(formerly)tangentmind.org

"The beta is now closed" That's what it says for the Heroes of Might and Magic V Open Beta. I downloaded the damn game, but you need a unique starforce copyright key. For some reason the Linux version of Firefox wouldn't display the beta sign up properly. I was probably one of the first thousand to go to the sign up page but it doesn't matter if you can't see the stupid page. I might have booted into windows too, but I was busy with other things.

I hope that they add some more keys, otherwise I guess I'll just have to stay pissed.

Edit:
Oh, I just checked the "Open Beta faq" and found this:

Q: "What's wrong? I went to one of those mirror links and all it shows is a black page with a little graphic about subscribe now!?"

A: For some reason the main graphic on that page doesn't load sometimes. Reload and wait. If it still isn't there, then you can click on the invisible join link. Move the mouse an inch or two above the subscribe link and click (the mouse cursor changes shape when its over a link). Thats where the join link should be. The status bar should say hmmv_signup.aspx when the mouse is in the right place on the invisible link.
Here's a pic of the black page and where to click for join link (red circle):
http://img462.imageshack.us/img462/3268/invisiblejoinlink5yy.jpg
Here's a pic of what the page SHOULD look like (red circle around join link):
http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/2162/visiblejoinlink0wc.jpg

Well, I guess that explains it. That's stupid.

Here's the direct link to fileplanet's download of the open beta. You have to have a fileplanet/gamespy login though, which is free.

Also, I found this great sight called straightdope.com. It's a column syndicated in a few newspapers where readers ask questions and then the writer, going by the name Cecil Adams, responds. This is not like Dear Abby, this is more like Myth Busters, because the questions are different things like "Why do women's shirts button on the opposite side of men's?" or "What causes Piss Shiver?" or "Where did the phrase 'rule in thumb' come from?". Stuff like that.

Also, here's one that asks, "Is taking a hot bath an effective contraceptive?"and also whether or not blowing inside a woman's vagina can kill her. The answers, in order, are no and yes.

In short, never blow inside a vagina!

Ocassionally I hear a cd that just gives me a warm feeling. I think Neutral Milk Hotel - Aeroplane Over the sea falls into this category. It's not perfect, but some of the songs just have such great lyrics and nice music to go along with it. The lyrics are almost more important than the music, but the music is a vehicle, the singer is the driver, and the lyrics is the steering wheel. The driver's steering is very important in a vehicle, but the vehicle has to be capable of working for the driver and responsive to the steering.

I'm not sure that's the best analogy, but it'll work for now. I am the King of Carrot Flowers...King of Carrot Flowers...I love that song...the first part especially but both are good. Two Headed Boy, while probably most popular, is also good but King of Carrot Flowers is where my allegiance lies. The other songs are good too.

Speaking of analogies, I saw a pretty funny Dilbert comic recently about the analogy police. This one!. It reminds me of an Art teacher I used to have. Sometimes his analogies weren't too bad, but sometimes they just wanted to make me scream. I think the biggest problem was frequency...just...too...much.

I was surfing all last night, so I've got some more stuff to post later...and I haven't slept so that always leads to excessive and partially coherent(And lengthy, this was supposed to be like a sentence or two)posting. Stay tuned!

1. Pamela Anderson has too sweet a voice to make a good bad ass.
2. Run to Canada.

Slaves used to run to Canada. In most of the movies where the US is messed up, Canada is always safe. I've been thinking, you know since Bush was reelected, that Canada might be a nice place to live. Seems like sooner or later the US is going to get really messed up. Might have to run to Canada at some point anyway, so why not sooner or later? I think bad guys don't like to go there because it's too cold. Brrr!

Actually, Europe was safe in Barb Wire too. No software patents there...

The guy I bought my audio device on ebay from said he sent a socket plug adapter and a mini usb adapter, that he forgot to send, this morning. So I am anticipating that.

So, my Maya class finally got the Maya software, BUT LOST THE MAYA TEACHER. Apparently he was taking too many hours(16?), but he's going to try to be in class ocassionally. Instead we are being taught by an aging CADD expert who has never touched the software. If I was going to have to learn how to use another 3d program on my own, I would have preferred Blender 3D. Still don't have After Effects or Combustion installed for my other class either. I'm a little bit annoyed about all that. I wish someone would just pop out from behind a door and explain that it was all a cruel joke.

Also, my girlfriend got in a wreck and lost her car. She is mostly ok. I would link to the news on the news website, but the news website doesn't seem to mention it. Not gruesome enough I guess. Which is ok by me. Her parents don't think the car stereo with the auxiliary input I mentioned before was worth enough so they're not bothering to take it out. Which means that whatever new car she gets might not have one, and she won't be able to plug her mp3 player into it. I realy wish Aux in was standard on all cd stereos. I bet that it is some conspiracy to get people to buy more cds.

Well, I'm done complaining. Sorry about that.

Edit 02-08-06: He sent it, and I got it and recharged my audio player and I've been using it. I promptly took the mini usb connector to school and lost it the day I got it though. Smart, right? I think Aux in is standard on Scion's btw.

I got my mp3 player today. It is pretty sweet. However, the manual is completely in Korean....and low and behold I was looking at the recharge, and...


IT'S KOREAN TOO.

I don't think I've ever seen a foreign plug in person before. I felt frustrated and pissed, but a little enlightened.

Not sure what I needed to get it working, or even if I could, I did a little searching and found http://www.school-for-champions.com/science/ac_world_volt_freq.htm, which told me just about everything I wanted to know. The device says 110v~220v,60hz, which I hope means that it can automatically switch voltages and only needs a cheap plug adapter. Otherwise I would have to get a replacement ac adapter or an expensive transformer.

The e-mailed the guy I bought it from on ebay, and he said,
"Hi. I'm really sorry about it. I didn't notice the outlet was for 220v because I got it as a gift and I didn't open the box

If you're talking about little adapter like this one http://www.safenet.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=859 . I'll get one asap and ship it to you (free of charge of course)

Again, I'm really sorry I should've taken more look into the box, but I sure did not mean to give false-advertising because that's not how I do trade online.

Please let me know. Thanks"

So, that's pretty awesome of him.

It has an fm receiver and transmitter and a long lasting lithium battery and it's well designed and it's all around a very neat thing to have. Digital Dream Device is right! Hopefully it won't die before I get a recharger for it.

I know I've been posting a lot lately, but I have to balance out the times I don't post at all by posting a lot the other times.

First of all, there's a comment on my "Damn You Cruel World!" post from the guy who runs kahvi.org and he said that until the next kahvi release all the podcasts are in mp3 format.

Secondly, Heroes of Might and Magic V is having an open beta on the 19th. Also, I missed the anouncement for the next Might and Magic game. It is being made by Arkane Studios, the makers of Arx Fatalis. I played Heroes of Might and Magic 2-4 quite a bit. My mom and I both played the first Might and Magic on the NES for far too many hours. I never really got into the rest of the Might and Magic games, but I do have Arx Fatalis. I never beat it because I had too much trouble picking it back up again ater I put it down because I never remembered what it was I needed to do.

The new Heroes of Might and Magic V is going to be different than the previous. Since 3do went out of business it is being made by a different studio, nival interactive, and they are going to have lots of 3d and possibly different third person perspectives or something. I think they're trying to make it more exciting. I'm not totally sure how it's going to be, which is why I am anticipating finding out in the open beta. I am also anticipating finding out what the next Might and Magic should be like. I liked Arx Fatalis, because it reminded me of Ultima Underworld, but I never beat either Ultima Underworld 1 or 2.

Heroes V will have a Mac version...maybe someone can convince them to port it to Linux.

Should be interesting.

Reference:
http://www.mightandmagicgame.com/us/
http://www.mightandmagic.com/HeroesV/

Sometimes I think of things when I'm laying in bed.

I was thinking it would be really neat if at a live concert everyone had in ear monitors that all got their signal from a bluetooth system hooked up to the sound system. That would be neat. Everyone could listen at their own level and no one would have to hurt their ears if they didn't want to. Of course, the acoustics would be different and that could potentially suck, but it could also potentially rule. Of course, in ear monitors are incredibly expensive but that's not the point.

In ear monitors:
http://ultimateears.com/
http://www.ultimateears.com/custom/Custom-Ear-Monitors.htm
http://www.headphone.com/products/headphones/in-ear-monitor/

there are some cheaper ones by other companies but the ultimate ears are awesome.

Part 1

Your eyes,
bright shining as the sun,
imitate a silenced gun.

The burning
of the fire there
has sneaked upon me unaware.

The shot rings out
though no one hears it.
My body falls
though I'm still standing.

Part 2

No death
for mourning.
No injury
for healing.
No fright
for fearing.
No cry
or hearing.

Part 3

Your smile,
Your laugh,
Your hair,
Your shine...

My walls break down;
I'm left without
a fortress to keep the feelings out.

I don't know what, where, why or when;
I only see what's left within.

You take what's left in warm embrace
and tell me of a better place.

Ocassionally I learn important life lessons from movies or video games or whatever. I think I will start posting them up here. If there is a possible spoiler, I will put the text in the background color so you have to scroll over it.

Now, "what I learned from Quest for Fire."(possible "spoiler")

If you ever find yourself in a primitive world, and you see a girl tied to a tree about to be eaten by cannibals, rescue her. After that, make sure you keep her around, because she probably knows how to make fire. Also, make sure you have sex with her.

I have some stuff I write down in little text documents that I never published anywhere. I probably have some in notebooks too. Some of it is terrible but some it surprises me when I read it. Sometimes it's even something I did within the last 3 months and just forgot. I decided I should try to publish them all on this blog. I think I'll just copy the text instead of trying to upload the txt file and link to it.

Without Further Ado, A poem called "freeze dried", which was possibly written on the 16 of August in 2005. Not totally sure. I just found it and my response was "Where the hell did that come from?"

Freeze Dried

freeze dried fillets of frozen soy

filled with firey spices

flame licked and fire drizzled

food for favored guests



The neon sign buzzed noisily.

The wrapping paper wrinkled.



Flies buzzed busily to beat the sign.

Condements flowed freely.



MSG, salt and pepper rained down in extremes.



Damn that's a good burger and fries.

No, I can't dance. My brain dances though. Dances from subject to subject in some maddening frenzy to drive me insane and keep me from getting some good rest. Maybe it was just the green tea at pho vietnam. I should have drank some more water. Water is pretty good at flushing out Caffeine. I'll probably get tired about the time my class starts.

So, I noticed that the web page archive over on the right doesn't work. Oh, wait, I already mentioned this. Anyway, I thought I would put a direct link to my poetry archives. 250free.com puts all sorts of nasty banners on the pages so I though I might upload a zip file of all the html and link to that also, that way the archives could be perused(and hopefully not plagerized) at will. Remember, it's not plagarism if you get permission and you site sources. In other words, give cred biatch. Not that anything's worth stealing.

Poetry & Prose Archives

I'll probably upload the zip and add the links to the right side later.

This morning I learned that putting cold hands into cold gloves, that have been in a cold car all night, is not an improvement.

I'm in photoshop class right now and the computers have neither photoshop or 3dsmax, which is ridiculous. If they don't get one, the other, or preferrably both by the end of this week I'm going to write a nasty letter to the admins. I want to check and see if I can get my DS to use the campus wifi, but I don't want to get it out in class just because I don't know how the other students will react.

I noticed that the link to the archive of my old web page doesn't seem to work. I'll fix that later.

I was bidding on some other ogg players on ebay. This, this and this.

I also had this bookmarked.

I just realised that Penny Arcade, one of the few sites a frequent which I thought had no RSS feed, does have one. I noticed it when I looked at the address bar and realised what that little icon on the right means. It means there's a feed. I then realised there was even an rss button on the penny arcade site but I never noticed it.

It's not the traditional RSS icon though(the orange one made by Mozilla and adopted by Internet Explorer..7 I think, and many web sites). If you're using Mozilla or Firefox(not sure about IE or Opera) you can see it to the far right in the address bar. neat huh? Not sure how to find out what the feed address is without first adding it as a live link on the bookmarks toolbar and then checking the live bookmarks properties.Found out that linuxgames.com also has an rss feed that's not advertised that way.

For this reason I should be able to check all the website I frequent by simply opening up Thunderbird, my mail program, except for Doublefine.com and mojo.com's feed doesn't seem to be working. So I simply have those on my bookmark toolbar in firefox. Much easier than trying to remember which website I would like to check.

I have wanted a new mouse for a long time. I've had this cheap logitech optical mouse for a long time, and it works great but I don't think it's too great for gaming. I think it's 300 or 400 dpi. I'm using one with a higher dpi right now (forgot...600? 800?) that's cheap and made by aopen. I think the new laser mice from logitech are nice, but I can't justify spending $70-$100 on a mouse. That's why I've kind of been wanting one of these for; a while. They are an affordable laser mouse made by a company that makes optical devices like cd-roms. I think the resolution is set at 1600 permanently. Many of the mice from logitech you can change. There is some software designed for linux to allow you to change it. Some of them from logitech, the laser ones at least, have switches on the mouse to change it, which is nice. I also found out about mice that also have that switch made by a company I've never heard of called "a4tech". Some of their mice features seem kind of hoaky, but they're more affordable and they have that nice resolution switch.

It would really be most ideal to buy a mouse that I can test drive first...at least hold in my hand which is not incredibly likely to happen with the optorite and a4tech mice but I might be able to find the logitech on display at best buy or elsewhere. I started to think about all this because there is a well priced logitech gaming mouse at 3b-tech right here. It's really not all that impressive though.

Occasionally I will just think "sure would like to have a new mouse" but I sually forget about it eventually. I probably shouldn't buy one now though, because I just spent $70.00 on an audio player. Some of the mice sure are tempting though. Maybe I should go get a job...or sell plasma. My girlfriend, Leslie, doesn't want me to sell plasma. Shes says that it will make me feel weak and faint, but I feel that way a lot of the time anyway. Oh well.

Edit: I forgot to say why I want a high resolution laser mouse. I used to think high resolution mouses were hype...and they can be. If you are a person who prefers low sensitivity in your mouse it probably doesn't matter. however, in First and third person games I like to set the resolution up so I can look and move around quickly. This can cause a problem when any sort of accuracy is needed. In fact, in the PC versions of Grand Theft Auto, it can actually be impossible to hit someone with a sniper rifle because the gun target will skip pixels totally passing over something that is very far away. Using the Aopen mouse over my logitech mouse has helped somewhat, which is why I use it even though it is less comfortable and can make my hand cramp. The aopen's resolution isn't all that high either. In reality a comfortable 800 dpi mouse might be enough but why go 800 when you can go with 2000 dpi and a laser mouse(being laser instead of standard optical itself is a big improvement)?

The temptation was too great to resist

It has 6 times as much space as my previous one, and I believe(though the listing doesn't say it) that the included remote control has an fm transmitter built in so I won't have to buy one. My biggest fear is that I will drop it and, being a hard drive player, it will break...or it simply won't work when it gets here. I'm also not sure if it uses a simple usb drive interface or something more complex. If it's more complex then it would probably be useless as a portable hard drive at school or in Linux. I think it's just a usb drive interface because it is advertised to work in on Macintoshes.

At 67.99 it costs much more than I intended to spend, but that's about what I payed for my first 256mb mp3 player. If it has the included fm transmitter the price should look more reasonable.

Edit: I forgot to mention that the bid price went from .99 to 58.00 in less than 24 hours. Also, since the device is a Korean device, I'm not sure that the fm transmitter will work in the US, if it has one.

edit again: More info on the player at http://nextway.co.kr/english/product/nmp_150d.htm. It is one of their "Digital Dream Device" products(that's what D Cube means). At least the South Koreans are not as crazy as the North. It's probably all that rice alcohol. I think it's a good kind of crazy. We could all probably use some more Digital Dream Devices and rice alcohol.

It is official. I want an mp3 player that can play ogg vorbis files. Well, it wouldn't strictly be an mp3 player then, it would elevate to a higher plane of audio existence and become a "Digital Audio Player". Why you may ask? The mp3 player I have now plays wma and mp3 just fine. Simple, I decided I don't listen to enough music and that I don't give music from Kahvi.org enough listening time. So I thought I could download the new released to my audio player and then listen to them for a while until I've had enough time to make a significant opinion about them. I could listen to them while I walk around the house, eat food, walk outside, traverse the vast expanse which is "The Wal-mart", or while I'm riding in the car. The hitch, all the new kahvi releases are ogg vorbis. Yes, I could reencode them using various softwares but I don't want to.

Listening in my car, be it with my current mp3 device, or a separate cd player or tape player or portable 8 track or game device or whatever is portable and happens to have an audio out is also a problem because my car stereo does not have an auxiliary input. I thought about taking it out and seeing if there was any input on the back that I could rig up to play my devices through the car speakers but I don't have much hope for that. I could also get one of those $50 fm transmitter things but why get cd quality digital audio just to make it radio quality, which is pretty low quality on the audio quality scale? Not only that, but they're like $50 and up. My girlfriend's car stereo has aux in and it was probably $50 itself.

When cd car stereos were designed that should have all come with aux in standard so people could still play their tapes. I should start a movement about it. CSAISFABF - Car Stereo Auxiliary Input Standard For A Better Future(say that 5 times fast).

Back to the ogg player. I had a link to some cheap mp3 players earlier and at least one of them could play ogg vorbis. I will probably search for the link on my website later. I think I may have also mentioned the Rio Karma which is one of those hard drive players that can store something like 20 gb of music and can play both ogg vorbis and, get this, Flac which is lossless audio compressed of the highest quality made by the people who made ogg vorbis.

Update: A (probably incomplete) list

IN OTHER NEWS
Hasbro seems to own almost every, if not every, toy I ever played with as a kid...and a number I played with when I was older.

ALSO

A super soaker flame thrower.

It's 2006. This means to me, "a new year", "metroid for DS should be out soon"..and I think that's about it.


I kept noticing the word "Hoodia" in spam I've been getting so I looked it up.

Apparently Hoodia Gordonii is a succulent plant, much like a cactus, that grows only in the African Kalahari desert, and when eaten even in small quantities makes you feel like you are full for a long time. The African "bush people" have used it for thousands of years to stave off hunger during long hunting trips. The first scientific research done on the plant was done in the 60s in a study of indigenous foods, by the South African National Laboratory but only recently did they figure out exactly what caused the reaction in animals. They call the ingredient p57 and it tricks the brain into thinking that an animal is full. The South African national laboratory immediately applied for a patent and licensed the drug to a drug company, Phytopharm. Pfizer teamed up with Phytopharm to do research and try to make the drug into a pill, but after figuring out that they could not mass produce pills, they dropped out. Instead Phytopharm is making weight loss products like shakes and bars and food replacements with Hoodia or p57 in them. They expect to have the products on shelves by 2008.

There are a lot of fake Hoodia products on the market now and many that have very little Hoodia in them. There may be some legitimate products but none that can be sold as weight loss products. However, I guess that's kind of like selling bongs for tobacco use. Here is someone who claims to know something about it, but I'm not sure I'd believe it.

Below are the other links were I got my information. Listed from newest to oldest sources.
http://www.hoodiascam.com/
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/18/60minutes/main656458.shtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/correspondent/2947810.stm