Magazine Na13D
The future of internet access and entertainment Internet access is often associated with entertainment and different sorts of amusement such as watching tv-shows on the net, streams and downloading new programs and listening to music. Strangely the internet today is not “world wide”, there is a lack of availability for people living in continents such as Africa and furthermore in developing countries. This year (2014) in July only 40,4% of the worlds population had access to internet. For a lot of people either the cost of having internet is too high or the connection is far too slow, in normal gaming language this is referred to as lag. Luckily for us companies such as Google and SpaceX want to build cheap, but enormously efficient equipment to deliver world wide internet access, that is both cheap and reliable. In an interview with the director Elon Musk at SpaceX, Mr. Musk acknowledged the rumors about his companies “crazy notion” to send up internet broadcasting satellites in space orbiting earth. SpaceX director also told the magazine that he is determined and confident in his companies technologies’ and employees’ ability to make the idea happen. Google has published a similar idea on their site named Project Loon. Google will use special air balloons that reach high altitudes of around 20.000 metres up in the stratosphere. They will use the stratospheric winds to move around the balloons to provide valuable internet coverage on the ground. If these two companies do achieve their project goals they might get monopoly of internet providence due to a most certain loss of competition from other companies. Extreme profits can be expected. However it will bring us revolutionary possibilities as we will probably see a giant increase of internet usage and communications throughout the globe will continue to grow constantly in a much higher pace. More people will be able to take part of internet based entertainment. The dangers concerning a broader internet coverage would be that more people get obsessed, staying on the internet for unhealthy periods of time. There will be a greater risk of being hacked when more people manage their house appliances, alarms, bank accounts and personal identities through the internet. Google and SpaceX will gain large amounts of power, as they will be the only companies that deliver internet to the worlds population. They will be able to shut down the internet, communication systems and take away peoples opinions that do not go their way. They might also control the amount of information that is available to the people and the society through different websites, blogs and newspapers that are on the internet. However internet has made it possible for people to receive the same experience of culture, music and entertainment no matter where you live. Through streams from operas, concert, world-metropolitans in London and New York directly to rural areas such as Skoghall or Deje to their public houses. The broad mass will take part of worldculture, without paying large amounts of money for expensive trips and accommodations. The culture life will broaden and
grow due to that the high culture moves out from the saloons to the countryside. People who have never seen or had the chance to attend a musical or opera will now have the possibility to do it. Internet access has proven itself to create endless opportunities for our worlds population, not solely towards the entertainment access. Today most apps, games and software are connected to the internet. Houseware such as doors, powersupplies and even pacemakers that controls a persons heartbeats and function can be managed through the internet. Internet has a powerful position in our lives and will probably be more important in the future.
Karl Sjรถberg NA13D
Game of thrones – a review The difficult task of turning a marvelous book series into a TV-series is not a challenge everyone is willing to take, yet the written producers David Benioff and D.B Weiss decided to do so and transformed it to something that HBO’s audience had never before seen. But the question is, is it worth watching? I do believe so, and who would not when the star actors are well known people, such as Peter Dinklage (The station Agent) and Sean Bean (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring). Equally as impressive, it moves on with an excellent pace that even makes people enjoy the talky bits, which are not few nor short. But that is a good thing, since the series need to explain a lot for those who have not read the book about the world of Westeros, and the kingdoms that fight for control. Westeros is a continent whose people live in a medieval era with queens, lords and knights. The series focuses on a family that goes by the name of Stark. Ned Stark is the head of the family and is after the assassination of the king’s hand, offered by his friend King Robert Baratheon to become the new one. Ned accepts the offer and moves to King’s landing, which is the capital of Westeros. By taking the job, Ned and his family are thrown into a world of political battles and danger. While this is happening, John Snow, who is Ned’s illegitimate child, has to face the danger that lies beyond the north wall. When the first season got aired, it received great comments and raised the bar for the competition in the TV- industry. But as a reader of the first book, I remained skeptical that it could live up to the same level. Without knowing what I was getting myself into, I decided to give it a change and I am glad I did. It made me puzzled about how well it followed the book. It had followed the original story without skipping any events. But the true joy was to see the faces of the people and the places in the book. The actors performed phenomenally and truly lived through their roles. As a viewer it was easily done that one got emotional due to the great acting. To sum it all up, Game of Thrones is a serie that I strongly recommend, and it is without a doubt one of my favorite series of all time. My final rating is 5/5 iron thrones.
Christmas movies The nightmare before Christmas: The nightmare before Christmas is an animation movie that has not been created in the same ordinary way as other animation movies, i.e. that the characters are created by drawings. But in this movie the shooting is made in a process called stop- action animation where the characters actually are constructed and moved frame by frame so that in this way a three dimensional world would be created instead of a flatter universe of cell animations and the characters appear more live. It is not only the way that this movie is created in that gives it a distinguishing quality, but also several other facts. Everything is raised to whole new levels, nothing seems ordinary and familiar. Something as simple as the world that we live in does not even exist in this movie. Here our world is replaced by different holidays; each holiday has its own town, e.g. Halloween town and Christmas town. In every part of these towns’ dissimilar preparations takes place by the very sensational characters. The story which mostly takes place in Halloween town and partially in Christmas town is about a stealing plan by Halloween for Christmas. The most spectacular character, a bony skeleton named Jack Skellington accidently when on his way to one of the Halloween town’s department trips into the wrong entryway and ends up in the middle of preparations for Christmas. Tiny little figures help Santa Claus by assisting him in fulfilling people’s wishes. Back in Halloween town Jack begins to reconsider and realizes that he also wants to have an important holiday, bring piece and spread joy on earth, just like Santa Claus does. He then consequently wants to improve himself and decides to do so by kidnapping Santa Claus. Jack plays the role of Jolly Old St. Nick whilst his helpers manufacture hilarious and outstanding Christmas gifts. As described above, this movie is so special and entertaining in so many different ways, which is why it suits everybody in all ages. Therefore, on this Christmas I really do recommend you to gather your whole family to just sit back and watch this phenomenal movie!
Interview with a skilled Tetris-gamer Tetris is a classic computer game that was invented by the Russian mathematician Alekséj Leonídovitj Pázjitnov in 1984. The game does contain seven tetriminios and all of them are built by four square blocks. In the game the tetriminios fall down the play field and one need to move them sideways to create a horizontal line of squares without any gaps. When one get a full line it disappears and leave space for new blocks. One loses when the blocks get so many they touch the roof of the field. Tetris has been played all over the world and has loads of sequels and variations. So what makes the game so popular? We asked the skilled Tetris-gamer Oskar Thorén. Hello Oskar, what do you like best about Tetris? Hello. It is definitely the simplicity that makes the game so unique and entertaining. When is the right time to play it? The right time is whenever you are sad or bored. Nothing can make me as happy as Tetris. If you were able to change something in the game, what would it be? Oh, I have always wanted that the site where I am playing Tetris would buy the rights to the original Tetris music: Old Russian folk songs. That would be great!
You do sound like a veteran! When did you start gaming? Tetris has always been a part of my life, but since we started the gymnasium things has changed. We got these wonderful red computers and they have made my Tetris-gaming much easier. On what kind of devices did you play Tetris before? In the beginning it was a lot of Gameboy, then some joysticks. Thank you for sharing, Oskar! My last question to you: What is your high score? To be honest I do not know! I believe I have reached 800k once, and I might have crossed the holy one-million-line, but I am not sure. Sofia Fransson 19/11-14
How many cell phones have you had? According to BBC.com 1.8 million phones are sold every day and this research includes solely smartphones. Other electronics as well, for example televisions and computers, are in large quantities on the market today. However, do we ever ask ourselves what effects these electronics have on us as well as on the environment? The environment is continuously put to the test; electronics are just one example of reasons that are contributing to the surroundings’ decreasing unhealthiness. In mobile phones there are several materials that are considered toxic, for example arsenic, lithium and zinc. When these are decomposing they can leak into the groundwater, spread and contaminate the environment. This does not only affect the surroundings, but also us humans, as for example metals can enter our food through the food chain which can, in large amounts, pose a threat to our health. However there is more than one example of how we are affected by the increase of cell phones being produced. In the first place the waste from the cell phones, which often is dumped in developing countries, may have a bad effect on the people that live nearby these places. Cancer and damage to the nervous system are two examples of this. Furthermore the production of mobile phones contributes to the climate change because of the releasing of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Considering that the production has unmistakably increased much since the cell phone was invented, also the effect on the earth enlarges. On the other hand: we can’t survive without the technology we have developed because the society is nowadays depending on it. What we can do though is to take into consideration how we treat our surrounding and how our actions may have an impact on the earth. To prevent further harm on the environment and ourselves, firstly we could use the same cell phone during a longer period of time. In other terms, the newest design of a phone should not be the most important, but instead to use a mobile phone until it is not working anymore. Secondly we could recycle the cell phones that we don’t use anymore. They can then be reused to make new ones or sold again to someone else. As the metals in the phones are recycled, the mining of the metals could decrease as well. The key may be to have accessible recycle stations and an environmentally friendly mindset to keep the evolution manageable. Ida Staxler NA13D
The Future of the iPhone When the iPhone first was announced, it was a huge improvement compared to other phones on the market, it was in a league of its own. If you had an iPhone you had the best telephone available at the time. A couple of years later, things started to change. It wasn’t an overnight change, it happened gradually. Soon the iPhone was no longer the one and only star on the telephone market. Serious competition had seen the daylight. Samsung soon proved to be a tough rival. Since the era of smartphones started, Samsung had been a strong part in the game, but their first models were hardly comparable with the iPhone. They had smaller screens, lower screen resolutions, less internal memory, and most important: their compatibility was not even to speak of. The Apple “App Store” offered the vast majority of the applications available. Not only had the App Store most of the applications, the applications that the competitors did have were often released several months later. Nowadays the situation is different, it isn’t completely the opposite, but the amount of apps is about the same in total. The release dates are also about the same, though the App Store does have a small advantage, but the leap isn’t big, more likely fractional. Furthermore the companies using the Android operating system do have a lot more models available. That is both negative and positive; it depends on how you look at it. The benefit of having many devices is of course that you can choose among many different alternatives and buy a phone that suits you like a glove. The negative aspect of a wide range of models is the compatibility of the internal software in the devices. If the software has to be adjusted for many different devices, the error and bugs become much more frequent. If the software only has to be adjusted for one or two devices, the company (Apple) can develop it specifically for those devices and support it in a good way. The iPhone will always have the benefit of compatibility towards the software, but as I’ve experienced it isn’t enough anymore. New times have come, and they will strike hard on the iPhone. This autumn Apple released two different models of the iPhone. The biggest difference between those models is the size of the screen. One smaller model sporting a screen of 4.7´´, and one bigger model called the “iPhone plus” - having a screen size of 5.5´´. In my opinion, the iPhone now having those screen sizes available has taken one step forward in the fight against the Androids. To summarize the differences between the Androids and the iPhone I would say that their top models are all good phones, and the biggest reason for choosing one before another is personal
preference. The phones are going up and down in popularity all the time, but recently more people have chosen the Androids before the two new iPhones. My conclusion is that the iPhone has dropped in popularity the last couple of years, but I still think that the best choice is the phone that fits your requirements the best!
The iPhone 6
By Gabriel Berglind, NA13D
Christmas themed games As Christmas is approaching people, mostly children, tend to enjoy playing Christmas themed computer games. Therefore we decided to investigate the quality of the holiday themed games. The games were generally very inappropriate and violent. But the few games, which content were not improper, were mainly about decorating, giving Santa clause a makeover or other stereotypical girly things. Discovering what kind of Christmas themed games the Swedish children get to play on these websites, are very disappointing in a gender equality perspective.
Weihnachsturnier ★★★★☆ http://tema.spelo.se/christmas-volleybal.html
One of the games we decided to investigate were Weihnachsturnier. This game is about two Santa clauses playing volleyball. One Santa is just an ordinary classic Santa and the other one has a bit unusual appearance with a blue hat and sunglasses. Weihnachsturnier is a game for everyone. Boys and girls can enjoy this game together since it has a multiplayer option. This is a great asset to the game because to do something together with your friends are important. But there are something negative with every game. In this case is it the language. The German language is not always easy to understand. It is not a necessity to translate the game to English, but the language might be confusing to some children.
Santa dolled up ★★☆☆☆ http://tema.spelo.se/santa-dolled-up.html
- “Dressupone.com where girls meet to play.” The opening phrase of the game Santa Dolled up were despicable, it implied that this is the kind of games girls are supposed to play. The introduction also rejects all the boys who might want to give Santa clause a makeover. However the Christmas carol which is playing during the game is very festive and jolly, which contributes to that your Christmas spirit enlightens, owing to that the creators of this game really succeeded with the music part. But overall, the game where quite mediocre. The players are not granted much creative freedom because the game is already laid out for them and approximately all that is required for this game is someone to click whatever is twinkling on the screen. Since the game, Santa dolled up, is very monotonous is it perhaps more suitable for very young children due to the fact that it is not a especially complex game.
Is the pressure on professional gamers too big? Today there is a big industry around gaming and the best players. But do we put too big pressure on these young people who are set to always perform, and have to practice most of their lives to stay on top? And how does this affect their health? League of Legends, Dota 2, Counter Strike Global Offensive, Starcraft, these is just some of the games where there is players who play for a living, but there are plenty of other games that you can play and earn enough money to live a good life. But there is a backside. To reach this high level of professional gaming, you have to practice many and many hours, it is commonly said that you have to practice 10.000 hours to get really good at something. The biggest difference between gaming and other professional activities like ice hockey and football is that it is more accepted by the society to play sports where you are more physically activated than where you sit in front of a computer screen eight hours per day. And this is of course that your body is getting strong and healthy from playing sports where you need to run or skate. This is a big problem for someone who tries to get professional in gaming, they mainly sit still by the computer and are trying to increase their level of gaming. And as a said, this is not good for their bodies. In an interview for the Swedish channel TV6 , Martin “Rekkles” Larsson, League of Legends player for Fnatic, says that “I try to work out a lot, it helps me to focus, often I try to go for a run or workout in the gym.”
This is in my opiniun very important, the players bodies have to stay fit, both for the focus and to have the energy to play, but also to feel well, they are not going to be professional gamers their entire lives, and most of them do not earn so much that they can live on the money they have earned after their gaming career, they have to get
another job. And of course, it is not worth to get so fat and not physically acitvated that you get sick and die early. This is a before and after picture of another Fnatic player, Bora “yellowstar” Kim, who got tired of being fat and unhelaty, so he started to work out a lot and this is the result.
This is what he had to say about his change to Fnatics web site : “I understod that my life style was not healthy, I practise up to ten hours per day, and I was only eating unhelathy food, so I started to workout, stopped drinking coke and started to drink water instead. I scipped the pizza and started to eat healthy, and today I feel much better, I play better and I know that I will be happy that I made this choice even in the future” So this is a solution to the problem with professinals health. But is this enough? Are there other problemes about this? Not just about these young peoples pshysicall health, but what about thier mental health? Many people, often older, do not understand this world. They think that these guys are afraid of the sunlight and do not talk to people, that they live in their parents houses and so on. But the truth is not like that, the earlier mentioned guys, Bora and Martin, both live in Germany. They have moved there from France and Sweden to play full time. They live in a big house with everything you can ask for. It is their team organization, Fnatic, who own this house and do everything they can so make these guys will feel well. So that myth is absolutley not true, what about the sunlight then, do they ever see it? Of course they do, let us not forget that these guys are professionals, just like every other sportsman. They do lots of interviews and see a lot of fans everyday. So except from playing, there is more in the job than just say hi to the fans after the tournaments, they have to do it all the time. So I do not really think that this is a problem, since their organization do everything they can to make their players feel well.
Cookieclicker is love. Cookieclicker is life “It is so simple, but still so complex.” Says Oskar Thorén one of the many victims to the new game cookieclicker. “I just can’t keep my eyes off the screen or my fingers off the mouse pad.” One of the most recent popular games at the moment is a game called cookieclicker, and just as the game indicates it is a game about clicking cookies. You are supposed to click on a big icon looking like a cookie on the left side of the webpage. You start with zero cookies and for every time you click the icon you will get another cookie which you can invest in upgrades that give you an amount of cookies every second. It might seem really simple and perhaps quite boring clicking on a cookie, and it probably is even for the players themselves. What convinces the players to keep playing the game then? After playing it for a while myself, I actually found it rather enjoying. At first it is not that appealing but just at the moment as you buy an upgrade such as a grandmother or a self-clicking cursor and noticing the cookies starting to pour in by themselves you could roughly compare it with a self-owned company where the company after a while powers itself and the money pours in without you putting that much effort in it. In cookieclicker the more you click the more cookies you will get which will result in new investments such as grandmothers or bakers rather like a company. Many people that has played the game might suggest not to ever play the game. I asked Olle Wallbäck about his addiction to the game and he said: “It was fine in the beginning, and you thought you could put the computer away as fast as you bought upgrades and could start letting the cookies fly in by themselves. Although that was really not the case”. Olle is not the first person I have heard suggesting on that. The reason the players just cannot turn the screen away and let the cookies work by themselves is because they all know that if you continue playing and keep clicking the cookie you will or might be able to buy knew upgrades and therefore earn more cookies every second which will be giving you more cookies when you turn the screen away. Which you would never do…
Also there is an extra feature in the game called golden cookies. These cookies appear randomly on the screen and disappear after approximately 10 seconds and you are supposed to click on them to get some sort of buff. These buffs can give you an amount of cookies just the instance you click the golden cookie or make your clicking 1000 times as efficient. The golden cookies also ensure the players not being able to turn away the screen or close down the game away because of the major loss of cookies they would suffer. Therefore because of the poor reviews and my personal experience of the game I would strongly suggest every reader not to play the game unless you just like me are going to write a review about the game or if you suffer from an extreme apathy though in that case you need to be aware of the severe consequences of not being able to take your eyes away, which would occur.
A Christmas Carol How would you like to spend the last few days that are left until Christmas? We can highly recommend you to just spare yourself the enormous amount of stress that Christmas time tend to create, to just take some time to relax while watching one of the greatest Christmas movies in our history, “ A Christmas carol ”. It is not just a great movie, but a real classic that suites both adults and children.
Main character Jim Carrey as Ebenezer Scrooge (2009) This splendid movie receives 5/5 stars from our magazine.
This story was once written by a great author named Charles Dickens in the 1840’s. Even though it was first published in London it certainly became a real hit when it turned out that people all around the world embraced his insightful story. As you probably already know this book has been made into a movie several times and the newest one you can see on the cover above, starring Jim Carrey (2009) So I’m guessing now that all of you probably wonder; “What’s the movie about?” Just calm down you guys, you will find out right now:
“A Christmas carol tells the story of a bitter, old and miserable man named Ebenezer Scrooge and his transformation into a gentler, kinder man after visitations by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the ghosts of Christmases past, present and yet to come. The ghosts are visiting him to teach him about the real message of Christmas, that appreciating friendship and being close to your family are much more important than just amassing a fortune of either gifts or money�
A classic game that never dies The first mariogame came out in 1981 and is still going strong today with new, more developed features and gametypes for every new game that is released. For example players can drive around in a kart together with the other classic characters like Yoshi, Bowser and Donkey Kong from the “Nintendo family�. People are also able to try out one of the hundreds stages that exists in the gigantic Mario world. It is more than just a virtual world, it is a phenomenon that connect generations together. According to a recently published study by one of the biggest gaming companies in Canada where they had shown 20 pictures of characters from videogames and asked 3000 people on the street about what characters that they recognized and knew the name of, the result clearly showed that Mario was the most known, with almost twice as much answers compared to the second most recognized character Zelda. But why is this stereotypical Italian plumber with his red hat still one of the most loved and known characters after 30 years in the gaming industry? The secret behind the success is the concept of the game. Most other game developers are having a hard time trying to handle the hype that comes with producing a fantastic game. When they are trying to make an even greater follow up they often seem to remove the heart of the game by focusing on introducing new features to the consumers instead of keeping the basics from the old game and work from there. This is exactly what the game developers at Nintendo have done right. Even if they have released a lot of new Mario games during the years, they are still keeping themselves to the soul of the game. This is why Mario still is so popular, adults can relate to their own childhood while watching their children play Mario games because the concept has not changed that much over the years. It is quite simple, everybody can play and understand the purpose of the game. Beside this reason, Nintendo has also built up a reputation about Mario being one of the most classic games in the videogame industry which has helped Nintendo to reach the top of the gaming community. This successful story about one of the biggest phenomenon in the history of gaming will probably continue for decades. Mario is much more than just a game, it is a culture, since 1981 when Nintendo released the first game they have built up a platform empire where people connect with others with the same passion for Mario and his friends.
Every week we use this article to bring some of Sweden’s most famous entertainers in to the spotlight. This time we’re going to talk about a very funny YouTuber named Johan Ring, or as many call him, Sp4zie. He has worked in the digital entertainment business for a few years now and he is getting more and more popular. Sp4zie has a Youtube channel where he posted his first video the 1 of November 2011. He posts videos about 3 times a week on this channel. He also has a twitch channel where he streams his games with his friends for the viewers to enjoy.
Sp4zies life Johan Ring was born 22th of August 1989. He grew up in Stockholm Sweden where he lived with his mother, father and two sisters. The school where he went as a kid was a good place. He had many classmates who were really nice to him and they were also very supportive. He describes himself as impulsive and funny and if he wanted to do something he did it. Because of the environment he had as a child he could do what he wanted to. In his spare time he did as much as he could. He was very creative and he always wanted to learn new instruments and improve his skills.
Martin Lindhetjärn NA13D 20-11-2014
In his young years he was a very talented soccer player and this sooner led to that he got an invitation from a football school at the other side of Stockholm. He accepted the invitation and he moved there to play football. Though football was a very big passion of his he didn’t like the way it was at that school. You as a person didn’t have the chance to be yourself and you had to act cool and hard, otherwise you would get bullied. After a while he decided to move back to his old side of the city to his friends and family where he was much more comfortable. After his years in school he decided to move up north in Sweden where he studied to become a radio producer. Now he lives in Stockholm with his girlfriend and he uses all of his time for his fulltime job as a YouTuber. This pretty much summons up Sp4zies life and I can recommend you to go and have a look at his YouTube channel. With this I wish you a nice day and see you next time.
One Piece Gol D. Roger also known as the Pirate King, the strongest and most infamous being to have ever sailed the Grand Line, the capture and death of Roger by the World Government brought a change throughout the world. His last words before his death revealed the location of the greatest treasure in the world, the One Piece. It was this revelation that brought about the Grand Pirate Era, men who dreamed of finding the One Piece (which promises an unlimited amount of riches and fame), and the most coveted of titles for person who finds it, the title of Pirate King. Enter Monkey D. Luffy, a 17-year-old boy that defies your standard definition of a pirate. Rather than the popular persona of a wicked, hardened, toothless pirate who raids villages for fun. Luffy’s reason for becoming a pirate is one of pure wonder, the thought of an exciting adventure and meeting new and intriguing people, along with finding One Piece and becoming the pirate king. Following in the footsteps of his childhood hero Red Haired Shanks, Luffy and his crew, the straw hat pirates travel across the Grand Line, experiencing crazy adventures, unveiling dark mysteries and battling strong enemies, all in order to reach the One Piece.
One Piece is an action adventure story in line with some of the great quest stories out there. Starting with a very simple plot, One piece follows the adventures of a young boy looking to fulfill his ultimate dream. Even though One Piece is animated and has very cartoon-like humor, it's a very well-rounded adventure show with as many serious bits as funny ones. While to some that might be a turn off, I think it makes the crew's journey and struggles all the more realistic.
Each character is defined by what they seek in their quest, leaving very little for actual development. Luffy and his friends are basically what the audience sees, with no ulterior motives driving or influencing their decisions. Each of the members in the straw hat pirates would do anything to help another member of the crew out even give their life if that is what it takes. Also as the story goes on the crew forget more and more about their own personal goals and helps each other out. The characters are also unique to the point of quirkiness and really bounce off each other well. It's hard not to smile at some of the crew's antics and even harder not to cry for them when they go through a tough time. While One Piece is anything but a children's show, teens and up can have a lot of fun while watching this gem of a Japanese anime.
Story: 9/10 Animation: 8/10 Characters: 9/10 Overall: 9/10