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[17 Nov 2008|11:17am] |
You knew it was coming. I've been playing Lich King probably 60 hours out of the last 96 hours and have gotten to level 74 and just made it to Dalaran tonight which is, for those not in the know, is the new center of the world pretty much. But I didn't start this post to talk about everything that's new and cool. God no. It'd take me until 4am and I'd never be happy with it because there'd always be one last thing that I forgot to add in. No, instead I wanted to talk about a new cool and extremely promising system termed the phasing engine. Pretty much it allows real-time changes to areas and allows for different versions of areas to exist in one physical (or as physical as a world made entirely out of data can be) area in such a way that players in different versions of the areas don't interact with each other.
Imagine an onion. As you know, onions have different layers of skin that come together to make up an entire whole. Imagine now an area of land that has different versions of the land that all exist simultaneously and are layered one atop of the other so the different versions form one entire whole and players inhabit different layers of the land. As an example, there's an area that you enter and start an event in which the land is drastically changed, like it's been attacked by dragons so the formerly untouched land is now a burning wasteland. In the spirit of reality, you want to keep the land that way but you can't make it a global change, you can only let players who have completed the event see the area as it is after the dragon attack but players who haven't done that event will see the land as it was before the attack. To achieve this you create the two different versions of the area: pre-event and post-event. The two areas inhabit the same physical space but the players who have completed the event won't be able to interact with the players who haven't.
A big use of this potentially confusing technique is in the starting area of the new hero class, the Death Knight. When you first create your Death Knight you are in Ebon Hold, a necropolis hovering above the human settlement of Hearthglen. The Lich King has made Ebon Hold his new siege base and plans to make dead people out of the living people in the town below. As a brand new Death Knight you start in version one of Ebon Hold: the hold under the control of the Lich King. You're sent down to the Scourge camp outside of Hearthglen and you're able to see version one of this area before the Lich King moves his engines of war through the town below. Your first set of quests has you conducting beginning strikes against the outskirts of the town where you do typical evil minion type things. After you do these quests you're called back up to the Scourge camp for more quests. At this point version one of the area is stripped away to reveal version two. Heading back down the hill to Hearthglen you can see visible effects of the efforts of you and your fellow Scourge: houses smolder while where once were humans and horses are now zombies and other Scourge beasts. Your next quests have you push farther south and the trend continues. After each set of quests you do you're called outside of the area and the existing layer is peeled away so the new version of the area is revealed with visible changes now apparent in the area where you just quested in. Layer after layer of the area is removed like that until you hit level 58 and your Death Knight quests are over and the "core" of the land is all that's left. This is what the area is really like, the area that every other class sees when they come to the Death Knight starting area. The area is never changed and the other versions of the area still exist with Death Knight players still in them but you can no longer interact them or even see them or the area as it was before you left to hand in your last quest at Stormwind. Ebon Hold even changes as the relationship between the Death Knights and the Lich King changes. After the Death Knight leader openly defies the Lich King he releases Scourge to attack Ebon Hold. Ebon Hold during the Scourge attack is version two of the Hold; the Hold still is taking the same physical location in the game but you can't interact with the players on the first version of Ebon Hold. Finally the Scourge are repelled and the "core" of the Ebon Hold map is revealed, the version that all Death Knights that have finished their quests are in. This really allows for the obvious and permanent passage of time between your rise as a Death Knight all the way to the wounded Lich King retreating to the Icecrown, and is something that's rarely seen in a MMO like this where you can kill the final boss of an instance and then come back 24 hours later and he'd be respawned along with the rest of the mobs in the instance.
This phasing engine really shines in one event that I just finished today. In this event the Horde and Alliance join up to battle through the horde of Scourge defending the Wrathgate, but the battle is going badly when the Forsaken appear to assist. Or so we think. Their Grand Alchemist orders the battlefield be bombarded with bombs packed with poison to kill the Scourge, but they don't stop there. The bombs would also kill the living and the combined Horde and Alliance forces succumb to the poison. This creates an uproar, as the Forsaken have openly betrayed the Horde forces and King Wrynn orders the player to visit Orgrimmar in attempt to understand the full implications of this surprise attack. After the visit to Org, the players are ordered to join up in an attack to seize the Undercity back from the Forsaken coup that drove Sylvannas out.
Doing this poses a bit of a problem for Alliance players, as Orgrimmar and the Undercity are Horde towns and if the event takes place there normally it probably wouldn't go well with Horde players taking potshots at flagged Alliance and trying to kill the king. Blizzard used the phasing engine to layer new versions of Orgrimmar and Undercity over the original versions for players of the event so they can complete it without having to worry about interactions with Horde players. It's really amazing because we now have a fully functional version of Orgrimmar and Undercity to work with that's still connected to the world just like the original versions. It isn't an instance or some version that's isolated from the rest of the world and what impressed me was that every part of the area was fully functional. I was able to hearth back to Shattrath and then head back to Eastern Plaguelands and walk back to Tirisfal Glades and Undercity and I was back into my version, my layer, of Tirisfal Glades without any loading time or instancing. It was a fluid switch just like riding into the original version of Tirisfal. Even in this version of Tirisfal I was able to get into Scarlet Monastery without any problems and even when I entered a Monastery instance and left back out I was in the new version of Tirisfal.
I realize that only real geeks will appreciate this breakthrough. I really hope that it's used more often because it's a new paradigm and really has a lot of promise.
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[13 Nov 2008|09:31am] |
Alright, alright. That was just plain mean. Though I did enjoy it.
But as you see, I did finally get to pick up Lich King and I drove straight over to Steven's house after I picked it up. I still haven't played it yet, as Steve didn't preorder it so he hasn't picked it up yet and I promised him that I wouldn't start playing without him.
Since I preordered, I got to pick it up at midnight last night; the first midnight sale that I've attended and really the first line I had to stand in that was video game related. I didn't stand in line for a Wii or a 360 or a PS3, mainly because I was cheap and didn't want to buy one, and even when Pokemon fever gripped the nation I never had to stand in line to pick up any of the new editions of the game. It was a pretty cool experience, which I will relate in a few minutes. Just hold on. Jeez.
I showed up there at 9:45 since I thought "hey, either there will be a ton of people there or nobody at all" and if there were people there I'd get a place in line early and if not I'd go back to the apartment and come back later. Turns out that the crowd there was kind of in the middle of the spectrum; there were people there but not many. Gamestop was trying to make a big release party and invited people to show up in cosplay (though I have a feeling for Lich King people would have shown up in cosplay regardless) and there were a few people. There was a pretty well-done voidwalker, a tier 2 rogue with a huge sword that I assume was Frostmourne, a girl dressed as a troll mage (complete with protruding tusks) and a guy dressed up as an available quest. While it was pretty simple in design, just an exclamation point made of yellow foam and attached to his hat with a wire, it was still pretty ingenious to have even considered doing it. The hardcore line-waiters were already set up complete with their camping chairs and food and coffee. There was a small coffee stand set up giving away free coffee and I milled around the table just checking things out and trying to figure out if there was actually a line or just a nebulous gathering of people. I talked a bit to a guy in the front of the line, comparing how long we've been playing and discussing whether or not the extra super awesome edition was worth the extra money. Blizzard released two versions of Lich King: one version was just the standard edition but the super special awesome edition included an artbook, a soundtrack, a "making of" DVD and a code to get you a vanity pet that only the elite people who could afford the special edition. The peons who only got the standard edition got none of this. It was nice talking to someone, but the guy was a bit offputting just looking at him. I don't want to judge on looks, but it always seems that at a gathering like this, it's the creepy guys who always want to talk your ear off and I'm too polite just to walk away.
I finally took my place in line at about 9:50 and the line really didn't appreciably grow, though it was still early enough for the line to be informal so people were standing in groups and clumps here and there. At about 10:15 ish the manager on duty announced that they were going to start the prepay process. The line would filter into the Gamestop two and three at a time and people would either pay what they still owed, as in my case, or if they paid it off in full at the beginning they'd just pick up a fresh receipt. After you got your receipt with the cashier's signature on it, you came back out and took your old place in line. At midnight they'd let you back in the same way and you traded in your receipt for a copy of the game and go on your merry way. That means that at 10:30 when I finally got my receipt that I had an hour and a half to kill. I briefly considered staying in line but there wasn't anyone I was really talking to. It seems that I was the only person who came alone so I didn't really have anyone to talk to. There were some guys I recognized from school but I really didn't know them well enough to talk to them and I was standing in line behind a skinny hyper kid who kept shouting about how awesome his rogue was and his experiences in arena and rumors about what was coming next in the game. He wasn't a bad guy but I wasn't that interested in what he was yelling about so I decided to head back to the apartment and kill the hour I had left until midnight.
Left back for Gamestop at about 11:50 and when I got back the line had grown appreciably. Gamestop is located in a strip mall and when I was in line before the line didn't stretch back more than the next store down from Gamestop, but when I got back the line had gone back several stores. Since it was so close to midnight the crowd had gotten more formal and were standing more or less in single file. I was able to get my spot in line back without anyone protesting. I imagine the people I was standing near remembered me and there was even still a hole in the line where I was before, and nobody seemed to care enough to heckle me for just showing up and getting in place near the head of the line. There were a couple of new cosplayers there but I didn't stop long enough to try to figure out who they were supposed to be. At that point I was more concerned with getting in and out as soon as possible, and that actually turned out well. People were let in by twos and threes and since all you had to do was hand over your receipt it went quickly. Similar to when I voted earlier in the month, if someone came out and flashed their copy of the game they got a small cheer from the head of the line, and people were keeping track of how many of the Deluxe Bacon Cheese editions were left. I got out at about 12:15 and headed out to Steven's as fast as possible, only stopping to snap the photo of the game in the parking lot with my phone before I headed out.
Oh yeah, I forgot to give an honorable mention to a couple that were standing in line ahead of me. The guy was wearing a screen-printed T-shirt he probably made himself for the occasion. It had an image of Arthas wielding Frostmourne on the back of the shirt, with a couple of lines that I can't remember right now but I thought sounded pretty cool. His girlfriend was wearing a similar shirt except the front of the shirt said something like "I'm only standing in line for my boyfriend. I play the real game: " with the Diablo 2 logo underneath it. The back of the shirt had what I assume was an image of an Amazon character that I assume was her character. They were right ahead of me in line, and when I was picking up my copy of the game the girl was taking a picture of the guy who was holding up his copy and a hand-written sign that said "I <3 WoW Insider". It was probably for some kind of contest at WoW Insider or he really just <3's WoW insider.
Both are equally likely.
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| I has a Lich King |
[13 Nov 2008|08:20am] |
Yes, after 40 weeks of nothing, that's all you get.
SUCKERS
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| Kana -Little Sister- |
[02 Feb 2008|07:56pm] |
I just finished playing this game and I really wanted to see if anyone else here had played it.
This is a pornographic game but that's definintely not it's strong point. The best thing about this game is the story; you play as Taka Todo, and your sister Kana is ill with chronic renal insufficiency, a disease that will eventually take her life much too early. Taka, who bullied her as a child, has since grown close to her and has taken it upon himself to protect her and let her pack as much living into her limited time as possible. As time passes, Taka and Kana grow closer to each other and blur the lines of the relationship between a brother and sister.
It's mainly about dealing with death and illness, how it affects and changes each of us. Both Taka and Kana go through painful times, times of happiness, times of sadness and times of growth as their love for each other deepens while Kana's time grows shorter. It was really involving for me emotionally and I genuinely felt for Kana, emotions of happiness when she was having fun with her brother and sadness when she has to deal with the reality of her illness. I guess you could say I fell for Kana, but unless you are an unfeeling creature of steel and electricity, you would feel the same way and want to protect her the way Taka does.
I did say it's pornographic earlier, and while it doesn't make the game it's tame compared to other porno games out on the market. Kana isn't the only girl in Taka's life. Any anime/manga fan knows the childhood friend archetype, and this game it comes in the form of Yumi, a girl who liked Taka back in elementary school. Taka likes her but after he confesses her feelings for her and is mocked by his classmates, his love turns to anger and he wants nothing to do with her. Later on Taka and Yumi meet up and even though the old wounds are there, Taka opens up to her. That's the source of most of the sex scenes, there are a few between Taka and Kana. And don't worry, she's an adopted sister, so you shouldn't feel guilty for liking it.
It's a really touching game and honestly the only game that's brought me close to tears. I wanted to cry, but I don't cry as often I should, but whatever. This is about the game and not my own psychological deficiencies. :P
It's a good kind of sadness though. It hurt but I'd be willing to go through it and play the game again to see Kana happy and smiling once more. There are six different endings to this game and for the hopeless optimists out there, in one ending Kana lives. It's worth playing over and over again just to see her live.
You really must play this game. And I don't mean the general meaning "you", I'm talking to you personally, my reader. It's an experience that shouldn't be missed.
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| Their shit is golden |
[04 Nov 2007|12:04am] |
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The concert was awesome as predicted! I got there a bit later than usual but managed to get there before it got totally dark so navigation went smoothly. I really don't like driving in unfamiliar places at night. I decided not to bring my foam finger because I considered that everything I brought I'd have to keep it on my person the whole time, so to travel light was best. There were foam fingers given out before the concert like last time but since I got there late I missed them, and when they were being tossed out into the crowd before TMBG took the stage I was too far back to get any. No matter how hard you toss it, a foam finger isn't going to travel too far. It's not a huge deal though, it was exactly the same as mine in design, just was orange instead of yellow. Both Oppenheimer and TMBG were awesome. Oppenheimer was a good mix of rock and electric, kind of like Postal Service, and I wanted to get the CD they were selling after the show but I didn't have enough cash and it didn't look like they would take a card. TMBG didn't have Strong Bad on stage this time around but they did "Phone Calls to the Dead" which wasn't anything I've heard before. A "dead" person, done by Flansburg back stage, called Linnell and they did a song together, which was odd but funny. They did a pretty wide range of songs too. Even though they did a whopping eight songs from The Else they took samples from a wide range of stuff. They did the classic ones, Birdhouse, Istanbul, Particle Man, but did songs that I didn't hear last show like Alphabet of Nations (with epic levels of reverb) and Spy. This is what they played as far as I remember. I know I'm leaving some out but I'm proud of myself for remembering this many.
Dr. Worm
Birdhouse
Particle Man
Istanbul
Spy
Twisting
Alphabet of Nations
Don't Cross the Street
Boss of Me (only the first minute of it, what you hear on Malcom in the Middle)
I'm Impressed
Take Out The Trash
Climbing the Walls
With the Dark
Contrecoup
Shadow Government
Withered Hope
Mesopotamians
Puppet Head
Experimental Film
Memo to Human Resources
Damn Good Times
I Palindrome I
Meet James Ensor
the Variety Playhouse venue song
I was able to sing along with most of them, and almost shouted the lyrics for Experimental Film and Birdhouse, but some of the songs from The Else weren't totally familiar to me. I've only listened to it twice through so I recognized the songs but didn't know the lyrics that much.
I left the show with a sore throat and ringing ears, and I can't wait until they come back again.
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[16 Oct 2007|12:10pm] |
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Who would have thought that the cure of my update drought would have been being stuck at work being bored? Shame I didn't figure it out earlier. I would have been up to my stomach in updates if I had.
I found out today that They Might Be Giants are coming back to the Variety Playhouse! They're coming November 2nd and with tickets just $25 there's no way I'm not going. I was a bit disappointed at how I found out though. The radio station is always touting some big upcoming concert so all time time I'm hearing stuff like ECHOFEST or LALAPALOOZA or BIG DAY OUT but for this I kind of heard it off-hand like they might be giants. I know they aren't as mainstream anymore but it still makes me a little sad.
Regardless, I'm very much looking forward to it. I've grown a lot as a fan since the last time they came to town, in that I know a lot more songs by heart. I remember last time them playing Purple Toupee which was a total mystery to me but intimately familiar territory to me now. Course, they'll probably play a few songs off The Else, which I haven't heard more than one song from, and I'd totally be in the dark then too. I'm hoping that since they're back in Atlanta they'll have Strong Bad or Homestar on stage. Last time they did a sort of duet with Strong Bad, and that was totally friggin' awesome. Gotta remember to bring my giant yellow foam #1 finger too. I've saved it for this exact reason.
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[15 Oct 2007|11:20am] |
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Well! It's been a while boys and girls! I blame this entirely on the fact that nothing interesting happens in my life, but I hope to change that soon. But more on that later. I've been fairly busy since we last spoke since I'm still working at the temp job at the bookstore. I don't know if it totally qualifies as temp work any more, since I've been employed for a little over a month. I've been shuffled between Gwinnett Tech and Perimeter but still wear the Proud Green Follett Apron. I don't know how much longer they'll need me and I'm not going to try to guess since each time I thought I was quit of them they called me back in. I wouldn't mind staying a while though. The work may be boring but the people are nice and it keeps me from filling out applications to other places.
Life-wise, things remain unchanged on the grand scale. I picked up Phantom Hourglass and have been playing through it over the last couple weeks. I'm on the home stretch, which I'm putting off by trying to get all the collectibles and finishing the trading chain. I've really enjoyed it and don't want to finish it quite yet since I don't have any game lined up after it. I guess probably FFIII DS to keep from finishing the second Twilight Princess run I started. I'm trying to keep from replaying old games that I've already finished to keep from falling in a rut. Or at least not another rut.
This actually nicely segues into the self-change I talked about earlier in this entry. I think that my life in general has gotten stuck in a rut. I've, over time, developed a general apathy concerning pretty much anything I'm not interested in. This stems from laziness - I'm too lazy to go out and learn about various and sundry things, so to deal with that I simply convince myself that I don't care about it so that leads me to not giving a shit about anything other than the few childhood interests I developed. This is, to put it crudely, fucking ridiculous. I'm ruining my alloted time here by not expanding my interests. There's no point in this and I need to change this if I hope to die with no regrets.
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| Who needs pencils when you have pixels? |
[10 Sep 2007|12:09am] |
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Modest Mouse - Education |
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Today I took my first step towards being an artist. A pixel artist that is. Actually what it's called is isometric artwork, isometric being a technique where 2D shapes are rendered and shaded to make them look like 3D. It's been around for a long time, nothing new, but it's only been recognized as a true art form a relatively short time ago. It's pretty much like how you draw a square or a triangle on a piece of paper and add lines and shading to make it look like a cube or a pyramid, except this time it's done in pixels. It's a pretty popular form of digital art, mainly used to make landscapes or buildings because you can only really make simple shapes and it doesn't really lend itself to impressionist art. One big use of it is in the online game Habbo Hotel but I found it in a webcomic called Isotown. That's kind of a misleading descriptor though, it's not just a simple webcomic. It's pretty much the chronicled growth of an isometric town called Isotown. Both are really good examples and it's amazing how complicated isometric stuff can get. Take this isometric City 17 that was done by the guy who made Isotown. The real kicker though?
It's made entirely in Paint.
It was hard for me to believe that such amazing pieces of art were made in Paint of all places. I had written Paint off as a crap program, something used to make stick figures and bad Megaman sprite comics. But all that up there was made in Paint, and it only gets better. I stumbled on a website once that was dedicated to the growth of an isometric tower that was several hundred floors tall with each floor dedicated to a different person or website or something. To think that all that was made in something simple like Paint is mindboggling.
I tried my hand at a few simple shapes and for my first go I think they turned out pretty well.
The pyramid and cube turned out pretty well and I'm fairly pleased with the brick wall. Obviously it needs more work with the bricks themselves; the spacing isn't as regular as it should have been and I shouldn't have used basic black for the mortar lines. I think that just a deeper orangey-red would have done better. That weird structure on the right is pretty neat too, it goes to show that art is basically just a bunch of simple shapes stuck together in interesting ways. The shapes are just the first step though. The coloring is a big deal too; if you're doing outside structures, which you probably are, you have to worry about light sources and getting the right shades for it. The brick wall is the epitome of this with the different colors. The brick side is the darkest, the side has to be a few shades lighter and the top a few shades lighter still, with the highlights a really light shade of the orange. With the cylinder and the sphere you have to dither your colors to get a feel for 3D. That pretty much means you have to blend the different colors you work with; dark on the edges and progressing lighter towards the middle to show the light source, and you have to kind of smudge that all together to make the color change more smooth. I'm going to wait a bit to try it since there are probably a couple ways to do it. I could either blend the pixels by hand or use something like Photoshop or GIMP that does dithering automatically. Oh yeah, that green square up top is supposed to be a grass tile. It didn't really turn out. I think I may try to base the grass of the Isotown grass instead of the grass in the tutorial I'm using.
All in all it's really cool stuff. It's kind of a pain to put in those small details, like the brick texture, but the finished product looks so dang cool. I hope to be able to do my house isometrically soon, but I'm definitely going to need some practice.
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[31 Aug 2007|04:28pm] |
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Imogen Heap - Goodnight and Go |
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Well I'm unemployed again, but at least I get to add this job to the "didn't get fired from" list. It definitely needs some more entries in it so I can at least create an effective illusion that I'm a good worker. I ended up doing jack today but in my defense I at least had plans to do something, but they were thrown off by a girl so no dice. I was going to hang out with Alex and see a concert with him tonight but his girlfriend wanted to keep him to herself and any smart man realizes that "bros before hos" is only an ideal that shouldn't necessarily be followed.
So I just did my usual today. I actually got a good night's sleep last night so I'm feeling pretty good and hopefully I can get my old schedule back on track and not start nodding off at 11pm tonight. It puts a serious crimp in your "nightlife" lifestyle if you're ready to go to bed when the night is just beginning, but I got to say that it's been nice waking up early because I really don't do that often enough. See, I have kind of contrary ideals on my sleeping patterns. If it were at all possible, I'd do away with sleeping at all and stay up 24 hours a day but since human bodies have a finite energy source we have to sleep to survive. It isn't worth staying up so much if you just feel like shit the whole time. :P Usually what happens is I stay up late at night and sleep late in the morning so it's been kind of cool to get to wake up early for a change. I woke up at 7:30 this morning, a pretty good sign that my subconscious knows that I'm done working and done with being up at 5:30 and isn't going to try to wake me up that early any longer.
I spent my day alternating between playing E.V.O. on the laptop, Episode One on the desktop and reading a Terry Pratchett novel while waiting for Ubuntu to install on the laptop. Tribe 5 of Gutsy Gibbon is out and I want to try it out since there are supposed to be lots of new things to it but predictably the life CD didn't work on either computer. I'm trying to install it the long way by putting Dapper on and using update-manager to go through Edgy and Feisty to Gutsy; it's how I had to do it to get Feisty on the desktop so it should work. I'm thinking of getting the next volume of .hack tonight or tomorrow since I haven't touched the PS2 in a few days. It's pretty damning proof that finishing the Ryu Books are amazingly important to me.
Christ, this journal is damn interesting isn't it? This is why I rarely update; when I start writing about what I do/have done it's just serving to remind me how amazingly boring I am. :P
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| Strider? I hardly knew 'er! |
[29 Aug 2007|08:42am] |
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99X morning radio |
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So I unexpectedly beat Half-Life 2 this morning. I had installed it a few days ago and started playing it when I got bored filling up the Ryu Books in .hack but didn't really try to finish it. I was just playing it to play something else in the meantime. I played most of it Sunday and got up to the point I had gotten stuck at last time; I had to fight off two Hunter choppers in the courtyard of Nova Prospekt and kept getting killed because I couldn't destroy them fast enough and since it was in a courtyard I didn't have many places to hide and the longer the fight was drawn out the greater the chance to die. I played it a bit more last night and managed to get past that point so spent about 5 or 6 hours playing last night and a couple more this morning since I don't have to go into work until 1 and what do you know, I beat it.
Huh.
I purchased HL2: Episode One afterwards through Steam and I'm waiting for it to download. I'm looking forward to playing it cause it picks up right after HL2 and I'd like to see the repercussions of the destruction of the citadel on the city below.
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| Y HELO THAR |
[25 Aug 2007|03:52pm] |
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Modest Mouse - Parting Of The Sensory |
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I'm bored and I decided that it's time for my monthly journal update!
Been pretty busy lately since I actually have a for real job now working at the school bookstore. I got hired on as a temp for the busy week at the beginning of the semester which was just last week, so it isn't like this entry is way too late. I'm pretty much just a register jockey but it's the first time I've had to stand in one place for so long and it took a while to get used it. Sure I did my token time working at a grocery store but since I worked back in a department I at least got to walk around. I was about ready to keel over after the first day but it's gotten better since then. They worked me a lot this week, Monday through Thursday I worked no less than eight hours. I'm not the only guy they hired though; they had a few temps from an agency working the week too. It was my first time seeing a real temp since reading Not My Desk so it was like seeing some mythical animal I've only read about but never seen in the wild. They seemed to fit the temp stereotype so at least I wasn't disappointed.
I started classes Monday and I honestly don't have much to say about them. Monday was my first real day at the bookstore so by the time 5 pm rolled around and it was time for class I was so worn out I just sat in a stupor through both of my classes. Wednesday I was less tired but it was most of the same; I just scribbled down notes in my first class and my second class I did pretty much the same. The psych class is 80% online material so I can't just passively go through this semester. I might have more interesting things to say about my classes later, but I wouldn't bet on it.
As for free time, while I've had significantly less than usual lately I always make time to screw around. I celebrated getting employed by going out to buy the first volume of .hack//G.U. It was pretty gratifying playing it after being teased by it two years ago at E3 (was it already two years ago?). I got it last Wednesday and beat it last night and enjoyed it immensely. It was pretty much a new game, not much based off the first series, but the Ryu Books are still there so I've got more work to do before I go off and buy the second volume. I'm at least going to try to wait, but I've got most of the Book content unlocked except wallpapers so if I stop now I'm not going to miss much. I ought to though, to try and get back on the right track for the rest of the series. I finished them for Infection, Mutation and Outbreak but got bored and didn't finish them on Quarantine and I don't want to reinforce that habit. As expected there were only questions raised in the game and not a one of them answered but I've got some new material to chew on for my theories. The bad thing is that it's only whetting my appetite for the next game.
Also, the new Modest Mouse CD is really good. You should listen to it.
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[15 Aug 2007|11:47am] |
Nothing beats human companionship.
It wasn't until I got friends that I realized how lonely I was. It sucks to feel this way but I wouldn't want to go back and lose those I love and care for.
In other news I finally got a job so I'm going to go out and buy a video game for the first time since April! Wheeeeeee!
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[05 Aug 2007|01:18am] |
Well, I didn't make all As but it was close enough so I'll let myself live... this time.
CHEM 1212 494 Principles of Chemistry II **Distance/Online Learning B
CHEM 1212L 425 Principles of Chemistry II Lab Lawrenceville Campus A
MATH 2432 452 Calculus II Lawrenceville Campus A
SOCI 1101 400 Introduction to Sociology Lawrenceville Campus A
That calculus grade... how I got it I'll never understand. Oh well, it's better than the C I got in Calculus 1, mainly because my teacher was about 400% better this semester than my Calc 1 teacher.
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[17 May 2007|08:20pm] |
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God help me, I'm going to make straight As summer semester or die trying.
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[13 May 2007|09:51pm] |
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mood |
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pleased |
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I signed up for classes a few days ago, and most of the classes I'm taking are continuations of the classes I had last semester, like Calc II and Chemistry 1212. I am taking an "original" class, Intro to Sociology. Kind of a strange choice, but I need some kind of social science, and the course list isn't too specific on which courses count as a social science. I just decided to go with the one that seemed most obviously to be one. :P
My schedule is:
Sociology, Monday through Friday, 11-12:45 from May 21 to June 20
Calc II, Tuesday Thursday Friday, 5:50-7:45 pm from May 21 to July 30
Chem Lab, Monday through Thursday, 2-4:45 from June 27 to July 30
Chem online
Huh, it looks like sociology will be a half-semester class, and chem lab doesn't start until the second half-semester. I wonder what the timeline for chemistry will be, if we'll get both minimesters or what. Last semester, chem lab worked out so it mirrored chemistry; we started labs where we had to calculate moles of substances and their molarity soon after we learned how to do so in chemistry. It makes me wonder how it'll work this time, if we can leave chemistry until the second half to sync up with the chem lab or whut.
Um... I had to recompile the kernel today, I managed to remove some language support that somehow removed my ability to mount my flash drive. It just took a few minutes to add the module back in, it still took like half an hour to recompile it but now everything works. And still nobody cares!
Oh yeah, Happy Mother's Day!
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[11 May 2007|04:47pm] |
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mood |
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accomplished |
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music |
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the new Incubus song |
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I just finished compiling and installing my own customized kernel! And it works! And nobody cares but me!
ROCK
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| Post-final wrap-up, now with 50% more hyphens! |
[09 May 2007|03:42pm] |
Well I just finished my Chem exam, thus drawing this... semester to a close. I wanted to say stuff like "horrible" or "joke of a" but it wasn't all totally bad. Just 70% of it. Now comes the wait to figure out what my grades are. I'm gonna post what I think I made and then update it with what I actually made. My guess will be in parenthesis and my actual grade after it.
Calc - (F) C
Chemistry - (B) A
1302 - (A) A
Lab - (A) A
All in all, a pretty good semester. Not enough to get the Dean's List, but I'm happy enough with my calculus grade to not complain. I cannot stress how happy I am with that calculus grade. :P
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| Two down, two to go |
[03 May 2007|05:55pm] |
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mood |
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music |
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C Is For Conifers - They Might Be Giants |
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Well, I had my penultimate calculus test today, or sort of did. Instead of a comprehensive final the teacher decided to have just the "final" be the chapter 5 test. He's a pretty hardcore professor, the kind that really likes the subject he teaches. You'd think that you'd have to be in love with the subject matter you taught if you were a college professor, but sadly that's not often the case. *cough*Tanner*cough* He said that, to paraphrase, there was no way that he'd be able to issue a satisfactory comprehensive final with only a two hour window to work with. It kind of gave me chills that he felt that way, not in a good way, but more like the way you'd feel when a bullet passes by your head close enough to singe your hair. He didn't pull any punches with this test though, regular ol' chapter test or not. It was over integrals which contain high doses of my kryptonite, anti-derivatives, and took me past the alloted two hours to finish. Two hours and fifteen minutes to be exact, in comparison the three chapter tests we took in class that we had to finish in an hour fifteen. I got all the questions finished but one, but I'm not sure about them though. About an hour in I was seized with this kind of urgency and almost mechanically blew through most of the integrals in a few minutes. It reminded me of the English final I took a couple of semesters back; I had two hours to finish and I spent the first thirty minutes gripped in a panic, but after I got over the panic I went through the rest of the exam on autopilot. I remember just writing and writing, not really consciously thinking about the words I was scribbling down, only stopping when the muscles in my hand started to burn from the effort. I went through those integrals the same way, not really thinking about the anti-derivatives I had to figure out but just mowing through them. I think I did seven of them in fifteen minutes.
All in all, I don't really have any feelings about finishing. I don't feel good or bad about the work I did on the exam. I don't feel any real relief of getting it behind me, which can probably be attributed to that I've still got Java and chemistry exams to go through. I have a good idea of why that is though, and it's probably that nothing has changed now that the exam is over. Unlike pre-calculus, where I worked my behind off reading the chapters and doing the homework, and getting a palpable feeling of relief after walking out of the classroom for the final time, I didn't put so much effort into calculus. This will probably come back to bite me in the ass, but nothing I can do about it now. I don't feel the relief of never having to do calculus work again because I never really did much in the first place.
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[12 Apr 2007|09:46am] |
Recently our calculus teacher has become annoyed with us because as a collective class we don't do jack in the way of homework, so to get us to burn the derivative rules into our heads he assigned us 100 problems to do. I was able to do about 90 of them, and even though I finished it Tuesday and turned it in yesterday, my brain is still trying to do them. If I don't keep my brain occupied with something to think about, it'll start doing chain rule derivatives of problems it'll make up. I kind of wish that the final was all about derivative problems, I could probably ace it in my sleep.
Literally.
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