Counting on Silence

(Note: The following article was originally published on July 14, 2016.)

For many casual observers, Pokémon may be best remembered as a trading card, gaming, and TV phenomenon that swept the globe into a frenzy 15–20 years ago. Naturally, the A$60 billion franchise has almost been milked dry over the years, and Nintendo’s struggling Wii U console meant that a breakout hit was highly sought-after. However, Pokémon Go hasn’t just revitalised Nintendo’s dry spell; it has transcended culture, age, and language. More importantly, Pokémon Go has got people to get outside and active once more.
Nintendo is no stranger to fostering fitness and social interaction within its video game titles. Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus have sold a combined total of approximately 43.8 million units. To put this in perspective, both of the aforementioned titles are, on their own, currently one of the top 25 video games ever sold, each surpassing The Sims 2, Skyrim, and even Super Mario World. What makes Pokémon Go different, however, cannot be chalked up to a single catalyst; instead, there are several factors which have paved the way for Nintendo’s latest success.

1: Combining a multibillion-dollar franchise with augmented reality on a global scale.

As already mentioned, Pokémon is huge. You would need to be living under a rock to have not heard of Pokémon Go, much less Pokémon as a franchise. Pokémon Go has infiltrated the public consciousness on an unprecedented scale, especially for a video game. The game has seen whole families on the hunt for the virtual critters, which populate your mobile device depending on your location. The runaway success of the new mobile game has seen Nintendo’s share price spike by A$14.4 billion, a staggering 67% increase from the stock price before the game’s release.

2: Making the game available for free and on a range of mobile devices.

As Nintendo’s first foray into the mobile market, hordes of people who don’t own a Nintendo DS—or other proprietary handheld game consoles by Nintendo—now have the opportunity to see what the big deal about Pokémon is for themselves. Better yet, the fact that the game is free means that people who are new to the Pokémon series can try the game risk-free, increasing the awareness and exposure of Nintendo’s 20-year-old franchise.

3: Capitalising on its users’ propensity to freely advertise the game on social media.

Marketing for video games is a huge industry. Common methods for advertising mobile games are on other mobile games, ads on TV, or ads on websites such as twitch.tv. A significant contributing factor to Pokémon Go’s explosion in popularity is social media. The games virality (not to be confused with ‘virility’) can be felt all over the internet, but it can also be felt in the flesh, with many people congregating and bonding over the game, which sees its players step into the real-world wilderness to catch Pokémon.
One thing is for sure, though: with a battle-mode component sure to be on the way soon, Pokémon Go shows no sign of stopping any time soon.

— Ben Schultz

Engine-tested!

Well, it took me over an hour of solid investigative work, but I’ve finally figured out how to input en and em dashes with ease!

This is pretty inside baseball, so this post is probably only going to apply to people who want to set up a shortcut for any symbols on their Windows machine, regardless of which application they are in.

The em dash—you know, the extended horizontal lines that surround this fragment—is useful for breaking up a train of thought; unfortunately, however, Microsoft keyboards don’t have an easy way of employing the em and en dashes outside of Microsoft Word. The other solution, unfortunately, is to use the numeric keypad; for instance:

Hold down one of the Alt keys and type on the numeric keypad: 0150 for an en dash or 0151 for an em dash. The dash appears when you release the Alt key. On a keyboard with no numeric keypad, use a Fn (Function) key combination to type the numbers.

Unfortunately, not everyone has a numeric keypad; some people—like my colleague—have a gaming keyboard, which neither has a numpad nor function key numbers. Besides, even if you do have the option to press “Alt+0151”, it is an extremely tedious option; moreover, it’s a struggle just to remember the numbers!

Here’s my long-term solution to remedy this annoying issue for Windows 8 users: (A similar concept should apply to other Windows users; simply search to find out how to add a new keyboard for your particular OS as necessary.)

1. Download and install the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator 1.4 software package. (This link will automatically open a new tab for you.)
2. Once you’ve installed and opened Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator 1.4, simply open the program and select File → Load Existing Keyboard…
3. Scroll down and select ‘US’—you should now see a fully populated keyboard layout.
4. On the left you will notice that it says ‘Shift states:’ with ‘Shift’, ‘Alt+Ctrl (AltGr)’ and ‘Ctrl’; simply click ‘Alt+Ctrl (AltGr)’ to check the box.
5. You should now see blank keys throughout the on-screen keyboard; this is a good thing.
6. For an en dash, simply copy the punctuation mark between the following quotes: “–”. Switch back to Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator and click the key situated directly left of the ‘Backspace’ key. Paste your en dash into the text field and click ‘OK’.
7. For the wider em dash—you know, these ones—simply copy one one of the aforementioned em dashes and go back to Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. On the blank space directly left of your newly installed en dash, click the blank button and paste your em dash. Hit ‘OK’.
8. You’re almost done! To make sure you didn’t mess up the process, click Project → Test Keyboard Layout, then try Ctrl + Alt + (equals symbol [=]) for the en dash, and Ctrl + Alt + (hyphen symbol [-]) for the em dash. If it worked, then you’re almost done!
9. On Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator, select File → Save Source File As… (You can call it whatever you like (so long as there are no spaces); I just opted for saving it as ‘emdash’, but it’s totally up to you.
10. Now click Project → Build DLL and setup package. When it asks you to open the director after creating the setup package, select ‘Yes’.
11. Right click on ‘setup.exe’ (but just “setup” if you have file extensions hidden). Click ‘Run as administrator’. Once you’ve installed the custom keyboard, go to step 12.
12. Copy this into an explorer window text field: Control Panel\Clock, Language, and Region\Language
13. Press Enter. Once you’ve loaded it up, you should see English (United States). If you have another language installed, such as Australian, double-click that option. Under input method, select ‘Add an input method’. Scroll down and find your newly added custom keyboard, which is probably listed under ‘US – custom’ by default. Click ‘Add’. If you followed all of these instructions carefully, you should be done! Congratulations! Now pour yourself a celebratory drink!

Note: Although I didn’t have this issue, my colleague has noticed that you may need to exit and relaunch certain applications. Once you have done this, however, you should be golden for as long as your computer lives. Hooray.

Found this article helpful? Feel free to send me a tip via PayPal using info@deluxecopywriting.com as the email.

Let me know how quickly you can solve it! 🙂

Altruism is a peculiar trait; essentially, helping out someone or something else with no ulterior motive. Having done some shopping today, my wallet was apparently left behind in a trolley, and two kind women drove to my house to deliver it. Now, I’m sure that a lot of people would have done the same, kind, selfless deed if you were in their position, but it’s never something I take for granted. Also, to the kind checkout clerk who served me today and took an interest in my writing and wished me luck, please feel free to send me a message, and I’ll happily send you a free copy upon release as a small token of my appreciation.

 

Also, here’s some 3D concept art:

Warning: the following transmission transcript is a classified document belonging to the United States military. Unauthorized possession of this document is illegal; any military personnel caught violating the terms of their clearance, by illegal distribution or otherwise, will immediately have their clearance revoked, and will be tried under courts-martial for transgression of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Any unauthorized citizen in the United States found to be in possession of this document, or an unauthorized copy, may be subpoenaed for treason.

UCMJ, 64 Stat. 109, 10 U.S.C. §§ 801–946; 18 U.S. Code § 2381

 

My name is Dr. Damien Huxley. I am writing this letter on March 25, 2071.

Two weeks ago, you received a binary message which—accurately interpreted—predicted an event in your immediate future that was so unlikely that only a person from the future could have made such a ludicrous prediction with such acuity and then be proven correct about the exact nature of the event that occurred. For the sake of national security, I will not reiterate what happened, lest the information fall into the wrong hands. Today, I received your reply.

I am relieved that you were able to decipher my instructions on how to reply, and that you managed to bury the totem that would give us empirical evidence that the law of causality could not possibly be violated as per our understanding. Unfortunately, as expected, there is no evidence that the totem you buried was ever put there in my reality.

I am with a team of nanotechnology-assisted humans at a research facility you will know in your timeline as the Cheyenne Mountain nuclear bunker. Since time in our reality is of such critical importance, I will keep this as concise as possible while not trying to redact details that are critical for the survival of humanity in your reality.

The median temperature of Earth currently sits at an estimated -240 °C. If you think this was a result of humanity trying to reverse global warming by modifying our atmosphere, then you are gravely mistaken. Like endangered wildlife that succumbed to incidental changes of environment, humans in our reality have also become the victims of natural selection at the hands of pseudo-sentient entities. Over the past few months, almost all species of fauna and flora have been annihilated, save species such as the tardigrade. Even the various seed banks we have are inaccessible. Humans will soon join that list if we cannot quell the explosive growth of quantum nanotechnology, although I suspect our window of opportunity is severely limited.

I know, I know, you are most likely asking how this could happen. After all, surely we put checks and balances in place to ensure that the inevitable technological revolution brought upon us by the singularity would not run out of control. I can assure you that we did; however, once nanotechnology began to self-replicate, it devised a quantum substrate that required temperatures close to 0 Kelvin—absolute zero. Before we realised what had happened, we were powerless to stop its self-replication. It manifested itself exponentially until it had spread like an unstoppable virus on Earth and beyond, artificially using its own computational force to cool the surrounding molecules to allow it and its neighbouring quantum particles to thrive at optimal performance. It is estimated that there are less than 200,000 people on Earth, and the loss of biological life is unprecedented. All of these people, like us, are only alive because they have utilised thermo-bunkers, but their food supply is dwindling. The great dying has been classified technically as the Quantum Extinction Event.

We have known about the ability to transmit data back in time on a quantum level for a while now, but all attempts to transport living organisms back in time have proved futile. In the same way that past generations have tried to protect the interests of future ones by cutting down deforestation, maintaining the ozone layer, reducing reliance on fossil fuels, and the disarmament of nuclear states, we must extend the same courtesy to our past selves by sending this warning, even if humanity within our own reality will not be saved.

The time in which this message has been sent signifies a critical branch in technological progress. Please stand by for a new directive.

The purpose of this website/blog is twofold:

1) I intend on using this as a platform to both promote and sell my book when it is eventually released.

2) A place separate from social media, so that the people who wish to follow my progress can do so, and those people who have little to no interest but are also my friends on social networking sites such as Facebook, are not constantly bombarded with my writing updates.

So why did I buy this domain and not benschultz.com or some other variant? Well, I would if I could, but unfortunately, Ben is a fairly common name, and so too is Schultz; therefore, it was always going to be a hard domain to acquire. The current owner of that site has had it as long as I can remember (I love the minimalist theme, by the way), and I seriously doubt he would be willing to just hand it over.

My other blog, euphoricgames.net, which has been lying dormant for over two years now, will probably just be left to decay like a long-forgotten Geocities site, or Madonna. (Just in case you’re reading this in the future and Madonna has actually died, this a cheap joke about Madonna’s age, not her decaying corpse; I am not that insensitive. Wait, let me just check Wikipedia to make sure she’s not actually dead … Okay, just checked it; she’s still alive as of this post.)

If you came here from a Facebook post or an email link from my previous blog mailing list, the Metanet Forums, or any other place for that matter, then I thank you for taking the time to read this post. This site is very bland at the moment, but I am working on procuring a new theme, as well as adding in relevant pictures and other pertinent details.

I will try to post here with much more frequency than my previous blog; however, as is my tendency, this might be a huge lie. (Tendency to not make regular posts, that is, not my tendency to lie. Unless that, too, was a lie. A-ha! Now you will never know what I meant, as your mind contorts through the mysterious paradox that I have unleashed upon you.

Well, that’s all I have to say for now. Adios.