Cyborg_572's Blog

Happy Mother's Day

2010-05-09T23:51:00.002-04:00

For the next 9 minutes it's still mother's day, so I'm going to type this fast.

I've started neglecting this blog, mostly because I haven't had anything to say I thought was worth posting, but also partially because it's more fun to update my comic, and because I'm planning on launching a portfolio site with a professional blog on it very soon.

But what I've found out recently is that my mom still reads this blog often. I decided that since she's going to be going away soon, and since it's mother's day, I'm going to start updating this blog regularly again. I'm going to try, once a week, to just sit down and type what's happened during the week. Journal style. So that my mom can keep up with what I'm doing.

So happy mother's day, Mom.

if you're reading this, and you're not my mother, you'll probably find everything after now to be rubbish :P

Kittens!

2009-12-11T21:49:00.003-05:00

As you may have guessed from my user name, kittycat27, I am a cat lover. I do have a cat, but he is 2 and a half hours away from where I currently live because I am at school.
This fact I think has dramatically increased my desire for a kitten. I mean at any given time I always want a kitten, but lately I've been wanting one way way way more. It may be also because where I currently live (an apartment) actually does allow pets, so I don't have that stopping me either. I do realize that as a student I may not have enough time to spend with the kitten, or it may distract me from my work, also student=lack of money for proper food, litter, shots etc, all these logical statements do not quench my desire. There is a part of me that says all these things, which a good logical reasons not to get a kitten, but the other part of me whines but I *want* a kitten.
I also run into the roommate problem. One of my roommates has been dying for a pet all year (we almost got a dog, luckily I convinced them out of it. They would only get a big dog and our apartment is to small for a big dog) the 2nd one doesn't care and the third one....well lets just say when I told her I was a cat lover and she responded with "why? They're useless." For being a political science major her tact and diplomacy is severely lacking.
Then there is my poor tortured boyfriend (cyborg owner of the blog). Whom I have been pestering for a kitten since almost as long as we have been dating. I know full well that my parents have forbid him from getting me a kitten under pain of death etc. This doesn't stop me! I constantly bug him for one with the hope that his love for me will cause him to defy my parents and get me a kitten! or he'll get me one just to shut me up because he can't stand the pestering any more. So far neither has happened, it's probably because I'm not trying hard enough!
Ah yes, I forgot the major factor in my lack of kitten, my parents. They are pretty much 99% of why I'm no using the blog to describe the kitten I just got. They want no more pets. We have 1 cat, whose gotten sick at least twice, and we're talking near death sick, that we have had the vet fix. Now you have to know my parents they love our pets but they aren't the type to keep a suffering animal alive. Luckily both times no surgery was needed on poor bunny (yes my cat's name is bunny) and he bounced back. Also, we have a (in)purebred cocker spaniel. She hyperactive, cute, horribly annoying, stupid jealous little 15 lbs thing. We do not think she'd take well so something else taking attention away from her. Bunny is older than Katie and can defend himself, a kitten couldn't.
So, alas another Christmas will go by and there will be no kitten for me :(.
Oh well, it's back to studying organic chemistry for me!
Kittycat27.

"The Jub Hunt", or, "The Wild Goose Chase"

2009-05-01T11:49:00.004-04:00

With all my excitement over the comic, and the work on a Layout and Tips and Tricks guide for it, it seems I've neglected my blog. Well, that and I don't have much in the way of news. Amy's back for the summer now, which is nice, and we both have to find jobs, which is less nice. I should have gotten one by now, but there's not many to be had, and after last summer, I'm reluctant to throw resumes blindly at every job. It also doesn't help that I'll be moving to London in September. Nor that I just found out that I had bad contact information for my references on the first couple batches of applications I filled out. I can't really see why no one wants to hire me. I'm hard working, I'm good with people. Then again, so is everyone else who writes a cover letter. But I'm among those who mean it. Not that that means anything. Out of the couple dozen or so resumes I've sent out, only one employer gave any indication of why they wouldn't hire me. It was because I was leaving in September.

I don't know what these employers want. The open ended essay questions are the worst. "What does customer service mean to you?" Making the customer as happy as possible without breaking company policy? "Why are yo interested in a position at [our company]?" You have an open spot in customer service, and I really want to work customer service? "Why are you interested in a career with [our parent company]?" Whoah, what? I just want to apply to this temporary position to get money so I can pay my tuition.

I don't see why someone needs to be eternally dedicated to a company to work for them. Isn't enough to be dedicated to doing your job to the best f your ability, regardless of who you're working for? It's an employers market, so apparently not.

I'm also in a bit of a catch-22 with transportation. No one wants to hire someone from out of town who doesn't have their own car. Unfortunately for me, I live in the middle of nowhere, so all my applications are for out-of-town jobs, and I don't have more than a G1 license. I'd get my G2, but I can't afford the classes or the insurance, which is why I need a job, but no one will hire... etc, etc.

Some might say I shouldn't post this because of employers reading it. I just did a google for my name, and that doesn't seem likely, but I'm fine with it if they do. I have this comic pinned up on the wall by desk, and I agree with it. Although if any prospective employers are reading this, I would like to point out that I don't complain nearly as much in person, which is probably why I complain so much on this blog. I would also suggest they search "cyborg_572" if they really want to find out about me. As there's a lot of people with my name, and I don't use it online all that often. Well, that's it for me. Until next time!

yeah, I'm back to the "Until next time" thing. What can I say? I like it.

Exams!

2009-04-16T14:17:00.003-04:00

Yet again exams are upon me. This time it really counts because they are my finals, and if I want to go into chemistry next year I should probably do really well on my exam, which is tomorrow. I'm very nervous! I know what you're thinking, why am I writing this if I could be studying?" I am merely taking a short break. I never really did figure out the thermodynamics questions, but there are only 3 questions from the stuff we learned before January so I think I'll be O.K. I'm mostly concentrating on kinetics and electrochemistry because they are going to be focused on mainly.
On a happier note, my birthday is coming up soon! I'm very excited! I have been reminding Mike it's coming everyday since mid March. (my birthday is April 27th). I honestly don't know how he puts up with me ;).
Well that's all I have time for, back to studying....yuck I just want this exam to be over!
-Amy

Two Weeks

2009-03-17T22:34:00.004-04:00

First off, let me apologize for not posting a comic last weekend, I was busy with a submission for the Dorito's Guru competition, and also very distracted because I found out about the Pandora and was reading about it. I want one, by the way.

It also seems I will not be uploading any comics any time soon either. Well, maybe if I can hook the scanner up on my dad's desk and install it on this computer. You see, I have been having some trouble with the screen on my laptop. It's been getting progressively more... splotchy? It's hard to describe. So I realized that Monday was probably one of my last chances to bring it in before the warranty expired, and decided to do so. It needs to be shipped off to HP for repairs. The guy at Best Buy said 2 weeks, maybe more. They're going to call when it's back.

That reminds me. Amy tried to call me today, and it seems our phone line is now dead. Hopefully it will me back in the morning.

I'd have to say the worst part about not having my laptop is that I can only use this computer until 11:00pm. With my laptop I usually just get started into things at 11, and I usually talk with Amy until 1:00am. No more doing that though for a couple weeks. I guess I should find me a good book. There's a copy of IT by Steven King on my desk, and I plan to read it this/next week. Although on the weekend Amy will be here and that's always great.

My paragraphs have become a disjointed mess. I should stop writing for tonight.

forgot the little italic text and had to edit it in :P and then fix its spelling

Reading Week

2009-02-21T23:52:00.002-05:00

Well my reading week is drawing to a close and now it's back to school for 4 midterms over 2 weeks. Not fun. I should have studied more this week, but honestly I don't regret not studying. Well currently I don't, it may be a different story on friday and saturday. I spent the majority of the week with Mike and a bit with my friends. Unfortunately my friends at home are all still in high school so I couldn't see them as much as I would have liked. Mike and I did go visit our old high school for a day, it was fun! We watched movies, hung out, went out for dinner and played lots of mario kart. I went shopping with my mom several times and even got a few possible dresses to wear to my sisters wedding. I'm the only brides maid/maid of honour, so I get to pick the style, she still picks the colour. All in all it was a great week and was far too short.
It's scary, soon I'll be done my first year of university. I really only have about 6 weeks of classes left. It sounds like both and long and short time. We have to tell the university before the end of march what program we plan to enroll in next year before the end of march. I sat down with my mother today and figured out that I am going to major in chemistry and minor in biology. I was thinking originally minor in gentic be decided just general biology would give me more flexibility.
Well thats everything that's new so far for me. Make sure to check out Mike's new comic!
Amy

It Figures

2009-02-08T00:44:00.003-05:00

I've been saying for a while that I was going to get some form of content to go with this blog. Since the process of starting this blog was one of jumping on a bandwagon, it figures that the next step would be a webcomic. It would have been up earlier today, but it took a lot longer than I thought to match the style of the blog and the comic hosting site. Oh, by the way, the comic is being hosted on the fairly young comicfury.com. They offer some pretty nice free comic hosting options, and the community there is small, but seems pretty nice.
So I'm not making any promises, but I'm going to try for a weekly release, I'm looking at sunday mornings at 12:00am.

Anyway, the comic is going consist of one-off gags, exploring the question of "what could go wrong?" Hopefully they'll get better from the first one. I'm always open to comments or critcizms, and look forward to trying my best to entertain anyone who bothers to read this. This should be fun.

|----------->>It Figures<<----------|

hey... I didn't end with "untill next time..."! 'tis the dawn of a new era.

New Theme

2009-02-07T03:12:00.002-05:00

So I mentioned that a new design for the blog might be on it's way, and after poking around for the last hour and a half or so, here it is. It's not much of a change from the old theme, but it's a bit tighter, if you ask me. I need to come up with a title graphic though, that plain text title looks horrible.
I just have one or two more things I need to work out before unveiling what I've been working on, so just be patient, you'll see soon enough. I want to set Monday as a deadline, but I have my Opa's birthday party to go to and some job hunting to take care of, so we'll see. Speaking of which, I need to get up in about five hours for that job hunting, so I best be going. Until next time.

I have my work cut out for me

I Didn't Touch Anything, I Swear.

2009-02-02T21:48:00.003-05:00

So, yesterday my Opa called me over to his house because his computer wasn't working. It was complaining that it couldn't find his hard drive to boot from. My hunch was that it had something to do with the damp CD he had put in immediately before the computer shut itself off. I will say in his defense that he did have an understandable reason to do so. When I got to look at it, the first thing I did was turn it on and see the error for myself. I even poked around in setup, and found it could see the CD drive, but not the hard drive. I thought that was weird, as it was probably the CD drive messing up. Either way I decided to see what would happen if I took the CD drive out. I pulled the computer out from under his desk, put it on the table, opened it up, and moved it to where I could attach a screen. Before going any further, I decided I wanted another look at the error message. Unfortunately, I couldn't, because the system booted perfectly. Nothing wrong at all. I have no idea why. Oh well.

In other news, I decided if I'm going to be home for the next 8 months, I might as well get the Linux installation on the family computer up-to-date and bootable without messing in the BIOS (I put grub on the wrong drive last time). I decided to go with Fedora 10, as I had a really strong urge to see Plymouth in action. I installed it Sunday afternoon, and I didn't get to see Plymouth until earlier today due to slow Internet and a ton of updates. I finally got the Nvidia drivers installed, and now it looks very nice, but keeps freezing and the package manager bothers me. I think tomorrow it will be getting Linux Mint, which is my current favorite distro. I was hoping the impressive look of Fedora10 would get my family interested in using Linux, but Mint is pretty polished itself.

I would also like to point out that as soon as I find a way around some annoying technical difficulties, one of the content ideas I've been thinking about will be unleashed. It may coincide with, be proceeded by or closely followed by an update to the look of the blog. Maybe. We'll see. Until next time.

I got talked into fixing someone else's computer while writing this. I'm on a roll!

Updates

2009-01-12T17:08:00.003-05:00

Hello!
Well I'm just as bad as Mike in updating, in my defense it is his blog! Kidding of course. Anyway I'm back at school for a second semester and I did reasonably well in my courses last semester. (I got an 87 in physics, usually my worst subject!! Now biology is which makes me sad.) Tomorrow will be a busy day as I have 8 hours of class, stupid labs, but I'll survive, maybe.
Christmas was really fun and really short, I feel we need longer holidays.
When I returned to my residence after the break it was sweltering in here. They were afraid of the pipes bursting so they kept in tropical in here. I was in shorts and a tank top and barely got any sleep because of the heat, so I had a lovely first day back.
For Christmas my big present was a Tv to put in my room so I can play my wii on it. I must say it is pretty awesome. I am also able to not play video games and do work, I'm such a good girl.
As you know Mike's been wait listed for his program. The wait is absolutely killing me, I miss him and I'm dying for him to be living in the same city as I'm in. They had better accept him soon!
It's just the beginning of week 2 and I'm already behind in calculus, oops. Well the stuff is kinda tricky (Integration by parts) but I think I'm getting it now, I'm just to lazy/not motivated to do question 1-49 even if it is just the odds.
I, like an idiot, forgot my boots back home, well they are actually my moms boots, but don't worry I bought another pair and jumped in puddles just to show up the snow, HA take THAT mother nature.

Well, I'm hungry and it's dinner time so I'm off to the cafeteria!
Hopefully Mike and I will post soon about his acceptance!
~Amy

Happy New Year, Christmas, etc.

2009-01-09T23:52:00.003-05:00

Alright, once again I have fallen behind on the updates to this blog. And really, the Christmas theme should have come down almost a week ago, but there's not much I can do about that now, other than just take it down.
In my last post, if you'll recall, I was talking about an application to college. Other than my high school transcripts spending 3 weeks in the mail, the application process went as well as can be expected from someone as disorganized as myself. I'm currently not at the college however, as I have been wait-listed. The good news though, is that I'm in the top 10 somewhere, and the course doesn't start until Monday. So I still have a chance of being there for day one, and if I'm not, then the people dropping out during the first week will surely get me a spot in the class.
So until the point when I get to go off to college, I'm stuck at home. Alone. My parents work, and my brother has school, and I'm sitting around doing very little. Well, I have done a lot of work on that website linked to from the sidebar, but I haven't actually uploaded it to the server, so nothing has really changed there. I'm still toying around with some ideas for something to put here on a regular basis, that doesn't rely on interesting post-worthy things happening to me on a regular basis. Let's just see where things go. Until next time.

I no longer like the "until next time" ending. again.

Christmas and College

2008-12-04T20:32:00.004-05:00

Well, there it is; the Christmas theme is up, and it's up early enough that it will get to stick around for a while. There's been a lot going on lately, and at the same time not much at all. I just spent most of last week doing a supplemental for a program I'm trying to get into at a college next semester. Turns out university isn't really what I'm looking for. If all goes well and I can work out the last few kinks in my application, and am a bit lucky, I should be in a different program at a college in January. I'm really excited about this. I've found an apartment that's a 15 minute bus ride from the school. This means I'll have to go back to the high school way of doing things, where I head into school in the morning, and don't come home till I'm done. I think that will help me focus a bit more.

Not only does college seem more my speed, but the apartment I'm looking at is also only a 15 minute bus ride from Amy's which will be nice. No more planning weeks in advance and then shelling out $40 in train tickets. I'll just be able to hop on a bus going that way on a whim. Next semester should be pretty nice.

It seems I've really gotten into cooking a bit more since I was sick that one week. I had to make my own food because walking to the restaurant was out of the question. I had a nice hamburger helper thing for diner tonight with mash potatoes. I quite enjoyed it.

Sometimes, I think it would be nice to have my own server, or at least a proper account on one, where I can upload little images willy-nilly, and organize it in a way that makes sense to me. A lack of being able to store images and get at them easily really limits what I can do as far as theming the blog goes. Also, there's other things I'd like to do that right now are going to require me to try and link several pages from different services together. Oh well, maybe someday. Then I'll just have to try and move all this and still make sense of it. It might be worth looking into though. Don't get me wrong though, I love Blogger and how easy it is to work with, I'm just the kind of guy who likes to get in there and build it myself to see if I can.

Well, that's all for now, I'm starting to ramble. Hopefully I can get some real projects going soon, projects that provide content. That would really be nice. Anyway, until next time...

I'm really going to miss all my friends here :(

Exams are Nearly Here!

2008-11-26T23:15:00.003-05:00

Hello!

I'm sitting here in my dorm brain dead. I spent way too much time working on calculus homework. I should have spent more time on chemistry, seeing as my exam is in a little over a week. As the title suggests exams are nearly here for me and I'm going crazy studying of course. I hope I don't go as crazy as I did last time where I wanted to eat a bottle of caffine pills. (Don't worry Mike stopped me). I have given up studying tonight as my brain is just done for the day. Today I got up at 7:50 am went to calc, chem bio hour break wrote a physics test then came back here studied bio, then practised for an hour, called my friend worked on calculus and then summarized a little chemistry. I only have a week of classes left so I think I can make it till then. Then it's study study study. I should have been an english major! Some of them have no exams at all! Well no I shouldn't have, I hate writing essays.
Anyway, I ended up going to Mike's last weekend. It was loads of fun and he cooked for me twice! Well the second time he put frozen stuff in the oven but still he didn't burn it! I had a lovely weekend, but I'm paying for it now with my studying. Oh well, totally worth it!
Anyway I'm going to go to bed or study or something.

Will post again after exam and it's christmas time, don't worry Mike'll get his Christmas theme up soon, he's really busy this week.

Chem Prof's Philosophy on life: All hail silicone

Writer's Block

2008-11-19T02:20:00.003-05:00

So I once again find myself locked in a battle with my old arch-nemesis, the Essay. I thought I had finally rid myself of him when I finished grade 12 English, but arch-nemesises (... nemesies? ...nemisi?) always seem to have a tendency to pop back up again. Of course, he is once again teamed up with my other arch-nemesis, Writer's Block. The two make a powerful duo, unfortunately.

So I'm taking a psychology class, and for part of the seminar portion of the class, we have to write a single page (maximum) essay about how something we have learned in the class has affected the way we think about ourselves and others. I guess it's not really that hard of an assignment, especially compared to what most essay assignments are like, but I'm having trouble either way. I like to read a lot, and I'm very good at reading Wikipedia instead of doing what I'm supposed to, and I do have a bit of an interest in psychology. As a result, coming into the class I had already heard of most of the things we talked about in the seminars months or more before that. There was even one or two cases where I could have sworn I had already read the article, although I may have poked at one or two of them to see what I was getting into, I can't really remember. As far as I'm consciously aware, I haven't changed my way of thinking about people from learning the stuff. I tend not to do that kind of thing unless I try, and it usually doesn't last much longer than my short attention span. I don't know, maybe I just enjoy being difficult on these kinds of assignments. I'll have to come up with something to fill that paper. I've got until 8:30 Thursday morning to get it done and locate a printer I can borrow, which means I should get it done by the latest on Wednesday before my suite mates go to bed. Speaking of which, I should go to bed too, I've got a busy-but-not-really day ahead of me tomorrow. Until next time...

someday, I want to be able to afford to be recklessly spontaneous on a regular basis

Record High

2008-11-17T16:27:00.004-05:00

I was shocked a couple weeks ago to check my e-mail and see that week's stats for the blog. I've never seen the viewer numbers that high before, I'm sure Amy has something to do with that. I might have another project in the works, but I'm not making promises this time, what with my track record and everything. I would also really like to get some Christmas themed stuff up in the store before long. If there's anything you want to see, drop me a comment and I'll see what I can do.

I wrote most of what you just read about a week or two ago, although I edited the time-sensitive bits of grammar so they make sense reading it now. I realize it may be a bit late for Christmas stuff in the store, but I'll still try to cater to any requests as fast as possible. Cafepress just launched their Canadian store, which means Canadian prices and shipping. I'm trying to figure out how to adjust my prices to match, but the control panel seems to still be in USD$. As far as the project I am working on, is concerned, it's still in the fairly early stages of planning, and I'm not even sure what format I'm doing it in, but we'll see how it goes.

As Amy said in her last post, I've been kinda sick the last week. Those following Twitter or Facebook will know it was a sinus infection. I'm mostly better now, so nobody should worry about me at all. I've just got to get caught up on everything now.

In less exciting news, the light bulb in the fixture in my room has burnt out. At some point this week someone from housekeeping should come and fix it. I'd gladly do it myself, but the bulbs they give out at the front desk are for the desk lamps, and probably won't work in the fixture. I also can't figure out how to get into the fixture, I can get it to spin a bit each way, but it kind of bounces back, and I don't want to force anything. So I'm waiting, and trying to keep my room clean. I just hope I don't have to be here, I've got a busy schedule tomorrow. This desk lamp is taking up a bit of space on my desk, and an outlet that could be put to better use. Oh well. Until next time...

I hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring ring ringling too...

Keeping Up to Date

2008-11-14T11:38:00.003-05:00

Hello readers,

Well Mike still hasn't posted but he has a very good excuse, hes been sick the last week or so, but I'll let him tell you about that.
Last weekend I had my chemistry midterm. It didn't go as well as I hoped, it's unfair though because there was only 25 questions, so every question I get wrong is 4% off my final mark. Fear not for me though, I now know what to expect on the 6th of Dec (my exam for chemistry) so I'm sure I'll do loads better :) (hopefully).
Something else super exciting happened last weekend! Mike showed up outside my room. Normally you would think "So?" but I wasn't expecting him. I had been pesting him all week to come (:D) but I didn't think he actually would. So after writing a chem exam I got to spend the rest of the weekend with Mike :).
We went to see Hamlet, just at my school though I really wanted to see it in Stratford. It lacked a little luster and a few of my favourite lines (mainly the pirates), some of the acting was a little shaky (namely Horatio) but Hamlet and Ophelia were good.
We went to the mall and he helped me grocery shop (I know I'm the epitome of excitment) and he got sick :(.
I'm very excited about this weekend :D! I have 2 of my friends from home coming to visit (and bringing a care package from my mom :)) It's gunna be sweet :).
I'm in a dilemma though! Next weekend (the 22nd) I'm debating what I should do! I have three options and please leave comments on what I should do! I could go to visit Mike (last time I could visit it him at his current school), I could go home (I haven't been home in over a month and if i don't go this weekend I can't go until I'm done exams Dec 16th, so it'll be 2 months by then plus I want to Xmas decorate my home) or stay here and study for my exams in 2 weeks (the more responsible but boring option). I suffer from indecision so I need some help!
Anyway I got to head to physics really soon and I'm hungry.
Hope to get lots of replies!
~Amy

Amy's 2nd post :)

2008-11-04T11:00:00.003-05:00

Hello!
mike always forgets to update his blog so i will:P:). I went to see him this past weekend and we had loads of fun together, we went for walk, out to dinner (east side marios Mmmm) for our 10 month anniversary, played some smash bros and pool, it was a wonderful weekend:). now we will prolly have to wait 3 weeks or so to see each other again, then after that we wont see each other again till the 16th of decemeber a whole 3.5 weeks, our longest time without seeing each other. It sounds maybe a bit pathetic i know, but i love to get together with him and 3.5 weeks sounds so bloody long!
I am currently waiting for my online tutorial for physics to start. I hate physics i really do. but it was supposed to start at 1030 and its now 11 and the virtual room isnt open im starting to doubt it ever will open. i got my bio mid term results back 61 :(:(. but it was a hard test and i had no idea what to expect in terms of questions. i got an 89 on my lab tho (yay) so in december im gunna study for that exam like theres no 2morrow. (that doesnt make sense if there was no 2morrow then there'd be no test:P) well i do have a chem midterm this friday i get to study my brains out for. Some the unit im really good at, others need a little work. i think ill be OK tho i really like chem (yup im a nerd) and im pretty good at it.
This weekend I'm going to see Hamlet with a friend. Im very excited. Normally i dont really like shakespear, but i really did like hamlet and have been dying to see it performed. Shakespear is meant to be seen not read in a classroom.
It's very scary to think that school will be done for Xmas in 4.5 weeks(for me) 3.5 for mike (stupid universities not being consistant) I only get a 3 week break between the last of my midterms and the beginning of my exams :S
Well its now 11:15 and the tutorial is supposed to be over at 11:20. Ill try again at a different tutorial. One is schedueled for this week, they musta had technical difficulties. I did get to sleep in today which makes me happy, because for some reason i thought it was a good idea to put calc 4 times a week at 830 am! no idea what i was thinking.
well im hungry time to get some food:)
-Amy

Look i don't whine as much as mike :P jk, mike:)

Amy and Mike

2008-10-27T21:27:00.004-04:00

Regular readers may start to notice a couple of changes around here. The first and more obvious one is that the "What am I doing" section is now the "What are we doing" section. The change of name is because it's been updated to show tweets from my girlfriend, Amy. I've mentioned her before. Other changes, are less obvious. I've made minor updates to some bits of my profile. Which upon looking, has apparently been removed by another big change; Amy has been given posting privileges. Expect stuff from her now. On a less big news note, blogger added an embedded comment box on single post pages, so I turned it on.
This is Mike, saying I hope you enjoy what Amy adds to this blog. Until next time.

EDIT: seems Amy beat me to the punch. Her first post is below this one.
@Amy - sorry if I stole your thunder

wait... does this mean things from Amy show up in my facebook notes? confusing :D

The girlfriend

2008-10-27T21:18:00.003-04:00

Hello all!
My name is Amy, and I'm the girl in mike's life :) he's even given me access to his blog! (if u know him u know that
s a big deal!!:P) anyway here's a bit about me. I'm a bio-med major at university and a musician (i play french horn yayayayay), i'm blonde, brown eyed and 5' 2"ish. Um, what else? unlike mike my knowledge of computers is extremely limited, but on the other hand i can separate DNA like no ones business (i know i've done it...twice, yay repeat labs). hmm no idea what to write about. Well currently im avoiding a chemistry pre-lab :).
Mike has gotten me addicted to Doctor Who! i just keep downloading them, and ignoring hmwk. like right now! Oh well so worth it. We're going as doctor who and rose for halloween. yes we are that awesome that we are doing a couple costume:).
we're currently very far apart which makes me sad but i am going to visit him this weekend for halloween yay :).
Ohh today i had a master class (buncha horns getting together playing and telling each other what was done well what could be improved) and i got so many compliments i loved it:) apparently im good :D.
well i should prolly go watch the loaded doctor who....i mean do my pre lab!!
tootles
Amy
p.s. my grammar sucks as does my spelling, my argument is that i'm a science major and don't need proper english:P so im just apologizing now.

Twitter!

2008-10-15T01:44:00.003-04:00

For those of you who are a little observant, you will probably already have noticed that I now have a little section for posts from my new twitter page at the top of my blog posts. I'm hoping that this, combined with my new phone with a texting plan, will let me update a bit easier. Right now the twitter posts are being displayed using what seems to be a pretty good plugin called Twitter Multi. It's currently set to show my 5 newest tweets, and it's only updated when the page is first loaded.

Also, the Canadian elections were today. Looks like another conservative minority. I'm proud of myself though, I voted.

That's all for now. Until next time.

The more I add, the more the people on facebook are missing. Get the full thing here: www.cyborg572.blogspot.com

2 Years later

2008-10-13T19:02:00.002-04:00

Well... it seems I've broken my stream of steady updates with a decent sized gap in there. The weekly average of readers was picking up for a bit there, but seems to have dropped down close to zero again. I guess that's what a lack of content will do to a blog. Before you ask... no. I haven't done anything on the idea I've had in the works. I'm starting to have second thoughts about it anyway. It seems I just don't have much time to do anything constructive much, but maybe I'm just wasting too much of it doing hardly anything. Anyway, you'd think after two years of blogging, I'd have more of an Idea of what to do content-wise. Which Brings me to the main topic of this article... "Cyborg_572's Blog" is now 2 years old. It was started on Friday, October 13, 2006. I completely missed the one year mark without even realizing it. It came as a bit of a shock to me when I noticed the start date on the profile. Two years and still running str-... well, no it isn't. Like most projects of mine, it's still fairly lacking in any sort of direction or purpose. Perhaps I should have done this earlier, but I'm going to announce that I'm open to suggestions. What would you, my few loyal readers, like to see in this little bit of webspace? I'm running low on Ideas.

Friday the 13th, what a day to launch a major project....

In the Works

2008-09-11T13:33:00.003-04:00

Hello again. This has to be my first three-days-in-a-row posting in months. I'm starting to remember why I don't post more often, I don't do enough to have rambling-style posts about my day. Especially not when I'm posting in the middle of the day. I've decided, however, that the more I do it, the easier it will become. I also, as the title of this post suggests, have an Idea in the works. I just need to flesh out the details, see how feasible it is, and get some opinions from people in person before I throw it out there online, or out here online, or wherever online is relative to my blog. Around here maybe? Right here? Either way, the post explaining it will be on the front page of this blog. Most likely in video form. And that's all the hints your getting. If all goes well, I should be able to start seeing how feasible it is next week. I think I have most of the details worked out. Keep tuned, or RSSed (is that a word? (do I have RSS enabled? I should... if not now then soon))

In other news, the link for the store is in the sidebar. A Working Man's Journal is gone, as I have been informed by the author that he has no intention of adding to it at all. That's all for today. Until next time.

EDIT: I've added the suscribe to buttons to the sidebar, they're right underneath the other sites to check out

This teaser somewhat ties me in to following through, doesn't it? :P

C572's Online store

2008-09-10T16:10:00.002-04:00

So I was bored the other night, and inspired by some posters I had seen, and was looking in some online stores to see if I could find more interesting posters, and happened to be poking around on the CafePress website. I found the option to start your own online store, and figured it was worth a shot, as being in university, I could probably use the money. My store is located at http://www.cafepress.com/c572. Keep an eye out for the link that will soon be in the sidebar. There's not much there right now, but I have some ideas for some more products when I find time. Feel free to make any suggestions/request though.

If this stores going to attract any customers though, I'll need some content here... That's something I'm working on. Keep tuned. Until next time

buyaclockbuyaclockbuyaclockbuyaclock

University Begins

2008-09-09T13:27:00.003-04:00

I did it again. I went far to long without posting. What's happened in the meantime?

Well, I didn't have internet at the hotel the next night. It was a horrible little motel, by the way. Oh well, any port in a storm, as they say. The upshot was that the convenience store across the road sold Bawls, which I've always wanted to try. I bought a bottle, saved it for the car the next morning, drank it, enjoyed it, then promptly fell asleep for several hours. I kept the bottle around and it now decorates the desk in my dorm. More on that later.

I did manage to get a job this summer. At an auto shop. I should mention here that I have a strong dislike of auto shops. I figured I could put up with one part time, because I needed the money. I learned an important lesson from this. If the job interview ends with "You start tomorrow at 8am" then it would be a really good time to ask about the hours. I turns out I was wanted 9 hours a day, 5 days a week, with Sundays and Tuesdays off. I didn't ask, and found out the hard way. After a week or so of that, and of driving everyone insane with my complaining about it, I asked my boss for less hours, and he gave me Thursday's and Friday's off too. That was more bearable, but I'm still very glad to be rid of it. Hopefully the money I made there won't affect my OSAP at all.

That brings me to the next piece of news. I'm currently attending the university of Guelph for a bachelor of computing. I'm living in an East residence Suite with 7 other people, 3 other guys, and 4 girls. So far things are going really well. We just got cable hooked up as I'm writing this. Our Suite and this whole side of our floor has become a bit of a party central, although that has seemed to have died down a bit since classes started. I'm really liking Guelph, and I think I chose a good university. That about wraps it up for today. Until next time.

hey readers... wind your toy! - what an odd official dance for a university....

Alberta

2008-07-15T02:18:00.002-04:00

I really need to start updating this on a regular basis, as way too much happens between posts. Last time I posted was, apparently, before prom, and now it's midway through August. A lot has definitely happened since then.
I completely missed posting about being with my girlfriend for 6 months, about how prom went (well. Loud, but well.), And about several other things.
For instance, I am currently writing this form the basement of the house of some relatives who live out in Alberta. The same cousins who came to visit me in last summer. (Remember Sombra?) I've been having a grand old time here. We went stampeding. There was a hilarious hypnotist there, so we watched his show, then hit the Midway for a bit. Lately I've taken a bit of a dislike to midways, because for the cost of enough tickets to ride 12 of their small, somewhat boring, nauseating rides, (that's about 72 tickets if you only go on the big rides) you can get a season pass at a real amusement park, with giant, fun rides. Think about that. As I'm typing this I just brought up the Paramount Canada's Wonderland season pass page. at 1$ a ticket, or 22 for 20$ or 55 for 50$, or all day for 45$ at the midway, you can see how it compares. But I'm complaining again. It really was a lot of fun. Especially the grandstand show. That was simply Amazing. Words can't do it justice. Lots of music, lots of lights, lots of explosions, and so much more. Although I don't think I've ever been that close to that many fireworks all going off at the same time. Wow.
It's getting late as I'm typing this. It's weird being in a different time zone. For everyone else I know, it's two hours later, so that means it's 3:00am back home. That makes it hard to find people online at what for me is a reasonable time. it either too early for me, or too late for them. But that will soon change. I'm leaving at 5:00am to start the 3 day car ride home. Or, at least, I hope it's only 3 days. It took us 3 days to get here. Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, my brother and I, all stuffed into my grandma's van. That was less than wonderful. Especially since it seems that the people who designed my grandma's van assumed that other than the driver and passenger, who will be, of course, parents, all passengers are under 6 years old. The shoulders on the seats come up to about the base of my shoulder blades, the headrests slant forward at a very uncomfortable angle, then is no leg room (and I have need for leg room) and one of the things that bugs me the most, odd seatbelts. They don't do that thing that most seatbelts do to hold carseats and booster seats in place. You know the thing, where you pull the seatbelt out all the way, and it ratchets as it goes in, so that the child's seat will be held in place, but an adult can sit there just fine as long as they don't pull the belt completley from its roll. These seatbelts are different. They don't have that ratchet mechanism. Instead, once you buckle the seatbelt in, a little peice of plastic is pushed into place, which makes it so that the seatbelt can only get tighter, not looser. This is very uncomfortable if, like me, you feel the need to move around a lot. Which I always do, especialy on 12 hour drives.
It will be a little easier going home though, as my brother is staying here. Since there are so many jobs avaliable here, and none back home, he's going to stick around and find summer employment. It has crossed my mind to accept the invitation to do the same, but I have too much to go home to (Girlfriend, University, Etc.) so I'll have to try a bit harder to find employment. So that means the whole ride home I will have the entire cramped back seat of the van to myself. That will be nice. Or at least not as bad.x
I mentioned earlier that it took us 3 days to get here, and I hope it doesn't take longer than that to get back. "Why would it take longer?" you may ask, and the answer is simple; we'll be taking the scenic route home. That means that not only will we be taking a longer route, but we will be stopping constantly to look at things. Now, don't get me wrong, I like looking at nice views, but I don't like that at the expense of having to spend another night in a hotel room, another day in transit. If it's something out the window, fine. If the purpose of the trip was to go see it, fine. If it's a bunch of stuff on route from one place I want to be, to another place I want to be, over 3 days, in a car, going through places I don't want to be, then it bugs me.If I'm going home, then I want to go straight home, beeline. I don't like sitting still that long, and I don't like hotel rooms. I need a teleporter.
It's getting late, and my post is starting to break down into complaining. Perhaps I shall post tomorrow, from whatever hotel I end up in, perhaps not. We'll see. Until next time.

Parlez-Vous Yahoo!?

Lots Going On

2008-05-20T18:16:00.004-04:00

It's been a while since my last post, and a good deal has happened since then. For instance, I am currently writing this on a brand new laptop. Note that I said "writing," not "typing." That's because it has tablet functionality and I can actually write on it, which has me pretty excited. Now, those of you who know me well will know that I'm normally not a big fan of Windows, but as the tablet functions are going to take some time to get working in Ubuntu, along with the sound, Wifi, and fingerprint reader, I'm currently using Vista. I have to say that I'm finding it "not bad." I've only had things not working to the point of having to reboot about 4 times since I got it on Saturday. The handwriting and speech all work with it though, so I'm thinking that for school, I may end up using windows to do most of my written work. I'm planning on install the 64 bit Ubuntu, as the Vista installation is 32 bit, and it would be nice if at least one OS could make use of the 64 bit processor.

In other news, my high school prom is on Friday. I'm looking forward to it. I'm not going to the large after party, as it seems a bit much. A small group of us are getting together afterwards to hang out and be responsible and whatnot. It should be fun. What I'm not looking forward to is the Thursday right before prom, in which I, and almost every other grade twelve guy in the school, along with those of any other school with a prom this Friday, will all be trying to pick up there tux at the same place. Should be... hectic. Well, that's about it for this post. Until next time.

not that I don't have more news, I'm just saving some for other posts.

Long Weekend

2008-04-17T22:46:00.003-04:00

This weekend, I'm getting a rather good impression of the old saying; "Distance makes the heart grow fonder." My girlfriend, along with most of our mutual friends, have set off on the annual school band trip. They left last night. I'm having a hard time believing they've only been gone for a day. Even though last weekend had 3 days, I have a feeling this will be the real long weekend. They'll all be back on Sunday. I hope they're having a ton of fun. I should really look at this with a more positive spin. My girlfriend is off having a blast in Disney with her friends, and I've got a weekend completely free of distraction. Maybe I'll be able to start some kind of project, although I'm not sure what kind at the moment. The website I was working on has teetered off for the moment, as my dad hasn't had time to further the business plan upon which the whole site will be based. I do have an updated version of it that needs and upload though. I also felt inspired enough to do a fairly run-down looking version of my logo. I really like how it turned out.

I got a new camera today, a Jazz DV179. I got a really good deal on it, and am happy with it so far. I just wish I could get its webcam mode working in Linux. I did manage to get a ridiculous picture of my brother. I guess he didn't know that when someone points a camera at you, you shouldn't make a face you wouldn't want them to take a picture of, because they can and will.

Next week, I get to drop my history class, move my spare to third, and get a first period Communications Technology class. I'm pretty happy about that. I've been spending my spare in that class anyway, and never wanted history in the first place. I just wish I would have found out that Communications and Animation are no longer the same credit earlier in the semester, as this would have been much easier.

It seems I've become a bit of a tech support person since march break. I volunteered teaching seniors computers for that week, and am doing it again this week. I got my picture in the paper, and another lady looked me up in the phone book and asked me to come help her. I also found myself at my brother's friend's house helping his mother with a problem. It's amazing how well people insist on paying you for this kind of service. I have never once stated a price, or asked for payment, I've even said, "no, really, that's a bit much" a few times. Despite this, the going price for my services seems to be ten dollars an hour. I am in need of a job, maybe I should send out fliers...

Well, this post has exploded a bit from what I originally meant to put here, and I should probably be getting to bed. Until next time...

Maybe now would be a good time for that "CSS attack" on my blog that I've been planning...

Film Festival

2008-04-03T18:37:00.007-04:00

In my last post, I may have alluded to the fact that my school was putting on a small film festival type event. I've been working on a clip in blender since mid march, and was planning on submitting it to the festival. The Actual event is tomorrow, and my video was not submitted. I hid some snags at the last minute which meant I missed the submission deadline. Which isn't a big issue in and of itself, but it was the final straw. I wasn't to happy with the way the clip turned out. I had to leave it rendering overnight at my school, and eventually cut it short before it could finish rendering the last 60 frames or so. I had to cut it short so that I could bring it home that night so I could put it on disk in order to meet the deadline. Unfortunately, I failed to remember to actually copy the video onto my thumb drive.
So the video got cut down from 24 seconds to 22, (from 720 frames to 666, freaky, huh?) I have no real sound figured out for it, other than that the main background was going to be a Shepard tone. I was going to put some kind of music over that, but never got around to it. I didn't end up putting any real plot or anything into it, and none of the scenes I had pictured ever made it into the clip. To top it all off, I forgot to adjust one of the textures, and the position of a object, so it's glowing in a way it shouldn't, and is all glitchy where it meets the ground.
Lets run through that again: 22 second clip, with no sound or plot, and wasn't anything how I wanted it, and looked bad at points. I don't think that exactly qualifies as film fest material.
Of course, I'm not letting it go to waste, no siree. I've added a title screen, the Shepard tone, and replaced the missing frames with a preview animation of those same frames. It may not look all that great, but here it is:

And special thanks to our schools communication teacher for letting me use a school computer to render

Motivation

2008-03-28T08:53:00.005-04:00

I'm at school right now. On my spare. I probably should be doing something other than blogging. I'm suprised this site isn't blocked, actually. I have some history work I could probably be doing right now. Actually, not could, should. I just have a total lack of motivation for all things school-related at the moment.

Today's a Friday that was almost a snow day. There are really three things that have to happen for the busses to be cancelled:

It has to start snowing late the night before, or at least be snowing hard.
There has to be a lot of snowfall over the course of the night
It has to still be snowing in the morning

The weather reports were calling for all of these. Snow starting and midnight, continuing into the morning, about 15cm (6 inches). They were wrong. It started snowing around 6pm, stopped, started again around 10, was still going when I went to bed. When I got up there was maybe 5cm of snow on the ground, and all precipitation had ceased.

So there was school today after all. It's a shame because my girlfriend and I were planning on getting together, as her house is on route to my mom's work, whilst the school is 10 minutes out of her way. Either way, I'm at the school today. I don't really want to do any work. In calculus, we're working on these questions that aren't particularly difficult, but take 20 minutes to solve, and have a ton of places where you can mess up. History is being as boring as ever. I never wanted the class in the first place, but I needed one more to fill the schedule, and it was the best of the availiable choices. It's also my least favourite course this semester, holds no interest for me, and is not relevant to the feild I'm getting into. Computer Sciences, which should be a fun and interesting class, has also been rather dull. We haven't done any programing since February. Two days ago, we actually opened the java editor, because we needed the help files to do the API scavenger hunt; basicaly looking up what commands do and filling in the chart. Today we have another career study due. Almost the same assignment we do in every computer class. So basicaly, nothing interesting going on, but still lots of work to do. As I've said, I'm having trouble getting motivated enough to do any of it. What't the motivation? If I work really hard on all this stuff I really don't want to do, then in a couple months, I will have a somewhat higher number on a piece of paper. I have trouble finding any motivation in that, I just can't make the whole "your future depends on that number being higher" connection on a daily basis.

I have other stuff I'm working on, that has much more of my attention, and provides more motivation. My school's putting on a little film festival, for the fun of it, and I'm trying to put together an animation. The communications teacher is being nice enough to let me use one of the school computers for rendering. I need the clip done for wednesday, and was planning on doing a test render, but it seems my thumbdrive wants to keep losing the file. I double checked that it was on there when I saved last night, and it's gone today. I also have that webpage I could be working on, as that needs to get done soon. I need to get up to speed on php first though.

To top it all off, I had a run in with a zip-tie on a stair case yesterday . I'll have to post a picture of my hand when I get home. A note to anyone using zip-ties to repair railings: The sharp, cut-off end, should not be sticking up in the middle of the top of the railing. My hand felt like it was on fire for most of history class yesterday.

EDIT: Here's the pic:

Well, it seems I have done another somewhat complaint-ridden blog entry, so I need to end it with some good news. On the plus side, today is Friday, and if I can make it through today, I have the weekend to relax. Saturday I get to go hang out with my girlfriend, and that will be a major plus. Well, my first period spare is almost up, time to face the rest of the day. I'll be posting a copy of the film festival clip when/if I get it done. Until next time.

Darn... Internet Exlorer doesn't have spell check... Maybe I should look into getting Fire Fox on my thumb drive...

Web Design

2008-02-27T22:54:00.003-05:00

Hello! Today's post is going to be short and quick, because I don't have much time before I have to go to bed. I just felt like saying that I've been recruited by my dad to design a website for him. I've been updating it as a work in progress, this is very much a learning experience for me. If you go there, keep in mind that other than the basic HTML, I did not know how to do any of that last week. It's consuming most of my time. Of course, this means I'm learning tons of CSS stuff, which I intend to turn towards this blog at some point. I'd love to have posts use something like this:

I'll admit it, I really like these scrolling panel things, I think they're neat.
You could do so much with these
At least, I think so.
I wonder how Facebook will handle this?

So, you probably want a link to the site I'm working on. Here it is: http://users.xplornet.com/~goltd

When I get a chance I'll put the link in the sidebar, and I'm going to consider putting a poll up with some of the possible names. Well, until next time.

I can't wait to attack my blog with CSS :D

Happy (Belated) Valentines Day!

2008-02-15T23:10:00.009-05:00

Hello, all! So much for posting before New Years, or even acknowledging it. There's not much in the way of news since then. I've submitted applications to the universities I want to go to, and am now playing the ever-popular waiting game. My top choice is supposed to be making offers soon.
In other news, I found the stick figures I made for that Christmas video were an absolute pain to work with, and decided to do them over, the right way. What I ended up with are the lovely stick-people in the picture on the left. I know it's a day late for a Valentines pic, but I was busy yesterday. It was Valentines day after all.
Speaking of which, I am once again in a relationship. I think it's going really well. We went to the theater and saw Juno last night. It's a pretty good movie. And I got her a nice little pair of earrings.Those of you reading this from Facebook probably know how to find out who she is. For those reading on blogger, I'm sorry, but no more info for you.
It's semester 2 now, so I have a spare. I'm liking that. I also have calculus, history, and computer sciences. I'm finding I really like the limit in calc, am enjoying the movie in history, and am getting a bit annoyed with Java. Well, until next time, happy belated Valentines!

public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException
//so much code, so litte acomplished :(

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-24T21:40:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas! It's Christmas Eve right now, and I'm in a great mood. It's such a fun time of year. I actually got the theme up about a week ago, for anyone who's been paying attention. I like making these Christmas-y pictures. I even went so far as to render out a video in Blender of some stick figures getting ready for Christmas. It's a bit fast, I'm still not all that great at working out timings of things. I'm going to upload it here. I'm not sure how well that will work for Facebook readers, so if you want to see it, go to my blog's page at www.cyborg572.blogspot.com and watch it there, unless it works on Facebook. I learned a lesson from this though. My computer is not cut out for rendering. All the hissing and spitting sounds it makes are not encouraging. Anyway, I hope everyone has a fantastic Christmas, and a wonderful New Year. (though I should post again before than) Until next time, here's the video (yeah... there's no sound):

Yes, that's the same tree from the picture. Why model 2? Same presents too actually...

Graphics Card + 100 visitors

2007-12-14T22:58:00.000-05:00

I just got a new graphics card today. I can't wait to install it. I'm debating whether to install it tonight, or wait until tomorrow. I can't really do anything at the moment, because I'm waiting for the window's drivers for the card to finish downloading. My old card was an ATI Radeon 9200se, which is a real pain to get to do anything useful on Linux. I'm hoping this Nvidia GeForce Xfx 5600 will work better. I got an awesome deal on it from a classmate of mine. It's not a new card really, but looking at it's specs, it's about twice as powerful as what I have now, and with much better Linux support. So I'm going to save this as a draft now, and I'll get back to it after it downloads and I have it installed.

2007/12/17
Well, I installed the card on both windows and Linux, and was so pleased that I have to admit I completely forgot about this post. I now have fully working Compiz Fusion effects, and am just trying to work out a couple bugs involving running Blender. So all-in-all, I'm very happy.

I just noticed, as well, that my visitor counter hit the 100 visitor mark on Wednesday. This also makes me very happy. So thanks to everyone who reads this blog. Until next time... I'll be working on some Christmas graphics to put up.

I think part of the reason I'm getting visitors is because Google has started sending them my way. XD

It's About Time

2007-12-09T13:58:00.000-05:00

Anyone who reads this blog regularly (yes, I know, there aren't any, but still...) may remember a post I made last April, called "Don't We Get a Say In All This?". The post was about wanting to take a survey. I went on and on about not getting any say in the school system that makes up a major part of our life for 14 years or so. On Friday, and I know this had nothing whatsoever to do with my post, but that's not the point, everyone at our school received a newsletter informing us about an online survey from the school board. This pretty much made my day.

I'm taking the survey right now as I write this. It's modular, just so you know. It's a nice survey. Completely anonymous, with a user name and password given by the school. It lets you skip answers you're not sure about (unless you accidentally answer it...), and leave and resume at any time. It's nice to see the school board finally taking an interest in the opinions of students. There are a lot of questions, which is a good thing. Some stuff could be worded a bit clearer though. Apparently, "School to College" programs are not things like presentations from the colleges ans universities about things like financial management... I think I may have messed up there. Oh well. So far it seems to be mainly about things like Co-Op and Apprenticeship programs and the like. Maybe as it goes on there will be some questions about "Mainland School" if you catch my drift. Now it's onto dual-credit courses... I know very little about any of these, cause I've never done one. I'm leaving lots of answers blank. And judging by the progress bar, I am now on the last module, which is: Server Error !?!? darn, that's not good.... Alright, so I hit back, and then clicked the link again and it worked, but that could be a problem... This last module is on learning about post-secondary options.

Oh, I was wrong, there is another module, "Experiences at School" This is the one I've been waiting for. Good, relevant questions about the school experience in general. I like that I can sign up for results.

Well, the survey is done. I'm sorry if most of the blog up until this point was a bit incoherent, I was just jotting down my thoughts as I took it. The survey probably could have been better, but it's a nice gesture either way. I really hope this kind of thing continues and improves as the years go on.

Server errors are not good things to have in surveys. No siree Bob.

Graphics

2007-11-18T22:14:00.000-05:00

Well, I've been sort of busy. I've suddenly started customizing most of my computer. I figured out a better logo than that red diamond thing, and I've started using it to theme most of my computer. I made my own KDE login splash screen. Actually, I made two, almost identical. The rest of this post is just some example pictures. The first is my logo, then the two splash screens. If anyone uses KSplash, and wants these themes, let me know, I'll get them to you somehow. I don't think I'm going to put them on KDE-look.org or anything, unless someone thinks that's a good idea. Well, until next time, enjoy these pics!

Yeah... I just traced my pic in inkskape for the logo

Fog

2007-11-13T19:00:00.000-05:00

You know what my favorite kind of weather is? Fog. I really like fog. I just love it in the morning when you wake up and can't see anything out of your windows. Thick fog is the best. When everything starts getting blurry at an arm's length, and then by a couple meter's it solid gray. It's very peaceful, if you ask me. And usually the temperatures when it's foggy are nice too. Not usually too hot when it's warm, and you can usually get by with a light jacket on the cooler days. Yesterday was almost a very foggy day, but not really. I thought it might get foggy today because it was still foggy last night, but no. Oh well. I'm just waiting for spring, when all the fog comes to town, but all this thinking about it made me want to post about it. Until next time!

"In the arena of logic, I fight unarmed" - Red Mage, 8bit Theatre, www.nuklearpower.com

Ranting In MLA Format

2007-11-04T22:13:00.000-05:00

Today I'm working on an English essay. It has me really frustrated and I started ranting a few lines in. I thought I might as well post it here. Enjoy.

*My Name Witheld

*Teachers Name Witheld

*Course Code Witheld

4. November 2007

The novel “Cell” by Stephen King is a good book. Why? It just is. I liked it and you can take that as you will. I could tear it apart, find reasons, and quotes, and back it all up in the form of a three page essay, but then I wouldn't feel it was a good book any more. It would be tainted by the bad memories of having to shred it apart. That's why I don't do any readers responses on books I like. The whole process ruins the book for me. I'm going to have to find a different book to do my third response on, because I don't feel like ruining “The Salmon of Doubt” I thoroughly enjoy that book on so many levels, and this type of project would just ruin it. If you think of a favourite book as a favourite pet, you will see that this makes perfect sense. If you love your pet you just do. You don't try to pick your pet apart piece by piece to find what in them makes you love them. What you love is the pet as a whole. Once you pick it apart, what you have is a bloody mess, and your favourite pet is no more. That is just horrible. I know in a while I'll have to get rid off all this ranting and put an actual formal essay here about whether or not “Cell” was good. That's another challenge right there. I have to use “good book”/“bad book” as my thesis, those are the only two allowed. Those are, I'm fairly sure, opinions. We have to do it as a formal essay, which, by definition, are not opinions. It's the kind of contradiction that makes these projects that much harder to get a good mark on. Like being forced to build a house from what's left of you poor pet, only to have the person who made you do that complain that it seems like it was built from the remains of your pet (I think I might drop that metaphor now, it's a bit disturbing for my tastes). I really should erase all this and do the essay, as it is due first thing tomorrow, but I'm enjoying this much more. Picking English assignments apart is fairly enjoyable. Say you had this couch you really didn't like... well, you can see where that is going. You get a lot of Fabric and fluff, and maybe some fire wood, and no more evil couch. Also, you get some bing springs you can do stuff with. So by criticizing my English assignment, I get big springs, or something like that. Hang on, I'm going to check my English teachers rating on “RateMyTeachers.ca” just to see how he's doing there. I'm shocked at how good his ratings are. Oh well. Time to erase all this (probably save it first) and do the real essay. I guess. If I have to. Maybe I should go leave a comment on his rating, hmm....

Cellulose, My Good Friend

Happy Halloween!

2007-10-31T22:34:00.000-04:00

Well, It's Halloween once again. This year I managed to come up with a costume that I liked, my friends recognized, and that was easy to put together. Pajamas, plus house coat, (or dressing gown, or bath robe, or whatever you feel like calling it) plus towel equals: Arthur Dent. This Halloween I went as the main character from Hitchhikers. I didn't go out trick-or-treating this year, I might be getting a bit old for that. I would have handed out candy, but my road doesn't do trick-or-treating. All the candy is given out at a community Halloween party. That party was last week this year.
So I've tried theming my blog again. Probably should have done that a couple days ago. I'll leave the theme up for a while, just so it has a chance to run. If you're reading this on Facebook, you may want to check out the actual blog just to see. Right now it's just a themed pic, but when I'm done typing this I'll see what else I can do.
I managed to fix the problem with my computer constantly overheating (Broken fan fin catching on a grate) so I can actually use Blender once again. Now I can get to work making, um, stuff and whatnot... like Jack-o-Lantern display pics. That's it from me today. Until Next Time.

You know, technically, tomorrow's the holiday. Why do we celebrate "All Hallow's Eve", but not "All Hallow's Day" or whatever it's called?

What a Trip!

2007-10-28T19:49:00.000-04:00

I just got back from a two or three day trip, depending on how you look at it. Friday we headed to Toronto for a relative's wedding. I just figured out the actual relation at the reception. She's my Oma's Cousin's daughter. On Saturday we headed up to Peterborough. I got to spend the day with some of my friends who live in the area. It was nice to see them again. Today we drove by the place we used to live when we were there, and then headed home.

The wedding on Friday was alright, and the reception was awesome. The bride and her family have always known how to throw a great party. There was good food, Awesome deserts, lots of guests, plenty to drink, and - of course - a Live polka band. The band was very good. My parents were complaining that they only play polka music and nothing else, or so it seems. I didn't mind that very much. They had a CD player for the other music. The band was the Kielbasa Kings. They did some interesting stuff. They managed to successfully merge the Chicken dance with the Violent Femmes song, "Blister in the Sun" which made for an interesting song. They're polka remix of "Be My Yoko Ono" by the Bare Naked Ladies, another interesting combo. So all in all a great party. I mean, how couldn't it be? When you go to a party, and the first thing you do is find the small pumpkin with your name on it, you know it's going to be good. My dad took a bite out of his mini-pumpkin, just so you know.

I've been waiting for Saturday for a few weeks now. It's been about a year and a half since I've seen my friends from the Peterborough area. Although I could only hang with one of the two I went to see (and one of her friends I sort-of know) it was still fun. We didn't really do much. Just hung out like the "Good ol' Days." It was nice. Definitely worth the extra 8 hours of driving (2 up from Toronto, 6 for the trip home), and extra night in a hotel, compared to if we had just gone straight home on Saturday. I can't wait until later next semester (May, I think) when the school there does it's 1812 reenactment. My brother's part of the group that helps the school, so we'll be heading back up. That time will be for a few days, and with any luck I'll be able to see more of my friends in the area. I really miss hanging out with them.

Well that's it for me today. I've got some stuff in the works, if I can get my computer to stop overheating, so you may be hearing from me again pretty soon. Either way, you will hear from me again eventually. Until next time!

I'm going as Arthur Dent for Halloween.

English Class

2007-10-16T20:49:00.000-04:00

Brace yourselves, this is going to be one of my "Making a point" type blog entries. I haven't written one like this since Don't We Get a Say in All This. This time I want to focus on English class. I have long held English class as my least favorite of all the subjects (with geography a close second). Last year it seemed more brutal than ever, which is what inspired the aforementioned post. This year though, it somehow got worse. This year's English class is the second of two classes that have ever made me angry. Thinking about what the homework is, and what it will be, and what we will be doing for the next few weeks, it bothers me. Basically, in a nut shell, what we are doing is finding the longest, most uneventful, boring and depressing stories we can, and going over them slowly and painfully to suck out the hidden meaning. It's enough to drive a person mad, or at least put them into a bit of a depression, if it goes on for too long. Personally, I find these stories hard to read, and even harder to re-read. Between the boringness, the sadness, and my short attention span, I keep realizing that I haven't actually read any of the words on the last three pages, and keep having to go back. So what does one do about this? Nothing. There is absolutely nothing that can be done. Either you just suck it up, do the work, and feel like garbage for the next few hours, every day, or you don't do it and you fail the project, get a low English mark, and are rejected from university. There is no real way of protesting this. Even if everyone in the class protests together, the result is just group failure. And if you do do the work? No guarantee you won't just fail anyway. All these stories can be interpreted several different ways. Everyone will find different hidden meanings and messages, depending on personal biases. Of course, you tend to only do well if you pull out the same meaning as the teacher, who "knows" the hidden meaning. The only way to really know the hidden meaning is to ask the author, not that the teacher has ever done that. Their conclusions are based of assumptions made by other people who think they have it right. You can't ask the author yourself either, as they tend to make sure the authors of all the stories died at least a decade ago. So there it is, the boring, angering, depressing, futile thing that is grade 12 academic English. Until next time.

I REALLY don't like English. :(

Now What?

2007-10-14T00:13:00.000-04:00

Well... I've run out of things to do. For once I've gotten my computer to the point where everything is working. This morning I got blender all set up with my usual settings, and just plumb ran out of things that needed to be done. I'm once again looking for a project to keep myself busy with. I've got a couple things I've wanted to get started on for a while now. I was working on a 3D animation based on some really simple characters I found scribbled on some papers from when I was in grade school, And I've also got an Idea for a game I would like to work on. I'm just finding it very hard to actually get started. The animation is giving me trouble because I have this group of characters, and that's it. No story line, no personalities, no setting. The characters themselves aren't overly original, I'm pretty sure I had based them off of another character I had seen at the time, and I keep finding overused characteristics are all I can think of for personalties. As for the game, well, I started that over summer. Then I hit some road blocks. Then I tried to start up again. It's so tempting to just try and fix the code I wrote over the summer, but too much of it is buggy, and hacked together. So I'm trying to write it again from scratch, which his hard cause I can't remember what it was everything needed to do. I've tried looking off the original as a reference, but that just ends with me copying it, and is just as problematic as trying to fix it. I really need to sit down for a couple hours, completely uninterrupted and just think about it and work everything out. Of course, that's not going to happen anytime soon. during the day, when my family is all awake, I can't focus for more than ten minutes at a time. If it isn't my mom calling me to do something, then it's my brother just bugging me to tell me a joke from a Simpson's re-run that we've both seen about a dozen times. Or maybe it's the dog whining to go out. So that leaves at night, after everyone else has gone to bed. During the summer that's when I got the most work done. But during the school year, I have to get up at 6:00 in the morning. So the absolute latest I can stay up is eleven, which is when everyone goes to bed. Except on Friday and Saturday nights, when I can stay up later cause I don't have to get up. Lately, however, I'm finding I just can't do that. The seven hours of sleep or less, every night during the week is starting to catch up with me I think. I have no clue how to get in more sleep though. From six 'o' clock until three 'o' clock I'm at school, getting ready for school, or in transit between home and school. And although there is about two hours of free time over the course of the school day, it's not really constructive free time. Can't do much else other than talk to people. Not that talking to people isn't enjoyable, it just doesn't accomplish much. So that leaves from three 'o' clock until eleven 'o' clock in which I can get stuff done. That's eight hours. Seven if you take out the time spent on eating supper and doing dishes, less if my mom has me help her. So less than seven hours a day of true free time. Now, to actually get some work done on either of those projects, I need use of the computer. My dad uses the computer for work, on most nights, right up until super (six 'o' clock) so those three hours are gone. And I really should be using that time for school projects and whatnot. so after the hour for supper/dishes, I have four hours left at the end of the day, where I can sort of focus on getting stuff done. Provided my favorite shows aren't on that night. So if I were to go to bed earlier, I would get 3 hours a day to actually do what I want to get done, and it would be a distracted three hours. Also one of my favorite shows is on at ten, so I'd miss that. That's 15 hours, over the course of a school week, in which I can work on a project. Right now I get 18. Either way I'm usually distracted and multitasking. So what was the point of all this? I can't remember. I'm too tired. That was it I think. I don't get enough sleep during the week, and have no place in my schedule to fit more in. So on Friday and Saturday nights, when I try and stay up late, and take advantage of a few hours of productive, distraction free computer time, I find I'm too tired to focus on anything. I'm willing to bet that this blog entry has a few points that don't make sense, as it is after twelve on a Saturday as I write this. So I think I'm going to have to start taking advantage of the weekends to catch up sleep, which leaves me with no time to do some good, focused work. Of course, I'm sure I'm not the only one with this particular dilemma.
Doing some quick math, I come up with 21%. That's how much of the time I'm awake during a school week, that I can actually spend doing what I really want to, which is working on the projects I have going on the computer. It's kind of interesting to see that. Just figure out how much time during you school/work week you awake. I'm awake from 6am until 11pm, Monday through Friday. Unless I stay up late on Friday, but I'm just counting that as part of the "Unpredictable Weekend." So that's 85 hours each school week, of which 18 hours are actually spent on the computer, working on my projects. So that's 21%. Try it and see what you end up with. And feel free to post it in a reply here. Well, I think that's all for me. I'm going to re-read this and hope it all makes sense, and then I'm off to bed. Until next time!

Oh Well...

Back in the Flow

2007-10-11T22:15:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been suffering from a mild case of Distro-itis, brought on by the purchase of a nice, new, shiny, 160gig sata hard drive. I went with a sata drive because my computer came with a bunch of sata cables, so my natural assumption was that the computer supported sata. Imagine my surprise when I had to go back into town the next day to get an adapter for the power connection. Anyways, Like I said, I went through 3 distros. Fedora 7, Ubuntu, and PCLinux OS. My original plans were just to install Fedora, as I really enjoyed the live CD. I then thought it might be a good idea to try Ubuntu too, as it was supposedly very good.
So I installed both of them, and was having trouble juggling the two. I decided to Install just one, and since Fedora was causing me some frustration over my IP address (It was picking one that was on my network, but which was below the range my router broadcasts on) so I went with Ubuntu. That was going well, for a bit, but I was hitting problems left and right. Not anything you would find in the course of day-to-day use, just some fancy stuff I was trying to get working (XDMCP, or something similar, and MIDI). It would insist things like Xinetd were running, and XDMCP was on, but none of the other computers on the network could see it. So I set forth looking for another Distro that might give me more luck.
I took every "Which distro is for you?" test I could find, and ended up starting a download of OpenSuse. I was feeling slightly guilty about this, what with the whole Microsoft deal, and was looking for an alternative. I found one that none of the tests recommended to me, PCLinuxOS, and I stopped the download of openSuse, and went for PCLinuxOS instead.
It turned out to be a very good distro, within a day I had all the things that I couldn't get Ubuntu or Fedora to do over the course of a week. The only thing that bothers me is that the Beryl effects don't work well. They do work, it just gets a bit choppy a times. I might look into the DRI (I think that's it) project to get it working smoothly, but no rush.

In less technical news, I went to Stratford yesterday on a school field trip, to see The Merchant of Venice. It was an enjoyable experience. The best part of the trip had to be on the way home, when we stopped at a mall for supper. I found myself in a bookstore, following some friends. I had no intention of buying anything that day. But while I was waiting I decided to see what they had by Douglas Adams. I ended up getting myself a copy of "The Salmon of Doubt." So far I am enjoying it immensely.

Well, that about does it for me today. Until next time!

It's really the only way I can think of to end these things.

Quick Update Through the Chaos

2007-10-08T01:24:00.000-04:00

I did in fact get that hard drive, eventually. I've gone through about 3 distributions in a week or so, trying to find one that fits my needs. Haven't found time to post through all the chaos. Once everything settles down I'll be back with a full post with lots of details.

This post is really just so you don't think I dropped off the face of the earth ;)

A New Hard Drive

2007-09-20T22:22:00.000-04:00

If all goes well tomorrow, I'll be going shopping. For what? A new hard drive! I'm hoping I can find a decent one in my (low) price range. My dad's already agreed to let me install it in our computer. I can't wait. If all goes well, by the end of the weekend I'll have a full Linux installation on a decent computer. Until now I've been getting by with the version on the laptop (Damn Small Linux on a laptop with a 233mhz processor and 32mb of ram) and live CD's on the good computer. I'm planning on installing Fedora 7, as that's the distribution I'm currently obsessed with. I'm happy 'cause my computer actually supports all the Compiz desktop effects. Who knows, maybe the next time I post it will be from a full Fedora 7 installation!

Actually my GP2X is definitely a better Linux machine than the laptop. It has twice the RAM and about twice the processing power.

Facebook

2007-09-13T22:57:00.000-04:00

Enough of the people I know have bugged me about it, that I've decided to join Facebook. One of the things that helped convince me was it's ability to import blogs. So there's a good chance that most of the people reading this are probably seeing it in Facebook. I'm wondering if the comments posted here will be grabbed by Facebook too... Probably not. And I'm almost positive the comments won't go the other way either. Oh well. If you are reading this on Facebook, may I recommend looking at the real thing at least once, cause it looks a lot nicer. Well, I've got school tomorrow, so it's off to bed with me.

@Facebook Readers: Normally the text down here is small and italicized.

I Got It!

2007-09-11T19:56:00.000-04:00

You may have noticed that I haven't posted in a few days, and there's a somewhat good reason for that. Wednesday night, I got a package from Fed-Ex. And what was in that package? Why my new GP2X of course. So the last 6 days I've been spending all my computer time getting it all set up. I've found all the programs that I want on it, and converted all my music to the .ogg format. I've gotten my computer all set up to network with it even. I'm loving this little device.

In other news, I think I might cut back on how often I post. It seems after a day of school I just don't feel much like blogging, at least not about anything that isn't complaining. I'll still update it when I'm feeling up to it. Might try for at least weekly updates. We'll see.

Look at me! I'm Online! Hi Mom!

The First Day

2007-09-04T21:39:00.000-04:00

Well, as most of you know, and probably experienced, today was the first day of the new school year. It wasn't to bad today. Usually at the start of any semester, you have to fill out all sorts of personal information, and what your expectations are for the course, and whatnot, just so that the teacher can get to know you better. Fortunately, none of my teachers really did that this year, which is a nice change. My classes seem OK, and I actually have some very small ones (about 15 people). Our communications class just got all new computers, so that should be fun... once they get all the software on them. It should be a fairly decent semester. Of course, only time will tell.

English, Music, Animation, Math. What do you have?

The End is Near... Goodbye Summer.

2007-09-03T22:34:00.000-04:00

Today's it. The last day of summer vacation. I don't think it's really sunk in yet though. Halfway through next week I'll suddenly wish it were summer again. But for now, it seems I can hardly wait for the first day of school (or the third, which is the sixth, which is when my package arrives). I've got all my supplies ready, although it dawns on me now that I should probably get my backpack packed up for tomorrow. I'll probably do that when I'm done here. I wonder if I'll have a hard time falling asleep tonight, considering I'll be going to bed 4 hours earlier than I have been all summer. We'll I'm out of things to talk about. So for everyone going back to school tomorrow, Good luck.

Considering how late it is, I doubt anyone will read this until tomorrow, so I guess I should of said "For everyone who went back to school today, were you lucky?" or something.

Ungh... Technical Dificulties

2007-09-03T00:12:00.000-04:00

This morning I was talking to one of my friends, and we thought it might be fun to try our internet connections with a game of Animal Crossing: Wild World. Imagine my disappointment when my DS couldn't find the internet connection. I was puzzled cause I was sure I had typed in all the settings right. Just to be sure I booted up the Wii and ran it's connection tests, with the same results. Now, I'm absolutely positive that the settings on the Wii were right, cause I was using it online yesterday. I thought the problem might be a setting in the router, cause my dad and I were messing around in there trying to get some VoIP software working (but that's another story). I tried undoing every change we made, to no effect. I even tried restoring the factory default settings and setting the entire network up again from scratch. Still wouldn't work. The router has a problem once before where it stopped recognizing that the network cards could support 100mbps. I had to unplug it and let it cool of to get it working again. I though this might be a similar problem, so I unplugged it and let it cool off a few times while working on it. That didn't help. I started getting desperate, I even tried turning off the computer to see if somehow its new firewall was getting in the way. Nope. The only thing I can think of is that it did overheat, and cause permanent damage to the wireless. I hope there's something obvious I'm missing.

What? Where you expecting a nice little solution at the end?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
P.S. If you have any suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them.

Water Skiing!

2007-09-02T01:17:00.000-04:00

I went water skiing today. I haven't been water skiing since my dad's boat floated away a couple years ago. Kind of sucked, the boat floating away. We had been out water skiing all day, and we brought the boat up on the beach when we were done. It was an aluminum boat, I don't know the size. It had nice 24 hp off board motor, which was on it when it drifted off. Normally we put the anchor on the beach, just in case, but that night we forgot. If there had been a storm, we would have checked on it, but there wasn't. The water level just came up, and the boat drifted away. Last summer my dad thought he actually saw it on the back of a truck, of course he was about 6 hours away from here.

So the water skiing today was fun. I spent most of the time as a spotter though. But I still had fun hanging onto the jetski and trying not to fall off. I might be able to go again tomorrow, don't know if I have the energy or not though.

I also went tubing, but I don't wanna talk about that.

They're Finnaly Here!

2007-09-01T01:59:00.000-04:00

That's right, it's the post you've all been waiting for. (and if it isn't then oh well, it's the post I've been waiting for) I finally have completed images of the new robot.

First up is my new pic. This is it. The new robot. He has a TV screen for a head. I have a few pics I can put in place of the one he has now, as you'll see later. The background is something I made for a game that I was trying to make, but hit major roadblocks on. I think that will probably be My next project. That red diamond is my logo, I guess. If anyone has seen that anywhere before, please let me know so I can come up with something different.

Next we have a side shot of the robot in that same pose: The cord in his torso actually flops around when he moves.

Next is a front view: I've changed the pose and also his face. He's showing off the ability to stretch his limbs out to about twice their size.

And finally, because I was bored I turned on the transparencies and reflections and turned off the outlines for a more realistic pic: So there you have it. The new Robo 2. Was it worth the wait? You can decide that for yourself.

WooHoo! I'm DONE! I never thought I'd see the day. Now onto my next major project! Or maybe not...

Gotta Be Quick

2007-08-30T23:55:00.000-04:00

Not much in the way of news tonight. Every summer the little community I'm in has games of Baseball every Thursday. They're just little pickup games, and other than the people running it, I'm one of the oldest who still goes. Tonight was the last game of the summer. So we all had hot dogs. It really drives it home that the summer is at an end. I was at my neighbor/cousin's house all night, so I'm just getting on long enough to type this. I have to go to bed because I have an early day tomorrow.

As you probably can figure from reading that, I didn't get a chance to render any robo pics. But be patient. I will get them done as soon as physically possible.

!pleh ,neecrs rouy ni kcuts m'I

It's Done!

2007-08-29T22:16:00.000-04:00

I finally finished the new robot today. What? You want pictures? I was planning on rendering a new shot for my Pic, and maybe some other ones for the heck of it. Unfortunately, my dad has been using the computer since 6 this morning, and he does 3D work too. So by the time I got on the computer was overheated and worn out. It kept crashing while I was trying to pose the Robot for the pic. As soon as I can get on the computer while it's stable, I'll render up a nice gallery of pics.

I got an e-mail last night from the website I ordered the GP2X from, and they gave me the FedEx tracking number. I checked on the website, and It's expected to arrive on the 6th. I can't wait. I was hoping to get it before school started, but at least I'll be getting it soon.

Which reminds me, school is just around the corner, 5 days of summer vacation left, and then it's back to the old grind. This year it's grade 12, "Kings of the School" as I've heard some people say. Quite possibly the last year of high school. This year is also a first for me in that it will be the first time since I've started high school that I've been to the same school for two years in a row. It will be nice to actually get the classes I want, other than just getting whatever I could be put into at the last minute.

I'm starting to ramble now because my connection has cut out meaning that I cannot save or publish this blog, or chat with anyone. I'm using the live CD right now, so there's not much else I can do. Hopefully the connection will come back and I can end this post.

...Nope, still no connection. So.... anyone seen any good tv lately? I haven't been watching it much myself. Just Doctor who. Monday's episode was pretty good. I quoted a line from it at the end of the post before last. Although I wrote that from memory, so it's probably a bit off. And I still don't have a connection... wow, I don't think it's ever gone out for this long before. It's a good thing I couldn't get the robot pictures today, I wouldn't be able to upload them anyway. I still don't have a connection, but I'm calling it quits.

I'll just wait in silence, in order to maintain some quality here.

Little Bite-Sized News Bits

2007-08-29T00:15:00.000-04:00

I finally did it. The robot now has a head. Tomorrow I'll just have to add the neck, and it will be done.

I did manage to get that Darwinia game working. And it's pretty fun. It can be slow and challenging at times, but you usually feel like you're actually accomplishing something.

Not much else is going on. The GP2X is en-route. I just got another e-mail confirming that it has been shipped. I'm waiting for the tracking number to start working.

Yes, this post has small paragraphs. you have a problem with that? I know my English teacher would...

Display Driver Update!?!

2007-08-27T23:53:00.000-04:00

As a nice gesture today, my brother bought me a belated birthday Gift. Its a game called Darwinia. It's supposed to be a very unique game, and has had hight ratings, but I can't get it to work. I'm in the middle of waiting for new display drivers to download. The site's instructions said to uninstall the old ones first, so my computer is running a bit slow at the moment. But hopefully it will all be worth it. That means no robot updates today, but I think I have an Idea for what the head might look like....

"This is my Timey-Wimey Device. It goes "Bing" when there's stuff. It also boils eggs at 30 paces... whether you want it to or not, actually. I'm avoiding hens, it's not pretty when they pop" - Doctor who

I'm Getting One!

2007-08-26T22:59:00.000-04:00

I've manged to hit my goal, so I ordered it today. That's right, the GP2X is in the mail! (or will be at some point tomorrow) I can't wait for it to show up. I just hope it gets here before school starts. It would be nice to have a few days to figure it out. I wonder if the school would let me classify it as a PDA, or something like that. And if so, I wonder what they're policy on those are...

My attempts at working on the robot last night were foiled. Blender didn't work so well on the live CD, and by the time I decided I wouldn't be able to get it working and moved to Windows, My brother came down and booted me off the Comp. I might work on it a bit tonight, but I don't know.

Other than that there's not too much going on. Just the same-old same-old.

the head... definitely the hardest part of the robot

Burnt by the Weather

2007-08-25T23:54:00.000-04:00

There was a big storm last night, big enough to make the power flicker a few times, and the TV had tornado warnings going. I don't think any tornadoes ever formed though. The flicker of the power did have some interesting effects... We were at my grandma's at this time, but my dad was home. He said that the power went out for about an hour. When it came back on, here could hear electricity crackling in the laundry room. There was also a smell of burning plastic. It turns out all that noise and smell was the water furnace doing something it definitely shouldn't. So we've been without air conditioning today, and will be tomorrow (Sunday, I notice as I type this it's 2 minutes after midnight...) It's not all too hot, but it's a bit muggy.

I'm still using the LiveCD for all my computing needs. Right now I'm trying to see if I can't find a way to get blender working. In which case I'll work on the robot's head. There's not much else going on, but I did see something very interesting today. I had no idea Windows XP could run on a computer with 64 mb of ram, considering the minimum requirements are... oh wow... I just looked it up as I'm typing this and the minimum is 64... wow... that's a bit embarrassing. I'm just going to shut up now...

the minimum is 64mb? Since when?

Burnt by the Firewall

2007-08-25T00:05:00.001-04:00

I'm blogging once again from the Fedora Live CD. My dad installed a new firewall on Windows, and it's driving me up the wall, constantly telling me it denied something, occasionally giving me the option to accept it, but mostly making executive decisions, and just telling me. So I'm having fun messing around with settings in GNOME. I've added a pair of eyes and a fish to the top menu on my screen. I really like how customizable everything is. It's a real shame it will all be lost when I reboot. I think once I'm done saving up for the GP2X (almost there, can probably order it by next week) I'll have to save up for my own external hard drive, unless I can get a job, in which case I'll save up for a laptop. But that's dreaming a little bit.

I can't get to the robot files from here, so no progress on that...

New Linux Live CD!

2007-08-23T22:54:00.000-04:00

I don't think I've ever posted about this before or not, but I'm a big GNU/Linux fan. Back when I had Dial-up I was stuck trying little live CD versions, like Damn Small Linux, or Slax. These were nice cause they fit on my thumb drive, but were laking in a lot of features because they were so small. Last night I downloaded the Fedora 7 Live CD. It's a bit big for my thumb drive (well, I could put it on there if I really wanted, but not much else). I'm finding It really enjoyable, actually I'm using it right now to type this. I really like the look of this Live CD, after I convinced it I had a screen that could do better than 800x600, I started testing everything. Compiz worked just fine, and I Really like it, my windows are all stretchy and wobbly, and I can spin the whole thing on a 3D cube. If something crashes, the window goes all gray-scale so you know that particular window is done for. I'm am having a hard time with getting music going, because of the lack of MP3 support, and My CD drive is full. All in all though, I really, really like this. If it weren't a live CD, I'd always use it. Maybe I can talk my dad into letting me install another hard drive...

I set my resolution without having to use the Shell! Hoora!

Birthday, Binder and Robot News

2007-08-22T20:36:00.000-04:00

Soo.... my birthday went well. My parents have told me to think about what I want from them. I going to wait until the end of the week to decide. There's something I'm saving up for (a GP2X) There's a chance I might have a job for the next two days, at $10.00 and hour, which would make it so I can afford it. If I don't then I'll ask for some help in buying it. If I can afford it on my own, then I'll think of something else at that point. There's a really good chance I won't have the job, because it's tomorrow morning and I didn't hear back from the guy who's hiring people, which means I'm on the list of people to call if someone doesn't show up tomorrow. Maybe I'll get lucky.

I went back to school shopping yesterday. It was nice for once to go without my brother. I didn't need much this year, as almost everything from last year survived. I just replaced my old mechanical-pencil/pen/other-pen-or-stylus-your-choice all-in-one multipurpose writing utensil with a nice, simple, quality mechanical pencil. It was really the only part of my last "device" that I really ever used. I got the usual refills of stuff: paper, lead, and erasers. I got a new lunch bag and a new binder-type-thing. It's not really a binder.

With the exception of grade 9 French (where a binder was a requirement) I haven't used a binder since starting high school. In grade school I tried using binders, but they just didn't work for me. When I tried to write in them, the pages would tear out, so I had to take the paper out to write on. I've always been a bit lazy when it comes to organizing that kind of thing, so instead of putting pages back, they would end up it the front inside pocket of the binder. That's right, all the papers for all of my classes were kept in the same pocket of one binder. Not the best way to stay organized. When it came to grade nine, I had an Idea: Just forget the rings, and get a folder with a pocket for each class. I managed to find something very close to what I was looking for. It was plastic, had no rings, folded open with a notepad inside, and had three tabbed pockets to put papers in. Lucky Three pockets was enough, cause the school I go to is semestered, and I had one class each semester that didn't need a folder (gym and French). I ran into problems though, with the way it held the notepad in place. Actually, that was the problem, It expected a notepad, which I bound at the top, whereas for schoolwork, I needed a notebook, bound on the left side. It just meant that the book wasn't firmly attached to the folder, also, at the end of the year, when it was getting full, it started cracking. When I started grade 10, I got a new folder. It was bigger, and had 5 folders, one for each subject, and an extra folder for stuff like newsletters and a pack of grid paper. It had smoother plastic then the first one, meaning I could use it as a lap desk, but it still expected a top-bound notepad, instead of a side-bound notebook. It lasted me through both grade 10 and 11, but it has some pretty bad cracks in it. So this year I've gotten a new one. It has 7 folders, six of which are labeled, and also a pocket that could count as an eighth folder. It's made mostly made out of fabric, with plastic for the folder dividers, and some cardboard reinforcement. Best of all, it is designed for a side-bound notebook! The fabric should be more durable then the plastic, and it's lighter and more flexible. I like this new folder.

In robot news, I just finished the hand a few minutes ago, which means all I have left to do is attach the hands and feet to the rest of the robot, and make a head. That will be the hard part. I have no clue what to do for the face, I'm thinking of trying to make it look like a mechanical version of my own...

If you missed the Themed image yesterday, and still want to see it, It's in a photo album called "Themed Pics". Any themed images I use on this blog will end up there, so feel free to check them out, just follow the link on the left to my photo albums. Well, that about wraps it up for this post

for some reason, I really enjoy back-to-school shopping. And cheesecake, that's what I had for my birthday.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2007-08-21T00:19:00.000-04:00

Okay, technically, it's Tuesday. I guess that means I missed a post. Oh well, not much I can do about that now. So tomorrow, or today or whatever (Tues. Aug. 21) Is my birthday, so I can't wait. Not too too much else going on. I made a foot for the robot, so I've just got the hands and head left, if I don't decide to scrap the feet too.

I've decided to start theming this page for special occasions. Today, I'm just going so far as to give my good 'ol robot a party hat.

I look like a monkey, and I smell like one too... cha-cha-cha

In the Aftermath of the Party

2007-08-19T16:27:00.000-04:00

The party yesterday went off without a hitch. Guests started arriving at 3:00pm yesterday afternoon, and everyone was gone by 1:30pm. So we were an hour and a half short of having it go the full 24 hours. We played baseball, volleyball and soccer. Most of the adults just socialized, and it was the younger of us playing the sports. When it got dark there was capture the flag, and about six different types of tag and hide-and-go-seek. When nothing else was going on, the Wii got a real workout. The food was good, but some of it ran out pretty fast. There was 111 guests in total, so the 40 hot dogs went pretty fast, along with the small pot of meatballs. But there's still plenty of pork and cake left over. Some people spent the night, but most went home late on Saturday. Tonight's garbage night, so we don't have to worry about storing the trash for a week. No one seemed to mind when it started raining.

That's about it for me today. Looking forward to next week, well Tuesday to be exact. Why? Nothing to exciting. If you really must know then check back on Tuesday. Until Nex - oops, um.... See ya!

I must find a good way to end my posts.

Party!

2007-08-17T22:55:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow we're having a big pig roast at my house. We used to do it annually, but then we stopped. This year was my grandpa's 70th birthday, and he really misses them, so he's funding a great big one this year. We have no clue how many people are coming. I've invited a few people, my brothers invited his friends, all of our family is invited, my parents are inviting friends, my aunts inviting friends, and my grandparents are inviting friends, and none of the invitations say to RSVP. This should be interesting. How do you prepare for X number of guests, when you have no clue to what X would be? We're just assuming 70-100 and hoping for the best. It's going to be allot of fun with all sorts of games like baseball and tennis and volleyball. Some people are planning on spending the night too. According to the invitation, it all starts at 3 and ends at "..." So don't be surprised if I don't update at all tomorrow.

Robot? what do you... Ohhhh THAT robot? Do I have to talk about it every post? It's coming.

One Step Forward, And That Same Step Back

2007-08-16T23:28:00.001-04:00

Not much going on of late, again. I've been working on the robot as much as possible. Last night I designed a Torso for it, which I'm going to trash cause I don't really like it. This is why it's taking me so long. I want something that looks like I didn't throw it together. The torso had that look, most likely because I just threw it together. I'm also finding it hard to fit computer time in. My dad uses the computer for work - and I'm going to end this line of though right now, before I slip back into my old complaining ways. So the robot is coming, and since I haven't yet figured out a good way to end a post, I'll just stop.

No, seriously, I'm done.

"Hello, I'm Cyborg_572, and I'm a complainer. It's been 6 posts since I've last complained, but earlier today, I was really tempted..."

Why do they call it anonymous if you start by saying your name?

My 3D Work, A Comparison

2007-08-15T21:17:00.000-04:00

All this talk of the new Robot has got me all curious. I went back into the copy I keep of the old laptops hardrive, and found some of my old work from November/December 2003. It was on an older version of Rhino then the robot was made on, so it didn't have the benefit of the Flamingo renderer.

All of these images were made pretty close together. The Pot was finished on November 29, 2003, the Alien was done a couple hours later, and the Joystick was finished the next day. There's nothing too special about them, mostly just 3D primitives that have been scaled wierd and Booleaned. The Robot was made in August of 2004, but was rendered with Flamingo. That was made using primitives and a technique from the tutorials part of the Manual.

These Next pictures were made recently, in Blender. There a bit of an improvement from the older works.
That one on the left is some kind of massager, I guess. I modeled it first, and decided what it was later. Not usually the best way to do things. I'm hopping to really up the quality of the robot, but be warned, I'm heading away from photo-realism with it. I want to try for something that looks like a cartoon. I've always liked 3D images that try to look like 2D images. I just love the Irony of it. You put in so much extra time and effort to make a complex 3D model that looks like someone drew it in a matter of minutes. The real fun comes when you animate it though, that's were you save allot of effort, cause you don't have to draw it from a bunch of different angles. Of course, it takes 5 minutes to render one second of video... I guess there's pros and cons flying all over the place, I'll just stick with the 3D though, cause that's what I know.

I must go now to do work on the new robot. Until next time... man, that's getting old, I've ended four of the last five blogs that way. hmmm...

As you can tell, I like to make inanimate objects, which gets in the way of my goal of making an animation...

Just Another Post, Mostly Robot News

2007-08-14T00:06:00.001-04:00

Oops, looks like I missed a day there. Oh well, only by a few minutes. I just finished a test render of an arm for my robot, it took forever because I rendered an 8 second animation of it. I think it's coming along nicely, if I can figure out anything other than the arms and legs. I still have no clue what to make the feet, hands, body, or head look like, but I'll figure it out as I go. I have a strong urge to post a picture of the new arm, but I want to keep it a surprise.

I almost regret setting up the web counter, as it shows me that I was quite right in calling this "my quiet little corner of the web" Oh well, not much I can do about that, other than try to create interesting posts that attract the attention of people who will read this.

There's not much else to go on about right now, hopefully in the coming days I'll get more done with the robot. Eventually I'd like to animate it completely in a video, but that's if I can muster up something to resemble a plot. I've never been much for creativity.

Until the next time, Have fun!

hmmm.. quantity, or quality... I need content.

A Blog Update About The Updates to My Blog

2007-08-12T22:47:00.000-04:00

Welcome once again to my quiet little corner of the web. There's not much going on to talk about, so most of my news actually involves some of the changes I've made to this blog.

A couple posts ago I mentioned that some family was visiting the area and one of them has a Deviant Art page. Well, they're heading home tomorrow. I did ask about a link to the deviant art page and am happy to say that she was more than happy to let me link to it. So please, check out Sombraro-o-doom's Deviant Art page, there's some really nice artwork there. I've added a link to the side bar, under "Other Sites to Check Out:"

I've made a few other changes too, though nothing drastic. The "Powered by Blogger" Icon has been moved up a few notches to be directly under the "Blog Archive", and I've added a web counter, it will count all the visits from today onwards, along with some other useful information. Thanks to StatCounter.com for there wonderful free services. Something really hard to notice is that I've changed the fonts on all the titles from Arial to Verdana.

My redesign for the robot is coming along nicely, I've been experimenting with some neat effects I'd like to use, and it seems that most of them will work. I hope to get the new version in place pretty soon.

Not much real news today, just pointing out the potentially obvious. ;)

Web Browsing On My Wii

2007-08-11T03:49:00.000-04:00

What? Two posts in two days? I haven't done that in a long time. Tonight I'm trying something new; this post is being wriitten from the comfort of my couch, using the Wii's internet channel. XD Although the internet connection is fast enough to use with the Wii, it's a bit unstable, which offers some interesting challenges. If the connection is lost, theres a chance the page might refresh, which would reset everything. If I'm typing the keyboard, any edits I've made disapear. So I'm only typing a few words at a time and saving often. I also can't use bloggers WYSIWYG editor, so I'm trying to remember as many HTML tags as I can.

The Internet channel does work pretty nice though, I've been playing Flash games and movies full screen on my tv all night. It's a fun way to pass the time.

You may notice some changes in the page layout of this blog, or maybe not, they were small changes. I've decided that along with my display pic, I should update the look of my whole blog. Expect alot of subtle changes in the future, I'm going to be messing with colour and whatnot alot until I find a look I like.

Until next time, Have a good day, or week, or however long it is before I post again.

This small text takes allot more HTML than i thought it would.

Summer Update

2007-08-09T23:40:00.000-04:00

Well, I've once again gone an insanely long time between posts, over a month if I'm not mistaken. I guess my plans for posting more during the summer are... oh well. It's been such a good week this week. I've managed to do several things I've been wanting to do for a long time. I have no clue where to begin, I'll just go at it chronologically.

Met some family who lives 3000 kilometers away, who I haven't seen in at least 7 years
Got to be a DJ for a night
Played Cricket
Saw the Simpson's Movie (I recommend it to anyone who likes the Simpsons. It was awesome!)
Got high-speed internet
Used my Wii online

There was the odd thing or two that was less enjoyable, but I don't want to dampen the mood. Points 1, 3, and 5 have to be my favorites, especially since I had doubts of any of them ever actually happening. I don't want to talk to much about my family online... but one of my family members from afar has a deviant art page. If I can get her permission, I'll post a link. Until then, all shall remain anonymous.
I was really surprised at how fun cricket is. I was at an historical reenactment, and one of the reenactment personnel got a pick-up game going. It took him all of five minutes to explain the rules and we started. It's awesome. No fouls, no bases, no tagging. Anytime the person hitting feels safe taking a run, they can. If they hit it and don't feel safe, they don't have to run. The ball can be hit in any direction. And all you have to do to get some on out is catch the ball after they hit it, but before it touches the ground, or just whip the ball at the wicket before they cross the safe line. I did find myself having to struggle to take the game seriously though, having read "Life, The Universe and Everything" (one of the books in the hitchhikers trilogy).

In other news... Can you see that blue robot, the one on the "About me" panel? Well, here's a pic in case I've removed it by the time you're reading this: Well, that pic has been around forever. I think I made it the first time I was on MSN, so it's definitely very old, well for a DP anyway. I made the model for it long before that using my dad's copy of Rhinoceros. It was a grey robot then, and it was doing a handstand. Like this:
I've decided that I'm tired of this old robot, which I made back in 2004. I've decided that I'm going to create a new robot, loosely based on this one, but using Blender instead of Rhino, and adding My 3 more years of 3D experience to make it much better.

I sincerely hope to update this blog allot more often. Now that I have high-speed, that might be a possibility. This whole process has become allot more painless, and once I get the Wii web browser, I could do this from the couch. Until next time, Enjoy what's left of the summer, I know I will.

Edit: added the Title... stupid! stupid! stupid! :P

By the way, the closest thing to a name that robot has is "Robo2" which is its Rhino file's file name.

Summer!

2007-06-25T22:11:00.001-04:00

It's finally summer! 8 weeks with no school. Doesn't seem like much when you consider that everyone's been anticipating it for about 10. Oh well, summer may be short, but all the good stuff is in the last week anyway, at least for me. It's a busy summer, a job and a volunteer position. Saving up for a GP2X, and getting experience in the IT department.
This weekend was the annual community yard sale. For $11 I got a copy of Super Smash Bros. and a network router. That should keep me busy for a while, not to mention several other little projects I'm working on.
Kinda sucks not seeing everyone everyday, but there's always MSN. What would I do without the internet? Speaking of which, the local county council is trying to get a county wide fiber optic network installed. Now that would be awesome.
Just felt the need to update this thing with some news. Maybe now I'll be able to try and post more often, and about meaningful stuff to. Till next time, enjoy the summer!

Hey! Would you look at that! An entire post, no complaints, and only one cynical remark. Getting good at this :)

Don't We Get a Say In All This?

2007-04-25T20:47:00.000-04:00

I would love to do a survey right now. I think all students should be able to do a survey right now. 14 years, on average. Everyone spends about 14 years in school. There's no way out of it. You are sent into it when you are 4 years old, and stay in until you are 17 (at least that's how the school board around here does it: Junior Kindergarten - Gr.12) and not once during this entire experience, at least not to my knowledge, does anyone running the school boards ask of students, "What do you think of the way schools are run?", "How do you feel about the selection of books that are in the curriculum?", "How many hours of homework do you think are appropriate?" They just assume that students like reading books written circa 1950, and that you can't have too much homework, the problem must be with your time management, and that the schools are all running fine. I'm not saying that student's should have total control over the way the schools are run, but (in some places) even criminals can vote for the government, which gives them some say over how the prisons work, student's don't even get to help decide who the minister of education is. We're all stuck with whatever the people in charge say were stuck with. I guess they wouldn't have to even take the surveys as binding in any way, but at least read the results. We all spend about six hours a day at a school, it would be nice to feel we have some sort of say in how it all runs.

Am I complaining again? Or am I trying to make a point?

Whoa... Long Time, No Blog...

2007-03-29T21:29:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything here. I guess if I want to attract any readers, I should probably give them something to read. I have been working on a new post, where I was going to tie up a bunch of loose ends. I was going to go slowly and painfully through every post, list them here by date, and them tie up any loose ends. I've decided that would be a complete waste of both my time and yours. I'll just go over the ones I can think of here:

Still don't have high-speed
Halloween costume was so-so
My girlfriend and I broke up

Enough Old news, what can I give you in the way of new news? Not much actually. Life's Life and ya just gotta roll with it. I'm going to try and remember to type here more often. Talk to whoever reads this again soon.

"so remember when your feeling very small and insecure
how amazingly unlikely is your birth
and pray that there's intelligent life, somewhere up in space
cause there's bugger all down here on earth."
~taken from: " The Galaxy song", Monty Python ans the Meaning of Life~

Exam Time

2007-01-23T19:26:00.000-05:00

Yeah, it's that time of the semester. Exams. That means no after school activities, or sports, or anything run by the school that doesn't take place in a classroom, during normal school hours. Not that that bothers me too much, I don't participate in any of those. It's more the "why" that has me writing this. All those things are canceled to give students time to study. I guess the school feels students should study 24/7. Every class gives you all period, every period, for studying, and then you're supposed to go home and study so much that you have to cancel your once-a-week, one-and-a-half-hour trip to the weight room (not that I do that, but my workout habits are not the point here). I'm no expert, but there has to be some downside to studying that much. If you ask me that much studying is a good way to get stressed and tired, and no matter how much you study, if your stressed or tired (let alone both) your not going to do well. But like I said, I'm no expert, to each their own.

Relax, all this test means is whether you have to do the year over again or not. No pressure.

No Complaints... At Least Not From Me.

2007-01-11T21:03:00.001-05:00

I promised I would not complain on my next post. Of course, this isn't my next post... this is my current post. So here come the complaints. No... I wouldn't do that. Don't want to scare off the few people who actually read this thing. One quick note, due to a comment on the last post, I am now moderating the comments. Anyway... I had an idea. You, the readers of this blog, are probably getting sick and tired of me complaining, either that or your enjoying it. Either way I think it's time you got your turn. Anyone who wants to vent, feel free to complain in the comments section of this post, or any other post. And don't feel the need to only complain about what is posted here. Anything is fair game. Just keep in mind that anything inappropriate/illegible will not be posted. Well, thats it for me this time. See ya.

uh-oh, what have I gotten myself into?

Christmas' Right Around the Corner

2006-12-24T00:15:00.000-05:00

It's the day before Christmas eve. Actually, now that I look at my clock, I realize that technically, it is Christmas eve. As much as I look forward to Christmas, I can't help but feel a little upset. I look out the window, and there is now snow at all. we've had maybe two snowfalls this year, and neither of them stuck around. On Friday it actually rained. My music teacher had "I'm dreaming of a wet Christmas" written on his board. The Forecast actually calls for rain tomorrow(or would that be today? ugh.. I gotta start going to bed before midnight, It's a lot less confusing). Nothing says global warming like rain on Christmas eve. Especially in Canada. Just a couple hours north of where I live, a couple weeks ago, they had a pretty good snowstorm with a couple feet of snow. In Denver the airports are closed for snow. If people won't try to stop global warming for the sake of the environment, then how about for the sake of a traditional white Christmas. I'm sorry, I know, I'm complaining again, aren't I? On the upside, The next few days are supposed to be full of fun, if not snow. And new years is coming up as well. I promise that my next post will have 0% complaining.

You might not hear from me for a while...

Yet Another Post. This Time I Have News!

2006-12-11T21:55:00.000-05:00

Something entirely unexpected happened last Monday (Dec 4/06) - I, of all people, now have a girlfriend. I have to tell you, that came out of left field. She can be found online as Erana on deviant art. Not much else besides that, but I think anyone's first girlfriend can be considered worthy of their blog. Especially since I usually write about nothing.

Christmas is right around the corner. I already know what I'm getting. My parents gave me my gift early, as it was half Christmas half birthday, and my birthday was in august. My grandma tried to give me her gift early too. But I guess there are still some surprises. But that's not what Christmas is about is it? I need to figure out what to get everyone else.

Don't things normally fly into left field?

I Got One!

2006-11-22T21:14:00.000-05:00

As many of you probably know, Sunday was the release day of the Nintendo Wii. On Monday I thought I had no chance of getting one, but on Friday my grandma talked me into waiting in line. I'm glad I did. It is 100% awesome. I did have some trouble with the controller that came with it, whenever I hooked up a nunchuck it would act up and intermittently lose it's connection to the Wii. (I just have to find something to complain about, don't I?) It turned out to just be that particular controller and I have since replaced it and have had no trouble. I just wish I had high speed so I could get the Wii Connect 24 thing going. Oh well... someday I will get it. I also got a copy of Twilight Princess, and haven't been able to put it down since. I haven't been on the computer in almost a week now, which is odd for me. Well, I just had to tell everyone so thanks for reading. Hopefully I can think of something better to write next time.

Maybe I should put down the Wii and get some homework done... hmmmm...

First Comment!

2006-11-07T19:54:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to post for a few days now. The only real reason is that I'm proud to announce that at least one person has at least noticed this blog in passing and has decided to comment. It's good to know that this isn't a complete waste of time. Halloween has passed, and I ended up staying home. No one trick-or-treats by my house, so I didn't get to give out candy either. I decided to take another whack at Majora's mask, in anticipation for the Sunday after next. That's the nineteenth, official launch date for the Wii. Personally I can't wait. I just hope I can manage to get one on the launch date, I don't think I could wait for the next shipment. Well, that's all for now enjoy yourselves.

ever been thrown without warning into a chat room on MSN? It's very disorienting.

It's Been a While...

2006-10-27T23:11:00.000-04:00

It's been almost a week since my last post. Partly due to lack of things to blog about, partly due to lack of time to blog in. Not much has changed since my last post, I'm still looking for a Halloween costume, and I better hurry, I have a Halloween party to go to tomorrow. I'm thinking of going as a hacker(cracker), the kind you see on TV, the guys who use the computer to spy on corporations and enemies, and despite the fact of being miles away from the place they are spying on, still feel the need to keep in shape and dress all in black, as if that makes their computing stealthier. Either way I think it would make a neat costume. I'm going to dress all in black, and spike my hair, but not so that it sticks up, but so that it hangs down in groups/cones. I have a small hand-held computer (a Cybiko for anyone who's ever heard of one). I intend to carry around with me. I also have a pair of yellow motorcycle glasses for night that look geeky yet cool at the same time. Until next time. See Ya.

I'll hack you... watch - 10010010000011111010010100101010101010100120101010101010... yeah... have a good Halloween

Halloween is Fast Approaching

2006-10-18T21:23:00.000-04:00

It's already the 18th of October, Halloween is only 13 days away. Normally by now I'd have my costume all figured out, or at least have an idea of what I intend to go as. This year, Zilch. The fact that my costume budget this year is all but non-existent doesn't help much. I have a pretty freaky mask I could use, but I've used it two years ago, and didn't see anyone in the Halloween in between, so I would more or less be using the same costume twice in a row, and aside from the mask the costume wasn't that great. I've considered the possibility of going as Sam Fisher, but I don't have even part of the costume, so I hit the budget problem. I guess I need to stop thinking "What do I want to dress up as" and then putting together a costume. I really need to look at what I have lying around and put something together from that. Maybe I could just go as some generic spy and put together an easier costume that way, maybe even turn some of the random electronic parts I have lying around into a fancy prop? I guess the possibilities are endless, so at least one possibility has to be good, right? I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

BOO!!!!! hah haha ha haa... yeah...

Let's Talk TV... Or something.

2006-10-17T20:16:00.000-04:00

Sorry I didn't post yesterday, but there are some days when you just can't get to the computer. Anyways, I'm thinking about not posting every day any way (see last post). Not much going on right now. Well I shouldn't say that, there is a lot going in the world, but that stuff is all over the news, so there's no point putting it here. There's nothing on TV tonight, unless house is on. You ever notice how some nights there are so many good shows on that you have to pick a few and completely miss out on the rest? Today all anyone was talking about was "hero's." of course, I chose to watch Dr. Who instead. Of course tonight there is almost nothing on. House used to be on on Tuesdays, but it hasn't been lately, although I have seen it on on Mondays (Like I'll ever get to see any more of it now!). Wednesday isn't bad, there's one show on for every hour of TV my family watches. That's the way it should be. Thursday's are Tuesday all over again. Never watch anything on Friday, usually rent a movie on Saturday, and catch Monty Python's Flying circus at 11:00. There's a few good shows on Sunday too.
I have no idea why I just listed the weeks TV schedule, maybe it's just that whenever I run out of things I turn to TV, but usually quoting episodes, not listing schedules. Oh well... Until next Time.

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools talk because they have to say something." - Plato

To post daily or not to post daily? That's my question. For now anyway.

2006-10-15T19:12:00.000-04:00

Today, again, was fairly uneventful. We're trying to sell our house, and people keep wanting to see it on short notice. Like just this morning my dad was talking on the phone. When he got off the phone, there was a message from our real estate agent saying to call him. By the time we got a hold of him, the people who wanted the house had called him back saying that it was too late, and they couldn't come see the house. So these people wanted too, at 10:00 in the morning, on a Sunday, call the real estate agent and get a viewing of the house within the hour. There was still the chance they might call back so we had to clean the house, then at around 2:00 I got to go hang with my cousins. I also got some great news, it turns out high speed internet is finally available in my area, actually it has been for about a year and a half now. The guy at the service desk was just telling us we were a bit out of range and needed to wait a few months for another tower to be built. ahhh c'est la vie , I guess. (did I spell that right?). So as soon as one of my dad's clients decides they feel like paying him, we're getting it. My dad has a small business that does work for other businesses. Lately he's been working 80 hour weeks, and no-one feels like paying him. Sorry, I guess I haven't really done anything but complain have I? Probably not the best way to attract readers. It's a habit I need to get rid of. Sorry for the lousy post, I'll try to make them more positive in the future. Maybe I shouldn't post every day, but only when something interesting happens. Or maybe I can fill my posts with pointless chatter like "I saw a funny movie last night" what do you think?

I really did see a funny movie last night.

All alone, me my thoughts, and a set of controllers

2006-10-14T17:36:00.000-04:00

Well, it's been an uneventful Saturday. My brother's away in Indiana for the weekend, which is more of a relief than a problem. Personaly, I feel like I'm wasting the day. I got up around noon, which i hate doing because that's half a day gone, of course on saturdays it's worse as you miss all the cartoons. I woke up in a mood to play video games, but do you think I could find anyone to play with? Even if my brother were here, he hates multiplayer games. he especialy hates playing against me because 90% of the time, no matter what game, I kick his but. So I decided to ask my parents if one of them wanted to play one of the easy cooperative games (4 swords) with me. Of course, my parents feel that playing games are a waste of their time. My dad would rather do something more constructive and my mom would rather read a book. Personally I feel a good game is like a good book. Most of the same elements are there, but you usually have to think more and can actually explore the setting a bit. Which makes me think, a good game, like a good novel, needs a deep story line, what bugs me is people who decide how good a game is based on graphics and would rather buy a realistic looking game with a cheap storyline then a cartoony game with a deep story line. The realistic game is like a picture book and the cartoony game is like a novel, but people playing the realistic game (picture book) look at the cartoony game (novel) and call it childish. Now don't get me wrong, their are alot of games that have a great balance between looks and story, and of course some great books have illustrations (Sherlock Holmes) and there are alot of cartoony games that have horrible story lines, and some pretty bad novels. And none of this takes into account game play; ever tried to read a novel when the pages are glued together? But that's just what i think. Anyway, I never did find anyone to play games with, it's just not that kind of day. My n64 crashed twice on me so I gave up trying to play games and went on the computer which is probaly why I did a blog entry today. I'm gonna stop now as it seems I'm starting to ramble. Enjoy your weekend.

Monty Python's Flying Circus is on Tonight! HOORAY!

My First Post - Ever

2006-10-13T23:58:00.000-04:00

It seems like nowadays everyone has a blog, or myspace acount. An online identity. I finaly decided that it's time i jump on the bandwagon. I find i constantly have ideas i want to write down. most of them in no way usefull to me. Some of them i feel are pretty good, but i don't have the follow through to make anything of them. I finally decided that i was getting tired of putting them in a notebook, where only I, the person who has no use for them, would ever read them. It seemed kind of pointless to me. I've started this blog as a way to share my ideas, get feed back, and still remain anonymous. Well, mostly. Anyone who knows me knows that i use Cyborg_572 everywhere online. It's even my username on my DS. (That's right Nintendo all the way!). I hope you'll read this and comment back. I'll try my best not to annoy anyone. Of course, sometimes i might just write something for the heck of it, and some of it probably won't be worth reading, but hey, If you don't like it, then there's a little arrow at the top of your screen you should try clicking.

note - if the background is black, then a link has messed up. please add a "www." after the "http://" or click here

I'm so nervous about pressing that "Publish" button.