Kyle's Articles

The Origin of Halloween

by Kyle Krug

Published October 29, 2018

As we all should know, Halloween is celebrated annually on October 31rst. Every year children and disturbed adults go trick or treating whilst older teens and undisturbed adults take kids trick or treating or greet them with candy, Branding October as the month of spookiness. But people don’t really know how it all started, and how it all went down. Well, in celebration of spookiness, let's talk about the origin of Halloween.

The origin traces back an old Celtic festival called Samhain. They celebrated the new year on November the first, which is a day after today’s Halloween. The day marked the end of summer and the beginning of the harvest. It also marked the beginning of winter, a time that symbolizes death. So the day before, they celebrated Samhain, which is the day the ghosts were believed to rise from the dead.

During this day the Celts would damage crops and cause all sorts of trouble but in addition to that they thought that Druids (Celtic priests) could tell the future during this day. This ,of course, was false but hey let them dream. Them once the celebration re-lit there hearths and sacred bonfires to keep warm during the long, cold winter.

By 43 A.D the Romans had pretty much taken over the Celts and their land and for all 400 odd years so what the Romans did was just kinda combine 2 of their festivals with Samhain with the first being Feralia which was a day when the Romans celebrated the dead. But the only thing of note come from this is the birth of bobbing for apples. The next being All Saints Day which is celebrated pretty much the same as Samhain but instead of being celebrated on may 14th it was switched to november 1rst. Eventually the day before became All Hallows Eve what we know as Halloween and spread minimally.

Now it's what you have all been waiting for, Halloween coming to America. In Great Britain it wasn’t celebrated all too much but it started to gain traction in the colonies, specifically the southern ones. But we all know we do things differently here in America, so we developed our own distinct version of Halloween. The colonial festivals had things called “play parties” where people celebrate the harvest, tell stories of the dead etc. But it wasn’t popular everywhere in America. But it was in Ireland. So when the the Irish potato famine hit, America was flooded with Irish immigrants who brought Halloween to the rest of the country. With the spreading of the holiday itself, they meshed together some traditions, one of them being a tradition where you go house to house asking for food or money in exchange for caroling. This tradition eventually morphed into what we know as Trick Or Treating.

Now you know what the abridged version of the history of Halloween. How will this help you in life? It won’t! So just like sitting alone in your house doing nothing during Halloween, this was a waste of time! But at least it was a fun waste of time wasn’t it?

The Xbox One Adaptive Controller

By Kyle K.

Published September 25, 2018

For as long as anyone can remember, people with little to no mobility in their hands could not play video games. That makes sense, you can’t move your fingers or click the rough buttons then you can’t really play a video game. But then Xbox came in and make it possible for disabled people to be able to have as much fun with a game as anyone with the standard mobility. But how does it work you ask? Well the base controller is two big buttons that some use with their feet or elbows but are big enough to just click with the whole hand. It also comes with some attachments like some more big buttons to plug in, an arcade stick with a big sphere to move your character, and so much more to make jacks of all trades able to play there Xbox. but let's talk about what this means for other consoles like PS4, Nintendo switch, and PC, let’s knock those out one by one.

First the PS4. The PS4 controller is very similar to the standard Xbox controller with only the analog stick being different. With some practice, a disabled person could use this controller effectively but it would take years of practice to play on a normal person’s level. This push for gamer equality by Xbox makes the PS4 look like a bunch of jerks who don’t care, hurting there spot at the top of the console wars. Now the Nintendo switch controller is hard to use for anyone with normal capabilities, let alone someone with less movement in their hands. Now looking at Nintendo’s track record with motion controls and always letting out new types of controllers, it kind of shocks me they haven’t done this yet. Now the PC. There isn’t one company who controls the PC. There's a few different companies who do this. Microsoft already is doing this for there PC because the Xbox One adaptive controller works on microsoft PC’s as well. All other PC’s haven’t even tried controllers, but no expects them too any way and no one whos adaptive could even try clicking those small keyboard buttons.

All in all, Microsoft did an amazing thing by making gaming a pastime for anyone and everyone and I gained a lot of respect for them and hope PS4 and Nintendo witch do something akin to this too as I feel this should be the standard in making video games.