So, I was thinking about entertainment.

And a thought occurred to me, we enjoy entertainment, but why? It would have to have something to do with evolution, as all behavioural patterns seem to.

So, I started thinking about what exactly made entertainment enjoyable. There seems to be two main ways something can be enjoyed:

1. From your own perspective
2. From the perspective of another

Basically, something like music and art would be enjoyed from your own perspective. Something within those mediums triggers something within your psyche to make you feel good.

There is intellectual reasons these things could make you feel good. For instance you might relate to the lyrics, or the subject matter of the painting with creates an attachment to it. It gives you something to associate it with which will trigger a reaction. For instance, if I saw a painting of the old house I used to live in, all kinds of nice childhood memories would well up in reaction to it and I would enjoy myself. Another theory I had is that any form of complex stimulation is pleasurable to the human brain. This mostly applies to music, something a lot of people don’t really understand their attachment to.

Music stimulates the human brain. The human brain likes patterns, and it has an internal clock. Music has beats that play at regular intervals, along with a usually repeating melody. A cat will like it when you stroke it’s fur, due to the stimulation. I think the brain is the same. It enjoys the patterns and timed beats, and it’s especially pleased when change-ups happen, which usually occur in songs. Stimulation keeps the brain working and keeps it healthy. Evolutionary benefit. Something I don’t understand is our ordering of pitches. Trying playing something on a piano randomly. Sounds bad. But going up two keys at a time sounds much more pleasant. And then there are chords, several notes played together with sound pleasant to us. Play three of those “two keys at a time” notes at once and it sounds lovely. This probably makes sense to people who have taken music theory, but I’m not going to tackle it anyway, because I have no idea. Whatever it is, it’s universal.

Now video game’s entertainment value is rather obvious. It feels good to accomplish things. This is for an obvious reason:  to motivate you to accomplish things. We are generally lazy. This is evolution’s way of making sure we use the least amount of effort to do only important tasks. It became this way because thousands of years ago who knows when your next meal might have been. It would have been rather silly for you to waste all your effort running in circles for no reason. But, when you did something your brain considered “important”, you were rewarded. And thus would be motivated to continue doing things you brain considered “important”. And that’s why video games feel good. They make you brain think the task you have to complete is important, and then when you complete it your brain rewards you. Pretty simple.

The second type of enjoyment is enjoyment from the perspective of another. This type is popular in movies and such, as most of those feature main characters. In a large amount of movies we live vicariously through the main character on screen. Our brains seem to somehow consider them as us, I don’t know why. But when the character on screen succeeds, we feel good too. Even though we’ve done nothing at all ourselves. Our brains reward us for their accomplishments. We feel excitement when they’re in danger, sadness when they fail, even hatred for those who have wronged them. For the course of the movie, our brains seem to effectively think we are the person on screen. It’s quite odd when you think about it.

You could say that we are simply relating to the person on screen, and not really becoming them, but I disagree with this. If someone is really enjoying a movie they seem to almost forget themselves. They become totally engrossed in the movie. And if they are not in themselves, where are they?

It’s also the same for books, come to think of it.

This isn’t really true for comedies, though. For comedies it’s our brains being surprised and stimulated again. Comedies actually have a lot in common with scary movies. Both surprise you, but comedies surprise you in a way that is non-threatening. They’ll build up expectations and then switch completely to something else using wordplay or another tactic, and your brain will make you chuckle and feel good in response that surprising and therefore stimulating experience.

If you like scary movies you are just an adrenaline junkie and possibly crazy.

You’ll notice that I added an ad to the sidebar. Don’t worry, I’m not on a downward spiral of exploiting the two people who read my posts (hi to both of you, by the way). What actually occurred is that I read a article on a 16 years-old teenager who had recently made over 500, 000 dollars with a new advertising site he opened. The site’s name is Branchr. I decided I’d give it a try, being a curious fellow.

Set up was ridiculously easy. Especially compared to google which makes you verify all kinds of things. Branchr had stunningly few steps. That’ll probably change as it gets more popular, though.

Anyway, disregarding that, I’ve finished my work term with the Irvings! It was a great experience, and they even got me cake for my last day! I wonder how they knew I liked cake…

They also got me a nice backpack with “JD Irving I. T. Division” on it. It’ll get plenty of use as I’m heading back to Uni in only a week. Anyway, I’d just like to say thanks to Irving, as well as all my coworkers. I worked with some pretty cool people.

More frequent posts to come as free time increases substantially.

So I took a “vacation” down to America to do some shopping. Did pretty decently, I suppose. Although I remember the deals being better last time I went.

Got some clothes, Starcraft 2, a new headset and most noteably some books. Book stores in America are great. The price on books are about 25% cheaper for no reason, and the selection is much, much better. Here’s what I got:

1. The interpretation of Dreams, by Sigmund Freud

Penises.

Got this since I’ve heard a lot about Sigmund Freud’s work, mostly in relation to penises, and was curious what it was all about. I’m reading it right now and it’s actually quite interesting. There hasn’t been a single mention of penises yet, but it’s coming. I’m sure.

2. Man and His Symbols, kind of by Carl Jung

Apparently it's "written" by someone else, but edited by Carl Jung.

I got this for a similar reason. I’ve heard a lot about Carl Jung, specifically the tiny variety.

Dresden Codak Reference!

Should be interesting. Also, I am doing a course in phychology this year, so some prestudy couldn’t hurt.

3. Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist, by Stephen Rogers Peck

Humans, how do they work?

Hopefully this will help me out with my drawing.  I’ve started to get the hang of colouring and digital drawing, but my raw lineart just isn’t that good. I’m in need of some ole fashioned anatomy grind. I’m also not sure how much I’ll touch digital art while I’m at university, since I’ll lose my awesome huge screen. We’ll see.

4.  Beginning Visual C++ 2010, by Ivor Horton

Not sure what string instruments have to do wi- Oh. So clever.

I’ve been trying to learn C++, more specifically, winapi. The issue is that winapi tutorials are so hard to find. There is the Microsoft documentation, but it’s not so great for beginners, and probably not even for experts. I much prefer picking up a book and flipping to the relevant page than doing a google search anyway.

That’s about it, overall I’d say it was a pretty good vacation.

Well, I’ve been programming a lot lately.

First off, I’ve upgraded the webcomic software. I added spam protection as well as a ton of stuff to make life easier for me. Everyone also gets a small profile. I encourage you to go have a look!

Secondly I’ve been learning and experimenting with C++. It’s a lot more complicated than Java, I must say. I made a small music played with a library I found called IrrKlang. Seemed to be mostly geared toward games, but whatever. I also programmed the interface the hard way because I hate to have .net dependencies. I don’t know if I actually managed to keep it out though, since I have .net installed on all my computers. If anyone could tell me if it works I would be grateful. It plays .wav, .mp3, .ogg, and .flac. Plays a few other things too but I think they are game related, so I ommitted them from being chosen. I’ve never heard of them at least. Only thing it’s missing really is .wma support…

Anyway, here’s the download link for it:  Atmosphere Media Player.

Screen

I might keep working on it and make it awesome. Who knows. I’m mostly just horribly confused about the graphical aspect of programming for windows with C++. I have no idea what I am doing really, at least not without .Net.

That being said if I could get a playlist working with this I would use it exclusively. It would still be crap but using your own programs is just badass.

So I was browsing youtube and found some amazing examples of great animation. I thought maybe I’d share.

First up on the docket is bentarthur who has some really impressing stuff. He draws every frame by hand. Here’s a montage of some of his things from 2008:

Really great.

Next up is weebl who is a pretty crazy dude with lots of off colour and on colour animation. But all of it is incredibly amusing to watch. Here’s a music video he made:

Next up is this thing. I’m not sure if the uploader is the one who made it,  but there’s credits at the end anyway:

Well, that’s it for now. Happy Canada Day.