Christmas and College

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!

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

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

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

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 :)

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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:

1. It has to start snowing late the night before, or at least be snowing hard.
2. There has to be a lot of snowfall over the course of the night
3. 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

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!

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 :(