Moving the Blog....

Hi, I'm just announcing that the blog has been moved to here. That's all.

From the Diaries of a Mad Scientist

It's been a while eh? For once I actually have a fair amount to talk about. My two friends and I decided to share our Steam accounts, which has ended quite well surprisingly. The only thing I got out of it that I'll actually play much of is Nexus, which I'm enjoying so far. Ah well, I won't have to get anything for a while, considering I donated Bioshock, all the Half Life games and GMod. I'm hoping Mirrors Edge will come out on Steam, cause I know my friend will buy that.
In other news, I applied for a job at the local library. 100 bucks a week, 12 hours a week. The job title is "library page" whatever that means. According the the paper it entails running around doing odd jobs the library has for me, mostly helping out the technophobic old lady librarians get the computers to work. Not bad at all. I'm hoping they at least call me in for an interview.
Also, my friend and I have taken up Parkour. For those of you who don't know, Parkour is a form of free running, or rather free running is the show offy version of Parkour. So far we've just been invading the local park and running aroud vaulting off of it and such, while inspired little kids stare in awe, and their parents glare. I myself am practicing rolling still, and can't seem to do it right, even though I've been watching a bunch of videos on how to do it and stuff. Ah well, practice make sperfect I suppose.
One last thing: Loco Cocoa got published on Albinoblacksheep! Woooo. That's it for now.

So much to do

Well, the weight of all the stuff I've halfway put off and halfway wanted to pursue but couldn't is catching up with me. I've got a hunk of a big ol' math textbook to do, which is not exactly the most exciting, and therefor slow progress. I also intend to finish some games I've been working on as of late. My recent purchase of Bioshock isn't helping get things done, but it IS taking my mind offa things, which helps...sorta. Bioshock is an amazing game to say the least. Rapture is by far the best designed environment I've seen in any game. ANY game. The splicers and big daddies and such are also amazingly well put together, leaping out at you from random shadows, or taunting you while hiding on the ceiling where you can't see them. But enough Bioshock raving.
I tried my hand at composing some stuff with FL Studio the other day. That was a fun little adventure. Needless to say it wasn't exactly good, but I'm still proud. I think I'll try some more stuff and see what I can get going. If I make anything of decent skill I'll upload it and post it here.
Also, in entirely unrelated news: THE POTATOSHEEP FORUMZ GOTZ A P0ST! Dear god I am amazed, after months of no traffic, a post! Goes to show how popular my site is <_<. Oh well, it's something. Anything is good for me.
Ah yes, I saw The Dark Knight the other day. It. Was. Epic. The Joker was a badass, whoever played him did a superb job to say the least. I was kinda disappointed that Twoface only made an appearance for the last 5th or so of the movie. He had some awesome special effectness goin' on with his half burnt off face. To anyone who hasn't seen it yet: get off your lazy ass and see this! It's WELL worth it!
Well that's all for now. I'll be postin' my game when/if it gets done.

Risk v2.0

Well, my grandmother is gone. It was an interesting visit to say the least. One very good thing that came of it however was my acquisition of Artrage 2, as a gift. From what I've used in it so far, it's a truly great program. I sketched a weird robot crane (bird) thing the other day, which I like.
On a gaming note, I picked up the Necron Codex for Warhammer 40K at the local geek hobby shop/comic store. The little stories they have in those things are hilarious. I'm looking forward to playing the game a lot. Once I get enough to buy an army and crap at least. Also on the tabletop gaming front: I'm creating my own Risk game. It's not exactly Risk...at all...but it's a world conquest type of game, but much different. I'll post some pictures when I'm done with it.
This has been a weird summer to say the least, weather wise anyways. Yesterday we had an epic rainstorm. It filled our sidewalk gutters with streams at least several inches deep, and flooded a few driveways. Dang fun stuff. Big storms have always been a love of mine.

Well, that's all for now.

A Plague Doth Cometh

So my grandmother is visiting from Baltimore. That's interesting, most certainly. We went to dinner tonight which hilarious and extremely dull at the same time.The dull bit was that it took 3 hours, and the hilarious bit was when she asked the waiter oh so politely to "Please ask those people in the table over there to be quiet". It was all I could do to contain my laughter as he stared at her for a few seconds, muttered something incoherent and walked off.
Anyways, good news in the gaming industry. It looks like games are picking up in style again. Mirror's Edge looks freakin' kickass. I'm definitely getting it if it comes out for computers, which it will according the rumors and such. My theory about game development is that one day the graphics and physics and all the programmed things won't be able to get any more realistic, so game designers will be forced to come up with better sotrylines and new ideas for gameplay to compramise. I'm halfway looking forward to that day, and halfway dreading it, because it will mean that there will no longer be much of a need to upgrade computers to deal with new graphics and engines, because all the ones out will require about the same amount of power due to being as lifelike as possible, which means that all the computer company's revenue will drop significantly. Anyways, that day is pretty far in the future, as well as near impossible to happen, so I'm not worried too much. Also, there's several sequels coming out for games I've enjoyed extremely: Portal 2, Starcraft 2, Bioshock 2 and Dawn of War 2, which is my most anticipated. Feast your eyes on some trailers:




Also, here's a little loop I made in an attempt to revive my animation skillz, or what there is of them. I don't think it's too horrible, but it could still use work...

Suggestions on it anyone?

Well, that's the end. What now?`

TOFA round 1 is closed. Most of the animations are awesome as heck. Cataclysm Studios has released it's first piece of crap, lets make some cash, type of game: Trumble. Fun stuff. We're working on Hot Cocoa at the moment. One of those "climb to escape the lava" type games, only you're a marshmallow escaping cocoa. Weeeee.

In other news, I'm becoming increasingly pissed off at my lack of animation skill. I guess that's what I get for getting so in depth into coding. Blarg. I've been trying to practicing animating and drawing lately. Maybe I'll improve. Got my cast off too. It's hard to get used to using a finger after not using it for a few weeks. Ah well.

Oh yes! An AWESOME Gish 2 trailer is out now. SOOOOOO epic looking. I cannot wait.

To the Dungeons With Him

Well, the 4th has come and gone, and so have the fireworks. My friend and I made an epic tank battle video, shattered a glass bowl accidentally, made a metal bowl red hot, and set off fireworks in a kiddie pool. Daannnnggg good stuff. Here's the video:

Also, the fireworks show got FP'ed on ABS, so I'm happy.

I haven't been playing many non flash games lately which is sad, and I've had an urge to have a tabletop RPG tournament or something...Something is wrong. Ah well, I downloaded On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness demo, which is AWESOMELY HILARIOUS. Thrusting robots are da shniz.

Hmm, not much else to update one besides the creation of Cataclysm Studios, the company Slouchingtiger and I are founding. Our first game shall be Trumbler, a crappy game to just say we have something published. Should be fun though.

Watch TOFA progress is making me increasingly annoyed. Ah well. I shall practice for failing next year. Woot.

I also discovered an AMAZING AS tutorial blog. It's helping a lot. Alright I'm off.

Waiting Waiting Waiting

Weeeeeellll, I beat Half-Life 2 Episode 2 a few days ago. Needless to say I am pissed at the ending. Blarg. They left me in a goddamned garage with a helicopter, a robot, a dead body, and a random person who's been stalking me all of HL2. And did I mention we're about to leave on a groundbreaking mission to a lost ship thingy? Hmm, I should probably be less addicted to games. What the hell, at least it's not drugs or something. Episode 3 better come out soon...
In other news, my hand is recovering. I can sort of type. Woo. I'm going back in a week and a half and getting more X-rays. Radiation...weeeee.
Anyways, my friend discovered how to make Actioscripted cameras in flash, and needless to say, we're working on a sidescroller. Sort of like Mario, but with puzzles, better graphics and all that good stuff. I'm basing the art style off of Peashy. That should take skill...Anyways, I'm not going to be sharing it with teh netzors much, due to wanting to keep good momentum.
I'm also regretting not joining TOFA (Tournament of Flash Artists) this year. I really need to practice drawing/animating. Blarg.
Fireworks stands are open now. Woooot. Sadly though, I don't find myself into them as much this year. Too bad. Well, I'll put on a good show on the 4th hopefully.


I had a dream my town was invaded by Japan....and they all had on white kimonos....and I had to BMX style bike down our ditch bed, and I hit one of them in the face with my back wheel in mid air as he tried to nunchuck me...God I'm weird.

Anyways...that's it for now...

Just in time

Well, it looks like I actually have something non-stupid to whine about now. My hand is broken. Apparently hitting your hand on a door frame accidentally breaks them these days. They just don't make em like they used to. All I can say is thank god for one handed typing skills. Ugh.
I'm going back Wednesday to see someone more specialized. Apparently I might need surgery:'(. God I hope not. That would well and truly suck....


...


I heard that one rickroll song at the hospital today. That was weird.

NO IT CANNOT BE

I am in an utter state of doom. Just several minutes ago, while calmly sitting at the computer I had an urge to play Morrowind for the first time in ages. So I closed out of all my stupid little distractions, and got up to get the disk. Then trouble began. At first nothing was wrong, when I realized that the disk was not in it's case, I simply dismissed it as being in another of the numerous disk trays that litter my desk and the area around it. However, I could not located it in any of them, and I mean any. So here I am, Morrowindless...D': Maybe I can play off of the expansion disks.



Listening to public radio can get hilarious. You'd be amazed the crap they play there. I mean, I heard this on it one day:

Anyways.........The weather is still screwed up as HELL. There was snow covering the mountains yesterday. All of yesterday. And it's been raining for about a week now. Not that I'm complaining. I LOVE this kind of weather.

Well, I shall be off now.

I do believe it's pineapple

Blarg. I've been sick for a few days now. It stinks. I think it's some sort of sinus infection but I dunno. I'm gonna go see the doctor tomorrow...at 9:00....D':
On another note, I ventured to the depths of our local mall today with my friend to meet a friend of his. It ended up that we got attacked by about 10 people he vaguely knew while eating lunch. It was rather terrible. Eventually we managed to get away, and walked to the other end of the mall, where we discovered to my horror, shock, and utter unbelief that the arcade had been replaced with *shudder* Wet Seal *gag*. HOW COULD THEY HAVE DESICRATED SUCH A SACRED PLACE?! HOW?! I've attended birthday parties there!!! Goddamnit!! GRRR
Anyways....I must be to bed before 11 tonight, so i shall go and squander my time with Half Life 2.

Ach Hans Run!

My day is made. THE MOLE IS BACK! I seem to be the only one who remembers that insanely ridiculously hilarious show. For those of you who don't know The Mole has been gone from the air for about 7 years now, for whatever reason. It's a show about random whiny, competitive idiots trying to gets lots of money, but The Mole tries to sabotage the group. Fun stuff. And I found out that you can stream it off of ABC.com. Hoo rah.
I swear the weather is going insane. It's summer, and IT'S BEEN RAINING FOR A WEEK! Heavily too! Usually by now the temperature is over 80 and everything is parched. I guess I can't complain.

Blaah de blaahhhhh

Maybe I should get a sponsorship for my games....Assuming I could. Maybe I should start animating again. I dunno.

Nothing else to report captain...

....

over and out or whatever.

I Remember the Good Ol' Days

Blaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh....it's summer break, and yet, I'm bored. I'm ashamed. Terribly ashamed. I mean, it's summer! If there was an 11th commandment, it would be Thou Shalt Not Be Bored During Summer Break. Grr. Anyways, I saw Reign of Fire last night for the first time since it came out. Beeaauuuttiful movie. Simply amazing. In a hilarious, dragon packed way. Always fun.
I also got a pair of Ozma Five headphones from my friend who had extra due to shipping failure. Damn they are AMAZING. What with the sweet sound quality, and ear drum preserving technology, they're all I could ever want for headphones. Not to mention Half Life 2 with them is KICK ASS! Anyways...I have to do graduation tomorrow. Someone save me. I don't want to give a speech in a goddamned over heated gym...and then have to sit there for 3 hours watching slideshows and crap. Ugh. But then I'll be DONE! WOOOOO.
Alright....that was a gloating whining waste of a post. I"m off now...

Haze and Such

Well Haze was interesting. I like it quite a bit, but it wasn't really worth all the hype. Then again, what is? My friend and I got stuck on one level by respawning facing the opposite direction of where we were supposed to go, and trying to go back through the level. God we felt dumb. All around good game though. Gameplay is awesome, and I really like the cutscenes for some reason. And god the Mantel troopers are hilariously arrogant. BOOSH!
Anyways, I'm still working my way through Half Life so I can play Half Life 2. I'm a purist when it comes to chronology. I must say, the game doesn't get dull very fast. I'm not bored of it yet, and I've been playing for like 3 weeks now. Fun stuff.
I got a few more levels done on my new game. Should be done soon. Also, I figured out my next programming/animation project. Phase, a sort of combination of Shift and Drag the Dot. Shouldn't be too hard to program. I feel like I'm forgetting something..OH YEAH. I'm gonna start another 4th of July collab on Albinoblacksheep. Feel free to join anyone, I'll make the topic now. I think. Hopefully we'll get FPed this year.
I feel like sketching concept art. I'm off.

Back Again

Weeellll, I just got back yesterday from a week long trip to the west coast with my class. It was surprisingly fun actually. No one ended up screaming at each other, crying, or dead, so I think it went relatively well for my class. The first day we took a nearly twelve hour drive to a campground, where nothing of real interest happened. We stayed there a couple of nights, then headed off to Bellingham, where we boarded a schooner and learned how to sail for a few days. Fun stuff. Nothing of much event happened there either, besides lots of line hauling and stuff. Oh yeah, and I met someone who left Christianity because he had to pray every time he masturbated. That was weird. On the last night we played "honey I love you", which for those of you who don't know is a game in which the main goal is to make someone laugh. It ended rather badly with a friend of mine getting into crab walking position in front of someone and screaming "SHUT YOUR FACE AND POLISH MY VAGINA" much as a military commander would to a grunt. The teacher wasn't very happy.
Enough of that though. Yesterday I downloaded the Crysis demo, but only got around to playing it today. My god. It makes me so happy, having a computer that can run that game on medium settings. The game itself is AMAZING to say the least. And it runs at 30+ FPS on my computer. Hoo rah.
In a bit I'm gonna go buy Haze with my friend for his birthday. That game looks awesome. Like Crysis, but not...woot. Can't wait to fight with Nectar. Muahahahhaahahahah.
Indiana Jones 4 came out today didn't it...As much as I hate the company for trying to get more money out of Indiana Jones, it's still Indiana Jones, so I'm gonna go see it sometime. I can't believe they still have Harrison Ford playing him. Anyone else would fail.
Anyways, I'm off to play Half Life for a while. I really need to do some work now and again....

So Close, and Yet So Far

Summer is nearly here...Ack. I can't wait! The insanity, the adventures, the sleep! The FIREWORKS! Muahaha.
Moving along...I got the Half Life Complete pack on Steam the other day. Every single beauty created in the Half Life name, along with Team Fortress classic for some reason. God I love Half Life, it's so....classic, and puzzle based, but it's still got plenty of shooting, explosions and violence. I am content, for the next month or two, for games.
Oh man oh man....I toured the school I'm going to next year on Wednesday. It actually made me look forward quite a bit to the academic stuff...But to my horror I found that the dozen or so people I've met maybe once before in my past, and never wanted to meet again, have come back to haunt me. Goddamnit...
Anyways, this has been a waste of a post...Whatever.

"Liver? Liver!? Who gave me LIVER again?!"

I should really start doing something productive. I worked a tiny bit more on the game I'm making, but that's all I've done in several days. However I have starting working on random weird projects that don't involve the computer. How odd.
Well alright there are two projects...
One: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/arcana/1569
I made one of the big ones of those things with all my left over out of date cards I have lying around. I'm gonna make 20 more of them and connect them so I have an even larger one. I need a life.
The other project type of thing is building a Spidohedron, I'm gonna give it to my school's math room so I leave my mark. Maybe I'll fill it with explosives...Spidohedrons aren't as hard to make as they look. You just need 8 hexagon shaped sides and you're good to go. Here's the little crappy, vague tutorial I made on how to make a hexagonal side thing for them.




They really are quite fun.
Anyways, I watched Serenity again last night at my friends with Whattodowhenboredomstrikes and another person. It rocked. I love that movie. It's so damn hilarious! And makes NO sense if you haven't seen Firefly. I can't believe they dropped that show. Argh. Sadly when we were watching it, we discovered that the two single most awesome scenes in the movie were covered in a .1 centimeter deep .5 centimeter wide ring gouge around the edge. Just when the movie was getting awesome too.
God DAMNIT. I have to write my stupid graduation speech soon. It's due Wednesday. I really don't like giving speeches...
I feel like crap. Too little sleep. I'm off to brighter pastures. Or the sofa to sleep.

"You have to admire a man who believed in freedom of choice. Sadly he didn't believe in angles"-Lord Vetinari

Yeah yeah, I know it's been a while. As usual, nothing has happened really though. Besides conferences. Those were fun. and bike bus walk week, which of course automatically meant bad weather...
Conferences went interestingly well. The art teacher gave everyone a "give more effort" sentence or two on their evaluations. I dunno why. I got the usual "you're doing great in the classes you like, and the classes you hate have mutual feelings for you" talk. Nothing else too interesting about it.
Hmm...
My class is going on a field trip for a week on a boat off of the west coast near Seattle. That's probably gonna end badly, with someone being thrown from the boat or something...by Court Plumage, the most evil, destructive, malicious biotch ever to live. He's cool.
I went up to my friend Zach's cabin yesterday for the night. We didn't exactly take advantage of the wilderness....by staying inside playing internet games. But we did go down to the still frozen lake and eat ice and fall through the ice and get soaking wet up to out knees several times. I say that getting out in the fresh air counts twice if you suffer for it.
I really should get to work and update potatosheep once in a while. Consistently too. No one ever submits anymore though...goddamn them...unless they submit more:D.
Ugh I need to stop typing in short paragraphs. And write stuff that is semi-interesting. What the hell. Here's some screwed up pictures I drew.




Maybe I should get more sleep...
Goddamn...Starcraft 2! Damndamndamn!! 7 months away!! Argh. I cannot wait. The hilarity! The aliens! The actual 3d images unlike the first one which just uses 3d drawings on a 2d plane. It's gonna be sooo glowy and green and blue! And awesome!
Corporate America is probably chuckling at me right now. Spore should be fun too.
Well, this disjointed, scattered post has come to an end. Good day.

Curse You Carpal Tunnel!

Today was a great day in the "getting old classic games that I haven't played in at least 5 years" book. In other words, I woke up this morning and had an urge to bike out to the local Bestbuy and purchase a copy of the Starcraft Battle Chest. So I did. And DAMN does it bring back the memories of 3rd grade. God those were good times. The good old 2d landscape with 3d sprites and glitchy AI, how could it get better?
Also today I put the Slouchingtiger/Potatosheep forums back up into working order. About time...
Not much else to report, besides my addiction to minesweeper, which is rather out of the blue. I beat the maximum size map with 100 mines on it :D.
Damnit, I can't remember the password to the Sussex blog. Either that or it doesn't work. Ugh.
Anyways, I'm off.

And They Cheered, For The Pudding Had Made A Great Speech

Huzzah. My 9600 is here! And in perfect working order and all that too. I installed it yesterday without any hitches besides accidentally uninstalling the nvidia motherboard drivers...it's fixed now though, so I think I'm good. The card itself is INSANE from what I can tell so far. At least compared to my old card. My old card ran at about 135 idling, and the new one runs at 120 ish, and only got up to 131 after playing through the beginning of Bioshock. Woot. Also, with the old recommended settings on Portal, I get 160-220 FPS, which is awesome, not to mention it looks SO much cooler. In mildly unrelated news I watched The Triplets of Belleville last night with Slouchingtiger and two other friends of mine who had never seen it before. God I love that movie. It's like something I'd think up, but weirder. Which is saying quite a bit. Fun stuff.
Nothing else to report for today, besides I feel rather tired due to getting 6 ish hours of sleep.

Society Is But Agreed Upon Insanity

Sorry it's been so long since a post. School and school work have been gnawing away at what little free time I have these days. The main event since my last post is the beginning of the Unofficial Sussex Blog, that Whattodowhenboredomstrikes (slouchingtiger) and I are running about the school we go to. So far it's not much, but we're still getting it up and running. Also I ordered my 9600 GT on Sunday, and it should get here tomorrow. Muahaha. Hopefully I won't make my computer explode or anything installing it. According to the reviews it runs cool and well. Woo.
Just tonight Slouchingtiger and I biked over to the local "health/organic food stuffs place" in search of cake to boost our artistic talent. Sadly, there was only mocha cake, which we weren't in the mood for. We wandered the store for a few minutes looking for another sugary treat until we found ourselves in the bulk section of the store. Just as we were giving up hope of finding anything, my eye alighted upon a small plastic container filled with bulk items of some sort. I walked over and opened the lid....and what did I find? BULK CHOCOLATE BARS FOR 3.89 A POUND! Heck yeah! Together we bought about 2.25 pounds worth of chocolate, getting odd looks from the cashier. Good stuff, good times.
That's it for now. I'll update tomorrow once I get the card installed, assuming shipping isn't delayed.

To Be Honest Is To Make Enemies

Well this has been an interesting week at school. Science class has jumped up like a newly animated zombie from it's usual stupor of no work and assigned us about 4 different projects that actually require work and have to be done or it'll be bad. Thankfully I've only got two of them left, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue. Also this week I decided to start boycotting the local bakery (for another local bakery of course, always buy local if possible...) because the one I'm boycotting is snooty, has bad service and last, but most certainly not least, would not pledge to the school fundraiser I'm doing because they needed two weeks to review the form for donating!!! This is quite ridiculous because they are a small local bakery with only one shop, and about 10 employees....they also kept mixing up the orders I wanted. Ugh.
In other news I watched Hot Fuzz today. It was the most magically amazing movie I have ever seen. An old lady with a shotgun was taken down by a cop over a stone wall in the face...fun stuff! It also had a goose in it, which made me happy, not to mention the ridiculous amount of explosions and shooting done by people with sun glasses. God I love American films some times.
Nothing else much to report, besides I'm seeing Obama speak tomorrow at 10. That should be interesting. I must say I hate politics though. Hmm...OH YEAH! Thing Thing 4 is out. The BEST game designed in flash EVER. Running around with various high powered weapons and a lead pipe....that's my kinda game! Also I now have $2.22 from all my ad stuff....not much, but it's 2.22 that I didn't really have to work for xD.

I Won't Go Back! You Can't Make Me!

Damn...spring break is drawing to a close. It was a good one though. I discovered a bunch about mochiads and Kongregate ads and stuff...earing about 1.50 :P. It's not much, but it's getting going. I submitted my Fun With Gravity game to Newgrounds and actually got good reviews, which made me happy. It got about 450 ad views from that. Muahahaha.
Hmm...oh yeah. A good local bakery brought back their Sardinian Roll, which they hadn't been making for a while. The Sardinian Roll is a delicious little roll a little bigger that a pomegranate, stuffed with feta cheese, marinated artichoke and a few other mysteriously tasty ingredients. I love those things. I really like them also because they sell them at a local health food store that's right by my school. The teachers/parents there take us pretty much every lunch so we can buy lunch there. Fun stuff. Anyways I can't think of anything else that's happened to me this break that's too exciting, so I'll be off.

Easter Eve....Or Whatever

Yay, it's nearly easter. Tomorrow I shall chow down on chocolate rabbits and play Stratego or some such. Today I dyed eggs with my parents and 9 month old sister. We also had several easter egg hunts which was quite entertaining.
Also today I filmed the following out of boredom and stuff:


I personally like the egg the best. It only takes three frames, or a tenth of a second, to smash. I really want to get one of those 120 FPS cameras now for stuff like this...except they cost a bunch. Oh well. While I was filming that I also found one of my super old ninja Lego figurines half buried in my back yard. I always wondered where it went. Ah I remember the days of Legos. That was fun.
I finished my game today too, and am fairly happy with the results. I'm going to submit it to Albinoblacksheep and Addictinggames. I shall be off now.

It's Gonna Burn Up If Ya Don't Stop It!

ARGH! Today I came to the revelation that I've been spending at least 3 hours a day on the computer for the last...4+ months...AHHHHHHHHHHHHH! SOMEBODY SAVE ME FROM MYSELF! The computer has trapped me into it's web of addiction...In my defense I use the computer mainly for animating/programming/social stuff so I guess it's not bad use...overuse though. Also today I made this game. Use space bar to jump and then space bar again to deploy your parachute in midair. Try to get high points by deploying your chute late as possible! The height of the building is randomly generated though so watch out.
Tomorrow I shall go sledding.....or something. At least get out of the house! Away from the trappings of technology. Damnit I sound like my parents.

Indiana Jones' Pope Beatdown

The above is a doodle I did the other day. I'm rather proud of it, it being one of the more realistic things I've drawn. I based it a bit on this.
Also today I made a Game Name Generator. It's quite fun to mess around on. Not much happened today, besides my math teacher freaking out at me for missing a field trip for LA
we had yesterday (I decided to take the day off after Mathcounts :D). The field trip didn't seem that important considering it was a nature poetry field trip.....I'm not sure how there can be a field trip for something like that but whatever. I really didn't want to go anyways cause of several reasons: 1) I really don't like writing poetry. 2) I really don't like listening to poetry
. 3) I really don't like sharing my work (which we had to do) especially if it's poetry. Anyways, school again tomorrow...In other words me being nauseated by how little we learn and how inapplicable what we DO learn is to real life and trying to avoid my annoying kindergarten "little". Bigs/littles is a system my school has set up for the purpose of "bonding" and "teamwork" and "learning to run like hell when you see your little" along with "being forced to participate in annoying activities and help little kids and getting yelled at for not being cheery about it". It's where everyone in the school is paired up with someone either younger or older than them (big kids get little kids and little get big). The bigs and littles are forced to work together on stupid activities at random times around the year. You can call me a cynical bastard and say that the little kids look up to me and all that, but all that I myself remember of being a little was hoping my big would get an incapacitating disease for the year so that I didn't have so see him or her.
Alright that's all for now...I'll be back whenever.

"Sometimes I think grownups only pretend to know what they're doing"

Ach...The ants have begun their yearly invasion of our house. I think they've got a nest in the ceiling above my bathroom/bedroom, cause that's where they keep appearing. I usually end up killing about 8 of them a day. Not fun stuff. This morning though we put an old trash bag over the fan in my bathroom, which is where we suspect them of coming from. Hopefully it'll help.
Yesterday I got back from the state Mathcounts competition, which is essentially a convention of math geeks who compete to get trophies and stuff. I placed 7th in the state, and got a massive trophy, which made me feel pretty special. However I have my suspicions, along with the two coaches, that they somehow screwed up grading my test. We think this because usually on state level tests I do about 18 problems, and get at least 15 right. However at the competition I did 18 problems, and felt quite good about how I did on them, but supposedly only got 9 right. However suspicious this is, the most we can do is write a letter of complaining suspicion, and even if they find I should have gotten 3rd or something the most they can do is write a letter back saying "We failed...don't say anything to any of our sponsors...we can't actually change the placings so go away." Ah well, I'm content to get a trophy at all.
In other competition related news our school had it's second annual "Battle of the Bands" last Friday. Battle of the Bands at my school is essentially the graduating class playing badly rehearsed and occasionally listenable to songs that they've made up. I was in one of the bands this year...and my god, the song we had was bad. By bad, I mean that if you heard it on the radio you'd turn it off fairly quickly, maybe wonder how the heck someone could write that, but that'd be it. The other two bands (we have a small school) had songs that were apparently even worse, because my band, by some miracle, won. The band that took second in my opinion should have been third. They had two of the girls in our class who can't sing that amazingly singing notes 5 times too high for their voices, along with mildly disturbing drumming and a piano and guitar that didn't fit in at all.
Progress on Ninjava: Just about none. My friend and I came up with a sort of storyline for it on the way back from state. Here it is: You are a Ninja, but your awesome pimpin' clothes got stolen by jealous people who wanted cool clothes. You've got to retrieve you awesome accessories, which give you powers as you go through the game. We were thinking something like three worlds, one for each item, and the final boss of each one being the person who stole your item.
That's all for now, I'll post something next time anything interesting happens, which isn't too often.

Caffeine Assassin

Sorry it'd been so long since an update, but I've been quite busy working on my new game. If you're going to play I'd suggest downloading it (the link at the bottom of the page) so you can run it at a decent FPS rate. So far I'm quite happy with the game, I worked out all of the glitches I think and the animation isn't TOO choppy. It annoys me however that it runs at least two FPS behind what it should (what it does on my computer rather than in the browser). The full version should be done by the summer, hopefully sooner.
In unrelated news I went downtown today to check out a computer chassis with my friend who's considering getting a new case. The shop we went to I'd never been to before, but I liked it. It was the kind of place where they sell actual computer parts along with computers. The chassis he was looking at ended up costing 175 dollars and weighting a huge amount, so he didn't get it.
Hmmm....what else...Ah yes! It's that time of year again, yes spring, which means that the 7th and 8th graders of our school join up and laugh at the 6th graders going through sex ed. Good times, good times. God I love my school...well, the parts that don't involve class or teachers. Unless of course the teacher is our awesome jedi social studies teacher, who I swear is obi-wan re incarnated....or born from star wars or whatever.
That's all for now I believe. I'll probably be updating within a few weeks when I feel bored enough to actually write on this thing again.

And What Do You Have To Say To Your Competitors?

Well well, the 9600 series nvidia card is out as I learned today. I personally love it. It's not an AMAZING card, but it functions quite well and can run all the games on the market. One of the best things however is that the price tag is a mere 179.99, which makes me very happy considering that I have about that much money tucked away in my money-hiding crevices around the house for just such an event. The stats on the card aren't the most impressive I've ever seen (512 GRAM and a reasonable amount of processing power) but it's a step up from my card for sure, which is the good ol' 7600 GT with 256 GRAM. I'm probably going to go on a Newegg.com shopping spree once the warrantee on it runs out (if I modify anything in the computer it voids it, so I'm waiting for it to run out until I mess anything up...cause by then I'll have to pay for it anyway).
In other news I can't wait for this fall. Besides the fact that I'm going into highschool, which sucks, a lot of stuff I've been waiting for is coming out. The two main things are Spore, which doesn't look like a game so much as a "build and control awesome looking cartoony beasties" which is just as fun to me. Also, the 3rd Abarat book is coming out, which makes me jump like a small child who's been given too much sugar. The 3rd Abarat book has annoyed me for a while...considering the last one came out THREE YEARS AGO! Apparently Clive Barker has been writing other stuff and fine tuning the story for Absolute Midnight (the 3rd Abarat), but still, three years.
Anyways, I'm going to go immerse myself in reading the wonderful backlogs of Penny Arcade, one of the few comics that can remain funny while using profanity every other word. Good stuff.

Gack Gorble Snork

Yeah yeah I know...It's been too long since an update. I actually have a good excuse though...and that is that I've had the flu since Saturday. This was actually quite a stroke of luck considering school has become ridiculously tedious over the last month with only the exception of social studies (I got the whole week off school due to being contagious). I've sat around in general and played a crapload of Portal. Speaking of games, I also got to play Bioshock on Saturday, which I loved. It's the most amazingly entertaining game ever, just about all the environments are fully destructible, you can change a bunch of attributes and the like on your character..the list goes on. It's also ridiculously creepy, violent and scary, which makes it all the more fun at 2 am. On Sunday I sat around being sick and avoiding homework, putting it off for Monday cause I knew we had a three day weekend. As it turns out it didn't matter cause I skipped Tuesday of school as well, and Wednesday and now Thursday. I'm not going tomorrow either, I need rest even though I'm feeling a bit better. So all in all I got a week off of school...man am I happy about it. Though I do have to catch up on all the work I missed over the weekend....ugh.
I finally got the beta for my game up on Potatosheep.com today. It can be found at www.potatosheep.com/game.html. It's not much but it's a good beginning, with the physics and most of the glitches and stuff worked out. I'm going to be adding levels and stuff to it hopefully soon.
Another event this week was my 24 year old cousin stopping through town with two friends for a couple of nights. They're on their way to San Fransisco and decided to stop in. It was the first time I'd seen my cousin in at least a few years, so it was a grand time had by all to see him again, even though I was sick for most of his visit.
That's it really for now, if anything amazing comes up I'll post on it or something...hopefully soon.

The Times of Time...

I just realized today how dang long it's been since I updated this thing. I've been up to quite a bit though, so I'll attempt to catch the people who actually read this (if there are any) up on the last few weeks.
Lesse...I guess the first thing was the starting of the potatosheep forums. My friend and I collaborated, or rather he did a crapload of stuff I didn't know how to do, and we got the forums together. They were amazingly a minor success. I got several submissions, and they're still coming in. I'm overall quite happy with the forums.
Another thing that happened: I started an awesome game collaborationish thingy with Slouching Tiger: NINJAVA! The super beta beta beta version can be found at www.potatosheep.com/game.swf. It still has a HUGE amount of glitches that need fixing which I'm currently working on.
I can't really think of anything else to say at the moment, though I'm fairly sure there's stuff that I'm forgetting...I'll try my best for at least every other day updates for a while.

Like an Unstoppable Wolverine

It's not often that one finds oneself sprinting down a darkened street in the middle of several miniature tornadoes of snow at 1A.M. I, however, did find myself doing just such a thing not but a few minutes ago. It started with my dad walking in from the yard at around midnight and commenting on the raging storm outside. I had not heard anything of the storm as of yet, and so thought it was just a normal old snow, or something of the sort. I decided to go and have a look sometime soon, but was soon wrapped back into the computer and it's addictions. Eventually, at about 12:45, I dragged myself from the chair and shuffled to the door. I unenthusiastically twisted the knob and pulled it open. What I beheld was a true spectacle. Trees writhed in the wind, while bestial clouds of snow stalked through the streets. The wind picked up anything in it's path and threw it aside without effort. Snow blew eerily like flowing water in the light of the street lamps. All I really saw at that moment however was lots of wind and snow. This of course made me quickly grab my coat and boots (though not gloves) and run outside. Nothing of event really happened, besides huge gusts of wind nearly lifting me from my feet as I stood in rapture in the middle of the street, cackling with mad delight at the miracle that is the weather. Then, however, as I was standing there, I looked down the street for another gust of wind coming. What I saw however was what appeared to be a wall of solid snow gliding down the street deceptively slowly. I squinted at it now quite believing my eyes. Then it hit me. Shards of ice bit into the flesh of my face and hands, but I was determined not to give in. The onslaught probably only lasted about ten seconds, but it felt like an eternity. When it passed I followed the drifting remains of floating snow it had left behind down the street. After that I ran up to an extremely exposed area of ground. It was at the top of a hill that lead to the sidewalk along a main street in my town. The wind up there was so strong that when I jumped, I was blown backwards down the hill. After all these adventures I went inside and partook in a particularly delicious cinnamon toast and cocoa.
So that concludes my story of tonight, and the massive snow storm. I'm looking forward to possible sledding and/or loafing around tomorrow.

Curse You 343 Guilty Spark!

Ack. I feel dead today. It might have something to do with the 3 hours of crackball (a variant of dodgeball) I played yesterday, and the snowball fight....and the mere 7 hours of sleep I got. Oh well, it was worth it I suppose. Ah yes, I haven't explain the barbaric ritual of crackball yet have I? Well I shall.
Crackball at my school is rather like a religion. Skipping playing it in our minuscule gym at lunch is a bit like blasphemy. It's essentially dodgeball with a few minor variations. The goal is the same though: hit people with the ball. Whenever we play I can just imagine some aliens spying on us for a sort of national geographic documentary of humans. "Here we find a group of the creatures partaking in what appears to be some sort of barbaric religious function. Possibly a sacrifice."
Crackball isn't quite as barbaric as all that though. We've refined throwing a plain red ball with all of our force to an art. Dodging and catching too. Tricky spin moves, jumping off of the waist-high trim around the edges of the gym, diving behind people and catching the ball while horizontal in midair, it ends up looking rather like something out of the matrix.
The other day our rapist/crack addict PE teacher let us play in class a little bit. He decided to join in too. I should add before I continue with this story that it is the goal of my friend Zach and I to be absolute spazzes during class cause it's our last year at the school and we hate the teacher. We have been sent out of class and all that stuff several times and gotten the "I need more respect" lecture about 20 times. So far, our mission is a success! But back to the story. So the teacher decided to join the game, and he obviously hates the heck out of me. So he wings the ball as forcefully as he can straight at my upper chest/neck. It's a direct hit, with a massive TWACK noise I feel the ball literally bend around my torso, then shoot off into space. "HOLY CRAP DUDE!" yells my friend drew, "that sounded like a frickin' CANNONBALL!" After about half an hour I discovered a huge red mark all across my torso. Good times, good times...good times to get revenge that is. Muahaha.
Onto a different topic...I beat the Halo campaign yesterday. Woot. Now I'm going back through and trying to beat it on legendary. By the nine divines (random gamer geek joke) is it hard to beat! The strategy involved is quite engaging however.
I have nothing left to say really so I'll upload a doodle I made with the Artrage 2.5 demo. That program rocks.

HA! Take That You Sick Flood Bastard Child of Science and Satan!

This week I went back to school after a shortened holiday break. It was undoubtedly one of the worst experiences I've been forced to endure in the last month or so...It's also why I haven't updated in several days, too busy with schoolwork and the like. Ugh. School is evil. Well, Halo came today in the mail. I enjoyed a few hours of absolute mayhem and violence after getting home from school. I'm playing through the campaign at the moment on normal, then I'll go back through on heroic and legendary, woot. In other random news here's a doodle I made a while ago and still haven't uploaded as of yet.

It's sort of based on all those cool desert drawing in Calvin and Hobbes, for the spaceman spiff stuff. I like the way it turned out actually, one of my better creations in a while.
With the resuming of school, I have also resumed Mathcounts, a sort of math competition for middle schools held nationwide. It's extracurricular so it's afterschool. Yes, I am willingly devoting my time to doing math after school when I could be having fun...I know I'm insane. It's not easy either....we have to do extra homework and the like for it too. It's not exactly that I want to do it...it's more the glare of death our almost 70 year old danish math teacher gives me if I even suggest not doing it. She scares me sometimes...