An especially interesting part of The Matrix Online universe is Radio Free Zion. It’s an internet radio station, unofficially connected to The Matrix Online. Their listner’s right now generally seem to hover around 550, while a week ago it tended to be somewhere in the 400 listner neighbourhood. That’s quite the growth for a week, and I don’t think there’s any reason that that growth will slow down.

Naturally, with my interest in DJing already nurtured so well through the school radio station, I said to myself, “I’ve got to be a part of this”.

Luckily, there was a “We’re Hiring!” link at the bottom of their page. Hark! They’re looking for DJs! So, I sent out my email, they sent me back a list of questions. Since they’re no longer looking for DJs, I feel safe putting this list out there (sorry all). Their questions to me… are the questions. My answers to them… are the other stuff on the page.

1) How old are you?

I’m 17 years old, going to be 18 July 13th

2) Do you meet all the requirements listed on the RadioFreeZion website?

My upstream bandwidth, according to my service provider, is 800 kbps. According to the test at the bottom of the page it clocked in at 318 kbps actual upstream bandwidth. I do have to question the results though, because while the speed test at the bottom of the Radio Free Zion page gave me a downstream bandwith of 806 kbps, other tests I have taken that were reccomended by the broadbandreports.com website that were closer to where I live peg my downstream bandwidth at around 1300 kbps (I did three tests, the average speed given was about 1300). I’m inclined to believe that geography plays a role in their speed test (I am connecting from Canada, most of the tests probably aren’t built with Canadians in mind). Unfortunately, there weren’t any tests in my area that tested upstream bandwith. The tests I could do though seem to suggest that 318 kbps is likely a low figure.

Other then that, I feel that I have all the requirements listed on the website

3) Do you have any experience as a DJ?

I DJ with my school radio station (usually once a week). Normally, I wouldn’t consider radio DJing on a school station to be all that good a preperation, but the teacher that runs the program made a living as a DJ for 10-odd years before teaching radio broadcasting at a nearby college. On the weekend he still DJs for a station in a fairly big city. This suggests to me that he knows what he’s doing, and from what I can tell he’s gone about applying that to our school station very well, building it from the ground up.

The effect, of course, is that I’m quite interested in DJing as a hobby, and that I’ve developed a fair level of comfort doing the things DJs do (it’s probably a lot more difficult to go on knowing your entire highschool is listning then a bunch of strangers too)

4) Have you ever used Spacial Audio Mixer on your PC before?

I haven’t used Spacial Audio Mixer much, but I just recently downloaded the demo and played with it for a few hours. I really love it, it’s a great program. I haven’t had much time to play with things like beat matching and such, but their layout is pretty good, I love having the two decks right next to each other, fading is so easy, the microphone’s auto fading when talking is very convenient, it makes it effortless to do something like talking during the intro of a song. The auxilary decks are convenient for doing things like playing a looping tune while you’re talking over them, the playlist setup is quite nice too. And the sound effects right there would come in handy once in a while (though, I’m thinking if I were to use this program on a regular basis religating the sound effects to desktop three and brining up one of the auxilary players would be handy (or just bring up the auxilary deck when I need it))

All in all, from what I’ve seen it seems to be an extremely capable program that I’d love to work with more.

5) Why do you want to be a DJ for RadioFreeZion?

Well, I’m not a rabid Matrix fan or anything. I mean, I found the game interesting enough, and have been following its progress for the last few months, I was on their betatest list for some time, but I only managed to get in for the stress test. Overall, I found the game to be very nice (I wish the missions weren’t so buggy and the servers were more dependable through the beta though, that would’ve made it more enjoyable). What I really found good though was the community spirit that seemed to exist throughout the game. People seemed willing to give you a hand most of the time. I’d very much like to be a greater part of that community. (and if Radio Free Zion wants to help defray the cost of my Matrix Online subscription, that would be absolutely wonderful :-) )

6) What format would your sets follow? (Genre etc.)

In looking over my music collection, I’m kind of all over the place. I do happen to like up-beat music, so that would likely be a common thread. I’m not really into a certain type of music, or stuff by a certain artist, I’m well spread out. I wouldn’t want to be considered talk radio by any extent of the imagination, but discussing a topic of interest to the community on a show is something I’d like to do every once in a while. Mostly I’d like to play some music, spread some news, a contest now and then would be nice. That sort of thing. If there’s a kind of music that seems to be under-represented, I’ll try and favor that style in my broadcast where its approprate (assuming I don’t get boo’d off the net, that is, lol)

7) Tell us a little about yourself. (hobbies, work, classes, etc.)

I’m your average **, Ontario native (maybe you’ve heard of the Festival? We’re where that is). I’ve been accepted to the University of Waterloo, where I plan to major in Legal Studies next year (which means I’ll probably have access to a nicer, faster connection in a few months). I’ve already mentioned my liking for DJing. If I’m luckey during the summer I’ll get an IT position at a car frame plant around here, that’d be a really nice job (as I also maintain a healthy interest in computers).

There’s not much more that I can think of that’s worth telling (and even what I have written I wonder if its worth telling, lol)

8) Do you feel that Cheeto’s are evil?

I definately feel that Cheeto’s are evil. One has to look no further then the packaging. Its mascott is a TIGER, one of the most violent animals on the planet. Why don’t they just put an AK-47 on the bag? Its probably just as dangerous as the tiger. Does it seem to anyone else like the Cheeto’s cheezies are just a lure? Why else would they mark your hands so effectively when you eat a lot of them? Chester is just marking you, so that when he’s on the prowl he’ll know the people who probably won’t put up much of a fight, instead of running they’ll be like “Hey! It’s Chester! Maybe he’ll give me some Cheeto’s!” or “Ooooh man, I WOULD run, but I feel all sick after eating an entire bag of Cheeto’s” then he can just slash your neck out at his convenience.

So, I guess the real answer is that while I feel that Cheeto’s themselves aren’t evil, the fact that they are used by an evil mascott makes them evil.

Thanks for considering me for this position, I can’t wait to hear what you think!

-Binks

They must’ve liked something I said, because I got a positive response. Unfortunately, they won’t take on a DJ until they’re 18 years old. Hopefully we can work something out, or they said I can give them a shout out around July 1st and ask for the paperwork. W00t! Pretty happy about the whole thing.

The beginning of the March break I had the opprotunity to be in on the stress test beta for The Matrix Online. For any of you that live under rocks, this is the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) based in the Matrix universe. The game takes place right after the third movie, during the tedious peace that now exists between the machines and mankind.

Overall, I found the game to be interesting. I thought that there was quite a bit of story potential there, which is refreshing. They’re making a big deal over the fact that the game’s story will evolve and change, and that people who play the game will be the ones that drive the story. No longer (we’re told) will the story move AROUND all of the players, but the players will help to move the story forward. That’s something I wasn’t able to test in the beta, but I’m pretty stoked about that possibility.

From what I could test, I was pretty happy. The controls are… interesting. You run around and such as you would expect, but the fighting system is both more restrictive and more open then you would expect. It’s restrictive because once you enter into combat you’re basically limited to 4 basic attacks, plus a few special attacks that can be aquired. You’ve got a fast jab, an strong attack, a dodge, and something to regenerate your “concentration”. Those will be taken against whatever basic attack your opponent is using, and naturally some attacks are better at “beating” other attacks, while some do more damage. That’s pretty restrictive, but it makes it really nice for players on modems (yes, there still are a few players on modems out there) (Yes, I know its a multi-gigabyte game, and it’ll take them literally days to simply patch their games, but at least they can play it eventually). The openness comes from the special attacks and something called “ability code”.

Remember in The Matrix when they wanted to learn how to do something, all they had to do is call their operator and ask how? Same idea here. You can learn new abilities that you aquire (usually at a price). This seperates The Matrix from every other MMORPG that I know of, in that if you want to kick some ass, you load up the ability code for ass kicking. You want to go around healing people, you load up the healing ability code. You’re only limited by your available “memory” (which stops you from being everything at once). I found the idea that you weren’t ever limited to be very refreshing.

The missions are hard to judge on how good they are. When I played them they were mostly extremely buggey, which sucked. For example, mission 1, you had to go to a specified building, go to a specific floor, and talk to 3 people. For the first half of the beta, those people weren’t there, so the mission was uncompleteable. I’m hoping that’s fixed soon (up until a day or two ago I was still hearing from people having problems with Non Player Characters not wanting to follow them as they were supposed to in missions).

From what I could see the graphics were solid, if not a little bit “blah” (though, that’s what you’d expect, the movies made a big deal of making the world “blah”). I’m probably not the best one to ask about the graphics, as my computer could just barely run the game (seriously, there was a black square where my character would be because my graphics system couldn’t handle it), but my graphics system is really crappy, anyone with a good graphics card can probably handle this game well.

I’d definately pick this game up if not for the $15 a month fee. If the fee was a more reasonable $5 or $10 it’d be easier to justify with, “well, I’ll enjoy this more then a movie” but, as it is, the game itself is $60 and then there’s $15 a month on top of that, that seems a bit steep to me for ANY game.

EDIT: My bad, just checked out Future Shop - $69.99 for the game itself, and a 60 day game card costs $39.99, so, we’re talking $20 a month. That’s more then my old dialup access cost me.

Yeah, I know, I was gone for some time. Stuff’s just been so busy lately! Expect a few posts in rapid succession, dealing with various topics. Why don’t I just do it all here you ask? Because it’d be much more easier to organize it all by dealing with each topic sepeartely. So, that’s what I’m going to do.

So, I’m pretty sure I now have an RSS feed. I’d rather appreciate it if someone with an RSS reader could check it out and make sure it all works right. There’s that fancy link over there somewhere —–>

If it does work then it was rather easier then I thought.

There’s not a lot you can’t do with Blogger assuming you’re willing to read their FAQs and hack around in the template file a bit… though it’d be nice if they offered Atom and RSS feeds with an options page….

Just a quick little blurb here, if you’ve got 2-3 minutes, there’s an OK reference to the Hitchhiker’s guide over at Obsydyon.net on their 404 page.

Yep! I’ve been accepted as a student at the University of Waterloo as part of their Honors Arts program with a major in Legal Studies. W00t!

So, I’m sure you all remember that fiasco with the additional student information they wanted but didn’t hardly mention, and I said it should be in big bold letters on that thing that they send out. Well, for some reason, on the thing that mentioned that I’m accepted, right on the front of it, against a white background, it says “YOU’RE IN” in big, giant, black bold letters. Well, shit, that’s great, but for something like that I can afford to take the time to open the letter and look it over and stuff, for the student information junk, that was time sensitive. I’ve got 4 months to decide whether or not I’m going to accept their offer, yet I only had 3 WEEKS to get in the information. Which I never did, by the way. I was going to finish that off and fax it off tonight, the night that I got the acceptance letter. Guess that tells me how important that student stuff REALLY was.

They congratulated me 8 times, just within the 3 (Count ‘em) letters that were enclosed. I haven’t counted the “congrats” on all the other sheets of paper that were in there. If I had…. $1200 for every time they said congratulations, my (first year) of university could be paid for….Wow, that was surprisingly depressing….

I think I need a Paypal link for University donations….. :(