OMG! Hell yeah! I was watching the New York Islander hockey game and it just finished 10 minutes ago! YEs!

Islanders just beat the New Jersey Devils and got the 8th place spot in the playoffs!

Its like a miracle! 6 impossible things had to happen for the isles to get there, and all 6 of them happened. Yesterday the maple leafes had to beat the canadieans and miraculously did in the thid quarter,  then there was this game! The Islanders were winning 2-0 for the whole game till the third, where the devils scored a goal. Then with 0.07 seconds left till the game was over, the devils scored another goal, tying the game and getting into overtime!

Nobody scored in overtime, so the game went to a shoot out! Isles went first and scored the first goal! Then the devils went and they scored! The isles went again and scored then the devils went and the goalie saved the puck! That means the isles had to makea goal to win, but the puck was stopped by the devils goatender! Damn! Then the devils went, and if they scored, therd be another 3 rounds of shootout, but thanks to one of the most amazing saves ive seen, we won it!!!  The puck was saved !!Yes! The islanders win by shootout! For the first time in i dont know how many years the islanders are finally goin to the playoffs!  WOO-HOO!!

Check this out from espn.com (wow these guys are fast at writing these things)

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- The New York Islanders earned the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference by beating the New Jersey Devils 3-2 in a shootout Sunday to complete a sweep of their final four games.

The win triggered a wild on-ice celebration by the Islanders who were seemingly out of the Stanley Cup hunt one week ago. They regrouped in front of third-string goalie Wade Dubielewicz to edge out the Toronto Maple Leafs for the last playoff berth to be decided on the final day of the regular season.

Toronto finished its season Saturday night with a 6-5 win over the Montreal Canadiens. The Maple Leafs had 91 points, one more than the Islanders.

The Islanders mission was simple: win, and they were in the playoffs and would face the top-seeded Buffalo Sabres.

Despite squandering a 2-0 lead, the Islanders regrouped to beat the Devils in the shootout. Miroslav Satan and Viktor Kozlov, the first two shooters, scored for New York and Dubielewicz made poke saves on Brian Gionta and Sergei Brylin to send the Islanders into the postseason

You know, ive been thinking about games graphics recently, and more specifically the differences between each of the systems games and designs. Game designers have been specifically trying to improve the graphics in games. Many companies try and try to get that special graphics sweetspot that makes their stand out amongst the others, and that gamers are looking for. But what is this sweetspot? Is it having the biggest technical advantage? Or is it something else that stirs gamers emotions?

When games upgrade their graphics engine, people assume that the graphics will always look better, as well they should. But throughout my years of playing games, i have found that this is not nessesarily what catches my eye in terms of graphics. I think that it should take more that shiny graphical hardware to capture my imagination. In fact, this is one of the reasons that the Wii is not upgrading its graphics hardware that much. Nintendo, as well as the game giants across all the consoles incorporated color into conveying feelings and moods. These feelings can be expressed by showing all different sets and ranges of colors, from the blackness of a dark blue used to express sadness, to a vibrant luminance of a happy yellow. Brown can be used sometimes to express earthly colors, and the opposite can be achieved by using a color such as a purple to achieve a soft somber feeling. Even a simple color like white can be used, and when combined with another color, it can even achieve emotional status. Whenever witnessing a color such as red, a person can be stirred to feel of action, excitement or even feelings of anger. Since the color red works in contrast with the color blue, a great game maker can have a games environment include red and blue in the same place, and achieve botha a feeling of action, and of solemness.

Some of the scenes from a game such as Resident Evil 4 manages to pull off such feats of color contrast, and on a console that has worse hardware advantages than that of an Xbox, a gamecube. (although now its available for Pc and PS2 as well. The game manages some incredible feats, and I think thats the reason that it was looked at with such glory in terms of graphics. At every moment in the game, you can see how the color effects everything from the doomed atmosphere you feel, to the constricted feeling you get inside the castle walls. When your outside in the villages, it truly feels as if you are wandering in a diseased old town,. thanks to the mixture of yellows, greys and browns. In boss chambers what are the colors that are used? In the fight with the little prince guy, it is a redish-orange. In other boss fights, ou can feel a sense of dread because of the mixtures of black and violet they use, such as the Final boss fight. Also, i think its more than just a coincidence that ashley is wearing a light-orange(bright, vibrant) colored clothing and leon is wearing black and dark brown (solemn, serious) You never see a character that is decked out in all black and is humerous or vibrant.

What happend when the game combines the maximum efficiency of the hardware and uses colors the way they should be used? Games like Halo, metroid prime, Zelda, and even Grand theft auto are born. In Halo, i noticed this in the deep purples of the covenant ship, in metroid, This was shown in each of the environmental locations. Grand theft auto used it on a lesser note, but you can truly feel the gritty-down to earth feeling that liberty city gives off as you walk its streets. The buildings all look tragic and over-worn. Compare this to a game that also uses cities, like spiderman 2, where the players have the same environment but dont feel the grittieness. In the game zelda, the same applies with the temples themselves, as the first temple is always green, to signify the begginers feeling in the game.

Overall, i think that good graphics are a combination of all aspects including hardware, colors and the emotions enstilled in them. If a person simply focuses on the hardware aspect of a game, they may overlook the true beauty that a game can posses, that comes from the details and the color designs.

Welcome to my newest blog post of the day of April 3rd, 2007! Lots of stuff to cover. First off, i want to say that i posted my next game review: Prince of Persia: warrior within

 
I bought it about a week ago at  Gamestop,  for like 17$ so now i have the review ready. Read it here:

Otherwise, i am finally done with spring break and am entering the final months in what it seems like was a blazing fast senior year. Im am totally ready for the year to be over, and i cant wait for summer break to be here already.

Also, im going to be going off to college next year, and i think ive decided to go to UWM : Milwaukee. Its a great school that is offering me full tuition if i go to swim there. Theyre a Division 1 schoo, so theyre pretty serious about the sport there, and I think that itll help me out alot. 

 What I especially liked about the place is that the whole campus is about a minute away from the beach on lake michigan. Its beautiful. The city milwaukee is also really nice, and is one of the most clean cities I have seen (at least compared to NY) The way downtown area is about 30 minutes away from campus, and the nice, clean rich part of the city is about 10 minutes from campus. Over all, the whole area looks really nice. Heres a pic from over head. The three tall buildings on the top are the dorms.

Also, it seems my parents have unsuprisingly backed out of the deal they made to buy me a laptop for college. :? I shouldnt be suprised by their actions, since this has happened numerous times by them. Im not sure how im gonna save up the money to by one yet, but ill think of some way :wink:

Well, that all for now

Peace out

If for some reason you are still not part of the 19th most popular and accesed union on gamespot, then this video will convince you to become part of the phenominom.

[video=cnRgkTPw5bkFuT_c]

Also, it seems that gamspot has added a cool images tab. I added 101 new images so inf anyone wants to see

-Resident Evil wallpaper

-Prince of persia wallpaper

-Avatars

-My artwork

-Pics of me

-Naruto union behind the scenes

This week i also bought prince of persia warriro within. Its a sweet game, so ill review it sometime soon.

Peace out

Well, as many of you know, GS had their Avatar making contest a few weeks ago, and they recently awarded everyone who posted at least 3 avatars an emblem. I wanted to know if any of myne were specifically choosen and yes! Alost every one of the residetn evil avatars is the one I submitted!

These are all the res Evil avatars they choose^^

and these are the ones i made and uploaded! ^^

I know i sumbitted a bunch of ninja gaiden ones too, but the ninja gaiden sect isnt workin so i wont know till they fix it..

Well, im finally back from the meet that took place on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Overall i think i did really good.

50 Free-21.23=1st place=State champion :D

100 Free-46.66=1st place=State Champion :D

200 Free-1.43.05=2nd Place=State Runner-up

500 Free- 4:59.53=9th=OMG i cant believe i swam so slow...My best ever is a 4.47.62 :(

Our relay was also first! We made the US Open cut too! Yeah!

What a sweet movie. I went to go see the 9:45 showing of 300 yesterday, and it is by far the best movie i have seen this year. It absolutly rocked. Not only was it incredibly cool-looking, but the action was top-notch. The story was a little weaker that the rest of the movie, but the point was brought across fairly well. If you thought the battle for middle-earth was epic in LOTR, wait till you see 300 freakin spartans wasting a million persions in the battle of therma-something.

I recommend it with ***** stars out of 5. Definatly one of the more inspirational and cooler movies i have seen. At the end, youll be cheering with the rest of the crowd, cuz its spectacular.

If you havent seen this before, I IMPLORE you too watch it. Its kind of old, but still one of the funniest video's ever. It almost brings me to tears. great stuff.

[video=JCQ2lmOr5bkLuj_e]

Sweetness. Check it out 2 new icons, the Biological warfare icon and the derek jeter icon. Nice. Im slowly fillin up my bars, i almost have 5 bars, just need 4 more icons!

Well, we had another party at my house again, this time it was with alot more people, around 20-25 people came total. There was a bet goin on, and whoever lost would have to have their head shaved. Too bad. Just too bad. It was pretty funny, however. Dont worry though, Aaron and Josh glady accepted to have their hair cut.