Intresting Passtimes - Shogi

So, I thought today I'd share with you all one of my favorite games (although admittedly I dont get to play it much and am not real flash at it yet)

One of the greatest board games ever made, Shogi.

After all, whats better then chess?

Japanese chess!

Heres a little fun fact for you people who think that the western version couldnt be beat just because, International chess as you know is not english but is in fact from India.

So despite the fact that Shogi is still more or less Chess, what makes the game so different?

Well for starters, its far more complex then regular chess, theres a rating given to games (Game-tree complexity) based on how many possible moves there are at any given time from start to finish, and other factors and whatnot.

Chess has a rating of 123, whereas Shogi has a rating of 226.

So there are more moves and more things to consider at any given time in Shogi.

Defense is more important then it is in chess, and players will spend the opening of the game setting up different 'castles' or defense formations, before going on the offensive, dont let that fool you however, the game is far more agressive and offensive then chess.

the Yagura Castle formation, one of the more popular ones,
takes around 12 moves to setup if I remember correctly

Aside from having some different pieces with different movement, and a bigger board, and a few more pieces (20 as opposed to chess's 16) the biggest change in Shogi is the ability to 'drop' pieces.

Or 'Deepstrike that ****' if you're a terrible person like me

picture this but way cooler

Any enemy piece you capture, you can drop back onto the board as your own piece instead of moving that turn, the only two limitations being that you cant drop a pawn into a spot that will give you an immdiate checkmate on your opponent (however you can do so with any other piece) and the other being you cant drop a pawn into a row that you already have a pawn in.

That particular rule is quite intresting, if you do drop a pawn into a row that you already have a pawn in, you immdiatly lose the game, no exceptions, and when you do lose this way, it is considered ettiquiet to say to the fouler, the phrase 'Nifu' which translated more or less means 'your an idiot, you lose'

What a game.

Even more intresting, is that reading this you would consider this an amatuer mistake, but even professionals lose this way on a regular basis, with even championship games going down like that.

Habu Yoshiharu
 one of the best shogi players of all time

Its really this ability to drop pieces that really opens things up, and most beginners dont really take advantage of it, but really good players will be utilizing it alot.

Since you can capture pieces back and forth, material advantage is alot less important in Shogi as it is in Chess, so you can be more daring and take certain risks you wouldnt in Chess, making for a much more fun heated game, dont get it wrong though, its still just as important to be wise and patient in Shogi, perhaps even more so.

So, how are the pieces different, well lets go into it in a little more detail, you have fuhyo or pawns which are the same as in chess, except they cannot take pieces diagonally, they can only ever move forward no matter what, and they dont get to move forward twice on their first turn like they can in chess.

Then you have 2 Keima or Knights/Horses as you know them which are similar to chess, but they can only jump forward 2 squares and 1 to the side, meaning they only ever have 2 possible moves, and they can never move backwards



Then you also have 2 Kyosha or Lance's, which can only ever move straight forward, but may do so as many spaces as they like.



Next you have 2 Ginsho's or Silver Generals which can move 1 space diagonally in any directions, or forwards.



After that is 2 Kinsho's or Gold Generals which can move 1 space in any direction except diagonally backwards (golds are the ****)



After that you have 2 different 'power pieces' as I call them.

The first is a Hisha, otherwise known to everyone as a rook, or castle, and it works exactly the same as it does in regular chess, and is easily the most dangerous piece in the game, and you only ever get one (unless you capture your opponents one and turn it against him)

The second piece is the Kakugyo, or bishop, and again works exactly the same as it does in regular chess, and again you only ever get one.

Both the Rook and Bishop are very important and work better in different situations, but the rook is usually better offensivly and some defense setups use the bishop as part of their formation, so its usually better on defense.



or you could just teach your cat to play for you.



And finally you have the Osho/Gyokusho (depending on what side you are) which is the king, and works just like the King in chess.

Another Important difference in Shogi is Promoting.

In Chess your pawns can Promote if they reach the other side of the board, and have a choice of pieces to choose to become.

In shogi, Pretty much every piece in the game can promote by simply getting into the last three rows of the board (from your perspective), or put simply, your opponents starting zone.

Just about everything will promote into a gold general, except for the two power pieces, who will gain the ability to choose to either move as per they normally would or move 1 space in any direction just as a king would, this is alot better then it probably sounds.



This will help simplify things











I could keep going on about the rules, but if you really want to know more, you'll probably learn it better here -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogi-

Good old wikipedia, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjNyLB6jWrw



Alternativly, if you happen to be lucky (or unlucky) enough to know me, you can always come play a game with me and I'll teach you everything you need to know, I love playing shogi, and I'd love to play with you!

If you think you can handle this shit



Its great to have a fun passtime that is not only a game but also really engages your brain.

Fun Facts and Musings - THE craziest animal in the world

Ok, so following on from last time, we have one animal thats so crazy, it gets its own post.

The Honey Badger.

Sounds kinda cute huh?

Well anyone who knows that name wont agree, and anyone thats come face to face with one of these suckas will probably go pale at the very mention of the name.

If there god is out there, theres no way he didnt create this asshole of an animal for his own personal enjoyment. (unless it was to say to satan, hey man you aint worth shit)



No Wolverine, go home.



Now the honey badger is a smallish badger like creature (probably closer to a wolverine really, and much better then the wolverine you all know) that doesnt really look that tough and again its pretty small, how much harm could it possible do?



Well lets just start with this, theres a video out there of a Honey Badger that happens upon a Puff Adder, an extrememly agressive, deadly and poisonous snake, it has the highest kill rate on humans out of any snake in Africa, you dont mess with a Puff Adder.

Well did the Honey Badger listen?

No, it did not.

It went right up to the Adder, who was eating, and took the Adders food right out of its mouth, and then sat down to eat said food right in from of the Adder, like what, what are you gonna do huh?

Now of course the Adder could have let it go, but you dont play anything but hardball in Africa, so it attacked the Badger, which earn it a swift death, but not after biting the Badger right in the face and injecting it with enough venom to kill 5 fully grown men.

Probably feeling pretty pleased with himself the Badger starts eating the Adder, and he gets about halfway through before he keels over from the poison and dies.

Not a bad effort right?

Well the Badger clearly thought so, because a few hours later he gets right back up again and finishes off the Adder, and goes on his merry way to see what laws of the universe he can break next.

You'll have to excuse me here but there is no other way to describe this animal other then he simply does not give a fuck.

or a shit, or anything.
ANYTHING.

Thats just the tip of the ice burg, remember it lives in Africa, where everything will kill you and nowhere is safe, unless you are a Honey Badger.

It has no known predators, yes thats right in badass africa EVERYTHING is too scared to go near this tiny tiny little ball of death.

It does not know fear, literally.(listed in the Guiness world book of records as being the most fearless animal in the world)

It will charge and fight ANYTHING, from lions, to cars, to elephants for fucks sake, thats like a size ratio of a million to one.

The honey badger is about 23-28 centermeters high and 68-75 long and wheighs around 15ish kilograms.
Male African Elephants are about 4 Meters tall and can wheigh over 6000 kilograms.

looking kinda scared there buddy.

It doesnt matter who the fuck you think you are, or who you actually are, you make eye contact with this demon beast and you are going to die.

This thing does not fuck around, it doesnt just fight things like lions, it kills them, if they dont manage to run away that is, and it does it in the most insane way.

If your around the size of this badger, it will eviserate you with its ridculous teeth and claws, nothing new there, but if your a larger animal it will run underneath you, and provided you have them, cut your balls right the fuck off.

Then you die from a mixture of blood loss and humilation, luckily theres no one else around to see you die in this most embarrsing fashion since they are all dead too.

Lifes tough.

They are called Honey Badgers because they sure do love honey, and how do they get it?

They just waltze right up to a beehive and stick their face right in there and eat till they're done.

Nevermind that hundreds of bee's are constantly stinging it the entire time, it doesnt even notice.

This thing cant feel pain, or fear, or anything seemingly, mercy is right out.

We're gonna need guns... Lots of guns...

Now what about humans?

If you were to go out for a bit of a walk in Africa, I'd call you an idiot.

If you were to even go to Africa, I'd call you an idiot.

If you were to go out without a gun, for every single animal in Africa, I'd call you an idiot, and that is alot of guns.

People often run into this thing, and probably think, whats the worst that can happen, we're humans, we're smart, we use tools.

Those people often lose their testicles.

Arrows, spears, machetes, these things rarely pierce the hide of a Honey Badger, hell if you want to take one down use one of these.

Yes thats about the only thing that will do it, and as a helpful hint to those unfamiliar to the territory or how to deal with a Honey Badger, the South African military named that particular APC pictured above after the Honey Badger (Ratel, the African name for the Honey Badger)

So what have we learned today kids?

Stay the hell out of Africa!

My take on planking.

So, its pretty big news recently (even though planking’s supposed to be really old) but everyone seems to be all riled up by the latest craze, planking.

This is what they're all talking about right?

Now the common viewpoint is that plankers are wankers, and everyone hangs shit on plankers calling them stupid idiots and all the rest of that fun stuff, and who knows maybe they're right, but people have done dumber stuff. (Like get on the A-teams bad side, never a wise decision)



oh sure, they look happy now...



But is it really all that bad?

Well first up, I think people are over-reacting a fair bit, most people probably hear about planking in a negative light to begin with.

"Man planking is so dumb, they all deserve to go to prison'

"What’s planking?'

Insert rest of hypothetical conversation here.

So the accepted norm is of course to hate plankers and hang shit on it, so everybody does it, just because everyone is doing it, and of course most people don’t realize it, or they will deny it.
And that’s cool, who am I to tell you how you really think and feel.

But I think people are going overboard, and hating on things just because it gives them a chance to be all high and mighty and look down on people, everyone does that at some point, hell I'm doing it right now.

So you can go ahead and hate on plankers if you want, its unnecessary and doesn’t achieve anything except for your own personal satisfaction, if you’re cool with that then good for you.

You might also want to go look in a mirror while you're at it.

But let’s look at planking in a different light now, is it really all that bad, is it really worth all the hate it gets?

The common argument is that people die from planking, now I heard somewhere that only 2 people have died so far, and a quick search on Google didn’t give me any answers unfortunately, but at any rate the number is probably not very high.

What about other things of such nature, how about mountain climbers, again according to a quick Google search, 142 people have died from climbing Mount Everest.

Does that mean that everyone that climbs Mount Everest is a dickhead, an immature loser who deserves to die because of engaging in a stupid brainless fad?

How about rock climbing?
Again according to a quick Google search around 2500 have died rock climbing since 2008, does that make them stupid? Does that make them bad people?

What about skateboarding, that’s pretty much the same as planking, they even go out to look for cool/dangerous things around the place to trick off, and people get sponsored and make a living off that.

So, who’s to judge that planking is bad but rock climbing is good?
They are the fundamentally the same thing though, just a fun thrill seeking activity that doesn’t harm anyone but the person doing it, and even then the risk isn’t much higher then it is to, I dunno drive to school or cross the road.

Look at you sharon, thats sooo dangerous!

What about planking as an art form?
Well I don’t know much about that so I won’t get into it.

The real issue here is one of free will.

You can never take someone’s free will away, the moment you do, you've just violated someone in the worst possible way.
If I want to go around planking, then I'll go around planking and if you try to tell me how immature or stupid or deserving of bad things happening to me I am, well then you're a judgemental piece of shit, plain and simple.
You see people posting up stuff on the net like 'All plankers are dickheads and if I see you planking ima smash you'
Well if you're one of those people, you really need to have a good hard think about yourself.

And it’s impossible to not judge people in some way or another of course, but this doesn’t fall into that category.

So to sum it all up, you can’t take away peoples free will and you have no right to hate on them for what they do in their free time.

Everyone hates on plankers, but psychology says that even though you will at first, you don’t have to follow the crowd, so don’t.

Fun facts and musings - you guys would not believe some of the crazy shit the animal kingdom is capable of

So, animals are often thought of as inferior to humans, which is understandable since our brains are so much more developed then theres.
But who needs brains when you can live forever? or make other animals spontainisly combust? or punch faster then a bullet? or have a byakugan? or being able to go toe to toe with god?

Yeah, theres some animals out there in this world, and they make us humans look like shit...

Like the mantis shrimp.

This little shit might look fairly flamboyant, but as far as animals go, you dont want to mess with this bastard.
Basically its a shrimp with mad eye sight and stuff (far better then humans, they can see in our spectrum as well as ultraviolent and infared and stuff, and can see 12 primary colors instead of our 3 apparently), you can look up the other details about it, but the main feature of these shirmps is their claws.



What a lovely pair of eyes you have...



Some specis have spear claws, others have what are known as 'smashers' and thats what they do.

They can punch with an acceleration of 10,400 G's (whatever the hell that means) and their punch can move at 23 meters per second from a standstill. (roughly 83 kilometers per hour if my calculations are correct-sound like a nerd)

The acceleration of a .22 calibre bullet basically.
The claw itself is more or less a hammer claw, and it has a sharp inside, but that doesnt matter when you can punch like a gun.
As you can imagine, this is a ridiculous amount of force and can pretty much kill anything in its size range that it hits (remember this is underwater, you probably cant even punch hard enough underwater to even hurt yourself)

If that wasnt enough, the strike creates whats known as a cavitation bubble (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavitation) basically it creates a vacuum or whatever, and then the bubble collapes in on itself.

This particular bubble created by the mantis shrimp has a force of 1500 newtons, again comparable to a bullet.

The force of this collapsing bubble can kill animals outright by itself, failing that it usually knocks them unconcious, so even if this the claw misses, the pain doesnt.

Of course the force of this bubble will still hit anything that gets hit by the claw anyways, so basically, your done.

You wont usually see one of these suckers in an aqaurium because, while it is uncommon for them to do so, these bad boys can break the glass in one shot.

Theres a similar shrip called the bullet shrimp, which also creates thie cavitation bubbles and, well basically it shoots pressure at other animals to kill them.

My interpritation of a bullet shrimp.

So, whats better then having gun claws with pressure bubbles?

How about being a japanese honey bee?

So, you wouldnt really pick it at first since bees and hornets are pretty much the same thing, but in japan, bee's and hornets FUCKING HATE EACH OTHER, and are always fighting.

kinda reminds me of the history of asia (ohohoho I went there!)

They both pretty much exsist just to kill each other.

Now before I go on, I want you to keep in mind that the hornets in japan are ridiculous, the largest in the world, and cause more deaths among humans that all the other animals in japan combinded (and theres some crazy shit going on in japan)

So, how does the japanese honey bee deal with sass from these hornets?

well when the hornets send a scout out to find the bee's, the bee's lure said scout hornet into their nest.

Then they all pile into the nest, as many as possible, until there is literally no room to move at all.

Then they all start to vibrate their wings and very quickly the middle of this shitfest gets heated up to 117 degrees farenheit, or 47 degrees celcius, which will burn the wasp to a crisp.



shit...



Sure maybe a few bee's die (and thats only if things go wrong, since the bee's own limit is closer to 50, so even the ones in the middle can usually survive) but they get the job done. (talk about going out with a bang... except there is no bang... well its kinda like... well... lets see you do better then)

Next time you think your hard just because you went into a mosh pit, why dont you go pick a fight with some of these bad dudes.

So, whats better then being able to kill people by setting yourself and them on fire?
how about not dying at all.

Humanity has always dreamed of, and even searched for, immortality.
But its been under their noses the entire time.

There is a specis of jellyfish known as the 'Immortal Jellyfish'.

Now you'll have to forgive their unoriginal name, because hey, at least somebody finally gave an animal a name that is actually accurate.

I'm looking at you flying snakes, and dragonflys, and wild ass's (just a donkey), and sand dollars, and killdeers (just a tiny little bird), and rabid wolf spiders (actually very docile) and so on.



At least the Yeti Crab deserves its name... kind of...



This jellyfish is pretty normal, except that it can age backwards, and then forwards again, and backwards again, infinitly as much as it likes.

That doesnt mean it cant die though, since its still vunerable to disease, being hunted, and being too stupid to actually keep itself alive, but its possible for them to live forever. (well untill global warming kills them, lol)

Who knows how old some of them are nowadays?



Simply wear one of these on your head, and you'll live forever.



Not only that, scientist have been noticing an increase in their numbers lately, as well as the fact they are no longer happy being in the one spot and are spreading across the entire world.

Brace yourselves kids, they're coming.

Now most people are afraid of spiders, and I dont blame them, but what those people probably dont realize, is that while you can run, you cant hide.

Not from the jumping spider anyways.

Their eyes admittently arent as good as the mantis shrimp, but they are still pretty nuts.
They can see 4 primary colors, what that means is that they can see in ultraviolet.
Now, we humans use ultra-violet light to determine many things we wouldnt normally be able to.

We use them to find things that are invisible to the naked eye, things like blood, and semen (I'd make a law and order joke there, but theres already enough of those to go around)

At some point, people figured out that all those old ancient greek statues were actually painted and not white as they appear today, yeah they used ultra-violet light to figure that one out.

So jumping spiders can see things that are normally invisible, as well as being able to see through time, they can see camoflagued animals as if they were strobe lights, and unless I am mistaken, have xray vision.

Yeah their eyes are pretty good.

Oh, they can also see in 360 degrees.

Now whats left...? oh yeah something about an animal going toe to toe with god?
Well thats abit of an exaduration, you'll have to forgive me.

Theres another animal that probably deserves a spot on that 'animals that dont live up to their name' list above.

Believe it or not, theres an animal called the Jesus Christ Lizard.

Now it sure as shit doenst live up to its name, it cant do anything that jesus could do.

Well, except for one thing.

The Jesus Christ lizard can walk on water.

Well, it can run on water anyways.

I wonder if it was named the Jesus Christ lizard for this ability, or simply because thats exactly what you'll say when you see this happening in real life?
either way, theres not really much else to say about these guys, so I wont.

Now there is one more animal I'm going to write about, but its sooooo good it gets its own post.
Till next time ;)

Distant Worlds, Nearby Adventures

So, for those of you who dont know the name Nobuo Uematsu, he's a composer and song-writer famous for his works in the video game industry, specifically all of the Final Fantasy music that gamers love so much.
He did the entire sound track for final fantasys 1-9 (and a bunch of the spin off titles) and has partially contributed to the soundtracks of the rest, and most of squares other games aswell
He worked for Square Enix (formerly known as Square, and then Squaresoft) for 20 years, before breaking off and making his own company and becomming a freelancer (what a boss)

So basically, this guy has done literally thousands of songs, and so many of them are masterpieces, and he's still going.

You'd think there'd be a limit to your creativity, to how many songs you can make before they all start sounding the same but no, he just keeps on going.

And he can even (and does) weave a theme and nature subtly into a soundtrack, and he's covered pretty much every style of music.

He is quite possibly the best composer who's ever lived, and is simply limited by the lack of exposire video games have had compared to other mediums (at least untill recently).

Never the less, his music is famous and has even been played at the olympics, has inspired so many other artists, has been groundbreaking (I believe, and I could be wrong, that the one winged angel song from FF7 was the first piece of videogame music to have coherent lyrics) has been in time magazine, has created his own band, and does concerts the world over.

Out of the many of those, there is a concert performance titled 'Distant Worlds' that has been touring the world, where nobuo has teamed up with Arnie Roth, who is some famous grammy award winning dude.

I was lucky enough to get to go see this as it visited the Sydney Opera house, thanks to my bud mandy who is a boss and organized this amazing adventure for us and did a really good job, thanks mandy!

And so off we went!

We took 2 cars, the others went through some amazing place with an amazing bakery or something, but we slept in (allright!)

How cool are we?

So me rose and scabe ended up going down by ourselves where me and scabe gave rose an introduction to Final Fantasy music as she'd never played the games :(

And we ended up arriving in Sydney about an hour before we had to meet up at the Opera house.

We stayed at tobys place, cause toby is the fucking king and makes everything better.

Anyways we headed off to the Opera house, all dressed up (well some of us) and I was touting my cool new shoes (see elsewhere in the blog).

On the way we saw this guy here, and he was having waaaay too much fun.

So we got to the Opera House, chilled out for abit (well I say that but everyone was excited) and took photos and stuff.



damn man, I look like such a creeper



my little family <3



Who is that? thanks to terrible 3ds camera, and crazy ninja shadow skills, you'll never know!
Pretty cool cosplay, good job penelope.
whoops, now you know.



Anyways we got inside, got our seats and watched the magic begin.

I lasted about 10 seconds into the concert before I teated up.

Now you can all call me a faggot if you want, but if you have played the games, esp as part of your childhood, you'd understand.

Nobuo either thanking arnie roth, or begging no to be made to do a solo piece.

Looks like holding hands in a line is a pretty difficult task

Theres something magical about Nobuos works, they are full of emotion by themselves, but they also really draw you into whats happening in the games they are in, which themselves are well written and full of emotion.

Many people will say Final Fantasy VII is the only game to have ever made them cry, because you really get drawn in and care about whats going on, you really feel it, thanks to the game itself but also to Nobuos Magic (wizards are the shit guys, they are so good)

And I was lucky enough to meet this amazing man in person.

Most signings the person you meet is just like yeah whatever, but nobuo was so cheerful and really into it (even though he looks kinda bored in the photo, like he was really happy and smiling, except for when you took the photo, shouldnt it be the other way around? oh well, I cant really smile on demand for photos either)

.

I got my photo taken with him using my 3DS (which is probably the worst camera ever, but it can take photos in 3D) and he and the photographer were like hey this is a 3DS isnt it, and nobuo wanted to see the picture so I showed him and he started freaking out "WOW, THATS IN 3D, THATS SOOOOO COOL!"

Yeah take that everyone else in the line waiting, nobuo likes me best!

The photographer was getting really excited over it too, and he was pretty much the coolest looking guy I've ever seen, so I asked him if I could take a photo of him too, he was so happy.

sanji?

After the concert we had Korean BBQ.

yum.

So all in all it was an amazing concert which covered music from pretty much every ff game, including some preview music from FF XIV (not that anyone cares about anything in the series after X, since the original team responsable for all the FF's up to that point left square and made their own company called mystwalker).

I had a great time, and you could too if they ever come this way again

http://www.ffdistantworlds.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=46&Itemid=54

I just hope my not so distant adventure to distant worlds wont soon become distant memories, lost in the fog of my mind.