Category Archives: Video Games

This is a new title

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My desk area r teh photo-y! :-D
Actually, I’ve been meaning to replace most of the photos on the wall. They’re mostly from freshman and sophomore years of high school. My wall above my BED, on the other hand, is happy. I guess that’ll be tomorrow’s picture.

Um… yeah. So I head back to Pittsburgh in 2 days (this Saturday). Strangely, I’m not as excited about heading back as I was at the beginning of summer… probably because I actually am starting to feel comfortable here, and because I havn’t spent as much time with friends here as I would have liked. Meh.
Poo to all of you too, for not having time for me :-P
…
Only half kidding.

Worked a bit on constructing Student Wars decks today. Got a Programming deck, Athletic deck, and KGB deck done. I’ll build more so people have more options when it comes to introductory decks (since building a Student Wars deck, like any other TCG, is not trivial). So yeah, I’m putting all this work in, so people please play? I’ll sit down with you and teach you everything. Seriously.

For those of you who’ve asked, I’ll be working at the PSLC this summer (which basically means I’ll be on campus at the LTI). They produce and market tutoring software for kids. I’m working on the algebra tutor project. I’m going to be rewriting the backend of said system: the parser that takes the word problems the instructor enters and outputs the solution algebraic equations. The existing parser is written in lisp and is relatively accurate. Our goal is to improve the accuracy (so instructors don’t have to go in and fix the parser’s mistakes, which is extremely time consuming) and to rewrite it in Java. In doing so, we hope to gain an understanding of how children learn to parse word problems and get solutions. Should be lots of fun.
…
I just hope they didn’t misplace their faith in me… as in I hope I’m smart enough to do this. Meh.
Sounds like an incredibly difficult problem.

Gone to GameWorks for the past 2 days and played DDR. It’s really weird that they don’t have an ITG machine there, given how they’re supposedly incredibly state-of-the-art. At least I’m getting exercise.

What else, what else… there’s so much I want out of life, and I feel like such a bum sitting here in front of my computer all day not getting any of it. What have I contributed to the world? Nothing. Makes me feel insignificant. Meh.
Whatever. I don’t want to be big and important anyway. Famous people are scary. I just want to be content with who I am and what I have.
And I think, at this moment, I can be, so yay.
Life is good.

Dette er en Tittel.

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Last night was one of my best KoL nights ever. Was able to get from the airship all the way to ascending in one day. Granted, I started the day with 170 adventures, and got an extra ~75 from my pasta dishes, but still… I had amazing airship luck. Used my spooky fairy, and got all the drops I needed along the way to getting the 4 immateria and S.O.C.K. Had good luck in the castle… got enough muscle non-combats to gain 4 muscle stats while getting all the drops needed while turning the wheel to get the egg. Got slightly screwed in the hole when it took a while for the third star chart to drop (ended up with something like twice as many stars and lines as I needed), but that’s ok. My chef-in-a-box exploded just after I made my last necessary potion (yay for weird food!). Had to go back to the valley to get ‘n’s, but it only took 10 adventures to get the two I needed. Sorceress went down first try (yay thrust-smack!). Woot.

Today Vicki and David came over and we played Risk. It is incredibly scary to see an army of ~12 cannons (120+ units) marching across North America and Asia… especially when you’re the one trying to hold Asia. Oh well. Was a good game though. I don’t know if I like this style of playing (draw a card every time you conquer a country; trade in at any time during your turn; redeployment phase limited to one country’s troops across one border) or the style I played at CMU (draw one card at the end of your turn if you attacked at all; trade in at the beginning of your turn; unlimited redeployment of all troops across any distance). This style lets the game turn around really quickly… all you have to do is conquer a bunch of small countries (easy in Asia, where borders are drawn weird) and trade in to get huge armies… Vicki basically conquered the other half of Europe, North America, and Asia (or would have if I hadn’t surrendered) in one turn since she kept on getting cards and trading in. She ran out of yellow troops and had to start using green. Meh.
Oh yes, and I still get horrible defense rolls. Bleh.

I think it’s going to be my goal to post one picture in every post from now on. Not necessarily a photo… but at least some kind of image (just because I’ve been doing it lately, and it adds something to posts besides boring text).

Also adding a new page to archive all the used photos, I guess. Whee.

What else… um… graduation last night was fun, but I already wrote about that. Photos are up. You should go look at them.

Fixed my forums after they’d been dead for a couple months. Not that anyone cares, since no one ever uses them anymore. Had to actually go in and hack the database since the upgrade somehow screwed up and didn’t upgrade the tables properly (and screwed up the theme I was using). Then had to hack at the script itself a bit too. Meh. At least it works now.

Props to anyone who can identify all the “This is a title” post title languages over the past few days. I’ve just been using online translation sites. Whee. Also props to people who give me good suggestions for post titles.

More game foo

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It is 4 AM. I am, once again, still up. I fail at this whole sleep thing. Meh.

Today was really, really eventful. I am officially obsessed with rasterbation. Last semester was the Matus poster of doom. Today, I rasterbated two pictures of chrisamaphone and pfriedma cluster raving and hung them up in the cluster (pictures will come tomorrow). Thanks to Dan and Alan (Caum) for helping with cutting/assembly.

Then was tons of Starcraft. Played a 3/1 vs 3/1 game, and my team actually won… I’m definetly getting better. Was able to take out two people more or less by myself (Vincent helped with Mike’s base, but I think my guardians could have handled it).

Then was a bit of packing.

Then was cheesecake and other desserts at 7 (the place). Yummy food. Really, really good company. Lots of fun.

8 (Philip) and I then went to Scotland Yard to play ITG, but it turns out they closed at 10 and we got there just as they were closing, so he lost $5 in the machine. Bleh. Stupid CMU… no signs to warn people or anything. Stupid, stupid, stupid. So meh, we ended up going back to 7 and listening to music and stuff, and then went to Underground for foodage.

At Underground, I watched a game of Apples to Apples for a while, and then migrated to watching another game (whose name I forget right now). Was lots of fun, but it lasted over 3.5 hours, so meh.

Tomorrow I MUST study for 80180 with Car. Also might go to the Strip with 8 to get food for the dinner party Sunday night. Wheee. Oh yeah, I should also pack, probably.

Grades for two classes are out. 21301 (Combinatorics) and 62141 (B/W Photo I) are both As. Hope 213 is an A… Hope 312 is an A… if so, I can pretty much go into my two finals on Monday stress-free.

Today was an amazing day.
Happy happy dance wheee.
*dances*

Game foo

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Hm… it is 4:30. I probably should have gone to bed 4 hours ago.
I’m hearing birds chirping outside. Perhaps that’s a sign that the sun will soon come up. Meh.

Today was tons of fun… slept, got up for lunch, slept some more, went to psychologist, went to Tims’, ate more, went back to Tims’. Whee.

Went to cluster to play Starcraft around 11:30. After a few quick games (including a massively horrible one of capture the flag, where people built insane amounts of cannons/colonies), I played Risk. When I left just now, I was winning… I controlled all of Asia, Australia, and Africa… I had eliminated two players, and Ivan and Julie controlled North America and South America, respectively. I really should sleep though.

Work is coming along on Student Wars: Hijinks. Hope people actually play it when I get it released… meh.

The weather today was horrible. Started raining before I got up, rained all day, just now stopped. The wind made it worse… had to hold my umbrella at strange angles to prevent wetness. Bleh.

Psychologist is weird… I mean, she’s nice and amazing, but I don’t really know what I was expecting out of it, and I’m not sure if I want to continue sessions or not. Oh well, I have until I get back in the summer to decide.

Something must be wrong with me… today, I had 2 full dinners and was still hungry. Ordered Chinese delivery (mmm shrimp and veggies), and then had a huge bowl of pasta (mmm cheese sauce). Then I stole a slice of mrwright’s pizza. Now I’m sitting here and I’m starving. Meh.

Bed. Tomorrow is studing for my last two finals, working on website, and working on Student Wars. Wootage.

Life is good, but I can’t help but feel like I’m missing something.
Oh well.