This is a follow up post, or rather a continuation of my earlier micro-essay on Cheerleading (Cheerleading, the case for.) It is a videeo covering the issues regarding the classification of high school Cheerleading in the USA (split in two parts.)
Please take the time to watch them even if Cheerleading isn't something you are interested in, it will change your opinion of us!
For today and tomorrow I have been and will be a volunteer facilitator for a symposium at the Lowry entitled The As Yet Impossible (TAYI)
TAYI is a two day event which is focusing on the future. The participants are a number of experts in their field which range from performance practitioners, artists, designers, animators, producers, scientists, physicists and so on. The overarching concept is to think of what we, as yet, cannot achieve by means which are available to us through technology.
Today's main focus seems to be how we can change what and how much we experience through our senses. What the future of our senses might be, what augments can we make to them. How our senses are effected when one is lost or disabled, how our senses can be tricked or employed in a different way. The exploration of these topics was done using none-typical means for what you might expect a symposium to use. A series of workshops ran throughout the day which delved into the subject of sense, art, technology, nature, the future, the present, society etc and there is more to come tomorrow.
My role today was to blog about what was going on, to (try and) consolidate the information being fed back to the central hub (where I was stationed) for publication online.
It was very difficult, I could tell from the information I was receiving that the session facilitators were witnessing an almost stream of conciousness as the academics discussed such complex topics. It was exciting to be there at a time when these ideas were in their infancy, and being discussed by the bright thinkers of their respective disciplines. Having the mix of scientists, creators, performers and so on in attendance meant we could discover new ideas in such succession, it made it hard to clearly get the information into print.
Tomorrow will be more focused on the future, on where we can go without technology and how we want, or whether we want it to augment or diminish how we interact with our us and our environment.
Follow the event on its blow, www.theasyetimpossible.wordpress.com where you can find the information from today and subsequent publication of information for the remainder of the event. You can also view live tweets from the event on its blog page, or on the page of the events tweeter, Hannah Nicklin.
Ok I am going to admit something here. As a huge fan of the Portal series since Portal originally hit the shelves back in October 2007 I might have fired up Portal 2 with an already enthusiastic and rose-tinted view. What I found only confirmed my expectations.
Portal 2 is a first person shooter (FPS) puzzle game which carries on from its predecessor Portal. Based on the concept of the manipulation or reality through portals which preserve linear momentum. If that sounds complicated, watch this:
That is the teaser trailer for Portal, as you can imagine the game play is innovative and refreshing from other FPS's which I am not so much a fan of.
The story of Portal 2 revolves around your character from the original game; Chell. After being subject to numerous rounds of testing in the Aperture Science Computerated Enrichment Enviroment, and almost being murdered several times by the psychotic testing mainframe AI known as GLaDOS, Chell eventually finds her way out of the laboratories and to the surface which is where Portal leaves us. Portal 2 Is the continuation of that story, where you find out after losing conciousness from the final fight with GLaDOS in the previous game, you are returned to the Aperture facilities to recuperate (This was later ret-conned in a patch, the ending was added with an ambiguous robotic voice approaching Chell from behind and dragging her back into the Aperture underground-complex before she lost conciousness.)
You are woken from suspended animation by a personality core called Wheatley and emerge from your chamber into the now-destroyed and decaying Aperture facility. Wheatley helps you stumble through the labs in order to escape, but in doing so you inadvertently reactivate GLaDOS, the passive-aggressive and completely insane facility control AI, who appears somewhat bitter about the fact that you killed her...
Without giving away any of the story, what follows is a slightly jilted round of further testing ala: Portal with a which quickly changes in a surprise twist! In Portal 2 the game goes deeper into the story of Aperture Science Laboratories, it's history and it's founder Cave Johnson.
The best feature for me is in the middle of the game where you learn about GLaDOS and where she comes from, and the secrets to why she is so bent on testing. GLaDOS received numerous awards from gaming magazines and websites such as 'Best Character' and 'Best New Character' from GameSpy and X-Play respectively, and Game Informer named her one of the 'Characters who defined a decade' in terms of storytelling. Most are citing her humour which is a form of passive-aggressive speak which actively changes in tone and intensity throughout the series (in both games.)
One of GLaDOS' unique qualities is her voice, which is synthesised from the voice acting of one Ellen McLain (who also has the Half Life series and Team Fortress 2 under her belt) through an auto-tune to give it that robotic and maniacle tone (here is a sample, from wikipedia). GLaDOS is by far the best reason to play Portal 2 besides the game play.
Another quality to Portal and Portal 2 is the complete mind-fuck of gameplay. We have seen this sport of manipulation of the game world in games such as Prey, but never has it been used in such a way as to encourage problem solving on the scale Portal has set. One comment made by GameSpy when awarding GLaDOS 'Best Character' was that the game could have got by without a story, which while in itself is pretty definitive of a lot puzzle games in the industry, Portal sets itself apart from the others such as Myst or the Professor Layton series as being almost exclusively character driven while not taking emphasis away from the mind-bending puzzles of physics and lateral thinking.Not to mention how much of an impact Portal made on internet culture creating such memes as "The cake is a lie" and the emergence of the Companion Cube.
Something which I am yet to experience but I highly anticipate as being another redeeming quality of the game is the incorporation of co-operative mulitplayer. You take one the duties of one of two co-operative testing initiative bots...
Atlas and P-Body are the two robots featured in the video above, which is something I cannot wait to try!
For anyone who is interested in puzzle games, FPS games or simple fancies a good bit of storytelling, seek out Portal 2 but I urge you not to do so until you have played Portal. A criticism which I am quick to offer of both games is that they are too short. I completedboth Portal and Portal 2 in the evening of buying them, but their replay value is acceptable for fans of the game, but it may be worth waiting until there is an offer on to purchase both games, and certainly purchase them online through supplies such as gameplay.co.uk or play.com. On the PC, both games are available for purchase and repeated download through Steam which is a service available to PC which binds many PC games to a single account where you can purchase said games and download them over and over again which is handy if you are apt to losing your original disks.
It is my hope that the series continues in some form, though Chell's story recieved a definitive ending in Portal 2 I am certain Valve can come up with a way to continue the franchise which is so highly regarded in the gaming community.
Last year I was tickled pink. I wouldn't admit it then as I was trying to be casual and aloof about it, but I really was pleased about the state of my body. I spoke about ita few timeslast year. My weight has levelled off now, as I mentioned a month or so ago, and I am feeling a little dissatisfied again.
In my last post, I mentioned that I needed to build upper-body strength. While I may currently reside in a slimmer frame, it is not one which is capable of meeting all of my needs. I feel healthier, I can wear more layers which is a look I like going for once in a while, and I can generally go for longer in endeavours such as sport or physical theatre. I can also hold my breath for longer, like the sunshine a little more, get less heartburn than I used too, less back pain. Honestly the benefits of being my ideal weight outweigh the things I miss, such as playing with my belly when I got bored (which I sometimes still try to do) or having to wear less layers in the winter months and so on. My body is functional in that respect, but I need to work hard to make it more-so.
That is where my new Build Upper Body Strength plan comes in. Every week, or every fortnight depending on time restrictions I plan on updating the blog with my progress on building upper body strength which I will need for my Cheerleading, Gymnastics and to enhance my body confidence. I wasn't going to mention it, even though I have lost the puppy fat I am still not 100% about how my body looks. This is me doing something about that!..
The above is me, as of today. That is, as of about half an hour ago from writing this post. As you can see from the above images, my frame has taken a beating. You can see the stretch marks around my tummy and you might see them around my arms. I don't mind the stretch marks so much, but I find them a good reminder to myself not to over-indulge. Another thing you may notice is the love handles. Alas, these are the hardest things for men and women to get rid of when trying to improve their image through diet and excercise. A few people I know are quite to state when they though I looked ill when I'd finished losing weight. As ill as I ever looked, I'd never lost those bad boys.
My goals for Build Upper Body Strength are:
Increase the muscle mass on my chest, shoulders, back and arms.
As you might see, there is the tiniest hint of definition in these muscles already. This is due to the lifting and pushing I do already in Cheer and gymnastic tumbling. If I am to be able to support my own body weight on my arms, and complete a chain of back-handsprings, I will need these muscles to be as lean as possible, at least lean enough to match my legs.
Get rid of my love handles
These fuckers are gone. Seriously, their days are numbered. I don't know how to do it, I mean it's fat and fat is all the same, but I can't shift that shit for some reason. They will go though, mark my words!
Get an arse.
Ok, so maybe this one is for vanity's sake. One of the areas I am uncomfortable with at the moment is the bottom of my bottom, the back of my front, the vertical smile. My skin stretched everywhere I used to carry weight. You can see this on my tummy, on my upper arms, and to an extent on my chest. You can't see it on my bum, but trust me when I tell you it's there, and it isn't pretty. I am aiming for as much of a straight line as my hips will allow from the end of my ribcage to the start of my thighs. Somewhere in there I'd like to have a nice arse, so lets see what happens!
Let's keep it at that for now. Sometime soon, after I git the gym, rearrange my diet and work out some of the specifics of my new project, you will see pictures of my progress. I'm not foolish enough to believe that this will happen in a matter of weeks. My goal is pride, that is, the bank holiday weekend of August (just after my birthday.)
I have a holiday to Czech Republic in the first half of August which I am sure you will hear about. It's a sports/cheer holiday so it's not as if I won't be getting exercise then, but hopefully at that point I'll have accomplished most of my goals.
