Saddling Up in Assassin's Creed III

The latest Assassin's Creed game (Assassin's Creed Syndicate) lets you drift on a horse-drawn carriage in the streets of London, but Assassin's Creed III is the last game in the franchise where your character can ride a horse. This is me saddling up on all main maps in the game: Davenport Homestead, the Frontier, Boston, and New York. I excluded both Benedict Arnold Missions and The Tyranny of King Washington DLCs.

Davenport Homestead....02min20sec
Frontier...........................05min09sec
Boston............................04min19sec
New York.......................02min28sec
----------------------------------------------------------
Total...............................13min56sec

I'm done.

Strolling Through Assassin's Creed III

Strolling through all the walkable locations in Assassin's Creed 3 (AC3): Davenport Homestead, the Frontier, Boston, and New York. I excluded both Benedict Arnold Missions and The Tyranny of King Washington DLCs.

Davenport Homestead....08min07sec
Frontier...........................25min49sec
Boston............................16min17sec
New York........................09min34sec
----------------------------------------------------------
Total...............................59min47sec

I'm done.

Sprinting Through Assassin's Creed III

So I sprinted through all the walkable locations in Assassin's Creed 3 (AC3): Davenport Homestead, the Frontier, Boston, and New York. I excluded both Benedict Arnold Missions and The Tyranny of King Washington DLCs.

Interestingly enough, Both AC3 and Assassin's Creed Rogue's New York maps are about the same distance when sprinting through them from south end point to the wall boundary in the north at about 4 minutes.

Davenport Homestead....02min33sec
Frontier...........................07min49sec
Boston............................05min19sec
New York.......................04min02sec
----------------------------------------------------------
Total...............................19min43sec

I'm done.

Who Are We?

There was a TV show called Ed back in the day about a Bowling-Alley lawyer. The premise was that on the same day he got fired from his job (for drafting a contract with a misplaced comma, costing his law firm $1.6 million), he comes home to find his wife sleeping with a mailman. His wife made a point it wasn't their mailman. He spends some time back to his hometown in Stuckeyville, Ohio, reuniting with old friends and his high school crush. He decides to win her heart, move to Stuckeyville, buy a rundown bowling alley and open his own law firm.

In one episode, Ed was hired by a psychologist who was sued for allegedly scamming people. The psychologist explains to Ed that this was part of his research (I think it was). He asks him to think of a number between 1 to 10. The psychologist guessed correctly: 7. The psychologist asked Ed again to think of a number between 1 to 100. He guessed correctly: 37.

Statistically, 7 and 37 are the most common numbers people think of from 1-10 and 1-100, respectively. In the lawsuit, the psychologist sent e-mails to a distribution list, predicting which team would win in a ball game. All he did was send half the people a prediction and the other half another team winning. On the winning half, he divides it again and so on. The people who were randomly placed in the 'always' winning distribution list surmised this guy as the real deal. Some people started betting real money on the games. This is part of a general phenomenon known as subjective validation.

Subjective validation occurs when two or more unrelated or random events are perceived to be related because a belief, expectation, or hypothesis demands a relationship. This phenomenon is also related to the Barnum effect, where individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. It provides us a partial explanation to why people believe in horoscopes, astrology, and personality tests.

I recently read a horoscope infograph on Facebook, describing the personalities of each sign. I scrolled down to my sign and thought "that kind of describes me." I read the other signs. They are just as vague as the others and might as well describe me. Some of them, at least.

This got me thinking about personality tests. I know of people who are vehemently against religion, pseudoscience and supernatural things, yet welcome the Myers Briggs test with open arms. 

Are people just inclined to seek patterns and meaning regardless of religion, creed, belief system or lack thereof? Do people take these readings and personality test results at face value or aspire to represent them in a self-fulfilling prophetic way? What makes us us? What make me me? What makes you you?

I'm done.

The New Job

1. In the IT world, especially companies dealing with government and sensitive info, security is everything. It's the third day of my new job and they're still processing my badge. I have my laptop setup, but I can't login without my badge. So I'm reading and re-reading documents my coworker printed for me about the programs we support. Once I'm done, I stare at the wall for hours. Hence my new posts.
2. Had lunch with a former co-worker and her co-worker earlier. It's been a while since we left that really awful experience for a job at that company, which still holds the title as the worst, period, job, period ever, period. She's still in the area so it's nice catching up with her.
3. I've come to depend on Facebook for such a long time that I expect I could find long lost friends I haven't talked to or seen in many years, that I forgot to factor in them probably not having an account.
4. I brought my iPad mini to work, hoping I could up my work count for NaNoWriMo, but no. I forgot to install the Google Doc app for editing. I can't connect to my work wifi without a login (which is probably a good idea as they'd know what I've been accessing at work). The nearest Starbucks is 3.4 miles away. I'll just make sure to download it when I get home.
5. My Starbucks card's gold status expires next year in August. Thanks to their member exclusive star deals, I could gather 30 stars to retain gold status for another year and spend less. If I buy from 3 different stores till 11/14 this week, I get 6 bonus stars on top of the star I get per purchase/visit.
6. Saw Spectre last weekend. It was not as good as Skyfall, but I enjoyed it the same. Also, Sam Smith's Writings on the Wall is the epitome of all James Bond theme songs. I put it on the same level as You Know My Name and The World is Not Enough. Don't care what anyone says. Goldfinger theme song did not age well. Can't let nostalgia hold us back. Not sorry.
7. The last Hunger Games movie comes out this next weekend. I'm actually more interested in what trailers they have in the theater. Watching trailers on a full screen is just better.

I'm done.

The Personal Blog

• Sometimes I miss Xanga and the personal blog format it provided. I had a closed group of subscribers I regularly talked to and followed. This Blogger account has supplanted that in someways, along with my Wordpress account. I don't share much personal info as I used to, but this can be considered personal.
• The YouTube videos I post (LEGO, Nanoblock, gaming) are mostly my creation. I've done mostly time lapse recordings, building LEGO and other construction toys. On the gaming front, I've recording gameplay footage on my PS3. I mostly set them to music, with some videos taking hours to create to sync different scenes with the song.
• I became a YouTube Partner about 3 months ago. I have an Adsense account, but I don't make much money from it. That would be nice, but that's not my intention. YouTube Partners have the ability to schedule when their videos are published. Regular users have to manually publish their private videos for it to show up on their channels. As a partner, I can upload multiple videos I've created and stagger their published dates. That way I could set up my blog posts in advanced with my videos going live at the same time as the posts are scheduled.
• I just started working this past Monday. That's 5 months and a week since I've been unemployed. The job is alright for now. They're still trying to provide me login access to my computer and security badge, paper work and all. It's contract for 6 months. They have an option to hire me full time. I really hope that's the case. I'm not getting any younger and I need to put more money in my 401K.
• After a 3 year hiatus. I'm attempting 50K words for my entry to this year's National Novel Writing Month. So far I've done 2K words. I'm clearly very behind. I'm invested in too many things and always distracted. But I'm still trying.

I'm done.

Movies I've Seen - October 2015

I can't believe it's November already. I already talked about the movies I saw in September in this post, so I'll talk about the movies I saw last month. Here are the movies I saw in September and October.

1. The Martian - Apparently, some people thought this was based on a true story. We don't even have actual working hoverboards yet. Anyway, this was an epic story of an astronaut that was left behind on Mars by his team after he was struck by debris during a dust storm in the planet. He had to survive on his own, find a way to contact Earth, and somehow make potatoes grow on Martian soil. The science in this movie checks out. Matt Damon should win an Oscar for this.

2. Sicario - I watched this on a Tuesday. Our theater in the mall has a discount day program with ticket prices at $6.50 per movie, all day. I think it's one of the most underrated movies this year. Emily Blunt plays an FBI field agent who goes on a kidnapping raid in Arizona. They discover corpses hidden behind the walls inside the house and improvised explosives. She was later brought in by her boss to a joined meeting with other individuals and recommended her for a task force in El Paso, Texas. Turns out they were going to Juarez, Mexico and performing a different task of extracting a cartel boss' top man to bait him out into the open and find his location. I think if you like gritty and suspenseful cops and robbers movies with carefully planned pacing and action, you'll like Sicario... which is the Mexican word for hitman.

3. Zero Dark Thirty (2012) - I didn't get a chance to watch this the first time around. It details a top level CIA agent's journey to hunting down Osama bin Laden for several years, including the secret special operation in Pakistan to take him out. I rarely see movies likes this, so it was nice catching it on TV.

4. Steve Jobs - This is the second movie they released after Jobs died. The first movie starred Ashton Kutcher and that one was more like an actual movie. In Steve Jobs, Michael Fassbender plays the former Apple CEO. The movie is divided into three acts, all of which occur behind the scenes prior to the launch of three products: The Macintosh, The NEXTcube, and the iMac. Rather than show as Steve Jobs' life story, the movie gives as snippets of what supposedly they talked about prior to the launch conference. The movie is like a play, focusing on Jobs and his interactions with six other important people. It's an Aaron Sorkin film, so the dialogue is always on point.

I'm done.

Puddles Pity Party "Chandelier" (Sia)

Postmodern Jukebox covers pop music and takes it back in time. This time, it's Chandelier by Sia performed by Puddles Pity Party (the band). Puddles is the clown.

I'm done.