MDude's Journal

A quick reminder for myself.

2009-12-28T09:11:38Z

In Saurbraten, you can toggle viewing materials in edit mode with the M key. This is paticularly handy when trying to build underwater things, since with materials mode on the selection cursor is a pain to use underwater. And who doesn't like water levels in their video games?

Edit: Also, I went and overwrote one of the maps I was working on for a while, but then I found out about the backup system Saurbraten has so I didn't really lose anything.

Crazy dust things

2009-12-20T23:08:16Z

The way tiny bits of dust and stuff in the air around us all the time, but usualy aren't visible is something I find pretty interesting. A few days ago, I was out on the back porch watching dust fade in and out of view at it passed in fort of the spotlights. Looking at the dust, I've often tried to keep track of a single speck in an attempt to continue noticing it as it went out of the light, only for it to dissapear anyway. Then I thought of visualising of the shaft of light as a sort of window and tried to look at it as if I was peering through to something on the other side. After a few seconds of focusing, *it suddenly looked pretty big and scary. I was expecting it to maybe be a bit unsettling, but this was more startling than I thought it could be, especially considering that it just looked like a big cloud of dust floating a few feet in front of me in my back yard. I thought it might have looked kind of like I was standing at the bottom of a huge oceon of dust particles, but it seem quite that big. I wasn't able to concentrate on it for long, though. I'll need to check this out again when it's less cold out.

*Note that I stopped writing here, and added the rest later on December 28, in the early morning.

Computer Things and Things

2009-10-26T01:41:14Z

When I found out a while ago that Geocities was closing tomorrow, I went and checked out my old website I had hosted there. It doesn't have anything that great, with not much interesting and a few broken links here and there. There was even a couple alternate versions of the index page, and a pair of images I know I'd just uploaded for personal storage I'd forgotten about. In any case, there wasn't much, so I just saved it all on my butthuge hard drive so I could look back at it again later to remind myself how poor I was at making things back then. The last time I looked at the page, May 30 of 2004, seems both more recent than I remember using it and too early for some of the things I have on it.

In any case, one of the links on said page was to Angels 2200, a web comic I'd read a while ago. I thought it had disappeared from the web forever at some point, but apparently it either didn't or it came back, so I'll probably go check it out again some time. While I'm plugging web comics, I might as well mention Accursed Dragon, which has been one of my favorites lately.

I also might as well post here about my brother's entry in the Aniboom Marvel Motion Comics Competition. I'm not quite sure how the rules work for this because I haven't red them, but supposedly he just missed out on getting picked during some kind of preliminary round, but still has a chance at winning the contest if he can finish motioning the whole comic on his own.

And in chat this last Friday, Buzzard linked to the Wikipedia article on Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo, which linked me to an article on sentence mapping. That was pretty cool, because I've been calling it sentence mapping forever. This kept me from even finding anything out about it, which worked as a nice excuse to never work on it, or mess around with artificial intelligence/coding much at all, really. I'd recently gotten around to making actual code for a program that parses and displays a diagram for a sentence, but I still can't say I even got started at the meat of it, and it's still nice to have a reference of the traditional ways of doing stuff like this. So maybe I'll eventually get to make the coolest IRC chat bot ever~

Longer than I thought since my last post.

2009-10-06T04:07:47Z

First off, if anyone reading this plays Spelunky, I've mad a custom level for it called Rescue Time.

I haven't practiced driving very often, but I've driven to the dentist, a store that we get pizza at, the place where I get my hair cut, Sheetz, and my dad's house. I also got to drive in the rain last Friday, and in the late evening/night at that.

Garden stuff is pretty much done for the year, except for the peppers, which haven't stopped entirely, and the herbs, although I want to make sure the mint plant grows hardy enough to make it through winter. Grapes did pretty well, with my dad starting some wine and my mom canning some straight up juice, although over a her house I think we still need to work on protecting the plant from disease. Tomatoes and peppers did well enough for us to make some salsa, and my dad got plenty of corn. Pumpkins and sunflowers did well, although the pumpkins were planted a little early and might not last until Halloween. At one of then is obviously rotting already.

Zucchini did well as always, and this year, in addition to zucchini bread, we tried making a zucchini mock crab cake that went pretty well aside from being too salty. That was probably because the recipe called for Old Spice and we used some other kind of seasoning. Speaking of recipes, I tried out 1-ingredient ice cream and it worked out pretty well. Next time I'll try it with peanut butter or chocolate.

Over at Blackstar, I've been participating in a nice little interdimensional alien space war RP, and there's another thread starting up there I wouldn't mind joining. There's also some other role playing stuff I'd like to write, such as a group of characters I thought up while listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin and an in-depth history of "green wall slime". What matters is, I've actually been sticking with the RP I've already joined, and it hasn't died yet from no one else responding, which is pretty cool. I've also had an idea for a setting I thought up while reading about DnD which I really just need to write down already. There's some other stuff I should probably write down too, for that matter.

Computer problems have not gotten much better. The big beefy computer I got from dad has been working perfectly lately, with the exception that it won't boot unless I let it sit for a while with the power cut off to it. I think it might be that I let it just sit running during thunderstorms, thinking the UPs would protect it well enough. As for the malware spreading to this computer, I think that was taken care of when my dad had his computer guy wipe everything. I would have reinstalled the system myself if I hadn't lost the registry key by throwing away the plastic film that was slowly peeling off the case anyway either without checking or thinking it was the case's serial number. I'd think something like that would be on a small sticker on the case interior to avoid it getting lost. I might use the laptop my mom gave me, but she's offering to take it from me in exchange for money to buy a new one with, which is nice.

Anyway, I just figured I should write something in here just to get some more writing done and organise my thoughts a little. I'll try to work on writing more RP things tomorrow. Or rather, later today, since it just passed midnight.

A big post

2009-05-27T03:32:14Z

A short while ago my brother took me to a farmer's market for the first time, which was pretty cool. We didn't stay very long, but we got a pair of soft pretzels and some beef sticks, and saw a few things we might want to get next time. Later, my brother went and got me a crate of homemade root beer, which needs to sit for a week or so before it's ready to drink. There's also another farmer's market that we found out about form a poster at Rita's, and we might check that one out too.

We've been going to new places in general, recently, mostly going to different restaurants, but also going to an army supply store and a pawn shop. Most recently, a small store, the only one within walking distance of the house actually, reopened under new management again, and this time things are looking pretty spiffy. They even put in an ice cream/soda counter, and sell breakfast food all day, the latter of which we tried out, but there's too much desert stuff at the house to be going out for ice cream so much. We even had to throw out a strawberry-rhubarb pie recently, and I'd rather not let out other stuff go to waste too.

The garden is doing sort of ok. We've actually been getting a little too soaked recently, and it hasn't been warming up much, so the a lot of the plants are limp and yellowed over, and animals are eating at the garden, but the tomatoes and herbs are doing great, as are the zucchini, and I think most of the other plants will do fine once we get into summer. The grape plant has this fungus thing that messed it up pretty badly last year, which was only the second year it started giving grapes anyway, so I guess we'll need to do some more to take care of that if we want backyard-grown grapes.

Over at my dad's, things seem to be going well, at the grape vines, which he treats with some kind of powder, and a corn/watermelon/pumpkin patch he has going this year is starting to sprout up stuff. I didn't check out the main garden much actually, but I think it's probably doing well. Last year I think it did pretty well, but we hardly picked anything, so this year I'm going to try and grab some stuff every once in a while when I'm on my walks.

I've finished up the classes part of my driving lessons, so that's cool. I've been scheduled to take the driving part in a few weeks, and then it's off to try to get my license, I guess. I'll probably end up using my sister's old car, unless it doesn't have room for my huge legs. I'll try looking for a job once I get a feel for what kind of driving I'd be willing to do.

Over at Blackstar Dojo, I've finally joined a new RP thread, and it's pretty fun. I don't think there'll be any new posts this week do to busyness for a lot of people, but I don't think it's dying yet, so that's good. I've also been messing in MSPaint some, pixeling up a face for my AI character and a pair of logos, one of which is a url I might buy due it's cleverness and my having made a logo for it. This computer is still running Windows 2000, so until I get my laptop or desktop fixed my paint program options are limited. Just yesterday I found Pixia, which so far seems ironically unsuited to pixel drawings, but at least knows how to save .PNGs unlike Windows 2000's paint version.

The computers might get fixed pretty soon, though, since my brother wants to take me to a place where they sell power supplies/cases, and I'll try ordering a connector to do something like this soon. I actually got a new laptop this Christmas, but I haven't been using it, partly because of potential incompatibilities with Vistaids and this weird "hardware agreement" that's probably about OEM software, but mostly because the only reason it wasn't what I asked for was because something fancier was on sale for the same price, and I don't like being told what computer stuff to use when I've already picked something out. Also, my brother had been getting on me about liking my gifts way too much, so I was pretty much obligated to dislike as much as possible to spite him.

We're still walking the path up to the reservoir, if I haven't mentioned that, and my brother's taken some nature pictures up there. I've heard we might move some exercise equipment into the living room form out in the barn so we'll actually use it. I'd be using Wii fit, but I refuse to take advice from a video game that makes such frequent, serious use of the word "lifestyle".

Driving school and such.

2009-05-10T03:33:16Z

I started my driving school lessons this week. They're going very well, and aside form missing a day due to a misunderstanding of the schedule, I've done very well. I've done nicely on the tests so far at least, even getting all but one of them right on the second one despite missing the first half of studying for it. I'm sure I'll be able to get through the paper testing part pretty easily, but I'm not so sure if I'll do as well at the actual driving part. I did allright when I was practice driving in my mom's red truck though, so I don't think I'll do too badly.

Last night, I went to see the new Star Trek movie, and it was pretty great, although I wasn't as totally amased by it, I think that was because I was a little distracted by having Awkward Zombie stuck in my head. This plus the movie lead me to thinking up a short story of me as an incredibly incompetent pirate in the Star Trek universe that I'm thinking I might want to make into a comic strip, but I'll just write out what I have of it now in case I forget about it:

*over a shopping mall at some planet*

Whitt Lesley Leatherman (anagram of my name): Hey mall guys, I've been thinking of what I could do now that I've got my own spaceship, and while I don't know much about piracy, I know even less about everything else, so I'll go with that. Also, bombs now.

*Whitt deploys bombs, which hurtle towards the surface before being neutralized by ground defenses, which then attack Whitt's vessel*

Whitt: WAIT MALLS HAVE GUNS TOO THIS IS NOT SOMETHING I WAS EXPECTING.

*Whitt's ship emits sparks, smoke, and noise it begins to fall towards the planet surface.*

~~That's all I feel like writing right now, since I'm already staying up later than I'd like to. Also, not that great, but whatever.~~ It is unlikely I will ever bring this up again. I would say it's unlikely I will ever bring this up again, but if I get the below-mentioned game I'll probably do stuff something like this. But yeah, besides that, I'm not really interested in it. Also, not that great, but whatever.

Speaking of Star Trek stuff, that whole Star Trek Online game looks like it might be pretty awesome. Maybe it'll let me get a runabout and go on some WACKY SPACE HIJINKS.

Also, on the way to the movies, we saw some helicopters flying around all weird. I was thinking it was some kind of maneuvering thing, but then today another helicopter flew close over my house, which my mom said was a Life Flight helicopter, but I'm pretty sure it's just that helicopters are stalking me now.

The Electorate have chosen.

2009-04-09T21:51:18Z

The vote is over. I now hold the rank of elite within The Evil Council! I celebrate this by coloring in and shrinking the Evil Council logo (originally created by Spook) for use as an avatar. This is probably less impressive when you consider I initially tied for fourth place in an election with five nominees and four seats available, but still, I'M ELIIIIIIIITE.

In other news, my computers are still busked, however, they are busked differently than I thought before. The computer at my mom's house seems mostly clean of junk somehow, but I'll be making sure by finishing up my antistuffware run when I get back. However, it's having problems booting that seem to be the fault of the power supply, so that'll need replacing. The computer at my dad's house, on the other hand, is giving me a bluescreen error when I boot it up, even after reinstalling. I guess I'll need to move my hard drive over to a working computer t fix that. In more gooder electronics news, I think I'll be hooking up an remote control to an alarm clock so I can wake up in the morning to cartoons, as man was meant to sense the dawn of time. As nerdy man-child was meant to, anyway. After that, I think I'll try to replace the power jack on my old laptop so I can use the dang thing.

Edit: Here's the picture because LJ dosen't show post pictures and I don't want to use it as me default right now:

MDUDE'S MARCH MADNESS SALE!

2009-03-20T22:16:49Z

Allright, this week I was able to do something helpfull! My brother was trying to move files form one drive to another and was getting an error saying the drive ran out of room, even though it was several gigabytes larger than needed. I figured out pretty quickly that it was the maximum file size difference between NTFS and FAT32 behind it, and the problem was fixed just by splitting up a large .rar file he had.

As far as fixing my own computer over here at my Mom's house goes, though, I've procrastinated that away for another week, but I'll be trying out SuperAntiSpyware and MalwareBytes when I get back. Interestingly, over at my dad's house, I had moved some files over from the infected computer that weren't backed up using Drop Box, and and starting getting some errors, but seemed to have gotten in under control by getting Avira, and was going to get SuperAntiSpyware too, but it gave me a registry error when I tried to install it, which means I need to find a way to repair the thing, and I've got no reason to think it won't be on this computer (which is still only usable with the help of a DSL live CD) too.

Anyway, I need to go to Montezuma's now, so maybe I'll post more later.

THE GONADS COMPELS

2008-08-13T02:00:30Z

So here's some stupid quiz thing:

Edit: Ok, for some reason it messed up completely, maybe from not likeing Opera, but what metters is the first time I used it I got a raven, then I tried again to see what was up with this undefined thing and got a fox. Either way, I'd probably go with an octopus or some kind of automoton or golem instead if either were possible, b/c they just seem more craaaaaaaaaazy. Also, gonads.

back form Robot 250

2008-07-28T04:02:15Z

I'm back form Robot 250. It was pretty cool, although not as much as I'd like it to be because most of the events were over except a couple that were just starting by the time we had to leave (this was the only weekend my brother had time to take me). I got some kind of wind up robot toy, but I must have elft it somewhere, despite having looked all over the hotel room for anything I might have dropped before we left.

Also I got the details for the program I'm makign for Xuanwu, and will be starting on it soon. Hopefully,

And also I might try to update this post later whn I'm less tired.

SQUIDOO SKADOO

2008-07-12T17:19:23Z

Gardening is doing well so far, we've got a bunch of cherry tomatos and zucchini so far, and I've put one of the larger watermelons in the box I made for making square watermellons partly according to these instructions.

Also, I might as well point out that I made this page on Squidoo because I hear about modular device things, but then I forget what they're called and can't find them again because nine times out of ten they never become more than someone's odd side project. I guess I could just bookmark them, but this just seems kind of neater, and I might as well use my Squidoo accoutn fo something. Plus, I can use this from any of my computers, so that's kind of neat too. Also, Squidoo can give you moneys, but I probably won't be putting any paticular effort into making any through this.

Oh, and also, my brother will be taking me to Robot 250, so that's really cool.

Update after over a month!

2008-06-21T00:28:09Z

So I went to the Pittsburgh Comicon with my brother, and it was pretty awesome. I got some sketches at the con, I might remember to finish scanning them and put them up here. One interesting thing was, my brother goes to the Comic Geek Speak forums, and he took me to some restaurant that had invited the forum members over during the con. There was an interview in which I commented on the food, but I haven't listened to it yet (or more than one, those things are pretty long). Now we're both invited to another comic convention, and he's pretty excited on going.

However, there's something else I'd like too go to, that being the 250th anniversary of Pittburg. Or rather, to Robot 250, the robotics thingamagig that the University of Pittsburg is holding, althouhg I could go see some other stuff too. Hopefully I'll be able to get to go. Also my sister may of may not be interested in going to thiis, which would be nice.

I downloaded the Spore creature creator kit, and made a few creaures. It was really fun seeing what kind of animals I could make, even with the limited parts of the trail version, but not having an EA account apparently means saving dosen't work properly. I guess I'll get one of those.

Also, the peppers in the garden ripened. YEAH! They're extra super spicy, and we might make some chillie with it.

Learning Java has gotten marginally better if I read about some of the built in classes and used them. Also I learned some Python before I realised that, and I might use it when I actualy make a big project, since form what I've read about it it's easier to maintain.

VIRTUALY ACCEPTABLE

2008-04-14T23:57:39Z

Today, I downloaded Damn Small Linux, and am now running it in Microsoft Virtual Machine. That's pretty much it, really, but it's pretty fun doing this. I was going to burn a DVD or Fedora Core or Debian, but my brother has the only DVD burner, and he says he dosn't have the software to make bootable disks with it. I'd think something lie that would come with whatever default program uses it, but he seems pretty sure about it, so I'll leave it at that. Allthugh it really dosn't do much aside from let me mess around with something marginally different, Im glad I got this. Maybe I'll be able to get some stuff done soon, like finishing my Java lessons or learning to drive, although I'm getting distracted from the former pretty easily, and latter I can't do unless someone has the time to take me practicing. And by someone I mean my mom, since she's the only person who'll do it, and she has about a hundred things to do every day anyway.

ALSO: For some reason, the food Mom was going to cook for dinner was spoiled, even though we got it recently, so now we're getting food from Geroge's, one of two small stores within a few minutes of the house. I'll put this in the "mystery" pile in case anything else develops on the matter.

ALSO AGAIN: I should probably get some more RAM for this computer.

EVENTS OF TIME: NOW

2008-04-12T21:28:01Z

My brother is going to take me to the Pittburg Comicon this month, which is pretty neat. Also, he's planning on setting up a website with me. Although I'm not sure what he's planning to do exactly, he's going to be designing the website and I'll be running the computer stuff. I'll set up a Linode server for it later, but for now I'm going to get something set up on a computer I have here so I can get a feel for what I'm doing first.

BRAWL CODE

2008-04-01T01:21:07Z

0709-2750-2666

Unless I've misremembered it since I came inside. My brawl name is MDude.

LOL wut?

2008-03-23T01:18:29Z

I couldn't find my wallet for a while, and then just now I looked right next to my hand and there it was. Most of the time I was at my other parent's house, though, but I thought I looked at my computer desk here before I went over last week.

Some things today

2008-03-17T01:46:32Z

One, water preassure loss again.

Second, I'm still working on learning Java, and I've reached the part on interfaces. I think I'll make a simple text application soon.

Third, my cat still likes popcorn.

Fourth, I tried out Second Life again recently, and it was pretty dull, but I might try it again later to see if I can do something interesting in it.

HMMMMMM

2008-02-29T02:05:00Z

My super-powerfull computer I got for graduation threw a BSOD yesterday (although I had several pages open in FireFox and Opera at the same time, while running Steam and I think something else), and last night/this morning I heard weird mechanical sounds form it, which could mean trouble with the hard drive, although it could be an issue with one of the fans. Nothing is acting up right now, although I'm still a little concerned.

I WILL DO NOTHING UNTIL DISATER OCCURS.

mdude1350 @ 2008-02-20T18:03:00

2008-02-20T23:05:19Z

My DS was found a lwhile back. It was wedged between the wall and the side of my bed the whole time. :p

Also, I'm making some progress in learning Java. Possibly making things soon!

I've been playing Orange Box games and SUper Mario Galaxy, as well as Phantom Hourglass. All of them are awesome.

Three things to note

2008-01-22T21:06:32Z

One: I just moved the data from the PS2 memory card to my PS3, and began playing Psychonauts on it. It's skipping, which I didn't think game discs would do (I thought they'd just crash). I hope it just needs cleaned.

Two: Installing just portal on my current drive partition would take up most of what's left in it. I actualy have a lot of it unformatted, but I was planning on putting Linux on that. Which means finally putting Linux on here so I can use the rest of the disc space and/or installing the extra huge drive I got for Christmas on this computer instead of the new one wich has much more space on the drive it has already.

Three: I'm learning Java right now, because I could use for a few things, including some kind of program for Xuanwu over at the Proffessor forums. Also, if I make a text AI, I'll probably want a web interface for it.

I NOW HAVE STEAM

2008-01-18T00:31:33Z

Anyone who would want to invite me to their steam group should now do so. Or wait until later.

SUPER TRIVIA

2008-01-13T18:37:57Z

I was just using my headphones to listen to music on my IPod, and the music seemed to loud even when the Ipod was at minimum volume. I attrubute this as least partly to the headphones being BOSE noise canceling earphones. So I took them off and crankec up the volume to the point where they were essentialy a tiny pair of speaker with a convienient handel for easy carrying. Also, I just noticed one of the songs skipping, even though I had listened to every song as it was put on my comp to make sure it didn't. I guess I'll just have to re-do that one.

mdude1350 @ 2008-01-09T08:49:00

2008-01-09T15:10:06Z

IT'S TIME FOR AN (INTERNET SUPERGAME:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4.Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result as a comment in this post. Also, pass it along in your own journal because it's more amusing that way.

Also, I'm working on some things, but I think I'll wait until they're more done or at least more interesting to talk about them.

Prevent you, unwanted item displacement!

2008-01-07T01:20:24Z

So yeah, I've lost some things, and I'll list them here to help me remember to lok for them.

1. My DS, which I lost when I went home from Disney World recently.

2. The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass cartridge contained in aforementioned DS.

3. The disc for Lego Creator.

4. One of the two Bender's Big Score DVDs I got for Christmas (although I was just going to return it, since I have another).

5. Disc and Case for the video game Evil Genius.

If you break into my house and happen to find one of the above, please let me know by leaving me a note before you run off with your ill gotten gains, so I may discontinue searching for them in my residence.

Return

2008-01-03T01:52:44Z

That's what I've done.