Tony Stark

Drawn in 1 hour with a number 2 pencil

Marilyn in progress

My art project :)

Sloths!

Chad's Tech Dungeon - Strike Tech

Right there's a mighty fine dungeon right there. Real Mordor quality. 

Chad's Tech Dungeon -
Strike Technology

Strike has been quite the technological endeavour since our company began work last spring. Be it through industry standard Adobe software or our clean online reader (via Issuu), Strike’s technology is always improving. Anyway you put it, the Strike staff is well dedicated to the cutting edge of technology to keep the company on top of things.

However, the catch about technology in business is that it’s ever changing, and the next wave needs to be implemented quickly and smoothly. Having a Tech Manager column here at Strike is something that differs us from any other publication, and is a positive addition to informing our readers of our utilization of technology.

I have a few things that I would like to see fully implemented by Strike by the summer issue. Something that the Strike staff and myself would like to see is a constant flow of new content on our brand new streamlined Foglight website; that way all of you will have less of a headache in searching through Strike content and all of our other Foglight material. So far we’ve collaborated as a team, and come up with an individual tab system that would allow for access to certain Foglight material, like Strike. Next, I would like to utilize something more streamlined to an average person’s mobile lifestyle, such as iOS’s Newstand and the magazine section on Android’s Google Play. The magazine will be delivered automatically, along with a notification, which would be beneficial to the readers.

Since the mobile arena is so important, why not optimize our whole website to be supported on mobile devices? It’s only the logical thing to do, and our visitors wouldn’t have to wait so long for the page to load, only be greeted by zooming in on unresponsive web elements. Because come on, who likes unresponsive web elements? Overall, all of these changes should allow for an overall improved user experience.

- Chad Earnest - Tech Dungeon Columnist

The Turntable - The Modern Music Formula: Flawed & Broken

The Turntable - The Modern Music Formula: Flawed & Broken

The modern music formula is flawed and broken. Present day society, technological advancements in the musical marketplace, and a growing demand of one hit wonders adds to the disaster that is the current musical standard. With this column, I’ll take a look at why this is, what causes it, and what the inevitable outcome will be. 

While it pioneered the modern way we buy and listen to music, iTunes has destroyed the need and expectation of a decent album. In the 60’s and 70’s, an artist had to take great care in writing and designing the best tracks possible, because on LP, you had to buy and listen to it all! You couldn’t pick what track you wanted, and you couldn’t really skip to one with ease, either. That’s why artists had to care about each song on the album. For a wonderful example of this, see my Classic Album Review of Born to Run to be posted later this week. 

Fun: A Band That Embodies Everything Wrong. 

When iTunes came along, artists could decide to not give a flying crap, as long as their title track was half-way decent. Let’s face it, do you honestly know, or like, any of the other songs from Some Nights aside from the title track and We Are Young? 

When you love a band of whom you only actually know one song from, an issue arises: It creates a musically shallow society with lack of diverse taste — or good taste — and it also creates an opportunity for bands to create a formula that they know you’ll keep buying. Take Mumford & Sons for example, a rare band in today’s music, considering they are creating a mainstream folk sound, and are legitimately talented. Even they have created a formula that they know you will keep buying over and over, so they really don’t have to do much work from album to album. (Will upload my Mumford & Sons Song Formula this week as well)

Finally, the latter creates one giant issue. If bands are allowed to create crappy albums with one or two good songs, and they are allowed to make each of those albums sound basically the same as the last... then where does our generation create musical legacies? Do you really think AWOL NATION is going to be our generation’s Beatles, Bob Dylan, or Bruce Springsteen? Do we really have any bands or artists that hold longevity? Every great artist who has stood the test of time hasn’t used this formula. They created masterpiece albums over a massive musical career spanning decades and generations because they were constantly updating their sound and changing their music. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see, but something tells me that when we play music for our kids, we’ll be playing them our parent’s music, not ours, because ours won’t hold the legacy or stand the time.

- Brett Stewart - Editor & Publisher of Strike - Columnist for the Turntable.

The Quantum Age and You

The Future is Awesome:

The Quantum Age and You

by Joe Redmond

Your computer is out-dated. No matter how hard you try, your tech will never keep up with ever-changing—and improving—world of computers. In the 1940’s, a computer was someone who did your taxes with a slide rule. Now, it’s the single most revolutionary piece of anything anywhere. There isn’t one aspect of life that the information age has not impacted (save possibly government).

The computer changed stock trading, the classroom, social interaction, the space industry, global culture—the list goes on. Computers provide a place to communicate efficiently, organize logically, and spread ideas to the masses. That’s a revolution.

What if I told you that it isn’t over? What happens when the “digital age” goes down in the history books as nothing more than a transitional period? There’s something more on the horizon, ladies and gentlemen. Something faster. Something a little more confusing.

Traditional digital technology relies on what tech geeks have come to call “Moore’s law,” essentially stating that computer processing power will double every year and a half. What that translates to is this: if your computer is three years old, then the latest computers are four times faster. Except, this isn’t really a “law” as we might understand from science class. “Moore’s law” simply expresses how some guy at Intel expected computers to improve back in 1965. Companies have followed this claim because it’s convenient for predicting where the industry will be in a few years down the road—in essence, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Also, calling something a law is much cooler than calling it a “general guideline,” apparently.

But what happens when silicon, the basis for microprocessors and what makes your computer work, can’t get any smaller? What happens when the size of a chip becomes constrained by the very size of its atoms? That would mean that the digital computer can’t ever get any faster and more powerful without getting bigger, too. Moore’s law has a definite limit as long as we stick with silicon computers because of the way they’re structured.

Digital computers rely on “bits,” or 1’s and 0’s, corresponding to “on” or “off.” Therefore, in order to represent a number or word, digital computers have to rely on strings of 1’s and 0’s. Quantum computers, in theory, would not be restrained to such a simplistic and relatively inefficient view of information. These “qubits” (quantum bits) could be a 1, a 0, or anything in between. Quantum data could be “on,” “off,” or “sorta-on/off, depending on how you look at it.”

So, what does this mean? The human brain is different than contemporary computers in a few ways, the most prevalent being that humans can think about and do multiple things at once. Digital computers, however, are generally constrained to doing one task at a time, dividing up its power between buffering your video, playing your music, displaying your video chat, and uploading your photo to Facebook. That’s what makes it slow down. However, quantum computers will be able do all of that at once, without even breaking a sweat.

The most technically demanding processes we can devise for computers nowadays—playing beautiful video games, downloading large files, or even graphing multi-variable calculus—would be a synch for the computers of tomorrow. Like the human brain, quantum computers will be able to think about many things at once. Some humans possess the remarkable ability to juggle apples while singing (awesome), unlike your computer, which would juggle the apples, and then sing. The computer you’ll get in 20 years, however, would juggle apples, sing, teach you how to juggle apples and sing, all while making your coffee.

Crude example aside, quantum computers actually have the ability to revolutionize the world yet again into what I’m calling the “Quantum Age.” Cars will be able to talk to each other on the fly, avoiding crashes, while driving themselves via GPS. Halo 10 could have hundreds of players facing each other in a single round. Each gene could be hand-picked in newborn babies to ensure a generation of geniuses—or a generation of Coca Cola lovers.

There are still a few obstacles in the way of making commercial quantum computers, namely our understanding of quantum physics. Suffice it to say that we needed a way to measure quantum states, and now we pretty much have it, thanks to some dudes in Switzerland. (For more, look up Nobel Prize in Physics 2012, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

In the future, information will move even faster. Parents will become even more technologically illiterate. Your computer will become even smarter, probably smarter than you. In the Quantum Age, the best computers will be more powerful than anything we can concoct today. But more importantly, in the Quantum Age, your computer will still be out-dated.

The future is awesome.

What We Missed in the NHL

by Brian Heissenbuttel

Sadly, this years NHL season has been shortened due to the lockout. It is such a shame that we already missed some of the drama that professional hockey always provides. At least we can be thankful that everyone will not miss the opportunity to see the Toronto Maple Leafs hoist the Stanley Cup. Most analysts would’ve thought a team such as the Coyotes, Kings or Rangers would hoist the trophy this year. But they’re all wrong.

Toronto’s severe lack of skilled players worked in their favor this year, thanks to an imminent lack of offseason drama. They didn’t need to worry about any contractual issues with good players, since they have none. Being the NHL’s dumpster doesn’t seem so bad all of a sudden. Also, think about how much money the Toronto franchise earned over the years selling paper bags for fans to wear. In the interval where no games were played, what would’ve happened is still very predictable.

First of all, despite being retired, Peter Forseberg will injure himself at least four times, either through a mild golfing injury and a serious lawn mower injury. Second, Roberto Luongo will have yet another fantastic season and will become Vancouver’s biggest social pariah every time the Canucks lose.

Nobody will know or care about the Central conference until the second round of the playoffs. Sure, one game when the Blackhawks play the Red Wings may be televised, the press doesn’t want to be near the division containing the Blue Jackets. The Blackhawks will have a successful regular season but have their goaltenders fail in the playoffs. So will the Red Wings, only with fewer own goals in the process.

In the Pacific division, Dallas will endure another year of sadness and remorse, while the San Jose Sharks will come into the playoffs for the sixth year in a row thinking that it’s finally their year. Warning-choking hazard.

The Eastern Conference will be simple. Florida gets back to their golf game as quickly as possible and the Capitals will suffocate once Ovechkin inevitably stops scoring.

Boston would’ve won their division, Toronto would’ve won the cup (obviously), and Montréal fans will be complaining how their team isn’t good anymore. Sorry guys, World War II is over. Do the Buffalo Sabres still exist? I’m not sure.

In the Atlantic division, Lundqvist will do well (again), Sidney Crosby will score at least 50 goals (again), and there will be a lot of controversy surrounding Martin Brodeur and his age (again).

I am just as sad as many people are about the NHL season being shortened. Though we are upset about the Joe Louis Arena having a quiet new year, at least we can all find comfort in the fact that San Jose will be torn to pieces yet again in the playoffs, and (obviously) the Toronto Maple Leafs will win the Stanley Cup.