I'm blogging this!

Times like today when you wish you had a shirt with those words written across it. My girlfriend's Dad, tonight, wanted to treat us to dinner. He'd bought a cake for dessert; had expected to pay $6.99 for it but was charged $25.99 at the till. He shrugged and went home.

My girlfriend and I had picked up dinner and appies from a meat deli her Sister works at and drove to her parent's place. We had the appies and dinner, followed by the cake for dessert. Heh, more dessert than we bargained for. While eating my slice I thought I'd noticed a funny taste around the place where a banana slice was placed. I ate the banana and DAMN it was gross. I'd warned the others not go to there. I'd eaten my entire piece of cake; my girlfriend couldn't finish hers. She'd eaten a quarter, from the bottom.

So I proceeded to finish hers off. Got to the banana slice on her piece, tasted different again. Decided that it must be the different coloured whipped cream used on that part. Yeah, different coloured. Reddish, with little green spots. Wait a minute, the spots are fuzzy. Moldy cake. Her Dad had eaten two pieces, her Mom had one. Her little brother one, and I'd almost eaten two.

That thing was no doubt meant to be priced at $6.99, and should have been pulled the day before, for sure. The cake was returned, money was refunded. The shirt "I'm blogging this" would have come in handy during the refund. To warn the public, it was bought at The Real Canadian Super Store also affiliated with Extra Foods. So buyer beware.

-Fear Factor

Study Study

Updated my profile, added some items to my wishlist. Posted a picture, he's everyones favorite criminal. Replied to a new random question, something about the taste of pennies in your mouth. Misread as the taste of penis in your mouth.

Still studying here. Systems Analysis and Design along with Linear Algebra. Haven't touched SAD today, going with LinAlg. SAD later, maybe tomorrow. Just taking a break here, covered determinants, will now review eigen-vectors/values.

Reading Dracula by Abraham (Bram) Stoker. Excellent book, opened my eyes to the world of shorthand (as written in this blog). New style, may be a bit annoying to read, but easy to write. Back to studying for me.

Oh yeah: ChairDancing O numa numa song

-Girlfriend still got a sore side

Home Time

My girlfriend has been home since Tuesday afternoon. It's good to have her back.

I've written two exams so far, still have Systems Analysis and Design left, as well as Linear Algebra. I've written Discrete Structures and Machine Architecture. It feels good to have those classes over with. And to never have that professor again, as he's taking a long vacation.

-Study, buddy

Blogging from the Hospital, sort of

I gathered up my bravery today and ate the hospital food. My girlfriend was never going to touch the "FF Cream of Broccoli Soup" and I was feeling curious. It was almost like they'd poured cream and broccoli into a blender and mixed it up. She told me not to be silly, that it probably comes from a box and I was giving them too much credit. She's probably right. And what does "FF" mean anyway? We guessed "Full Flavoured" as opposed to half/half.

I'll be posting this when I get home, seeing how there's no wireless connection to be found anywhere in this hospital.

-They need to be tech'd

Trackmania

Great game for racing. Very much so unrealistic, but that's the kind of game that appeals to me. Unrealistic in the sense that I can escape the real world and occupy myself for a brief moment in another. Think F-Zero but with modern cars. Jumps, track editing, skin/paint editing, video save/replay. I haven't tried multiplayer, but the single player part of the demo I've seen shines very nice. The full game was just released April 8, so maybe I'll have my hands on it soon.

-vroom vroom

Master of Doom

Way back in the day, my Grandpa bought Final Doom (yeah, when you could still find Final Doom on store shelves ~ ie it was just released). I'd been exposed to Doom long before that, in the form of Doom 1. I've been playing around with Doom II lately. Maybe I'm a little slow on the uptake, as people have been playing the source ports for quite some time. I've tried out zDoom and jDoom (Doomsday).

zDoom is quite nice, for playability. The graphics are nicely updated for higher resolution, much like jDoom. But jDoom lacks in the gameplay department. Sure, jDoom shares jumping with zDoom and higher resolution textures, but jDoom just doesn't have the keyboard customizability that zDoom does. I like having my mouse wheel swap through weapons. You know, I think if jDoom had just that one little feature, I might play through Doom II with it, rather than zDoom. But in the mean time, it's zDoom all the way.

-Yeah, I've read the book Masters of Doom cover to cover

Just to let you know, I'm calling security!

Escorted out of the hospital last night for sitting beside my girlfriend after visiting hours.

-Not as exciting as TV makes it out to be. Bo-ring!

More Hospitality

That's a good word, isn't it? Hospitality, being hospitable. Welcoming and catering to another and their needs. We've had a good run of nice nurses and volunteers at the hospital, which helps to make the stay more pleasant. At least tonight nobody was pressing me to get out of there before I was ready, I left when my girlfriend was ready to fall asleep for the night. I'll be back there early tomorrow morning, just as I was this morning.

-I watched her sleep for almost an hour

Transitioning... Conglomerating... Consuming

The school I attend is being consumed by a larger, better known school. I figure it's just as well, seeing how I'm paying big-school prices, I may as well get the big-school degree. To help ease students into the transition of one school consuming another, the new institution has printed up brochures to help inform the new and transitioning students. It just happens that I'm 'featured', as one friend called it. Here's the quote:

rak ~ (8) take the skin and peel it back... doesn't it make you feel better? (8):
hey, dude... you're featured prominently in that [big all absorbing conglomerate] transition booklet they were handing out.

I haven't had a chance to look at the page in detail, but from what I've glanced at, it's me striking a pose (because I was posed) talking to some girl. That's how those brochures are thrown together. They aren't reallystudents doing real student stuff, it's a photographer gathering a bunch of ... well, ok, students ... and posing them doing student stuff. I'm also smattered around the website of the new (and as of yet still non-existing, but soon to be new and existing) school. I'll give you a hint, I'm in the middle wearing the grey sweater bearing the school initials. 'rakslice' is the guy doing the 'hey ho, kool-aide' in the white shirt behind me.

-Sleep time, gotta visit and take care of my girl some more tomorrow

Hospitals and their ilk

I've spent the majority of the last 29 hours at the hospital; my girlfriend went under emergency surgery. So I spent the night at the hospital last night (seeing how she was out of surgery at 12:30 midnight) and skipped school and work today to be with her. I made up an hour and a half of work today, seeing how I'm on salary for researching. I ate hospital food... that I paid for. $4 for 2 sausages, 2 eggs (scrambled), 1 english muffin (crumpet?) and 2 scoops of shaved hashbrowns (because nobody likes hairy hashbrowns).

I'm going to sleep now, though. Now that I'm back home, and I'm going to work and school tomorrow.

-Checking up on her early in the morning and after school

Guru of sorts

I've been playing with mazes as of late. Attempting to solve the secrets to creating one, actually. And there's a method to my madness, it's for level generation in my game. So, I'm learning to program mazes.

Anything I'm learning, I'm learning from this site, Think Labyrinth which truly is a great source for anything maze related. This guy really knows what he's talking about, and was even blurbed about on Ripley's Believe It or Not section of a newspaper .

I'm trying to code my own 'Hunt and Kill' agorithm, which basically, when no more rooms can be carved in a certain segment, scans the array of rooms and searches for the first available room that is not too crowded, which means there's room to start another segment of room creation.

Start at one location and carve a room. Next, choose an adjacent room at random. Test to see if that room is not too crowded. If it's not too crowded, place the room and choose another adjacent room at random. Test and repeat. If a room is too crowded, 'Hunt and Kill' to find the next available uncrowded room and continue from there.

A room is concidered too crowded if there are two rooms adjacent to that room. What you want to ensure is that every room you add is a continuation of only the preceding room. This ensures that there are no loops in the maze, which guarantees there is only one path to the exit. This is called a 'perfect' maze.

Admittedly, I've been having trouble with my program. But only because I did not understand these simple concepts. It took me the last two hours laying in bed for my brain to really dumb it down to something I could understand. And here I have crawled out of bed to make a note of it so I don't forget my brilliance in the morning.

-Because that's something I would do

The home stretch

I've finally put the finishing touches on my research poster... you know, how exciting is it to read about another persons life? I can't see that it's really all too exciting. I don't expect people to be even slightly entertained in reading my blog. It's here for me, as a record of events in my life. Maybe one day my grandchildren will read my blog and write up a family history of it or something. I don't know.

But I know I've got nothing to offer the random passerby. Go on, find another blog. There's nothing of interest here, at least not yet.

-Heh, that was fun

The Day after the First Day of Spring
Yeah, today is the first day after the first day of spring, so that makes it the second day of spring, right? So why is it snowing outside? I haven't seen it really snow since January. It tried to snow this past Friday morning, but weakly.

So this is what it's like when posters collide
I've a presentation to make in just over a month, at the University of Calgary. I exagerate on that, seeing how all I'm really doing is standing in front of my poster, answering peoples questions about the sort of work I do.

...And blog sucked for a moment. I'd gone on to describe the work I'm doing but it decided to fart and lose it all.

-Put an end to it

As luck should have it
My girlfriend's best friend has been seeing a certain guy for a little while now. Turns out, I went to highschool with this guy. I saw him tonight for the first time in 4 years, and he's doing really well. The title, 'as luck should have it' relates to him. Not so much in the sense of me meeting him again, but his luck in landing a good career job.

After graduation, he started seeing a girl. Her Mother worked at some place that involved aptitude tests, and he ended up taking one. His results landed him with a job at a fairly new software developement agency close to where we attended highschool. He started in tech support (and this is a lot like the sims, so it seems). The bottom rung of the ladder, tech support, making a fairly decent wage for someone fresh out of highschool.

Now, 4 years later, he works in sales and marketing. He makes twice as much as I do at his job, and he gets to travel the continent. Twice this month he has been flown to California. What luck! He admits, the software development department is where the real money is at, they make over twice as much as he makes in his department, and that's five times as much as I make in a University level student research position. Not bad for a small, local developement agency.

-Good for him

Game Developers Conference

Year after year the GDC occurs and year after year I wish I could attend. Some time soon I'll be sent to the GDC by my employer to promote our latest game... but I've got to graduate university and get hired first.

The big news, originating from the GDC, is of Will Wright's evolution game, "Spore". I'm really looking forward to this game! To think you start as an indiscriminate round blob and you evolve yourself to fit in with the changing world. And single player that uses a global database to populate the world with other players creations. GamingSteve has some screenshots and a recording of his views of this game.

-I can't wait to play GOD again

The games

I found Lucas Arts Armed and Dangerous for $5 at my local Electronics Boutique. For a $5 game, it's really not all that bad, but for the game itself I can see why it's only $5 after a year from it's release. I thought I'd have more to say about it than that, but I don't. Hrm, go figure.

My spring break has come and gone, and I stayed in my town for the duration of it. In fact, I worked through the whole thing. Well, not without entertaining myself, of course. I had 16 hours of monitoring a computer lab on campus during the break. 16 hours of The Simpsons: Hit and Run as well as my homegrown game being developed in my spare time. I squashed a few bugs in my game, got some AI going as well, so that's a start. I also played around some more with my moth simulation. I needed to output some information to record the center of mass of my cloud of moths as they progressed through my simulated orchard.

Back to school tomorrow. Some day soon I'll find out how terrible I did on one or two of my midterms and hopefully how I rocked another. I don't pick the classes I'm good at, they seem to pick me.

-Though the classes I suck at do a good job of picking me, too

So, what's the right thing to do?

What to do when your girlfriend is mad at you, and making it quite obvious? Theoretically, of course. What to do when this happens to you? What's the right choice of action? This is all a theoretical basis, of course, as if your girlfriend is mad at you for any reason.

Say she's playing the "You don't even care" card. What do you do? And why is she saying that in the first place? I see two things that you can do. One, you can keep your calm and try to reason the situation out. This, how I see it, is where she's getting the "You don't care" attitude. Second, you could yell right back at her. Maybe she could see this as a caring attitude? It boggles me, I'll tell you that. Personally, I'm more of a 'keep calm and reason with her' kind of guy. I've no enthusiasm for yelling at my girlfriend when she's clearly distraught. I know it's not her fault she's acting that way, she's a girl.

And you just know she's going to try to get you to yell at her if you don't. So what can you do in a situation like that? I'll tell you what I do... I fall into her trap. She knows exactly what to say or do to strike that nerve, and I fall into her trap almost every time. But I keep hopeful, I know that's what she wants. She wants me to take the bait and snap back at her, to show her I care, right? Not that I'm asking you if I'm right, I'm sure that's what she wants. So I retort and she gets angrier. But that's what she wants, she expects it. But what else could you do, if you don't take the bait and yell at her? She'll take it that you just don't care and she'll keep using that against you. And you know that all you want is for her to give in and give you a hug but we don't live in that universe. If you don't lose your temper, she'll get angrier and more distant and that'll just fsck with your mind.

Remember, this is all theoretical. Nobody is mad at you or me; this is all a 'what to do' discussion. I really don't understand why they don't stop when they get what they want. Forgive and forget, right?

-Forgive and forget

Homegrown Concerts

Glory Nights, let me tell you, they are up and coming. Vocals like Dashboard Confessional and music to match. I just got back from a CD Release show for The Bleeding Alarm, with guests Red Light Roulette and Glory Nights.

-Awesome show

The lyrics, the lyrics

Dashboard Confessional - "Hands Down"

Breathe in for luck,
breathe in so deep,
this air is blessed,
you share with me.
This night is wild,
so calm and dull,
these hearts they race,
from self control.
Your legs are smooth,
as they graze mine,
we're doing fine,
we're doing nothing at all.

My hopes are so high,
that your kiss might kill me.
So won't you kill me,
so I die happy.
My heart is yours to fill or burst,
to break or bury,
or wear as jewelery,
which ever you prefer.

The words are hushed lets not get busted;
just lay entwined here, undiscovered.
Safe in here from all the stupid questions.
"hey did you get some?"
Man, that is so dumb.
Stay quiet, stay near, stay close they can't hear...
so we can get some.

My hopes are so high that your kiss might kill me.
So won't you kill me, so I die happy.
My heart is yours to fill or burst,
to break or bury, or wear as jewelery,
which ever you prefer.

Hands down this is the best day I can ever remember,
I'll always remember the sound of the stereo,
the dim of the soft lights,
the scent of your hair that you twirled in your fingers
and the time on the clock when we realized it's so late
and this walk that we shared together.
The streets were wet
and the gate was locked so I jumped it,
and I let you in.
And you stood at your door with your hands on my waist
and you kissed me like you meant it.
And I knew that you meant it,
that you meant it,
that you meant it,
and I knew,
that you meant it,
that you meant it.

As Always, thanks to AZLyrics.com for always having the lyrics.
I'm here at school, programming my game and this song starts playing in my Winamp. It starts me thinking of my girlfriend, so I'm thinking of her, feeling good.

-Yeah, uh. Guess I just wanted you to know

Bookworm

Since Christmas, I've read 4 books (and counting). My girlfriend got me "The Looking Glass Wars" which follows Alice through a variation of the charmed Wonderland. I've also read J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series from "The Philosopher's Stone", to "The Chamber of Secrets" and "The Prisoner of Azkaban". Not to mention I've watched all of the coresponding movies after I'd read the book. Also, I'm 1/3 done the fourth book in the Harry Potter series, "The Goblet of Fire". And I've got "The Order of the Phoenix" on order at the library. I plan to have all the books read by the middle or end of February. At this rate, providing I get the book promptly from the library, I'll be done in the next couple weeks. Sadly, after this series, I don't really have anything else planned for reading. Which is just as well, seeing how midterms are starting next week.

-Keener... no, but I try

Concerts abound!

I saw Sum 41 in concert just this last Friday! Great show! Black Maria from Toronto opened for Sum 41, but the lead singer had larynghitis [sp] and only lasted 20 minutes. The were pretty good. After their set No Warning rawked the dome. No Warning was awesome, high energy, good music. And then came Sum 41 themselves. They were introduced via a video projected onto the backdrop of the stage. StevO ends up murduring Cone during a basketball match (literally) and drags Cone back to his apartment where StevO chops him up and serves him as dinner to Deryck and Dave. Boing :funny pose:

The backdrop falls and StevO opens the show standing on his elevated platform next to his drums, wearing a bloody butchers apron and wielding a chain saw. Deryck makes several references to GWBush and pays homage to the King and his Throne (you know which Elvis and which toilet I'm referring to) as well as their Anna Nicole Smith homage. Comedic show, they played their stuff from all 4 albums and are even better live than recorded.

-Super happy fun time

Crisp Mountain Air

I spent the day on a mountain. I'd start at the base of a hill and would travel up that hill. I'd then slide down that hill, only to get up and travel back up the hill. I went tubing, as it's called, at one of the local ski resorts. I did it with a group, which consisted of my girlfriend, her brother, a friend of ours she works with and her boss and boss' son. It's good to take advantage of what nature has to offer, once in a while. My only complaint: today was particularly warm, which caused the snow to turn very much into slush. The first pull UP the hill (on a pulley) soaked my
back to the point of no return. It just got worse from there on. But the sliding down the hill was still fun.

-But wait, there's more.


About Games

Half-Life
I'd have to say that the original Half-Life has the best story/script of any game I've ever played. I've played through the original game (Half-Life) and the add-ons (OpFor, BlueShift) many times, it's that good. And the mods available for it are killer. Especially the official DeathMatch: Classic. But more on that later.
Still on the subject of Half-Life, HL2 is awesome as well. Not so much for the story, as it's not groundbreaking there (imo). HL2 is rawx0r for the engine. Source is where it's at. Picking things up and throwing them around is shweet. Counter-Strike: Source wins big kudos as well, especially for the bots recently made available. No need to play online with lamers any more. Not when there are bots to play with/against. I just wish the mod community would get around to releasing some quality. I want my Half-Life 2 to be put to some good use.

Quake (DeathMatch: Classic in Half-Life)
Tenebrae. You should really check that out. Doom 3 lighting algorithms in the original Quake engine. It makes playing through the original Quake another time worth it. Advanced texturing and lighting and wow. Smoke coming out of the ground and light from a stained glass window refracting through it. Wow. I can't really say what I want to say. There's no words. Try it, you'll like it. Definate eye candy.

I've been playing the original Quake, I'm currently in the lobby standing outside the entrance to episode 4. Episodes 1 through 3 standing completed, exhausted by the total rape of which I had just performed. Maybe those are too strong of words, regardless, I brutalized them. GL Quake is what I'm playing, as even my laptop lacks sufficient power to play Quake Tenebrae. Yeah, I'm too lazy to link anything tonight. Maybe you're not too lazy to Google what I'm referencing. Are you picking up what I'm putting down?

Codename UGOD
My own little concoction I've had in the works for over a year now. It always makes progress but never sees the light of day. Maybe some day I'll get to polishing it to something I think is worthy of the public eye. My latest accomplishment was overcoming a hurdle that was something of a shortcoming. We all know that when you are using an array to store some information (I may lose some readers here, as this is programmer talk) that you can't have two objects in the same cell of an array at the same time. Doing so causes one object to overwrite the other. You can clearly see how this limits using a 2 dimensional array in your game. You can't have two objects (two players for that matter) occupying the same cell of an array. So how are you supposed to have your players interact with each other? Sure, you could loop and
check every cell around the player (that would be 8 tests to see if another player is in an adjacent cell). But that is a severe limitation. So you think, ok, maybe I'll make a 3 dimensional array. No, that won't work either, it's too inefficient. If I make a 3 dimensional array with a height of 10 but only two players are in the game then that's a waste of 8 2 dimensional arrays. So! why not program a room and create a 2 dimensional array of rooms? The trick is, every room has a list to store one or more players! You've just turned your 2 dimensional array into a static 2d array with a dynamic 3rd dimension! Of course you can play around with variables, you don't have to limit yourself to a static 2d array. This is programming and anything is possible.

Moth Work
The above example was worked out in part to the limitation in my moth simulation. The simulation, written using the SWARM library (.org) is limited to a 2 dimensional array. I've been seriously considering rewriting the whole simulation in a standalone programming language using my own tools and libraries, thus circumventing a static array. Moths fly, .: (therefore) they exist in a 3 dimensional space. It's not fair to them if you prevent them from occupying the same x y coordinates in an array.

Doom 3
I shouldn't rule this guy out. Doom 3. I'd have to say it is extremely unfair to ATI and it's family of video cards. My laptop should be able to run this beast with all the eye candy turned off, but unfortunately it's brutally choppy. This means I have to wait until a PC upgrade comes my way before I can enjoy this one. From what I've seen so far it scores points. I just wish I could enjoy it now.

-My neighbor insists on sharing the bass-line of her country music with me 24/7

Delayed Posting

I get around to this a little slower than I would other times. I had one of those dreams a couple nights ago that leaves you feeling quite happy when you wake up. For one, it involved my girlfriend. And another, it included sexy vampire and zombie girls hungry for my flesh.

Now that I remember it, I was in Europe and there was some freaky doctor guy who was at the middle of the whole diabolical scheme. Some werewolf kept bothering me, and there was some sort of experimental and primitive rail gun involved as well. The doctor impaled himself on his rail gun. With the doctor dead, the institution became swarmed with headcrab zombies from Half Life.

-And I still woke up with a huge smile