Pros and Cons of blogging

                

                For this blog entry, I will be talking about the pros and the cons about blogging. Blogging can have its advantages when it comes to communicating but it also has its disadvantages if you say too much information, especially if it is personal.

                The pros of blogging are that you can share information with the world and share your opinions or any news that has happened to you or that is happening in the world. What could also happen when you blog is that you meet new people and if you get along with them, you become friends with them. It is just like adding random people you play online with on your video games and you become friends with them.

                The cons of blogging are that if you write to much information about yourself, people can take that information and use it in a bad way. Another bad thing is that if you write information about a friend, that friend could get in trouble sometime in the future by what you wrote about him.

                In my opinion, blogging has been fun for me because I have been able to express opinions about things that are going on (usually electronics). Although I have shared a lot of things, I have been able to control myself and not share too much information about myself and peers. This technique has been productive because it helps us with our writing and helps us write good paragraphs.

                There is good and bad experiences about blogging. Blogging lets you communicate to people but it can also be harmful if you say too much about yourself or others. It is up to you if you want to share information to the world but it is also your duty to control how much you say.

PlayStation Network hacked!!

                For this blog entry, I’m going to be talking about the recent incident that happened to Sony to their PlayStation Network. What I mean is that there was an accident to the PlayStation Network and PS3 gamers cannot sign in which means gamers can’t play any game online.

                This horrible event happened on April 20 2011 at approximately 3:00 am in the morning. When gamers tried to sign in, it said “An error has occurred, you have been signed out of PlayStation Network”. When I woke up on the 21^st, it showed that message and I kept on trying to sign in but it wouldn’t let me. First I thought that my internet was bad so I disconnected and reconnected it to make it a bit faster. Even after I did that it didn’t work so I decided to see what was going on. The first thing I did was that I went to the PlayStation website. There was nothing wrong so I tried to sign in into the PlayStation Network through there. There was when I found out what was going on, or so I thought. When I pressed sign in, it appeared a message saying that the PlayStation Network was undergoing maintenance. Now that I knew what was going on, I waited for several hours because maintenance just takes a couple hours. After waiting, I tried again and the same message appeared on the PS3 and on the website. Now there was something wrong because maintenance doesn’t take so long. I started to search through Google of what was going on and I found many sources that all said that the network was hacked. My reaction to this was amazed as well as sad. I was amazed because Sony is such a big company with very well built products and software and people were able to hack the PlayStation Network which is a huge network from Sony. The reason why I was sad and still am is because I haven’t been able to play online which makes my day very boring.

                After two days or so, Sony announced that they were hacked from an outside party which means it was several people joined together to hack the network. After they announced that, I tried to sign in through the PS3 again but instead of the error message, it showed that it was under maintenance. When I read this, I predicted that they got the software back but are checking if anything is damaged. Later, Sony posted another update message which was that they have the software back but are rebuilding it to prevent further damages or hackers. After everything announced, people are creating rumors or ideas of how the hackers were able to hack the network. One idea, which is the hardest one to understand if you don’t know much about computers, is that he hackers are sending small bits of information to the network and the network in return, has to send a bigger message than the one it received. So the hackers sent lots of information so the network in return had to send lots of information which are bigger than it received so the network crashed. The second idea they created, which is the most reasonable one is that a game called Portal 2 just came out and it can connect to a PC so possibly, the hackers sent a virus through the PC game of Portal 2, it goes into the PS3 game of Portal 2, which got into the PlayStation Network so it shut it down. All these al rumors and ideas but it isn’t confirmed how they hacked this massive network.

They haven’t announced when they are going to put the network back up and running, but it has been a week already that it has been down. Like I am a PS3 gamer, I have been waiting patiently for a long time and I hope Sony gets the network back up and running soon. I really want to play online games again.

Black Ops map pack 2: Escalation

                For this blog entry, I’m going to be talking about the rumor that is going on that there will be a new DLC, Down Loadable Content, pack for Call of Duty Black Ops. It is called Escalation and is said to come out on May 3^rd 2011 for Xbox 360. PlayStation 3 and PC are yet to be announced, if this is true. The new DLC pack is supposed to contain the same amount of maps as First Strike, four new online maps and one new zombie map. I am especially looking forward to the zombie map. Hopefully they make it better than Ascension or as good as Ascension but we shall see.

                One of the maps seems to be in a zoo because on the poster, it says “SEIZE THE ZOO”. My thought about this map will be, first of all, in a zoo and probably there will be animals that if you get close to them, they will hurt you or kill you. Looking at the picture, it looks like there will be a tiger because on the sign it shows a tiger and the man with two guns looks like it will be a bloody map.

                Another map seems to be in a hotel because it says “TAKE THE HOTEL”. My thought about this is that, hopefully, the map will be big and you will be able to move around a lot, maybe go up some stories and enter hotel rooms. Another thing I hope to see is that the man is breaking in to what seems like a window so maybe if you go to the top floor, you can repel down and break through a window like the man in the picture. This looks like it will be a map like Kowloon, where you get do something special in the map. For example, in Kowloon, you can repel on a line and get to one area to another very quick. Maybe the repelling from the roof and breaking into a window will be the special thing.

                The next map seems to be in an airport because if you zoom into the picture and look at the rectangular sign, it says “Airport Crystal City”, and the map is called “SECURE THE CONVOY”. I don’t have many suggestions for this map but I will suspect that it will be big. Maybe there will be a plane that you can get into like in Modern Warfare 2 on the map Terminal. Another suggestion that I have is that players can ride on the airport cars. What I’m referring to is those small cars which drag the entire luggage to get to the plane it needs to go on. This seems like a map that not many people will like and it won’t be as popular as the other three.

                The final online map seems to be in a camp during the winter and the map is called “RAID THE STOCKPILE”. This map looks like the map Discovery, with huts around the map and maybe you can go into them. But other than that there isn’t much to say about it. This map could be one of those maps that people will not like.

                The next map is the zombie map which seems to be that type of game mode because there is a bloody hand and it says “SURVIVE CALL OF THE DEAD”. Although it says that, the map will probably be called Survive and Treyarch must have put in Call of the Dead just to get people’s attention. The picture of the hand doesn’t give much about what the map is going to be like. My hopes are that it will be better than or as good as the last zombie map Ascension which was released in the First Strike DLC. Hopefully Treyarch will take out the gas zombies like they did in Ascension. When coming to the monkeys, I might have a debate about that because the monkeys can be distracted by throwing a grenade. The monkeys can also die when you throw a Gersh device and that helps a lot when defending the perk machine you are protecting. The negative side about monkeys is that they are hard to kill and they steal perks which are very helpful. So I am to the conclusion that Treyarch will put in the monkeys again, put in the dogs instead of monkeys, or put in a new type of animal to make the map better. Out of the other 4 maps, I am really looking forward to playing on the new zombie map and see how good it will turn out to be.

                To recap, Escalation the new DLC map pack is rumored to be coming out on May 3^rd 2011 for Xbox live first, and PlayStation 3 and PC are yet to be announced.  If you are a PS3 lover, like me, then you must be pretty mad because we PS3 gamers have to wait longer and Treyarch already did this to us when they released First Strike. I hope this map pack will come out and will be better than First Strike

UPDATE: I have been writing this blog entry for several days and when I just finished I got news about the Escalation map pack. Treyarch has just announced that this map pack WILL come out and on the same date as the rumor. Now we just have to wait until it is released and enjoy more online maps!

Ascension map walk through

                For this blog entry I will be talking about the zombie map Ascension from a bird’s eye view and talk about the different places. To me, it seems a lot of my class mates don’t know about this map so I think I will be helping them from my own free will. To explain this map, I will be using the maps below (and yes I did make these maps on my own, I did not copy it from Google).

The area where we always start at is in the centrifuge room which is the circle with the red circle inside. In that room, we have two doors we can go through, one on the bottom and one on top. There is also a teddy bear which, if you activate all three, you hear a song. Let’s say we went through the top door. When we go through it, we can go left or right (or up or down in our case because we are looking from on top). We will go left (down in our case) so we will appear in the area where there is the orange pentagon. If we continue left, we can go through another door which leads us into the area with a lander location and another teddy bear. That’s all for that area of the map so we will go back to the top door and go right (up in our case). When we go up, we will find a turret which we can use but I never use it because turrets will eventually do nothing in the high rounds. If we continue through the path, we will find a door to our right or another area to our left. Let’s go left first because this area is very good to get to high rounds and it’s the area I always stay in to get far. When you are camping in this area when you play, you got to watch out for zombies coming for the balcony on top (which you can see on the map, which is a small area) and zombies coming from the little room where the pentagon figure is in. This area has a lander location also so if you’re getting crowded, you can use the lander and escape. Let’s continue through the door to our right before we continued to the lander area. When we follow the path, we can go into the building or continue forward and go through a door into another area. Let’s go through the door ahead because in the other map (which I will talk about soon), one of the areas will appear in the building area which is the path we aren’t going through right now. Past the door, we can go up some stairs but we won’t because in the other map, it will tie into those stair cases. When we continue down the path, we will find another turret and a big door (silver door on the map). This door is opened by using all the landers at least once and then you launch the rocket. Let’s say it is open. When we go in, we go through a small alley like way and in that new room there is the pack-a-punch machine which is so useful in the high rounds. That is all for the first map. Now we will go to the next map which is the inside of the building and this is where it gets more complicated.

                The map of inside the building will start in the centrifuge room which you can kind of see the red circle which is cut off on the bottom left. The door that we go through is the bottom door that I said there was in the beginning of the second paragraph. This area is pretty small and it’s not a good idea to be there when there are a lot of zombies. Let’s continue up the stairs which is marked with a grey arrow. If we see in the key, I say to follow the same colored arrow to continue up the stair case. I also put what floor the area is to make it easier to follow. So we follow the grey arrow and we are now in the area which is marked 1 ½ floor and has a red pentagon figure. This is also a small area and is bad to be there when many zombies are walking around. We continue up the stair case labeled with a brown arrow and it leads us into the 2^nd floor which is the room where we didn’t go through (if you remembered I said we won’t go through an area because the second map would appear in that area) and now we are here. Let’s continue up the stairs with the blue arrow and we will be in another small room. Then we go up another stair case with a yellow arrow which will lead us to the 3^rd floor. This room is where you turn on the power which will get the map in color and is where you can launch the rocket AFTER you use all the landers at least once. We continue through a door and go down some stairs and there will be a hole in the wall. If you jump through it, you will appear right outside the building which I said we wouldn’t go into at first. Let’s go right and not jump through the hole to finish the map. This room has a place where you can go out and it goes through a stair case which ties with the stair case I talked about that is in the area close to the pack-a-punch room. We won’t go through there and continue through another stair case which we can see in the map which leads into the room with the green pentagon icon. We continue through another path and we will appear in the last lander area. This place is also where the last teddy bear is to activate the song.

                These are all the areas of the map Ascension. I hope this guide helps to get around the map when you play and this map works for a PS3 gamer, a Xbox 360 gamer, a PC gamer or a Wii gamer. This was all for this long blog entry.

Disaster in Japan

                For this blog entry, I’m going to talk about the disaster that happened in Japan on March, 11, 2011. It started with an earthquake that was approximately on a scale of 8.9 that lasted for 20 seconds. To make things worse, there was a tsunami that left the entire village under water.

                This disaster is a great impact in today’s world, and if you see videos, you can see how japan suffered from an earthquake that was very strong and then from a tsunami which finished many lives. It is said that approximately over a thousand people are killed and probably counting. After a horrible earthquake, the tsunami came and that’s when disaster struck.

                When the tsunami came, it destroyed millions of houses and it moved cars and boats as if they were just toys. Many Japanese people weren’t able to leave their house and get to higher ground to be saved so in return, their life was taken away by the water. Many Japanese people (but not all) were on the top of high buildings watching their house and probably family and friends being killed and swiped away by the tsunami. Now people in Japan are trying to survive with the very little food they have because of the huge wave that took away and destroyed the food they had.

                After both these terrible events, other problems have occurred. The first problem was that there were more than 300 aftershocks throughout Japan. Another thing that happened was that the nuclear power plant that Japan has, one of the huge barrels exploded so there is a possible nuclear gas/leak that can affect the people and kill them. In recent news, they stated that there was another earthquake after all the terrible stuff that happened and now Japanese people are predicting that there will be a tsunami. Hopefully the people are starting to evacuate and get to higher ground to be safe and so no more lives will be taken away.

                The United States are helping Japan to recover from the disaster by sending crates of food and supplies so that they can stay alive. A company that I saw who are helping Japan is the famous Apple Inc. If you go to their website, you will see a tab where you can donate money to help Japan after what happened. To the people, this shows that apple is a company who cares about what is happening around the world and more people will probably buy their products because of their hospitality. I hope Japan recovers and that no one else gets killed for whatever is to come.

First Strike review

                For this blog entry, I’m going to be talking about the release of the new DLC (downloadable content) pack for the Call of duty Black Ops game, First Strike. In this pack, they gave the gamer four new online maps and one new zombie map.

                One map which they released is called Berlin Wall. This map is divided into one half and the other half as if it was the Americans vs. the Germans. Treyarch made that you could cross to the other side three ways, two of the ways are on each side of the map, and the other one is in the middle. They also made an area of the map that if you stand in it, some turrets will start shooting at you which will kill you. I thought this map was pretty good and I kill a certain amount of players in this map.

                Another map they released is called Discovery. This map doesn’t really have a current location/setting. But my guess is that it is sort of the setting of one of the missions you play in the campaign which you are Reznov (a Russian) and are playing in the year 1945, and the setting is similar to Discovery. In Discovery, Treyarch added a new detail which is that there are some bridges that you can blow up and the floor actually falls and breaks. I thought this was very realistic and it gives a certain taste to the map.

                Another map they released is called Stadium. This map is set in a hockey stadium except you can get on the ice. There is nothing cool about this map and is pretty much the same as the maps that were released when Black Ops came out. In my opinion, this map was horrible and you can die so much.

                The last online map they made is called Kowloon. This map is set in one of the missions of the campaign called Numbers. You fight against players on roof tops in what looks like a Chinese town. I didn’t like this map that much because it was very big and I get lost many times, so the other team always kills me. But one thing I liked that Treyarch put in was that you can use a zip line to get from one place to another very quickly. Although this is cool and effective, you have a greater chance of being shot. In my opinion, this map can have its good sides and its bad sides. I will have to keep on playing in it to get my full opinion about the map.

                The best part of this map pack is the new zombie map they put into the game. The map is called Ascension and is set in a soviet Russian space station. Treyarch added many new weapons and designs that made this zombie map so fun and enjoyable. One main thing they added was new weapons. They added a weapon called the Gersh Device which is a black hole that sucks in the zombies. I thought this was an awesome weapon as well as a hilarious one too. Just seeing the zombie walking backwards into the black hole is so funny. Another new weapon they added was the Matroushka Dolls which are like those dolls which you take half of its body out and another smaller one is inside and you keep on removing the dolls until you get to a tiny one. In the game, when you pop out one of the dolls, the player throws the dolls and the dolls will explode. Like there are several, there are several explosions. This weapon I didn’t not like because it isn’t good to kill zombies. One detail they added in this new map is something called landers. There is only one lander but you can use it from three different locations. When you use it, you go up in the air and then land in an area in which you started the game in. This saves you when you are crowded by zombies and there is no escape by foot. Another detail Treyarch added was color. When I say color, I mean that when you start the game, you start on a lander and land in a room (which is the same room in which you land when you use a lander). When you land, you see that everything is in black and white. When I saw videos of this on YouTube, I thought that persons TV had color problems. But if you turn on the power in the game, everything gets colorful. When I saw this, I thought it was something so cool and I never had thought about something like that. All these things combined made this zombie map so fun and cool.

                After reading this blog entry, I hope I encouraged people to buy the First Strike map pack and try out the new online maps and the new zombie map. I really recommend this DLC and I hope Treyarch will create more DLC packs with better online maps and better zombie maps.

Call of Duty zombies

                For this blog entry, I’m going to be writing about the game mode in the Call of Duty series which is zombies. When Treyarch created World at War (Call of Duty 5), they made all the things you would normally see in a call of duty, campaign, multiplayer etc. Then, Treyarch wanted to take the Call of Duty game to the next level and they added zombies.

                When zombies came out in World at War, Treyarch put one zombie map only just to see if the gamer liked it. Turns out that everyone, including me, loved the new zombie game mode. Treyarch herd this satisfaction and decided to create another zombie map with more things to do and more areas to explore. When that map was released, gamers played it immediately and loved it. Treyarch then decided to make ANOTHER zombie map which the gamer could explore even more areas and could actually go outside of the house they started in. Although this map was the biggest one of all and had slight changes, it was my least favorite. After the third zombie map being released for a while, Treyarch created the last zombie map in World at War which was the best zombie map out of the other three. The reason is because the map was big but not as big as the 3^rd map. Also, there was a lot of space to run around and escape the zombies. Another thing they added was the pack a punch machine which would upgrade the player’s weapon so that it would be more powerful and kill the zombies.

                While Treyarch developed the new maps, they also developed new weapons. The new weapon that I liked the most was the wonderwuffen (wonderful weapon in German). This gun released an electric blast that would kill up to 20 zombies with one bullet. This helped a lot because it was easier to escape if you were trapped in a corner with a million zombies on top of you, than to use a pistol. Another good weapon that I liked was the ray gun. Although this gun was already invented in the first zombie map, it is still one of my favorite weapons. This gun would deliver a laser blast which at the beginning rounds, it would kill with one shot. Once you get to the high rounds, the ray gun will take two, three, or four shots to kill them. But this weapon still helps to kill the zombies and survive as long as possible.

                I thought this game mode that Treyarch made was very fun and creative and it’s something to do if you’re bored of playing team death match online. Hopefully Treyarch will keep on making this zombie mode for the games to come.