Category Archives: Video Games

ITG, Photography, KoL, and life

Posted on by

Meh, I don’t really know why I continue to post here when it’s obvious that no one cares (I mean, hell, I wouldn’t read my own blog… never anything interesting in it). I guess it’s nice to have a record of things for the future though.

Today was a great day ITG-wise. Accomplishments…
-First star (96.82%) on Infection Hard
-Second star (97.16%) on Infection Hard
-New personal records on Mellow Hard (95.78%), Dawn Expert (91.89%), Land of the Rising Sun Hard (~94%), and The Game Expert (95.23%)
-Third star (~96.5%) on Birdie Expert (my first time playing the song)
-Broke 1000 combo
-Broke 2000 combo
-Currently at 2850 combo (may break 3000 the next time I play)

Also, some amazing players came to play at our machine (one was apparently the best player in PA) and set 5 #1 records in their first 6 songs. It’s amazing to watch people who consistently get fantastics and consistently full-excellent-combo a song (with single-digit excellents).
Jason doing Disconnected Disco Expert Doubles (which makes you crawl across the entire pad)

Um yeah, in the world of photography… I have Van Dyke prints.
Here are Van Dyke prints…

I’m really happy with the way this series (photographers) turned out… this one is printed on a single strip of flower-petal paper (5″ tall) and designed to be placed on top of a table or dresser or something.

These were printed on thick white fiber paper (5″ X 5″ each) and are designed to be wall-mounted together as shown. I’m probably going to mount them together on some thicker paper so it’s easier to manage them.

I also printed an ITG series of prints in Van Dyke, which you probably aren’t interested in seeing (it didn’t come out nearly as well as this one).

I’m quite unhappy with the way my photos turned out for my color photo class… want to reshoot them this weekend.

In the world of KoL, I managed my first 10 day ascension a few days ago (Disco Bandit, sub-1200 turns). Currently on day 2 of a hco tt run to perm astral shell (although I might change my mind and go sauceror to perm its elemental saucesphere instead next run, since tt have so many other useful skills and I’ve been meaning to do a hct sauceror ascension anyway).

As far as other stuff goes, life has been the same, which I guess isn’t a bad thing. Tons of homework for my tons of classes, as always. Todo list for myself for this weekend, in order of importance
-Reshoot film for Color Photography
-Graphics written homework #1
-Numerical Methods homework #3
-Analysis homework #1
-Algo homework #2
So weird to refer to my classes by their names instead of numbers. Meh.

Memories

Posted on by

I’ve spent the past ~6 hours going through stuff on my hard drive. There’s things on there from my very first webpage (back in 4th grade) to my first VB programs (4th grade) to my first Java programs (6th grade) to various LPSO board stuff to every photo I’ve ever taken to a bunch of Games Factory games I made with Jim in middle school.

As I read through the various archived forum pages and chat logs, it occurs to me how horribly arrogant and self-righteous I was then. I acted like an ass to so much of the LPSO community, and for that I apologize. In chats, I was intrusive and annoying (hopefully I’m not as bad now… hopefully). Bleh. I hate who I was back then. Stupid stupid stupid.

I look over my old websites and I realize how horribly devoid of content they were. Sure, they featured interesting layouts and advertised themselves as “Fanfics, forums, and much much more,” but there really wasn’t “much more” than that. I think that’s one thing I’m proud of in AlanvDotOrg… it actually has content. Design is important, sure, but it comes second to content. Back in my early web design years, I seem to have forgotten that and used and reused the same old tired layouts as many times as I could just to have many pages up, even if those pages had only a “Coming soon” sign on them.

I was so full of myself… things were created under the assumption that everyone was interested in me… that my site was the one that everyone wanted to come to. I had password protected pages. I had exclusive members-only content. I put together tons of web games and quizzes. I had a page to give out awards to other websites. Meh.

I also stumbed across my first website ever. It’s an animorphs fansite with stuff copied directly from the official site and random animated web graphics. I was a little confused until I remembered it was before I knew to use “index.html” as the splash… so the index is “t1.html”. Odd, but meh. I should upload it sometime in case people are interested… it’s 1.2MB, but only because it contains WAV files.

So yeah, it’s highly amusing to go back and look through my old webpages. I just realized I have screens of them here. Heh. They evolved so much.

Looking over old photos, I’ve really changed.
Here’s me from Halloween 2000 with my Sonic pumpkin

Here’s me from before we even had a digital camera, at my birthday party (probably 5th grade) with Kat, Katie, and Jim

Oh, and me with my 6th grade homeroom class

My photography has also changed a lot… I guess you could say it’s matured. Interesting.
In any case, my folder containing almost every photo I’ve ever taken is now 47.2GB (94,872 photos) and growing weekly.
…
That’s a hell of a lot of photos.
I wonder if I can break 100,000 before December.

Looked over my massive archive of game screenshots from back when I loved posting screens of video games online. There’s over 1.5 GB of horrible-quality 640X480px screenshots from SoAL, Sonic Adventure 2, Animal Crossing, PSO, Grandia 2, Evolution 1/2, Starfox Adventures, SSBM, and Super Mario Sunshine. So much random crap in there. I really should get back into video games… I kinda miss them sometimes. I should also get my video capture card working again. Meh.

Looked over my archive of card games, from the failed games to my first “successful” one, the Starcraft TCG (although the definition of “successful” is debatable). So much potential. I still want to create RPG Get! I think they’re the best set of card game rules I’ve ever created, and the system is expandable such that it can encompass potentially-limitless numbers of RPGs in the game as seperate affiliations. Meh. One of these days I’ll get around to taking more screenshots of the games so I can have enough stuff to create the base set (which I think was supposed to be themed around Grandia 2 and Skies of Arcadia). Whee.

Ahhh so much more I want to write about, but it’s almost 2 AM, so I should probably sleep.

Edit: Meh, it’s 2:30. I’ve uploaded some (more) old pictures onto Facebook. Go and look. Whee.

New Lappy

Posted on by

I am writing this from the pretty bright widescreen goodness of my new laptop. The blue lights… the clear black plastic… the way the keys feel. Mmmmmm I’m in love.
Only thing that I’ll have to get used to is the resolution… 1280X800 is the maximum on this, and I’m used to having 1200 pixels of height. Meh. Whatever.
But yeah, finally got stuff set up today and it seems to be working well. Gotta download other drivers and foo when I get back to CMU, but that’s really it.

My camera memory card died again today. Same brand/make/model as the first one. Going to return it and try a non SanDisk UltraII SD 1GB card to see if it’s the camera that kills cards, of if it’s just the cards that are bad. Given that I used a SanDisk SD 256MB card in it with no problems, I’m guessing it’s a combination of the two.

Congrats to Ben (who may or may not read this) for landing an interview for a great job.

Went bowling with Kat, Jim, Tommy, Kendra, and $person today. I would have pictures, but my card died. Bleh.
I’m gonna miss Kat… :(

Um… yeah. I would also post a picture of my laptop, but my memory card died.
*sigh*

Oh yeah, yesterday was KoL run of amazing funnness. Went from mid-level 10 to level 11, beat the sorceress, leveled up to 12 to get the dual-wield skill, ascended, and went from level 1 to mid-level 5. Played over 350 adventures yesterday. Wheee.
This run would be a record run except it’s a myst class… and I always have trouble with level 9+ areas as a myst class.
Bleh.
The fact that I eat all my reagents doesn’t help either.

Oh, I had the weirdest dream the other night. Society thought masochism and torture were sexy and attractive… so I drilled holes in my toes and was chopping my fingers in half (long-ways). Then I woke up. It was the most disturbing dream I’ve ever had.

Tim’s

Posted on by

Spent all day at Tim’s place with Keith. Was quite fun, actually. We played tons of games and went to the mall for food and played more games and made tacos for dinner. Whee.

I really like reflections, don’t I?

Todo list for myself:
-Parser
-Poster summarizing my internship work
-Center for School Outreach website
-Make posters for mom
-Print posters for mom
-Use up remainder of printing quota
-Backup photos from the summer
-Play ITG set of “Queen of Light”, “Dawn”, and “Bend Your Mind”

Edit: KoL related… I think this is a new record for me. I went from *just* having reached level 10 yesterday (I literally saw the “You gain a level” at the end of a battle and stopped playing) to beating the sorceress just now… with over 50 adventures to spare. Yay for reagent pastas, having a stat script, chest of the bonerdagon, stat code in leaflet, and volleyball familiar!
It is now 2:15 AM. I should sleep soon.