• 24Apr 08

  Best 360 error. Ever!

  So as I put Assassins Creed into my XBOX 360 I get an error that says (in multiple languages):

  To play this disc, put it in an Xbox 360 console.

  I think I may need to bring my 360 to a psycologist because it seems rather confused about what it is. I have tried asking it what it actually thinks it is, but it just responds with a funny fan noise. Hopefully this is an issue that my 360 can work out in therapy.

  • Posted Apr 24, 2008 7:05 pm PT
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• 20May 07

  Achievements

  Gears of War did alot of little things right. One of these things was how they handled achievements. I like the idea that some of their achievements unlocked items, like pictures. I am not asking for anything big from companies, just a little recognition for things that I completed. I like the idea of getting gamer pics from difficult achievements, and possibly a theme for completing them all. Other items could include unique in-game items or skins. I think Oblivion could have done this with their horse armour. Overall, I would just like to see a little more thought put into achievements and any implications they may cause for games (no matter how minor).
  • Posted May 20, 2007 12:55 pm PT
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• 9Sep 06

  Superfund Sites

  For the past few days I have had the opportunity to do first hand field work at a superfund site.  While I have done laboratory work with samples an experiments from superfund sites, actually going out and seeing one has made me realize how bad some of them are.

  For those not familiar with Superfund, it is a government program that spends your tax dollars and industry taxes to clean up environmental disasters left by companies.  Many of these sites are almost fully funded by the government due to the inability of the old owners to pay, inability to prove liability, or the inability to get money from the owners.

  I knew the site that I was going to be working at was going to be bad, with all the high concentrations of creosote and other random chemicals that got left behind and dumped into the river.  It amazed me at how much money they have spent trying to clean up and contain the spill, putting in new soil, trying to regrow native plants, and how long they expected the cleanup to take (50 years).

  The most amazing thing was that despite all this, no plants will grow.  They have spent many years and millions of dollars, but everything they plant, dies.  They have even put in irrigation systems, but none of the plants survive.  At the site, there is a retaining wall to contain most of the chemicals, and the concentrations in the wall are about 100 times that outside the wall, but even outside the wall nothing will grow.

  You can even see were the plume of contaminants ended because everything outside of the plume is green, and everything inside is dead.  They have done studies on the fish and have found high leves of contaminants in them that probably originated from my site.

  The goal of our research is to see if the microbial communities can be stimulated to increase degradation of the chemicals and decrease the amount of time and money to clean the site.  There are many metabolites present within some of the wells which suggests that it is highly possible.

  I am just amazed that somebody could have willingly did this to the environment.  I can understand that at the time, most people did not know how harmful creosote and many of the other hazardous materials they were using were, but it was well know that some ammonia solutions were.  Alot of the known contaminants, at the time, were not dumped in the river, but just right next to it (dumping them in the river was illegal).  The ones they did not know about went straight into the river and have greatly damaged the wildlife, and probably half the people that drink from it (and there are alot of people that do).

  Something that is interesting is that the company that created the site I did some field work at also has done this at other sites in other states as well.

  The thing that bothers me the most, is that the harmful waste they knew about should have been treated, but laws did not mandate that when most of the waste was dumped.  Even without laws, people should still have atleast an ethical or moral obligation not to purposely try to screw over our planet.

  • Posted Sep 9, 2006 12:21 pm PT
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