Cal is a school infamous for its stressors. We all are pretty competitive, and often we’re even competing against ourselves; we came to Cal to make ourselves better, didn’t we? In the quest for bettering ourselves, though, the basic necessities are neglected during the semester. Eating and workout habits go awry, sleeping patterns tend toward the nocturnal and relationships are strained.

But did you ever stop to consider that the weather could push us even further and make us take our stress out on other people in even worse ways? A recent study published in Science — for which two of the researchers are from UC Berkeley — found that hotter temperatures in weather really do make people more hot-headed. The study suggests that, historically, wars and other kinds of violence tended to occur during periods of extreme weather.

We think there has to be some truth to this research. We’ve done our own observations when it gets warm in Berkeley. Everyone feels a little groggier and crankier when we get an uncharacteristic “heat wave” of 80-something degrees. There’s no air conditioning in most Berkeley housing, so we don’t feel like doing anything in our puddles of sweat. When we don’t get anything done, we’re annoyed (mostly at ourselves). And then we take that annoyance out on the people surrounding us.

So though you may love the sun and complain of Berkeley’s “bipolar weather,” be grateful that you have one less stressor on you. Clouds and colder weather can make us sad, but a little chill may help you keep your own cool.

It’s not like we need any more reasons to sweat during that first exam of the semester.

Image source: Giulia Forsythe, under Creative Commons

Contact Jessica Rogness at jrogness@dailycal.org.

The post Berkeley economists find ‘hotter temperatures lead to hotter tempers’ appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Uday Mehta/Staff

Situated in an area of the world that spawns many great ideas and businesses (and far more horrendous ones), UC Berkeley students can often have difficulty making their work stand out in a field of an equally bright colleagues. “Standing out” has been the mantra instilled in the vast majority of us for a long time — starting with (presumably) college applications and culminating … well, never. It’s understandably convoluted to do so when one doesn’t even have the slightest scintilla of sapience as to the work of the competition and their allies. Enter Cal student Adam Remba.

While working away at a summer internship in the far reaches of Tel Aviv, Israel, Remba met Ben Lang, a man who managed to consolidate more than 1,000 startups and their information in his website, which he appropriately titled “Mapped in Israel.” It grew from being merely a location tool to one that granted exposure to companies through agglomeration. As any startup would appreciate, exposure is the cardinal goal. Upon recognizing the practicality of such an endeavor in California, Remba began his personal creation, correspondingly titled “Mapped in Silicon Valley.”

Simple in its execution yet powerful in its purpose, the site offers a map of all the startup-type companies in the Silicon Valley — the vast majority of which are concentrated around Berkeley — and allows one to see basic information, such as tagline, address and website, with a single click. Also available is the option to add your own community. It is very much a community-driven website where registering your startup proves to be a symbiotic relationship. The current function that makes this tool so useful is its organization: It’s guaranteed to let you find others who may be in a similar space to you and open the opportunities for collaboration and the occasional friendly rivalry and to let others find you by virtue of the same process.

Following the mold of pretty much all Berkeley student innovators, Remba is not yet content with the product he has created. Alongside the co-founder and fellow golden bear Eric Katz, he hopes to make his website an outlet that can be used to drive traffic — similar to how his inspiration worked. “Although there are ones for specific communities like Berkeley, San Francisco and Palo Alto,” Remba remarks, “I couldn’t believe there wasn’t one for Silicon Valley.”

The duo hopes to reach a total of 500 startups added to the website by December of this year to match their tagline of helping unite Silicon Valley.

Contact Uday Mehta at umehta@dailycal.org.

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Snapshot of the most depressing thing we’ve laid our eyes on in a while: two nicely dressed young adults, presumably on a date, sitting across from each other in total silence, ignoring one another for the entertainment of their respective smartphones. Unfortunately, this is not that outlandish of a sight. With our generation’s addiction to mobile technology and social media, it seems as if dinners are more often set to the auto-lighting of an iPhone than to candlelight.

We at the Clog recognize the benefits that these forms of technology can offer us. Direct messaging and sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn help us promote our professional careers, stay updated on club matters and keep in touch with distant friends. But when we have to install Chrome Nanny to keep us off of Reddit before a midterm or get in potentially life-threatening car crashes because we couldn’t wait to respond to a text from our friends, it’s an understatement to say that our priorities are getting a little out of whack. Don’t misunderstand; there’s nothing we hate more than holier-than-thou types. We are just as addicted to these things as the next person is. But hopefully considering the detrimental effects technology has on our daily lives as students will be enough to convince us all that the way we use it often isn’t worth it. Without further ado, here are some areas where technology might slowly sucking the life force out of us.

Relationships

Why is it that thousands of young, spritely, educated, intelligent students can’t help but reach for their smartphones when they get together? Look around campus. At cafes, parties, discussion sections or pretty much anywhere that tradition and human decency would tell us to look one another in the face and make conversation, a lot of people are more comfortable looking down at their screens. It’s almost a reflex — and an extremely inconsiderate one at that. There is nothing more rude and offensive by making it alarmingly clear that you prefer the allure of a social media notification than the conversation of a real human being sitting in front of you. Social media is the greatest paradox. It gives us an illusion that we are becoming more connected to people when, in reality, it is crippling our social skills. The act of “liking,” “favoriting” and commenting on posts by “friends” on these sites might seem like a legitimate way to establish or maintain valuable relationships, but no amount of thumbs-up buttons will replace genuine, in-person human interaction. You know — with body language, voice inflections, real words and stuff. By allowing ourselves to spend so much time with these often empty forms of communication, we are preventing ourselves from seeking true intimacy with other people, leaving us feeling socially unsatisfied.

Academics

Translation apps for language class, educational websites like Khan Academy — we may have failed without these tech developments. But what’s more likely a reason we were struggling in class in the first place is that we were too preoccupied with distractions on our phones and computers. It’s almost comical to sit in a crowded lecture hall in Wheeler and see hundreds of Facebook homepages glaring on the screens in front of you.These sites are designed like the classic Skinner box; we click a certain button to receive immediate gratification. Our smartphones have essentially destroyed our ability to concentrate, encouraging us to leap from one application to another for any bit of entertainment. Regardless of technology’s addictive qualities, the ability to focus and a very expensive education aren’t things we should be OK sacrificing just because we  heard our phone buzz.

Mood and personality

Addiction to social media sites and the like, similar to an addiction to a drug, can be detrimental to your mood and, ultimately, your personality.  Ever log off of a social media site feeling lousy about yourself? It’s alarmingly common. In fact, Time reports that scientists who studied 600 people active on Facebook found that one in three felt worse than before visiting the site. It’s no wonder that networking sites can easily becoming breeding grounds for self-esteem issues. People anguish over social approval in the form of a “like” on a post or an invitation to an event. Negative body image is also a residual effect of frequent visits to these sites when people compare their pictures to those of their peers.

A lot of us spend a considerable amount of time and effort trying to present the best-looking, most interesting, coolest, most popular version of ourselves to  acquaintances through tech mediums. What we want people to realize is the cost is just too high. If you aren’t happy being on the social media site you probably found this article on right now, then log off.  Less time focusing on these things will translate into more time doing the things that actually make us feel fulfilled and happy, like completing assignments, finishing a book or sharing a laugh with friends. “LOL,” “haha” and “grinning emoji face” simply just doesn’t cut it.

Image Source: William Hook under Creative Commons 

Contact Liz Zarka at lzarka@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @Zarkotics

The post How technology hurts us appeared first on The Daily Californian.

It’s the exact antithesis to anything supportive you’ve ever heard, and we liked it. Larry Smith delivers an incredibly punchy and brilliant talk about why you, yes you, will fail to have a great career — or even a good one. In fact, the way Smith sees it, we’re all pretty much destined for a high-stress, low-reward, “soul-destroying” job unless … actually, he doesn’t even give us the “unless” part. Instead, the professor of economics chooses to disarm every single excuse for a mediocre career, leaving us with little more than a shattered ego and a pile of broken excuses. But did we mention we liked it? The talk is incredibly funny — if not a little too close to home. You can watch the video here or read below for our main points.

There are interests, and there are passions. As Smith points out, you would never “go to your sweetie” and say, “Marry me! You’re interesting.” No, that just wouldn’t do for a spouse, and it shouldn’t do for a career either. Passion should be your highest calling, your biggest love and the greatest expression of your talent. Only once you’ve found your passion, will you be able to have a great career — but even then you might fail. That’s because …

No matter how many times people tell you to pursue your passion, you won’t. Maybe you’ve memorized Steven J.’s Stanford commencement speech, but Smith still doesn’t think that you’ll pursue your passion anyways. Instead, he thinks that you’re afraid to — afraid to look dumb, afraid to be obsessive, afraid of greatness. This part of the talk was a little like a backhanded challenge; he’s calling all of us pre-careerists out, but the sting of his insults is motivating.

We are extremely good at avoiding greatness. When he’s not teaching economics, Smith mentors startup businesses (the most famous of which is Research in Motion of BlackBerry fame), so he has seen plenty of excuses for mediocre careers. He says that we can think of anything to make an excuse for ordinary careers, whether it be our personalities (“I’m too nice to be a Steve Jobs”), our intelligence (“people with great careers are geniuses”) and even our friends and families.

Admittedly, it was a little hard to garner anything self-assuring from the cagey Larry Smith. However, his talk did end on a vaguely positive note. He said that we will all fail to have a great career, “unless”… But that’s for us to find out.

Image source: bark under Creative Commons

Contact Griffin Mori-Tornheim at gmoritornheim@dailycal.org

The post TED Talk of the week: Larry Smith on why you will fail to have a great career appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The wit and wisdom of Anupam Mishra’s TED Talk is not just a compelling watch – it’s also a pertinent discourse on water conservation, especially considering today’s shortages. In this talk, Mishra explores and expounds on the various ways that indigenous Indians harvest water with wells, filter ponds and catchment systems. Sound easy enough? It’s not. He focuses on the inhabitants of the Golden Desert – think sand dunes and camels – which receives only 9 inches of rain a year. Yet despite the aridity of the region, the inhabitants still manage to skillfully build a thriving city on nothing more than the area’s natural supply (that is, no aqueducts — just desert). The talk is entitled “The Ancient Ingenuity of Water Harvesting,” and although Mishra is difficult to understand at times, it’s definitely worth checking out this talk. You’ll be amazed by the skill and craftsmanship with which these people have built their cities, and you may even walk away with hope for our future’s water supplies. You can watch the video here, or you can check out our breakdown of the talk below.

It’s possible to get water from just about anywhere, and that’s reassuring. The Golden Desert is arid in every sense of the word — it’s hot, sand stretches for miles and the only underground sources of water are saline. Yet despite the desert’s inhospitality, indigenous Indians have built and maintained centuries-old cities right in the middle of it. What nature has withheld in amenities, people have counteracted with ingenuity. Some water basins harvest more than 6 million gallons of water per season, and what’s more, these systems are more than 400 years old. If that’s possible in the middle of the desert, what’s holding us back from better water practices elsewhere?

Caring for something means respecting it. For the inhabitants of the Golden Desert, regional water is a source of life — there is no Colorado River to serve their needs (by the way, thank you, Colorado). Hence, their systems are built with the utmost care, and maintenance of these systems is a matter of life or death, and that’s not being melodramatic. This attitude is visible, too — Mishra shows a picture of a 400-year-old water canal next to a modern road, and while the road is decrepit and broken, the water structure is pristine. Generations upon generations of inhabitants have been maintaining these structures because of their importance.

Mishra’s TED Talk ended on a hopeful note: Chris Anderson, the curator of TED Talks, came up and asked whether these lessons are universal. Mishra responded by saying that he believed that these techniques could be used by any number of people in any place.

Image Source: Vasudev (Vas) Bhandarkar under Creative Commons

Contact Griffin Mori-Tornheim at gmoritornheim@dailycal.org

The post TED Talk of the week: Anupam Mishra and ancient ingenuity appeared first on The Daily Californian.

To shake you out of your post-Independence Day hangover, we’re going to give you four tiny technological tidbits that’ll really excite you, though you’ll probably appreciate them more once you’ve recovered your sobriety.

All four of these apps abide by the following exceedingly important criteria (we only made up one of them):

Platform: Google Chrome

Price: Free

Mission: To prove that The Daily Clog is right about everything.

With that out of the way, here we go:

1) Announcify: “Listen to your web.” There have been a good number of text-to-speech apps, but none have as few caveats as this one. Sure, the default voice can get annoying after a while, but that’s true of nearly any software that hasn’t broken the copyright on Morgan Freeman’s voice. The options are standard but still allow you to exert a great deal of control over the content — including changing pitch, volume and reading speed. It can work with any webpage, but it naturally works more quickly with webpages that are meant for reading, as opposed to your Facebook news feed or an eBay listing. It opens up the page in a new tab in a simple-text format, so you can simply read it in that window without all the flashy distractions. The app blurs out every paragraph except for the one it’s reading, which can be useful or annoying depending on your use. If you’re falling asleep while reading often, this could save you some valuable studying time. 3.5/5 clogs.

2) Print Friendly & PDF: “Save paper and ink when you print.” This is one of our absolute favorites. It’s quite simple in context — you can control what you print from a webpage and convert it into a PDF file. A single click on the extension takes the webpage you’re currently viewing, eliminates all ads and junk that you’re probably not interested in and pops it up in a mini-window reminiscent of the default Chrome print screen. There, you can click on any line, phrase or image and delete it right there. There’s also a one-click option to remove all images and change the text size. Then, you can print your modified page, save it as a PDF for later use or e-mail it to anyone within that window. Though we would like to see some options like adding text first, it does a great job of keeping the pre-existing formatting and doing what it’s intended to. 5/5 clogs.

3) WatchDoc: “Notifies you if your Google Docs change.” The tagline is pretty self-explanatory. The icon will produce a little notification square a la Facebook if any of your Google Docs happen to change. Clicking on the app creates a submenu showing your most recently edited Google Docs with a timestamp on each, as well as a link to each Doc and the Drive homepage. A one-time entry of your Google credentials is all you need, and it remedies one of the only noticeable issues that Drive had in the first place. An obvious improvement would be to notify of any chat messages within Drive using a different notification color, but for now, the extension isn’t quite capable. Yet despite its ugly interface, it’s functional. 4/5 clogs.

4) WiseStamp: “Empower Gmail…” This app is a great way to give your emails a touch of professionalism. You can start your signature with a bunch of templates according to your stylistic preference and edit the information within. The interface has a rich-text editor and the option to insert and resize pictures as well — handy if you happen to be photogenic. The coolest part, however, is the ability to add miniature social icons — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube to name a few — to the bottom. Customizing these icons to link to your respective profiles is very simple, and you can view real-time changes to your signature. The only drawback is that it has a WiseStamp advertisement at the bottom, but this can be circumvented by copying and pasting the signature itself into Gmail’s signature option, where you can customize the signature for each account you send mail from. 4.5/5 clogs.

Our average verdict: 4.25 Clogs. So what are you waiting for?

Contact Uday Mehta at umehta@dailycal.org.

The post App of the Week: student edition appeared first on The Daily Californian.

All that sitting down might be killing you. Slowly.

Those countless hours you spent in Main Stacks? That 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. job you’re holding over summer? As it turns out, both are extremely bad for your health. But it’s not the lack of sunlight, the slow depletion of endorphins or the dreary routine of corporate culture that threatens your life — it’s the sitting. That’s right; the passive position of scholars and desk workers everywhere is bad for you. Just how bad? Well, some of the negative effects include, in a roughly ascending order of severity: weight gain, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and endometrial cancer. Yeah, we thought that was a pretty dismal list, too.

What’s worse, the negative effects start almost immediately upon sitting— and the consequences only increase in severity as you prolong your sitting. When you first sit down, the rate at which you burn calories decreases to about a third of what it is when walking. If you sit for over six hours a day, your body starts to increase production of fatty molecules and bad cholesterol; after two weeks of that, muscles start to atrophy. Weight gain and high cholesterol will eventually plague your health, and if you continue this for 10 years, your chance of dying from heart disease increases by 64 percent.

Thankfully, modern life and scholarship doesn’t have to be unhealthy.  If you stand once during an hour of sitting and get a half hour of activity a day, you’ll combat its negative effects. In addition, you don’t have to sit while you study or work — height-adjustable, stand-up desks are becoming increasingly available, and makeshift stand-up desks are always easy to make. Some of UC Berkeley’s libraries have also confirmed the existence of stand-up desks, which they’ve mentioned are usually unoccupied. And in case the positive health effects and availability of stand-up desks don’t convince you to change your sedentary habit, rest assured that great writers have stood up to sitting down. According to PR Daily, Ernest Hemingway and Vladimir Nabokov (among other great authors) were both known for their stand-up writing, and while we don’t promise that you’ll be the next Nabokov, standing up may lead to great heights (in more ways than one).

Image source: askpang under Creative Commons

Contact Griffin Mori-Tornheim at gmoritornheim@dailycal.org

The post Can sitting kill you? appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Sean Conners/Staff

A real caped crusader lurks on Berkeley’s streets. Meet Eugene Tssui. With a resume that overshadows even the Dark Knight, the four-time master’s Olympics all-around gymnastics champion is, all at once, a flamenco guitarist, a Harvard University research scholar, a ceramicist, an author of seven books, a professor at Peking University, an inventor with three pending patents, the current reigning world champion for amateur boxing, a concert pianist and the designer of his very own line of capes. He is a Golden Bear with a handful of UC Berkeley degrees (including an interdisciplinary doctorate in architecture and education). In short, Tssui, 58, is a jack of many trades. He is best known as an architect of buildings — jaw-dropping buildings. One of his homes, the Tardigrade House in West Berkeley, has been named the “world’s most indestructible house.”  Another project, though only in blueprint, is the design for the world’s longest bridge across the Strait of Gibraltar.  But for his long and varied career, Tssui’s story was almost nipped in the bud by the very department that took him in.

Rough beginnings

At the end of his final year as a master’s student, Tssui was invited to exhibit his designs for the campus department of architecture at Wurster Hall. On the first day of his exhibit, a group of architecture professors, shocked by Tssui’s unorthodox designs, called on the administration to take the exhibit down. They succeeded.

“(Dismantling my exhibit) caused an uproar from the students,” Tssui recalls. “They demanded that it be put back up.”

Within 24 hours, Tssui’s detractors buckled but not without a fight. Beneath each of his drawings, the architecture professors also added a blank sheet of paper for the public to comment on.

“I don’t even know what that was about,” Tssui shrugs. “And the comments people wrote said ‘Great!’ and ‘Amazing.’”

Still, Tssui found key mentors and a place to call home at Cal. He doubled up on classes in biology, engineering and education and credits Berkeley’s immense diversity for keeping him rooted and creative. He befriended lifelong mentor Richard Meier, the sole architecture professor who recognized Tssui’s talent.

“(Meier) was a chemist, a futurist, an architect, a biologist — he was a polymath, like me,” Tssui said. “And in a way, he protected me. He backed me up when things were getting tough. I spoke at his funeral. That was my way to repay his debt.”

Meier’s legacy can be seen in each of Tssui’s projects. Both advocates of environmentally-friendly architecture and energy-efficient design, decades before global warming had become a national concern, the two have pioneered the concept of sustainability in living spaces. Tssui’s most recent buildings are emblematic of this.

A new look for green living

Finished design for the ZED Residence in Mt. Shasta

His latest house is the Zero Energy Dwelling Residence, branded as the “first residence in the world that purposely uses no electricity and toilet water.”  Aptly named, the house seeks to minimize its carbon footprint and utility bill. There are no plumbing pipes or electrical conduits. Running water, heated by the sun, travels by gravity through a series of pipes before flowing through a faucet or showerhead. Solar-powered ovens cook food. Building materials are locally sourced. And the steel petals that surround the house?

“The 10 wall panels open and close according to the changes in temperature, humidity, climate and natural light,” Tssui explains.

Much like the tiny tardigrade that inspired his parent’s house, Tssui again drew inspiration from nature for his design — this time looking to the venus flytrap.

The ZED Residence under construction.

In the foothills of Mount Shasta in Northern California, the ZED Residence is already halfway complete. With its geodesic dome and orbital ring, the house sustains a visual aesthetic as iconic as the Tardigrade House.

In pioneering his own family of architecture — what he refers to as the “Biologic Movement” — Tssui has translated various natural properties into building materials. The ZED Residence, for example, maximizes the “strength-to-weight” ratio found in many super-strong objects. Its spherical shape dissipates forces from wind and earthquakes. It can withstand a tsunami.

“We are introducing and implementing the universal principle of strength-to-weight ratio that is found everywhere in nature,” he elaborates. “Every one of nature’s living organisms exists having the highest strength-to-weight ratio. There are no fat organisms in nature. All of nature’s creatures abide by the laws of being the strongest they can be and the lightest they can be. Only humans and caged animals are distorted examples of not following this inherent law of existence.”

Elsewhere in Mount Shasta, Tssui is planning the city’s conference and exhibition center and an interdisciplinary thought laboratory called Telos. In a career spent actualizing his dream of “architecting the 21st century,” Tssui has built 18 one-of-a-kind projects nationwide. Tssui also has great international ambitions. He casts his eyes east to the burgeoning cities of China, where his lessons in sustainable design and environmentally responsible living reach thousands. Jumping between elementary schools and government bureaus, Tssui has discovered teaching to be every bit as satisfying as architecture.

He remarks, “The joy in teaching is to have the special privilege to observe the flowering of an individual’s inner capacities. The joy is in creating the kind of attitude … that invites people to think differently and be free to find their genuine passion in life. “

In topics from reducing resource consumption to discouraging unhealthy eating, Tssui’s classes reflect his widely diverse interests. As a teacher, he often found himself personally rooting for his student’s growth and pushing them to think iconoclastically.

“I want them to become the rebels and revolutionaries of the future — to be able to anticipate the coming needs and issues of humanity and think in ways that can develop solutions,” he says. “I want them to defy convention and question assumption and expectation — to do the unexpected.  That’s what I feel a true professor should do!”

Eugene Tssui lectures at Beijing University.

A real caped crusader

Splitting his time building houses on one end of the Pacific Ocean and teaching on the other, Tssui has come to embrace a “best of both worlds” philosophy. As a Chinese American, Tssui has never thought that the hyphen separating his nationality from his ethnicity set the two apart. He has dedicated his life to breaking barriers and championing what he calls “the era of reckoning.” In finding ways to contend with increasingly global issues, Tssui has drawn on Genghis Khan as a role model:

“Recently, I have studied books on Genghis Khan. He allowed communication between civilizations in ways we don’t realize. The East and West were created because of him. And he was an incredible humanist.”

From a recent respelling of his last name to an expansive array of brightly colored capes, Tssui hopes to continue the traditions of the famous Mongolian emperor, who created the largest contiguous empire in human history almost a millennium ago. Predictably, these actions have inspired numerous criticisms, some of which harken back to Tssui’s graduate years at UC Berkeley.

“(People) have told me that I am a crazy egoist that only cares about my work and wants to shock people, both in my work and in my dress.  This is understandable, because (people) who dress differently and whose work stands out from others are often are motivated by self-aggrandizement and attention-getting,” he says. “In my case, I want to design differently because commonplace designs make little sense. I feel all life is an experiment and that to be truly human, one must try to discover what is possible and what is not.”

Over the past few years, Tssui has come to appreciate how today’s young people have accepted his work with open arms. When he first constructed the Tardigrade House in 1993, green architecture was virtually unheard of. Today, his mentorship is demanded by budding architecture interns and graduate students worldwide.  For a cape-wearing, globetrotting architect on an environmental crusade, no time is better than the present:

“The new generation — that’s why I spend so much time with students and ideas — has the guts to defy the old ways. I’ve learned that the millennial generation … is impatient now, and rightly so, to ask questions and find lasting solutions to problems that have plagued us for centuries. They see that past generations have let greed overtake stewardship of the planet. And they are finding ways … to change the future.”

This article is the final part of the series on Eugene Tssui.  To see Tssui’s work in Mount Shasta, check out the video here.

Image sources: Sean Conners, staff and Eugene Tssui, courtesy

Contact Alex Mabanta at amabanta@dailycal.org.

The post The man behind the world’s safest house appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Naughty Dog/Courtesy

After what has felt like forever since it was announced back in 2011, the much anticipated PlayStation3 game by developer “Naughty Dog” known as “The Last of Us” has finally dropped. Some of us at the Clog are pretty avid gamers and were pretty hyped to finally get our hands on the game after the torture of waiting for two years. And now that we’ve played it, we have but one thing to say: Play this game. Like, play it now.

The story of the game is pretty simple. You play as a character named Joel, a survivor living in one of many quarantine zones built after a zombifying fungal outbreak of time past kills off the majority of human civilization. Joel is a man of thin morals, who engages in smuggling deals within the black market of the quarantine zones. However, one day, after a routine deal goes bad, Joel is forced into escorting a 14-year-old girl by the name of Ellie to another quarantine zone. The importance of her exchange remains a mystery. Yet the two must form a desperate bond and journey together while fighting off relentless infected humans and vicious scavengers.

Chances are if you are one of the informed gamer kids, you’re probably already playing it. The game is amazing in what it does right. So let us give you the Clog-style take on the three basic things that make this game as great as it is:

1. A series of goals that are just beyond reach. Any great adventure is marked with multiple goals leading to one huge dramatic goal that encourages the player to push forward to the end. For “The Last of Us,” this particular thing is done incredibly well. You are constantly reminded (by the press of a single button) of your current goal in the environment that sits within an arm’s reach from your player character’s progress. Though a tease, it never stops you from having the feeling of “OH CRAP, I’VE GOT TO GET TO THAT LOCATION. DUDE. THE LOCATION. IT IS SO CLOSE AND YET SO FAR. CRAP. I MUST SURVIVE.” Put that on top of the game’s amazing ability to maximize the tension through a series of encounters with crazy survivors and infected fungal zombie dudes, and you have one of the best-paced set of goals of survival in adventure gaming in the last three years.

2. Immersive soundtrack. The game’s soundtrack is a good mix of a synthesized crawl accompanied by the occasional guitar twang. It has a fitting minimalist tone that makes you really feel the reality of the game’s world, so it definitely speaks more than games that have a full-on symphonic score with Michael Bay explosions and the constant spouting of machine gunfire. But don’t let us convince you of that; just give this one a listen.

3. Nonglorified monsters. A legitimate concern for people in regard to “The Last of Us” is the shock and terror of the aforementioned infected fungal zombie dudes that players desperately want to avoid when they play this game. Sure, they may run at you … and bite you … and stumble around like scary zombie people. BUT this game isn’t as scary as you might think! Part of it comes from the fact that the game focuses on the drama of the characters rather than glorifying the monstrosities that are the roaming creatures within the game’s post-apocalyptic environment. When it comes down to it, there are really only three different kinds of monsters throughout the entire game  — all of which are immensely similar to each other and not too over-the-top grotesque. So if you happen to be on the fence about playing this game because of the monsters, then we totally recommend you give it a second chance! There’s more to it than that! By the time the game ends, you’ll have lost all concerns about the fungal zombies and instead will have become consumed by the emotional feels that is the story of “The Last of Us.”

Ultimately, “The Last of Us” is fantastic. It does those great little things that make us here at the Clog go bombastic crazy. So by all means, go ahead and check out “The Last of Us” as soon as you can. Whether you have to buy a PS3 or go to a friend’s house to play it, we highly recommend it!

Contact Matt Espineli at mespineli@dailycal.org.

The post 3 things that make ‘The Last of Us’ amazing! appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Uday Mehta/Staff

Name: EasilyDo Smart Assistant

Platform: Android & iOS

Price: Free

Mission: EasilyDo gets you the right information and gets things done.

Though most of us possess smartphones, we can all agree that the vast majority of the apps on these phones are anything but intelligent. They do a singular task over and over again, and they’re quite good at it. But with so many things to keep track of, including social networks, calendar appointments and birthdays, you might not even get a chance to check the simple things, like how warm it is outside! This app, taking the role of a personal assistant, does its best to remedy that in a smart way.

EasilyDo creates a news feed of things that are relevant to you. You can connect a number of accounts, including Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo, Evernote, LinkedIn, Twitter and IMAP email. To make things even more convenient, you can add multiple accounts of any of these networks, which is especially helpful if you keep your social and professional lives separate. Using the data it gleans from all these services, it puts together a list of things that resembles a to-do list combined with a set of reminders.

One handy feature is that it automatically calculates your commute at a specified time every morning, given that you specify your destination location. You can set a home address or keep that as a dynamic “Current Location,” and it’ll notify you of how much time you’ll be spending on the road on the weekdays. Based on weather projections dependent on your current location, it will notify you the night before if there’s anything you should be prepared for — from rain to hurricanes.

Facebook integration provides birthday reminders in addition to posting at a later scheduled time. You can write your wall post for your friend’s birthday that’s in five days, so you don’t have to worry about forgetting. You also get to view all upcoming birthdays and events right in the app, which is more convenient than trying to find them in the confusing Facebook interface. It also gives you the option to RSVP to events and add them to your main calendar service. Where it really shows off its intelligence is the “important posts” functionality, which takes certain posts it deems important and displays them in EasilyDo, giving you the option to ‘like’ and comment. It even prewrites responses for you based on the content of the post!

As if that isn’t already good enough, adding an email account really gives EasilyDo a chance to flex its muscles. It will store boarding passes you receive in your email for convenient access and add hotel and restaurant reservations or Eventbrite and Ticketmaster confirmations to your calendar. For all you online shoppers, shipping update emails will send the tracking number to the app and notify you when there is progress. Also, emails with jargon about bills will let you add payment reminders at your discretion. Lastly, any time you have an event on your calendar, it will show the map and offer to provide directions.

Taking all of this and putting it on a news feed is incredibly helpful — as are the notifications the app generates regarding any of these events. The interface on the whole is clean and self-explanatory, though we would like to see more integration with Twitter and LinkedIn. The Android widget is a cool 4×2, but it only shows one thing happening on your news feed and isn’t scrollable; you have to enter the app to view everything. While IMAP is supported, it would also be nice if they added POP email as a functionality. The creators do seem remarkably responsive to users, so hopefully we’ll see some of these changes in the future. For right now, a four-and-a-half Clog rating isn’t that bad.

Contact Uday at umehta@dailycal.org or follow him on Twitter at @mehtakid.

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