Proving the Existence of God is Easy: a Logic-Based Proof

It always makes me laugh when I hear people say, "You can't prove or disprove the existence of God."

I just think it's one of the funniest and least logical things a person could say.

Logically speaking if something does exist you by definition can prove that it exists.

If there is no evidence for something's existence then it by definition does not exist.


It also makes me laugh because proving God exists is actually super easy. Here goes:

First we need to define what God is:

God

ɡäd/

noun

1. 1.

   (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.

Thanks google. I'm not Christian, but we'll go with this definition since it's a popular one in the US and Europe.

Given: God is the creator and ruler of the universe and a supreme being.

Given: the force of gravity is real.

Also given: it has been shown through direct observation, and logical and mathematical extrapolation that the force of gravity and the electromagnetic forces are the primary means by which stars, planets and all matter beyond lithium form and were formed.

The entirety of the universe was formed through a handful of forces but the force primarily responsible for forming stars and planets was gravity. Every particle of matter takes part in the force of gravity therefore everything that exists is the creator.

Everything that exists is the creator and the creator is God therefore God by definition exists (transitive property of equality).

Proof that God is all powerful:
Given: Power is defined by energy per unit time.

If one possessed all the energy in the universe one would be all powerful.

Given: energy is defined by the ability to do work and work is defined by moving matter a certain distance with a certain force.

If one were defined as everything in the universe one would by definition include all matter and all forces and therefore all energy and all power.

Conclusion: My God is all powerful (i.e. supreme)


Now you might say, "Hold on there just a minute! That's not what God is like at all!"

But hey, that's what my god is like and I can prove my god exists, and I can prove my god is all powerful. So, if you think your god is better then prove it.

How to use a controller, keyboard and mouse at the same time in Skyrim

I really love the video game Skyrim. I found it such an awe inspiring human creation. It's such a beautiful game.  Having said that, I really dislike one thing about it: Skyrim completely disables the keyboard and mouse when you connect an Xbox controller. Why? It makes no sense!

I searched from forum to forum to find a way around this and I found only partial solutions that were reasonable complicated, but I decided to figure out a simple solution that not only works, it gives me full control of all keyboard functions with my controller.

It's actually pretty simple. The first thing I had to do is disable the controller support in the game.

1. Click View in a file explorer window and check "Hidden items"
2. Go to the follow path C:\Users\your_name_here\Documents\My Games\Skyrim
3. Right click on SkyrimPrefs.ini and select edit
4. Search for the line bGamepadEnable=1 and change it to bGamepadEnable=0
5. Download Antimicro and install it.
6. Turn your controller on.
7. Map the keys to whatever keyboard and mouse functions you want or download the one I use (which I think is totally awesome).
8. Play Skyrim and enjoy your freedom to switch back and forth from keyboard, mouse and controller at your whimsy. 

The Antimicro file I use for skyrim does the following:

A jumps, B sneeks/crouches, x picks stuff up, Y equips weapon

start is escape

back is the character menu

left stick is WASD

right stick is the mouse

right trigger is attack/left mouse

left trigger is left hand attack/right mouse

left stick button is run.

The D-pad is mapped to the map, the C key and some other stuff.

But the really cool thing is what the left and right shoulder buttons do. Hold down the left shoulder button and it shifts all the buttons to the shortcut keys 1-8.

Hold down the right shoulder button and the left shoulder button becomes the shout key and the other buttons become unused keys on the keyboard that can be mapped to whatever you want if your using mods like Convenient horses etc.

Anyway, if this brightens the day of a single Skyrim fanatic out there then my joy is full.

Random Thought #5

Have you ever noticed how the phrase "I'm addicted" sounds a lot like "I'm a dick head?"

Random Thought #4

The world teaches to embrace the light and shun the darkness, but it is the darkness that makes the tiny specks of light in the night sky beautiful.

There is no beauty without light, and no beauty without darkness.

Random Thought #3

Whenever I hear someone say, "sweet Jesus!" I think, "sour Jesus!" because Jesus was Asian and I could really go for some sweet and sour chicken.

Oh my, that makes it sound like I want to eat Jesus.... But I just couldn't eat the flesh of Christ: I'm not Catholic.

Stupid English Letters and Letter Combinations.... Why can't English be more fonetik?

How is it that we live in an age of technological progression, yet we seems content with the stupidity of the English language.  

English is an ugly dirty mongrel dog that needs a good bath, and some TLC.

In 1806 good old Noah Webster published his first dictionary which included a commentary on the oddities of English spelling which helped to reform ridiculous English spellings such as colour to color, but of course the British held on to their colour because they are such colourful chaps after all.

But why didn't Webster go even further?

Let's start with the ph for example. Why does the combination ph even exist? It's only purpose is to indicate etymology. Good on the Italian language for getting rid of all these damned ph's and replacing them with old fashioned f's.  Yes, I love how the Italians just said F' it these ph's F'in suck balls.

How ironic is it that even the very word that means it is spelled exactly how it sounds isn't even spelled exactly how it sounds? There's nothing phonetic about phonetic! We could at least have to common decency to spell phonetic fonetikly!

And why does the letter c even exist? I mean the letter C totally has a case of associative identity disorder: sometimes it's an S and sometimes it's a K and sometimes it's a sh and sometimes it's a ch. My poor dear letter C you need some counseling.

Science is such an unscientific word... siens would make more sense, but damn it siens looks like seens! How do we fix this mess?

Well for starters if the C is making an S sound let's write an S instead, if it's making a K sound then let's write a K instead. Am I suggesting we get rid of c altogether? Not at all. I'm suggesting we give the letter C new purpose and meaning by replacing the CH sound with C and the SH sound with CC since the SH sound is just a sustained CH sound anyway. AND while we're on the topic all these words that end in tion or sion or cion let's just replace all that crap with cun (yeah the o to make schwa sound makes no sense, and schwa, really? did you have to be spelled that way? You're cwa to me from now on).

So English, let's have a cat about your other iccues.

Why does x exist? Why? It's easy (damn s should never make a z sound I mean what the hell do we have z for if we don't use it!)... it's eezy to say that x makes an ks sound and culd be replased with ks, but it's not even that simple (what is that e even doing at the end of simple? That's not simpl at all) for example: example isn't said eksampl, it's said egzampl. So sometimes the x needs to be replaced with gz not ks, but either way the letter x is useless. You're utterly (why the useless double letters?) utterly useles you letter X! So let's cros you out of the Englic language.

Don't get me started on the qu kombinacun. Wy (useless h's we don't pronounce anymore) does this egzist? The letter q is even mor useles than x. Al q's can be replased with k's and al qu kombinacuns can be replased with kw. So, kwik and eezy even an MS word find and replase funkcun could do it... ugh, hold on the n in function isn't an n sound at all it's an ng sound like in among or going. I guess we could replace the ng sound everywhere with ng but then fungcun looks too much like an exkrecun frum a fungus... and isn't fungus an interesting word in that ng doesn't just make the ng sound like in among it also makes the g sound. So, we're not using the stupid letter q anymore and it looks kind of like a g so let's just replace all the ng sounds with q's. I wonder how that would fugcun in praktis?

Damn... this is getting complicated, and we haven't even looked at the worst part about English phonetics! The fact we only have 5 vowels, but well over 14 vowel sounds! For example:

The o in for is not the same o sound in toe, which is not the same o sound in operation, which is not the same o sound in sound which is not the same o sound in does which is not the same o sound in do, which is not the same o sound in book which is not the same o sound in function!!!!! How does this even function when we are using the same letter for more than 8 different vowel sounds? And we wonder why it's difficult for foreigners to learn English....

There are standardized ways of writing English phonetically using the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) but the IPA requires special characters now found on the English keyboard. If we were really to put into practice a phonetic version of English then we would either need to replace the millions of keyboards out there with ones containing phonetic characters or we could re-purpose the Latin ones and create an orthography like this one:

a - awesome

u - but

e - hello

i - bit

ay - eye

ae - apple

ey - ate

y - eat

o - oat

oo - book

uu - too

oy - boy

h - hat

y - yes

m - man

w - water

p - pat

b - bat

f - fat

v - vat

th - thin

dh - there

t - tin

d - dare

s - sin

z - zoo

n - never

l - list

c - chat

j - jerky

cc - shoe

x - confusion (I thought about replacing it with jj since it's just a sustained j sound but x would be lonely and unused otherwise)

r - rat

ny - lasagna (actually an Italian word, but who doesn't love lasagna?)

k - kill

g - girl

q - among

Even with this orthography we needed to have some double letter combinations because there are more consonant sounds in English than there are letters. Also, this is even oversimplified there are multiple R sounds in English (some that use the tip of the tongue others use the back of the tongue and palate/uvula area) the same with the L sound. Also, like I said, English has 14+ distinct vowel sounds but some are similar enough (like the o in does and function) that the distinction only exists for ease of pronunciation due to the accenting or surrounding consonant characters. If we combine these very similar vowel sounds we are left with 12 basic distinct vowel sounds (including a few diphthongs).

So what would phonetic English look like?

It wood look sumthiq layk dhis. Ay don't thiqk it looks very nays tuu bee anest, but hey, aet leest it's fonetik aend ey lat uv dhu werdz didn't eeven ceynj. Dhu best thiq ubaewt it iz wee kaen stil yuuz dhu Laetin keebord! So, no need to reepleys al uv aewr teknalogy.

So, nekst taym sumwun seyz it's speld haew it saewnds cal dhem aewt for beeiq dhu filthy layr dhat dhey ar.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment: Everything Wrong With the American Public Education System Part 2

The environment most children are required to endure in American Public Education is abusive is many ways. Here is a simple, yet important, example of such abuse:

We require our children to sit in these desks from hell for about 8 hours a day 5 days a week:

Except they don't even look this new because the ones our kids are using are like 35+ years old. The baskets on the bottom were all broken off years ago and the legs are all bent out of shape. But even if these were new the seats are rock hard! Yes rock hard! These things are harder than the old wooden seats kids used to sit in back in the olden days. Sitting in one for 5 minutes is painful enough, but expecting our kids to sit in them for 7 to 8 hours while listening to boring lectures and being forced to remain seated even if they are experiencing extreme discomfort from sitting so much is obscene!

Not to mention that these desks are too small for some of our students to even fit in! Talk about large body size shaming....

Studies have shown that remaining sedentary for long periods of time is very destructive to ones health. Side effects include (but are not limited to the following):  weakening of the heart (leading to heart disease and sometimes death), muscle atrophy, back problems, digestive disorders, bone deterioration, etc.

As a teacher I always tried my best to allow students time to get up and move around, and if they were feeling any discomfort I wanted them to be able to stand up and take a break from sitting for a while. Unfortunately, the school systems often don't give teachers even this much freedom. I was constantly questioned by administrators about why my students weren't always in their seats being obedient little robots with bad backs and was given poor evaluations because this was seen as a lack of conformity and obedience: even after explaining why I let them stand up in the back of class if they needed to.

This is only one of the many cases I found myself being coerced by the school system to go against my code of ethics. I became so disgusted with the person the school system expected me to be if I were to keep my job I had to quit, but I feel terrible leaving my students because I know the majority of people completely ignore their plights.

The sad truth is this problem is super easy to fix! Yeah, it's super easy to fix!
All we need to do is get rid of these damn torture devices and replace them with more ergonomic seating:

Give them some real chairs to sit in:

Replace desks with tables so the students can position themselves comfortably.

Put standing desks in the back of the room for kids that want to stand and seated desks for kids than need to or want to sit in the front.

"But that would be too expensive!" People say.... Well, not really, because the desks we are putting in new schools costs about the same amount as these alternatives, and guess what? Chairs, desks, and tables are a pretty old technology and they aren't hard to build either. Why not put shop/welding classes to use in creating things that actually improve the school? Or, here's another idea why don't we get rid of the government assholes who currently govern public education and high some people who actually care about funding our schools! I mean, there are american public schools who can't even afford to pay for heating and air conditioning or patching their leaky roofs!

I don't give a damn how expensive it would be to make school a positive and safe place for our kids, they are worth it! I'll repeat, they are worth it!

I have a few choice words for president Trump: instead of spending billions building a fucking wall please use that money for the sake of our children!

To all of you who voted for Trump I say this: in that vote you chose to put your xenophobia before our children. Change your evil ways and start giving a damn about our kids. We don't need a wall. We need education. We don't need to focus on gun control: we need to focus on educating people to value life, and how about we start by valuing the lives of our children--because they certainly don't feel valued. We don't need to focus on climate change: we need to focus on educating our children about the impact our wastefulness is having on our planet. 

Ok, I could rant on for hours....

There's an even more obvious solution to this problem: how about we alter the structure of public schooling so physical activity and physical freedom are integrated into the system?

How about we have a system that doesn't require students to ask permission to use the bathroom? How disgusting is this? It's a violation of human nature! And I'm proud to say my students didn't have to. They simply had to sign out and take a hall pass. That way class wasn't disrupted, they didn't have to announce to everyone, "Hey I've got to pee. Is that okay with you?" and I had a log where I could keep track of where every one was.

Our students need more freedom and more respect.

I've heard people argue: parents, teachers, administrators that if we gave our students nice things they would destroy them.

Well, I know from experience this is NOT the case. I've worked in schools what worked with some previously 'troubled' teens who didn't make it in standard school systems. These schools surprisingly had nice seating, very nice facilities and guess what? They stayed in pristine condition.

The fact is our students treat things like desks in schools like crap for this reason: the desks are crap. 

So, let's stop violating our students human rights and petition for better seating arrangements, more break time in class, and more freedom for our kids to move their bodies: that's kind of what they were made for.

Random Thought #2

Would people feel the same way about mayonnaise if it had been named egg butter?

Random Thought #1

Microwaved burritos are like human dog food packed into a sub-par tortilla.

Teen Suicide: Everything Wrong with the American Public Education System Part 1

Every time a school shooting happens people present the idea that we should arm teachers to defend our children.  I think having armed professional security in schools is a better idea personally (but with the scrappy funding schools get some can't even afford to heat their buildings), though I am not opposed to teachers caring for this reason if they are properly trained and proven to be responsible. I feel that too much crap is already piled on teachers and expecting us to have the training of a police or military professional as well is simply over the top. Having said that, I would have given my life to defending the lives of any of my students had there been the need. I already gave a large portion of my life to teach them and attempt to inspire them, and I hope I was successful in some measure.

With all the attention in the media about school shootings there seems to be something everyone is missing: mass shooters don't usually expect to survive and often kill themselves afterwards. These individuals are not only homicide then are also suicidal, and chances are the suicidal issues started first. All arming professionals could do is prevent mass casualties (which is definitely an improvement), but there's a bigger problem here: what actually drives people to the breaking point where they feel the need to take out their aggression frustration and hate in our public schools in such a horrific manner?

Mass shootings are not even close to the number one killer in schools.... 

The #1 cause of death in teenagers are accidents (automobile accidents being the highest).
Suicide is second leading cause of death in teenagers and young adults. 
Tens of thousands die each year from suicide. I'll repeat that: tens of thousands!!!

Many mass shootings are accompanied by suicide (no shooter expects to survive a mass shooting). It's not uncommon for suicidal individuals often seek to take the lives of others before (or with) their own.

But hey, let's just ignore the uncomfortable truths and go on believing that arguing about guns on facebook is going to make the world a safer place. It's all part of a political agenda to control the population. It's a distraction technique the government uses to keep our minds off the issues we can actually do something about.

I find it so ironic that we trust a government that has so clearly lied to us over and over again for decades with the most destructive weapons on earth, but we can't trust ourselves with guns.

I find it so ironic that a few lives taken by a few murderers get so much attention from the media but tens of thousands of lives lost from suicide get nearly zero attention.

Oh, did I mention that about 50% of suicides are carried out by guns? So, yeah over 19,000 gun related suicides per year in the US, which by the way is over half of the gun related deaths in the US. This number is more than 10 times the number of deaths from mass shootings. So, statistically speaking people are more likely to kill themselves with a gun than kill someone else (which if I am to be completely honest is the reason I will never own a firearm and have never shot one in my life because I have struggled with suicidal thoughts for much of my life).

Mass shootings are tragic. I'm not downplaying that at all... but we've got a much bigger problem here (that might even be the root cause of many or most of these shootings) and this narrow focus is nothing but nonsensical.

Unless my readers are my previous students or family, you may be surprised to know that I was a public education teacher for many years. I very recently chose to retire from teaching in public education and I feel the desire to write down some of the reasons why and my thoughts on public education.

I started teaching when I was in high school: tutoring special education kids in math.

I continued to teach as a TA and Tutor in college where I majored in Physics Teaching.

I even taught religion and English in Italy for a while.

I've taught and tutored for the following subjects in public education: Physics, AP Physics, Biology, Chemistry, elementary math, reading, writing, English, Algebra II, Math I, II & III, Geometry, Trigonometry, Calculus, and special education (math, reading, writing, behavioral intervention).

I've worked at 10 different schools, I have children of my own and am no stranger to the way things are run in public schools.

Retiring from teaching in public education was one of the hardest things I ever had to do in my life, and I did it for the following reasons:

All the stress of working in public education was making me very physically ill. To understand why I was getting sick it may help to know that I have several genetic mutations that affect my hormone metabolism and overproduce adrenaline when I'm stressed. Compromised adrenal function can cause all sorts of problems among a few of these I was experiencing the following: seizures and autoimmune issues that were making me so sick I could barely function. So, my health forced me to quit, but the truth is I would have lost my job at the end of the year anyway because I did not believe in what our school system is doing to our children's minds, bodies and lives.

Why was I so stressed?

The workload is insane and the pay is terrible: those are true, but I can cope with that. I actually enjoy a challenging work environment and as long as I have enough to meet my needs, the needs of my family and aid those around me I don't give a damn about money: it is often just a means of manipulating the thoughts and actions of others.

The number one reason I was stressed about the public education system is the fact that it is being used exactly like money is in our corporate governed consumerist society: 

to manipulate the thoughts and actions of our children.

Now in my criticism of the public education system know this: there are so many great teachers out there who are doing their absolute best to educate our children and care for them in our schools. I love the teachers I've worked with: they with only a few exceptions (yes there are some asshole teachers out there) are amazing individuals who deserve our praise and admiration not scorn and blame. There area also some great people who work as support staff and administrators (though I unfortunately find that 'authority' tends to go to people's heads and make them into asses).

The problem isn't so much with the people in the system as it is with the system itself.

I've had a lot of conversations with my students about how they feel about the school system, how much it stresses them and as it turns out the stresses these kids go through that are caused by public school are one of the leading reasons our children are contemplating suicide.

I've had several frank discussions with some of my students who struggled with depression, anxiety, stress, and suicidal tendencies. The system encourages us not to have discussions like this with students. It encourages us to just tell them that they need to talk to a counselor, but the fact is most of them don't trust counselors and if they do talk to them then the treatment they receive is often more punitive than therapeutic: pushing them even closer to feeling the need to escape their lives.

I was reprimanded by an administrator once for talking about suicidal thoughts with a few of my students. It's such a taboo thing to talk about... we are punished for talking about suicide, but the very sad fact is having suicidal thoughts at some point in ones life is actually quite normal: millions of people contemplate suicide at some time in their lives. Why did I talk to my students about it?

Well, many of them were attempting to cope with major stress and anxiety induced by the school system: which was one of the main sources of my depression and stress as a teen and one of the number one reasons I started contemplating suicide.  I felt it would be healthy for them to know that contemplating suicide actually isn't that abnormal and that you can think about it objectively and logically without feeling like need to follow through with it.

I think it's helpful for people who are struggling to see that one of their mentors has had similar struggles and has always made the choice to put suicidal thoughts in perspective and stick to living no matter how hard it gets. Living is always better than rotting in a coffin.

So, that's the #1 problem with the public education system: we are pushing kids to take their own lives and possibly the lives of others because of all the stress and the way our system treats everyone like products on an assembly line being sent through quality control rejects and all.

In my next posts I'm going to go through all the issues in the system that lead to these stressors and make public schools a miserable hell hole for non-conformists.

Thoughts About Humans

I often think about humans.

We are interesting primates.

I find animal communication so very interesting.

Studies have shown that apes primarily communicate to satisfy their needs and are generally unable to piece together linguistic concepts that go beyond satisfying their immediate needs.

I wonder if humans are like this to.

Then I learned in this random documentary on ape language I watched on youtube that humans have mutated DNA that gives us powerful mutant brains that are capable of piecing together language into more abstract ideas because of our increased memory and ability to project into the future.

I think that perhaps it is this ability to project into the future that enables us to project ourselves into someone else's shoes and feel empathy more effectively than our primate cousins.

How to expand the functions of an Xbox controller on a PC

I'm a fan of PC gaming because of the customizability, but what I'm not a fan of is gaming on a keyboard and mouse. It's so not ergonomic and so cumbersome. I just really love the way a good console controller fits in my hands and vibrates so lovingly....

Anyway, after playing borderlands 2 with my best friend who uses a keyboard and mouse religiously I've realized that playing with an Xbox One S controller has its limitations over a keyboard/mouse setup (I consider the Xbox One S controller the best controller out there for PC gaming, though I do like the layout of the PS4 controller better, but I like how the Xbox controller works naively without having to install third party drivers).

Pros of using a console controller:

• Ergonomic design
• Forced feedback (vibration)
• No buttons you don't use: easier to access the ones you need
• Analogue sticks and triggers
• Way more intuitive controls 

Cons of using a console controller:

• You're limited in how many buttons you have so multiple functions are assigned to the same button and some functions you are just absent on the controller.
• Example: Borderlands II assigns pick up and reload to X which is really annoying and makes it super easy to accidentally reload with your Mechromancer when you're picking up ammo, causing you to lose your stacks. Yeah, super annoying.
• You can rotate way faster on a mouse. The controller pan/tilt speed is regulated by the system whereas the mouse pan/tilt speed depends more on how quickly you move your mouse.
• Keyboard button mappings in games are almost always customizable, but sometimes controller button mappings aren't customizable at all and when they are they are severely limited.

So, I got sick of accidental reloads, accidentally throwing grenades, and not being able to press T to talk to my friends without reaching over to my keyboard and I started looking for an alternative.

At first I tried out mapping my Wii balance board to other keys like T using a dolphin bar and Wii Balance Walker, which is a super cool program by the way. It worked ok and was kind of fun, but in practice not very playable and only help expand the functionality using my feet without really solving any of the problems.

Then I thought: I wish I could remap the buttons to whatever I wanted, but still keep some of the controllers native button mappings (because sometimes it's useful to have one button mapped to multiple functions), and who wants to remap an analogue stick to a digital keypad: that's icky.

I remembered this amazing program called AntiMicro that I used on Linux to map my old PS3 controller to use as a chorded keyboard, and I was delighted to discover that I they now make it for windows!

So, I installed it. It let me easily map my Xbox controller to any keyboard or mouse function I wanted, there was just one problem: the controller still performed its native functions on top of the ones in AntiMicro. So, I couldn't really remap anything, just add functions.

Then I remembered this program called x360ce which tricks games into thinking that any controller is an Xbox controller. You just copy the file into the same directory as your game's executable then run the configuration (sometimes you have to mode the name of the dll file: but they tell you how to do that on their page).

I realized that x360ce could be used for a completely different purpose: to disable some gamepad buttons in game, while leaving them completely operational to the rest of Windows. This allows you to use AntiMicro to then remap each button/stick/trigger to a keyboard or mouse function without it also performing it's default in game operation.

So this is a guide to how I totally modded my Xbox controller:

1. Download x360ce (either 64 bit or 32 bit depending on your game) and copy it to your came directory with the executable file.
2. Open the file: it will prompt you to make a config file, let it do that.
3. Disable all the buttons you want to map to keyboard inputs by selecting <empty>. If you ever plan on using the triggers at the same time then you're going to have to set those to <empty> and remap them to keyboard or mouse buttons because for some dumb reason x360ce and the default windows xinput driver set both triggers on the same axis and there is no way of separating them in this app without installing a third party gamepad driver.  In the picture below you can see I only kept the left stick and Dpad active and the A and B buttons (since both of those buttons tend to be mapped to sets of functions in game that you can't easily map to key presses) and because I had not plans on remapping the Dpad or the left stick.
4. Next you need to go to the Force Feedback tab and select "Enable force feedback." You shouldn't need to do anything else on this tab.
   
   
   
   
5.  Now select the Advanced tab and then select "Force Feedback Pass Through." If you are trying to follow this guide with any other controller besides an Xbox controller then you probably don't need to select this option.
6. 
7. Damn it! Stupid blogger screwed up my numbering scheme and I can't fix it. Oh well.
8. Next you download AntiMicro and use it to map your previously <empty> buttons to whatever the heck you want.
9. Here are a few AntiMicro presets I made for Borderlands II. One of them uses the right shoulder button as a shift button to switch to a higher mouse speed for the right stick and to change the function of the buttons. A slower mouse mode can be entered by holding the right shoulder and start.  The other one uses both shoulder buttons to shift into different modes, but I find it a bit more awkward to play with in some respects.

So far the only issue i can find with using this method is that if the last button you pressed is mapped to a keyboard then it thinks you are using a keyboard. The only problem this creates is if it thinks you are using a keyboard it doesn't send out force feedback data (vibration). Which basically means that it doesn't vibrate when you shoot guns in BL2, but usually vibrates otherwise.

Like I said before I really like a vibrating controller, so, I spent like 10 hours straight trying to figure out a way to resolve this issue. The only way I could think of was to find a way to separate the Z axis on the game pad into to axes in x360ce, but I guess you need a different driver to do that and it was a pain in the ass, so I gave up.

Anyway, if you want to increase the functionality of your controller and have many of the benefits of a keyboard/mouse setup then this should work for you at the cost of losing some of those good vibes.

Gaming: The limitations of using a controller piss me off, but a keyboard and mouse: just too cumbersome.

I enjoy gaming from time to time.
I'm not a console person really
...and here is the long story of why.

When I was a wee child I my oldest brother taught me how to play (and program) video games on the Commodore 64:

This was an awesome gaming machine at the time: it was like a PC (which back then stood for piece of crap) combined with at ATARI (it even used the same kind of joysticks: and they plugged right into the side).

Ah, early 80s obsolete technology nostalgia... few things in life feel so good.

So, I spend many years playing games on this thing and programming text adventures that took hours to make and were impossible to save correctly... mostly because I never really learned how and it's not like I could just google: how do you save programs on a C64 5.25" flopping... since google didn't even exist yet and the internet kind of wasn't even a thing. Though, this machine theoretically did have modem capabilities if you connected a gigantic box to the back.

Fastforwarding to the late 1980's. It was Christmas and I got Legos: few things in life feel so good as getting Legos for Christmas.

My brothers on the other hand got a Nintendo Entertainment System (our first game console since the original ATARI... well their first game console).

My brothers made it clear to me that the NES was theirs and that I would only be allowed to play after they had beat the games they were playing (or on the rare occasion that they didn't feel like playing).

Years later I got a Nintendo Game Boy from my dad and I refused to let them play (most of the time), but they were like, "Our Nintendo is better anyway! Ha ha ha ha!"

Needless to say I grew up with this sort of resentment towards game consoles....

Later they got a Super Nintendo. By then my brothers had matured enough to let me play with them once in a while, but it was usually just when my brother wanted to kick my ass in Street Fighter 2.

My family didn't have much money... single parent home, lots and lots of kids, and my dad mainly payed child support through Christmas gifts: Legos, and video games.

Anyway, years later my mom spend like $2000+ on her first IBM compatible PC. She needed it for writing papers for college. She would let us use it sometimes, but with a very watchful eye: mostly I just got to use it to write papers for school too.

But the desire to program never left me. I wasn't much interested in playing video games anymore, but I wanted to make them. The idea of creating my own world was fascinating to me. So, I started programming on my mom's computer, but she was worried I would mess it up. So, there wasn't much I got to do on it.

Then in my early teens I found a computer in a dumpster and I brought it home.

It sort of worked: everything but the keyboard port, but I enjoyed poking around at the hardware and seeing what happened when I took things out or moved stuff around in side. Mostly, it just beeped at me in agony as if it were crying out, "Please! Just put me out of my misery!"

The old dying PC inspired me to embark on a quest to create my own computer. I started going to thrift shops with my mom just to look at computer parts. 

After purchasing some crappy systems and digging others out of dumpsters I finally found the system that changed my life: The IBM PS/2 386 16MHz.  Even thought it ran at a slower clock speed than my mom's 25MHz VTech machine, it ran on a 16 bit bus (thanks to it's Microchannel architecture, it was like PCI but way ahead of its time) instead of an 8 bit bus like most PC clones at the time: meaning it actually ran a lot faster for most applications. 

I think it cost me $20 and I had to borrow money from my mom to buy it because I had no job.

So, I spend days programming on this thing until I had enough dumpster parts to piece together a 486: which I built in the case of the original IBM 8086 with the broken keyboard port I found in the dumpster.

I became obsessed with building computers: to the point that my room was literally filled with machines and parts. This is about the point where I started playing War Craft II with my friends over our modem (I can still hear the modem mating call as if it were only yesterday).

 I at one point had a network of 7 machines in my bedroom and I would invite my three friends over for LAN parties.  Yeah, I had more computers than friends.

I still didn't have a job so I mostly played game demos, but I made money on occasion working with my best friend (or on my own) upgrading people's computers.

I eventually got my first real job working for the local college's IT department: fixing computers, upgrading, networking stuff, printer stuff, ghost server stuff, etc. I loved that job and I loved the people I worked with.

My interest in gaming totally died as I pursued a career in IT and studied physics and I didn't really game again until a few years ago.

Uh... I kind of forgot what this blog post was supposed to be about and just started rambling. So, that was my long story about why I prefer PC's over consoles: mostly because I like building computers. I enjoy doing more with them than you can do with a console.

I think I'll just write another blog post about what this was supposed to be about. So, if anyone ever reads this they won't have to scroll all the way to the bottom just to find instructions on how to severely tweak an Xbox controller.

ED Talks

A while back I started this youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPnxWbaC6r0EdWiA2fQA0Dw?view_as=subscriber
and this show I called ED Talks: I named it after my sock monkey Ed. This was my first attempt ever at creating videos for youtube beyond simple recordings of me playing my guitar, and it really helped me to appreciate how much time it takes to make a youtube video when you have no idea what you're doing.

There are a lot more topics I'm planning on covering in my youtube videos:

Everything wrong with public education
Time Travel
Parallel Dimensions
The Existence Code
Human Empathy
Language
Intellectual Democracy
Minimalism
Consumerism
Recycling
Off grid living
etc.

I'm planning on griping about public education next.

I'm not entirely sure yet what my goal is with this youtube channel: influence the world and inspire people to build a Utopian society? Sure, why not?

I'm hoping that someday my channel will be internet famous enough for people to recommend I speak on different topics. Wouldn't that be great to be internet famous enough to get video recommendations?

I think I spent too much time griping about religion in my first two videos. I could do one called "Everything wrong with religion" if I wanted to piss off a lot of people, but really I don't like offending people. I used to be extremely religious myself. Though, I now consider myself a recovering addict from major brainwashing, I have not lost the ability to empathize with others who really value their own religions. However, I think I will at some point in the future either write about or make a video about the logical issues with Christianity from a very objective standpoint. Mostly, I would really love to know how devout Christians capable of rational thought hold tenaciously to their believe amid all the logical contradictions.

Oh, I'm rambling. I kind of forgot where I was going with this post.

Oh, yeah. So, it's taking me too long to put together youtube videos and I thought I'd create a blog where I can just express my thoughts freely on different topics and whatever is on my mind at the moment: sort of like a sounding board blog to help me piece together my thoughts for my videos and also for other things I've been working on.