...And These Are Not My Thoughts

Another 2010 Update

2010-05-25T22:29:00.003-05:00

<-- This blog hasn't really been utilized recently but I refuse to give up on it. It represents something much different than Wandering with Purpose and I like having that around. When will my writing be something that is academic in nature and not just a place to write down thoughts? Which leads me to think I should probably scrap the wiki and make this a solo effort.

My domain names across all blogs expire December of this year so I'm thinking about a complete rework involving WordPress. Perhaps this blog could be first to go? Either that or we might not see a lot of action for a while.

In the meantime, I've been watching a lot of TED Talks and I came across a familiar face, namely, Dan Meyer. He's a math teacher. He understands his craft. Go read and open your minds. -->

INFO 390 - Writing Exercise

2010-03-03T14:48:00.008-06:00

A common question raised by the articles is the way in which perception of race should be perceived and why people should care. One excerpt from the article "Alllooksame? Mediating Visual Cultures of Race on the Web" by Lisa Nakamura illustrates the guilt felt by those not able to tell the difference between Chinese, Japanese, and Korean-American residents of New York.

"The most challenging aspect of this, and one which is specifically enabled by this site's interactivity, is that the user is forced to confront her inadequacy in the face of visual "evidence" of race. The low scores that most users get seem to surprise them: in the extremely extensive discussion area of the site where users post their comments, many note that before using the site they thought they could tell the difference, but their low scores convinced them otherwise." (Nakamura, alllooksame?)

It seems like it is a cultural expectation for us to be able to distinguish between different kinds of Asian-Americans by visual evidence alone when in fact we are not expected to tell the difference between Polish-Americans and Russian-Americans by the same standards. Often times other clues – such as last names, accents, traditions – allow us to correctly distinguish between similar races.

There seems to be a sort of confusion about "feeling racist;" often times we are too strict with this term and punish ourselves when visual similarities confound us. It seems to be a large part of our culture to expect everyone to tell the difference between similar looking minorities. Similarly, the Eglash reading -- "Race, Sex, and Nerds: From Black Geeks To Asian American Hipsters" -- touched upon our uneasiness with combining stereotypes.

"The compulsory cool of black culture is mirrored by a compulsory nerdiness for orientalized others such as Middle Eastern groups, groups from India, and Asian Americans. Just as the black nerd fuses the desexualized geek with a racial identity stereotyped as hypersexual, Asian American hip hop allows racial groups stereotyped as desexualized nerds to fuse with the hypersexual funk of rap music." (Eglash 58)

In our evaluation of race and gender roles in today's world, we spend a lot of effort trying to separate our definition of particular minorities from our definitions of majorities. In an ideal world, everyone would be identified by his or her particular individuality alone. With Nakamura, it's pointed out that instead of referring to Asians as "not Caucasian," we work really hard to see the differences between different types of Asians, even if the task is quite difficult. With Eglash, we want to identify "black nerd" as its own subculture without returning to "white nerd" at all, since doing so seems like moving in the wrong direction.

The Wiki

2010-03-03T14:04:00.005-06:00

What's ahead in 2010

2010-01-07T18:12:00.003-06:00

MS 326 - WoW as a model

2009-12-02T13:40:00.006-06:00

First off, I'd like to state that I think it's funny that I start all of my WoW posts with "MS 326" since everything that is WoW related is obviously relevant for my class. In any case, I'm sure the title prefixes will be done away with as soon as the class is over. Then it'll just be me blogging about WoW because it's fun and interesting. :)

Using WoW and other massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs) to simulate possible real-world event isn't new. In the past, WoW has been used to model the outbreak of a massive epidemic. In this incident, a disease called Corrupted Blood "escaped" the instance in which it was contained via carriers such as warlock minions and hunter pets. Certain players -- such as level 60 toons -- were able to survive having the debuff because they had a lot of health. But when the debuff was transmitted to major cities such as Orgrimmar or Stormwind, lower level players died in a matter of seconds due to their low health pools. The video above was taken on my server on the Alliance side in the city of Ironforge. Below is a related video with the debuff Volatile Infection. Note that this debuff does not spread and is curable, but I think the video is important because of the commentary over Vent, a popular VoIP client. A hunter's pet has the infection and is being controlled by the player to damage as many targets around him as possible.

Right now I'm spending a lot of time going through WoWenomics and other such sites to get a glimpse at what we're capable of knowing from the economy of a game like World of Warcraft. I'll post as I find out more information.

MS 326 - Writing with New Media

2009-11-20T02:26:00.016-06:00

How has the Internet altered the production, reception, and circulation of music or film? Convey your thoughts by making references to your media examples.

The Internet has had a huge impact on the production, reception, and circulation of music. By linking together users with similar interests, the Internet has given fans of music the means to use word-of-mouth techniques to increase the popularity of musicians, especially up-and-coming artists. For example, Nick Pitera -- a computer animation major -- was able to gain recognition as a vocalist when he first began posting videos on YouTube. The first viral video that Nick Pitera created was his cover of "A Whole New World" from Disney's Alladin, which currently has a little over 14 million hits.

Nick Pitera is also a good example of online collaboration. Services like YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace close the gap between artists and listeners. Artists are more able to contact each other directly if they want to collaborate, such as this video with Nick Pitera and the Shures, which is a group of three members who have only met and made music over the Internet.

Another reason why collaborations and mash-ups are possible over the Internet is because everything is digital. This mashup, called Boulevard of Broken Songs, uses various songs to create a collaboration/mashup that is otherwise impossible. The artists in the mashup are from different genres and are unlikely to get together and record a song together. Also, the digital nature of music allows any particular user to "view" lots of different music in the same space, such as an iTunes library. This creates new juxtapositions of music that isn't normally listened together.

Because the Internet has made music so "open," production of recordings has changed on all levels. While local artists find it beneficial to spread their music through the Internet to get more fans, bigger name artists under record labels find that they lose money since recorded music is easily pirated and passed between fans. Things like Digital Rights Management (DRM) have risen to try to gain some of the revenue lost, but the power of collective intelligence offered by the Internet has found ways around DRM.

Another way the Internet allows others to circumvent DRM is to stream music using the "music as flow" model of music distribution. While we have already discussed services like YouTube and MySpace which allow users to post music to be streamed but not downloaded, services like Last.fm go one step further by sharing what music each user listens to. Some of this music can be "scrobbled" -- or recorded -- from "music as flow" services like Spotify but most of it is scrobbled from "music as electronic folk culture, physical commodity, and contract" models using a music player such as iTunes, Winamp, or Windows Media Player. Users who connect to each other based on similar tastes are now able to see music that contacts are listening to, allowing them to further find music that they may like.

In addition to the above, the web provides an interface for users to rate, suggest, and tag music. Music becomes searchable and therefore associated with words different than its name, artist, and genre. Also, users take full advantage of video, flash animation, web page integration, and other mediums to express themselves and utilize the music they enjoy.

MS 326 - Changing Virtual Worlds

2009-10-27T02:17:00.005-05:00

This post is a bit of a detour for me. Since I didn't have a chance to write one up for last week and our paper proposals are due this Friday, I'm using this as an opportunity to openly brainstorm ideas for what ideas I want to explore.

I was doing my usual patrol of the WoW-related blogs and websites when I happened upon this gem in the comments section of an article speculating what might be occurring in the next expansion for WoW, entitled Cataclysm. Here's the excerpt I really want to highlight from user tasty_wheat:

You know, it's kind of funny but reading about this upcoming change has really made the incontrovertible and unavoidable truth of Cataclysm's world- (game-)altering changes a reality in my brain. Everything is changing! All of it! Permanently! Not like the Scourge Invasion, which was fun but temporary (in terms of how it affected the gameplay experience for your average character running through, say, Elwynn Forest), but REALLY changing.

It's an epistemological wonder. A paradigm shift.

As Keanu Reeves as Neo would say, "Whoa." Or maybe I'm thinking of "They had really good noodles", but the point is this: we're really going to say goodbye to old Azeroth. Even those regions which are relatively unaffected by the cataclysm of Deathwing's return directly will at least experience some change of quests and NPCs.

Is it hitting anyone else this way? Or have you already made your peace with the fact that your virtual living place of choice is being so heavily changed? It's sort of thrilling.

Indeed, everything is changing, and this sent me through a whirlwind of mixed feelings. For starters, most of us have become very attached to the world of Azeroth. While the game has certainly evolved -- older players will attest to this and even as a 1.5 year old player, I've noticed some significant changes -- it's also a game with a lot of history that sticks around. At any time I can grab my Warlock and head down to the places where I leveled him. I can visit the mobs that gave me trouble and one-shot them for funsies, or even help other adventurers overcome the same troubles I had to master. Expansions always introduced new content to keep us entertained, but we always had a base of operations to return to.

This next expansion, Cataclysm, changes all that. If you haven't already clicked on a few of those links up top, Cataclysm will essentially rework all of the zones in old-world Azeroth, the very soil that all current players leveled their toons on. So instead of being able to visit the Barrens and look at all the places I used to fish, I'll see a completely different area, with completely different mobs and quests and probably even weather.

I'm not going to lie: part of me is really giddy. This is a huge change that will make the game less stressful to play and will add a lot of new content. It's just very bittersweet... :( I think one of the topics I'd like to explore is virtual spaces and how players perceive WoW as a virtual world. We certainly do get attached to places, even fictional ones. And what exactly might happen if the game suddenly came to an end? A question for another time, I suppose.

MS 326 - Bloodhoof Village Part 2

2009-10-18T18:40:00.005-05:00

This post concludes the second part of my adventures in the area known as Bloodhoof Village. I am now level 12 and have learned a lot of new abilities. Level 8 had me learning Lightning Shield, which does damage to enemies that attack me. This helped me kill mobs a lot faster and is one of the reasons I was able to make it to level 12 so quickly. Also learned was Revive at level 12. This ability allows me to resurrect players who fall in combat. Now I can run instances with groups, which I will talk about a bit later in the post.

The leveling process went a lot smoother since the last post. I caved in and bought Lasting Feralheart Spaulders for Bassamatoast, giving him a 10% experience bonus to all experience gained through quests and mobs. I also had some left over material on Bassamaphone to craft four Imbued Netherweave Bags. Now I have plenty of bag space and can stay out in the field longer before coming back to vendor trash items and turn in quests.

Hallow's End has begun today! Hallow's End is the event in WoW that represents Halloween for those confined to the boundaries of Azeroth. On Bassamatoast, I was able to experience trick or treating and unfortunately was tricked by being transformed into a frog. How unfair! For Bassamatoast, trick or treating is pretty much the extent of the activities available to him. For my higher level characters, however, I can enter a fight with the Headless Horseman and try my hand at some epic loot. While this fight is tuned for lower levels and can be engaging, I don't see the need to involve my shaman because his main goal is to be level 80 and not to spend time having fun, as would be his goal if he were my first toon. It's kinda sad how something that used to be purely for fun because more work than pleasure, but that's part of what happens when the game becomes so familiar and new rewards and opportunities open up.

Today a druid named Nladani asked me if I wanted to run RFC. RFC, or Ragefire Chasm, is an instance for levels 13 through 16, roughly. And for those of you who don't know what an instance is, an instance is a separate area of the game that can't be "intruded upon" by other players. Basically, it's completely separate from the rest of the world. Instances usually contain mobs and a few bosses, all tuned to levels much higher than you are prepared to kill on your own. This is why we group up! Instances are designed for groups of 5, 10, or 25 players. There used to be instances for 40 players but Blizzard decided to fade these out over the years. After all, getting 40 people together at once is quite a daunting task! I'll talk about the game mechanics of running instances at a later time when I actually run one with Bassamatoast.

At long last, I have acquired a profession! I have chosen for Bassamatoast to learn Herbalism, which allows him to pick up herbs that he finds during his travels. These herbs -- or nodes, in a more general sense -- are randomly dispersed through the world and require a minimum level of the "skill" of Herbalism to cultivate or gather. All herbalists typically start with one point and start by gathering herbs that don't require anything more than 1 point in Herbalism to gather. For every herb gathered, I gain another point in Herbalism, or a "skill up." More points in Hebalism allow me to gather rarer herbs! It's a really simple system once you get the hang of it.

Here's where one of the benefits of being a Tauren shaman comes in handy. While all other types of herbalists start with 1 point in Herbalism, I start with 15! This is because of one of the Tauren racials, Cultivation.

MS 326 - Bloodhoof Village Part 1

2009-10-11T14:20:00.007-05:00

Since I had a busy week last week, I wasn't able to get in as much playtime as I would have liked on Bassamatoast. Instead of placing a clear level bracket in the title of this blog post, I decided to start labeling posts by area. While I was fairly certain how much time it would take to get through levels 1 - 6, the rest of the levels are up for grabs because I'm really unfamiliar with the combination of race/class/area and how that might affect my leveling speed.

What's new this time around? Totems! After finishing those two extra quests I was given an Earth Totem and the ability to summon two totems: the Stoneskin Totem and the Earthbind Totem. I must have the Earth Totem in my bags to summon any totem that falls under the "earth" category. In all, shaman have four types of totems: earth, fire, water, and air. Each "school" of totem does a general type of magic. A shaman may only lay down one totem for each school. For example, I can only lay down Stoneskin or Earthbind, not both because they are both earth totems. For a really good explanation on totems, you might want to check out WoWWiki.

Right now I'll be using Stoneskin because it provides an armor buff to help mitigate damage from melee mobs, which will be the majority of encounters while leveling. Totems are unique to shaman and are what makes the class interesting to play. When I play my warlock Bassamaphone, I usually move around a lot because I think it's fun to jump and I like to stay on the move, especially when leveling. With a shaman, however, I plant a totem and it doesn't move until it either runs out its time and desummons, or I plant a new totem from the same school somewhere else. This stationary limitation affects my playing greatly, as I now work on pulling/aggroing mobs toward a central area rather than move through an area to kill things.

Since I've played in this area before, I'm keeping a sharp eye out for Wiry Swoop mobs. The quest Swoop Hunting is quite difficult to do if you try to kill all the swoops at once, especially since higher level mobs will steamroll you if you're not careful. I found it much easier to go around killing other mobs in the area for my other quests and if I see one of these guys, I'll work my way towards him and then kill him. It seems to make the questing go a lot easier.

One of the things I didn't expect to affect my game playing was all the stuff I wasn't doing in the game a.k.a. the real world. I spent a good deal of time trying to figure out what kind of music I should listen to while leveling. When I leveled my warlock, I found that Imogen Heap was the choice of leveling music. When I got to the endgame, Sum 41 helped me play at my best. So for my shaman, I started with Anberlin but soon decided that would be better for a paladin or something, I'm not sure. Now I'm listening to Eve 6 and seeing if it's working out. It's not bad, but I wonder if there's a better match for the shaman. Ideally, I want music that will keep me focused on leveling and match my enthusiasm for the class and play-style. It's a really strange thing to take note of, but I thought of it as part of the experience so I decided to write about it.

Looking back on what was keeping me back while leveling, I saw a number of limiting factors. The main factor was bag space. After running around killing stuff and looting their bodies for body parts and such, one finds that the backpack you get at level 1 fills up pretty quickly. The game allows a character to carry four additions bags, so I plan to give Bassamatoast four Frostweave Bags. Each bag holds 20 items, which is more than the 16-slot backpack you already have. I can craft these with Bassamaphone because he has the profession Tailoring. Professions are a whole 'nother story in World of Warcraft and I plan to cover them when Bassamatoast starts his first profession.

The image hosting site I use for this blog is currently shifting my files around, so images might not display properly on or around the post date. If you're missing a photo or two, just be patient and return in a day or two.

MS 326 - Levels 1 through 6

2009-10-04T00:40:00.005-05:00

Today I got around to playing my shaman Bassamatoast again. I leveled him all the way to level 6, which means the end of the starting area. The starting area is meant to teach new players the basic game mechanics of character movement, questing, and some of the menus on the interface.

As a veteran player, I was able to move through this area relatively quickly. In addition to already knowing the game mechanics, I have also played through the area before and knew the best way to navigate around and complete quests. In case you don't know, each quest has a beginning and an end. Quest givers give the quests to players who then go through a series of objectives, such as visiting locations, collecting items, or killing mobs. The player then turns in the quest at another NPC. Since I know the area so well, I know the best order in which to do these quests and I know what to do for each one. After all, the starting areas of this game are no surprise to me.

What was a surprise, however, was a little shaman-only questline starting with Call of the Earth. Since I've never played a Tauren shaman before, my experience here was new and I actually felt a bit bogged down and impatient because all of the sudden I had to do something in the game I didn't expect.

The experience was interesting because I got to explore new content in the game and I really appreciated that. At first I didn't like it because I had to take more time to level my character, but it reminded me of how I used to play when I was going through content the first time on my Undead warlock Bassamaphone. All of the sudden, I felt a rush of nostalgia and the game felt really good again.

After I did these quests I went on to the next area to log out in an inn. Since I've played this game before, I know that logging out in an inn gives me a bonus to my experience gain, making it easier to level in the future. I also checked my mail and received a companion pet called Grunty. All of my characters received Grunty because I spent money in the real world to watch BlizzCon '09.

MS 326 - Exploring the Starting Area

2009-09-26T23:35:00.007-05:00

After sitting through the beginning cinematic for my own nostalgic purposes, I see the UI for my character and the first thing I think about is changing it. Why? Had I been a player new to the game, I would probably try to figure out what the different buttons/keys did and move around the world a bit to explore my surroundings. But since I'm very familiar with the game, my first instinct is to change the UI so it reflects what I'm used to.

Right off the bat, I've got different keybindings and a few addons installed from other characters. The keybindings are how each of the keys on the keyboard are "bound" or connected to doing different actions in the game. Typically, one uses WASD to move around and uses keys like 'B' to open the character's bags, 'O' to see who else is online, etc. Most players tend to stick with the default keybindings until they one day realize that these "basic" keybindings are restricting the gameplay experience. This usually happens when the character a player is playing reaches the maximum level, where competition is abundant.

For example, instead of using 'WASD' to move around, I use 'ESDF' because I can then use more keys around 'ESDF' to cast spells. I've also found that this is easier for me as a left-handed player, as the default configuration of 'WASD' is designed for right-handed players. Below you can see some of my keybindings using 'Z', 'Shift-Z', 'X', etc.

I also installed these things called "addons". Addons are special programs that allow a player to customize the UI. For example, I have an addon called Quartz which augments the casting bar, as seen above. This allows me to time sequential casting well since Quartz factors things such as game latency into telling me how long a particular spell will take to cast. For my shaman, such information is unnecessary, but I'm used to it being a part of my interface and I feel strange playing a character without it. You can see me using Quartz above to cast War Stomp.

Aside from changes already in place, I also had to change some settings in the Interface menu that were defaulted to options I didn't like. I immediately enabled multiple "action bars", which are bars where I can place icons for different spells, actions, and items I want to use. I also moved around the existing items I had to positions that made more sense to me. For example, I moved Refreshing Spring Water to a space on my action bars that wasn't bound to a key because it's not an item that needs to be accessed quickly and/or frequently. I bind keys to actions that are usually used while in battle, such as spells and potions. Since Refreshing Spring Water can only be used out of combat, I figure that it won't be the death of me (or my character!) if I spend an extra second moving my mouse over to the button on the screen in order to click on it.

Below is my UI when I first enter and then again after I customize a few things. The second picture is darker because I took the screenshot several hours after the first.

After making all these changes, I find out that I don't really want to explore the area too much. I've seen it all before while playing other Tauren characters and I find that I'm more focused on doing quests and completing objectives. If you look in the screenshots of my UI, you'll notice a character with a yellow exclamation mark above his head. I right click on him to get a quest. A box pops up with the text describing what this non-playable character, or NPC, wants me to do. I accept without reading because I already know what the quest wants me to do, since I've done it before on previous characters. I also notice that once accepting the quest, an arrow pops up at the top of my screen, telling me where to go. This is part of the addon I installed called QuestHelper, which tells me the quickest way to go in order to get all of my quests done. Completing quests rewards me with equipment for my character to wear to make it more powerful, as well as valuable experience to increase the level of my character.

Since this character is one of my alternative characters, or alts, my goal is to get him to the maximum level as quickly as possible. I already have a main character -- my main (big surprise there) -- who has done most of this stuff and was able to experience it as a leisurely pace. I've found that while leveling alts, almost everything is motivated by getting to content with which I'm already familiar. When you're playing for the first time, you have no giant goals and you're in an exploratory mode. But once you've seen the big picture, you can't help but want to get there with your new character.

As I'm about to go kill some creatures to gain some experience, a friend of mine sends me a private message asking me to log onto my main character Bassamaphone and help him with some end-game content. And so I log off of Bassamatoast while thinking to myself how this shaman's playtime will be shadowed by those who have already experienced the World of Warcraft.

MS 326 - World of Warcraft Reroll

2009-09-26T19:48:00.005-05:00

The World of Warcraft, or WoW, is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game(MMORPG). For my MS 326 Practicum Project, my goal is to explore this world from the perspective of a veteran player. I have a friend who did a project on World of Warcraft last semester from the perspective of a player unfamiliar with the game and I wondered what might be different from the perspective of a person who has "seen it all."

As any World of Warcraft adventurer starts, I found myself staring at the character creation screen. To a new player, such a screen provides a daunting yet intriguing first look at the game. Players are able to customize their character's hair color, hair style, skin color, and other aspects. In addition to choosing a name, race, and class for your character, the number of possibilities seems endless. Where does one begin?

When I was new to the game oh so many years ago, I found that I was steered to decisions based on suggestions fellow players had for me and whatever seemed like it would be fun at the time. Friends who played the game had more knowledge about what was "good" and what was "bad" so I made decisions based off of their "game wisdom" lest I should craft a miserable experience straight from the get-go. I chose the class "warlock" and race "Undead" because my friends thought it would fit me. The name "Bassamaphone" and the rest of my looks were my own choices, picked with "fun" in mind. I was excited about the game and my character reflected that.

Having experienced the game for over a year, I now look at the character selection screen seeing less choices than before, despite it being the same screen it's always been. This time around I have a specific goal in mind and I make choices based on my own experiences in the game. For instance, I chose to create a Tauren shaman because I want to play a class that heals other players. Going into the game the first time, I had no idea what each class did and was blind to such an influence. Even the name of my shaman, "Bassamatoast", is a clear derivative from that of my warlock, in an attempt to link all of the characters on my account together in some fashion.

Above are pictures of my Tauren characters, which is a race of cows and bulls. Prior to creating my shaman, I chose to create three other Tauren of different races. Not wanting to create characters that looked the same, my Shaman's looks are entirely dependent on what the other characters look like.

It's also interesting to note the race that I chose. There are exactly four shaman races currently in the game: Draenei, Orcs, Trolls, and Tauren. I eliminated the Draenei because they played on the Alliance faction and therefore were unable to be played with characters my friends created. (WoW contains a two faction gameplay system in which two sides of players are always opposed to each other.) Out of the three Shaman races on the Horde side, I chose Tauren because of the lore behind the character. Tauren shaman are peaceful while Orc shaman are redeemed and Troll shaman are new to the class. Looking at the history of shaman, I ended up making a decision not based on gameplay mechanics but based on personal preference concerning how my character might roleplay.

And again, these are just my observations on my character selection process, or reroll. One is thought to "roll" a particular character when they first try out a character and "reroll" when they roll a character of the same variety but slightly different. This often happens when players choose to play on different servers, but in my case, I was rerolling a shaman simply because I did not like the character my last shaman was turning out to be. It's really amazing that all this analysis is about my gameplay experience before I have even entered the game. Indeed, I'm already having a different experience than a new player.

SourceForge.net and programming

2009-09-22T11:01:00.000-05:00

Right now I'm working on some programming projects over at SourceForge.net. Some of the projects have collaborators, some don't. In any case, my goal will be to use some really great math/logic/knowledge and write about the process here. That way we will all be able to learn.

If you're interested in jumping in on a project, please let me know. It may be sort of awkward if I don't know you, but if we've met in real life, then I'd probably be cool with it.

As it stands, there are two projects I'm working on. The first project is a Carcassonne game simulator. I'm working on it with my friend Greg, who I met through a mutual friend. We're both at different universities right now but hopefully this thing will be underway in a month or so, after I relearn Java.

The second project is a command for the Firefox add-on Ubiquity, developed by Mozilla Labs. I just got my roommate Tom into Ubiquity, and since the project is on creating a set of commands for interacting with Wowhead, he's probably going to jump on that project. My friend Jeff also got me into Ubiquity in the first place, so I might ask him to jump in if he feels so inclined.

If you're interested in checking out Ubiquity, view the video below to see some of the power behind it.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

It's been a while...

2009-09-21T00:20:00.001-05:00

LaTeX enabled

2009-03-15T16:06:00.003-05:00

I found a nice forum tutorial that utilized yourequations.com to render LaTeX on blogs and other things that don't naturally support it.

I had to change the layout to one with a white background so the LaTeX would show up well. Later on I would like to write a layout for this blog much like my other one, just for flexibility's sake. But for now, I just need to find some good documentation on LaTeX syntax and this blog will be well on its way to being fully functional.

Here's some test code just to show that LaTeX does in fact render properly.


\int_{-\infty}^{\infty}e^{-x^{2}}\;dx=\sqrt{\pi}

Edit: I ran into trouble getting the code to render when I redid my layout. I found out through trial and error that the <script> code must be placed right before the </body> tag. Anywhere else and you run into problems.

As simple as it seems

2009-03-10T13:01:00.000-05:00

Just like all other first posts, this post is indeed meant to say something about this blog. And it really is as simple as it seems. This blog is not your typical blog because it does not convey anything about the views of the author. Interests, perhaps. Aspects of personality, yes. But it does nothing to say anything that author actually wants to communicate. In fact, it won't even point you in the right direction for such views. Seriously, this is just another blog I am authoring...

...and these are not my thoughts.