  Overkill | 
Posted - 3/30/2006 3:15:14 AM | So, I figured I'd write one final entry before finals kick into high gear - aw crap, who I am kidding, it's not like I'm a real student. Good joke though.
For me, finals are actually kind of neat. I get to do the same thing I've done for the rest of the year except I get the gratification of being "done" with a class the second I turn in the final paper or exam. Being the silly little English major that I am, I get the joy of only having one of my three English classes require a final exam, whereas the other two just ask for a final portfolio (Creative Writing) or paper (genre study on science fiction books)... Though the English class with the exam also asks for a final paper, so I don't know where they get off thinking they can throw some kind of combo package. Then there's my Spanish exam, but that's doesn't really even count.
Though, speaking of Spanish, it reminds of the mental anguish I'm going to be dealing with from May 2-June 23 with an "Intensive" Spanish course during the spring term. The spring term is, basically, a full semester workload crammed into eight weeks or so. "Intensive" Spanish is basically the full second year of Spanish crammed into a single term class. Combine the two forces and you have a full second year of Spanish combined into eight weeks. So, from 8:30am to 1:30pm (with a half-hour break at the two hour mark) every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The real question I'm asking myself is why I'm planning to do this. Well, my only problem with classes is waking up early; since the non-intensive Spanish spring/summer courses begin at 9:00am anyway, I figured what the hell. Yeah, real solid logic on display here.
I would just like to point out now that I'm wearing a bright orange t-shirt and gym shorts. These are two highly unnatural occurrences for me by themselves. The combination is considered, by some (okay, just me), to be one of the last true signs of the coming apocalypse.
Generally when I write these entries, I leave Word open for about two hours and just add a new paragraph whenever anything comes to mind. That's part of the reason that they're categorized as "Ramblings" or "Just Hanging Out" (depending on the site you're reading this from) because these entries really are just that. Ramblings. My goal with each one is to make each paragraph a kind of standalone mini-entry so that when people peruse the entries they can find something of interest eventually. Also, as I've said before, it's pretty much my own personal way of relaxing while I attempt to get tired enough to fall asleep (something I have a bit of difficulty with).
Anyway, the reason that I brought that last bit up was because I was looking through some of my old site backup files and came across a few images I managed to snag a few months ago while I tried to remember what old versions of the site used to look like. Now, keep in mind that these images are all from the Internet Bastardization I Call Home (IBiCH; catchy, I know). That is, to say, that I have no images - other than one I found last minute) - of the numerous other sites I've had since the dawn of the millennium. Hell, most of the ones that I do have are incomplete memories pieces snagged from a certain Archive.org. Either way, I'm continually amazed at one thing every time I see the design evolution in these pictures: how horrible my taste in color schemes was three years ago. Anyhoo, enjoy:
    
I don't believe the third version is actually what the site design looked like then, but it's fairly close if you imagine the green as being blue. And there really isn't much of a difference between version five and the current, but I believe there was a fair amount of subtle and background stuff done. As it is I'm quite happy with the current look, though I do have to work on the size constraints of the site a bit so that it'll read comfortable at 1024x768, but that's a planned fix... Eventually.
Last night I was able to finish up Chapter 2 of my book (Paradise). I'm going to spend the next couple of days trimming it down, adding to it, and cleaning it up, but after that I'll post the first full rough draft of it. Currently, though, I've gone through so many changes just in my time writing this one chapter that I'm not doubt facing some real continuity issues. Given that I wrote it in about a fourth of the time as I did the first chapter (Yay deadlines!), I don't think it's quite as good as the first chapter, but I also haven't done any editing on it at all. I made about five of six passes on the first chapter before I really began to like it so, hopefully, I can say the same about this when I get it ready for the limelight. I will say that it's a far more readable and relatable chapter. There is a lot more dialogue between Adam and four new characters and some more information about the general state of things in the shelter. I'm still not quite sure what the main "problem" will be for the next few chapters, as I'm starting to have a change of heart about what I had originally planned, but I have no doubt this will iron itself out soon enough that it won't become an issue whatsoever. I'd say it mostly just depends on the kind of mood I'm in when I start up work on Chapter 3.
What's surprising for me is that I'm actually becoming more interested in this book the more I work on it, which is somewhat of an odd event. Between that and the very positive feedback I've been receiving about it I think that this is a project with some real potential. That just makes me all sorts of happy.
And I think the intense 5k I ran earlier is just now beginning to catch up with me. One of these days I'm going to wake up and my legs are going to be on strike. Ever had a body part hit the picketing lines? Let me tell you, it's not fun. You pretty much have to give in to whatever their demands are. And, let me clue you in a bit further, their demands aren't fun. Though, since we're dealing with legs here, their separation from the brain would severely hinder their attempt at bargaining strike resolution terms. So, hey, maybe it wouldn't be a total loss after all.
so what the hell now? we've already been forever damned
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| Remember, Remember the Fifth of November | 
Posted - 3/26/2006 4:12:43 AM | For whatever reason, tonight just wasn't an Oblivion night for me. I got back from a fairly funtabulous dinner at Chili's (it's the new golf course -- Small Businessman Magazine) where I got charged eight bucks for a Heinekin. I'm not normally one to complain about prices, but something just seems… off in this particular instance. Oh well, still a damn good meal with a bunch of friends.
Anyone who watches The Shield -- and by that I mean anyone currently in possession of a soul -- should be treated extra special this week. Special with a capital S. It's been a rough few days for the consistent viewers of this most excellent of television shows, so if you know anyone who watches it and has been acting "out of sorts" at all, just know it's for good reason. The finale episode of season five (I believe season six will be the final one) was, without any doubt in my mind, the most shocking, well-done episodes that I've personally ever seen on television. And I watch a fair amount of shows. The writers for this show are just bad, evil people. Though I'll have to make an addendum to that saying that the viewers of the show are simply masochistic.
I read Vanilla Sky without the batshit crazy women. It is a really easy-to-read book (and a fairly quick read, at that), but the first few pages may overwhelm people a bit with all sorts of fancy futuristic jargon. Once you get past the introductory pages, though, the book becomes far more readable. This week's book is The Left Hand of Darkness and, try as I may, it's just not an easy book to get into. So far (within the initial twenty pages) it's just dry, dull, and fairly generic feeling despite the fact that it's actual content is "fresh" and "innovative." Hopefully it gets better, but I'm not holding out hope in this particular case.
Here's some cute for your day. Love it. Worship it. Break into tears at the sight of it's oh-so-adorable little mug. Whatever.
And one-sentence movie review time for the movies I've seen in the last couple weeks. The Thing was a really cool paranoid horror flick with a fairly nifty subdued ending scene; seems it's regarded as a "classic" of sorts, and I can see why. Undead was simply hilarious gore-horror (gorror?) movie in ways that I can't even accurately describe with words. V for Vendetta was a surprisingly good movie that was really quite worth the trip. My favorite movie of this batch, though, was Slither; a movie I'm anticipating with all the patience of a strung-out teenage girl the hour before her Winter Formal.
And with that image I think I'll call it a night.
chickenmobile with your rooster tail
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| The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion | 
Posted - 3/24/2006 3:31:39 AM | I think it's safe to say that The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion is one of the most widely anticipated games of 2006 -- one of the few MMORPGs of my favorite definition (Massively Multientity Offline RPG). I will add to this statement by saying that although I really enjoyed Morrowind, Oblivion is not one of my most anticipated games of 2006. So keep in mind while reading this "review" that I went into this game with fairly average expectations -- in short, I think I'm fairly unbiased in regards to the game. Something I can't really say about some games.
With all the necessary background information, I feel safe saying that Oblivion is one hell of a game. It's hard not to go into this game and be almost immediately captivated by the world that Bethesda has created. And that's probably the best way to describe the world in Oblivion: captivating. Despite its stale, generic, middle-age fantasy setting, Oblivion still manages to have enough depth to really reel in its players. This is, in part, due to the fact that Bethesda has gone absolutely crazy in populating the world with NPCs powered by SkynetRadiant AI (as Bethesda has coined it) which maintain their own unique daily schedules. It is also due to the extreme amount of detail which the developers have taken notice of in-game: the volumes upon volumes of readable books, a shop sign wavering to-and-fro as a result of an arrow fired at it, and even its own reservoir of unique flowers and plants which can be harvested and combined to create potions and the like. The game just feels alive.
And in this feeling of reality comes one of my biggest gripes about the game: with all the extensive attention paid to Oblivion's graphics… They're probably the most disappointing aspect of the game for me. While I play the game I just continually see cool things that beg to have a screenshot taken of them (which is good), but very rarely do I see a beautiful animation or uniquely-designed enemy or character (which is bad). The game's rendering engine seems custom tailored to create good screenshots but, like Everquest 2 the characters, enemies, and animations feel so stale and stilted. It's quite a shame, actually; seeing Oblivion-caliber realism combined with World of Warcraft animation quality and we'd have a sure-fire graphical winner. Don't get me wrong, you'd have to be blind to not realize the amount of beauty this game is capable of. I just feel that a lot of the graphical prowess is put to waste as far as fluid animation is concerned -- each individual action is well-done, but as a whole there is simply something off. It's part of the problem with trying to recreate Real Life on modern hardware: you may make a lot of overall progress, but the closer you get to reality, the easier it is for people to spot rough spots. That said, check out some of my favorite "Oh, that's purdy!" moments (this was before I had to reduce my overall visual quality -- sadface):
  
Shortly after the above screenshots were taken I was forced into downgrading the visual quality in an attempt to actually live through combat without sinking into a single-digit framerate. I was quite sad to have to do this as it marks a first for being required to lower image quality to maintain a 30+ framerate, but hey, my AMD64 3500+, 2gb DDR400 RAM, 256mb 6800GT rig had a nice run of being top dog for most of my gaming needs. In the end I got rid of the ridiculously lengthy viewing distance, dropped the HDR rendering (which especially made me a sadpanda), dropped shadows, and added bloom (in place of the HDR). One of the nice things about this change was that I could swap in bloom and 2x anti-aliasing in place of the HDR and still get a 10-15 overall framerate boost. I would really like to see this game on my rig with HDR and anti-aliasing but Bethesda must have realized that some things were not meant for the eyes of mortals. Which is a shame; it would've felt neat to spontaneously combust in a cloud of joy.
Speaking of joy, I'd like to spend a moment to relay the true reason that Oblivion surpasses Morrowind in every way: the combat. Bethesda must've imported a team of super-coder-monkeys to completely overhaul the system from the previous games because, this time around, the combat has a whole lot of weight to it. And I mean that quite literally. When I swing my sword at an enemy, it feels like it oughta hurt. When an enemy blocks my swing, my speakers emit a shrill clank while my character recoils back and prepares to take a big, unprotected blow from my adversary. The new ability to quickly and easily cast spells while still having a sword and shield (or two-handed weapon, if that's your thing) equipped makes playing a Battle Mage, of some sort, a truly fantastic experience. Enjoy some screenshots of combat.
  
Part of the reason why combat feels more enjoyable to me is the increased emphasis on proper projectile physics and the like. Shooting a bow is actually quite entertaining (more so than any other FPS bow I've ever tried) because when an arrow hits your target, the damn thing remains sticking out of him until you kill him and yank the arrow out. If you miss, the arrow either breaks (if you're shooting a stone wall at point blank -- not that I found this out the hard way or anything) or clatters around the ground. And when you kill an enemy with a particularly devastating blow their weapon and shield will go flying (as will their corpse) out of their hands. So if by some chance you found an enemy with an especially purdy, glowy weapon that is absolutely tearing you apart and you get him down to his final sliver of life, I'd recommend trying to avoid cliffs. Because, and I say this once again purely with conjecture due to the fact that I'd never do something this stupid or anything (cough, cough), if you're near a cliff and deliver a big death blow you might as well say good riddance to that beautiful sword as it goes careening down an insurmountable cliffside. Oh how I miss that pretty blue-glowing sword.
And while this coupling of complaint and praise doesn't really impact gameplay in any way, shape, or form, the physics are spectacular. I have taken to busting into people's dining rooms during dinner and running amok on their table and laughing maniacally as all their lovely meat, silverware, and plates go clattering to the ground. I then run out of the house hoisting my sword in the air and shouting my dinner-miscreant battle cry as I disappear into the fog. My complaint about these physics, which lies in a similar vein, is that there should be destructible objects in the game a la the Source Engine. There have been so many moments in the game where I thought it'd be cool to break through the glass of, say, a display case or to just go crazy and destroy every barrel in a town (how's that for "infamy," eh Bethesda?). This, honestly, was one of the most disappointing things for me going into the game. Though if this is how far I have to go to find a complaint I'd say that Oblivion is pretty well off.
Supposedly the game world in Oblivion is smaller than that of Morrowind's -- oh well, I say. Good riddance to endless spots of land with no discoverable content. Oblivion's countryside is dotted with far more little facets of the game to reward explorers, whether it be a bandit hideout, random encounters with NPCs, or surprisingly large dungeons (redundant in design as they may be) than Morrowind could've ever hoped for. And this more focused land size seems to have helped Bethesda constrict the ease with which the main story quests can be accomplished (the Guild Wars-esque "Fast Travel" is really handy too), which I am very thankful for.
  
I'm not too far into the main story quest yet -- I've played thirteen-fourteen hours of the game so far and I've really just been doing miscellaneous sidequests for the Fighter's Guild, Mage's Guild, and then competing in The Arena in a one-on-one battle to the death. I've also completed two of the game's sixteen "Planes of Oblivion" which are horrendously annoying to look at, but ever-so-difficult and enjoyable to play through (not to mention the really rewarding items that can be found within). The story in Oblivion seems far more focused and intriguing than I ever found Morrowind's to be too, so here's hoping that the game keeps it up as I get further into the game.
For now, this is about as long as my review of the game will get. If I feel any of my complaints are unwarranted, or if aspects of the game I had previously considered flukes persist to the point where they start to grate me in ways that make me cry myself to sleep at night, then I'll update this article with the appropriate information. And here's hoping there's a patch soon which can address the frequent crashes I'm getting at seemingly random points, which seems to be a nice big bug custom-tailored for Trent Polack. Lucky, lucky me.
Also, hearing Patrick Stewart say the following line made me all sorts of tingly.
close shut the jaws… of oblivion
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| All Kinds of Time | 
Posted - 3/20/2006 2:43:07 AM | I said in an earlier post that I would write an entry later on and, for what may be the first time, I'm actually following up on that.
I'm not the kind of person who can lie in a bed and fall asleep almost instantaneously. I'm more the kind of person who, throughout middle and high school, often went to bed and started aimlessly at my ceiling for hours thinking about completely inane and useless things. It started getting a bit better over time (and, by that, I mean I became better adapted to sleeping less), but problems cropped up again last summer where I could only fall asleep for 2-3 hours at a time, so I was relegated to, roughly, five hours per day for about a month and a half. I generally go through these kinds of periods every summer, actually. Last summer, I ended up getting into a system where I just went to the gym at 6am every day, did homework until class at 10am, went to class, came back, and then slept for a couple more hours. The summer before I ended up being able to get to sleep fairly easily early on and just woke up at 4-5am, played games for a while, and then went to where I worked (the ever-exciting job of being some kind of prettying up some space thingy's readings into a program). It's just a fun little cycle.
The reason I bring up what may, in fact, be the most uninteresting side-tale-of-Trent ever, is because once I'm on a sleeping schedule, having to alter that schedule is like some kind of dark, Satanic ritual which should only be performed under the most dire of circumstances. Those circumstances happen, of course; however, I do get mildly annoyed when I get random spurts of drowsiness out of nowhere. One would think that taking a day off from all kinds of fitness/workout activities would be the kind of day where I have an excess of energy, but dammit, one would be wrong. That'll teach me to let my body relax.
Anyway, I figured I'd give the "going to bed early" thing a shot. It was 12:30am (my normal sleepy-time is roughly 3:30-4:00am) and I was feeling frisky in that oh-so-drowsy rebel kind of way. So, there I am, initiating pre-sleep preparations -- brushing my teeth, changing into sleep clothes, setting two alarms (I don't have trouble waking up, I'm just paranoid one won't work), and turning my fan on (it's my favorite brand of white noise). Now, the sad part of this tale is that the moment after I brushed my teeth and sat down to update all my various away messages and IRC nicknames… I was awake. Don't doubt my knowledge on this fact; a Trent just knows. So, was all like "Aw, hell." So, I cut up a lime portion, whipped out a Corona, realized that lime-cutting with dry and cracked hands was a painful process, and sat down with some awesome music as I watched one of my best friends play through God of War (for the third or fourth time) in my room. Then I started up Word and began work on this entry.
Currently, I'm slowly making my way through Arrested Development again and I'm enjoying it even more on a re-viewing. It truly is one of the most well-done comedies I've seen since the good 'ol days of Seinfeld. Maybe it has something to do with Julia Louis-Dreyfus being in both series… But given what I've heard about The New Adventures of Old Christine, I think that may just be nothing more than a coincidence. Either way, though, Arrested Development is simply fantastic. There are so many subtleties that I never noticed the first time through that really add to my ever-increasing love of the show. Plus, Jason Bateman's delivery for some of his lines is just awesome.
For those of you that rely on this site for musical information -- and if there's anyone actually under this category, I feel sorry for you -- let me update you on an artist I've long loved: Joshua Radin. Anyone who watched Scrubs would be very familiar with at least two of his songs, "Winter" and "Closer," as they were both used in a couple of the show's most tear-jerking moments. I just recently found out that he finished his first full CD and it has been released on iTunes. His music is all acoustic, folk-type stuff, and it's all very, very awesome. If I could link all my readers to one song, in particular, without legal ramifications, I would do so. Though let me just say that his song "Only You" is, without a doubt, one of the greatest romantic songs I've ever heard. I listen to the guy's songs so frequently that, despite only having 5-6 songs from one of his EPs up until recently, he was in my top ten most-listened to artists on my Audioscrobbler profile. It's damn good, if somber, stuff.
If you missed it, I uploaded and wrote a bit about my progress on Chapter 2 of Paradise earlier today. Though, to be honest, if you don't plan on reading it compulsively (and I'm surprised by the people that actually do; thanks to you guys), I would recommend just skipping this particular update. Waiting for the first full draft would be a way better way to go. I'm really enjoying working on this project, though. I'm going to get two or three chapters done by the end of April and it's going to be my primarily project aside from classes throughout the summer. It took me about a month and a half to get the first chapter to an acceptable first full draft, though, so I wouldn't really rely on me speeding through the writing process. I'm enjoying my incremental writing sessions method far more than my old process of just sitting down for an entire day and pouring out a long piece, which is also something I did when I wrote the chapters for my programming book (though, to be fair, I had spent weeks working on the actual programs which were contained in the chapter). Incrementally adding and editing is helping me really come up with far more polished, readable drafts.
I think that does it for the night. <3
all i needed was the love you gave
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| Paradise - Chapter 2 (Partial Draft 1) | |
Posted - 3/19/2006 6:08:21 PM | Depending on how involved I get in Red Orchestra or Ubik tonight, I may make a general post later. Though if that's what you're looking for at this particular moment, you may want to look elsewhere. This itty-bitty post has nothing to do with anything save Paradise -- which, for the unfamiliar, is what I'm currently calling my dystopian, post-nuclear, romantic, darkly comedic, dramatic psychological thriller of a book. If the idea of a book like this entices you in all the right places then I highly recommend that you read the first two segments before going any further in this post. If nothing else, you'll want to have read the first chapter. The introduction can be forgotten about for a bit.
So, a bit under two months after I started the first chapter, I'm starting up work on the second chapter of the book. In my current line of thinking the second chapter is going to be divided into two separate parts. After the first two writing sessions with it I've arrived at a partial draft (a mere seven pages) containing the chapter's flashback as well as introductions to two major characters. As of now it's a very easy-to-read chapter which has a fairly light tone; I've forgone the dense details of the first chapter for far more dialog-driven segments for the first half of Chapter 2. I'm planning on delving back into a darker, more foreboding mood at the point which the chapter currently drops off at.
Currently the chapter is in very, very rough shape. I haven't looked over it at all yet, and probably won't do so until I get a decent beginning and end to the thing written. So if there are any issues that crop up while you read through it that you want to bring to my attention, keep in mind that currently all I want to hear is some very general feedback. Once I get a full draft of it done, then I'll be down with some more specific feedback -- I'll also put up an HTML and PDF version then too. For now, it's just DOCs for all.
Quickly, though, I will WARN you that the chapter contains a bit of "adult language." Which is to say that I swear a bit. Well, a bit more than a bit. No sex, violence, blood, or gory text is presence though. So "Amen!" to that.
Linky: http://www.polycat.net/writing/paradisec2_week10_draft1.doc
I'm not sure why I feel the need to post an update on such unfinished progress other than the fact that this information is as much for me (if not more so) as it is for anyone else. Think of reading this site as having special, forbidden access to your sister's top-secret, pink-ruffled diary.
Wait. No. Think of a better comparison than that.
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| Wednesday, March 15, 2006 |
| Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 | |
Posted - 3/15/2006 4:07:47 AM | My original plan for the day was to skip Spanish at 2:00pm today so that I could be at my computer exactly at the time which Valve/Tripwire unlocked Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 (released through Steam -- and here is the game's Steam site). Unfortunately, due to the fact that I had to write a few papers before 4:00pm, that was just an impossibility. I still skipped Spanish, mind you, but it just wasn't quite as warm and fuzzy of a skip as it could have been.
Anyway, once I got back to the house today at 4:30pm, I managed to play this incredible game for a few straight hours before I realized I was hungry. I then found satiation, took a shower, and then played the game for the rest of the night. It's currently 3:01am and I, just recently, decided to quit out of the game for the sole purpose of writing this article. I'll probably sleep after this, but that's just the weakness talking.
I probably wouldn't have really given this game a try whatsoever had it not been for dslyecxi (I've typed this a few times, and still have yet to be able to spell it correctly from memory) from The Shack. The guy came out with one of the most well-done previews I've ever seen, which attracted me to the game fairly quickly on its own accord. You see, Shackers, as a rule, have good taste in games. So it would follow that when one of the more well-respected and well-known Shackers comes up with such rabid enthusiasm for a game, a lowly Shacker like myself is forced under penalty of mental anguish to listen up. I checked out the preview and, I'll be honest, the first thing that caught my eye was the guy in white spitting up blood. After that I just read through the text and looked at the purdy pictures. What really solidified my purchase of this game, though, was the same guy's incredible five-minute video.
And I know, I know: we're all sick of World War II-era games (by we, I don't actually mean me, by the way), but hear me out for a bit longer on this one, you'll be glad you did.
  
Red Orchestra is done by the same team responsible for completely dominating the field in Epic's Make Something Unreal Contest. In winning, they got themselves some cash moneys and, more importantly in terms of context, a license to the Unreal 2.5 (and 3.0, I believe, but that doesn't matter at the moment). And since then, the development team has coined themselves Tripwire Interactive and fancied themselves an indie mod maker-turned-commercial game development studio. And this, to me, is one of the most important aspects of the development of Red Orchestra: you can tell this game is a labor of intensive love and care. Unlike other big battleground FPSs, this is a game that you can simply know will receive all the patches, updates, and improvements that the community yearns for.
And, oh, what a game it is. I enjoyed games like Day of Defeat: Source and Battlefield 2 for the people playing them before, but Red Orchestra is the kind of game I just enjoy playing so far. After spending a good few hours on the Shackbattle server with all my good friends from the site and Counter-Strike: Source, I jumped on a random Red Orchestra server and had just as much fun playing with complete strangers as I did the ever-awesome Shackers. The game is simply fun to play -- which is saying something, because it's far from being a simple online shooter; in fact, while the game doesn't reach Operation: Flashpoint levels of complexity and realism, it is one of the most complex online shooters I've played in recent years. What's really cool about it, though, is that it's one of the more realistic FPSs I've played, yet it still manages to be a real blast (quite literally, in fact) to play. It's nice to see a developer that won't underestimate the average PC gamer to the point of console-esque simplicity.
Red Orchestra isn't for everybody, though. Something that will greatly turn off a lot of players is that the game lacks any sort of crosshair on the HUD. Players will need to rely on either blindly firing from the hip with very little indication as to where the bullets will fly or bringing up the iron-sights (which are very accurate, historically and in terms of their in-game aiming). The sniper rifle scopes are also done in full-3D, rather than a typical texture overly with a zoomed in perspective -- it's just all sorts of pretty. You can also say goodbye to blindly charging into enemy territory. Without teammates to lay down cover fire or some backup snipers to help pick off any enemies you will almost always be mowed down in your run towards cover closer to an enemy location. Going into the game, I had feared that the players would ruin this kind of gameplay, but over the course of the night I've seen quite the opposite. Even on the general pub that I played on towards the end of the night the players were all fairly good in terms of leading the team and supporting specific assault squads.
And, being that I'm fairly tired and this article isn't exactly a polished piece of writing excellence as much as it is my rambling first impressions of the game, I'd just like to close in saying two things. First, the graphics in the game are the best I've seen from the Unreal engine up this point (screenshots of the Unreal 3 don't really count). Hell, when I showed the screenshots I had taken through the course of the day to some friends, everyone simply assumed I was linking to a gallery of Call of Duty 2 screenshots. This kind of off-the-cuff comparison says a lot about just how polished this game really is; it may be a "budget title" at the price of $24.95, but this game is really a very well-done commercial title deserving of your attention.
Oh, and the second thing? The game has gibs. It's about goddamn time. I'll probably write more on this game once I've had far more time to play it. So, you know, lots of research in store for me. Work, work, work…
  
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| Cause You're Turnin' Me Inside Out | |
Posted - 3/14/2006 2:13:17 AM | So. I’m twenty-one now. All old and stuff. Feels pretty much the same as always, actually. The cool part, though, is that now I can buy alcohol and drink scotch late at night while working away at a typewriter and throwing a tennis ball against the wall. i'm outlining a new writing project...
Now a little story; block-quoted for formatting goodness. I originally had this as part of the general entry, but it ended up being one excessively long paragraph. Hence the block quotes of awesomeness.I think I may fall into a crowd of select twenty-one year olds who don't actually get wasted on their birthday. I had no plans to drink whatsoever, actually, but I relented at one point in the day for a single drink. My parents and my newly-sixteen (her birthday is two days prior to mine) year old sister came down to celebrate the day with me and we all went to Chile's, my restaurant of choice (I'm totally high-class), and at some point before we ordered I decided to go to the bathroom. When I came back out, we had a waiter, which took about fifteen-twenty minutes to actually achieve, and was asked what I wanted to order to drink. As all of the winners on the planet know, Diet Coke is the only rational response to such a query. Though, apparently my Mom had been talking to the guy and mentioned that it was my birthday. I was momentarily in fear of a squad of waiters and waitresses bursting forth from under tables, behind curtains, and dropping down the ceilings to join in unison to perform their rendition of "Happy Birthday" (complete with fireworks), but it didn't happen. That is good, though, because I told my mom that if she went through with it that I'd emotionally emancipate myself from the family.
Anyway, though, the waiter responded to my Diet Coke mandate with a "Are you sure you don't want a drink? It's your birthday, dude. Do you like beer?"
<Cue parent laughter> (Not sure why. I'm an innocent little dewdrop).
"Kinda, yeah, but I don't know -- not really in the mood to d—." I paused for a moment and realized that my parents had been fairly tough in their prodding me to drink and figured out that it actually probably meant more to them for me to drink than anything else, "Well, I didn't bring my ID."
The waiter paused for a moment and surveyed the parents, "S'alright, you look like an honest guy to me. What do you want?"
I took a moment before I could figure out the name of beer I actually liked. "Uh, I'll take a Labatt Blue, I guess."
Then he pulled an unexpected card from his deck of questions, "Want that short or tall?"
I looked around for help. Nobody threw suggestions at my face. "I'll take a tall, I guess."
And there were cheers and grins spread around. Everybody was happy. And then I cured cancer and eliminated AIDS. I then promptly forgot my discoveries due to my easily intoxicated system.
Unfortunately, what this story doesn't relate is the group of five-six sweaty college guys who belched loudly and shouted out any dishes of interest they found on the menu. They also pointed at other people's tables and yelled out a question along the lines of "Is that shit good?" My Dad and I got annoyed with this very quickly, so my Mom ushered us out in a hurry. I then came home, watched the two and a half hours that made up Part 1 and Part 2 of the Battlestar Galactica finale (splendiferous), and then Hobbes and I played Age of Empires for my DS (surprisingly awesome; a longer review at a later time) while I waited for my computer to receive a long overdue format. Overall it was an absolutely spectacular day, even if all I really did was relax. This relaxation actually greatly angered most people, though. Apparently taking my Birthday to do what I wish is a bad thing. Shrug.
Also, I'd like to extend a big "Thank You" to everyone who messaged me or some other sort of communication method regarding a congratulation of my reaching seven thousand, six hundred, and seventy consecutive days of living. My Facebook profile is now filled to the very brim with birthday messages ranging of the general variety to the variety where a big, loud black man threatens to insert something named "Bruna" into my bed to molest me whilst I slumber.
A quick note on games: I'm currently enjoying the single-player campaign for Act of War and I'm also going to be devoting some major time to Red Orchestra tomorrow when it's unlocked at Steam at 2:00pm EST. I'd write more on these games but I'm not particularly in the mood at the moment. I'm also trying to consolidate my entries into fairly easily definable categories for organizational purposes. Eventually I'm going to add a filter to the main site so that certain readers can only read the entries under the categories that appeal to them, but for now I'm just going to make my rambling entries fairly general rambling. My game-related articles are going to be a bit more formal and focused on a single game at a time.
I'm planning on beginning work on Chapter 2 of Paradise this weekend. So those of you that come here for that particular aspect of me can look forward to that. I'll upload whatever I get written over the weekend late Sunday night.
For the movie front, I'll give a one-sentence review of every movie I've seen since Friday. The Hills Have Eyes -- holy disappointing, Batman -- this movie should have been more like its incredibly awesome opening ten minutes. The Ring 2 was more of the same, but I was quite pleasantly surprised with how well that turned out. Saw II did everything the original movie did, but it just did it so much better. Saw II and the Amityville Horror remake take top honors for the bestest horror movies I've seen this year by far (yes, I know the latter was just a remake, but it was still awesome). I'm really looking forward to Slither, though; if only because it looks like an awesome horror/comedy with one of my mancrushes in a leading role. Only two and a half more weeks for this one.
Oh, how I love March.
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| I Kicked Them Off in a Fit of Joy | |
Posted - 3/9/2006 3:34:25 AM | As a quick note, this entry is actually even more devoid of content than usual. It was more of a thing to help me relax for a while than actually be an interesting read. All apologies in advance.
I had reserved a good portion of tonight due to the idea that I had an exam tomorrow (Thursday… So I guess that's today, now). After I checked out the semester calendar for the class, though, I found that I was about a week off in my estimates. Turns out the thing isn't until next Thursday. So, here I was with a full, wide-open night to do, essentially, nothing. I still have one of the most difficult exams of the semester coming up on Friday, unfortunately. I retrospect, I realize I should have probably spend tonight studying for that, but I'm lacking a few books which I need to, at the very least, skim. UPS has apparently hired ninjas for delivery men recently; therefore, when a package is delivered that requires a signature, they don't actually knock. Instead of this conventional method of alerting the house to a mailman's presence, they simply decide to jump from their truck to the house's doorstep in a deftly-executed maneuver, brush the door lightly with nylon gloves, and then toss one of them fancy-pants metal throwing stars with a "Sorry, you weren't here to sign, here's when you can expect us to brush the door ever-so-gently tomorrow!" What this means for me is that I can't really count on the books ever arriving (not like I was really going to study anyway). Hopefully I can scare them away with my ability to construct an extremely long run-on sentence.
Speaking of constructing sentences, it looks like I won't be getting a Creative Writing subconcentration here at ye ol' schoolyard. I got denied one of the very few spots (12-15 spots total, which were then broken down into "fiction" and "poetry" slots), which made me kind of sad. Once I actually read the rejection letter, though, I realized that not much more than my ego was harmed by the act. I can still take the senior creative writing course (a continuation of the junior one that I’m in now) next year, I just don't get to go one-on-one with a professor or some such thing like that. Would've been neat, but it's not a total loss. I think I had a pretty darn good portfolio put together, to be honest… Then again, my GPA is far, far less than that of what a good application probably should have. So, yeah, I'll blame it on that. Quiet you, let me justify the thing.
Earlier today I both finished the final season of Arrested Development and the final campaign mission of Age of Empires 3. Arrested Development really managed to stay consistently spectacular throughout and I never felt disappointed for a minute. The show's writing is brilliant and hilarious while the characters are just as fantastic. It's a show that I'm going to greatly miss, but I have a feeling I'll get a lot of laughs just from re-watching the episodes a few times (it has a lot of subtle humor). The final episode was actually kind of sad though, and seemed an odd way to end the season. One of the things I really enjoy about the show, though, is how none of the sub-plots, no matter how minor, ever seem to get overlooked. Things that I noticed were consistently brought back, if only for a single scene, and addressed -- something I wish I could say about, oh I don't know, Lost maybe? Also: Age of Empires 3's single-player campaign was a whole ton of fun to play through. I'm enjoying the skirmish mode at the moment, and I'll probably come back with more details later.
And on a closing note, Happy Birthday to my itty-bitty, teency-weency sister, Gabby, today as she turns 16. So, yeah, Happy Birthday!
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| Folsom Prison Blues | 
Posted - 3/7/2006 11:46:27 AM | It's been so long since you and I had a nice chat. I feel like you've changed before my very eyes. No, no, it's a compliment -- no need to shield your face. So, hey… How's it been going? Things going good? Yeah, well, I suppose they would be good now that you're seeing someone else. I can't believe you'd ever do that to me! You tore my heart out, threw it on the ground, and stomped on it with those hideous steel-toed boots you're always goin' on about. -- What's that? You want to know… How I am still alive without a heart? Oh… Uh…
Yeah, so it actually has been a decent amount of time since I wrote a nice, real entry up on this here site. Everything else lately has just been all business, stories, and games. There just hasn't been time in between writing, gaming, watching TV and movies, and exercising to really have any us time. Thankfully, or not depending on your viewpoint, things are settling back into their school-time routine:- Waking up and showering.
FinishingStarting homework due later that day.
- Class.
- Catching up on one or two episodes of 24, Related, Gilmore Girls, Scrubs, House, The Shield, Lost, Smallville, The O.C., The Office, or Battlestar Galactica. And, currently, Arrested Development.
- Go run a nice 5k on the track behind the local gym, then lift depending on whether or not my day's allotted masochistic tendencies have been used up or not.
- A dull, boring Subway sammich. Or chips and salsa from a local Mexican place. Or cereal of some assortment. Cooking is so overrated.
- Work on homework for the following day.
- Play whatever the game of the week is, write a new site entry, or read whatever the book of the week is.
- Play with kitty and then smeep. Rinse and repeat.
Word on the street is that all blogs are just about the day-to-day happenings of their authors. I've never done this before… Nor will I ever again. Though, yeah, that's pretty much the general weekday schedule. It's dull, but it works for getting things done while not remaining completely bored. The running and writing, in particular, are fun. With the exception of the recent vacation, I think I've managed to run almost every day (with the exception of three or four days) since January 10th. It's been kind of a nice little daily goal to maintain.
Quick entertainment bit. One of my friends recently praised Arrested Development to the point where I felt obligated to watch it. Before actually giving the show a fair shake all I had seen were the commercials that aired on Fox during the shows I actually enjoyed. All I could determine was that the show looked stupid; not even the continual praise of every person I came in contact with could usher me into a position of legitimate interest. Eventually, though, I caved, and have since watched the first season in its entirety. I'm almost done with the second season as well. It truly is one of the best comedy shows I have ever seen. It's especially nice to see a comedy that isn't really based on punch lines so much as it on its characters and the situations that they end up in. Even the show's narrator (voiced by Ron Howard, which surprised me) has a lot of very well-timed humorous lines. The most laughs I get from the show all revolve around the very dryly-spoken sarcasm of the main character, played by Jason Bateman. His reactions simply make the show for me.
Also, Walk the Line is simply amazing. I was a Johnny Cash fan to begin with, but this movie even surpassed the fairly high expectations I had for it. Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon both came through with spectacular performances; they also sang remarkably close to Johnny and June Carter Cash. A great movie that I'm looking forward to rewatching as soon as I get the opportunity.
In case you missed it, or you're reading this from another source, I made my around to upgrading and adding to some of the features of Polycat.net. Of the upgrades I redid some simple site code to be a bitter more reliable, created a simple "stats" page, and some other administration tools for myself. My pride and joy of the upgrades was the creation of a fiction page where I posted all of my fictional stories that I had written in the last year or so in DOC, PDF, and HTML forms. So go check it out if that's your thing. I'm also starting to redo some of the entry categories to better reflect the nature of each entry; eventually, I will work on a main page filter so that people that only come to the site for certain types of articles can filter out the unwanted riff-raff type of entries. I had planned to upgrade the Gallery to Gallery 2.0, but after going through about five-six hours of effort in upgrading and going through any site entries written in the last month (… there are a lot) to cohere with the ridiculous linking system I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. The new Gallery seemed to suffer from a major case of feature bloat, which isn't an issue on its own until I realized they lost a lot of the simplicity and ease-of-use which attracted me to the system in the first place. Oh well.
In closing, I'd like to say that I'm becoming all sorts of reflective in my old age (I turn 21 on Saturday, March 11). I've been running Polycat.net for a bit more than three years now and it's been a whole lot of fun. I've written a fairly extensive collection of blogjournal entries -- some of which I'd prefer to be wiped off the face of the earth (though I've never gone back and deleted an entry). I've gone from 3D programming author, to gaming journalist, to aerospace engineering programmer (not as fancy as it sounds), to English/Creative Writing major (formerly a Computer Science Engineer) slowly approaching on my senior year here at U of M. It's been a fun and crazy time since I started this site at home in early spring of 2003 (I think?) and one of the coolest things is seeing some of the people that have stuck with me the whole way, and then some of the really cool people I've met throughout the time. It's only been three years, sure, but when you're this young it still seems like a decent chunk of time. So, whether you're reading this from my site, JoeUser, or my GDNet journal: thanks for all the support, fun, and awesomeness. I probably won't ever stop doing this kind of thing for any long-term span of time… Well, save for something like a Cease and Desist order. But, even then…
I'll probably write an even more sappy entry on my actual birthday, but this sounded fun for tonight.
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The entries in this journal have all been posted, along with many more, at mittens' personal site at www.polycat.net.
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