Generatormagazine

May 2013

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Generator Staff

Music EditorRob Whitaker

President, Editor-in-ChiefJohn Paul Welsh

Secretary, Television EditorRebecca Murphy

Fashion EditorGina Rose Sirico

Video Games EditorJoe Corato

Faculty AdvisorDr. Richard Grinnell

Treasurer, Movies EditorAndrea Capobianco

Vice President, Literature EditorSophia Todeasa

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Table of ContentsFASHIONHigh-Waisted Shorts, p. 4This old-school style is making a comeback, so grab them while you still can!... By Erika Thompson

OPINIONThe New Prejudice, p. 7A reflection on the Boston bombing and the ensuing reactions from government, media, and public... By Lucas Scharf

MOVIESSummer Movie Preview,p. 9-10A smorgasbord of movies coming to a theater near you this summer!... By John Paul Welsh

TELEVISIONTeen Wolf Pack, p. 5-6What started as a really goofy (and pretty ter-rible) MTV show has grown into a truly great series... By John Paul Welsh

THEATERThe Phantom of the Opera,p. 4The classic Broadway musical continues its record-breaking run... By David Zeppieri

VIDEO GAMES AND TECHNOLOGYWind Waker Remake, p. 6One of the most beloved Zelda games is getting an updated HD release on the Wii U... By Katie Craven

Bioshock: Infinite Review,p. 3Some say it’s one of the best games ever made. Does the highly-anticipated third Bioshock title live up to the excitement?... By Joe Corato

Building a Desktop Computer, Part One, p. 8If you ever wanted to build your own desktop computer, follow along Rebecca as she explains her preliminary research and plan of action... By Rebecca Murphy

PHOTO CONTRIBUTIONSFront and Back Covers: John Paul WelshPage 3, 4: various users on Flickr

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In the years leading up to Irrational Games’ newest release, Bioshock: Infinite was the target of much skepticism. After the initial reveal of the game in August of 2010, ex-pectations for the game were set sky high. A little while later, Irrational Games de-cided to drastically change the style of the game. This is what so many gamers were worried about. The game looked so ambi-tious at first, and many gamers feared that the final product wouldn’t be as much so, and that the game would be mediocre. Fear not, however, because I’m here to tell you that Bioshock: Infinite is anything but that. Bioshock: Infinite is a first-person shoot-er with an emphasis on gripping storytell-ing and addicting, dynamic combat. The game opens up in a similar fashion to the original Bioshock, something that fans of the series will certainly appreciate. Infinite also takes inspiration from its predecessors in terms of its combat, with its use of mag-ical attacks, called Salts, and its visceral gunplay and melee combat. In terms of story and presentation, however, Infinite is a very different beast. In the opening of the story, main char-acter Booker DeWitt is tasked by a myste-rious voice with bring them “the girl,” and wiping away “the debt.” This is Booker’s main objective for the entirety of the story, and why he goes to the floating sky-city of Columbia in the first place. That floating sky-city is what makes Infinite stand out from its predecessors as well as its contemporaries. The game is absolutely gorgeous, with a color pallet that doesn’t leave anybody hanging on the sidelines. The sky is as blue as you’d ever want it to be, and Columbia’s buildings and other structures pop with different colors. Altogether, the color scheme of Bioshock: Infinite can be summed up as vibrant and distinct.

“Bring us the Girl. Wipe away the Debt.”A Review of Bioshock: Infinite

By Joe Corato

While we’re on the subject of graphics, it’s important to note that, while Infinite is built on Unreal Engine 3 (an aging engine to say the least), the game runs and looks fantastic. I’ve heard that it looks even better on PC. However, that’s not to say the game isn’t gorgeous on consoles. My roughly 10-hour playthrough on the PS3 was plenty beautiful. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in Bio-shock: Infinite. Whether you’re obsessive-ly searching every room for recordings that offer backstory information or for loot items that give you health and ammo, there’s always something for you to find. More interesting, though, is the undertones of racism and status issues that can be felt throughout the game. There are also some bashes on religion depending on how you look at it, but I don’t really mind that any-way. Combat in Bioshock: Infinite is intense and tactical. Players use any combination they like of firearms and salts. For ex-ample, using “Bucking Bronco” launches enemies into the air, allowing for easy dis-patch with the firearm of your choice. Or maybe you’d rather electrify and stun your enemies only to watch their heads explode? Or maybe you’d like to watch crows eat them to death? You choose. Or you can choose none of these and simply aim for the head and hope for the best. Whatever you choose, I can assure you you’ll be hav-ing a blast, sometimes literally.

I’m purposefully not going into much detail about the story. I will say this, how-ever: Bioshock: Infinite’s story is one of the best video game narratives I’ve seen in a very long time, complete with a twist that you more than likely won’t see com-ing. The ending left me with my jaw in my lap, and I’m still puzzling about it with my friends to this day. After completing the story for the first time on any difficulty setting, “1999 Mode” is unlocked. I assume this means that the game is hard like video games used to be back then. Just in case you were wondering, I’ve started a new save on 1999 Mode…and it’s ridiculous. Enemies take more damage to die, they do much more to you, and ammo and health are scarce. I’m not a big fan of playing a story more than once, but I definitely wanted to play this one again. It’s that good. Bioshock: Infinite is the kind of game that only comes around once in a while. It’s a near perfect game, one that blends amazing story telling with intense combat. This game is easily Game of the Year ma-terial, and I hope it wins. If you only play one game for this entire year, this is the one you should play. In fact, you owe it to yourself to do so.10/10

Photo: flickr/JBLivin

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One of the great things about being a Marist student is having the opportunity to see Broadway shows for $25; it’s an op-portunity that I was glad I took advantage of recently. I’d have to say that seeing the Phantom of the Opera on Broadway was the best $25 I’ve ever spent. I’m not really the theatre-going type of person; the only other Broadway musical I’ve seen was West Side Story during my freshman year. While I liked it, I never ended up going to another musical while here at Marist due to a busy workload (or a lack of spare cash). However, I knew that I’d be crazy to pass up a chance to see Phantom on Broadway. After all, when I was a little kid I loved the silent movie ver-sion of Phantom, and used to listen to the original cast recording of the musical on tape cassette (remember those?). Heck, I even dressed as the Phantom for Halloween when I was in third grade! While the movie version of the musical is good, it’s really something entirely dif-ferent to see it acted out, live and in per-son. What I never realized before is how, when you’re watching a play live, it makes you feel like you’re much more a part of it than when you’re just watching a mov-

The Phantom of the Opera is There…By David Zeppieri

ie. You’re seeing real people acting out a story, with a real orchestra down in front, and special effects that all happen in real time, right in front of your eyes. Scenery changes happen with incredible speed, made even more impressive by the intrica-cy of the sets involved. I was impressed by the amazing effects that the show was able to accomplish, particularly because they all happen right in front of you, and not just some computer generated effect added in the post production of a movie. Somehow, the Phantom’s boat glides across the stage, “floating” above a river of fog, as flickering candelabras rise from the mist. Most im-pressive to me was a scene late in the musi-cal where Raoul jumps into the “river” be-low—and disappears into its depths. The fact that this all happens on stage, which moments before had a completely different set (and no water!), gives it a mystical feel; much like a magic show, you have no idea how the tricks are done, which just adds to the fun. That is to say nothing of the acting and songs! In a way, what can be said? All the actors and actresses did an incredible job of bringing Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical to life on the stage… for the twenty-fifth

year running! While it may not be the same cast as it was years ago, I couldn’t think of a single criticism to make about the current production. I don’t feel that I would have seen a better production years ago with the original cast than I did seeing it this year, which speaks volumes about the amount of talent and effort put into the entire pro-duction. Further, having listened to the original cast recording of the soundtrack, I couldn’t imagine the songs sounding any better than they did. In short, the quality of the musical seems to have remained consistent throughout the years, which is quite an incredible feat to accomplish. Indeed, Phantom is now the longest-running show on Broadway, and for good reason. With a great cast, excellent songs and music, and great special effects, it makes for a great spectacle of theatre. If it weren’t clear already, I would heartily recommend seeing the show to anyone who has the opportunity. Even if you’ve seen the movie or heard the soundtrack, seeing it on stage is completely different, and is an experience worth having.

A Hot New Look for Hot Weather: High Waisted ShortsBy: Erika Thompson

When the weather starts to heat up, shorts come out to play. This season, it seems people are on blast to the past and raising the waistlines of their shorts. Say good-bye to low-rise booty shorts, and hello to high-wasited vintage cutoffs. High-waisted shorts are one of the best ways to look slimmer for summer, add-ing length to your legs, while subtracting inches from your waist! These shorts are great for all body types and are available at many stores. High-waisted shorts look great paired with crop tops and wedges, or sheer blouses and sandals. This playful, flirty look is perfect for transitional weath-er as well. Adding a cardigan and flats to a pair of high-wasited shorts is perfect for weather in the mid-60s. These shorts give any outfit a 70’s flare, without the afro and disco pants. This slimming look has been rocked by celebs such as Miley Cyrus and Blake Lively. Websites that sell handmade goods, such

as Etsy, are chock-full of high-waisted shorts. Amateur designers are buying out Goodwill stores of all their vintage high wasited jeans, and then cutting, coloring, studding, and selling them to people who strive to be on the cutting edge of fashion. Famous designers have added studs, lace, colorful dye, and many other design fea-tures in order to make their brand’s shorts stand out from the crowd, though some people prefer to make their own. Looking for a pair? Check out places like Urban Outfitters, Etsy, or Free People. Working on a tight budget? Visit your local Goodwill store (or your mother’s closet) and go wild! This gives you an opportuni-ty to experiment with coloring techniques, like dying, bleaching, and ombrè dip-dy-ing, to make a creation that is one-of-a-kind and all your own!

Photo: flickr/triciagosingtian

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This is a story about how I began watch-ing the MTV show Teen Wolf. It docu-ments how and why I came to appreciate it, not just for its goofiness and camp value, but as a legitimately good piece of televi-sion entertainment. It all began a few months ago, when a few of my housemates found the show on Net-flix streaming. They were initially search-ing for the show Reaper, which they had heard was very good, but Netflix did not have it available. Instead, they searched the Most Popular tag to find some way to waste some time, and stumbled upon Teen Wolf. All they knew about the show was that it was based on the 1985 Michael J. Fox movie, had been on for two seasons. They sat down and started the first episode, and about 20 minutes into the episode I came upstairs to watch the rest with them. I came upstairs because they were in up-roarious laughter almost constantly since they started the episode, and I needed to check it out. They summed up what I missed so far: Scott, the new kid at the lo-cal high school, gets bitten by a werewolf in the woods within the first few minutes. He tries out for the lacrosse team and, using his newfound superhuman powers, passes tryouts with flying colors. Meanwhile, he makes friends with a goofy kid named Stiles, and woos one of the local hotties, Allison. The rest of the episode, which I watched with the rest of the guys, set up that the werewolf’s name is Derek, that his sister was killed under mysterious cir-cumstances, and that Allison’s parents are werewolf hunters. I understood immediately why they found it so funny. Teen Wolf’s pilot episode falls into nearly every stereotypical trap of modern teen supernatural dramas. The werewolves are sexy, the students are gor-geous, the teachers are morons or crazy, the parents are either oblivious or the enemy, and the Scott’s condition is just one more source of teenage pressure. The Netflix de-scription of the series says it all: “When an animal bite turns socially awkward high schooler Scott McCall into a werewolf, he suddenly becomes the lacrosse team’s star

athlete and a chick magnet. But his new abilities and popularity also create a whole new set of problems for him.” We simply needed to watch more of this dumb show called Teen Wolf. It was sim-ply too fun to watch. As we watched ep-isode after episode, we came up with our own nicknames for almost every character, cracked jokes at the silly plot twists, and predicted the clichéd dialogue with nearly 100% success. What we did not know, what we could not have expected, was that we would con-tinue watching this show all the way to the end, through two seasons with 13 episodes each, and that we would be eagerly await-ing the release of the third season this sum-mer. We realized as we watched more and more that Teen Wolf accidentally became a great show. Seriously. None of us realized it at first. We con-tinued to laugh at the poor acting and the overly serious tone of the show, but then we started noticing that, as the season one arc began picking up speed, it got a lot more interesting. It was the kind of in-teresting that made us all fall quiet for the last few minutes of the episode, as more information came to light and the risks be-came greater and greater. The show began expanding on the mythos of werewolves, talking about alphas who lead packs, and betas who follow. The dynamics between Derek and Scott got more intense, with the former alternating between helpful and hostile.

Scott’s and Allison’s relationship stopped being a joke and started posing serious problems as her family became more active in hunting down the werewolves that had been terrorizing the town. The “big bad” of the season got more and more threatening, and the show’s plot started to match the se-rious tone that the show was always trying to force-feed to us, the viewers. By the end of season one, we were genuinely invested in the characters and the story. Teen Wolf somehow became good. Season two was even worse, by which I mean, so much better that we couldn’t even handle it. Allison’s family started reveal-ing the family business to her, and Scott was explicitly targeted as a threat to the town. Allison’s friend Lydia, and her on-off boyfriend Colton, played much bigger roles as the former started having genuine-ly disturbing hallucinations and the latter became obsessed with becoming a were-wolf himself. There is a mysterious new lizard-like creature terrorizing the town, and a bunch of shady minor characters that could all be involved in the most recent killings. It was almost as if the developers of the show decided, “Hey, now that we roped you in with really fun goofiness, we’re go-ing to do a 180 and start making the show actually good.” The plot got darker, the supernatural aspects became more relevant and interesting, and the interpersonal rela-tionships started to actually reflect real life instead of dwell in the land of typical high

Teen Wolf Pack: or,

Season 3 of Teen Wolf will begin on

June 3, only on MTV

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school garbage. I can personally attest to feeling legitimate sadness for most of the characters as more tragedies strike them and their families. Probably the most confusing part of this story for me is accepting that I am watching an MTV show. MTV has come to embody everything I despise about my generation and the generation younger than me. Reality TV is a plague on humanity, and MTV abandoned the M in its name to instead focus on vapid, awful people doing useless and degrading things for attention. I found it hard to believe that the channel had any scripted shows anymore (besides Awkward, which, although I know very lit-tle about it, looks like a failed attempt at high school wit a-la Mean Girls). I didn’t

want to believe that one of the worst TV stations produced such an enjoyable show. It made sense at first: the first few episodes are hilariously bad and blissfully unaware of its failures, much like any given Jersey Shore character’s life. But now that I am seriously invested in this show, I don’t know what to believe anymore. Teen Wolf is a unique show, not because it is particularly innovative, but because its effect on the viewer is one that I had never experienced until a couple of months ago. It keeps the story just interesting enough where you want to keep watching to see what happens, while subliminally bringing you to care about the characters and want to see more of them. Next thing you know, you’re no longer watching the show be-

How I Came to Love Such a Stupid TV ShowBy John Paul Welsh

cause it’s bad, because even if it still is bad (it very well could be objectively an aver-age show at best), you look past its flaws and see the brilliance lying just behind its guise of clichés. Perhaps I am overreacting, and the show’s only success is its ability to em-bed itself into receptive minds. Maybe it is only tricking us into thinking that it’s a good show. I don’t care. Tastes are not so clear-cut, and the only evaluation you can trust is your own. In my opinion, Teen Wolf started out really crappy and evolved into a great TV series.

Wind Waker Wii U RemakeBy Katie Craven

By now I’m sure a lot of Zelda fans have heard news of the upcoming Wind Waker remake for the Nintendo Wii U. The re-make of the game is going to be given HD graphics, and will apparently have some changes made to make it better suited for the Wii U gamepad. No details have been given, but many suspect that the item menu screen might be displayed on the game pad to allow for quicker inventory selection. For those of you who haven’t played the game, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker is a game that was originally released for the GameCube. Its cartoon-like graphics made many skeptical about purchasing it, but in the end it was considered by many to be one of the best Zelda games ever made. The cheerful atmosphere given by lively music and bright colors worked well for the game, even if it wasn’t what people were expecting. One of the most unique aspects of Wind Waker was the sailing game mechanic. The Wind Waker world is set up so that you have to sail from island to island. This me-chanic had both benefits and drawbacks. One of the benefits was that the game felt very open, but not empty. There was a lot of space, but it’s easy to tell that a lot of effort was put into the sky and sea graphics, so the sea never really feels too empty. Ad-

ditionally, in every area there is an island for you to explore, sunken treasure for you to hoist up, and monster areas for you to test your skills. To me, the wide open space left a feeling of freedom to explore. The drawback to having a wide open world, however, is that if you want to get to point A to point B, it’s going to take some time. Even the warp command unlocked to-wards the middle of the game only lets you warp to a few of the main islands. Usually I don’t find this to be too annoying, but it can make things difficult when you want to move around quickly. With the remake of this game, it is possible that this mechanic will be remade in a way that makes sailing less tedious, but doesn’t detract from the feeling of a wide open sea. One of the more interesting prospects for the Wind Waker remake is the possibility of the inclusion of more dungeons. Due to time constraints, two to three dungeons or islands were apparently cut from the origi-nal game. One of these islands, supposedly called Stovepipe Island, features several houses and what appears to be some kind of volcano, possibly a dungeon. The game already has a fire-themed dungeon, so it’s unclear what purpose this island would have served. It certainly looks unique. Supposedly, Greatfish Isle (an island that

has very little to explore in my opinion, de-spite being a part of the plot) might have had a dungeon as well. I would love to see these additions, if Nintendo decides to make them. The orig-inal game is long, with a good variety of entertaining dungeons. Still, I definitely wouldn’t complain if more unique dun-geons and places were added, especially if they replaced a few of the somewhat te-dious sailing parts of the game I mentioned earlier. Unfortunately, we have no way of telling. The remake of Ocarina of Time for the 3DS had no plot changes, instead focusing on improving gameplay mechan-ics and graphics (I noticed they removed the presence of blood in the bottom of the well). I think it’s safe to say that we can expect a graphics remake of Majora’s Mask as well, given that there is a large audience for it. However, for a larger-console re-make, I would hope that Nintendo would make some changes to make a great game like Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker even more fantastic.

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The latest episode in a seemingly un-ending sequence of indiscriminate violence concluded on Friday, April 19th, after a shootout left one of the Boston marathon bombers dead and the other in custody after he was found in the boat of a local resident. The ensuing celebration was a sight to be-hold, but it quickly gave way to a nation-wide call for answers. President Obama vocalized the feelings of millions of Amer-icans when he said, “Why did young men who grew up and studied here, as part of our communities and our country, resort to such violence?” It’s certainly an intriguing question, and one that may not ever be given a satisfacto-ry answer. However, the lack of pertinent information at this juncture has opened the door for a whole host of speculation and premature indictments on the part of the media and the American public. It would surely be naïve to expect anything differ-ent, but the fallout from this speculation may produce unintended consequences. Chief among these is the undeniable fact that American attitudes towards Muslims, which had gradually been improving since 9/11, will suffer a major setback. Almost immediately following the discovery of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s actual Twitter ac-count, which revealed his Islamic identity, the internet became overrun by posts men-tioning “jihad” and “terrorism.” Even af-ter the news was released that the bombers were not likely linked to any particular ter-rorist group, suspicion and outright hostil-ity towards the Islamic faith has persisted. One blogger, who goes by the screen name DJAnders, responded to Dzhokar’s claim that his brother was the mastermind of the plot by saying, “Typical Muslim, blame your actions and decisions on someone else.” A user on The Huffington Post by the name of franktrades said of Muslims, “These people are ruthless insane murder-ous religious fanatics.” Obviously, intolerance on the internet is painfully easy to find, but surprisingly, the U.S. government has shown a certain subtlety of prejudice in their handling of the situation as well. After both the Bos-

ton police and the FBI worked night and day under the assumption that the explo-sion was an act of terrorism, the younger Tsarnaev now finds himself facing several terror charges, including using a weapon of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property. While this may seem entirely appro-priate at first glance, consider that neither the Sandy Hook massacre nor the Aurora shooting was considered by authorities to be an act of terror. Granted, neither suspect in those instances used an explosive de-vice, but they each killed over three times as many people using firearms as did the Tsarnaevs via the pressure cooker. Also consider that upon being arrested, Tsarnaev was not mirandized. His rights to remain silent and to have access to an attorney were revoked, and only after being read the charges against him was it made clear that he’ll be given a fair trial. The media’s interpretation of the fail-ure to mirandize Tsarnaev has sparked a great deal of controversy. Adam Good-win, a contributor for The Atlantic, briefly explained the public-safety exception and pointed to numerous Supreme Court cases that have established precedent for a degree of discretion on the part of the police. He then provided analysis as to why the police were within their constitutional guidelines. “Specifically, in a case such as this one, where it seems likely both that the govern-ment will have overwhelming evidence to convict (without relying on any post-arrest statements) and that Tsarnaev may be in possession of valuable information that implicates national security, the rationale behind the government’s choice emerges: Even if the public-safety exception is de-termined to have been wrongfully invoked, this would not threaten the government’s case in a meaningful way.” The issue is not so much whether the po-lice acted appropriately (though discussion should certainly be held to address this) as it is whether Adam Lanza and James Ea-gan Holmes would have been treated sim-ilarly. Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian explores this in great detail in his feature

piece, “Why is ‘Boston’ terrorism but not Aurora, Sandy Hook, Tuscon, and Colum-bine?” He argues that because the motive is currently unknown, it cannot be labeled as “terrorism” and that suspicion based on his Islamic identity was a key factor for government officials in deciding how to classify Tsarnaev’s actions. He criticizes media figures such as Andrew Sullivan for making assumptions without all the facts, and coercing the public into prematurely (and possible incorrectly) believing that Is-lam was the motive for the crime. Sullivan had previously written that the bombings were, “an almost text-book case of Jihadist radicalization, most likely in the US.” Thus, before America can demand an-swers from the FBI and the 19-year old Chechen, it must first answer the biggest question of all. Is this about Tsarnaev, or is this about Islam? Or is it about both? Political correctness will ultimately dictate the official response from the government, but whether that can be perceived as legiti-mate depends very much on the months to come. The American people are a different case altogether. Nobody can blame them for being upset, and now having seen three major acts of indiscriminate violence in the last twenty perpetrated by Muslims and countless military casualties at the hands of insurgents in the Middle East, many are be-ginning to have doubts as to whether Islam, despite comprising of a mere 0.6% of the American population, can peacefully ex-ist on American soil. These are dangerous times for both Muslims and non-Muslims, and one can only hope that the damage to their relationship sustained by the Tsarnaev brothers can be patched up as quickly as possible.

The New PrejudiceThoughts on the Aftermath of the Boston Bombing

By Lucas Scharf

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Despite being a computer science ma-jor, I don’t know that much about computer hardware. After having my first laptop in high school, a solid black MacBook, for a couple years I got curious about what the insides looked like. I managed to take out the RAM, but I was alerted to the fact I didn’t put it back in right when I tried to turn the laptop back on and it made a lovely “WAH WAH” noise. Unsurprisingly, that incident didn’t boost my confidence when messing around with electronics. Since then I’ve opened a couple more laptops, mostly for cleaning. My family only has ever owned one desktop; bought back in 2004 when AOL was the premier internet provider. I don’t think it has been cleaned of dust once in its lifetime. Ick. My current laptop has great portability and battery life, but when it comes to play-ing games, or even running any kind of 3D modeling programs, it is rather subpar. So I started thinking, “I’m a CS major, I should totally be able to build my own desktop, no problem. But wait, where do I even begin?” Which is what brought me to write this ar-ticle: how to plan a desktop build with little to no experience. Step 1. Find some resources. Pretend you are writing a research paper on how to build a desktop. You’ve probably heard of Newegg.com if you’ve ever ordered anything comput-er-related online. But other than a place to buy parts and accessories, they have a pretty good video series on how to build a computer. It’s a three part series that’s a little over two hours long. Sounds boring, but you have to start somewhere.

I know reddit doesn’t have the best rep-utation, but honestly that have quite few good subreddits for learning. Specifically for this project, I used the following:

http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc.

This is basically a forum for anyone who wants advice on building a computer.

http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcforme.

Know what you’re going to use your desktop for and want some advice? There are some rules to this forum, they ask if you post you fill out a build request form when you post, which is just questions about what you’re going to use the computer for.These subreddit communities are usually nice as long as you follow the rules. I actually asked a real live human for advice too, and he said, “I learned it on my own, but basical-ly you’ll want to buy stuff from newegg and just match things up. You start off by choosing a motherboard (Intel is always a good bet), then a CPU that fits into that motherboard (same socket). Next up pick as much RAM as you want (that has the same speeds like 1333Mhz ect as the moth-erboard) and pick a video card (AMD is cheaper but I highly recommend Nvidia for gaming). “Next, pick a power supply (500 watts or higher is always good). The last thing to you need to do is pick a case, which is mostly aesthetic. You just need to make sure your motherboard and power supply can fix. There are sizes called ATX, mATX,

miniATX, and ATX-L. So you just make sure that the sizes either match, or the case is of the larger size. “Oh, and a monitor too if you don’t have one. Anything 1080p or higher is always nice. Acer and ASUS are nice cheap, but solid, monitors.” Step 2: Actually read all previously men-tioned resources, and then plan out a build. To be continued in Part Two, in which I actually picking out parts, and the horrors involved with that.

Building My Own Computer:A Step-by-Step Process, Part One

By Rebecca Murphy

Useful Linkshttp://www.newegg.com/Computer-Hardware/Storehttp://www.reddit.com/r/buildapchttp://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcforme

Come back for the first issue of Fall 2013, and if all goes well over the summer, we will have a Part Two to this article. Keep an eye out!

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Another year, another slew of summer blockbusters heading to the theater nearest you. This summer continues the trend of endless sequels, and begins a new trend of apocalyptic action flicks. Nearly every movie worth mentioning this summer will fall into one of these two categories. I will mention most of the movies coming out so you will be well informed about something for any and every taste. First up is the seemingly infinite supply of films that are adapted from graphic nov-els and comic books. The X-Men franchise continues with its second single-character movie, The Wolverine, sequel to X-Men Origins: Wolverine from 2009. This one sees the Marvel hero confronting mysteri-ous enemies in Japan, with a whole bunch of samurai stuff thrown in for good mea-sure. A more surprising superhero sequel is Kick-Ass 2, in which Hit Girl retires and a bunch of other heroes join the team, including one played by Jim Carrey. Nor-mally, movies based on non-Marvel or DC comic books are hit and miss in regards to revenue and popularity, but the original Kick-Ass gained itself a very respectable $96 million in ticket sales. It is especially hard to tell how the sequel will fair, but I have hopes that it will deliver as much as the first one did.

Summer Movie PreviewBy John Paul Welsh

Speaking of surprisingly successful graphic novel adaptations, there is a se-quel to 300 coming out this summer as well. 300: Rise of an Empire follows the story of Greek soldier Themostikles, and shows some of how Xerxes came to be “the God King.” Since 300 is one of the high-est-grossing R-rated films of recent history, the sequel promises to rake in just as much as, and include even more blood and gore than its predecessor. Man of Steel is the newest reboot of the Superman franchise, which has always suf-fered as a second-rate series of films in light of the Batman and Spider-man movies. Af-ter the uneven reception (but satisfying box office return) of Superman Returns, it is exciting to see a new Superman film after such a long absence from the silver screen. Man of Steel is directed by Zack Snyder, known for the original 300 and 2009’s Watchmen, so if you enjoy his previous work, you will probably be satisfied with his interpretation of Superman. Some find his style too overbearing, but sometimes it’s better to overdo it than make an under-whelming superhero movie. Branching off the comic-book path and moving towards book adaptations, the sec-ond installment of the Percy Jackson young adult book series is being released as Percy

Jackson: Sea of Monsters. I had never read the books, but was fairly pleased with the first movie in its ability to make Greek my-thology interesting while being satisfying cheesy (sorry to serious fans of the series, I just found it a little goofy). The sequel promises a lot of excitement, since Percy is in search of the Golden Fleece, and has to voyage to the eponymous sea, which sounds pretty treacherous to me. As you may have seen, there is a heck of a lot of sequels coming out this summer. Although sequels usually repulse me with their overabundance, there will be at least one that each of you will be interested in hearing about, so I will have covered al-most all of them this article. These include The Hangover Part III, Fast and Furious 6, and Grown Ups 2. Now, these are all are contingent on if you liked the most re-cent installment: if you thought the second Hangover was worth watching, then the third one will be about as good. Same goes for Fast 5, although critical reaction sug-gests that Fast 5 was better than most F+F movies, so hopefully that mean the sequel to a good sequel will be good as well. However, I would be lying to myself and to you, dear readers, if I said that any se-quel coming out this summer is more high-ly anticipated than Star Trek into Darkness.

May 16: Star Trek Into Darkness May 17: The Hangover Part III May 24: Fast and Furious 6 May 31: After Earth

June 14: Man of Steel, This is the End June 21: Monsters University, World War Z

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After rebooting the Star Trek series with monumental success, J.J. Abrams is setting the bar even higher with this, the twelfth film overall. The available plot descrip-tions are pretty cryptic, alluding to an “un-stoppable force of terror” within the Enter-prise crew’s own organization, so not much specifically can be said about how the story will turn out. But considering how well the first film did, this one will most likely be a smash success both critically and finan-cially. As it has been for the past ten years or so, kids-movie sequels are full-force this sum-mer, too. The Smurfs and Despicable Me are both getting sequels that simply add a 2 to their names, not lending very much in terms of any hints for the plot. The Smurfs 2 sees the little blue guys dealing with a new menace called the Naughties, while in Despicable Me 2, Gru is hired to fight a new villain named Eduardo. Like most sequels, your mileage may vary depending on if you saw (and liked) the originals of these two movies. One interesting release this summer will be Planes, which is tech-nically a spinoff of the Cars franchise, but is only distributed by Walt Disney Studios, not through Pixar. The cast is all-star and the animation will be about as good as any cartoon nowadays, but it was originally going to be a direct-to-DVD release, and I still think it should have been. The little I’ve seen of the film gives off a Thomas the Tank Engine vibe that probably will not work as a theatrical feature. The final broad category of movies for this summer is the apocalypse flick. I guess most production studios expected the world would end last December, so as a joke they pitched a bunch of apocalyptic movie ideas thinking that, by the time they got OK’d, it wouldn’t matter anyway. But, here we are, in the wake of a whole bunch of nothing, so now the question is this: which end-of-the-world movies will be good? World War Z is adapted from a popular book by Max Brooks about zombies over-running the world. From what I’ve seen, the book takes a very intellectual and meta-phorical approach to the concept of undead apocalypse. The film stars Brad Pitt and looks to be a good alternative to the type of zombie media we’ve had for the past few years (not to say that The Walking Dead isn’t good, but it’s refreshing to have some-thing a little different).

Two other movies deal with current day, on-Earth destruction in their vision of the apocalypse, but they take totally different styles. The first is the gratuitous monster movie Pacific Rim, directed by Guillermo del Toro, who has also directed Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth. Pacific Rim will en-tirely consist of giant underwater monsters fighting giant robots, but my fears of it being a cheap knockoff of the even cheap-er Transformers movies is probably for naught. Del Toro is known for high-quality effects and makeup, and has openly stated that this movie will essentially be a love letter to big scary things, so I am hoping for an exceedingly fun movie that uses re-ally big things fighting in the ocean to its highest potential. The second movie is a comedy, This is the End. In it, Seth Rogen and all his friends (playing themselves) have a house party just as the apocalypse barges in and ruins their day. It follows their efforts to group up and survive, but features ridic-ulous antics like being robbed by Emma Watson, watching others get impaled by flying shrapnel, and probably other types of unforeseeable insanity. It has the poten-tial to be really hilarious, in the same way that Hot Tub Time Machine did (whether it actually succeeded is anyone’s guess). Finally, there are two other futuristic summer movies that don’t quite fit into the above categories. The first is Elysi-um, from the mind of Neill Blomkamp, the mastermind behind 2009’s brilliant District 9. In this film’s version of the future, the very wealthy live on an orbital paradise city while everyone else inhabits the over-

populated and overrun Earth. The film is intended to be very politically conscious and will reflect issues of our current day, much like how District 9 was a poignant look at racism and immigration. In the ca-pable hands of Blomkamp, this sounds like an intelligent sci-fi film that will be sure to make you think. The second is After Earth, starring the incomparable Will Smith and directed by the notorious M. Night Shyamalan. In the film, Earth’s human population has long since abandoned the planet and other forms of life have taken over. The trailer teases that Earth has evolved to be specifical-ly hostile to humans. Will Smith and his real-life son, Jaden, play a father and son team of explorers and peacekeepers that in-tends to investigate the long-vacant planet, but they crash and now have to somehow survive this dangerous new terrain. This movie makes me anxious because, seeing as I am a native Philadelphian, I know first-hand how terrible Shyamalan’s most recent movies have been (see: everything after 2002’s Signs). However, the star power and promise of good performances makes After Earth a more reasonable gamble, one that I may end up taking. So there you are, a gigantic list of pretty much every movie coming out this sum-mer. Hopefully I have been informative and have highlighted something that you will want to see, and good luck out there.

July 3: Despicable Me 2 July 12: Grown Ups 2, Pacific Rim

July 24: The Wolverine July 31: The Smurfs 2

August 2: 300: Rise of an Empire August 7: Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters August 9: Elysium, Planes

“Thanks for Reading,And Have a Great

Summer!”

~Generator Staff(and the old Student

Center!)