyone has their two cents on display. This becomes a bigger problem when you actually find a task that might actually be lucrative:with hundreds of other competitors. How is one to succeed in such stringent competition? It gets worse when you consider the lack of credibility of claims made online, so even if your claims of competence are valid, potential employers have difficulty telling it from many other applicants, making the process more of a random crapshoot than the job market already is.

The bottom line here is that content sites in their current form are a bad move for all concerned. Content sites cant deliver reliable services, or profitable contracts, for either punters or providers. On the internet, as in life, there aint no such thing as a free lunch. Certainly, there are people who their living with what they do online. But the money hardly ever comes from content sites. Wealth online, as I see it, comes to people who put in some work, to people who build up a popular blog, or invent an audacious new type of forum, or way to deliver things online. Wealth online goes to people who looked and learned, who thought up a new scam, who implemented something clever, who built up value. Wealth online doesn't go to those who did small, comparatively unimportant tasks for other people for 50$ through someone else's site, while fighting for the job with 50 others. Thanks for reading, see you soon

Thoughts on Morrowind vs Fallout 3

So from now on, until further notice I shall post in the order of my interests as described in my welcome blurb. So, without further ado, some thoughts on gaming.

Morrowind is, and probably always will be, one of my favorite RPGs, and will probably continue to be for me, for a long time. I will admit to a certain amount of bias right off, in the fact it was probably the first RPG I played that I can think of, but I still think for the reasons I will mention that it was and is a very high quality offering from Bethseda to the RPG genre.

So what makes it good? Plenty. Although the skills system is rather large, and suffers somewhat from too many options to decide from, with several redundant skills here and there (block, spear, medium armor and acrobatics come to mind here....) that really could be left out, or amalgamated as part of the rest of the other skills, but one of the things that makes the game so appealing to me is the monstrous freedom offered. Indeed, what really sets this game apart from nearly any other RPG I played, bettering all others by a wide margin except Gothic 3, is the shear scope. There are 27 skills in all to improve on your character, compared to Fallouts 13. Even discounting the 8 magic skills, there are still many more ways of customising your character in Morrowind than Fallout 3.

The shear flexibility in how you play the game is a motif that is repeated in nearly every aspect of Morrowind. While Morrowind is a larger place than Fallout, one way this really shows is in gameplay. Granted, they are both shameless open-ended RPGs, but each has its stock of "main" quests or plot threads, that most players are likely to complete. Fallout tries to give you some variety in how you face its challenges, by giving you the options of stealth and subterfuge at certain key points, but realisticly, it quite often seems forced to me. When I decide to sneak instead of tanking a dungeon in Fallout, it is nearly always it is the only real choice-without the additional support of guard turrets or a combat robot, I will have signifigant trouble making any progress, at least without losing a lot of life. With Morrowind, many dungeons reward you for sneaking, but not as blatantly, and certainly not to the extent it is necessary for survival. I can only think of one dungeon That really requires you to sneak, and it has the advantage of being advertised as "basically impossible to fight, you should definitely be sneaking in here if you want to have a high chance of survival". A better example was when I completed a dungeon that would have been difficult(and still was quite tricky) because I was very careful with sneaking. In a similar situation in Fallout, I would be forced to use stealth at one point, but if I tried it somewhere else, I would be small pieces of meat on the floor. This made for a much more open ended feel in Morrowind.

While the game design biases me toward Morrowind, the most stunning achievement by the developers by far was the size and scope of the game. For starters, apart from guards and slaves, EVERY humanoid in the game has a unique name. There are no generic "Bandits", "Slavers", or "Bodyguards", as there are in Fallout. While many of them may be somewhat cardboard, and have little real interaction with the player at all, it doesn't diminish in the slightest when being attacked by some bandits, and after killing them you notice that one is the descendant of an ancient noble houses line, and infer from there about his history, his fall into the wrong company and habits, and his unfortunate end at your hands. Fallout does have its great characters, with high quality voice acting that gels well with some especially memorable personages, but it really doesn't hold a candle to some of the detailed development you can find in Morrowind. I once was told to get some books from a very specific bookseller, and found him rather unremarkable. Two unrelated quests later, I found that he was a major figure in an anti slavery movement, and part of a cult that was determined to destroy the main religious body in control of the game, while running an expensive shop, and being a rather nice guy all round. The game is littered, nearly composed, of hundreds of fantastic little Easter eggs. Hearing rumors about an ancient assassin's guild, hidden deep underneath a fighting arena? Believe it, its true, and they arent all bad, and are hiring, if you are so inclined. Hear tell about cults taking residence in the sewers? Grab your trusty weapon, cause the chances are pretty reasonable that they will have some sort of loot. Read a book about famous artifacts of near-godlike magical abilities and power? nearly two thirds of them are in the game, and can be found, if you look hard enough and follow your gut feelings.

One of the things that irks me about Fallout is the "Karma" meter. Do something "good"? Get good karma. Do something "bad"? Get bad Karma. And people react to you based on what level of karma you have. Whether they have any knowledge about what you did to deserve it or not. If you steal something, whether you are caught or not, you lose karma, which makes evil factions more affable towards you, and good folk like you less. In Morrowind, it is simultaneously more clear cut, and more complex. You earn a legal bounty and lose reputation with the organisation you wronged, and if you wrong an organisation another hates, then hey, they might just like you more, whether it was against the law or not.

Morrowind takes place in an alien landscape, that incorporates at least 7 recognizable terrain types. Fallout scenery ranges from gray to....brown. As far as I can tell, forever. Sure, there are a few towns and wrecked city bits to add a bit of flavour, but it just isnt on par with Morrowind's 20+ towns and hundreds of NPC's. Morrowinds breadth and scope are what make it for me, and draw me in, whereas Fallout to me just seems kinda shallow in comparison. Thanks, and see you soon.

Unicyling and me

Recently I have been attempting to pick up Unicycling again after about a half year. I was surprised at how little I had forgotten, considering I had barely managed to cycle 10 meters without falling at my previous best. Thats all changed now. I can manage around 30 or 40 meters now, and could probably go more, but I am confined by my lack of turning ability, which is still quite rudimentary, and my driveway doesn't stretch any further, so I suspect if I want to get much better, I shall simply have to go find a parking lot somewhere, and spend a lot of time looking like an idiot some more while I get better. Nevertheless, I am still quite proud of my accomplishment so far, because unicycling is exactly as hard as it looks or you could think.

When I first started, I thought I had an advantage over most starting out, as I can ride a normal bike with no hands almost indefinitely, but the help was negligible, and barely noticeable, if there at all. With a bike you are at least stabilised from canting forwards and back, and if you can balance from side to side, the bike is already designed to have a low center of gravity, so it takes care of the rest. With a Unicycle, there is no balance whatsoever other than what you impose with your hips, and with no aids and no way to help balance, its quite ridiculous how much you will fall off the first time you try, should you be so inclined. I believe it took me nearly an hour to get myself properly astride the first time, and then promptly fell off.

One good thing though, that while the learning curve is steep at first, it gets much much easier if you spend a good 5 hours or so of actual effort on it, though it doesnt all have to be at once. You quickly learn the best way to start off (at least if you are a beginner, which I still am) is to have support on both sides when getting on.(say a friend or two, or some chair backs to grab onto)`. To actually move, you kinda lean forward a little, and then peddle like mad to catch up with yourself. To balance, if you can already get on the damn thing, you are already doing pretty good. You mostly learn balance when actually riding when doing it. Flail your arms. A lot. It will improve your balancing technique no end.

Speaking of which, I had better get practicing a lot more soon, as by the end of the week I am performing as a clown in a womans mini-marathon for charity. The end goal is either be able to juggle or plate spin while riding, but I doubt that will happen for a while yet. Either way, I want to aim high. :)

See you next week!

Judah Rush

So....Here I am

Hey all, and welcome to 21st Century Live! As an American-born college student in Europe, My purpose for this blog is to comment on topical matters, ongoing issues, and life in general and what its like in the 21st century.

At the moment, I think that I shall post once a week, and hopefully get up to more if there is interest.

If there is interest in a certain subject, I will be more likely to write about it, but at the start I shall merely write about what interests me this week.

Farewell and Adieu for now,

Judah