tangentmind.org

Killian. My Only Son. As far as I know.

2012-01-22T04:19:00.000-06:00

So long blogger...

2011-02-21T04:06:00.001-06:00

It's been real.

http://tangentmind.wordpress.com/

Yes, this one

2010-06-12T03:01:00.003-05:00

I've decided a couple things for sure, I'm just not sure how I'm going to do some of them.

1. Going to start some kind of gaming team.
2. By the end of this year...going to have a server of my own...what purpose it will serve, I have no idea...maybe I will have more than one server. Who knows?
3. Want to go to quakecon in August.
4. Will definitely, at least finish my degree by the end of next year.
5. Going to publish a book of my writing...at least one
6. Will get a brand new computer by end of next year.
7. Am going to start some kind of business, even if it is destined to fail.
8. Want to become and Ubuntu partner.
9. Start some kind of planning for an electronics or computer museum.
10. Try to get a place of my own.

This is not a New Years resolution, just a list of Goals.

Terror

2010-06-10T13:07:00.002-05:00

I feel as though I'm losing the ability to pull myself up that slippery slope between insanity. I am seriously afraid that soon all of my memories will slip into darkness. That's pretty frightening for a 25 year old who hasn't been afraid of anything in a long time. Worse than that is that my wife is not here to help me, since she is in a correctional facility for possession with intent to deliver.

"Big Tent" Revival - Ubuntu 10.4

2010-05-27T13:48:00.002-05:00

http://ultimateedition.info - ultimate edition Ubuntu dvd

http://www.ubuntu.com/ - official releases

Try ubuntu 10.4...you can easily install it while still dual booting windows...you can even install it inside windows. It will change your life for the better...the possibilities are almost endless.

I'm really just posting this here to remind myself of what I need to do. If you are not me, you are completely welcome to ignore it. If you are me, then quit procrastinating and get on this.

Def. not a scam. Quit being a "pussy" cat, and just do it.

It's almost too easy....

Also fun to play with, and can be installed within windows easily

Syllable OS and Haiku OS

cdburnerxp.se

Planning on starting a local Linux User Group in Fort Smith.

Trying to get "sheet" together.

blah, blah, blah.

Still working out details. Drop me a line if you can help.

Feel free to check the ubuntu forums...there is a great deal of information.

Also...if you REALLY want to pay money, instead of getting everything for free...Canonical sells support...def. good for noobs.

later.

carfax

2007-10-09T15:44:00.001-05:00

I just signed up for a month of carfax reports for 30 days, so if you ever wanted to see your vehicle history, send me the vin. If you are someone I know, I will run it, if not, I probably won't.

Sneaky Subterfuge

2007-09-15T19:38:00.001-05:00

"While not a grievous crime, it borders on sneaky subterfuge... the deep dark place whence grievous crime comes." - A text message I sent to my girlfriend; I have no clue about the meaning or purpose.

Dual Channel: Stupid, stupid me; stupid, stupid chaintech.

2007-09-07T19:30:00.001-05:00

More on my Chaintech 7njl6

Ok, so I loaded up the program cpu-z, which I only learned about recently, so I could get some information about the memory in my computer. Lo and behold it tells me my memory is in channels 2 and 3. Apparently, my motherboard is lying about which channels are which. They look like this || |. The motherboard labels the channels as 1,2, and then 3. I had the memory in what I thought was 1 and 2. So I switched the one in motherboard labeled 1 to motherboard labeled 3.

Lo and behold I boot up the computer and the BIOS boot up screen tells me that my memory is running in dual channel. Apparently they are something like 2,3, and then 1, and once again, they look like this || | and the motherboard says "ddr1, ddr2, ddr3". Also, at first the computer crashed when windows was starting, but I simply reset the bios to failsafe, and then to optimal, set my agp aperture to 64(for HD playback), and set it to "reset" in the menu for pci or something(I don't remember which menu it's under exactly. After that everying started up alright.

Now, apparently I never learned anything about dual channel or I forgot. My motherboard's chipset uses Nvidia nforce2, which supports dual channel and I have two memory modules of equal size, and the same brand but made by different manufacturers. Apparently, in general you need the memory in slots 1 and 3 for dual channel, but it varies by motherboard. The info is easily available using a google search. I may have tried putting my memory in dual channel, before, but as I can tell you now, my memory slots are not in order.

I do not know if this will affect my motherboard stability, but it would be awesome if it did because that would save me the $60-100 expense of replacing it.

However, I have found a new reason to upgrade from Athlon XP. Some of the new games, and possibly other software coming out right now require sse2, which athlon xp does not support. So far I have ran into Lost Planet, and Dirt, which need it.

If my computer stays stable I will post the good news here. I may still need to set the memory to the same frequency as the CPU fsb. I haven't done that yet. Hopefully Dual Channel should speed up a few things though.

CPUs, Video Cards, and Motherboards - Don't buy AGP, etc.

2007-09-01T18:22:00.000-05:00

So, the first week of both work and school is over. Not too bad.

Never buy a Chaintech motherboard. They're probably not all bad, but mine certainly is. They don't make them anymore so finding one might be difficult, but if you do, beware. I have a Chaintech 7njl6. Worst (new) motherboard I've ever had. A simple google searach for 7njl6 will verify my claims. At the moment it's stable but that comes and goes and I had to fidget with my bios settings for a long time.

I don't remember what my bios settings are now. I think I set it to optimal defaults, turned on resetting the resources, then I started up the computer and rebooted it. Then I turned off resetting resources, changed the agp aperture to 128...and I can't remember if I did anything else. I may have changed the cpu settings. I think I set them all to expert, setting all the settings to match my hardware so both the FSB and memory was set at 166 mhz, and then set something to aggressive that I don't think mattered that much because after the other two settings were set to expert all the aggressive setting did was grey out the menu options on the bottom about something like "spread spectrum". I'd have to look again to make sure.

I have tried getting a new power supply, a new cpu fan, a new video card, switching out sound cards, and many other things. It's just a complete garbage board. For now it is stable though, so I'll cross my fingers.

Worst part is that the processor is socket A and the video card is AGP. Socket A is basically dead, so getting a good motherboard for socket A is difficult and furthermore AGP is on the way out. Most of the motherboards I can find with AGP slots are socket 754, which is also on the way out. I haven't been able to find any AGP socket 939 boards, even though I know some exist. Even still socket 939 has been superseded by socket am2, which is soon to be superseded by am2+ and am3.

I haven't really bothered too much with Pentium sockets. Even though Pentium currently has the fastest processors, which I believe are all on the 775 socket, and they dropped the prices on some of their processors, in general I still find AMD motherboard/processors to be closer to my price range.

Still, I recently bought an AGP video card and I'm starting to feel that I should have gone ahead and upgraded to PCI-Express and gotten a new motherboard and CPU when I did that.

If you have a good socket A motherboard, cpu, and AGP video card and none of the parts are going to die, and you don't need to upgrade, then you'll be fine. However, if any part dies or you ever want to upgrade, you're screwed.

I would recommend anyone who is building a new system or replacing some expensive parts, to go ahead and upgrade to PCI-Express, and at least socket 939, if not am2 if they're going with AMD. Currently there are still some socket 752 amd stuff out there, but they may go the way of socket A sometime soon. Intels pretty much all use 775 so that's not as big an issue, but PCI-express is still the better bet. Also, the 939 and up motherboards and processors are generally better than the older ones, and also pci-express is better than AGP. I don't think AMD motherboards below 939 had dual channel ddr, among other things.

So, let that be a lesson to you. Get the newest or newer AMD socket motherboards or an Intel, and shy away from AGP or you might regret it later. Also, stay away from Chaintech, and if you have a Chaintech 7njl6, I feel for you.

Updates

2007-08-18T14:24:00.000-05:00

I added a bit more info under my profile. Also, I added a "Currently Playing:" section to the section on the right. I considered adding "Recently Watched" or something like that to show which movies I've recently watched. I'm not sure. I maI'm trying to decide whether or not I should sign up for adsense. I doubt I would get much from it, but you never know. In general I don't like ads. I do like getting paid. I'll have to think about it.

I may have a job. I may know Monday. Also, school starts on Monday. I have 3 classes.

I did get Myth and my Kworld 110 working in Ubuntu somewhat. I haven't worked out all the kinks. I'm taking a break from it. I may go into more detail about it later.

Ubuntu Linux 7.04, BFG Nvidia Geforce 6000gt, MythTV,

2007-08-14T14:39:00.000-05:00

I haven't used Ubuntu in a long time, because I basically switched to using windows full time so I could always run the programs and games I wanted or needed to run. I also switched video cards, tv tuner cards, and hadn't updated Ubuntu in a long time. Most of the time my computer has something it wants to record, and since I have Beyond TV set up with my Kworld ATSC 110 in windows, I want to make sure I'm in windows when it decides to record.

KWORLD ATSC-110
However, the Kworld drivers in windows do not support QAM-256 in windows, because the drivers are BDA drivers. I wanted to try to set up my card in Linux with QAM-256 so I could see if I could pick up digital channels over COX Cable. I don't presonally have cable TV, but I do have cable internet, and my girlfriends parents have Digital Cable. I was wondering if I could pick up the channels for free, because usually you get the Digital signal as long as you have TV and you just have to rent an extra cable box to pick up the signals.

Installing Ubuntu
However, upon booting into Ubuntu I decided that my Ubuntu installation was too old to upgrade easily, and I decided to start over with 7.04. Most of my important information had been on a separate fat partition anyway. I formatted my two Ubuntu partitions which were "/boot" and "/", installed Ubuntu and booted it up. I had to turn off the "SB Live Analog/Digital Output Jack" because there was static coming out of the speakers. Then I ran all the updates. I installed the gstreamer plugins so I could watch videos while I'm working on the computer, and will probably install VLC soon for the same reason.

NVIDIA Restricted Drivers
Next, I needed to install the Nvidia restricted drivers. I could have just done it the easy way, but I decided to install the latest drivers from the Nvidia website(100.14.11).

Edit: I forgot an important step when I did this. Before installing the drivers, I should have opened up "/etc/default/linux-restricted-modules-common" with root privileges and put "nv nvidia-new fglrx" in "DISABLED_MODULES". After rebooting I had some issues with the Nvidia driver having the wrong version, and X not starting before I fixed this.

To install the drivers, I first downloaded them from the Nvidia website. Next I had to install the libc6-dev package. After that I ran "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop" in the console. After X closed, I went to the directory I downloaded the drivers too, which was my Desktop, and ran "sudo sh (driver file)". The installer then compiled a new package, and I chose to run Nvidia's X configuration program. After that I tried it out by restart X with "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start". Everything seemed to start ok, except that the resolution was wrong. I checked my "/etc/X11/Xorg.conf" file, noticed that the highest resolution was labeled "1440x1440" instead of "1440x900" like it was supposed to be, so I fixed this. After that, I restarted X and everything seemed good. System>Preferences>Screen Resolution seems to think that the frequency of the screen should be 50Hz or 57Hz, which is wrong. However, the Viewsonic menu says it's 60, so I'm not going to worry about it right now. Finally, since I have an LCD screen, I went to System>Preferences>Font and set the font to "subpixel smoothing" so the font looks better.

BFG GEFORCE 6600GT MESSED UP
Lastly, what I said about the Nvidia drivers causing that odd triangle on the top of my screen was wrong. I also may have forgotten to mention that my HD videos are kind of stuttering. The cpu usage stays slow, so it's probably something to do with the hardware acceleration on the video card. Also, ocassionally when I restart the computer, the screen will flash on and off, displaying the screen as it should be as well as with graphical errors. I don't know why. The only fix I've found so far is to turn the computer off for 5-10 minutes and then turn it back on.

I have no idea what's causing this. My BFG Geforce 6600gt OC might be a little bit messed up. It does have a tendency to run a little hot - about 60 degrees celsius but the shut off heat is well above 100. Also, the video card fan sometimes makes bad noises. It could also be an issue with the motherboard though. My motherboard is cheap. Of course, so was my card, but I got it on rebate.

The triangle is still on my Linux desktop as well.

I'm going to try to figure out the ATSC 110 HD TV QAM Linux, Mythtv thing now so more updates later.

More computer stuff

2007-08-12T17:17:00.000-05:00

VLC CRASHING
I recently had a problem with VLC crashing on me. I don't know why or when it started. It would just simply crash every time it started. I found some info online however that fixed it. What I had to do was go to the vlc install directory, rename the plugins folder, open VLC(it won't open), wait for it to try to start and not open, then rename the plugins folder back to "plugins", and open it again. This resets the plugins and for some odd reason, fixes it. Your guess is as good as mine, but it works.

NVIDIA DRIVERS
I recently tried to install the Nvidia 162.18 drivers for my geforce 6600gt agp. The drivers have something wrong with their widescreen support, so the screen didn't look right. Then I uninstalled them and installed the NGO 158.22 drivers. For some reason my nvidia control panel doesn't work, however if I install ntune, the ntune control panel will open install of the nvidia control panel. I also have a weird dark triangle up at the top of my desktop. I don't see it in games though. I will probably go back to the 78.01 drivers, which were the last ones I know of to offer wmv HD acceleration for my 6600gt AGP. I might just wait for another driver update though. The Nvidia settings taskbar thing still works.

End of Hiatus, maybe, and usefullness

2007-08-12T16:05:00.000-05:00

So, I moved out of my parents house and in with my girlfriend. Very fun. It took me a little while to get the internet up, and when I did, I didn't really feel like posting.

I have a fixed a number of random things and learned some interesting things though, and I just decided that I should be posting them, because someone else might find them useful.

Let's see..where to start...

PCCHIPS M810LMR
I have a pcchips m810lmr motherboard. I have a Sapphire Radeon 9600xt plugged into it. I had Ubuntu running on it but Ubuntu never seemed stable when games and videos were playing, which is annoying, because stability is a big reason I bought the board in the first place. I thought it might have been Ubuntu, because I had upgraded it many times and it was low and hard drive space it had hard restarted many, many times, and the installation came from the old motherboard. So I reinstalled Ubuntu, and also Windows 2000 on a larger hard drive. I then found out that games and video were not stable under windows either, so I looked online and decided that I probably needed to turn down the AGP speed. I now know that I have to set the AGP speed to 1x in order for the computer to be stable, even though the motherboard can do AGP 4x and the card can do AGP 8x. It's stable so I'm happy.

Next, I've had a lot of problems getting windows update to work on a couple computers. I've solved some problems with it and ran into others. I know that's not helpful, but I'm throwing it out there anyway.

GRANDPA'S LAPTOP
I tried installing a belkins wireless usb adapter on my grandpa's old presario 1235 laptop. It has, I think, an amd k6-2 266mhz processor, 96 mbs of ram, and no network ports. The drivers, under 98 caused the system to crash. 98se might have worked but I just went ahead and install windows 2000. It's relatively slow, but I turned off as many services as I could, I installed AVG, which is one of the least resource hogging AV clients I could find, and I haven't installed any other programs that start with the computer, besides the belkin wireless client. I'm having problems with the windows update website, but I got all the major updates installed and automatic updates is working. I did have an annoying bug where an update kept asking to be installed constantly even though it had supposedly installed sucessfully, but I got rid of it by installing an MDAC thing..I googled it.

MOM'S CD DRIVE
My mom's cd drive quit working. It acted as if the power was gone. I just unplugged the dvd drive, which I knew was getting power(and doesn't actually work correctly), and plugged those plugs into the cd drive.

INTERNET HOOK UP
I had a little fun getting the internet hooked up. By fun, I of course mean pain. First of all, Cox seemed to think my duplex neighbors address was mine, even though the duplex neighbors mailing address was correct. I had to go to the Cox service building with my lease, but it got all straightened out. Then I found out that the Cox cable modem that I had, I couldn't use because the people who had it before me had a delinquent account. I ended up trading the duplex neighbors their extra cable modem, for me fixing their computer.

The computer was a total wreck though. Pre SP1 install; No windows XP updates installed ever; No antivirus installed; No antimalware; limewire with undoubtedly p2p malware; malware from bad porn sites; installation of bogus programs. I got sp2 installed by running a windows xp home sp2 repair cd, and I ran a number of antimalware programs and antivirus. There were something like 20 viruses and 200 infected malware files. I got some of the updates installed but some of the other ones hung at the installation. I tried about a dozen things, but I'm not sure if any of them helped.

I chose Cox cable over DSL for a couple of reasons. First of all, I didn't have to get any other services, like a phone line. Second of all, it was $15 for 6 months. Even after it goes up to about $30 that's still pretty good considering that I don't have to pay for a phone line. The blocked all the tv signals with some signal splitter blocker thing. I can't get at it to take it off. They have some weird lock on the box. I can still get QVC, local access channel, and TBS though. Not sure why. Installation was free, but I had to use this old dirty rg-59 cable or it would have cost me something like $30-60 for a nice new rg-6 cable install with a nice new wall plate and everything.
Edit: I forgot to mention one of the biggest reasons I got Cable over DSL internet. At my parents house which is only a few blocks away, the DSL is very slow, about 40 KB down, because of old phone lines. The same may be true where I live. However, cable is not affected by old phone lines, so cable speeds are about 200 KB down. Possibly more if I opted for the RG-6 cable. However, this is faster than the advertised speed of the Cox internet package that I have, so I'm definately not complaining. Upload speeds are only slightly faster than the DSL speeds at my parents house though.

CABLE TV
I can get cable channels 2-29 for about $12 a month, which is the cheapest tv offer by far, but that's not a lot of channels. That would however get that tv blocker off, and if I could get my HD tv card set up with qam256 support(which I can only do in Linux because of Kworld's stupid BDA only windows drivers), then I might be able to pick up hd channels over cable, for free which would be completely awesome. Especially if I could get all of them, like Discovery HD, National Geographic HD, all the local channels(except a few multicast PBS channels), and Universal HD(stargate and Firefly in HD is awesome).

I may try the whole Linux QAM 256 thing in a little while.

In the meantime I'm picking up my channels from a midsize directional antenna I've got mounted to the top of the roof. I'm kind of down in a valley though so it's not really tall enough to get the best signal. I was using an amplified indoor antenna, but it wasn't the best quality and I live on the bottom of the duplex so I'm basically in a basement-like situation, and then there's the valley thing so the signals were sporadic. Also, my back yard floods when it rains...looks like a 1-6 inch deep lake. The valley thing. Seriously.

NEED A JOB

Did I mention that I need a job? Really badly need a job. Looking for one. Took a break. Had some leads, and interviews, but didn't pan out. I'm pretty much up for anything at this point.

Free ebooks, games etc

2007-05-11T23:57:00.000-05:00

Hopefully, if you know me, you know of the wonderful gutenberg project, wherein public domain books are converted to ebooks, by volunteers, and distributed freely online. They also have a number of audio books. There are also a few other projects creating free human-read audio books which can be found through the audio book part of the gutenberg website.

However, many of the the books are in text format, which is fine and universal and all, but not always particularly readable. Recently I have learned of something called kerning, which is basically the distance between words. Proper kerning would have every part of a letter in a word an equal distance apart. Most web text and text files do not have kerning, which means that the letters are exactly the same distance apart. Typically, in easily readable text with kerning, some letters might be physically closer together, because the kerning would allow the text to overlap, whereas with no kerning the letters could not overlap.

There are better explanations with examples online. I only have a cursory understanding, as I do with many things. Magazines and newspapers use kerning, which is one reason why printed works are often easier to read. It's not always(but, sometimes, definitely is) the computers screens fault.

My point is, I found a website with many of the gutenberg texts in different formats. I believe the pdfs, and possibly some other formats have kerning. The site is manybooks.net. There are also some nifty formats for some people such as formats for psp, pda, ipod etc. It might also be possible to simply copy the text from a text file into a word processor document to get kerning or to open the txt file with some programs to get kerning. I'm not sure. Pretty sure notepad can't do it, however. As I said, I have a cursory understand of these things. Manybooks.net is still nice, however you look at it though.

Ok on to games.
I played through Dragon Quest Heroes Rocket Slime recently and it is a pretty good game. It is not particularly long and there are a lot of things you can do that only will really benefit you if you play multiplayer battles. Furthermore if you want to start the game from the beginning, you have to delete your save, because there is only one saved game allowable. Restarting the game also means you lose any of the multiplayer benefits.

I played through Trace Memory. I really like this game. It is a nice example of a good modern day adventure game on the DS. A few of the challenges are not really obvious at first however. If all else fails, I say try blowing on it. I think there might be a challenge where you have to look at the reflection of the top screen in the bottom screen of the DS or something too. I did not get this, and I think it would be impossible with a DS with certain protective screens available. I missed a number of things in Trace Memory, so I will have to play it again to find them. Once you go into the lab, you can't go back. Would have been nice to know. Also, very short. Could beat it in like 4 hours if you really wanted to.

I'm still playing through Doom 3. I've probably been playing it over a year off and on. I enjoy it, I just don't always like to play it, like before I should go to bed. I will probably beat it soon.

Advent Rising is decent. It has a pretty good story. The graphics and performance are kind of hit and miss. Sometimes great and sometimes not so much. The first person view is kind of worthless most of the time. In third person view you can dodge and maneuver, but not so much in first person view. Dying is incredibly easy a lot of the time. You have no control over saves. The game automatically saves at checkpoints and beginnings of levels. Levels are restarted however, if you quit. The AI is also sometimes stupid. The baddies seem to just kind of spawn out of nowhere sometimes. Sometimes it is better just to push through and ignore the baddies if they're not going to kill you. The bosses have particular ways you have to beat them that are not necessarily obvious and you can die a lot of times figuring them out. Better to just look it up online probably. Save the frustration. There are also some bugs. Not too many serious ones, but I did have the game crash a few times and I fell through the ground once. It's pretty short to play through, which could be a pro or con depending on how you look at it. Con if you expected more. The special powers are fun to play with. If you can get past the frustrating parts, it's pretty good a lot of the time.

Enjoy my lack of editing.

Peace out,
Stewart

hello abandoned blog

2007-04-12T18:52:00.000-05:00

I've been a bit busy as I have a new job. That is the main reason I have not posted in forever. I'm sure my viewership of 2 has dropped to 0, but that's the way it works. I work here. I have to drive too much, and I don't get paid enough.

So, I was trying to watch the independent game awards and the game developers choice awards, with Tim Schafer as host, and the sound wasn't working on my computer. http://www.gamespot.com/news/6167061.html

I figured out that wmp11 has a tendency to not play mono audio. This can possibly be fixed in the player itself by setting the direct sound device in your speaker settings to your sound card. For the web browser plug-in it can be fixed by either instaling certain codecs, like the windows media codecs from a codec pack or possibly by installing ac3filter. However, in my case, I already had ac3filter installed. I had to go into the ac3 filter settings and uncheck pcm and mpeg audio in the system tab.

The game awards are awesome btw. More to come later.

Merry Christmas From Me in CG

2006-12-24T02:44:00.000-06:00

This image is Copyright Stewart James Martin, so don't steal it please. You can ask, though.

This is what I made to give to people as a Christmas card. Not the most detailed CG. Thoroughly festive, I would say. This was probably the first time I touched 3ds Max in a year though. I am a little rusty so it took me longer than it should have.

Christmas list

2006-12-20T17:30:00.001-06:00

Edit: Screw the two front teeth, I want this motherboard. I am incredibly sick of trying to fool with the piece of junk motherboard I've been dealing with for years. I need a replacement and this is probably one of the last disappearing breed of motherboards that will replace it(socket A that can handle athlon 2200+ and sdram memory). A new power supply or two might help with stability issues as well, but the motherboard definitely needs to be replaced.

5 days until Christmas, so I thought I would make a list. I feel like I don't deserve anything, except a job so I can buy others (and myself) presents, but that's not something you can put in a package.

Various things:
Money to pay for my credit card.
A light/electrical timer or two.

Computers and/or parts:
One or two of these motherboards
One or two of these power supplies
A laptop*
AGP geforce 6800 or better*

Games:
For Windows:
Farcry
Painkiller
Heroes of Might and Magic V
Siberia 2
Half-Life 2
Lugaru
Bone: The Great Cow Race
Sam and Max Season 1 collection
A month or more of Gametap
F.E.A.R.
Indigo Prophecy
For Nintendo DS:
Metroid Prime Hunted
Gameboy Advanced:
Sword of Mana

Other stuff*

*Feel free to ask me about this

Upgraded to "new" blogger beta

2006-12-19T03:50:00.000-06:00

There is a new blogger beta from google. The one thing(only thing I remember) that is nice about it is that it has topics or labels for the post, so that you can look at all the posts on the same subject. I was complaining about that earlier, but I don't remember which post. I will probably add "labels" for all my posts later so that they are better organized. I think there are a bunch of other neat things about the new blogger, but I would have to research that.

I haven't updated to the new blogger until now, because I wasn't sure it was stable enough and I didn't want to have to create a google account. Edit: I created a gmail account too, so I have 50 invitations if anyone wants one.

I haven't been up to much lately. I've been playing warcraft 3 and watching the first two seasons of Stargate SG-1. I'm enjoying both.

I might post my christmas list soon, but I feel like all I should put on it is "JOB" so I can get other people(and myself) presents, and quit feeling like a loser.

This is Stewart Martin, signing out.

work != job

2006-12-07T00:21:00.000-06:00

I don't mind work; I just don't like to fill out mounds of paperwork when it's not assured that someone will actually see it before it gets thrown away.

Gametap update

2006-11-19T14:27:00.000-06:00

Earlier I mentioned that there were not any Humongous Games products in gametap. Gametap has a wide variety of children's games but I believe that some of the best of them are from Humongous games like freddi the fish, pajama sam, spyfox, and putt putt. However, gametap has recently added a number of them, which should make gametap more inviting for those with children. They're probably good enough to play even if you're not a child, though.

Also, they added some games from Novartis, whose games have been interesting because they sometimes use voxels. Their most common brands are Delta Force and Comanche. The games on gametap might not necessarily use voxels however.

2006-11-14T05:48:00.000-06:00

Your SAT Score of 1170 Means:

You Scored Higher Than Howard Stern
You Scored Lower Than George W. Bush
You Scored Lower Than Al Gore
You Scored Lower Than David Duchovny
You Scored Lower Than Natalie Portman
You Scored Lower Than Bill Gates

Your IQ is most likely in the 120-130 range

Equivalent ACT score: 26

Schools that Fit Your SAT Score:
Virginia Tech
Texas A&M University - College Station
University of Connecticut
University of Colorado, Boulder
Florida State University

What Does Your SAT Score Mean?

Interesting enough, I took the ACT and scored 26 and an online IQ test and scored about a 130. However, it should be known that I usually choke up during tests...it could be compared to the mental equivalent of tripping and falling down a flight of stairs.

Sam and Max and Gametap review of sorts

2006-10-26T02:38:00.000-05:00

Many who know me will know that I like the game Sam and Max, as well as the characters themselves and the other medias they have appeared in. I was upset when the sequel was cancelled and rejoiced when I heard that telltale games would be developing a new game. The new game is out, but it's episodic, meaning that a shorter game with a shorter story, possibly containing another larger story, will be released at a reduced price once a month or every other month. It is not released yet except on Gametap.

Gametap is a games service where someone pays a fee monthly or anually to play a large library of games. Currently there is a special where you can get two months for $10 or the whole year for $5 a month. Which sounds pretty good except when you realise that if you quit paying, you will never be able to play those games again unless you go out and buy them or start paying again. Also, you can't exactly share your games with others the way you could with a hard copy. I think that two people can be logged in at the same time, so you and a family member or friend could play together, and there are also child accounts which I think the main purpose is to allow children to play with limited privileges but I'm not sure how many can log on at once. You always have to be logged in to play.

I decided I really wanted to play Sam and Max before its global release in November, and it would be nice if I could play it for free. Gametap has a trial period when you sign up where you can play for free for a few weeks and then cancel and not pay anything if you want to quit. This sounded like a hassel but I considered doing it. At worst I would forget to pay and then would have to pay $10 for 2 months of playing time which wouldn't be too bad.

However, I found out there is a limited trial where you can play a limited number of games for 7 days. All you have to do is create a name when signing up and then cancel and a popup shows you the limited trial download. In the limited trial it says that it gives you 5 games to try and you get to choose 4 more. I thought I wasn't going to be able to pick Sam and Max because it says "member exclusive", and at first I don't think I was able to, but later on I was able to download it and play it. I'm not sure if my limited trial is broken or something, but I was able to add 34 games in total, with no restrictions to the "my samples" list.

In the full version the "my samples" list is replaced with "my favorites" and you can select and deselect which ones you want in the list. In my limited trial all of the games I double clicked on to get a closer look at ended up in the my samples list whether I wanted them in there or not. There are many that I do want in there, but I cannot add any more or take any out, so it would have been nice to know that from the beginning. I'm not about to tell gametap because I don't want them to take the games away, even if I've already played and beaten the one I started all this for.

Sam and Max is a pretty good game and would probably be worth the $5-10 a month on it's own(though not being able to replay it if you quit paying is a real bummer), but gametap doesn't just have the games they have an exclusive mini documentary on the life of Sam and Max, they have the original tv shows, and the have other original works too. Also, they have a number of other games that would be worth at least or more than one month of payment too.

Specifically I was excited to see they have Colin Mcrae rally 2005 which I think is probably the most fun rally game out. They have many good adventure games like Beyond Good and Evil and all the Myst games as well as The Last Express(which is awesome and will probably live in infamy as one of the largest commercial failures in video games) and many of the old Sierra games classics. Soon they will also have Myst Uru Online exclusively(but they're price may also raise..we'll see). They also have good games of other genres like pretty much all of the prince of persia games ever except the last one or two. They have marble blast, farcry, serious sam, and vietcong to name a few. There are over 700 games currently and many of them are very good. Some of them are hard to find too. There are tons of kids games.

Possibly, most important about gametap is support for older games. Many games to not age well and it can be difficul if not impossible to get them to play, if you can find them. Gametap should be able to get them to play and offer them up so that others can play them. They are offering support for games that are no longer supported.

There are also lots of videos to watch. There are lots of game tv type videos, some animated tv show type videos, the sam and max videos, and mini documentary type videos. Many of them are pretty good if you like that sort of thing. It's really the only legitimate source for the Sam and Max TV show currently.

There are many good games from the Genesis. There are games from the commodore, dos, game gear, itellivision, master system, neo geo, 32x, arcade, atari, and of course windows. Noticeably lacking are the games from the SNES and NES. I'm not sure if this is some licensing problem with Nintendo or what. Probably. Nintendo can be bastards. They do have tetris, which I think was from nintendo but gametap classifies it as 8-bit instead of nintendo. There are also no games from the Sega CD, which is reasonable since mostly they were just sega games with better sound and would make the downloads much, much larger. But they were sega games with MUCH better sound. They should be on there. Ecco on sega cd was a masterpiece. There are no jaguar games or turbo grafx games either which might not be too bad. Also noticeably lacking are Lucas Arts Adventure games. No Humongous games either. Boo! Many of the series of games are incomplete also. For example Ultima, Might and Magic, Space Quest, and King's Quest only go up to about 5 when there were up to 8 or 9 in each series.

What I think is interesting is that they have dreamcast games. There are only 5, but as far as I know they must have either ported them to windows or emulated them. I don't know if they made their own emulator or what but dreamcast emulation isn't as far along as arcade emulation or the 16 bit or 8 bit system emulation. Also, there are not Sega Saturn games which is interesting, since gametap has many sega games and I know that Sega has their own Saturn Emulator because they bought out some homebrew guys a while back. There are also no playstation games, and playstation 1 games have been pretty well emulated on pc.

Though gametap has a lot of promise and could keep some very happy and busy, there are some things I see as problems. Gametap itself is a bit resource heavy. In order to play games or view videos or do anything gametap must be open. It can take up a lot of memory and page file and hard drive space. A number of processes take a while. There are sometimes long pauses before a game starts, but that could mainly just be the first time it starts. I have also had problems with one of the games not starting and when it did start there were weird sound issues where the sound would cut out then the video and audio would be out of synch(Shadow of Destiny which seems like a pretty good adventure game).

Also, another problem could be bandwidth and download times. Many of the games are very small downloads but some of them are huge. Huge downloads would probably include, all the Myst games, Colin Mcrae, The Last Express, a number of the Adventure games. Pretty much any games with a DVD or more than one cd. The dreamcast games and single cd games are not always too small either. Anyone with dial up should look elsewhere unless they just want to play some really small arcade games, and I wouldn't suggest anyone with a 386 kb broadband connection to download any of the large games unless they want a long wait. I have a 386 kb connection and Colin Mcrae would take something like 14 hours to download. 512kb might do. The videos should play at full quality with that. Anyone with Mb connections might not have anything to worry about but the downloads could still be long and possibly frustrating. Especially if the download doesn't work the first time and you have to redownload it or it dies while downloading.

There are also a lot of games that won't be any fun without good hardware like a 2ghz+ cpu 512mb-1gb of memory and a memory card with at least 64mb and hardware transform and lighting(maybe even shaders).

In short.

The good:
Lots of games, check the list at gametap
They're adding games all the time!
Lots of Kids games, and also child accounts if you have kids
not too expensive, lots of special deals
Sam and Max exclusives!
Uru online exclusives in the future?
The Videos(many exclusive)
support for older games.
multiplayer
Two people can be logged in with the same user name at once(I think)

The bad:
No Lucas Arts Adventures(or other Lucas Arts Games or humongous games)
No SNES, NES, or Sega Saturn games, few dreamcast games. no playstation, n64, ps2 xbox, gamecube , gameboy games etc.
Possible problems with some games
Possible problems downloading or loading games(Game Aquisition failed is a pain)
Long downloads and high bandwidth requirement(and no indication as to which games those are)
High hardware and hard drive space requirements for some games
Always have to be logged in to play
Only two people can be logged in at the same time on the same user name(I think)
can't play games after you quit paying.
Sam and Max teaser videos have many spoilers.
Can't use any patches or hacks, e.g. widescreen hacks(see explanation below)

I think that just about covers everything. I'm just happy I got to play Sam and Max

edit: changed some info

edit2: I did a little checking and I think 3 out of 5 of the dreamcast games may have pc ports(which are worse than their DC c\counterparts), so those games could very well be the (crappy) PC version, but I can't account for the other 2.

edit3: I'm having technical issues with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time now. The game takes forever to start, which I think is normal. In game the music will cut out, and I'm not sure if that's normal or not but I don't think it is. Also, one of the prerendered cut scenes kept freezing up, and eventually I was able to kill it but I didn't get to see the cut scene. Afterwards real time cut scene had no music and it would slow down like every thing was in slow motion so it took forever to get through that cut scene too. After I beat the short game sequence the game died. That is technical issues with 2 out of 2 of the windows games I have tried so far. The games seem to be incredibly compressed as well, because I think the sands of time only takes up 291MB. This could account for the long startup time and I wonder if any of the game has been compromised in any way. I tried playing the game again and it got to the same cutscene I had problems with, and instead of doing anything weird it just died and gave me the same error to "see the readme.txt" which I can't do because gametap has it.

Edit 4: Gametap just added some Castlevania games, Contra, and Serious Sam II. Serious Sam II is a very new game. Also added that they were adding new games to gametap in the pros. The problems I've been having with the windows games could have been caused by problems I had when downloading. They could also have something to do with my version of gametap being limited. It's hard to want a gametap subscription, or the suggest it for others, when the games don't work though. edit edit: Silent Hill 2 was also added as well as some other games. 9 total, I think. Edit edit edit: Which interestingly moved my total of "my samples" games up to 42 from 34. Not the ones that were added, and not any good ones. I think they were just weird games I was looking at earlier. Neo Geo games mostly. Gametap has a lot of fighting games blegh.

Edit 5: I forgot to mention that gametap has the first 4 heroes of might and might games, which is nice. Added a con about sam and max teaser videos.

Edit 6: Seems as though Sam and Max: Culture Shock has been taken out of my "My Samples" list and if I look at it's info the games' "get the game" button is highlighted instead of "play now" even though I already have the game downloaded. If I click on "get the game" I get the usual pop up telling me to become a member. I guess that free ride is over.

I e-mailed gametap tech support about the problems I've been having with some of their windows games and the problems with the downloading of larger games and they told me to updated my video card drivers. After responding and basically telling them that was ridiculous, since my drivers are relatively current, they told me to call tech support on the phone. I haven't done it but I have a feeling a would just get the same lines about things like updating drivers and reducing resolutions and reducing sound acceleration, restarting the computer, and things like that. They might tell me to redownload the games that take 4-8 hours to download and they might just tell me they can't help me because I'm a limited trial user. I don't really feel like going through all that when it's their buggy software that's causing the problem. I could very well get competent technical support that solves all my problems, but I'm not sure I want to deal with it.

Also, another con as far as playing games on gametap goes is that you can't use patches or hacks and things like that. For example, you usually don't have access to the ini scripts to do things like change a game that didn't initially support widescreen to the support widescreen, and that's pretty much the only way to get widescreen in most games.

Wal-Mart $4 drugs

2006-10-21T02:50:00.000-05:00

For those interested in Wal-Mart's $4 generic prescription drug plan, there is info here.
That is is basically a propoganda website for wal-mart, as far as I can tell but they have a pdf file of all the $4 prescription drugs available. The pdf is probably duplicated elsewhere, and I'm sure it has a hard form in the stores.

None of the drugs I know to be expensive are on there. The only alergy medicine on there is loratadine, which can be found over the counter for cheaper but usually it's more. Claritin, Alavert, and even the Equate kind is usually more expensive than $4 for 30. If you are careful and read labels instead of brands, you might be able to find one cheaper though. The one I found that was cheaper simply said Loratadine on the package. I don't remember how much cheaper it was but not having to go to the doctor to get a prescription makes it considerably cheaper, either way you look at it. For those taking claritin D or Alavert D, you can probably just get some nasal decongestant(drugs psuedoephedrine, behind the counter, or phenylephrine HCL) and save considerably. After the loratadine blocks the histamines you shouldn't really need a decongestant any more anyway.

I'm unfamiliar with many of the drugs but the ones I do know are all drugs that have been around for a while and are not particularly expensive. Many doctors today tend to push the latest and most expensive drugs too. Noticeably lacking from the list are Birth Control Pills(sorry ladies) and Attention Deficit medicine. There are still a lot of drugs on the list though, and I'm sure it will save a number of people some money. Make sure that you get the actual name of the drug to compare and not the brand name.

Edit: I googled some of the names on the list and so far the only one I've really recognized is Fluoxetine, which is Prozac. Also, the best way to found out about a drug, might be to find the wikipedia page for the kind of drug or the wikipedia for the drug itself. For example, here you can find everything you ever wanted to know about antidepressants.

Also, after research antidressants this makes me wonder. Could mood disorder drugs being robbing the next generation of good artists and musicians and other artistic people? Would artists of the past have made the same great works if they had the same drugs back then? On the flip side, would they have made even more or greater works? I think that's something interesting to ponder.

Thinkall.com are scamming SOBs

2006-09-28T15:54:00.001-05:00

thinkall.com is using open source software on cds to bait and switch people into paying when they think they are getting something for free. Much of the information on their website is false. They claim that they will send a cd that you only have to pay shipping for(which is probably overpriced for shipping in the first place), but after you get the cd they give you 10 days to send it back or they charge you. Only if you look at their terms of use can you see that afterwards they will send you more cds every month and charge you ridiculous prices.

Their about page states:
"We have assembled these one-of-a-kind software collections through special licensing and distribution agreements with some of the best-in-the-industry software companies in the U.S., Canada and around the world. These companies have received many industry honors and awards for the software products available on our CD collections. "

They may have some non-open source software on the cds but all the software I could identify was open source. They don't make it easy to figure out where the software really comes from though.

I am certain that at least some of the things they are doing is against the law. The way they are distributing the software may not be allowed the software licenses. At the very least they are not giving credit where it is due.

Furthermore, all of that software can probably be downloaded for free from the internet. A few software packages I recognized are Openoffice.org, scribus, frozen bubble, pengus, supertux, circuslinux...

People like this make me sick. I hope someone shuts them down.

Here is another post about it, with links to other posts about it.

I want this KWORLD HDTV Tuner

2006-09-21T00:16:00.000-05:00

I want this Kworld atsc-110

My current tv card has very poor support from most PVR programs, and it can't do Digital. This one can do both digital and analog and it's among the cheapest that can do that at about $60-80

Anyone want to buy it for me? Or maybe give me a job to buy it.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1632017&CatId=1427

What I want for my birthday

2006-08-26T06:18:00.000-05:00

Check below this post for new posts.
Last updated: 08-20-06
My birthday is less than 30 days away. So this stays on top, I will set its date to my birthday.

MONEY

The main thing I want for my birthday is money. Being jobless and having to pay lots of money for gas and other things(as well as some possibly foolish purchases), my credit card balance is rising. However, the balance does not acrue interest until September. Therefore I need to pay it off in August. I imagine it will be at least $300 by then unless I can pay it off.

Other things I could use:
*A fast, quiet cpu fan. This would probably do.
*A new 8xAGP video card. I would prefer an Nvidia Geforce 6800 or greater Nvidia card.
*A laptop...you know, for working away from home.
*antenna mounting equipment

Car Stuff
*A catalytic converter for the camry
*One or two seat covers for my jeep, because the driver side seat is falling apart and passengers complain about the leather sometimes. Of course, in the camry, that doesn't matter.
*a hydraulic jack and (2 or 4) jack stands
*a tire tread gauge
* feeler gauges
*A torgue wrench
*car parts(to be determined. possibly muffler, tie rod ends, struts, springs, air conditioner repair...)

And there might be some games or books or something.

All these things I could easily buy myself if I had enough money, so this should probably just a be a list of things I might think about getting after I'm out of debt.

Payed off debt, and a job, is probably the biggest gift I could get right now

Recieved as of 08-20-06:
*A book light
*some money

Memories of Boyscouts

2006-07-29T18:25:00.000-05:00

This picture is on the wall of my mom's computer/sewing/junk-piled-up=high room and is as hilarious as it is depressing.

You see, the Eagle Scout is the highest and last ranking you can get in boyscouts. After that you're pretty much done. Life is the rank just before Eagle Scout. I quit at life, as you can see here in the picture.

Another fun fact I remembered about boyscouts. A full physical was required to go to boyscout camp and at my first physical the doctor said "drop your pants" and I said "...but they're already down..." For those of you have have never heard the words "turn your head and cough", I can assure you, the hands are always cold.

My love/hate relationship with cans.

2006-07-17T03:57:00.000-05:00

The main reason why I really like cans(as in the cans that food and drink comes in) is that they are very recyclable and usually easily compacted to save space, when they are used.

There are however, a couple things that bother me about cans. Particularly drinking out of aluminum cans. There are the sharp edges, the annoying little tabs that touch your nose and, if there was any substance spilled on them, might stick to your nose. Long ago I started to rip the tabs off for the stickiness factor. Even with the tab gone there is still a chane of stickiness though.

More importantly, however, is the taste. I knew that drink out of an aluminum can tasted different than out of bottles. At one point I particularly liked coca cola out of glass bottles. However, not until I started drinking beer did I realise that I can really taste the can. It is this sort of bitter metallic taste. Depending on the kind of drink that's in the can it is usually a bit different. I can also taste the metal of food cans, and it doesn't usually bothere me as much, but ic can.

I really don't like it. Pouring into a cup helps a little but the taste is still there. With cola and many other products it is not a big deal because plastic bottles are available and the drinks from plastic taste better and, if it is a large container, might be less wasteful. Usually I can't taste the plastic in a drink except for bottled water sometimes. However, colored glass, particularly the brown or green glass that beer comes in, is not recyclable where I live. There are also some new brown plastic bottles which, I think, are not recyclable.

So, while I enjoy drinks out of colored glass, I always feel guilty that I'm not drinking out of something recyclable. Especially when I buy 12 packs.

Added and fixed links on Right

2006-07-14T15:36:00.000-05:00

I added and fixed some of the links on the right. Enjoy.

My Sam and Max Comics

2006-07-14T13:21:00.000-05:00

I've been too busy with school and watching tv and movies and working on my project car and stuff to post. I have a big long list of bookmarks of stuff I thought about posting, but never did.

One thing I did recently was that I had a kind of solder night. I spent hours one night fixing my two favorite pairs of headphones, a cell phone headset, and my favorite remote control car. That makes half a dozen times I've repaired my favorite remote control car. I had to repair it the day I got it for $5-10(don't remember exactly) from a yard sale. It's a 4 wheel drive jeep wrangler with a 9.2 volt battery, big tires, and spring suspension. It can drive over pretty much anything. Last time it broke corrosion and heat had torn a hole through the battery cable. I ended up just wrapping it around itself and taping it after giving myself a really nasty burn on the soldering iron and breaking the wire after I soldered it. Works anyway.

Now, the real reason for this post. Telltale games has this "make your own sam and max comic" thing so after reading a couple I had a few ideas of my own.

First one - A fart joke in 3 parts.

Go here and vote for it if you like this one.

Second one - Don't ask me. I did these all at about 5-6 am and it shows.

Go here and vote for it if you like this one.

Third One - This one is the most thought out.

Go here and vote for it if you like this one.

Sweet mother molasses, I just realised I spelled "points" wrong. I'm so ashamed. It's not my fault though, I had to retype the whole thing because I accidentally clicked the "back" button on my fancy new laser mouse and it got erased. The second time I around I didn't proof read enough, I guess. I disabled the back button after that, because that was at least the second time that happened.

Oh, I forgot to mention. I have 2 Red Eared Sliders that are named Sam and Max. I could post pictures here if requested. There are probably some pictures in the links on the right though.

Fixed

2006-06-29T04:26:00.000-05:00

I fixed firefox and thunderbird finally. I had to delete some of the saved information from the programs. I exported what I wanted to keep first, deleted it, and then imported it back so that I would still have my bookmarks and stuff. I had tried deleting the information before but it was the wrong folder. The folders I needed were in my user name's documents and settings application data folder not the local settings\application data folder or something like that.

I'm glad I fixed it. I seemed to be doing everything wrong lately. My antenna is working out pretty well so far though. I'll post pictures and an explanation later.

Holocaust Deniers and Neo-Nazis are fucking idiots.

2006-06-24T03:05:00.000-05:00

So, I have to write a research paper on a place in the Elie Wiesels holocaust memoir Night. For those who don't know Wiesel was a jewish child during the war, and he and his siblings and parents were taken later in the war. After the "Final
Solution" but not long before the German War Machine would start to faulter and the winds of the war would change. The place I chose was the infirmary in the concentration/work camp Buna, because the proper care received there seemed out of place compared to the gassing and burning of living people being carried out a short distance away in Auschwitz and Birkenau. Had Elie and his father stayed in the infirmary instead of leaving with the rest of the prisoners, they would also have been liberated by the Soviets.

However, I keep getting distracted by many other things I end up learning about the war in my research process. For example, Japan, oddly enough was a safe haven for a number of Jewish refugees. The conditions were not favorable because of the language barrier, incredibly crowded housing, lack of jobs and money, poor sanitation, and poor health care, and some of them ended up getting bombed, by accident, later in the war. Many others died of disease and many were starved. However,the Japanese had no anti-semitism at the beginning of the war and anti-semitism had only just barely begun, because of Nazi propoganda. The government had no reason to hate Jews and did not know why anyone else would. When Germany demanded that Japan surrender the Jews, they would not. I don't think the Japanese really wanted to kill people as much as they just thought they should rule the world.

Now, onto the real reason I wanted to rant. Holocaust Deniers and Neo-Nazis. In general, stupid people really piss me off. If stupid people listen to or think logically their deductions are always faulty. They only see what they want to see, and though they may use faux science as an excuse for their faulty ideas, their grasp of scientific proof and the scientific method is using non-existant. Others may just be selfish bastards.
Holocaust Deniers are especially annoying because there is more than enough proof to prove every aspect of the Holocaust that is believed to be true by major historians. Holocaust Revisionists, while not quite as bad, are still idiots. You can go to Europe and see the remains of the enormous gas chambers used for mass extermination. You can see the stoves. The Germans usually well documented how many people they had killed in the concentration camps. Some might argue that the gas chambers could have just been showers, but there is no reason for Germans to blow up showers while they were fleeing? I mean, would they go to the trouble to blow them up because they didn't want the allies to get clean? That's ridiculous. The creation of the gasses used for mass-extermination is also well documented.

The Neo-nazi arguments are also ridiculous. First of all, this whole Aryan superman idea. That goes completely against science and biology. One of the main reasons why many Jews have been, and continue to be incredibly successful is genetic diversity. The more diverse two parents are, usually the better their offspring. This is the whole purpose of sex. If we all reproduced asexually we would only be clones of each other, and would not be very advanced. The aryan idea of pale skin, blue eyes, and light colored hair sounds like a good way to squelch genetic diversity and end up with a bunch of retards, the exacty opposite of the ideal. Ideals are stupid anyway. Balance is always best.

I noticed a swastika on the coat of a woman at a diner I went to. I thought it could have been a Native American symbol, but I'm pretty sure I saw the bird symbol of the Third Reich as well. I hadn't really realised that stupid people like that existed in this area, but it doesn't suprise me. The headquarters of the largest KKK group in existence in the US today, the "Knights of the Klu Klux Klan" is in Zinc, Arkansas. Their leader, Thom Robb is a Baptist Minister near Bergman Arkansas and NE of Harrison. Actually, wikipedia says he is baptist, but his own website seems to claim that he is non-demoninational or maybe Christian Identitiest if that can be considered a religion. Maybe he was baptist. Either way, shit like this makes me sick to my stomach and ashamed to be white. Jesus wasn't white! WTF are these guys thinking? Race is just a social construct anyway.

Christianity plays a large part in the persecution of Jews and it's sick and stupid. Using religion for the sake of hate and violence is all too common in this world and one of the dumbest things ever. The reason the Jews were safe from persecution in Japan is because the Japanese were not Christians. Anti-semitism in Japan today relates to a Jewish world conspiracy theory. These theories also fueled the Holocaust, Neo-Nazis and Middle Eastern Jewish persecution as well as other forms of Jewish persecution. I don't know anything about these conspiracy theories but they sound like a load of shit to me. I mean, wouldn't the illuminati(another conspiracy theory) have something to say about it? I think most Jewish people probably just want to be viewed as normal people. Most of them look like everbody else, and many are not deeply religious. Some of them may only maintain their Jewish identity because of the Holocaust.

In short, genetic diversity in reproduction is good, not bad. Race is a social construct. The holocaust did happen. Jesus wasn't white, and he was probably very dark skinned, maybe even "black". Ideals are stupid. Hate and violence for the sake of religion is one of the dumbest things ever. KKK, Neo-Nazi, Holocaust deniers = Stupid Idiots who need to learn what scientific facts are.

Cero dineros

2006-06-20T18:21:00.000-05:00

My blog is worth $0.00.
How much is your blog worth?

Well, that's not surprising(and it's kind of funny), but it's kind of sad. Makes me think a little about whether the $9 a year domain name is worth it.

School Sucks

2006-06-19T05:07:00.000-05:00

I hate writing research papers.

Bob Ross painting for Nintendo DS and other systems. http://www.gamespot.com/ds/strategy/bobrosspainting/index.html

Happy Little Trees.

This is great.
http://lexownshubbard.ytmnd.com/

My firefox is all screwed up and I don't know why, that's why none of these urls are hyperlinks

Peace

Robosapien

2006-05-20T08:29:00.000-05:00

This is what robots should be made for.

You have to be kidding me

2006-05-17T04:27:00.000-05:00

So, Ive been thinking about building a robot. One of the caveats with robot building is the expense however, but some robots can be built out of scrap parts. Where do you get scrap? Well, one place is dumpsters.

There are some pointless, yet entertaining creations that can be made with pager motors..the same kind of motor found in cell phones. so I decided to check out a dumpster behind a cingular store near my house. I decided to do this around 3 or 3:30, just on a whim, because I know that this cingular stores dumpsters are hidden behind it out of view of the street, and hence if the police had any notions that dumpster diving is illegal here(Which I'm not sure about. Ill post the ordinance below), they couldn't even see me anyway.

This seemed like a harmless endeavor. So, I drove out there. This cingular store is on a strip mall that includes a video rental store, subway, 3 petes place, home decoration store and a bank, as well as at least one other store. There were, what I think is 4 dumpsters.

One was kind of smelly. Didn't pay much attention to this one.

One had some bags, a bunch of wreaths, and a cardboard box in it, as well as a styrofoam box. I took the box, because it seemed clean. I also found in the cardboard box, some opened dog buiscuts, a cat bed, an unopened bag of doggy treats and some other random stuff. I took the unopened dog biscuits, and I probably should have taken the cat bed but even though it looked clean, I didn't feel like pushing my luck. I also didn't take the opened dog biscuits because they were opened, even though I'm sure my dog would mind. Weird thing to find in here though, one bag contained random things which included a soldering iron, some solder, and digital tire gauge. I kid you not.

the next one was sealed shut on the sides. However, the top was accessible, but about 8 feet up, and with heavy rusty, big door.

The last one was promising. The view at what was inside was obstructed greatly by thse big cusions that were probably for outside lawn equipment. There were two computers inside. one was a crappy old gateway 2000 and one was a crappy old packard bell. The packard bell even had "Warning: this computer really sucks" and following that "no kidding" or something very similar to that, written with pencil on it. Though I already have too many crappy old computers, the temptation to take these was great, and I spent far too much time trying to decide whether to take them. There was also nice new boxes for nice new macintosh displays(friggin' huge ones!). You would think the displays these were replacing would be in there, but I didn't see them. Maybe the bin had already been hit. There was also a lot of bags full of shredded paper. This was probably sensitive documents that came from the bank. The bank needs a better paper shredder because this stuff looked like it was in big long strips. They could also be recycling it. I also found duct tape(yes, duct tape).

So, I grabbed the packard bell, because it had a big sturdy base and I used it as a step ladder to look into the 3rd dumpster, but the dumpster was mostly empty except for some big AC filters.

Some time during this I saw a big blue city waste truck. The bins they set out for recycling or blue, so I tought it could be a recycling truck...but it could be a waste truck. It was at the ABF building, which was across from this. I thought it would take a long time for them to get here even if they were and they would have to come from a very easy to see direction. However shortly after that they started barreling toward and exit that I hadn't seen that opened up on this property.

Sensing their impending descent I quickly grabbed the packard bell, tossed it into the dumpster from which it came, grabbed the gateway, ran to my car and tossed the computer inside.

The truck had stopped at the gate between the two properties, and it took them a while to get it open, but shortly afterwards, they were headed directly for me. I had difficulty getting the computer in the car, so by the time I got it into the seat, the truck was turning to face my jeep. I put the key in the ignition, ready to make quick get away, and the car wouldn't start. It has this issue where sometiems it just won't do anything. There is a problem with the neutral switch or something - it was like that when I got it. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. So I tried the usual tricks...switching it to neutral, that didn't work...running the gearshifter up and down and then switching to neutral, didn't work again...tried it again...finally it started. I had probably been muttering something like "you've got to be kidding me". All this time I was trying to start my car, they were sitting there in the enormous truck staring at me. There lights were too bright for me to see their faces. Though I'm not sure they would mind too much about the legality of it, I was still in the way of their job.

I started to back out, because that was just about the only thing I could do now that this enormous truck was in my way, and it was also the quickest way...and I didn't feel like showing the my license plate, just in case. So I just backed up all the way out. I probably nearly hit this big decorative boulder that was place out there.

I had forgotten a crucial component before I went out. I have the worst timing sometimes. I was a little shaken up by the ordeal. I mean, I wasn't fined $500 or anything, but I still wasn't expecting any of that. Worst of all, I never saw a single cell phone. They were probably in one of the bags in the stinky dumpster or something. The only explanation I can think of for all the random stuff that's in there is that someone dropped there. As I was backing up, I saw the truck begin to pick up one of the dumpsters. It's all gone now.

I may go back out again, but I'm not sure. I don't know where and when the dumpsters are getting picked up, and I don't want to have another incident. Also, if everything just got picked up there's no point in going out. Dang, I forgot to publish this, and i was reading and a few hours have passed. I'm definately too sleepy to go out now.

Digital Video Recorder

2006-05-04T18:36:00.000-05:00

I want a digital video recorder.

Why? So I can record videos and then import them into my computer.

It really doesn't have to be digital, but I imagine the digital would probably have better quality when importing, but I could be wrong about that.

I just want to record videos and then import them into my computer and apply some of what I've learned to them.

A wacom tablet would be nice too...just for fun.

HDTV letdown

2006-05-01T06:06:00.000-05:00

I just realised that my monitor can't display hdtv resolution. all this time I thought 480i(ntsc), 1080i and 780p(hdtv) were the width resolutions. But they're the heighth. the width resolution is 1920. My 25lb gargantuan 19" CRT Sony Trinitron monitor can only display 1600. Of course, it is a 4X3 screen, so there would be borders on top and bottom, so it might get scaled down or something.

The real amazing thing is that I didn't know what the ntsc resolution was(720x480). I know all about resolutions, I just never bothered to get it right. I think that, displaying or recording tv on a computer screen, it should be 640x480, because the 720x480 pixels are not square and the computer screen pixels are, though I'm not completely sure about this yet.

Regardless of whether or not I will have a proper display, I would still like an hdtv receiver(probably a computer card because my computer monitor is my best tv) because with hdtv the sound is better quality and the picture is either perfect or non-existant...and I hate fuzzy tv. Even when I had cable, I had fuzzy tv, so I've been putting up with fuzzy tv my whole life. I'm ready for it to end.

Not only that, some stations will actually multicast...meaning that one station may have both adult and children programming showing at the same time and you can switch between them. That's like having even more channels.

I think some hdtv cards are getting down to around $100, and the card made for linux pchdtv is around $160. That's getting closer to my budget. Some cards can also pick up hd radio too, which is pretty sweet. NPR is the only station around here that broadcasts in hd radio, but that's usually the only station I listen to. There's a nice hdtv "set top" receiver right here for $176 also.

Edit 05-04: I added some info about the ntsc resolutions.

Edit 05-22: The hdtv resolution 720p is 1280x720, which my monitor can do, just fine. I think 780p was a misprint on my part. So, though my monitor can't do 1080i, 720p is probably good enough for me.

What I did today.

2006-04-27T23:48:00.000-05:00

I combined two stupid mcdonald's ads to form one.

And these are the originals.

As you can see, my editing was not really professionally done. I'm aware of this, but I spent most of my time trying to find pictures for two or three other ideas I was going to do in photoshop, and this one kind of created itself out of the pictures I found. I really hate advertising. Mcdonalds advertising is some of the worst. Will have to do this more often.

One of the pictures was just from a girl's blog.

The other, an article about a Mcdonald's Unicef deal that went sour....(milk...sour...I'm so sorry...)

Links for school work. ignore this

2006-04-18T20:08:00.000-05:00

http://www.creativecow.net/articles/ebberts_dan/audio_sync/index.html
http://creativecalf.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=2&postid=872461
http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-204910.html
http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?p=427874&highlight=effects#post427874
http://aenhancers.com/viewtopic.php?t=247
http://www.shinjipierre.be/
http://www.videohelp.com/edit
http://www.creativecow.net/articles/al_khatib_talid/volume_meter/index.html
http://www.creativecow.net/articles/aftereffects.html
http://creativecalf.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=2&postid=872458

http://educationarcade.org/SiDA/harmonix
http://www.videohelp.com/guides.php?howtoselect=5;16#104

Damn you Auto Assault and Mad Max

2006-04-16T04:29:00.000-05:00

Yeah, so as much as I hate the idea of $14.99 per month for a frikkin' game, and as much as I hate also having to pay $50 on top of that for the game(which is more than I ever pay for a game), I still want to play Auto Assault. There's now way I could afford that right now, but I still want to play Auto Assault.

Watching the Mad Max movies hasn't really helped either.

I may start up Fallout in a while, because I already have fallout 1 and 2 and I never played them much.

I have found at least one game that's very promising though. It's actually a ut2004 TC mod....currently.

I present Roadkill Warriors or RWK. There's no story, or at least scripted, single player. Just some multiplayer with bots, in the UT2004 fasion, but it's still pretty cool. If anyone wants to play, feel free to drop me a comment. If you live near, I can let you borrow ut2004, but you should be able to find it for $20 or less.

I don't think it satisfies my desire for AutoAssault. I'm just hoping they make the client and serial code free and drop price of the monthly charge, but I'm probably holding out too much hope. I wouldn't even mind in-game ads, though they would probably ruin the atmosphere...so I guess I would mind, but I would put up with it, if I could play it for free, or cheaper. If I was a responsible person with a degree and a job, I might not have any problem dishing out that kind of money(except that I think it's too much on a number of degrees).

On other games,
http://automanic.sourceforge.net/ looks promising too, and it's open source but it's in very early stages.

http://cityscape.sourceforge.net/ could be promising as a futuristic GTA style game, but probably not really what I'm looking for, and that's in pretty early stages too.

On a related not, you can play anarchy online free.

Auto Assault, games, categories and excuses

2006-04-08T03:23:00.000-05:00

First off, I've been meaning to post for a long time. I have all sorts of bookmarks queued up to post about, I just haven't posted them yet. I am distracted. I will do it later.

Many other popular weblog software supports categories, so that each post lists the categories it falls under and if you want to look up something in a specific category you can just click on the category or type it in. The search bar at the top of this blog is very helpful for finding something specific but not so helpful for finding everything in a general category. There are a number of attempts to add this functionality to blogger, all of them with their own weaknesses. I might eventually use one, but I wish blogger would just add this function.

Enough with the griping, I played Auto Assault for hours the last few days because there was a beta preview thing going on and it ended just about an hour ago at 2pm cst on Saturday, 8th of April. I was just in the middle of trying to make a mad dash to another area that I had never gone to.

I'm not a big fan of MMORPGs. Anyone will tell you. In fact, even though I used to be, I'm not all that big a fan of RPGs in general any more. Too much mindless fighting to level up, and too much of an emphasis on points...hit points magic points items that increase this or add this ability or whatever. There's just too much to manage in many of them and it's too time consuming. A lot of them also just seem very scripted. Every thing is a random role of the dice, all the animations and actions and interactions are lifeless scripts. That's just me though.

Even more so, I hate monthly fees and I don't usually like to play games online with other people because, let's face it, sometimes people really suck. Then there's the fact that they can just take up so much of your life which could be spent more productively. At least a single player game that takes up a lot of time has an end.

Still, as much as I dislike MMORPGS, I like vehicular combat even more. I also like post-apocolyptic things. For example, when I was younger pre-elementary to early elementary school, I used to watch Encore, and one of my favorite Encore movies was a movie which may have been Mad Max 1 or 2(probably Mad Max 2, because I think I thought it was "Road Warrior" and I distinctly remember the whole gasoline thing), but I'm not totally sure. It was very similar, I will have tow atch those movies to find out. Also, when my town first got Best Buy, I used to go there just to play the 3DO they had, because it had this racing game with guns where you could blow up other cars. Best game ever at the time, and it was just a demo. I've also played and beaten Interstate 76, Interstate Nitro Pack, and Interstate 82. There are probably more examples, but I can't think of any right now.

Also, I'm relatively good at vehicular combat games, but sometimes it depends on the game and the interface. I'm nto so great at racing games, but not too bad, and I'm not so great at fps but not too bad...but anyone who's played with me knows that in vehicular combat, I am considerably above average.

In comes Auto Assault. As far as MMORPGS go, it might fall a little short compared to others like WOW, Lineage, Ultima Online, or Ever Quest. The weapons balance and polish might not be as refined, but that's only guessing because I've never actually played any of those games. I could really care less about those Fantasy Role Playing tedium fests. Auto Assault is great just because it fills a niche that sorely needed filling. The sub genre of Post Appocolyptic Auto Combat. As far as I know, no other game fills this role so well. There are a number of games that might kind of fit, but they're all just combat games, not worlds which be explored and interacted with, and most importantly destroyed.

Furthermore, instead of trudging along in your latest magic boots of whateverthehellI don'tcare+2, you can speed along on your allterrain low profile pimp wheels and run over poor pikers as they fling mud or fire or bombs or soemthing else that probably hurts. The game has a sense of speed. The game has explosions and action and sparse trees, which burn easily and mutated being and biomechanoids and lots of rusty metal type things. That, in itself is quite neat.

The game is not without it's faults though. Did I mention the speed? Well, at least on my computer the speed was not always so noticeable because something was lagging. My computer could be faster, and I could turned down some performance options, but something still seemed like it could have been running a little more smoothly. Especially today when the servers started to lag. Then there's the whole fact that some parts of the game seemed either broken or unfinished. There were a number of vehicles which I simply couldn't see. They were invisible. I could run into them, and destroy them, or be destroyed by them, though. There's also a lot of stuff to learn which could be either bad or good depending on how you feel about it. It probably adds depth.

The game has many scripted missions to go on. That's what I was doing most of the time. There are tons of missions. If they keep adding them, you could probably never talk to a living soul in the game and just go on missions all the time. This does fall into the RPG lifeless scripts type thing, but I think it's ok in this instance because you get to blaze around and blow up stuff.

It's not perfect by any means. However, if they could polish some of the things up, it could be incredibly awesome. In my opinion, far better than any of the other MMORPGS out there. So good, that I seriously thought about signing up for it, except for one serious flaw.

It's $14.99 per month. That's $190 per year. You might also have to pay like $60 for the game up front to get a retail serial code but I'm not totally sure about that. There are a number of great games out there for $14.99 or less as well as many other services(like gametap.com or basic cable). It's just not worth that much to me. If there was a single player version of the game or maybe multiplayer system like Diablo had, that would be cool. Any system that didn't require me to pay $14.99 per month. In fact, $0 per month would be the best.

When I was thinking about what I really liked about that game, I thought "I should just get a single player games just like it" problem is there isn't any. There's fallout, but that's not vehicular and I just couldn't get into it. There's the vehicular combat games I've already beaten. There's stuff like the battlefield or ut2004 games, but those aren't really single player story driven.

the Conclusion:
So, what I think the gaming world really needs is this: Grand Theft Auto: Post Apocalypse.

What I learned from Van Helsing

2006-03-17T12:57:00.000-06:00

Always bring an extra silver weapon.

Fun with After Effects

2006-03-13T14:04:00.000-06:00

Paul's Attempt at Noise Core (requires Flash 8)

Video Games used to treat ADHD

2006-03-13T10:44:00.000-06:00

This is pretty cool. I like it. To me, it sounds like it is viable and legit.

Their website almost makes it look like a scam though. If I hadn't seen it on other news sites, I would probably be sceptical of the claims.

I think mostly it's just this phrase "SMART BrainGames is the ONLY Neurofeedback Technology developed, patented and tested at NASA- don't be fooled by false claims for other systems offering lessor imitations!" Lessor? Are they leasing the technology? Is that a really bad typo or a play on words?

Anyone have $584 to buy me one?

Oh yeah

2006-03-09T13:36:00.000-06:00

This is also great.

Make sure you read the fine print

Hasselhoff is big in Germany you know.

2006-03-09T13:30:00.000-06:00

It's things like this that make life worth living.

Also on ifilm and google video.

Somebody set us up the coffee

2006-02-20T09:44:00.000-06:00

http://www1.neweb.ne.jp/wa/hidero-i/HowTo/howto.html

Nothing better than engrish and illustrations made with ms paint.

Insert subject here

2006-02-19T23:43:00.000-06:00

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4890324024926378754&q=little+rock

TV Ratings

2006-02-17T01:58:00.000-06:00

Bye-bye 'Malcolm,' 'That '70s Show'
'Arrested' return 'highly unlikely'; 'Hill' may come back

I was wondering how tv ratings are recorded because I have been watching a lot of shows that I download, instead of watching on tv because...either I forget, or I'm busy. Two of the shows I like to watch each week , my name is earl and everybody hates chris, are during one of my classes. So, I have no choice but download them if I want to watch them.

However, these days, a lot of good tv shows get cancelled because of low viewership. So, does that mean that my favorite tv shows, struggly by with only 4 million(that is few, for sindicated tv shows in prime time) viewers only has 3,999,999 because of me?

The answer in short, is no. My viewership doesn't count...even less than voting. Seriously.

Here is [url=http://www.nielsenmedia.com/whatratingsmean/]why[/url]. The Neilsen Media company takes what they believe is a good representation of the total population and finds out what they are watching. They claim that the results are as accurate and possible, and they probably know enough about statistics that that claim is statistically sound...but what you have to realise is that they can only take statistics from the people who participate, and the people who participate may not be totally representative of the total population that watches tv. I mean, how are you going to find out? The people who won't participate are not going to tell you because they're not participating.

I beleive this is probably why good shows get cancelled...or just because the people who watch tv suck...which is what I used to believe. Now, however I can only find out exactly how many people they polled, find out how many people they said watched the show and then say that that many people suck. For example, lets say that there are 99 million tvs in the US. There are 5,000 people participating the polls. Nielsen says that My Name is Earl only recieves 3 million viewers. 3 out of 99 is about 3 percent and 3 percent of 5,000 is 150. Therefore 4,850 of our viewing representatives suck. Isn't math great? (Statistics suck.)

So, I can download tv episodes to my hearts content and feel no moral shame. The only people I'm cheating are those companies who create those insulting commercials that make me hate and avoid their products(I avoided taco bell for months once for that reason, and still avoid mcdonalds). On that subject, they decide which commercials to play by using the same are similar statistics. Probably the same thing with radio.

The only moral obligation I have is to buy the dvds of the shows I like when they come out...which I have not been doing since I'm broke. Some day.

Knowing all this, I can't help but feel totally helpless to stop a good tv show getting cancelled...but I feel better knowing that I can just download the latest syndicated tv show episode and watch it without the commercials. It might not be totally legal, but I'm not going to feel guilty about it.

There still is one day, to try to save a good show: contact the tv station or start a campaign. For example, http://the-op.com/saveourbluths/. Also, buying the dvds probably helps, if they are out.

Credit Report. yay.

2006-02-10T03:52:00.000-06:00

Due to some government program, the big 3 credit reporting agencies made a website called www.annualcreditreport.com where anyone in the US can get a free credit report once every 12 months from the three companies. No credit score, just the report.

Well, I decided to check mine a few minutes ago and apparently I have a credit account with citi(which I didn't know I had), my names are Art B Martin, Stewart J Martin, and B Martin Art and my Date of Birth is 1985(it's 1984)...oh and I had a State Tax Lien which I paid back in November. All I can say is...what the fuck? I mean seriously.

I see this as being a major source of frustration in the next few days or possibly weeks. Needless to say, I've got some people to talk to.

Oh yeah, HoMM5

2006-02-08T09:57:00.000-06:00

In respect to my earlier posts about Heroes of Might and Magic V, I forgot to mention that I finally got a serial number. I received it curtesy of Jolt.co.uk. I sent them an e-mail and they sent me a number.

It's kind of disapointing. Being a beta, there's still a number of problems...it may be more like an Alpha really. I got into one game with a guy who didn't know how to play, and it lagged very badly but I wasn't sure if it was from my detail settings or internet lag. Then I downloaded and installed a menu mod so that I could create a hot seat game with a non-working AI player. After playing that for a little while the whole thing crashed. Whoo.

On the game front, I'm addicted to Animal Crossing and I finally started playing Broken Sword 3. I like it. I think it might have crashed on me too, but I can't remember exactly. Maybe I just quit playing without any game failure. Any fan of Adventure games or stories or non-twitch gaming should definately pick it up. The console versions might be better for the sole fact that the pc version installs the dreaded starforce protection software(which I now have 3 copies of for Trackmania Nations, BS3, and the HoMMV beta). It doesn't have one of those wiz bang graphic engines, but it looks pretty nice. The animations are pretty good. The voice acting is superb. The characters are believable. The story is pretty engaging. I haven't played it very long though.

I need to get a big "Buy Psychonauts" banner, because everyone should. Psychonauts finally made it to Europe, all localized and stuff, so hopefully that will boost the sales and Doublefine will get huge cash for mega games.

Oh No! I'm rambling again. (I slept about an hour...)

Good Old Toyota

2006-02-08T05:11:00.000-06:00

My brother currently owns a 1984 Toyota. It has seen it's share of miles and has a broken radiator, a problem that drains the battery, serious problems with the emission system, and a number of other small issues. There's chipping paint, rust, cobwebs in the engine, and a great deal of the plastic interior is faded or sun damaged.

I grew up in this car. To me it's like an old friend. It was bought the year I was born and was the first Camry ever made, in the first year that Toyota sold cars in the US. It's a brown hatch back and the shape always reminded me of a turtle. I probably locked myself in the trunk area a number of times because the back seats folded down. I think I may have known I way to get back out again though. A lot of the faded interior was that way for a great deal of the time that I can remember.

The engine was replaced once. I don't know what happened there. I wrecked it once when I was 3 or 4, because I was impatient while waiting in the church parking lot and I grabbed the gear shifter, which was between the two bucket seats, and pulled back.

Some of my first driving lessons were in that car. My brother has had the car for a long time. He could use a new car; a more family friendly car. I was thinking about whether or not it would be cost effective for me to try to fix it. I would be willing to make all the repairs I could myself. My current car is a gas guzzler, so the benefit would be double the efficiency, give or take. Also, ever since I got my Jeep Cherokee I have wanted a smaller car. I wanted a small car to begin with but a cherokee was kind of one of the cars I idolised as a child. The Toyota isn't a manual, like a would prefer, but that's ok.

Sitting in the car today, it kind of reminded me of going to my elementary school Everything seemed so much smaller and more worn and there was funny smell. Unrelated, they have since remodelled and made it look like a prison.

I don't know where I'm going with this, and I should have gone to sleep 6 hours ago, so I think I'll just leave this subject open ended and incomplete for now.

Who Owns You?

2006-02-07T04:08:00.000-06:00

Once again, I'm playing the who owns/makes you game with brands and companies. This time it's cars.

Ford Owns:
Ford
Lincoln
Mercury
Mazda
Volvo
Jaguar
Land Rover
Aston Martin

GM Owns:
GMC
Buick
Cadillac
Chevrolet
HUMMER
Oldsmoble
Pontiac
Saturn
Saab
Holden
Opel
Vauxhall

DaimlerChrysler Owns:
(Mercedes Car Group)
Maybach
Mercedes-Benz
Smart
(Chrysler Group)
Dodge
Chrysler
Jeep
(Commerical Vehicles Division)
Mercedes-Benz
Freightliner
Fuso(through an alliance with Mitsubishi)
Sterling Truck
Western Star Trucks
Setra
Thomas
Orion

There are a lot of other car makers and brands out there, so I might look at hose later. There may be more brands from these conglomerates in other countries because I checked the US sites mostly. One interesting thing about DaimlerChrysler and Mitsubishi. Mitsubishi has been struggling with debt for years and DaimlerChrylser bought 37% market share in the company and had plans to aquire Mitsubishi. Mitsubishi stacked up more debt though, and instead DaimlerChrysler is looking for a buyer for it's stock.

Another interesting thing. Smart, one of DaimlerChrysler's Mercedes Car Group brands is kind of interesting, if not weird. There are already selling in Europe since 2004.

Edit: 2:49 pm And now Volkswagen AG
Audi
Bentley
Bugatti
Lamborghini
SEAT
Škoda
Volkswagen

Nintendo DS

2006-02-02T16:26:00.000-06:00

If anyone has Mario Kart or Animal Crossing for the Nintendo DS, leave a comment or send me an e-mail or an IM and we can exchange friend codes.

* Son of ***!

2006-01-29T23:16:00.000-06:00

"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.

Heroes of MIght and Magic Open Beta + straight dope

2006-01-28T15:52:00.000-06:00

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!

Neutral Milk Hotel - Aeroplane Over the Sea

2006-01-25T09:37:00.000-06:00

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!

Canada: What I learned from Barb Wire

2006-01-25T00:51:00.000-06:00

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...

Schooled

2006-01-19T18:13:00.000-06:00

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.

Cruelty Unending.

2006-01-18T02:15:00.000-06:00

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.

Might and Magic + kahvi mp3 podcast

2006-01-16T17:07:00.000-06:00

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/

I think in bed.

2006-01-16T04:29:00.000-06:00

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.

Oh yeah, more poetry.

2006-01-16T02:19:00.000-06:00

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.

What I learned from: Quest for Fire

2006-01-16T01:56:00.000-06:00

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.

Everything that's never been published.

2006-01-13T05:25:00.000-06:00

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.

Can't sleep; can't stop these dancing feet.(Poetry)

2006-01-13T05:05:00.000-06:00

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.

Cold Hands

2006-01-11T09:19:00.000-06:00

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.

other ogg players.

2006-01-10T09:59:00.000-06:00

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

I also had this bookmarked.

Hidden RSS feeds!

2006-01-09T04:47:00.000-06:00

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.

Laser Mouses

2006-01-09T03:32:00.000-06:00

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)?

Ogg player update.

2006-01-08T20:36:00.000-06:00

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.

Damn you, cruel world!

2006-01-07T00:32:00.000-06:00

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.

Happy New Year

2006-01-02T02:26:00.000-06:00

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

Christmas list 05

2005-12-25T22:41:00.000-06:00

Notice: The date on this is christmas day. Hopefully that will make it stay up at the top until christmas day, at which point it kind of becomes nulled. Be sure to check below the post for new posts made before christmas day!

I don't expect any presents from anybody because, honestly, I don't have any money to spend on christmas presents for anyone else. Especially not after spending almost $100 to fix my computer recently. However, if someone was looking for a gift, these are a few things I thought about buying or have wanted before.

Linux games:
Doom3(windows version is fine): only $9.99
Postal 2
Lugaru

Windows games:
Half-Life 2(doesn't have to be game of the year edition or platinum collection)
Beyond Good and Evil
F.E.A.R.
Indigo Prophecy

Nintendo DS games:
Mario Kart DS
Animal Crossing DS
Maybe some other ones like feel the magic, haven't played them much if at all

Computer stuff:
Laptop
Nvidia Geforce 6800

DVDs:
Firefly boxed set
Veronica Mars Season 1

Clothes:
Scarf?
Sam & Max shirt http://www.telltalegames.com/products?dc=hg04
Whispering Rock Summer Camp T-Shirt - Ash Ringer http://shop.doublefine.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=33
Double Fine Zipper Hoodie - Black http://shop.doublefine.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=37

Other Stuff:
Scooter or Motorcycle
Money

Animations!

2005-12-17T23:35:00.000-06:00

I fixed the link to my animation on the side bar and added a new animation. I have some more to add, but I don't have enough web space. I need to find some better web space or a find a way to shrink my renderings.

Be sure to check out the new animation.:)

RSS and Atom feeds are nice.

2005-11-27T19:32:00.000-06:00

I had two posts about rss feeds earlier. You can find them here and here.

I thought I would link to the feeds I have in thunderbird:
http://grumpygamer.com/rss2.0 - Ron Gilbert's blog(the creator of Monkey Island)
http://www.osnews.com/files/recent.rdf - nerdy stuff
http://www.kahvi.org/kahvi.xml - free electronic music
http://www.npr.org/rss/rss.php?id=13 - Fresh Air, NPR
http://www.bitter-neko.blogspot.com/atom.xml - Bitter Neko's blog. Updates are infrequent, but sometimes good.
http://tangentmind.blogspot.com/atom.xml - My own blog, for vanity's sake.

You can actually add "atom.xml" to any blogger blog, I think, and get the feed.
Slashdot has feeds for all it's news too, I might add that(you can find them in a small link that just says "rss" at the bottom of the page).
If linuxgames.com, telltalegames.com, Doublefine.com, Penny-arcade.com, or mixnmojo.com had an rss feed, I would add those.
I also have a jastplanetojakarta.com feed, but it doesn't seem to be working.

Correction, mixnmojo.com does have an rss feed. Have to read the tiny letters at the bottom of the page.

Also, here is a wikipedia article on RSS, because wikipedia is awesome like that.

Everybody loves to sweat.

2005-11-25T18:49:00.000-06:00

I already knew that converse shut down all it's US factories, but I didn't know that they did that because Nike bought Converse. Nike bought Converse in 2003, closed down all the US factories, started manufacturing all the Converse shoes in sweat shops in other countries, and raised the prices on the shoes. Converse All Stars had been a favorite shoe of social activists, because it was simple and Union Made, and social activists also dislike Nike, so some of them decided to do something about this.

There are at least two products that came out of thise. No Sweat footwear and Blackspot shoes. I personally, have 5 pairs of Union made converse shoes, but I only wear one of them.

Edit: Wow, almost a whole month since my last post. Too bad no one got upset about it, because no one reads it. That's ok though because I usually only post when, A. I have some information I'm going to forget so I want to put it down or I learned something new and want to share it with everyone. That means, that in the month of November I didn't learn anything new and probably forgot a lot of things. Oh well. Everything will one day be forgotten.

Dog Chocolate Poisoning

2005-10-26T00:25:00.000-05:00

Once, on easter, my dog ate my chocolate rabbit. I was pissed, understandably, but it was my fault for leaving the chocolate on the floor. Chocolate is poisonous to dogs in sufficient quantities, however, and so I was thinking about how dangerous that chocolate bunny could have been to her.

http://www.dogownersdigest.com/news/library/chocolate-dog-poisoning.shtml
"Chocolate contains theobromine. A naturally occurring stimulant found in the cocoa bean, theobromine increases urination and affects the central nervous system as well as heart muscle. While amounts vary by type of chocolate, it's the theobromine that is poisonous to dogs."

It can cause:
Hyper excitability
Hyper irritability
Increased heart rate
Restlessness
Increased urination
Muscle tremors
Vomiting
Diarrhea
Possibly death

Each different kind of chocolate has a different amount of theobromine.
All numbers are mg per ounce.
White chocolate: 1 mg
hot chocolate: 12 mg
milk chocolate: 60 mg
semi-sweet chocolate: 260 mg
Baking Chocolate: 450 mg

The chocolate bunny falls under the milk chocolate category so she could probably eaten about 25 ounces of milk chocolate before it become truly toxic. I don't doubt that it gave her digestive issues. She used to have a very sensity stomach. I'm not sure how many ounces the bunny was, but it wasn't too small. I imagine it was probably less than that. 6 maybe?

NBC or Fox?

2005-10-25T21:00:00.000-05:00

http://www.nbc.com/nbc/header/TV_Schedule/
So, instead of showing a new "My Name is Earl" NBC decided to push the show back by 30 minutes and reshow the pilot. They also decided to cut out at least half of the good jokes and otherwise chop it up so the timing was all off. I have no idea why. You'd think they were fox trying to kill off a good series or something. NBC still says there's a new episode next week. Maybe there was an hour special on one of the shows before it (the biggest loser maybe?). It was kind of convenient for me actually, because the software for my new tv capture card on my computer decided to cop out while recording so I wouldn't have seen it if they showed the new episode at its regular time anyway. Maybe I just have good karma? Hopefully this isn't a bad sign and My Name is Earl won't be another Firefly. I didn't hear about Firefly until recently, but I have seen many of the episodes and I enjoy it immensely. Too bad Fox butchered it's showing and then cancelled it. Maybe it will start again because of the movie.

Spiders

2005-10-20T04:04:00.001-05:00

Well don't I feel like a horses ass.
(...wait..isn't that a mule?)

Fun Beer Facts for the day

2005-10-09T05:22:00.000-05:00

Beer is high in fiber. Beer has many vitamins(all the B vitamins), but alcohol interferes with absorption of some vitamins and destroys complex b vitamins and C vitamins. Taking C and E vitamins may help to prevent a hang or recover from one(I think the E helps the C in some way). Many beers filter out the vitamin B in brewing anyway. Some legislation was passed in Scotland to add extra B(thiamine) vitamins to Beer in order to combat the health problems caused by excessive alcohol consumption.

Miller Brewing brews all , or most, Pabst Brewing beers by contract.

Miller "was acquired by South African Breweries from Philip Morris (now Altria on May 30, 2002, to form SABMiller for $3.6 billion worth of stock and $2 billion in debt, with Philip Morris retaining a 36% share, with voting rights of 24.99%."

Altria is a scary large company, but SABMiller is a little less forboding. They are the second largest brewer in the world under....wait for it...InBev. Thought it was Annheiser-Busch? That's probably because you're American. A-B is merely third. InBev is considerably more global. Ironically, Budweiser is brewed by the Labatt(one of InBev's "local" brews) breweries in Canada. I don't know how much Budweiser Canadians drink...

"Altria Group, Inc. NYSE: MO (previously named Philip Morris Companies Inc.) is one of the world's largest food, beverage, and tobacco corporations and a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average." The Altria group owns the Marlboro brand,Parliament, Virginia Slims, Kraft Foods,Kool-Aid, Boca Burger, Lenders Bagels, Maxwell House, Miracle Whip, Oscar Mayer meats, Post Cereals, Philadelphia cream cheese, Shake n Bake, Splenda, Vegemite, and others. Nice to know who you're buying your products from...

The Sun is so very generous

2005-10-09T02:00:00.000-05:00

It just occurred the me that the Sun is the most generous thing in the entire universe. It gives great amounts of energy, day in and day out, and never takes anything back in. Of course, it could be argued that that's the nature of giant burning balls of gas. Ask anyone with IBS and they'll probably tell you that gas they are the gifts that keep on giving. For the moment, I can't seem to think of anything in the Galaxy like that. Sure the Sun will probably be a black whole one day which is probably the least generous thing in the universe by nature, but that's a long way off.

Moving on..
I had an idea for a short or series of shorts. They can be called "Giving Birth". Every day life through the view of a woman giving birth. Stuff like work and traffic with the view of two spread legs and a woman screaming and bleeting through tears of pain. One short might be enough.

It's natural that I feel the desire to blog right now as I have just started doing some actual homework and I'm very tired and need to sleep.

Television

2005-10-06T12:58:00.000-05:00

I've been watching a little tv lately. I like to watch Everybody Hates Chris, My Name is Earl, and Veronica Mars. Kevin Smith was on Veronica Mars last night. He's making a Clerk's 2.

I've been trying to catch up on my homework, but not doing so well. I will most likely post some more CG videos that I've been doing. They're all pretty simple so far, because I'm not doing very well on my homework.

Indigo Prophecy looks like a good, new game, that's come out.

Been drinking PBR. Anyone suggest a good, cheap beer? I know that's kind of an oxymoron, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

I'm thinking about getting a moped or some other relatively small engine motor bike. Need to get a job first though. I figure that I should make up the difference in gas costs within a year or two, if I get a motor bike. Most of my money goes to buy gasoline.

Show, games, whatever. I'm sleepy.

2005-09-17T02:06:00.000-05:00

I went to texas and saw the foo fighters and weezer, and briefly Mae. Elaborate on the show? Elaborate on all the crappy things that happened and how bad of a mood I was in a great deal of the trip? Post pictures? No. I don't feel like it.

Telltalegames release Bone: Out from Boneville! Go check it out. I haven't gotten to check it out yet but I'm excited.

Even better than that, they license Sam and Max!!! They're going to release a series of Sam and Max games!

No kidding!

Speaking of good games, and my trip, Kara, the person who I stayed with, has this macabre painting that reminded me of Grimm Fandango. Totally Dia de Los Muertos. I might actually post that. I have been concidently on the verge of passing out for like 5 days straight. I think I might go do that now.

Sugar bad for brain.

2005-09-10T04:15:00.000-05:00

Sugar is bad for your cells.

More finger pointing.

2005-09-06T03:22:00.000-05:00

This time, the federal government:
Waiting for a Leader
Bush Panics over Political Fallout
Barbaric Yawp
Impeach Bush Now

I don't like the titles for those posts, but the information in them is worth reading.

Has Bush portrayed himself as a strong leader in this disaster?

As far as I can tell, Bush has not portrayed himself as a concerned leader, or a strong leader, or a confident leader or a competent leader during this disaster. In fact, he really hasn't shown much leadership at all...at least not what I would expect from any kind of leader.

I still say fault is probably shared by many individuals, but it's hard not to look at the Bush Administration. Cut funding for disaster prevention to one of the most important cities in America? Good one guys.

There will probably be a lot of mud-slinging from democrats as soon all the disaster recovery has died down a little...maybe once New Orleans has been drained in a month or so, but maybe sooner. However, realise that everything you see or hear Bush do or say for a while is probably the Bush administrations own political disaster recovery. They are going to try to restore his "image" so everyone will like him enough that they can continue with their plans. Just keep that in mind.

Linux

2005-09-06T01:22:00.000-05:00

Hey, this is an open invitation. If any one out there reading this would like help with Linux or would like to try Linux or whatever, I can help you.

Just let me know. My e-mail is stewartmartin (at) sbcglobal (dot) net.

More on the finger pointing.

2005-09-04T02:42:00.000-05:00

So, Kanye West says the situation in New Orleans is Bush's fault because he doesn't care about blacks. However, this blog seems to claim otherwise. It says that Bush urged the mandatory evacuation, and that mandatory evacuation was unprecedented because they are usually voluntary. It could just be another right-wing-bush-loving blog, but if there's truth in it then less blame should be placed on the president.

Where should the blame be placed? It's probably a combination of factors and a combination of many people so it should be divided. The truth is usually some sort of ballance, and not an extreme(but not always). I'm sure there are many heroes and many villains and many that just fall in between.

However, there were literally hundreds of buses that were owned by the city of New Orleans that were not utilized. You can see some of that here, here, and here. So there is probably a lot of fault in the local government of New Orleans.

Also some fault in the Federal government though:
"Many had been critical of the slow response, with many people (particularly in New Orleans) left without water and food for three to five days (and continuing) after the storm. Among the first to express criticism of the management of the crisis had been The Pentagon, who complained only a day after Katrina hit that beaurocratic red tape from the Bush administration and the FEMA, (newly reorganized under the Homeland Security Department) had caused the delay of a scheduled and authorized military hospital ship from Norfolk, Virginia, among other related and prepared active military crisis response procedures."

Something else:
A town in Missisippi was obliterated.

Awesome 18 or 20(maybe) year old guy guy grabs abandoned bus and saves people. Note that the kid in the picture on that link is not the aforementioned driver. All the news snippets I've seen have said he stole it or looted it and not that he commandeered it or grabbed it or saved it. That is possibly a great deal of what Kanye West was talking about(maybe not, see below). Some of them don't mention it was abandoned and most, if not all, probably don't mention that it would probably be water logged and leaking poison into the water if he didn't get the bus(they also can't seem to agree on his age, but that's beside the point). I need to get a banner for that guy. He deserves one much more than Kanye West, even if Kanye did speak some truth.

Speaking of, there are a lot of posts on the web and other talking heads disgusted by Kanye West, which I guess, is to be expected. Notice, however, than many of them say things like "I never heard of Kane West before this" even though he was in Times as the "smartest man in pop music".

However, Kanye could have been talking about this. A misunderstanding.
Edit: Yahoo's public apology.

Kanye West

2005-09-03T04:06:00.000-05:00

Man, that was sweet. He has more balls than I do. I am of course, referring to his outburst on NBC's Concert for Hurricane Relief. I'm not sure how much truth there was in his comment, but I know there is some truth in it even if he wasn't spot on. I got the image from here. Notice at that NBC link that they actually have the footage available. I think that's pretty sweet too but I can't look at it because Windows Media Player is messed up and msNBC wasn't nice enough to create a Real Video stream so you know...everyone else without windows xp can watch it. Edit: good old ifilm.

What I think he was supposed to say...which I think Mike Myers tried to say before they switched over to Chris Tucker was that one of the biggest necessities for all those displace people right now and the people trying to give them releif is cash, because, simply put, cash buys food and water and medical supplies.

To insert your check book go here:

Also, in Fort Smith, AR, there are a bunch of people coming in and supplies for them can be dropped off at "hunt" something in the pheonix village mall. I forgot the name of the place.

Edit: I'm not a big hip hop/rap/r&b fan but you can listen to Kanye's latest cd and watch two of the latest videos on kanyewest.com and it seems pretty good. I dunno how I feel about the lyrics, but I like the music. Pretty funny, Late Registration is about registering late for College. Diamond has a good message, and tells a story I didn't really know. Don't buy conflict diamonds! Jamie Foxx's bleating on Gold Digger is priceless.

Good Old D-Link(....and Tivo too)

2005-08-31T22:58:00.000-05:00

Nice.

This is nice too.

Edit(09-01-05): fixed link

No more Birthday + Ericcson Cell Phone Tools

2005-08-31T21:18:00.000-05:00

So, my birthday has come and gone and now I'm 21 and can buy alcohol, hand guns, and rent vehicles to my hearts content. If there's anything else I can do now, and couldn't do before, let me know.

Here's the round up on birthday presents:
1.Money!: Thank you Grandma Chlorine, Leslie, Rachel*, and especially my Grandpa Art Martin.
2.A cell phone! from the parents. It was my dad's old one but it's still pretty good. I figured out how to copy all the content I want from the computer to the phone. I have one of Paul's midis set as a ring tone and a Dave Brubeck mp3 and some games and stuff. Ask me me for the number, if you know me and think I'll give it to you.
3. A nice air filter! from my Brother, his wife and co. It's a hepa filter with some ion stuff. It's right next to my bed.
4. A new computer! from my parents. Well, sort of a new computer. It's a barebones set up, but I can just put the video card I have now in it. It's still relatively fast. Also, my dad took the money my sister gave me to pay for the 160 gig hard drive.
5. A belt? Well....leslie gave me money for a belt but I haven't bought one yet.

I think that's it. If I forgot something, let me know.

I don't have a Sony Ericsson phone, but for those of you who do, there is some neat open source software at http://fma.sourceforge.net/index2.htm. If you have bluetooth or infrared you can use it to control winamp or power point...and probably some other things. Neat, eh?

My birthday is today! + dead smokers

2005-08-26T07:56:00.000-05:00

Edit: I edited and moved this post to my birth date, just because I can.

It is true. As mentioned in my last post, I will be 21. I can drink, rent vehicles, buy hand guns. Probably some othet stuff too, like distill alcohol(uh...for fuel, not drinking...ok, maybe a sip.)

So, what do I want for my birthday? hmmm....
Here is a short list of things I can think of at the moment:

Sennheiser HD201 headphones
Or maybe some
Grado sr60s

The #1,3,4,5,7,9,16 $1 cartoon craze dvds

A new computer(AMD64,high powered NVidia, 1 gig memory preferred)
A midi cable with one midi(not usb) plug and two midi plugs for midi in and out.

Numerous games:
Advent Rising(pc)
Doom3(pc)
Second Sight(pc)
Total Annihilation
Lugaru
Edit(08-20)
Beyond Good and Evil(pc or gamecube)
Grand Theft Auto San Andreas(pc)
Metroid Prime 2(gamecube)

A nintendo DS(edit: Aug 23 - Now $20 less!)
A laptop(nvidia graphics chip preferred)

Money is always good too.

Other stuff
Dead Smokers are good for society says phillip morris
The Pill Brothers?

Killer Toothpaste

2005-08-21T20:48:00.000-05:00

Sensitive teeth are caused by the wearing away of tooth enamel. Dentists say this is caused by things like acidic food, chewing ice, brushing too hard, and baking soda. While the former may be right, the baking soda part is incredibly wrong. It's possible that some baking soda toothpastes can cause this, but baking soda itself is relatively harmless. Whitening toothpastes are a different story however.

There is something called an "RDA" or Relative Dentin Abrasivity. This is an important number and I think the fact that it's not commonly advertised on packaging is just another example of industry misleading it's consumers. Toothpastes with a higher RDA are usually better at cleaning gunk and stains off the teeth and whitening the teeth, while they are also good at cleaning off the enamel. Lower RDA toothpaste can be just as good at cleaning the teeth, but maybe not as good at taking off any stains.

However, the irony of it is, whitening your teeth can't even help if you don't have any tooth enamel because the second layer of your teeth is dentin, which is naturally not white and virtually impossible to whiten. For more info on that, check here.

For a list of the RDA of some common toothpastes check here. However, the RDA of a toothpaste can be hard to get ahold of, especially with all the different varieties. The RDA of a gel or paste or a special variety or taste of toothpaste can be different than the normal. Different sources may show different RDA values for the same toothpaste as well(for example). Which one is right? Who knows? I think arm and hammer publishes the RDA of most, if not all of their toothpaste so those can be trusted. They are also some of the lowest. Baking soda itself has an RDA of 7. Only 3 above plain water. If you check both links the difference in the RDA of AIM toothpaste is enormous and I think that might be a difference in gel and paste. I'm guessing paste would be the lower one but one or both of them could just be plain wrong.
The rda value is especially important for someone who uses an electric toothbrush.

Also, make sure you get soft toothbrushes. If they fray, you're brushing too hard.
Carbonate beverages, fruit, fruit juice, lemonade, and sports drinks are some of the harshest foods. The sugar content doesn't help either. So, if you want healthy teeth drink water, use low RDA toothpaste, a soft toothbrush, and don't brush too hard.

"Even kids cannot stand life unless they have a drink"

2005-08-19T03:14:00.000-05:00

http://www.realbeer.com/news/articles/news-002656.php

So wrong.

Speaking of beer, I will be able to drink it because my birthday is in a week.

It doesn't have any alcohol though, as you will read. However, there are some very good uses for alcohol. How about running your car on it? There was a book published in 1980 that explained how to convert your car to run on it. That can be found, free, in it's entirety here
Speaking of fuel. Fueleconomy.gov is a neat web site and it seems to get better every time I check. Now it has "Your MPG". "We've created 'Your MPG' to help you calculate and track your fuel economy and compare it with EPA test ratings. You can also share your MPG with other users. Once enough users share their MPG, you will be able to compare your MPG to others with the same vehicle." I encourage everyone to sign up.

Old website

2005-08-16T18:57:00.000-05:00

I have placed a link to the archive of my old website before it went down. The web space that it's archived on has tons of stupid banners, though.

The anniversay of my last post to that sight will be the 21st. I think that's next Monday.

Also, my birthday will be the 26th.

http://tangentmind.250free.com/ is the link to it. It's over on the right though.

Faux-Republicans

2005-08-16T18:45:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure if the liberals of today are really liberals. However, the republicans of today are not really Republicans. They're not really christians either. So, if any of you reading this are voting for them on the premise that they are eithe Republicans or Christians, you might want to rethink your vote.

Rabbit Head Performance

2005-08-15T04:48:00.000-05:00

This link is for Leslie.

SoundFont Resoulution

2005-08-08T10:50:00.000-05:00

I have made my decision. This soundfont is the one I will use. It's not an sc55, but it sounds good, it's not too big(about 34 mb...not the target <32 that I would prefer for use in my SBLive but it's not too bad). The site is functional too so it's easy to get ahold of. My only complaint is that the archive is an EXE, but that's not a problem if you're in windows.

I don't know if none soundblaster users can use soundfonts. I think they can in Linux but I have no idea about windows.

Aoki Pizza

2005-08-08T06:08:00.000-05:00

http://otakuworld.com/data/voles/movies/aoki.mov < Aoki pizza commercial(Japanese) by the same guy who did Ren and Stimpy