Monthly Archive for March, 2009

I’m going to kill this person.

Published at 6:14 pm on March 29, 2009 in Uncategorized.

Yesterday I found a laptop on Craigslist for $245. It was a very good deal, and I really want a laptop… so what follows is the email correspondence with the seller.

kingcritter@gmail.comwrote:

I hope it hasn’t been bought already, because I’m interested.

If it is still available, I can pick it up anytime this week, whenever’s
best for you.

southsideisaac28@gmail.com wrote:
no it hasnt been bout yet, and i hope ur not one of those scammers that
will
try 2 get me 2 send it 2 nigeria!!

kingcritter@gmail.com wrote:

Ha, no.

I’ll pick it up and pay in cash. When should I come? I actually live
in Colville, which is about an hour and a half drive from Spokane, and
Tuesday afternoon is a good time for me to drive down there.

southsideisaac28@gmail.com wrote:

o ok, i thout u were one of those scammers that would try 2 get people to send the items out via paypal! well it depends, are u actually going to come!!!

southsideisaac28@gmail.com wrote:

SORRY< I just sold the laptop!

Feel free to send all sorts of spam to to him.

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Raaaaaaaaaaage

Published at 1:04 am on March 28, 2009 in Life.

I have nothing against Amazon. I do all my internet dealings there if possible. But what I DON’T like is the way sellers — and this is not just those at Amazon, but also eBay — hide the cost of an item in the shipping.

[tangent]
I remember when I was 8 or 9 and looking through a Lego magazine and realizing that even though they said they didn’t charge S&H, they just tacked a few dollars on to all the prices. I thought this was like a paradigm shift or something and that economics would never be the same now that I’d uncovered this deception. But I never got a medal for it.
[/tangent]

A few days ago I refrained from buying some RJ45 couplers from an Amazon seller because I felt the shipping was too high. The items themselves were something like 89 cents a piece and I ordered four — but then backed out when I saw that the total price for my order was over $15.

So, of course, I thought that I could get them at Radio Shack for under a dollar. That turned out to be a false assumption, because they were priced at $6 a piece. So, the Amazon price was actually about half the RS price.

Argh.

I bought two anyways, because I didn’t want to wait a week for shipping. (Further reading: two posts down. <_<)

And a sidenote : I have found an upscale pawn shop. I didn’t know such a thing existed. All the Pawn Shops I’ve ever been to have been… I don’t know, homey is the word that springs to mind. Our local Pawn Shop has a picture of a dead cat taped to checkout counter. (There’s two GI Joe action figures standing next to it, and because of the zoom and angle it looks like two humans just brought down the world freakiest looking animal. Very disorienting at first.)

Some may not think of that as “homey” but I like it. It shows personality. But this one Pawn Shop I found is clean, bright, small, and sells mainly jewelry. And they buy gold.

It’s weird.

(And has anyone else noticed that that the word “weird” is weird in that it defies the I before E rule?)

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Bad timing

Published at 11:45 pm on March 25, 2009 in Random Stuff and movies.

So imagine this: you’re in a big city, chill’n out, probably sipping on some expensive alcohol, when suddenly you get nuked. You’re all like, damn that sucks, and go home. Two days later, you’re hometown gets nuked. That is what I call bad timing.

And it’s exactly what happened to this dude, but probably not exactly how I said it. I was going for cheap laughs.

Watched the Chronicles of Riddick trilogy today. Thought it was good — not great, but certainly enjoyable. Chronicles of Riddick (that’s the third movie) has some very awesome action sequences. Way over the top, without being “sanitized” like the fights in the Matrix. Speaking of fighting, this is one of the few movies that has a tough-as-nails female lead that doesn’t end up as the male lead’s romantic interest and/or turn out to be completely useless. This is a good thing, by the way.

One thing I didn’t like at first about the third movie was that it shifted genres. Pitch Black was gritty, horror sci-fi, while Chronicles of Riddick was Orks in space, featuring undead, elementals, dream visions, and people turning into ghosts on command. And the bad guys all wear armor — the fantasy/medieval kind. Reminded me of Imperial Legion armor from Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.

But then, once I got into the movie… I got used to it. Especially at the start of the second act, when Riddick is sent to prison. That’s where it really starts to shine.

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I think my mind explodes around money

Published at 3:49 pm on March 24, 2009 in Geeky Stuff and Life.

Because I can not make good buying decisions. At all. Today I went to that PC repair shop I mentioned in my last post. I bought a 14 foot Ethernet cable, went back to my car, and face-palmed when I realized I could have bought a 50 foot cable off of amazon for a few dollars more. But, oh well. Gotta support local business, right?

No luck on the couplers, so I was gonna buy them from Amazon, before remembering that I was going to Spokane on Friday. Canceled the order just in time. ^_^

Speaking of local businesses, I spent $40 dollars at the Pawn Shop. I bought the Chronicles of Riddick trilogy ($10) — Fable: Lost Chapters ($10) — and a mini crossbow ($20).

Yeah. I got a crossbow. Unfortunately, I quickly found why it was $20 after it broke the second time I shot it. Well, one part of it anyway — a little doodad that holds the bolt down to straighten the flight path and to keep it from falling off the bow. I’ll have to rig something up, because the piece broke completely off and is now lost.

I went to drama/improv class today. Much more fun then I thought it would be. I got to be a cat that mauled someone to death. Mrow?

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Parenthesis, how I hate thine treacherous ways

Published at 10:29 pm on March 23, 2009 in Geeky Stuff, Homebrew and Life.

I’ve been struggling with a programming problem for last few days, and today I found out that it was caused by a pair of insidious parenthesis.

What I was doing was changing my code to use fixed point for the position and speed of the ball. The problem I was having is that the speed was being rounded down to zero. So when I had 64 (or anything else under 256) and bit-shifted it to the right, it came out zero. I asked on the PAlib forums and a guy directed me to a website explaining how fixed point math works. As it turns out, my problem was not a glitch or bug, that’s just how fixed point works. And after some thought, I realized that my number would either it round down to zero or up to one, and never get the answer I wanted.

So I was stuck. I needed a speed of 1/4th pixels per frame, and didn’t want to use floating point (decimals). But then as I was screwing around with another test project, I noticed that it was working exactly as I wanted it to! I looked at the code and at first didn’t notice anything different… then of course I saw the parenthesis and probably uttered a swear word.

It make sense, now that I see it. I had been bit-shifting the speed before multiplying it with the result of PA_Cos and Sin — the correct method was to multiply them and then bit-shift the whole thing.

The working code…
ball.x += PA_Cos(ball.angle) * ball.speed>>8;
ball.y -= PA_Sin(ball.angle) * ball.speed>>8;
…and the non-working code.
ball.x += PA_Cos(ball.angle) * (ball.speed>>8);
ball.y -= PA_Sin(ball.angle) * (ball.speed>>8);

And now for some stuff about my awesome, totally interesting life.

I, with a great deal of help from my dad, finished threading an Ethernet cable through 60 feet of pipe. Much more difficult then it sounds. Then, inside, I ran the cable up the wall, across the ceiling, into my room… and immediately ran out of cable. DAMMIT. So today, I’m going to have to pick up another cable as well as an RJ45 coupler. Unfortunately I live in a teeny-tiny town with no large tech stores. We have one small computer repair shop that sells some stuff, so they might have some cables… but an RJ45 coupler? Considering even I didn’t know they existed before today, I’m going to guess no. But I’m hoping they do, because I don’t want to wait a week for shipping by buying it online.

I’ve been playing StarCraft a lot recently. I’m still quite crappy, but getting better. At least I can survive a zealot rush. I remember a time when I’d get attacked by ten or so zealots and all I’d have is 6 ‘lings. Now I have at least 12 ‘lings, a couple hydras and a sunken.

But I still get killed by human players. Like today, this guy massed marines — he must of had at least 40 or 50 by the end, with a few tanks thrown in for kicks. I was slaughtered. I asked him what he thought I did wrong, and he suggested that I memorize a few build orders, which I think I shall go do right now.

Oh, and one last thing: I mentioned that I was going to watch Castle a few weeks ago? Never did, because *gasp* our TV no longer received anything because we’d never gotten a digital converter box. Just yesterday I went to wal-mart to get one, but they were out. It sounded like they’d been out for a while, and probably would be out until the end of time. If they don’t have ‘em back in stock before Friday, I’ll get one when I go to Spokane.

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Chinatown Wars

Published at 3:37 pm on March 19, 2009 in Games.

Chinatown-wars logo

So, any guesses as to what game I’ve been playing? Anyone?

My mini review:

Not as mind-blowing as expected. Expected it to cure cancer; was disappointed. Graphics are good, considering the limitations of the DS. The cell-shading is a good thing — without the black lines around everything, it’d be much harder to pick out stuff. The controls are good, except for the constant switching between the buttons and the stylus. However, at least the bits that need the stylus are nicely laid out and easy to navigate. Hot wiring cars — there’s a few different ways of doing this — hasn’t gotten old yet. Driving takes a while to get used to; the main reason being that the DS’s screen is so small and the cars go so fast. You take your eyes of the screen for just a split second and you will crash. At least the cars can take a lot of punishment before exploding.

The biggest problem with the game is the freezing. Yes, that wasn’t a typo. It freezes. A DS game that freezes!? Damnit Rockstar, what the hell is wrong with you? You have billions of dollars, put ‘em to good use!

Oh, and there was one time when I hijacked a van and even though I was in the vehicle the AI kept driving, and it wouldn’t let me out. That’s certainly a glitch.

But overall, it’s a fun game. Took me a while to warm up to it, but it’s definitely one of the better games on the system.

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The ills of mankind

Published at 2:05 pm on March 14, 2009 in Deep Thought and Life.

I’ve been sick with a cold for the past few couple one day, but, uh… it felt like longer to me. –_–

Regular posting schedule to resume in five, four, three… *bzzzt!*

I read I Am Legend. Much different from the recent Will Smith movie. But better? Not quite sure on that. The main character was not exactly a likable person, and there seemed to be a lot of plot holes/implausible scenarios/things that really just didn’t make sense. I didn’t care for it that much. However, included in that back of the book (actually, accounting for almost half the thickness of the book) were a bunch of the author’s short stories. I liked most of these a lot better then Legend.

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Aagh we’re doomed

Published at 12:55 pm on March 9, 2009 in Games, Life, Random Stuff and Site Related.

Well, I never got around to posting anything yesterday. I offer you my most insincere apologies, and a gift: a brand new homebrew page. Furthermore, I put some stuff up in my movies page a while ago but never actually mentioned it. So I’m mentioning it now. Have fun. ^_^

I’ve been playing a lot of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon recently. It’s… well, it’s awesome. The game is a hybrid turn-based strategy/RPG, and unlike Final Fantasy Tactics it doesn’t suck. Oh, and the battle animations are flipp’n beautiful. Seriously, they’re practically 3D. I was going to post a screenshot, but I can’t find any that look good — it’s something that must be seen in motion. The dialogue doesn’t completely suck, either. The story is pretty much your standard, boring JRPG, but the actual dialogue is OK. Better then some games, at least.

Further more, it’s the only game that’s ever made me feel bad for killing the enemy. Seriously. There are some enemy units that have a unique name and portrait picture, and when they die really sad music starts playing and they say something poignant. Kind of disturbing. Can you imagine if this happened in, say, Halo? Or Diablo?

The TV show Castle premieres today at 10:00 PM. I’m planning on watching it, mainly due to the presence of Nathan Fillion. He played Malcolm Reynolds in the uber-awesome TV show Firefly, and I thought he was a really good actor.

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Push

Published at 8:24 pm on March 7, 2009 in Deep Thought and Life.

Today, I watched Push. I was a bit hesitant at first, because all the reviews of the movie basically said that it sucked. The average rating was 2.6 out of 5, according to Google. But then I took a closer look at the reviews, and tentatively identified all the reviewers as middle-aged retards.

As it turns out, I was right. The movie was actually pretty good. Not the sort I’ll be raving about for years to come, but good enough that I might pick up the DVD if I ever see it in the pawnshop. I’m really bad at assigning ratings to things, but if I was forced to… I’d give it at least a 3.5÷5, maybe even something approaching a 4.

Admittedly, it’s not for everyone. You have to be quick on your mental feet to keep up with the story, and have to like not knowing exactly what’s true or not — a key plot point is peoples memories getting erased and replaced with false ones. Lucky for me, I love that sort of thing.

I once said that Dakota Fanning was the worst child actor I’d ever seen. Admittedly that was after I’d watched War of the Worlds, and I think Tom Cruise might just have this aura of suckiness he projects, and anyone trapped inside of it can’t live up to their full acting potential. Or maybe she did suck just as bad as Mr. Cruise in that film — but if that’s the case, she’s improved dramatically. She does an awesome drunk scene about halfway through the movie. It will undoubtedly show up on Youtube eventually.

In fact, all the actors were good, even the minor ones. If there was one thing that made me go (<_<) it would be the casting of a black guy as the main villain. And, oh yeah, he was the only black guy in the entire film. Come on, Hollywood. It’s the same way in an annoyingly large number of other films — the only black actor gets cast as the villain. This is the 21st century, right?

The violence gets a round of applause from me for still being pretty awesome even with the PG-13 rating. Of special note is in the beginning, when this guy gets shot from behind and drops instantly. Sounds pretty normal, right? I mean, there was a scene just like this in The Dark Knight, right? Wrong. In the TDK, the shooter was aiming at the victim’s lower back. In real life, someone getting shot there would be screaming thrashing around until he bled out. In Push, the shooter is aiming at the back of the victim’s head. It’s little things like this that add realism to a movie. Er. And no, I don’t need to see a psychiatrist, I can’t help that I pay attention to stuff like that. <_<

Random observation: the director seemed to have a thing about people dual-wielding guns. Maybe he’s played to much Halo. I mean, even Dakota Fanning has a scene where she’s holding a pistol in each hand.

If you’ve seen this movie and are intrigued about the idea of being able to tell the future, I suggest you read Blink. It may be a bit too Christian for some, though I would say that it’s the most un-stereotypical-Christian Christian book I’ve ever read.

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cupcakes

Published at 12:41 am on March 7, 2009 in Life.

I went to a funeral today. Didn’t really even know the person, but she was a friend of my parents. There were cupcakes and punch at the reception. I got to take home a box of leftover cupcakes.

I think my dad ate them.

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