Interview: Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda Talks Digital Audio Fidelity and Recording in Analog | Sound & Vision

Interview: Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda Talks Digital Audio Fidelity and Recording in Analog | Sound & Vision

The problem with soccer

I'm not a big soccer fan…

Don't worry, this will not be a "soccer sux w0rst sport ever made!" thing. I just want to share my opinion of what have happened in my country in the past few weeks, the way people reacted to the great performance our soccer team did in the FIFA World Cup.

After being selected for the Group D in the World Cup of this year, well… it was hard not to feel very discouraged (at least for soccer fans, I really didn't give a hoot about it). The thing is, getting to the world cup had been already a challenge on itself, but the Group D was a whole other level of destiny (or the FIFA, who knows this days) telling us "Well, fuck you". It was labeled as the "Death Group" and rightfully so. Italy, England and Uruguay, all of them champions of the world cup previously and soccer potencies were in it… oh yeah, and Costa Rica.

Everybody thought (and with good reason) that we were going to be the punching bag for those teams, that it was impossible for us to even score one goal… how wrong they (or rather we, I wouldn't had bet 5 colones for my own country at the time) were.  At the end Costa Rica came invictous out of there, winning to Uruguay 3-1, to Italy 1-0 and drawing with England (which was ridiculous in my oppinion).

After that we also win to Greece on penalties after a very long and tiring match, were Costa Rica had to play with only 10 men after one of them was expulsed, Greece had 11 men still and it was clear the referee was on their side.

After the match they went on to quarter-finals (is that the correct term?) were they had to play against Holand… It was very close, but at the end Holand win us in penalties (after switching to another goal keeper who was clearly trained for that situation, that is).

Anyway… What I'm going to talk about is about the celebrations that took place after those victories, and even after the loss of yesterday.

I don't know if other countries of simmilar soccer quality than Costa Rica (such as Mexico for example)  celebrate to such a level after winning a world cup match, or after passing to the next fase of the thing, but I do find a little ridiculous  what happened here.

I did celebrate with my family and friends of course (even a not-fan of soccer like me felt very proud of what the team was doing), but they were small stuff, having a drink, going to eat, even some tears of joy (from the others, I didn't got to that point… well almost), hug each other, you know, celebrations as the ones you have when, geez I don't know, just, happy celebrations… simple things.

But not like what happened in San Jose.

(Im sorry if the images end up at the bottom, this Blogger app for android is just crap, I can't even choose where to put them).

There is this place in San Jose (the capital city of Costa Rica) called "La Fuente de la Hispanidad". It is and has always been a point of reunion for the people, politics propaganda and yes, celebrations, such as New Year and that kind of stuff. The place completely turn to red after each of the matches (because the soccer t-shirts), people singing the National Anthem, people crying, pleople drinking, everybody hugging each other, even if they were complete strangers.

It was truly a sight to behold, a whole country together, forgetting their problems and stuff. But, why to wait to a soccer match?

In my almost 19 years of living strictly in this country (that is, I have never visited other places besides what lies in our limits), I had never seen that amount of people singing the National Anthem at unison, being proud of their country, happy to be called "ticos", of being born here as they did in those ocasions.

Why doen't that happen on September 15th (independece day)? Yes there are celebrations , but on the schools, not in the streets, or at least not at the same level of winning a soccer match against Italy.

I may not be sure of how they celebrated the matches in Mexico, but I'm sure that they know that it isn't as important as being a free country.

Why isn't the country this united on May 4th (another patriotic day)? As I said before, is just ridiculous.

I was talking with a friend about it (a soccer fan), it has always been one of the resons I don't like soccer anymore (I used to be very passionate before turning 15), the way people become crazy neanderthals about the whole thing. He answered me "I'm actually embarrased of what other countries might think when they see this".

And I am too, honestly. Embarrased of what people of other countries think of us (I know I shouldn't care what other people think about me, but it's a whole country we're talking about). I believe I don't need to tell you about the amount of garbage you could find on the streets the following days. It was ridiculous for a country known for it's high  degree of ambientalism laws. (I know I have used the word "ridiculous" a lot, but I can't think of any other more suitable, I do need to get into some english class though).

I am, nevertheless very proud of what the Costa Rican soccer team accomplished in the World Cup, and even though it has all passed and I am starting to forget about soccer again, I will remember the good things of these past few weeks for a very, very long time… until they do something even greater, that is.

PURA VIDA!!!

Grinding for experience.

You know… I've been trying to get a job.

I got my highschool diploma on november 2013. That was 7 months ago people. I was already 18 at the time, so I could have started to look for a job right then. But I didn't. I had already apply for a test previously, a test that would determine wether I get to go to a university or not. The results were going to be ready in about a week, so I told myself that if I got a good grade then cool, let's do it, and if not, well, I was going to start looking for a job to take advantage of this year and put my diploma to work.

After two long processes of going through a filter of students I was left out, even though I got more than enough of what it was required.

So anyway I started looking for a job, kind of more confident about myself since everybody had told me that once you get your diploma you're supposed to get a whole lot of job opportunities. So, looking through some pages on the web I did find a buch of places to apply for a job where they only asked for the 9th grade diploma. "Ppfft this is going to be a piece of cake" I told to myself. I already got both 9th and 11th grade's diploma. But it's me who was getting a job, It was not going to be that easy.

They were also looking for people with experience… Wich I do not have. I just came out of highschool for christ's sake, how I'm supposed to have experience?!? I couldn't have got a job before… I was studying my ass off trying to get the goddamned title you're asking me for you to give me a job… Geniuses!!!

Whatever… I did found someplace where they were only asking for the 9th grade stuff and it did seem like a cool place to work so I sent my application.

About a week later they called me (surprisingly), telling me that I was going to be doing some kind of test to see if I was opt for the job or not, I gladly accepted and was scheduled to be there at 8 a.m.

Since I got stock in 7th grade I have always been one of the oldest in the class (not bigger, oldest), so I couldn't help but feeling a little intimidated when I got there. I knew there was going to be more people applying for the job, but I did not expect for everybody else to be around 25 to 30 years old (and obviously, with experience ).

Anyway the job we were applying for needed a lot of precision… since we were going to make medical supplies which required a lot of tiny pieces to be assembeled mannualy, so there was no room for mistake.

The first test was exactly that, testing our abilities by assembling some objects with the tiniest pieces of plastic I have ever seen, I was only 2 pieces away of completing the task (we were given 2 minutes to finish) but still, I was the one who got the farthest in the matter.

In the second test we were give a set of larger pieces to work with (like the size of lego blocks) but the instructions were displayed just briefly, they were different for each object (there were 3) and we only got 4 minutes.

This time I did finish along with other 3 guys, out of the total 15 who were there. At the end 7 of us got chosen to have an interview, to know us better and see if we really wanted to be there and what were our possibilities (or something). I was really nervous since it was my very first job interview, but nevertheless the schedule was very appropiate for myself and the place was really cool, so I was ok about it all, I did not lie to them when they asked me if I have had any previous job, of course. I even agree when they asked me if I was willing to travel to other countries!!!, because c'mon, who wouldn't?

So they told me they were going to call me eventually, but of course they didn't because… who in their right mind is going to employ a person who fulfills all the points in the board? But hey, wait!! He doesn't any experience!!! He prove capable in the practice, but not having a job before renders him useless!!!

My God. Seriously. The whole thing makes no sense at all. I will never be able to get any "experience" if I never get a job, and I will never get a job if I don't have any experience. Does the abilities of the person don't matter anymore, not even a highschool diploma (which is always at the top of the requirements) is enough to get a decent job?

That's why this country is going to hell. The whole system is just broken!!!

The newly elected president put this exact problem as one of his main concerns, but here I am, still waiting for something to be done about it!!! (This could actually be my own fault for actually trusting in a politian).

Anyway, if you took the time to read that, I'm very sorry, but thank you for giving me some of your time. I don't know if I should continue the Pokémon writeup, as it was becoming very tedius both to write and to read, and I guess that if I want do a good job I'll have to start all over again. Linkin Park's new record is already out so I may also begin with my writeup about their main records, but I'm not really a music crititician so I would eventually run out of words to analize them correctly.

Whatever is the case I hope to keep this thing going on for a while.

Currently Playing: Dragon Warrior

So! Nobody is actually reading this so I might as well just continue with it. I thought that my first entry should be about a videogame (what? I like videogames a lot, don't judge me!). I wont be doing a review or something like it, I'm not a videogame reviewer nor do I have the same talent as  this guy, but I will tell you my opinion of this particular game, my experience playing it and wether you should try it out or leave it aside (but again, I'm not reviewing it).

Anyway, as you can tell from the title, I'm currently playing a game that is considered by many (myself included) as the very first JRPG to ever grace existence. Let's see a little bit of hystory about this game first. Dragon Warrior was released in 1986 for the Famicom (or Family Computer, the japanese name of the NES). It also received a port for the MSX (noup, never played on one of those), and was later released (much later) in North America in 1989. Several remakes were made including one for the SNES(or rather the Super Famicom, as it stayed in Japan) and other for the Game Boy Color wich did make it to this side of the Pacific as "Dragon Warrior I & II", both versions with several improvements over the original including updated grafics, new translation on the GBC (prefer the original myself) and it tooked a lot less grinding to level up and get more money more quickly. There is supposed to be an Android version in development but I'm still waiting for it.

The game was inspired by other RPGs such as Wizardry and Ultima, wich were released before for PCs. So Enix created the game, got Akira Toriyama from Dragon Ball to draw the characters and enemies and BOOM! The game was a mayor succes in Japan and inspire itself the creation of other JRPGs, such as Phantasy Star, Mother (my favourite saga) and, of course it's main rival and competitor, Final Fantasy.

So if you were born in the mid 90's as myself you might be questioning "If it is so important and inspire blah blah, why haven't I heard from it before? ". Well I forgot to mention (or did I?) that Dragon Warrior was the name from it's north american localization, and the original title in Japan was Dragon Quest. The series continued with this name until the seventh installment on the PSOne. Dragon Quest VIII was released for the PS2 in 2005 (I think) with the original name of the saga in all territories as have every later game since .

And if you're an actual veteran in the videogaming ambit you might be questioning "What is this snot from 1995 talking about a game released 6 or 9 years before he was even born?! " Well, I'm actually very fond of classic games and love to playing them every time I have the chance to do it (read: if I find a nice emulator).I'm jocking, my cousin used to have a NES and a SNES back in 1999-2003, so I spent an important part of my childhood playing these games. Incredibly enough he also owned a PSOne back in the day but, there were very few games that I liked from it.

Anyway, I started playing this game almost a week ago. I already knew how clumsy it was and all the "press A, select talk, door, stairs" stuff, so I initially tought that after 10 minutes of playing I would be bored and would never touch it again. How wrong was I.

The game just got me. Yeah, it feels weird the first time you make yor character walk. Yes, is annoying to select every single action you do. Yes, leveling up is fucking hard, especially when the enemies you encounter give just 1 or 2 experience points, and the same amount of gold, but dammit the game is fun. I don't know what it was; maybe I had very low expectations of the game... no, it wasn't that, I really wanted to play the game even with the stuff that I already knew. The battle mechanics, being the very first JRPG, are simple as hell: you walk around on the world map, you get into random encounters, you hit the enemy 1 point at a time (at the beginning), you win, you get exp. point(s) and gold from it. If you loose you're taken back to the castle, but with half the gold you had at the moment of loosing. When you gain enough experience you level up and gain a little bit more strength, you may also learn a new spell, be it offensive or deffensive. With enough gold you can buy new and better equipment, wich will give a little boost to your strength and defense. That's it. Seriously.

The story is fairly simple, go rescue princess Gwaelin from the Dragon Lord's lair (wich is visible from the first time you step into the world map). Although I can't really judge this game because it's story, since the game was more focused on delivering a unique experience rather than an amazing story. Same goes with the music, the game does have some pretty catchy tunes, but since it came out originally in 1986 it sounds very blipping-blopping, but I can't really give it less points because of it.

So if someone came to ask me what do I love about this game, the only answer that comes to my mind (and only valid one, really) would be exactly because of that, it's simplicity.

I haven't make much advancement in the game itself, my character is at level 12, and have only visited 3 towns, counting the very first one, but so far, it has really make a good impression on myself. I'm also playing Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones along with it, and although FE takes more of my time, I always play a good 30 minutes of Dragon Warrior when I have the time, and it doesn't feel clumsy, antique, obsolete or any of those things anymore. I might even be enjoying more my first playthrough of this game, that I did with Final Fantasy one year ago and that is a lot to say, because everything that is annoying about Dragon Warrior was scraped from Final Fantasy for it to be a better game (and objetively, it is) and still, my experience playing Dragon Warrior, it's been one of the best of any 80's RPG I have played, including Mother and Final Fantasy I & III. Which one is the best? That's a tough question, since it all really depends on anyones personal tastes, so to finish this...

My opinion of this game... Well it is incredibly fun, and is really deserving of all the praises it has received along this years; being pretty much the starting point of a whole genre (or sub-genre) I think it did pretty well, and the fact  that after it have come amazing franchises, or even later installment of the saga with improved mechanics and a much better interface doesn't take any merit from it, even after all these years.

Would I recommend this game? Well, it depends. If you played the first Final Fantasy and couldn't stand it and went with the GBA version, then no, I wouldn't recommend this game to you. But, if you love RPGs and want to see how the japanese scene began, then go for it.

But I might be wrong. The best desition is yours when you give a few minutes to it and see wether is what you were looking for or not. So I guess the final word would be: give it a try anyway, that is when you will know. And if you have played the game: what is your opinnion about it? Do you love it? Do you hate it? Why? Tell me in the comments ;P

Again, if anyone took the time to read that, then thanks a lot and if you have any idea on what should I write about (since I have no clue) tell me in the comments, it can be a book, a song, an album, a music artist, another videogame, a TV show or a movie, I will gladly considerate your suggestion and give my thoughts on it!

Well, now that I'm here...

Hi. My name is Randy Valdivia López. I live in Costa Rica. I am currently 18 years old and have no idea what compels me to do this.
My english level is no very high, so you can expect a lot of gramatical errors, mispelled words, etc.
I'm not a good writer either (well, I think), the only wrintings I have ever done were a couple of stories (they were more kind of short tales) that I wrote when I was 8 to 12 years old. I used to believe that when I grew up I would retake them, make the story the hell of a lot more interesting, give it a proper ending and see if I could make something out of it.
Back in 2010, when I was 15, I told to myself "You know... I think I should at least give it a go and try to finish it"
I did retake it. The original writings were still somewhere around and so I begin. Longstory short: I wrote aproximately 10-15 chapters, and quit. The new version would be pretty big and I thought of making 7 books out of it. The notes with the characters names,backgrounds, the order of the events and stuff like that are lost to this day since almost a year ago. I'm not really good with names, so I took a look to the ever-trusted internet and look for them (in latin or something), and the main character's name was going to be Cervus, wich has to do something with the color red.
The other writing was an essay that I did for my last high-school year (read: 2013), I HAD to do it, because if I did'nt I would be doing 5th grade spanish this year all over again. So, they gave us 5 different subjects that were affecting the society of my country. The first thing that came to my mind was "Goverment Corruption". In Costa Rica, at least 5 times a week you see something about it in the news. That is, if you do watch the news. "See? That what happens when you stay in your room playing Chrono Trigger or haging out with your friends you stupid asshole, now pay for it!" I told to myself. Of course, being the lucky bastard that I am 50% of the time, one of the subjects in the test had the title "Bullying in the children of our society". I got the highest grade of all of my generation, but of course I did not get any kind of recognition because I did not got one-fucking-hundred, like other students got in biology, math, etc.
Anyway, this blog (if I ever continue with it) is not going to be related to any of the above mentioned things (well, if I retake Cervus' story I'll told you about it), rather, I'll talk about the things that I like, be it videogames ( well I did metion a videogame above), books that I'm currently or have already read and music that I like (or do not like) to hear.
If something get to happen in my life (not that anybody cares about it) I would write some of it here. Also, you should know that I'm doing all of this from my cellphone (not the greatest piece of tecnology) so most likely my posts won't have images, and if they do have it will be two images tops, so almost all of what you get to read here will be simple, boring text (that is if you don't like to read).
So if anybody took the time to read all that, thanks a lot and I hope you come back regularly to see new entries (again, if I actually get to do them).