Randox

Some good news today. Our fridge seems to have killed its first mouse (we think the mouse tried to crawl into it from the bottom and shocked itself). The bad news is that between the time I found it dead, and the disposing of the body, another mouse revealed itself by attacking a loaf of bread. But now the pest control guys are coming back in the morning, and are going to pull some appliances out and take a look at the wall to see if there is anything that needs to be plugged up. Also going to trap the shit out of our kitchen since the sticky traps have yet to claim a victim. Be happy when this is all sorted out again.

All things considered, this has come at a good time for me. I have goals in game, but they are only in skills I don't enjoy. This gives me something else to do while I whittle away at the skills I don't like.

This one is an odd one for me since I normally despise remixes (if I hear the original first): Hot Butter - Popcorn (techno mix) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUM4MHBBeZo&feature=plcp

They really need to work on releasing things. I never got the new patcher, and the servers are probably down anyway so I can't update the game. Currently trying to see if I can log into the store to grab a full install or not (though if they do what they did last time, it wont be in the store anyway, though that 0.16 might have the newest patcher). At least they didn't release on Friday again. What a shit show that was. I can also understand some reluctance to beef up the servers, since they only have high demand for a day every couple months. Still, I hope its not something they feel they can get away with once they get to beta.

Starting to have a bit of fun with programming. We are still in the super basics, but at least I can get a bit creative with the lab work now. I expect I will do quite well in this course, since I don't think I am going to have any trouble picking up the language itself, and algorithms are definitely a strong point for me. I love figuring out how to solve problems. As soon as I learn inputs, I want to write up a little program for use in my stats class for handling smaller data sets where using a stats program will actually fudge it (because the computer method and hand method aren't identical). Also going to need some logic statements. But I figure if I can write a program to solve the problem, then I probably know how to do it. Or I could do what I did for physics and create excel spredsheets to do the math (again, because if you can build a spreadsheet robust enough to solve a whole type of problem, chances are you know what your doing). I wonder if I still have that around actually. Was a lot of fun to write, and it probably saved time in the long run. Economics is a bit dull, since I have two courses that are currently duplicating each other. That should sort itself out pretty soon, but it is making one of my classes a bit less interesting than it could be. Ran into a friend I haven't seen in like a year by chance today. Always awesome when that happens. Also, something that sometimes happens when I don't hear a song start...I'm not sure quite how to describe it. It's like my mind gets confused about where the beat/where the bars are in the song, and it comes across as in a totally different key signature for some reason. It's really weird, but the song just sounds different until my mind 'locks on' to the rhythm and then it sounds normal again.

That's one of the most adorable things I have ever seen!

Liking the new system, though it does not yet seem to be able to handle the chat spam bots that gather names from fc's and then pm them all in a matter of seconds. I wonder if this is because they are not yet in the detection target zone (I expect they have the system only looking at accounts within defined areas to start with, to make sure it works in a live situation first), or if it is because these bots can get all their pm's out before the system can ban them. I do hope that eventually those pm spam bots are also a thing of the past. This should be an interesting few days and they bring more of their systems online, and start targeting more areas. I picture a future of roving ad bots standing wherever the ban system is not currently active that day/week. Presumably the major ideal points will always be protected, so even if they try this it will be in the middle of no place where no one cares.

So earlier this evening I saw a couple flashes of lightning, and then noticed that all the drunks were screaming 'woooooo!' every time we had thunder (you know, in case you missed it). A couple hours after I last saw the lighting I was watching TV and noticed this kind of roar in the background, and I look out the window and for the second time in 7 days we have monsoon level rainfall going on outside. There are also more people outside than I would expect. Probably because it's Saturday and rain will not stop the drunks. I have also seen at least two people run by while writing this post that seem to be doing so sans pants (one girl and one guy, not together). I should really window watch more often.

Looks interesting, though I wouldn't expect the xp to be the actual best (case in point, the LRC can potentially offer substantially more xp than iron).. That said, it almost sounded like I could just keep picking say teh mine mithril challenge and keep getting xp as if I were drop mining iron, which would be kind of neat. I would like to see botany bay be the next update, though I am already kind of miffed that that have the gall to hold the macroing Q&A before they go all out with their anti bot thing. Seems ass backwards if you ask me. And @insane, the JAG was released last week. That was just some extra encouragement for people to actually use it. (unless I am missing something...)

Wonderful morning. Was late getting myself put together, almost late for class. Then someone reminds me that today is quiz day, and I notice I let all the referance stuff we are allowed to have at home (along with everything else I needed for the days classes, except my pens). Worked out suprisingly well since I would have had to take notes in the wrong notebook, and realisticly they would never be copied over. I'm also sort of confident I aced the quiz, though the teacher and text book seem to disagree about what a method is (teacher seems to be using object and method interchangeably, though its also quite possible I misunderstood something). If I did get that part wrong, I'll still have more than a 90, and I can accept that on a morning like this. My friend, who also forgot his referance stuff, did not seem to be doing nearly as well :( I think there might be some advantages to being a bit older than average, as long as your not too old. I suspect my brain is probably closer to its prime than most people in the first year. Well see how its doing when I finally get to fourth year classes :lol:

So I finally found the second space centre (thanks youtube!), and promptly decided to go there. Problem is I have one plane that can actually fly (it makes up for it by being capable of performing stunts and generally being the most easy thing to fly ever). Unfortunately it is not capable of flying nearly that far, and I forget how I gave it drop tanks in the past (which would still only get it halfway, probably). So I built a stripped down version that is short a few fuel tanks, and an engine so that I could strap it on a rocket and going so far as to weigh it down with 2 of its 3 original RCS fuel tanks, and promptly not giving it any RCS thrusters (so you can tell this was a well thought out design that was rigorusly tested from the space plane hanger, and not something I had the kerbal engineers slap together in 5 minutes). I then put an equal amount of effort into building a rocket to get it into orbit. A mighty rocket! A rocket capable of lifting the still fairly significant weight of a stripped down space plane. The second stage was the 'star drive", consisting of 5 standard fuel tanks and a standard rocket engine. Predictably, the rocket I threw together in 10 minutes was a bit underwhelming. So underwhelming that the original launch was scrapped to that the space plane could be reinforced so that it didn't flap its wings like a bird during launch, throwing the rocket around, and so that 3 large solid boosters could be added to give it a lift (because it was slow to take off). Once all that was cleared up, the rocket failed to achive orbit quite spectacularly. There might have been a way to get more distance out of it, but the plane was simply too heavy for the star drive stage to handle, and the first stage was not really large enough. I was able to get about halfway there, anf figured that was good enough and was off. Maybe 60-90km out, I realized I was't going to make it, and resorted to using the fuel bug which makes engines ridiculously efficient as the thrust goes down. I brought the thrust down to about 10% (which actually would have made the more efficient even without the bug). As low as I could go and keep the engines running. As I limped over the mountain wall to the second KSC, with a grand total of 4L of jet fuel left , I cut power and went for a glide, with a small engine burst to complete the landing. Apparently the second KSC is actually a floating hologram. It's not solid at all as I wound out when I tried to park on the rocket launch platform since the runway is missing. In an attempt to park, I folded the landing gear up, which was a mistake. Probably wouldn't have drifted away if I hadn't done that. It lost an engine when it took off down the slope, but that doesn't matter because the fuel tanks are bone dry. Now my time until 0.17 will probably be occupied trying to create an ultra light 2m style rocket, capable of getting into orbit and then coming back down in a targeted manner (will need to be able to de-orbit twice), and then building a larger rocket that can get that whole thing into orbit. I will then send a large command pod up into space, and land the smaller rocket in the second KSC where I will retrieve Jebediah, and then fly him back to the real KSC. At least the second KSC will keep him company in the mean time, since after I design my light rocket, I will need to learn how to perform a very precise landing. I'll have a landing zone with about a 150m radius to deal with, unless I want to walk really far. That or I will have to build a 3 man capable rover, and fly that over, so that I can transport jeb to the landed rocket, and then load the rover driver and Jeb into the rocket and take the trio home (tjhat rocket will have a pilot too of course). This might take a while, but it will be fun.

Yeah, the walls are 3 wide, and they have a hall inside where the windows are, and access to the top of the wall from every tower. When I use wodden doors, they are backed up by a couple sticky pistons that will make (in the case of the fort) a brick wall to block the entrance. In the interior, both the escape tunnel along the ceiling and the safe room are locked by steel doors. I'm not sure why the outer doors (especially the ground one) are all wooden.

You could always take a picture of your TV :lol: My only construction I would consider to be awesome would be my castle island. It used to be a hill. I leveled it, then built it. The wall is legit (pre creative mode, though I was using a program to add cobblestone to my inventory). The walls encompase 1.6 hectares of land. The netherbrick construction is the begginings of a house based off real life, but I think I need to rescale the foundations a bit because it got kind of wonky. Much of the castle is hollow, except for the tower, where the upper section extends down into the interior, and the throne room. Birds eye view: View from the tower: Throne Room: Then we have the two towers. The one in the background was my first tall structure (it hits the old 64 unit ceiling, same as the near tower which is a bit taller). Background is totally legit. The near one is actually obsidian on the bottom two thirds to make it blast proof. The stone is mostly a facade. Now, all my first buildings had panic rooms, in case the creepers were after me. The bunker tower (near one) was itself designed to be creeper resistant, but it still has a panic room on the 3rd floor (upper 3rd of the bunker part of the building). I might have gone a bit overboard: The far side of the room is the entrance, and was actually designed to be manned by up to 5 defenders (there is a gun port that is closed in that pic, by the window in the bottom left), and to not have blindspots. The only place that can't be hit is directly infront of the window in the bottom left. That single square should be safe. Then, running along the ceiling and down to the right side of the pic is the safe room for the fortress (that is in a bunker). That safe room has windows, but they can be covered up from inside to make it more explosion proof. Now that the new AI is out, I would actually like to make a rough duplicate of this fort (except with more depth as this one only goes back 10m from the front door) and test it. Ideally with another fort behind it, and then a safe room (I like making forts). And lastly, back over near castle island, I took a 3 sided valley, and put a roof on it to make this: Again, there is a fortress built into the far wall (this would be a wall I built along with the ceiling). The fort is far from done though. The bottom level still needs a self destruct, and the 3rd floor is non existant. The idea here is that monsters spawn in the dark, so I created a nice big cave for them to spawn in so I can 'study' them.

Well, not in theory, but in practice I am impatient yes. Also, I find that this might not come as naturally to me as I am accustomed to, so to be on the safe side I would rather review all the material ahead of time, so that I have plenty of time to figure stuff out. And I've never heard of being required to buy a text book. Yes, courses can be set up to make it exceedingly difficult to get by without (the biggest offenders are coursebooks, which are a cross between textbook and workbook, but these are pretty rare since they have to be constructed for a specific course), but I've never actually had to buy books. I normally pick up older editions for cheep. Most of the profs I have had will actively try to make it as easy as possible to use older editions, up to reserving a couple of the text books so that people in the course can sign them out for an hour or two (useful for checking the differences between editions in particular). The worst are courses that don't really use their textbook at all (though to be fair, a lot of the time your supposed to be reading it before class so that material isn't new). Always makes you feel like money wasted.

Nah, I've tried to teach myself programming before, and having everything in one place, start to finish, is invaluable for me. Also, I find books much easier to read than computer screens. I read books faster, more comfortably (since I have other options than 'computer chair'), and I can go back and find things faster in a book. If I used google, I would just be looking things up on an as needed basis, rather than sitting down with the book and reading as much of it as possible, and occasionally going over to the computer to test things out.

Got my textbook for computer science today (which is essentially Java for beginners). There is no way I will not be reading way ahead of what we are doing in class, though that might not be a bad thing. Definitely not going to absorb all of this on the first go through. They did make a nice choice with the text book. It is quite clear and thorough, which is exactly what I need. My only beef with it is that the appendices are all online only for some reason, so I will have to save them all at some point so I don't lose them (they are all PDF though, which makes saving them and printing them off pretty easy).

Rollar coasters are good too. I never got around to building one for myself. Then again, I have RCT3 which does a better job of rollar coastering, so I'd probably just use that anyway. I like how there are hills inside your building :lol:

That's pretty big in my books :lol: I have yet to build anything really tall since the sky was raised, and honestly, the structures I have that reach that high are really more like 30m structures, with a 30m tower on the top for a view and to be tall. I prefer the sprawling complex. Is the pyrimid hollow? That thing would have some pretty serious floor space available, or you could fill it up with your fortress of evil (everyone should have a fortress of evil. Or three).

The rain last night was...unreal (aided by my observing it while still at least 50% asleep). I've not seen rain that hard for a while. As a bonus, I still have my AC occupying and sticking out of the window near my bead, letting the sound of all the rain in (which is actually kind of nice), in addition to the racket of all the rain hitting the metal case of the AC itself (not so nice). I still managed to get back to sleep without much issue, but I seem to remember feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the noise. Perfect time of year for this kind of thing though, since its still pretty warm. The first class I had this morning though was suffering for it though. That room was at like 110% humidity somehow, but then someone noticed the windows can be opened and did that, and after a few minutes we weren't all sweating. And I just pulled my curtain back, and it doesn't even look real outside. The rain stopped, and apparently in the last 5 minutes the clouds got out of the way, which makes it like twice as bright out even with teh sun setting. So its brighter than its been all day, and the sun must be super red right now. Looks like dawn after a full moon, not sunset >.>

Falling asleep on a motorcycle is probably not optimal. Good call :lol: I watched all the TV today, and got almost nothing done. I feel like I am only just waking up now. Actually glad class is starting up proper now, because it will remove the option to waste a day like this. I prefer to be doing things.

I'm still baffled at the things I don't notice while dreaming, chief among them being 3rd person or out of body experiences (either I am seeing myself externally, or I am an observer with no body at all), and being other people. With a couple decades of being me, you'd think I'd notice being someone else. Also, I've noticed that while my dreams often struggle with textile simulations during dreams, they totally lack lack scents at all. I don't have a single memory of smelling anything in any dream ever. Another sense that is totally missing is balance, or rather the ability to lose it. Vertigo, dizziness, stumbling, or otherwise losing my balance are entirely absent. And of course time. The concept of time only exists in my dreams if I become lucid. I've also learned that apparently the part of the brain that handles pain is suppressed in a dream state, so it should be quite rare for anyone to feel pain in dreams. I think I have only ever felt pain in a dream once, and the half a second that lasted was enough to make me very grateful that it is very rare.

You can either do the url code manually in the code mode (icon in the top left of the post), or you can write out the name of the link, highlight it, and then click the link button and put in the address. Why you can't do the name and url at the same time is a mystery to me.

Except that in this case, there are reports of bugs with dawnguard on the PS3 I think. Or at least a lot of the people commenting there seem to be under the impression that the official reason DAwnguard was not released on the PS3 was that the larger saves it creates caused the system to shit itself.

I've been watching the skyrim news on steam, and was reading this article on Kotaku, and more importantly the comments section. Learned some things about how sony likes to build their consoles (and that probably all cross platform developers want to shoot them for it). I also learned that some people don't understand that the hardware inside a PS3 does not magically improve itself to keep up with technological developments, and that no matter how good your programming is, there is a finite limit to what the hardware can do. Not saying that Bethesda couldn't have done a better job porting the game to the PS3, but it seems like the most expensive to port to assuming you start with the PC version (because it is less like a computer than the 360), and the PS3 version has to be supported by PS3 sales of the investors will light someone on fire.

Actually, I think if people did get to watch themselves, you would see people botting in an effort to get onto the island so that they could record it from the bots perspective and put it on youtube.