Dear Notepad,

I have something to tell you that I simply do not know how to express to you verbally. We have known each other for such a long time. I remember the ye olde days of Windows 3.1, through the golden age of XP, and through the drunken fit that was Vista. You have always been there, like a shining beacon of pride and purity. Notepad, I love you.

I remember when we first met. I was young and stupid; I hardly gave a second glance to you. It was only as I got older and wiser that I looked up from my wild, loveless flings with other programs like Minesweeper that your loveliness began to shine through.

You are one of the most dependable and powerful programs I know. Whenever I am with you, you never crash, result in a blue screen of death, or hang. You can open almost any file. You may not always open every file necessarily well, but that determination in trying is commendable, and often useful. You can even create nearly any file type. Whether it be a simple .txt, a webpage like .html or .php, a full program class like .java, or even a database useful .csv, you are there for me to quickly get it done. Even with all of this power, you hardly leave a footprint.

Your simplicity is alluring. You know full well that you are a text editor and don't try to go overboard with unnecessary bells and whistles. You are a text editor that edits text. You don't need to be anything more. All of these others that have features like colored code or spell checking are weak, error-prone, and take those precious milliseconds longer to load (precious hours, in the case of some IDEs).

Notepad, I love you. I hope you will always be there for me, forever and ever.

Love from,

Jimbo1♥23
xoxo

Part of the reason I have not been posting as often as I normally do is because I rented inFamous for the PS3. It's a decent game, but the main reason I am writing about it is because of a revelation I had while playing into the state of gaming today. Games have become far too easy. Let me try to explain from the beginning. There are these side missions where you have to run past a series of spotlights within a short time limit. The very last version of this game has a very, very small margin of error wherein you fail outright if you do not follow an exact path perfectly. It took me about five tries to get this done. By about the third time, I was livid with rage. It was after succeeding that I sat back and reflected on what happened. This minute trifle was available only near the end of the game. It took me a mere five tries. Back in ye olde times that would be the standard Level 1-1 difficulty. You would be lucky to scrape out of Level 1-2 in the single digits (triple if it's a Mega Man game).

What has happened here? I think most of the blame has to do with the shift to 3D. Back in ye olde times, when 3D was accomplished with 2D sprites placed on a checkered plain, you had two buttons, limited movement capabilities, and an endless horde of enemies, spikes, bottomless pits, and falling landscape trying to kill you! In inFamous, you have roughly eleven different buttons with functions mapped to them, while pressing one of those buttons changes the effect of all of the other buttons for another set of abilities. It is features like these that are weakening gamers. Other features that are slowly degrading our attempts to reach gaming nirvana that are included in this game: regenerating health, a dodge button (well, SkyKid had this too, but you can only use it a few times before it started failing), high speed methods of locomotion, and a death penalty of merely being scooted back in time about five seconds. I should not be forced to furrow my brow after a mere five attempts. It should be closer to fifty. The simplistic games of today have weakened this generation.

To sum everything up, here is what I want everyone to do. Write a letter to your congressperson and tell him or her to pass some legislation setting up a federal regulation for game difficulties. It would limit how many functions that can be mapped to controllers to a maximum of three (not including movement). It would set a required ratio of enemies to noncombatants at a minimum of about 2,000,000:1. It would require any plots to be no more complicated than "continue moving to the other side of the screen". It would require that in-game death cost you heavily, especially if you do not save constantly. You may even wish to write the president. I think with this administration that ran on a platform of Change, we can finally get some meaningful video game legislation passed.