Solitude Adventures: a Science Fiction Novel, Chapter 1

So this is the first chapter of a new novel I've been writing, its called Solitude Adventures. I've been writing articles for two years now but I also write some fiction and I figure: what the hell, I'm going to publish some early drafts of this story to see what you think. Solitude Adventures is a science fiction novel about a bunch of youngsters living in an isolated school planet, when suddenly some fuck up shit starts to happen. Every chapter is written in the point of view of a different character, I hope you enjoy this first chapter.

Children of Bena

 

As the dwelling on the field continued, we gazed into the black heaven which was no more colorful than our years to come. The smell of failure came to me as an awaited and relaxing fragrance, destined to fail, the unknown and the nothingness unfolding in my mind and presence. Laying besides me, for her it was the same, destined to fail. Lying. As the dwelling on the field continued….

Out of the silence, while I was lost in the emptiness of it all, that emptiness got interrupted.

"You should be moving" she told me.

"I'm trying to enjoy possibly the final moments of my life, when I run I feel that I'm spilling the final moments that I'm able to enjoy" I said.

"Don't be such a fatalist Mata, you can still make it out of Bena if you wouldn't take so many fucking detours".

I appreciated the enthusiasm that she showed regarding my situation; the fact of the matter was that even if I managed to escape this goddamn planet I was doomed anyway. Those who became space nomads were forever lost in the memories and knowledge of the other ones that were able to stay together. Nobody is able to survive in the dark and cold pool of space and all the unknown nightmares that kept. In the our world, solitude kills faster than any cancer.

"What about your boyfriend?" I asked her "Does he want me dead too?"

"I seriously doubt it" she said, "he wasn't that angry when he looked at its failed results, I think that he just wants to speak with you."

"Really? Well... Net has always been a reasonable guy, it's good that you're with him."

I smiled at her, but her face was full of confusion and sadness after I uttered that sentence. I don't know if she was also in love with me but at least she cared about me.

"Mata... I can't believe that this is happening to you, I can't believe that you're in this situation, why did you accept the job if you weren't able to pull it off?"

"I WAS ABLE TO PULL IT OFF!" I shouted at her, she looked at me, biting her lips.

"Someone got me screwed, that wasn't a common preprogrammed system of security, someone knew what I was up to, that system was prepared to counter all of my codes".

I knew it from the moment that I started to enter in the first screens, I had just a terrible feeling after it was already too late to back off, I have been hacking EP systems for the last 4 years, and I have been able to hack the final exam results 3 consecutive times, the security system shows improvement over the years but nothing I can't handle, but this year, it was different, it was modified by a human.

"I was screwed before I even began the job"

"So you're telling me that someone in school set you up?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying and I want to know who, I want to know who bested my abilities"

She just stared at me more worried than ever.

"You really want to die here, don't you?" she asked.

"Becoming a nomad equals death, staying here equals death. I'm already dead" I replied.

"And you're creating paranoid delusions in the process, no one updates or modifies the security systems of Educational Palaces, the only ones who are capable of doing such a thing are the engineers who designed it, and they're long gone."

She had a point, the Educational Palaces were magnificent school buildings that were abandoned many years ago, however, we, the students, still attended to classes. No professors to be seen just artificial, holographic ghosts of them. Their systems were never updated and they always taught the same things generation after generation. The Educational Palaces remain the same with the passing of time. The technology in which they were built is almost ancient, only a geek like me has studied that type of obsolete linguistics to be able to understand them; I found the books that taught me such skills in an abandoned ship, close to the Alic Sea. I burned those books after I learned what I needed to learn. I was the only one familiar with its system, the only one capable of hacking the final test results. At least, that's what I thought but I have a tendency of underestimating people. Now that I think about it, if you would have lived my life you would have that same flaw to.

"Wait a minute" I was starting to put the pieces together. I stood up and began walking around in small circles in the grass. "Pretty much every one of my clients wants me dead, correct?" I asked.

"You told a bunch of guys that you would be able to hack probably the most important test of their lives at a ridiculously expensive price and then you failed. Yee, what is our friend Mrs. Logic telling us Mata?"

Oh!, my beloved Danna, I had just the perfect comeback to that.

"Ok, so we can conclude that everyone is pretty mad at me. Net was one of my clients for this job." She quickly stared at me, she knew where I was going. "Can you please repeat to me what was his reaction when he knew that I fucked everything up?"

She looked at the grass.

"You son of a bitch" she said laughing while nodding her head. "So you think that Net was the one who got you screwed?"

"You said that he wasn't mad at me, If I were him I would be pretty fucking mad at me."

I just looked at her while smiling.

"I'm just repeating what our friend Mrs. Logic is telling us Danna."

"Well, stop listening to that bitch!" She stood up. "Net would never betray one of his friends. You talk like if you didn't know him."

"The only thing I know is that we don't know no one at all, plus, you said that he wanted to speak with me, isn't that the case?"

"Mata, just stop that train of thought of yours. It's going to lead you nowhere."

I was starting to hear some motojets in the forest, approaching the field we were on.

"Why does he want to speak with me Danna?"

Danna listened to the motojets approaching to.

"Shit!, Mata they're coming!"

"Why does he want to speak with me, Danna?!"

"Damn it Mata I don't know!, he has been behaving so fucking strange these days, I think he wants your help."

"Strange? strange how?"

They were just a few miles away.

"Get fucking moving!"

"Where is he?"

"I dont' know"

"You're his girlfriend and you don't know?"

The motojets were about to enter the field.

"Fuck, I'm sorry Mata."

She began to run away to the opposite direction and she hid in to the woods. I did the same but I didn't stop running and I encounter a slope. It was the first time that I was running on that kind of environment. Hell, it was like the third time that I ran in my life. So, I image that you can guess what happened next. Every single and irrelevant little rock had the power to destroy the balance of my feet completely. There was a waterfall near me and I just kept rolling towards it. I was praying to the gods that I didn't believe in, to stop the fall, but their existence disappointed me once more and Mr. Gravity made me pay my lack of balance by escorting me to the lair of Mrs. Waterfall.

Thanks for reading :)

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Monster's University: The Hard work vs Talent Paradigm

Do you remember when you were a child and your parents use to read to you different types of tales every time you were about to go to sleep?  I don't. But anyway, you know which stories I'm referring to, you know these types of tales and you know that there's always an underlying lesson that you must have acquired by the end of the story. Usually , it's a lesson that you've already acquired or is something so obvious or dorky that you completely forget about it within few minutes. Classic Disney movies work the same way, hell, even the most popular and classical Disney movies are based upon these stories. Except Pixar movies, those are different. Pixar movies tend to explore themes that we don't ordinary see in kids movies and some of these themes and lessons are actually quite complex than just the classics : "The true beauty is inside", "True love conquers everything", "You're the only one holding you back", etc. Take the revolution and oppression theme that revolves around "A Bug's Life":



The middle-aged crisis and the family issues that Mr.Incredible has to endure and how these things put his family in danger, the dilemma that Woody has to face while choosing a momentary period of happiness with Andy or an eternity of fame in a museum but alone.

The conflicts that these characters face are quite complex but at the end of the day, they always learn the lesson that we expect them to learn, they always make the choices that we expect them to may. Except in this final release: Monster's University.



The overall theme that Monster's University presents us is the classic "Talent vs Hard-work" paradigm; Mike Wazowski representing the notion of hard work and determination and  Sulley (and all of the other successful monsters) the notion of talent and natural ability. You may think that this is nothing new, we have been presented with this same paradigm in a lot of different movies and what is the lesson that they always teach us? It doesn't matter if you don't have talent, if you keep on trying, you will succeed. If you show determination and hard work you can keep up with the ones with natural talent and even overtake them. Hard work is always going to defeat talent. That's the lesson that we have learned but now here it comes Monster's University and this movie doesn't come to retell this lesson, what it does is actually the opposite: this movie challenges and question this idea that we thought we have learned and in the process that teach us the true hard lesson about the "Talent vs Hard work" paradigm.

What Monster's University and Mike Wazowski's quest of becoming a "scarer" are trying to tell us is that, this paradigm is not always true, hard work doesn't always manifests in success and in some disciplines, a degree of natural talent is required and cannot be acquired through hard work.

You can try, you can be determined but hard work is not always going to defeat natural talent. Just because you desire a dream so much and you try everything to reach it, that doesn't mean that it's going to eventually come true. But when you fail you need to know that this wasn't your fault. With the other lesson, failing is such a painful process because everything is up to you, success is there and you can take it, if you couldn't take it that means that you didn't tried hard enough and your failure is completely your fault. In real life this is not true, Mike had the knowledge and determination to become the greatest scarer of them all but he lacked the essential natural talent. After learning this hard lesson, Mike modified his dream based on the realities he has faced and that's exactly what we do in real life, that is the true lesson that we have to learn about this paradigm: Sometimes we have to just accept failure, move on and try something else, if you've tried really hard there's no shame in that.

So as you can see this is not the typical lesson that you get from your typical fairy tales or your typical Disney movie, this is a hard lesson to learn but an important one and Monster's University does an excellent job in teaching it.

Thanks for reading :)

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Video Games as the Highest Art Form

First of all, I'm real sorry I haven't been writing anything for these past 5 months. Sometimes you just shut yourself down and you lose touch with the things you used to do. But I'm back once again and I'll try to become a more serious writer/blogger from now on. I won't change the direction or the things I usually talk about, I'm still going to be writing about language, philosophy, music, films and other stuff but I'll try to write more often and in a more serialized way, maybe two or three posts per month. I'm also in the process of writing a science fiction novel called Solitude Adventures; it's not the first novel I attempt to write, it's actually like the third, but I would like to publish some chapters here and see what kind of reception (if any) does it get.

This post it's going to be a little bit different from the other's I've written, because this time I'm going to be talking about video games.  This is weird because it's actually the first time that I talk about video games in this blog and I'm quite an active player, so I wonder what took me so long. But anyway, this post it's completely inspired by the whole debate surrounding the following question: Are video games art? I'm sure that all gamers would agree and I'm sure that all non-gamers would NOT agree. One of the most peculiar things about video game criticism is that people who criticize video games in the most savage of ways are people who never play them. There are people who speculate that video games are only meant to entertain and again, these are people who don't actually play video games or they are not knowledgeable players because video games have shown us again and again that they're not just about entertainment, games like Deux Ex,Grim Fandango, Journey, Mass Effect, Half-Life, Heavy Rain, Metal Gear (even tough Kojima doesn't have the same views on this) Ico, Okami, Flower,Limbo, The Last of Us, The Walking Dead, Spec Ops: The Line and many others are perfectly capable of exploring the human psych and to show beautiful landscapes and situations in which the player is not only watching but he's actually engaging with them. Of course triple A games suffer the same paradigm than hollywood blockbusters, they need to appeal to the masses ,so they have to follow a general structure and they have to stay inside the box. But for more indie or adventurous games this is not the same and they can follow or break the common gaming rules whenever they want to, they don't need to make their video games appealing to the masses, they can just use mechanics to express and create the experiences they want to. Video games like this are becoming more present because the technology is already available and accessible to different kinds of artists, that's why we are seeing all sorts of video games that seem to break the paradigm of what we previously believed in.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="550"] The Passage of an entire life time in just five minutes[/caption]

But in this post I won't be discussing this question at all because, for me this question is a no-brainer and it's not worthy to be discussed; of course, video games are art and the ones who are not able to see this are either non-gamers ,people who don't know what art is or people who don't know in which type of art to categorize it. I'm actually here to make a bolder statement. In my point of view, video games are not only an art form but they are the highest art form there is (or well, they are showing signs that they are). Of course as Dr. James Asher affirms: "Teaching is the highest art form of them all" and I completely agree but when it comes to aesthetic and visual arts; video games are the winners.



First, we need to consult our friends, the ancient Greeks, to understand what are the proper divisions of classical arts that they originally developed. Before anything else, we must understand that in the process of art there are two entities involved: The artist and the audience. According to the ancient greeks there are 2 types of fine arts: The high arts and the low arts.

• The high arts are the ones in which the audience can perceive the art only with their superior senses (which according to the greeks were sight and hearing) and there was no need to interact physically with the art. In this category we can find: Painting, Music, Architecture, Sculpture, Theater and Dancing (and I guess we could also add Film and Photography).


• The low arts are the ones in which the audience has to perceive the art with their inferior senses (which according to the greeks were taste, smell and touch) and a physical interaction from the part of the audience is mandatory. In this category we can find: Gastronomy and Perfumery.

If we are to begin to think of video games as an art form, in which of these two categories would they belong?, or maybe this distinction between art forms is already to obsolete for this era. But anyway, let's say that we are trying to classify video games in this spectrum. Soon we realize that something curious happens. Video games can fit in the category of high arts. We engage with them with our eyes and our ears but they have something different from all of the other high art forms, the audience actually engages with them, the audience has to interact with them, a feature that none of the other high art forms has. By this maybe we can consider it a low art, after all, the interaction of the audience is mandatory. But here comes another point of view to this whole "category" thing: At one point in time, people said that theater was the ultimate high art form because it involved all of the other ones such as music, dancing, architecture, painting. Then it came film, and people considered film the ultimate art form because it also included photography. Now let's look at video games, they include all of the other art forms and even more. In a video game you can find photography, music, acting, scripting, drawing/painting, architecture and also things that are not consider art forms such as programming and development of artificial intelligence. So, how can an art form (that combines all of the other high arts) be a low art? Seems like we're facing a paradox here. But this exercise makes us realize something: Video games are a complete new revolutionary art form by its own and I guess we cannot really categorize them with the old ones.

Video games are not the art of sounds, nor the art of movement nor the art of color and pigments, they are the art of experiences.



They're emulators of experiences, they create an experience and you have to engage it and live it, this is something that none other art form can perform, so why we cannot consider this the greatest art form? All art forms try to imitate or express the beauty of life, video games are capable to do this in a deeper way because in video games you have the factor of choice, you have actions and you have consequences and you have to live according to the things you've chosen, just like in real life:



And if you're still cynical about this idea, try to make a good video game yourself and you'll realize this. Or watch the process of making a good video game and you'll see everything that its require and how immensely creative these programmers need to be to work in this medium.

Video games haven't reached the goal of becoming  the greatest art form or even a recognizable one yet, but everything indicates that they're just in the right path to become the highest art form, new artist are joining this medium and creating things that we have never experienced before so the possibilities are endless and let's face it, this medium is still in diapers. I would recommend you to watch Extra Credits, it's an amazing web series that will give you a completely new perspective of what video games are and everything correlated to them, it will give you a new perspective of this entire medium.





Here's the link for Loneliness: http://www.necessarygames.com/my-games/loneliness/flash

I also recommend you to watch Errant Singnal's videos, amazing video games analyzes there:

Well, this is all that I have to say right now and I would like to know what other people think about this topic, leave a comment if you have another point of view that I'm missing. This would be all for now and thanks for reading. :)   

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Soen - Cognitive (Review) A Hard Album to Talk About.

Ok, this is a great album but a hard one to talk about and you already know the reasons why.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="346"] Everyday without the sun[/caption]

I think that the problem lies in people who are always looking for something new, something that they haven't heard before or something that doesn't remind them of anything. And that's completely ok, I even share some of their thoughts honestly. The reason for this is that it's not only about the music, but about the identity and style of the music also. The identity and the style of the music are equally as important. Why? Because if a band doesn't create their own identity or style and they borrow it heavily from other bands, a lot of people are not going to appreciate their music for what it is because they are going to be too busy comparing it with those other bands. And I think that's exactly what's happening to Soen.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="562"] Does your singer has to be bald to?[/caption]

But in all honesty, Cognitive is a great album and it has a lot to show for. It's not an original album by any means but it does an amazing job at capturing key elements of the bands that influenced them, combining those key elements in a perfect harmonic and balanced way. Believe me, that is not as easy as it looks. Sadly, a lot of people are not going to be able to realize this because of the reasons that I already described, but thinking about it, I cannot really blame them either.

With all that said, Cognitive is a perfectly balanced album, entertaining and a living proof of what the genre of progressive metal is capable of doing, combining key elements of their most important bands nowadays. It's not an album that is going to change your life, unless you have never been exposed to this kind of music before. If you haven't, this album is going to be the magic door that will introduce you to the iconic bands that influenced them and to the genre itself.

In this sense, I like to compare Cognitive with Flying Colors. They are not the greatest and most original ground breaking albums in existence but both of them are a great way to introduce yourself to the genre. Flying Colors with Progressive Rock and Cognitive with Progressive Metal. If you don't care that much about styles or identities you will also enjoy this album a lot and for those who do; It's completely OK to dislike this album but you cannot say that it's a bad album, it's not original, it doesn't create anything new, but is not bad music in any way. I care a lot about the style and the identity of the music, but I was still able to appreciate the elements that they were able to compose in a lot of the songs.

Drums, Bass and Guitar were perfect. Vocals pretty well but I felt like they needed something else to create a different and more original identity. The exact same goes for the artwork and music videos.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="515"] Not the most convenient art direction to take, just saying.[/caption]

The themes that the album explore are also interesting to analyze, they mainly revolve around the conflicts of reaching cognitive freedom and the struggles to protect it.

These are the most influential songs, in my opinion.



I specially love the ending, reminiscing of April Ethereal.



If you liked them, and if you keep an open mind, you will definitively like the album and draw your own conclusions.

Thanks for reading :)

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The Stupidity Of Debating The Existence of God

Look, I love debates. They are fun, exciting, entertaining and if they are done in a correct and in a deep manner, they always leave you with something to think about. In a debate there's no winners, well, that's actually not true, there's no official winners, you're the one who must decide who the true winner is at the end on the day, based on the arguments presented by each of the opponents and how well they defended them and formulated them.

So, debates exist because they allow us to examine challenging questions looking at both sides of the coin.  They expose us to all the arguments and counter-arguments regarding that question and at the end of the day you are the one who decides what's the triumphant argument or what is the triumphant point of view regarding that challenging question and the  current status in which that question is viewed or perceived.

In seems like something ethereal.

Now bearing that in mind, is easy to assume that if we try to apply this phenomenal activity, this beautiful exercise into one of the most challenging questions ever imagined by philosophy or theology (that been the existence of God) We are going to witness  the greatest exercise of human intellect and expression in history.



But the funny thing is that the answer is a complete NO!

The act of debating the existence of God is one of the most fruitless, repetitive, time-consuming and  non-progressive things ever imagined. If you are ever entangled in a debate about the existence of God, I don't care if you're a theist, an atheist, an agnostic, a pantheist, an ignostic, whatever. Get the hell out of there, because let me tell you, that discussion is going to lead you nowhere and I will give you my reasons.

The reason why almost all the debates discussing the existence of God fail (and I'm not only talking about those mundane arguments that you get yourself into with your friends, relatives or so, I'm also talking about professional debates with academics, audience members and everything.) is because the debaters almost never define what the hell are they discussing about, they never defined what God is in the context of this particular debate. As I expressed before, "God" is a term that could express a myriad of completely different things. The term "God" is an ocean that englobes any kind of deep meanings in which a person could relate to or appreciate. God could be the beauty that you perceive in nature, God could be the essence and the rules in which we discover how this universe works, God could be your inner self that is always demanding you to transcend, God could be this world when this world favours you, God could be the love or the strong emotions that you feel for someone else.

Now, you realize how many meanings that word could carry and if you're going to get yourself into a debate about this vague term, the first thing that you must do is to define what are you discussing about specifically , the first thing that you must do is to define God in the most specific way possible, if you're not able to do this then this debate will be completely meaningless and a waste of time.

Don't believe me? Take a look at this debate.



I know, the debate is too long, and the most probable thing is that you're not going to be able to watch the whole thing. When you have the time watch it, to make a long story short Hitchens basically wipes the floor with these dudes single-handed. Nevertheless is a really bad and poor debate, because nothing is clearly defined, nothing is clearly defined by the apologists, nothing is clearly defined by the moderator (which in my humble point of view is the worst moderator in the history of debates) and nothing is clearly defined by Hitchens (although he sometimes try).

And by this, you get a debate that goes nowhere, debaters that don't move forward and that keep spinning around in the same arguments and counter-arguments that they already established.

If you look deeply the debate doesn't move forward because of how these apologists portray the Christian God. After watching this debate and making a few observations, I realized that must of people are actually wrong when they assume that religion never changes, religion chances to and their Gods chance with them. By this I've realized that the Christian God has truly evolve.

The concept of God that these apologists are defending is vague also, but for what I saw I can say that their views of the Christian God are formulated by the combination of 4 key distinct aspects:

1.- The God of Jesus Christ (every time they say "Yeah, but Jesus Christ said... ").

2.- The Cosmological God ( every time they pull out the "fine tuning" card or when they say "but look how everything is in order in our universe... ")

3.- The Hardcore God of the Old Testament ( Yahweh, this is a dangerous card but they only use it when it seems convenient, generally saying "Yeah, but in Genesis says..." ignoring pretty much everything else that this God did. They know this is a dangerous move and they don't use this card very often anymore.

4.- The Personal God  (every time they say "Yeah, but it doesn't matter what you say, ever since I started to believe in God I have found my purpose and I've been living in happiness everyday of my life" etc, etc.)

They start with the God of Jesus, when Hitchens refutes that, they go with the Cosmological God, when Hitches refutes that they go with the Personal God, when Hitchens refutes that, they go with the Old Testament God, when Hitchens destroys that, they go back to the Cosmological God once again. Hitchens is trapped in a debate that he will never absolutely win because the concept of God is not clearly defined and these apologists keep bringing different concepts into the table. He is in reality debating about 4 different Gods (which are not really that bound to each other, except the God of Jesus and the God of the Old Testament) and if one of those is true, all of them are true to.

That is what happened here and that is what will happen in pretty much every debate like this.

And even if you're able to endure a debate like this, at the end of the day is that pretty much nothing will change, the christian will still be a christian (almost all christians that engage into debates are strong christians that will not change their beliefs) the theist will still a theist (maybe he chances a little bit his perception of God but he will still a theist) and the atheist will still be an atheist  (almost all atheist that engage into debates are strong atheist that will not change their lack of beliefs).

Note: I'm not saying that we should never debate about religion, if the subject is focused on religion and religious values in society, then go for it, there's a lot of substance and a lot of stuff to talk about. But if the whole debate is only focused on proving or disproving the existence of God, then everything becomes meaningless, a waste of energy and a waste of time.

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Reading Methods: Review of LingQ & Learning with Texts

This is the second review that I do of this website, I made the first review when I was just beginning to learn languages on my own so I didn't have a lot of experience about a lot of self-learning techniques or programs or softwares out there . I'm not saying that right now I'm a complete expert on the subject, but I have tried almost all of the most famous self-learning languages courses and websites out there and I think I have a better opinion about them.

So now I'm going to start with LingQ, or to be more accurate LingQ 2.0.



The owner of LingQ is a fellow language learning blogger called Steve Kaufmann, who has quite a reputation on YouTube.

First of all, a lot of people might ask: What is LingQ? Steve Kaufmann defines it as: "Simply the best way to learn languages" mmm... ok, I don't like when people promote something they did in that kind of way and I'm sure that you neither so I'm going to talk to you about LingQ without all the drills and exaggerations.

Ok, LingQ basically promotes itself as a website in which you can "learn languages", but I don't find that accurate. LingQ is not a guide, LingQ is not a course, LingQ is not a systematic method that will teach how to learn languages. LingQ is just a platform where you can find , read and listen to texts in other languages, that's it. Yes, you also have the video calls, professional tutors  and all those things but I think you have to pay for the premium account if you want to get those. Mainly LingQ is a reading platform and a really good one if I may add. Reading a text with LingQ, is pretty much like reading a foreign text with an e-dictionary completely at your disposition. But listen to this, I don't recommend this method at all if you're just starting with a language. If you are just starting try Assimil or Pimsleur better, because in LingQ you already have to know how to read the language and a good decent chunk of basic vocabulary. Otherwise you will not understand a lot of stuff you're reading despite using an e-dictionary and you might get really frustrated because only few texts have complete translations you can look at, so you already have to know the basics.

LingQ is basically a library, a really big online library and let me tell you something: You might hate Steve Kaufmann, his attitude, the way that he promotes himself and his business but I have to admit that he has managed to create the biggest online library of foreign languages texts out there. You have hundreds of texts and books in Spanish, German, French, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, Russian, Italian... . I have never seen a library with so much content as this one and entirely free, every text has its MP3 audio which is really easy to download and the overall settings are easy to use.



For me this is the greatest aspect that LingQ has, you can find so much free material with audio. I think LingQ is the only website that I know that offers this and for "free".

But sadly there's a huge downside on this website, a huge letdown that made me stop using this site until I found a solution to it.  The point of reading with LingQ is to create definitions of the words that you don't know, every time you read something you don't know, you click on that word and LingQ will tell you the definition of that word in your language. That word will be highlighted in yellow and saved in your database. That's how you learn vocabulary with this method, the more definitions you do, the better, that's the whole point. But when you're using LingQ (the free version) you only get to create 100 definitions and that's it, and believe me, when you're reading  multiple texts in a foreign language 100 definitions is not enough.

You have to go to your database, erase the definitions you already have and then you can return to read. That was a complete pain in the ass for me, I was completely comfortable reading with this method and bum! you have created 100 LingQs that's your limit!, I had to return to my database, erase a few words and bum! I reached the limit again. That just made this method so annoying and uncomfortable that I stopped using it. That's the greatest flaw of this site , and that's why I don't use it anymore. Well I still use it but in another way...



Learning With Text was the solution that I found to this problem, and without any doubt LWT is the best way to use this reading method.

Learning With Text is not a website, is a software, kinda like an app. You use LWT exactly the same way that you use LingQ. But! LWT is completely free to use, and you can make as many definitions as you want to! no limits, the way it should be.



The only thing is that you have to import everything to it,  when you install LWT the whole software is empty you have to import your texts and audio to it, but this is really simple (copy/paste kinda stuff) and you also can choose two online dictionaries to use. And with that, you can study and read so much comfortably without limitations, without erasing words from you database, with a proper dictionary of your choise where you can see multiple definitions, and all of the data is in your computer so you don't really need the web to use it.

The downside of Learning With Text and there's really only one: Is a little bit tricky to download, is completely free, it doesn't take a lot of time to download but the way to download it and install it is a little weird.

There are several methods to install it, you can go to http://lwt.sourceforge.net/ to see them.

This is the method I used (using Windows and EasyPHP):

1. First you go to this link http://sourceforge.net/projects/quickeasyphp/files/EasyPHP/5.3.6.1/


2. Click in EasyPHP-5.3.6.1-setup.exe and a program will download into your computer, install it in Program Files.


3. Now go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/lwt/ and download the zip of Learning With Text.


4. Once you have the zip of LWT, copy it and paste it in C:\Program Files\EasyPHP-5.3.6.1\www.


5. Unzip LWT inside this www folder. You'll have a lwt folder, after that you can delete the zip if you want to.


6. Open the lwt folder, you'll see a file named connect_easyphp.inc.php changed that name to connect.inc.php.


7. Now go to your Windows Start Menu, you'll see an EasyPhP icon, click it to activate it.


8. Now go to your browser and try these addresses: http://127.0.0.1:8887/lwt , http://127.0.0.1:8888/lwt or http://127.0.0.1:8887/lwt_v_1_4_9%20(1)/, one of them should open LWT for you, when you find it, bookmark it so you don't need to write all those weird numbers again.


9. Now, when you want to open LWT again, just click in your EasyPhP icon at your windows menu and go to the address that you bookmarked and that's it.


10. Another thing, if you want to import audio, just go to your lwt folder, inside create another folder called media, you'll import all your audio there.
    

And that's it, once you've already installed it you can use LingQ and LWT combined.

As I already told you LingQ is a big library and you should use it as such. LWT is the best way to use this reading method and you should use it as such.

Go to LingQ, pick a lesson and import it to LWT so you can study it more comfortable, with no limitations and no cash spend. You can also import to LWT whatever kind of text you want, you can import songs (which are really useful) news and all kinds of stuff.

Do this!,because this reading method really works, if you already know the basics of the language and you use this method; you can pretty much read and understand every text in that language and at the same time acquiring a lot of information, vocabulary and the overall rythm of the language.

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Dream Theater - Images and Words (Album Review)

Okay, so, where do I even begin with this album? Some people call it the very first Progressive Metal album ever made (something I don't agree with), others call it the greatest Progressive Metal album ever and the greatest album DT has ever and will ever made. Yes I'm talking about the mythical and groundbreaking Images and Words.



Ok, so first of all, this album has this messianic complex that we all love. This album was made during a really tough moment for Dream Theater. Their debut album "When A Dream And Day Unite" was a complete commercial failure but this wasn't really DT's fault, there were serious problems with the record label when it came to the management and distribution that WDADU had.

DT was basically ripped-off by its first label company which offered them a tour, a single and even a music video and we all know that at the end of the day they didn't get a thing. It was also in this moment when DT realized that Charles Dominici wasn't the right singer for them and they decided to "let him go". I love that phrase, "let him go" ,come on dudes, it sounds pretty but you fired him, say it like that.

That's something that I have always thought was kinda cruel, especially when you watch Charles Dominici's early basement interviews with DT and you can see that he has the DT logo tattooed on his arm, OH DAAAAMMMNN, that must have hurted; It's like tattooing the name of your ex-girlfriend... but a little bit cooler.

Miraculously they managed to find a new label and a new singer, the infamous James Labrie. Now, they were ready for their second album but I'm pretty sure  this was their last chance; I don't think that DT would have survived another failure.

New unknown label, new unknown singer, only one bullet left and... this thing came out

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="300"] There was no time for pain, no energy for anger[/caption]

You know... just..one of the greatest albums of all time... it happens... it happens.

A lot of people call Images and Words the greatest album that DT has ever and will ever release, and I know that because I'm one of them.

Yes, for me, Images & Words is the greatest DT album ever, this album is just perfect in every way. There's nothing I have to complain about it, nothing! Every single second of music is perfect: poetical lyrics, beautiful melodies, technical compositions that are not from this world including a great number of the greatest guitar solos that you'll probably ever hear and an overwhelming emotional atmosphere ( we must to thank Kevin Moore for that, honestly).

There's only one other album that sometimes manages to battle my I&W preference, but it all depends in what kind of mood I am, but generally I&W is the one.

Every song of this album is a famous classic: Pull Me Under is probably the most famous progressive song ever, Under A Glass Moon is one of the greatest guitar composed songs of all time. The lyrics of the songs have also been memorable and analyzed through the years. Whether or not Metropolis is about Romulus and Remus, whether or not Wait For Sleep and Learning to Live are about HIV or about the struggle of fighting a mortal disease, whether or not Pull Me Under is really about Hamlet. There are a lot of interpretation of these songs that have risen over the years and that's because they wrote those lyrics in an amazing metaphorical but also literal aesthetical way.

I also think that this album has the greatest lyrics of any other DT album... well maybe except Awake. When it comes to lyrics I&W and Awake are in a complete tie for me. Awake lyrics are a little bit more literal but full of emotions and strong feelings.

Metropolis is my favourite DT song. Pull Me Under's guitar riff that starts at 4:03 is my second favourite guitar riff ever, only top by one of the final riffs that you can hear almost at the end of The Ivory Gate of Dreams by Fates Warning.

For me this album just represents the real and honest Dream Theater, this is not DT trying to copy or imitate other style, they started imitating bands like Iron Maiden and Rush but they soon evolve and here you can see a truly form style completely developed by them, a style that changed this whole genre and inspire many musicians to come. For me this is the real Dream Theater, every time that someone mentions DT; this! is the first album I think about and every time someone asks me about them I just say: Go and listen to I&W first! Because for me, that album is who they are, or well, who they really were.

I could talk about this album just on and on but I'm afraid all that I have left to say has already been said. Images & Words is just simply one of the greatest albums of all time (talking in general not only inside the genre), the greatest Dream Theater album, and a perfect candidate for the greatest Progressive Metal album of all time.

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