Posts tagged with "games"

Honours Project, Wind Waker

I’ve been get­ting a decent amount of work done late­ly. I’m pret­ty much fin­ished my graph­ics project, a week ahead of sched­ule, and it looks pret­ty sweet. I haven’t had enough progress on my hon­ours project yet, since my super­vi­sor isn’t very good at giv­ing direc­tions. I’m pret­ty wor­ried about my pre­sen­ta­tion for it next week. It’s sup­posed to be 15–20 min­utes long, and I feel like I only have 10 min­utes worth of mate­r­i­al, but more impor­tant­ly, that I’ve exhaust­ed all aspects of the sub­ject. The essay is sup­posed to be 20 pages sin­gle spaced, but I can’t see that hap­pen­ing with the amount of infor­ma­tion out there on Rubik’s cubes.

The Wind Waker comes out tom­morow at 9:30 am, and I’ll be pick­ing it up before meet­ing with my super­vi­sor tomor­row. I’ll be try­ing it out for the first time in the pres­ence of Trolley and Wheaties, and pos­si­bly Aaron and Dina, dur­ing the night. We’ll be pick­ing up some alco­hol, and I’ll be stay­ing the night there. Trolley has a car, so he’ll be able to pick me up, and dri­ve Dolores to his place as well. It will be inter­est­ing to see how she and Nala will inter­act with each oth­er.

Lonely Thoughts, Cryptography Presentation, Etc.

I feel…alone. I wish I could speak to some­one who could under­stand. I wish I could express my feel­ings the way I wish. What a per­fect time to write.

I’ve been work­ing on my graph­ics project all day. I have almost every­thing done now, with the cells co-ordi­nat­ing their move­ments in a 3D Game of Life dance. They grow and shrink as the rules dic­tate, and although I have some bugs to iron out, and some bells and whis­tles to add, it should­n’t take too long.

My cryp­tog­ra­phy pre­sen­ta­tion went alright. We did­n’t quite for­mal­ly rehearse, so I spoke for 15 out of the 20 min­utes allo­cat­ed to us, when three of us had speak­ing to do. We were fair­ly rushed at the end, but I think that we got our points through well. I felt that I did a great job at open­ing the pre­sen­ta­tions, and at explain­ing my part. Mike, Pat, Iain, and I went to get loaded before the pre­sen­ta­tion, but unfor­tu­nate­ly, the shock of the sit­u­a­tion sobered me up rather effi­cient­ly. After all, it was the first pre­sen­ta­tion I’ve had to do through all of uni­ver­si­ty.

I feel bet­ter after play­ing a few games with Darren. Somehow we made it under the 300th mark, with a 55–7 record at lev­el 14. I believe the height of my addic­tion was most evi­dent when I was watch­ing a movie where a man gets trapped in a bath­room by some tri­ad mem­bers, and the first thing that I thought of was the item box, and town por­tal­ing to a safe loca­tion.

I might going to the Dominican Republic when school ends.

I’ve lis­tened to some of the Tool songs off of the strings trib­ute album, and they’re not very good. The strings are great­ly lack­ing in ener­gy, and some­times bare lit­tle resem­blance to the songs they’re pay­ing homage to. One can tell that the com­pos­er is inspired by Tool com­pos­ings, but the instru­men­tal­ists are insipid in their per­for­mance.

The Honest Lawyer yes­ter­day was relax­ing and frus­trat­ing at the same time. I nev­er I had a chance to real­ly savour the fries this time though, since I felt so guilty about munch­ing on Wheaties’ last time. All in all though, I think I’d rather not have gone.

I’ve always thought that Beth Gibbons had an amaz­ing­ly attrac­tive qual­i­ty to her, not only from the dis­tinc­tive tim­bre of her voice, but also from the grace and gen­tle­ness of her fig­ure cap­tured in her pho­tographs. I’m try­ing out some of her lat­est side-project work with Rustin Man, and so far the sound has been amus­ing­ly unique, a mix of acoustic gui­tar with bit­ter­sweet melodies.

White Cheddar KD, Game Addiction, Etc.

I had some white ched­dar KD for din­ner tonight. I have to admit that it tastes bet­ter than reg­u­lar KD. It seems to have a “high­er class” cheap taste.

Blizzard has me addict­ed yet again. At least Dina is addict­ed too. And Trolley some­how made the FT beta, which is amaz­ing. I feel like I get to say, “I know a guy who made the beta!” When I tell peo­ple they look at me fun­ny.

I almost com­plet­ed my graph­ics assign­ment. The only thing that’s miss­ing is the object motion along the con­vey­or belt, and some pol­ish­ing of the col­li­sion detec­tion. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get per­fect col­li­sion detec­tion done, but I doubt that I’ll lose too many marks for that. I think I’ll just leave it the way it is, since I should be work­ing on oth­er projects, and I need to pri­or­i­tize.

Mel is hav­ing a birth­day par­ty on Saturday at the Honest Lawyer, and I’m look­ing for­ward to going.

There are a few things I want to with this page, like add a fea­ture that will sep­a­rate archives into dif­fer­ent pages, if it finds more than 100 results from a data­base query. I sup­pose I’ll find the time some­where.

I got my mouse in the mail today. It has stiffer but­tons and a stiffer scroll wheel, but every­thing is more respon­sive. I don’t like the fact that a part of the design isn’t flush with the rest of the mouse, so my pinky will catch on it. I’m not sure if that’s part of the design, or just some­thing that hap­pened to mine. The back thumb but­ton is also a bit too small and sunken when pressed. The pre­ci­sion of the mouse is dead on though, even with extreme­ly fast motions. I can now retire my old mouse. I should have giv­en him a name.

I don’t know how Trolley seems to drink every night. Some weeks I wish that I had noth­ing but alco­hol con­sump­tion, but my con­science always pre­vents me. I guess the idea that it’s cost­ly and not-so-dele­te­ri­ous real­ly pre­vents me from tak­ing shots as dessert. Yet Wheaties just tells me, “drink for fear of being upset do to lack of rea­son to drink. this way, you can drink before you get upset, real­iz­ing there real­ly isnt a need to drink, and you’ll be a peace­ful alco­holist — bet­ter than a ragin one.. hon­est­ly, its for your own good”. I think I’ll heed some of his advice.

Graphics Assignment, Frozen Throne

I’ve been work­ing most of the week­end on my graph­ics assign­ment. I have the arm ani­ma­tion work­ing now, togeth­er with most of the tim­ing, but the object motion is killing me. Somehow I have to get an object to move with the claw of an arm, get the object dropped, and then move along a con­vey­or belt. The prof gave us anoth­er week exten­sion (on top of one we already had) so it’s due next mon­day. I would pre­fer to get it done for tomor­row though, since the delays in projects would just add up, and I have my hon­ours project and cryp­tog­ra­phy project to think of. I might be hit­ting the bot­tle a bit ear­ly today.

I’ve been read­ing some Frozen Throne info, and the new units look pret­ty cool. The prob­lem is that the expan­sion is com­plete­ly chang­ing and re-bal­anc­ing all of the pre­vi­ous units and build­ings. Essentially, it’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent game. For exam­ple, all the build­ings have their costs reduced by about 15%. Or the fact that units can now ethe­re­al, and that there’s a new type of dam­age. Basically every­thing I learned has become use­less. The only thing that I’ve kept is what I learned from micro­man­age­ment. Shit.

The Fourth Day

Four con­sec­u­tive writ­ing days in a row. Balls.

Pat called me yes­ter­day to see how I was doing. How fuck­ing amaz­ing is that? When I found out, the back of my nose felt tight­ly con­gest­ed, and the rims of my eyes start­ed to tin­gle. I need to be more like Pat. I real­ized yes­ter­day that he’s like my preach­er; he’s the only one I can talk to with­out fear­ing judg­ment or embar­rass­ment. It’s not that my oth­er friends aren’t under­stand­ing, it’s that Pat is able to see the moti­va­tions that dri­ve the actions one does, with­out wor­ry­ing about whether the con­se­quences are for bet­ter or worse. He’s able to see the good in many peo­ple, and I guess that I need to be remind­ed that I have some good in me on occa­sion.

I think I need boobs. I bought a turtle­neck dur­ing a box­ing day sale. I found it on a table stacked with oth­er mot­ley piles of clothes, in the mid­dle of the store, for 50% off. I did­n’t try it on, since the lines for the change rooms were ridicu­lous­ly long. I got home and tried it on, and it felt a little…large. I tried to shrink it in the wash, but it only slight­ly worked, because it still fit in an odd way. I real­ized today that it might be a girls’ turtle­neck, and that the extra room in it might be for a healthy rack. I’m not com­plete­ly sure, because I’ve nev­er tried on what I know to be a girls’ turtle­neck, and the beige colour isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly fem­i­nine. I sup­pose I could try to return it since it has­n’t been worn yet, and has­n’t been (notice­ably) washed, but I’d rather have the boobs.

I’ve tried to change the date and time cod­ing in PHP, so that it more accu­rate­ly rep­re­sents when the entries were writ­ten, but no such luck. The serv­er this is host­ed on is locat­ed in Hong Kong, which is about 13 hours ahead, so all the entries seem like they’re writ­ten 13 hours into the future. I found out how to edit the val­ues of the date and time, but only when it’s from a cur­rent time­stamp, and not when it’s being retrieved from a data­base. I might just try to fig­ure out a way around every­thing if I real­ly feel the need to have accu­rate num­bers.

I think that I stop read­ing dur­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly stress­ful school terms. My free time alone is gen­er­al­ly divid­ed between gam­ing and read­ing, and when I need some stress relief then gam­ing is just able to deliv­er much bet­ter. As Doug and I dis­cussed, we’re able to lose our­selves, to just let go of every­thing else and be com­plete­ly absorbed. Sometimes my stress will spill over though, and I’ll feel the need to write.