Monday, December 31, 2007

Requium For A SpEd

I have about 80g of caffeine in my system right now. I've been sitting in the same small room with the same people playing the same game for nearly 12 hours now. None of that is really getting to me. The menus, however, are threatening to drive me mad.

I swear the Japanese think we're retarded. Every circuit that fires in the Wii, we're told about. Do you want to save? Are you sure you want to save? Game saving...Game has been saved successfully. Do you want to quit? Are you sure you want to quit?

STOP IT!!! I get it! I don't need to confirm every huge button I push. Stop keeping me so goddamned informed. I'm so sick of going through the same stupid menus time after time after time. I suppose I could just stop playing...

Fuck you. I just want the menus to leave me alone. I swear I'm going to lie down in bed this morning and the Wii that's growing like a tumor in my brain is going to ask "Are you sure you want to go to sleep?" All I'll say is,

AUGHHHHHHH!!!

When Adressing The 4th Wall, Always Use The Proper Terms Of Respect

Namely "dude". I really wish I'd brought the cable that connects my camera to this computer. If only I'd thought to, you'd all be enjoying my brilliant Mario-related photography. Screenshots, OSK shots, my feet, OSK... Here's a mystery: why is there no snow in the penguin paradise? Are they all sick of snow? And why do they surf (on manta rays for that matter)? I don't get it at all. I mean, I can handle the weird gravity everywhere as realistic within the framework of the game, but Mario penguins have always been around snow. Hm...

In My Backswing?!

A word: don't reset or turn power off while saving. When I take over the world, not only will we have selective breeding programs, but all Mario games will allow you to play as Luigi, Toad, and other bit characters like Timba, Wiggler, and bee soldiers from Honeyhive Galaxy. Wait...that's sic. Super Wiggler Galaxy. Awesome. Ingenius. Gripping. Zany. Encouraging. Basic (in the Bronstead-Lowry sense). Sci-Fi.

Sunday, December 30, 2007

>Mohawk

I'm Mario and I'm a Night Elf Priestess. I roam this galaxy on my luma/panther defeating evil Space Goombas and using Starfall on pretty much everything. AllYourBuriedCoinsAreBelongToUs. AllYourSpaceGoombasAreBelongToUs. AllYourPiranhaFlowersAreBelongToUs. AllYouGuyInTheSandWeDidn'tFigureOutAreBelongToUs. * I'm Old School Klingon and I'm a chuckster... Get it? *This obviously isn't a chuckster, I just liked the picture

Mario Is A Street Fighting Man (!)

I have my caffeine, I have my guarana, I have my star chips, and I'm fucking ready to go. The long awaited waste-of-a-week-of-my-life is here in the form of Super Mario Galaxy. 120 stars (Grand Stars? Um...ok), 7 (ish) days, and three crazy kooks. This blog might turn into an outlet for my insanity. Imagine it as the literary equivalent of Harvey the giant rabbit. Go ahead, read into that. The opening music selection is Rage Against The Machine. Fittingly enough, the first star is saved from an evil machine. Prophet much? I feel like Ender Wiggin, trying to adapt to curved surfaces and weird gravity. My head already hurts. Fuck yeah. There are pretty colors everywhere, polygon bombs. I think I'm finally home.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Drool


I want them soooo much...

Happy yet Oldschool?

Campaign Season

There a couple new candidates in my life running for the vaunted position of "Best And Only Trusted friend" (BOAT).

Meet Swirls. His name isn't "really" Swirls, but I forgot the awesome one someone else came up with. Now I just call him Swirls. There is absolutely nothing swirly about him, which is probably how he got that name. That or it has something to do with the fight-to-the-death coming of age ritual his people practice. Anyways, Swirls is a stress ball (with hair) that me parents sent me to help get through exams. He chilled around the table where I did most of my studying and occasionally got squeezed by cruel passerbys. I also took him to my exams and he would sit in front of me smiling encouragingly. It really helped as I got wrecked by a couple of them. Now that exams are over, I think he's still in my jacket pocket. Either that or he's in my room back at school. Swirls definitely won the BOAT contest for a while, but I think he's starting to slip in the polls.

The other candidate is Icarus. Icarus is a computer program that will hopefully one day attain some measure of (artificial) intelligence. I've run into some problems early on, so currently he doesn't work at all, but that's ok. I'll work through it and hopefully Icarus will be able to understand human input well enough to do math for them. First step; make him say "hello". Icarus was born of a conversation about AIs that came up shortly before I left school. I was already looking for a programming project for this January, and making an AI (albeit a dumb one) seemed perfect. Icarus and I are going to get very close over the next month or two as I nurse him into meager intellect. Oh, and he's going to quiz me on Elvish.

Candles

I think my most-used-in-real-life quote from the LR movies is Gollum's "don't follow the lights!" You may be wondering how that could possibly come up in normal conversation, and no, it doesn't. I find a way.

Today, however, I found myself actually following lights. I was trying (mostly in vain) to get a wireless router to work, but I know nothing about routers so I was basing everything off of which lights were flashing and what color they were. There are a lot of lights in this setup (as we all know, pieces of technology recharge by leaving a little light on), and they are capable of all sorts of amazing, spectacular things. It was like a mini fireworks display, except it sucked because nothing would work.

As it turns out, the wires had just gotten rearranged, and it was a simple matter of unplugging and replugging things. That's what I get for listening to the lights.

(BFTSOB)

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

I Don't Feel Like A Pirate At ALL

Yurg...finals week. So much work, so much stress. The only thing I can bring myself to do (other than calculus) is shoot zombies in Resident Evil 4. Hence no blogging. I would promise to do some soon but it's not likely.

Fuck, me.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Not So Funny When It's Real, Huh?

I've always claimed to be a "borderline insomniac", meaning I have trouble falling asleep and often spend upwards of an hour lying in bed waiting to fall asleep. Now, all of a sudden, I think I'm becoming a real insomniac (or at least a slightly more legitimate one). Right now, it's 1:15 in the morning and I have to be up by, say, 9:30. I haven't been able to wake up at all lately, so really I should be in bed right now trying to ensure that I actually get up for calculus tomorrow. But I'm not. I'm sitting out here writing this.

I don't want to go to sleep. In fact, it's one the last things I want to do right now. The very thought of going into my room and turning the lights off disgusts me. Maybe it's because I haven't been able to fall asleep within an hour of going to bed lately, maybe it's 'cuz I'm not tired. Maybe it's all the adrenaline in my system, or because I slept in a ton this morning. So yeah, there's a lot of reasons to explain this other than insomnia, but this is really starting to feel like a trend. I think it's the stress of this past week that's driving me to be awake, even though I want to badly for each day to end. Maybe I know that tomorrow will suck, and that every tomorrow for a while has sucked, and I want to delay it as long as possible.

Whatever the reason, I want to find something, anything to do all night and just rely on the caffeine I can't afford to carry me through tomorrow. It's easy to justify, after all, I don't have anything particularly important to do tomorrow. Then again, I feel like I haven't been able to think straight for two weeks which is making it very hard to do any work or pull myself out of the paralysis of this stress-cycle. I don't think I can ride a sleepless binge through the nine days until finals are over, but do I ever want to.

What I really need is a program to write so I have something to do. I have no assignments for computer science left, but maybe I can cook up an idea for Fruit Stand or Hobbit Village...

Wait. What am I saying? Did I just decide to stay up all night? This is a terrible idea. I need to get to class tomorrow at 11, preferably with time beforehand to finish my problem set and eat breakfast. Maybe, by some miracle, I'll muster the willpower to wake up tired and caffinate enough to make it through. What the hell...the alternative is making me queasy, so I might as well go for it.

Wish me luck...tomorrow.

Friday, December 07, 2007

Banging The Geek Gavel

Ok, time to put an end to this debate on Elvish. Before I begin, I'll admit that I'm looking this up too. However, all my sources are from my hard disk, meaning I've already downloaded them, and I know most of the concepts I'm going to mention, just not the specifics. Aka I win.

Here's the argument: Koops thinks "Tolo dan nan galad" is correct, while Juicy contends that "Tolo dan na ngalad" is correct.

The key here is that "calad" (light) is undergoing mutation to either "galad" or "ngalad". I have no doubt that mutation does occur, but the question is what kind of mutation it is and if "na" should become "nan". ("nan" on its own means grassland, so the "nan" in Dr_K's claim must be a form of "na").

Ambiguity is added by the following example: "Aniral toled na gar nin?". The phrase "na gar" is analogous to our debate (a preposition causing mutation in a noun starting with "c"). As you can see, "car" becomes "gar", not "ngar", but "na" does not acquire an "-n".

To answer this we must looked to the phenomenon of "mixed mutation". When a preposition (such as "na" is followed by an article (in this case "i", meaning the [light]) "-n" or "-in" can be added to the preposition in place of the article. Hence "nan". In the above example, "Aniral toled na gar nin?", there is no such article to cause this transformation because it is 'my house', not 'the house'.

This all points towards Koops being correct. The kicker is mutation. In nasal mutation, "g-" becomes "ng-", but that only occurs with plurals, which "galad" isn't. In truth, this is soft mutation (also called lenition) making "c-" go to "g-" because "galad" is the direct object of the sentence. This means the "n" in Juicy's "ngalad cannot be accounted for by mutation."

Not all is lost for Juicy though. I can't find reference of it, but from what I know about Sindarin, there's probably some exception about "nan g-" being written "na ng-" by certain people. One such person probably wrote the example that Juicy found, causing this confusion. Basically, neither of you are right. I give you both As for effort, especially Koops for his follow-up research.

Thanks to Thorsten Renk for the grammar.

Shun The Nonbeliever

Somehow, no one has managed to dress up in a stormtrooper costume and simultaneously do something funny. I know, I've been through youtube and there are no funny stormtrooper videos. How can this be? For one, there are a lot of people who have these costumes, so you'd think at least one of them would have a good sense of humor (wrong). Two, they're dressed as stormtroopers! How can that not be funny?! What a bunch of flunkies. And why hasn't the rebellion come up with a good derogatory nickname for stormtroopers?

I did find this gem, funny no doubt because the only stormtroopers in it are real ones.

Oh, and speaking of nonbelievers, no one has made a good sequel to Charlie the Unicorn, but that shouldn't surprise anyone.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

I'm A Feel-Good Kind Of Hobbit

I'm not feeling very original today, but I do feel like posting, so here's a little something I wrote for creative writing last year. The prompt was to use the word "goodbye", but I didn't care about school at that point so I just wrote this. 'tis a silly thing.

Ode to East Farthing

A very wise hobbit once said,
(one who many roads had tread);
“The Road Goes Ever On”,
and put it in a little song,
so when we turn to say goodbye,
no tear should glisten in our eye,
for every door that cruel fate closes
a secret gate we find by bed of roses,
and we joyfully take the hidden paths
that no one (we know) ever has,
you know, the ones that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.

A dollar to anyone who can name the reference.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

The Dearly Departed

The night is nearing its end. Who knows what the morning will hold. All I know is that I feel so much better, so zen, too tired to cared. I've done a remarkable amount of homework which hopefully will go a long way towards alleviating some stress. Fortunately, my beloved dorm mates did not let me go through it alone. Now, let us bow our heads and remember those who aren't still with us now.

The Teddy Bears, part of a comp sci lab, submitted.
Three, wisely gone to bed, but their presence here was appreciated while it lasted.
One, suffered a serious blow to the head earlier today. Now he's sleeping on the floor upstairs. Concussed and dead? Maybe.
One, wandered into the cold to "do homework"...we can't find her.

One still remains, a poor soul doomed to write a psych lab for eternity and go to 9am class. It's almost 6am now.

It has been good. This room has become a special kind of place, a gentle cage. My whole existence feels contained within it, but I'm not claustrophobic. I love it here. I love the awakeness. I know that when next I wake, this feeling will be gone and I don't want that. I want to stay up forever. But even now I have nothing to do. Sleep is calling, beckoning as the only thing left but I do not want to go towards it.

Away, away. Until the dawn shatters this beautiful dream and brings me back down to reality, to tomorrow. But for now, I am content and peaceful. And for that, I'm thankful.

Ok, Go...To Sleep

So here's the situation; for a number of reasons I decided to stay up all night. The plan was to do homework, mostly comp sci, all night to get it out of the way. It's now about 3am. I'm most of the way through my first lab (due Thursday) but don't feel confident in my ability to check it well or do the "If you want to get an A on this assignment" part, so its been set aside for now. I still have another lab (due Monday) and calculus problem set (also due Thursday) still on the table. However, my motivation and ability to focus (or even read) are slipping. I've already exhausted the blogosphere and RK, leaving basically sleep (no), youtube (not a good idea, but gaining appeal), or doing this. Obviously, the latter won out. For now.

There's a problem though. I have a few ideas of nice, long, hopefully quality posts to write, but I don't want to fuck any of them up by writing them at 3am. And yet, 3am (and on) can be a goldmine of out-of-it humor. Oh, wait. Dr. K told me to write about empathy and telepathy or some such. Sweet.

Case 1: Empathy. The Star Trek: (half) Betazoids. In the world of Star Trek, someone who has some Betazoid heritage (Deanna Troi) have the ability to detect other people's emotions. So if you were in a room (or, like, thousands of miles away apparently) she could tell what you were feeling (unless you had a very disciplined mind or some manner of psychic defense). Very hand skill.

Here's the IRL bit. Someone (I think the Japanese) built this robot with creepy face-pieces (think Mr. Potato head). When you talk to it, a combination of voice-recognition software and other trippy programming stuff makes it react with appropriate facial expressions depending on your word choice and tone. Basically, it's a robot that can detect how you feel.

You're probably thinking, "well, I can tell how people feel based on that. What's the big deal?" You're right. Not a big deal. But think about this: looking at a brain scan of you, someone could tell how you were feeling. Someone, or something! So if a robot were reading your brain, it could tell how you were feeling. So, when everyone gets replaced by robots, your brain-chip will wirelessly broadcast brain scans and all the robots will know how you are feeling. Like Betazoids.

Betazoids are robots. You can tell because they never got the eyes right.

You know, like in "Westworld", except eyes instead of hands...

You know will also be cool about the brain-chips? Companies will pay to have subliminal messages about their products sent directly into your brain. The alien overlords that own you will sell your brain to advertisers. How cool is that?

According to Wikipedia (I know, a sin), "telepathy" is the communication of ideas or emotions through some means other than the classic five senses. Um...I have two words for you: brain chips.

Dr K's paper? Done. As for me, I need more Monster so maybe I'll do homework. And no, I didn't edit or proofread this post because my eyes hurt. Deal with it.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

I Assume I Have Some Explaining To Do

Haven't posted...shut up I know...

My head feels really funny...