iPods and other portable things

I finally got an iPod, a Nintendo DS, and I have a laptop on loan. That pretty much makes me 100% mobile. Pretty exciting stuff. The laptop isn’t quite powerful enough for me to make any kind of permanent switch until I have something a bit more beefy. I’m aiming for 1GHZ, 512MB of RAM, and with at least 64MB of Video RAM. Hard drive space is another major issue. The laptop has 10 gigs which is kind of killing me. I’m kind of spoiled with the whole 120 gig thing.

The leader of our nation was told today that he needs to stop letting people in gitmo live without basic human rights. About freakin time. It would be pretty amazing if someone in this administration were held accountable for something. I listened to his press conference today and when he was asked about the gitmo thing all he could do is stammer about and say he needed a better briefing about the issue. As if he had no clue that it was going on and that the ruling was going to be handed down. He also proved how much of a puppet he is by expressing his need to be hand held before speaking about an issue.

I was talking with someone about my whole Bush is going to attempt to stay in office beyond his second term thing. I was rather shocked to find that someone with a Ph.D agreed with me. It was entertaining how coming from him it sounds completely normal. When I say it people look at me like I’m bat shit crazy.

I bought a 5 disc collection of Django Reinhardt’s music recently. It is great stuff if you are interested in music from the 30’s.

later,
-junc

Edumacated

Yikes! I’m doing the blog-slack thing.

Summer quarter has officially begun. I now have my loan money, my job is in order, and my classes are in full swing. It has been stressful getting things to this point, but it all worked out. I have such an easy and exciting quarter. I’m taking a C++ and a Study Skills class. Both are pretty interesting so far.

I had started work on another AGS game before the start of the quarter. I have a feeling after I get settled in with my classes I will be able to pick up work on it again. I finished all of the backgrounds and need to start on some sprite, GUI, and inventory graphics work. Once graphics are at 100% I will announce it on the AGS forums. I know how I am, and without graphics, there is never a guarantee that I will finish it.

On the novel writing side of things I also intend on returning to this before the end of the quarter. I’m at the point of outlining scenes and putting together an extended synopsis so I can flesh things out a little.

Well, that’s enough of an update for now. I will try to keep things rolling with the blog throughout the quarter. This month alone I have had almost 1000 unique visitors. So, it’s time to keep my butt in gear. If you read this crap, comment on it.

later,
-junc

More site updates

I put up the google ads and web services section. I also finished the design and got everything to W3C validate. I have a lot of CSS warnings, but no errors. I will work on them over the next few days. I also still need to expand the about section. I have a list of hobbies and interests around here somewhere to put up there. I'm getting two books on wilderness survival today. Pretty excited about those. I really need to buy some hiking supplies soon. It would have been nice to do that this summer. Maybe next summer. I would probably need to buy for two since my girlie isn't quite as fanatical about it as I am. Today will mark day two of the diet pill experiment. Things went really well yesterday. I wasn't just energetic, but I also felt really good. When I came down it was pretty slow. At one point I think I did manage to push myself too far. We went to the park for a walk and I got a headache and kind of woozy. After sitting down for a minute though I was okay. I think the pills give you more energy than you are able to handle when all you've been doing is sitting on your butt eating crap from two years. Heh. I really need to get a spell check for wordpress. I think once I have that I will be pretty happy with this software and the way it has turned out. Oh, I made a cool little "powered by" icon for wordpress. It is at the bottom of each page. later, -junc More site updates New Theme I finished the start of a new theme. Pretty much it was all about figuring out how the WordPress theme system worked. I must say, it kind of sucks. There really needs to be a more simplified system for new users. Pretty much if you don't know php you are kind of screwed. Not what I would call user friendly. I'm rather suprised that the community hasn't come up with a solution to this problem. The Basic Theme was a real lifesaver. I am convinced that there is something more that can be done to simplify things however. I'm thinking of doing that myself and making it a part of my theme. If it works out and is fit for public consumption I will release it. I'm all hopped up on diet pills today. Cleaned out the car jbob let me borrow, put oil and gas in it. Woot. Ready for summer quarter to get here. Still haven't got my loan money. School starts on Monday, should be fun buying books so close to the start of the quarter. Thank god it's only summer quarter. That is all for now. I might have more updates later if I make any more progress on the site. later, -junc New Theme Blender and Pandora I really seem to be stuck with the whole novel thing. I work about an hour a day on things at best. I've got some really horrible habits. I spend much more time playing Counter Strike than I do working on anything Keptosh related. I just heard about pandora.com. Such an awesome website. It picks out music for you based on the types of songs you like. Basically, it considers the style of music rather than how popular, or what category it fits into. It is all based on tempo, melody, and whatnot. Pretty slick stuff and worth checking out. Blender has made its way into the public eye with a movie called Elephants Dream. It is exciting to see Blender getting so much attention. I've been considering shifting my 3D focus to it. I have the game kit and intend on ordering the actual guide next week. This little burst of attention has driven my shift to it a little harder. The movie is just amazing. I have no freaking clue what it is about, but it is pretty. Between that and Final Fantasy: Advent Children the 3D thing really has my attention right now. later, -junc Blender and Pandora CounterStrike and stuff I've been playing a lot of counterstrike on the [ProN] server again. It is at 65.98.35.50:27015. I thought I would never play the game again. Recently though I gave it another try and found the [ProN] guys. Really great bunch of people that try to keep the maturity level up and the game being played as it was meant to be. The racist and homophobic crap that goes on in that game is unbearable. Not to mention just people that cry about the "unfairness" of the game. I never understand it. The second they get killed by one person more than once they start screaming Hax0r. I suck so bad, yet I don't complain. If I'm not happy about the skill level balance then I just leave, and come back later. That or I just have fun dying. The point is to play and have fun. I actually went back to Counter Strike after having problems with UT2004. I really like the game but suck at it too. Problem is, the second you step in a server, you are just dead. It's no fun at all. The skill level between newbies and veterans is just so great that you can't even enjoy dying. I blame the game designers for that one. There really needs to be a way for anyone to just jump in and play. It is such a bummer to me because I love that engine so much. It is so easy to map for. The Source engine on the other hand just sucks. I hate mapping for it and Steam makes all of the development tools clunky and difficult. Don't get me wrong, visually it is much better than the Unreal Engine, but for developers it just isn't comparable. I'm interested in learning a 3D package because of all of this. I enjoy building maps for first person shooters but I'm always limited by the engine. My hope is that I can learn enough of a 3D package to import work I do into game engines (at least ones that allow that). I'm stuck between Blender and 3DS Max. Blender is pretty interesting to me because it has a built in game development package. 3DS Max is the industry standard. I guess I will just wait and see which one ends up being easier for me to use. For now I think it is important that I learn about the concepts behind 3D modeling. I have no clue what a nurb is. On a technical note I added a contact page. This should allow folks to get ahold of me fairly easily. I'm still working on a theme for the blog. I got a local install of wordpress running on my machine last night to test themes with. One final thing. Firefly. Watch it, buy it, love it. June 23 is Firefly day. Buy Serenity and Firefly on DVD that day. I recommend Amazon.com, as always.

later,
-junc

A real update.

Okay, so it is time for a real update. A real post of some sort. But, first, more technical crap. I disabled the must register to post thing, but kept the ability to register. This will make it easier to track the size of my "community". As far as the spam thing goes, since comments go to moderation first it is not such a big deal. I also enabled akismet, the wordpress anti-spam thingy, so hopefully that will help. Anyway. I have a few projects going on at the moment. The top of the list is occupied by the Keptosh Novel. Years in development, things finally seem to be coming together. I'm trying to work with the Weekend Novelist approach. Most of the plot development was spent in Dramatica, specifically with The Writer's DreamKit. I recommend the book and software if you have trouble getting a plot into a decent outline (if outlining is your thing). The Novel template included with The Writer's DreamKit is worth the $35.00 (buy it from Amazon, not the publishers site). The Dramatica Book (which is also available in an older edition for free online) is pretty decent for working out character archtypes. All in all though the whole Dramatica thing is just a fancy version of Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey. Maybe even a dumbed down version, I've never read his book. All of that stuff means nothing if I don't start writing though. That is what the Weekend Novelist is for though, It provides a pretty decent 52 week program for writing a novel. I recently purchased the second edition of that book and so far I'm a little disappointed. I haven't read through it all yet so I won't slam it yet. Hey, this is getting pretty long, so I will wrap things up. My other big project of the moment is trying to learn 3DS Max. Summer quarter I am taking a C++ class and a time management/study habits class. I'm pretty excited about both of those.

later,
-junc