Laboratory of Mathematics and Writing

New Millennium: Y2K Era Those of you that are ready to hit middle age, or even already there and even past it, will instantly associate "Y2K" with the global bug of doom that was supposed to occur the moment we entered the year 2000. Hence, Y2K for the year 2000. Nothing happened. We even tested this theory as kids by typing "2000" into every date field just to see if anything will crash. Not exactly the most scientific expirement, but it did assuage our fears a bit. The year 2000 arrived and no major global catastrophe happened. There where a few important incidents that caused financial problems[1], but no planes fell out of the sky because of it. Aside from that scare, growing up during the Y2K era was a whole lot of fun. Credit is Due First, let me give credit to a Youtuber that goes by the name of "Life of Slice". He developed a brilliant v...

The Prince of Darkness When I was a young lad, I got into nu metal. It started off with KoRn, then Slipknot, System of a Down, Kittie, Powerman 5000, Static-X, it was awesome. Then, the Osbournes reality telivision show came on. It was centered around John "Ozzy" Osbourne and his family and all the crazy antics they did. They frequently refered to Ozzy as a rock and heavy metal legend and that he was "the Prince of Darkness". I thought that was cool, so I went out and bought the first Ozzy album I could get my hands on. It just so happens that the first album is the "Randy Rhoads Tribute" live album. I was instantly hooked. I went out and listened to Black Sabbath and Ozzy albums and songs. Anybody that's into rock or metal will tell you that the genre of heavy metal was founded by Black Sabbath, with Ozzy as the singer. I don't need to say anything further on just how legendary Black Sabbath and Ozzy are. For my ...

Jade Empire I remember purchasing this twenty years ago. As I was purchasing it, the guy at the register wholeheartedly recommended it saying "I really like this game!". It made me eager to play it. As soon as I got home and placed the disk in the drive and began playing, I was very well pleased. Jade Empire is an enjoyable action/adventure game with some RPG elements in a setting that doesn't take place often enough in video games. Teenage Tragedy I played this game to the very last mission. Then tragedy struck. My Xbox console died and could no longer play anything. I don't recall what caused its death, maybe the cpu just simply expired. In any case, I was no longer able to continue playing Jade Empire or Splinter Cell (I was playing them concurrently) and see those games to the end. Talk about a case of blue balls; double, in fact. Now, twenty years later, I am able to finish what I started all those years ago. I still...