Keep scrolling down, because I’m not posting all my stuff in the order I write it, it’s whenever I get access to a computer. Dates can be a bit off, you see… sorry.
July 7th - Hyannis! Ahahah!
July 4th - Where Everybody Knows Your Name…
July 2nd - New York, New York…
I passed my first year at university, by the way… fuck yeah!
Get it? Hyannis, Hyena… ah, fuck you.
Another day, another place to visit… and now we’re in the town of Hyannis, MA. Managed to pick up a Moleskine notebook today, after the constant recommendations from the guys over at Lifehacker to increase productivity - plus, it means that I can write down journal entries in it, and then type it up later when I get the chance. If you know me, expect to see it around from September onwards.
And I’ll start by always with pervertedness. Specifically, talking about the girl at the counter over at Barnes and Noble, reminding me once again that not only am I still single, but the females species over here in the United States are much better than the charvs and plastics we have back home. We need to export them or something, for the good of mankind before Britain implodes with inbreeding and stupidity. So to the lass in the full-length black and brown dress, the black lace collar, and the industrial bar ear piercing… congratulations. Feel proud that you’re the cutest girl I’ve seen so far this entire holiday, and you didn’t even have to wear skinny jeans. Yet another moment of a small encounter, and a person that I’ll never see again…
And before I continue being nice and calm, a big ‘fuck you’ to the woman in Best Buy today looking at me in disgust because I wouldn’t let her kid have a go of Rock Band. Why the harshness of a ‘fuck you’? Because her kid was a 6-month-old baby, for fuck’s sake! She got a go on Guitar Hero: Aerosmith later on, where her brat mashed buttons through the Xbox 360 dashboard for five minutes before throwing the controller on the ground in disgust and walking out (giving me another hackey look as well), presumably because she thought the game wasn’t ‘kid-friendly’ enough FOR A FUCKING BABY! God, people like that should go die in a gutter for stupidity or something. On a lighter side note, it was my first time playing on the drumming side of Rock Band, and despite there being no bass pedal (someone nicked it methinks), I actually enjoyed it. Remind me to live at Allan or Dan’s house in September until I get the hang of it.
I’m actually starting to like this town, mainly because I get Comedy Central on the TV (for the first time in 6 hotels, thank god!), and I get iternet access in the lobby. I might as well give a shout out to Newbury Comics nearby as well, which suprisingly manages to put both Forbidden Planet and Travelling Man to shame rather severely. There’s also a movie theater next door, and I went to see Hancock… meh. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an alright movie, but most directors (I’m looking at you, Michael Bay) think that good action sequences and shiny CGI are all that’s needed for a movie to be a box office hit nowadays (and it is, because the average movie-goer is a cockheaded moron). As far as the story goes, it’s idiotic and almost non-existant, with one plot twist halfway through not so much used as an actual plot element, but more as a reason for more fighting and CGI dazzleness. Tony Stark still kicks ass anyday, in my opinion.
At the moment, I’m quite undecided on whether I like Boston or not. And here’s a few reasons why:
Firstly, I despise American history with a deep passion, for being so prideful and with it’s head stuck up it’s own ass. Rather than, say, actually learning about the world’s past, the yanks seem to just have everything from Independence Day onwards forcibly drilled into their brains all the way through the education system, like some kind of propaganda… can you say fascist regime? Well, maybe I’m exaggerating, but I’m trying to prove a point here. On a guided trolley tour around the sights of the city on my first day, everyone apart from me and my family seemed to know every bleeding pointless United States fact off by heard, leaving us limeys having no idea what the hell the old coot’s rambling about (I think he was a stroke victim or something, mumbling so much, they should ship him off to Florida). In fact, his tour went something like ‘BLAH BLAH REDCOATS BLAH INDEPENDENCE DAY BLAH THE BRITISH ARE IDIOTIC WUSSIES BLAH WOOH AMERICA USA! U-S-A!!”. Or something like that, I wasn’t really paying much attention at all. At least the old buildings in Boston are pretty, so it’s not all bad.
Now, onto Boston’s main advantage - the opposite sex. Bearing in mind that my first day in the city was the 4th July (Independence Day for all you thickies) - maybe it was the summer fashion, or the weather, or the fact that it was a national holiday so everyone wasn’t an imbecilic tourist… but the number of hot girls increased dramatically compared with the Big Apple. And as an added bonus, the majority of these happened to be in tight jeans and converse… yum. Couldn’t go a few feet without spotting someone (and I’m referring to people above age of consent here, for the sake of legality), and I’m wondering why all places can’t be like this . People say I’m picky, but I guess this proves I’m not - either that, or I’m just getting more desperate. Does this mean Boston is good because it’s full of cite chicks, or bad because it drills in the loneliness of my pitiful existence just that little bit harder… screw it. All that matters is that patriotism is sexy, right?
So here I am, sitting in a Holiday Inn in the Middle of Fucking Nowhere, NY (I think Mark Twain’s buried here, but that’s about all I know), and this computer runs like a piece of shit. Still, I might as well let you know how I’m getting on.
New York is… well, hectic. that’s the only way I can describe it. The Empire State Building is tall, and there’s no sign of a naked cowboy in Times Square, unfortunately. Spamalot was awesome as well, all you UK folks should go check it out in London, seeing as you can’t get to Broadway…
I’m almost ashamed to say it, but I bough Guitar Hero DS yesterday, and I’m actually enjoying it. Yes, I look like a right and utter retard whilst ‘rocking out’, and the addon is a bit uncomfortable to hold, but you get the hang of it after a while. Also been keeping myself busy with the Charlie Brooker books (thanks for the recommendation, Allan!), as well as watching I, My, Me! Strawberry Eggs! (fucked up beyond belief, but thanks to Matt for the recommendation anyway ^^;). I’ll add some pics to this post (and probably add a little more text as well) when I get the chance, so for now, adios!
Methinks I’ve been playing World of Warcraft a bit too much since I resubscribed… to be honest, I can’t really remember doing anything else over the past month I’ve been back at home. Not that there’s much else to do around here… been looking for a job as well, but the prospects don’t look promising. So gaming it is, then.
Jaide seems to be back in action now. I hit (my first) level 70 just before my sub ran out in February, and I’m currently busy trying to make my Frozen Shadoweave tailoring set… going very slowly, seeing as I can only make two Shadowcloth per 4 days. At least I’ve got the shoulders so far. As far as other gear goes, I think I’m only down to 5 green items now, with a handful of purples amongst the blue. I’ve been in Kara twice now (only for one boss each time though, Moroes and Netherspite), I’ll see if I can tag along the next time my guild does a badge run - they’re now into Illidan himself, making me so proud :3 Between farming for primals and farming for gold so I can get my epic mount, it’s pretty boring. But it keeps me from doing nothing at all.
Oh, and you see that mount? Winterspring Frostsaber. Fuck yeah.
To relieviate the boredom, I decided to create an alt… I’ve always been against alts, but it’s not too bad. Her name is Tonks, and she’s a human mage (go figure). Yes, a mage plays similar to a shadow priest, and I’m Alliance again so I’ll be doing all the same quests… but I don’t care, so fuck you ^^ I’m following a levelling guide, so it’s not going too bad… I’ll probably stop at lv30 and wait for Patch 2.4.3 so I can get one of the newly-announced low-level mounts - God, will that help a lot. 30 to 40 can be such a drag.
I’m not gonna criticise it, like most people have done… I actually enjoyed the Lost season finale. Yeah, so it might have gotten a little crazy when Ben went deep into the centre of the island, blew a hole in the time machine, crawled into an ice cave, turned a giant donkey wheel and moved the island, warping himself to the middle of a Tunisian desert a year or so in the future… Okay, so it got a lot crazy. But I don’t really mind that at all. I’m one of the people who doesn’t mind how absurd it gets - the intrigue and mystery is what I enjoy most about the show, and it keeps delivering. Bring on the next season!
I went back down to the ‘boro for the weekend for the Middlesbrough Music Live festival, the only people still stranded down in the halls were Matt and Sheila - I’m not complaining, although it was a bit boring with my room being completely empty and all. The festival started off good (only because half the people there were skinny scene kids… yum), but towards the latter half of the day it turned into a charv’s family day out on the main stage. There were a few drunken fights/riots, usually when the performing band started playing Pigbag… bleh. Ash were awesome live, I’ve been wanting to see them for ages now, and I managed to get on the front barrier for the whole set ^^ Apart from the whether and having to stand for 11 hours straight in the mud, a great day!
Oh, and if you were the cute girl wearing the Metallica hoody that smiled at me, let me know. You were only a few rows behind me, but I lost sight of you after The Delays finished their set… damnit. Don’t you just hate it when that happens? ¬_¬
Okay, so you must have been wondering what I’ve been up to this past month. As well as finishing off my university assignments, this screenshot from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas should clear things up…
Yup, I’m that sad… just had to get 100%. I’d never really gotten into the GTA series before, but I really REALLY enjoyed this game - makes me wish that GTA IV would come out on PC faster. Who knows, I might even buy it on the 360, if I get one. Which is more than likely at the moment because I’ll need one in order to play the recently announced Beyond Good and Evil 2! Woohoo! ^___^ And everyone laughed at me, saying this sequel would never come out… they can go suck it. Although the teaser trailer needs to show the new Jade model still, at least Pey’j looks decent enough. Don’t forget to click the picture to see the oh-so-pretty trailer.
Another game that looks interesting is Venetica, being developed by Deck 13 (Ankh, Jack Keane) and published by dtp (Undercover: Operation Wintersun and Overclocked: A History of Violence). In the news post I saw on Kotaku, people are seeing the words ‘role-playing’ in the press release and thinking it’s gonna be some kind of crappy stat-heavy RPG trying to knock off Prince of Persia with the combat mechanics… for shame, gamers. Looking at past work by these companies, it’s obviously gonna turn out to be an adventure game, and with the gameplay from the short teaser trailer I’m going to (very waringly) compare it to Beyond Good and Evil. Should be interesting to see how this unfolds, methinks.
Tomorrow I get to rant on about how craptastic the Lost season finale is! Stay tuned, folks!
P.S. - Over 2000 blog views now. Fuck yeah.
For moving a point on a grid randomly, you could set it to randomly generate a movement range from -50 to +50, but you’d have the point bumping into walls, or generating a negative number such as -20 when the x value is already at 0, not moving at all because validation limits the cooordinate values between 0 and 100 (if thinking about it in real-life it would move into a wall 20 times). I like to think my points have a little more… intelligence.
Can you class this as my first AI code? Maybe. It’s designed to first detect how far away the point is from the outside boundaries (limited to 50 units away), use this for the random function’s range, and then offset the value with the bottom difference value to align the movement range properly. This takes the random out of it (so it’s always likely to go away from the closest wall and rarely go to the edges, but it’s cool nonetheless. It took me a while to get working properly, so enjoy (if you can find fun in looking at code, heh…)
int moveX, moveY, topdiff, bottomdiff, range;
topdiff = 100 - position.getX();
if (topdiff > 50)
topdiff = 50;
bottomdiff = position.getX();
if (bottomdiff > 50)
bottomdiff = 50;
range = topdiff + bottomdiff + 1;
moveX = (rand()%range) - bottomdiff;
topdiff = 100 - position.getY();
if (topdiff > 50)
topdiff = 50;
bottomdiff = position.getY();
if (bottomdiff > 50)
bottomdiff = 50;
range = topdiff + bottomdiff + 1;
moveY = (rand()%range) - bottomdiff;
position.adjust(moveX, moveY);
This blog is a great tool for procrastinating… I’ve been putting off finishing my Technical Asset Creation report for a fair few hours now, but I should get it finished at some point. I managed to finish my animation today, so I’ll be uploading it onto Youtube just after the deadline passes so you can all see the crappiness that is my Maya skills. In the end, I had to use MainActor rather than a decent editing program - Final Cut, Premiere, Vegas… hell, even Movie Maker has more functionality than MainActor. You think with .iff being the default Maya rendering format, things would support it ¬_¬ My GAT is all burned off and ready to hand in, leaving a week to learn the entirety of CP2 and design/code the assessment, and I’m not looking forward to it. Oh, and there’s a Graphical Mathematics exam I haven’t even thought about yet. Bugger.
This week’s episode of Lost is… interesting, to say the least. I’m worried that the writers are having a post-detox relapse and are back on the crazy pills, but we’ll see how it all pans out. Not that I mind it like this, I’m one of the few people who didn’t think ‘This is stupid!’ when drowning in a sea of unanswered questions, working out the mystery kept me even more intrigued. I should finish watching Chuck when I get the chance, and maybe pick up an anime series seeing as I haven’t watched any since Death Note. I can’t wait until I don’t have the pressure of work looming over me anymore! ^^;
So, that’s one ICA in the bag (Games Technology), only two more to go. Technical Asset Creation is going alright, I’m just onto the animation / rendering stage (have about 6 seconds of stuff, need 20 or so), which should be finished at the latest by Friday… leaving me one week exactly to do my C++ Programming 2 assessment. I can’t remmeber any of this, so I’ll have to re-learn all the stuff in the lecture slides first before even thinking about the design stage. I might have to ask someone for help if I want to get this all done in time… so, yeah. Busy. Explains why I haven’t been blogging, blah blah blah.
Entertainment-wise, I saw Iron Man the other day… such an epic movie. With this quality of production, I’m hoping that the following Marvel Studios features will be just as entertaining. And Tony Stark is just a awesome motherfucking badass. Because my DS was broken, I’ve been playing a lot of San Andreas (yes Anji, I know I should be playing FFIX instead, shut up), I’m around 50% complete. I bought a new DS and replaced it with the new case I was on about, so now it looks pretty awesome, and I’m back to playing Mario Party DS and Picross DS ^____^ Can’t wait for these deadlines to be over, I have so many games I need to play…
Sleep would be good right about now. For all the artsy people who are staying up all night working because deadlines are sneaking up fast, good luck!
