Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Pilot Review)

What Happened:

Detective Santiago (Melissa Fumero) and Detective Peralta (Andy Samburg) are interviewing a shopkeeper whom has just been robbed. Peralta figures out the case and they go back to the Precinct. This is where we meet the other main characters Terry Jeffords (Terry Crews); Charles Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio); Rosa Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz); Gina Linetti (Chelsea Peretti) and the brand new captain Ray Holt (Andre Braugher). After this, our main character Jake Peralta butts heads with the new captain over his new, stricter rules. The team is investigating a murder in an apartment building and pursue a lead that eventually leads them to a storage facility. The catch the murderer and unite as a team and grow trust as well as respect for each other.

Detective Jake Peralta:

Jake is a young, up and coming detective whom is quite brilliant in his own unorthodox way but struggles with his own immature antics. Jake loves the movie 'Die Hard' and quotes so many movies. He is childhood friends with Det. Rosa Diaz and quite obviously has a crush on Det. Amy Santiago. In this episode Peralta struggles with the captains new rules, but by the end of the episode, the two start clicking.


Detective Amy Santiago:

 Amy is an incredibly intelligent, by-the-books sort of person whom is always trying to prove herself; as she grew up with seven brothers. She is a bit of a social "buzz kill" because she feels most comfortable when she is at her desk filing reports.


Lieutenant Terry Jeffords:

Terry is incredibly strong and a physical specimen; he is second in command and initially introduces the captain to the entire squad. At his core, Terry is an incredibly strong leader and has great people skills. So far, his one downfall is that he has taken himself out of the field because he and his wife have just recently started a family.


Detective Rosa Diaz:

Rosa is the 'wild card' of the precinct; she is prone to spontaneous anger and hides her emotions well (outside of her episodes of rage). She and Jake grew up together. Throughout the episode, Det. Boyle is seen repeatedly talking to Rosa, even going as far as to ask her out to a movie festival. Rosa accepts, so maybe she seems to 'like' Boyle enough?


Captain Raymond Holt:

Cap. Holt is the brand-new captain of the 99th precinct in Brooklyn. He is as emotionless as Rosa and is very quick with his words. He has proven his resiliency by rising through the ranks as an openly-gay, black detective in the 1980's. Holt is strict with his rules, but also likes a bit of 'fun' (When he calls in the entire precinct to see Jake in a speedo).


Detective Charles Boyle:

Charles is...an odd guy; he knows plenty of strange cuisines and frequently references them. Boyle has no social filter (talks about disgusting things). Charles obviously has a crush on Rosa Diaz, but then he ruins the date plans by opening his mouth. All-in-all he is an extremely hard worker and never seems to quit.



I feel that Brooklyn Nine-Nine is and will continue to be an incredibly successful show, so-long as the writers don't stray too far away from the shows roots. I personally love the show and am almost completely done season 3, so obviously I wish to keep on watching this hilarious, fresh new take on the tired 'cop show'.
         

Season of Survivor: Who to Choose?

All of the applicants for my "Vault"

1. Okay, so the pregnant teenager whom just so happens to be a high school dropout wants in. This isn't gonna happen because she will be nothing but a drain on resources. She offers no specific skills and adds the problem of giving birth in (I'm assuming) nine months, which would create another mouth to feed.



2. The belligerent police officer whom refuses to let go of his trusty pistol was just to much of a risk to the other members of my base. I honestly just couldn't take the chance of him shooting or beating one of my survivors.




3.The elderly clergyman can definitely find recluse in my shelter. I feel like having a religious figure around would maybe help ease the tension between everyone while simultaneously boosting moral because there is something to believe in. Looking at all my options, there are more than likely going to be heated conflicts within this three month window of time, so we'll need a "peacekeeper" in the priest.



4. With all the things that could go wrong within a confined space in three months, we'll need a physician most definitely, so that is why I will allow the racist female to be a part of our sanctuary. Sure there is the possibility that she will cause problems, but the benefits of having her around out way her unfortunate social blights.



5. Yes having a musician would increase and maintain the positivity and hopefulness of my crew, however I rationalised that having the screeching sound of a violin vibrating off of the enclosed concrete walls of the shelter would eventually wear out the patience of everyone. I honestly couldn't care less about his drug selling thing.




6. Young, black militant wants into my shelter and I'll gladly allow him even if he offers no "special" skills. My reasoning is simple: he must be physically strong, energetic and will probably bring some sort of bravery to my shelter. He's a militant, so he'll be good with a gun and possibly with defending the base. Obviously because he is black the physician will be extremely racist to him and possibly wouldn't treat him if he were to become injured, this I can live with.



7. The prostitute is a middle-aged women whom, besides sexual activities and the spread of venereal diseases, offers nothing to my base. I imagine that she would just complain and spill her ageing hormones all over the place.




8. My thinking with the architect is that, say our base gets damaged and maybe we have the resources to "repair" our base, he would have the knowledge to do the job quickly, efficiently and correctly. Also, nobody is said to be homophobic, so he's safe from prejudice I assume.




9. We need a lawyer because what if some "bad" stuff goes on during the three months and I or someone in the base needs legal help, then we can get him to do it. He's also young so he'd be good at defending the base and generally just giving off a helpful vibe.




10. Unfortunately, I'm forced to take in the lawyer's drugged up wife. Honestly, she shouldn't be a problem, it's just that she really won't contribute much of anything. I genuinely want to just put her in a closet or something and forget about her.

Planet Base (Day 5) Final Post

Today is the last day of testing/reviewing my experiences with Planetbase. I'm going to try a new strategy today and that is...ACTUALLY EXPANDING; every time I've played so far I've always saved expanding the amount of people for last, and I always run out of time before I do it.
I'm gonna build a landing pad right after I achieve a level of being able to survive.

Here We Go!

So I started off with the usual's: obviously the oxygen generator, airlock, water extractor, solar panel, power collector and canteen. Once we survive the first night or two, get a mine going, that's when I'll build the landing pad.

First Night

Alright so, unfortunately I ran out of time yesterday, as It was a shortened block, so today I have to start up an entirely new game; however I will try my best to emulate what I had in the picture above, which shouldn't be too hard.

Somewhat close to yesterday's base.

Alright, now that every thing's back on schedule, it's time to resume plans for aggressive expansion!

So I built up everything we as a colony need to be self-sufficient, and within five-teen minutes I placed down a landing pad; now all I need to do is increase food production in order to ensure more people come to my base.

Success!! The first official "new guy" to come into my base
Now, the main thing now is too make sure I have enough power and resources.

 Alright so I've had four new astronauts land at my base, and just now I had my first experience with the Trading ships, they saved my colony from starving.

Just survived our first sandstorm, nobody died thankfully; although that would help my depleting resources:/

Alright so I'm fairly certain that everyone is gonna die soon, considering how I've run out of water and I have no metal to build more water collectors.

Whelp, I just had my first death, some guy died of starvation. I'd like to think that he died pridefully, but this base is slowly dying, so I'm calling it. 

I think the aggressive expansion route was definitely the most effective tactic I've used so far. This game is so challenging!

Planet Base (Day 2)

  Alright so today in Planetbase I started up the tutorial in order to, well, not fail immediately.

     It was fairly straightforward, I had to place certain buildings in certain pre-determined positions while simultaneously being given tips on why and how these buildings would help me.

The general gist of the tutorial was the game holding-my-hand through each and every building and placement, I like that and I generally wish more tutorials were as hands-on as this games was.

But although the tutorial is well thought out and makes the objectives of the game easy to digest for players, there are flaws with it, at least in my opinion.



With all of the features and different buildings that are found in the vanilla game, I wish that the dev's would've expanding the length of the tutorial to include every building and it's purpose. When I actually started to play the game, I had no clue about what a handful of buildings uses where and how to exploit them. I basically had to learn through trial-and-error before I could maximise their productivity and manage their drain on my colony.

The symbols I've circled in red are not even touched upon in the tutorial.

Planetbase (Day 4) Recap:

So, today I picked a brand new landing site and played a much more conservative game. The way I played more conservatively was by making sure I had plenty of electricity being generated and stored, because last time I ran out of power almost every night.

About 10 minutes in this is what my base looked like; basically just the necessities and LOTS of power is too come.

Later on, I ran into the problem of not having enough metal, i solved this by realizing that all the ore I had was litteraly meant to be turned into metal, so I rushed production in my factory.

This is as far as I got today, I had just installed the landing pad, things were looking up, but then...BOOM, the game crashed.

So, I kind of got screwed over today, although my actual play-through went rather well i'd say.

Planetbase (Day 4) goal:

Pretty much just slow everything down and pay attention to the amount of resources I have at all times. That's what happened to me last time.

Planetbase (Day 3)

-I chose to play pretty aggressively by continuously starting new projects and that actually was the downfall of my base because, i ended up having too much work assigned to too little people with depleted resources.
- All of the buildings I chose were the regular sized ones, as they fitted my needs best.
- I started out by doing the basics: Oxygen generation, Water collecting, Electricity, Power Absorbers and Food.
- The food I chose were potatoes, wheat, medicinal plants and turnips because they were all quick to make and low risk.

-I'd say that my goal is to slowly grow and thrive on "Mars"; eventually getting bigger than this:

Planetbase (Day 1) Reveal

Planetbase is a survival strategy game that tasks players with micro-managing every aspect of a manned-mission to one of four playable planets with varying degrees of difficulty and obstacles. The point of the game is to build on and colonize a planet; starting with a group of four astronauts, each of which have their own traits and specialties, and two working robots.

At the start of the game, players are greeted with the option to pick from one of four planets: Desert Planet, Frozen Planet, Gas Giant Moon, and Storm Planet. With each planet, the difficulty increases and the challenges that the player faces will vary quite dramatically.



The goal of the game is to gradually increase the size and and strength of your base; whether that be with more astronauts, more robots, more resources or more protection against invaders. Players must survive random environmental plights such as: meteorites, solar flares and sandstorms; make sure that your crew doesn't run out of energy or resources and manage growth responsibly.




I watched a quick walk through from a youtuber called STUFF+ who showed his experiences with Planetbase. Basically the video showed how quickly everything can go from 100% all right to "All hell is raising right now" because with all this game has to make a player worry about and micro-manage, it is quite common to have things creep up on you and almost kill everyone in your base.
I also watched a bit of another youtubers playthrough (Quill18) and I found his experiences to be quite entertaining as well

The Martian (Questions)

1. Which Actor plays Mark Watney? - Matt Damon
2. How was Mark Watney left behind? - During a storm on mars, his crew was rushing to get to their ship (that was slowly tipping), he then got hit with some debris from their base, everyone thought he died, so they left.
3. What is the name of the Mars mission? - 
4. What is a Sol? How long is one Sol? How many Sol's did it take for earth to find Watney still alive? - A Sol is the way NASA measures the length of a solar day on Mars (which is 24h 39m 35.244409s) so it's slightly longer then an earth day. Less then 538.
5. What is the difference between the MAV and the HAB? - The HAB: short for the Mars Lander habitat: a place the astronauts can relax without wearing a space suit. The MAV: Mars Ascent Vehicle- the device the astronauts use to leave Mars surface when they left on short notice or when a mission is complete.
6. What does Watney grow on Mars? - Potatoes.
7. What communication device does Watney dig up? What sol is it when he gets communication set up? - Watney digs up the Pathfinder probe and uses the camera to communicate with NASA. 
8. What coding system do they use? - The hexadecimal system.
9. Which country helps NASA? - China
10. What is Project Elrond? What is the project named after? - It's the rescue mission created by the director of NASA which is going to send supplies to Mark. It's named after the Council of Elrond from The Lord of the Rings.
11. Name 5 types of equipment that is used in the movie? - The spacesuit; Rover; Solar panels;  Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs); Ion Propulsion.
12. In the movie what does Watney define as Colonization? - Literally just planting food on a planet.
13. What did NASA want Watney to remove from the MAV? -  Equipment including the windows, nose cone, and exterior panels.
14. Which superhero does Watney reference?  - Iron Man
15. What happens to Watney at the end of the movie? What does he do for NASA? - After returning to Earth, Watney begins a new life as a survival instructor for new astronaut candidates.

Requirements for being an Astronaut

Am I qualified to become an astronaut?

Resiliency:

I think that I meet 4/7 of the practical applications for resiliency: Persistent thought process; connection between internal and external self; at best when things are at their worst; understand the purpose of actions.
I think the reason for my not meeting the other three requirements is because: 1) I'm subject to procrastinating and not always being self-directed; 2) I'm a bit of a pessimist; 3) I definitely don't have a sustainable "can do" attitude whatsoever.

Adaptability:

I meet all 4 of the applications when it comes to adaptability: Adapt to situations and individuals; know my personal boundaries; open and tolerant to other ideas and approaches; draw from other cultural backgrounds.
I know that I'm naturally passive and willing to change so being adaptive comes incredibly easy to me. I'm also intelligent enough to realise when other people have better ideas or plans than me, and I'm disciplined enough to put my pride aside for the embetterment of a group.

Curiosity:

I believe that I meet both (2) of the requirements when it comes to curiosity: Ask questions to understand not just get answers; transfer knowledge to others, not just show-off.
I've always loved learning and absorbing knowledge from lots of different people. There's something about learning that fulfills this need for self-empowerment I possess; knowledge is the best weapon anyone can have.

Ability to Trust:

I meet 3/4 of the practical applications for my ability to trust: Trust built on good judgement; self-informed trust; reflection on previous experiences.
For the most part, trusting in other people comes rather easily to me, I just believe in people too much.

Creativity/Resourcefulness:

I without any doubt meet all five of the requirements in this category: Flexibility with tackling issues; not constrained by how I was initially taught to deal with problems; humour is used constructively; good sense of play and spirit; aware of different forms of creativity.
I've always been taught that being open-minded allows for the most happiness in life, if you're always fixated on what you don't agree with in the world, you never focus on all the positives; that being said, it is easy for me to accept other ideas/opinions and learn from them.