There's summer in the city

What a week. My folks came over on incredibly short notice - not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but it made for a bit of a busy week. Do some chores and clean the room and get some flowers for my mom's birthday and a bunch of other odds and ends. We did some shopping and bowling and went out for dinner and spent some quality time together. Which included four rounds of five-pin bowling. My first round was a pathetic 83, two rounds at 127, and the final was 143. Which is good, I was aiming for 130 and the last round wasn't going so well. It was down to the last frame, and I used up a spare to pick up 20 points. Woo! I usually get 160 Wii Bowling, though.

iPod's been giving me mega trouble over the past two days. I did some browsing via the wifi, and turned it off at a half-charge and set it down. I came back to it a half-hour later, and the device was warm and the battery had dropped to 10%. I went home and plugged it in for an hour, and the battery didn't budge at all. I figured I'd follow some advice and do a restore/reinstall, and then all hell broke loose. The first two tries crashed the device - it turned off and would restart five minutes later in recovery mode. I tried restoring off of the old OS2 file I had on-hand, and then it'd crash and give me an 'Error 13' part way through the restore. I looked it up and that turned out to be some kind of connection issue, either with the port or cable. I tried my backup cable in another port and it installed fine. I left it on all night and in the morning the battery was charged up fine. It worked all day today without issue. Then about an hour ago, I plugged the new cable into the old port, and... The instantly dove from about 40% to 15%. I plugged it back into the other port, and it's once again charging fine. So I think, I think that this is all due to a crappy USB port. It doesn't explain the original battery drain, but... Hopefully it's related.

Oh, and hardware issue #2: The overheating graphics card. I took it into work and blew out the dust with the air compressor. I think I cleaned the heatsink and fan out pretty well. It was tricky to do - the compressor is pretty powerful, so I tried to keep the whole thing at arm's length from the nozzle so I don't damage any components. Anyways, it worked fine. Peak temperatures have dropped from 105c down to 80c. A significant chunk, methinks. Grid now works fine. I guess it's a good thing I decided to play that game on a whim and discovered the issue when I did. It hasn't manifested itself with any other games, but I surely would have fried the carder sooner than later had I not got to it when I did.



Lastly, I've decided to quit watching Joan of Arcadia. I was watching it with some friends and fell behind a few episodes... And I just couldn't be bothered to catch up. It's so teen-angsty and predictable. While some of the characters are written with some decent nuances and small-touches, the God portion is the only creative element of story-telling. It's such a... Brain-dead show to watch. So boring and under-stimulating. Feels like a total waste of time.

But I just started watching The Wonder Years (yaaaaay for torrents! I dunno where else I would've found it). I probably haven't seen that show since I was 12-years-old myself, and you know what? It holds up remarkably well. I'm about a quarter of the way through the second season, and I'm sucking it up. The narrative is so fresh, and the story-telling so unique and perfectly executed. And yes, I'm well aware that I'm replacing one teen-angsty show with another. But there's actual value to this one. It really isn't like the other assembly-line shows that are all over the place. It's just so original, the perspective is unique, and the delivery is superb. I'm truly enjoying it. I should probably wait until August before I download the other four seasons - I've been using up a lot of bandwidth this month. And, in my defense, a LOT of it has been legit (Yaaaaay Steam!)



August, ugh. What a scary thought. I don't care much for the warm weather or The Month That Follows. It's going to be a looooong 36 days.
-Cril

Summer in the city
Means cleavage, cleavage, cleavage
And I start to miss you
Baby, sometimes
I've been staying up
And drinking
In a late night establishment
Telling strangers
Personal things

Summer in the city, I'm so lonely, lonely, lonely

Regina Spektor - Summer in the City

Death of the Weekend

I hate weekends. They're never long enough, and the seldom feel... Satisfying. But I did some laundry, tidied up my desk, made a photo dump, wrote another angst-y rant, finished a game, watched some TV and a movie, and troubleshot (troubleshooted? troubleshat?) some computer issues.

Ah, PC gaming. When you work, you're so satisfying. And when you don't, you're absolutely infuriating. In this particular case, I played some GRID for the first time in... A month or two, and I've been getting this periods where the game just slows down in the middle of a race. Five or six times, for a few minutes each. The game files didn't need to be defragged, a driver rollback didn't help and neither did the following rollforward. I think I'm having heat issues. If I recall correctly, my video card (KFA Galaxy 9600GT) is a naturally warm piece of hardware, but it shouldn't be peaking at 105c. That's friggin' HOT. So I took off the side of the case and used to vacuum to de-dust it a bit. I was able to play for a lot longer before the slowdowns started happening again. But they never used to happen at all, so... Maybe I need to take out the components to properly clean them. Or maybe my card is on its way out. But really, what do you expect when the manufacturer doesn't even have a website? Something tells me this may not be a quality piece of equipment. I shoulda gone with EVGA, they did alright by me last time.



I watched two movies this last week, actually. National Treasure 2 was... Wonderfully predictable and shallow. A few semi-humourous bits, but as a whole it was completely forgettable. I won't even mention the gaping plot holes and idiocy in some parts of the logic.

Then I also watched Flight of the Navigator, a kid-friendly sci-fi flick from 1986. It was a movie I probably haven't seen in... At least 13 years. We used to watch it when we went to visit our grandparents - there was a decent video rental shop in town (something we usually couldn't get to without a 40min ride in a bushplane), and I remember us getting it on at least two or three occasions. Often by request. Unfortunately, it hasn't aged well. The movie is SUPER corney and lame. I will say two things, though - the premise was really intruiging and the visuals were good. Part of the movie revolves around a robot alien merged with a spacecraft, and it was done with *gasp* actual props. Yeah, it wasn't mind blowing and it looked flimsy, but I'd take that over most of the CGI we see nowadays that litter the sci-fi genre.

Nurse Jakie is a good show, but they try too hard to make the main character flawed. I'll tolerate it for the time being, we'll see if/when I give up on it.

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic was a fun game. Neat universe to explore, and I really like how they made the environment useful in combat. It had a pretty wide array of ways to approach a situation, and the RPG-style classes were implemented well. For as much emphasis as there was on melee combat, the system sure feels a bit unpolished. Something in the way that enemies don't get knocked back or stunned by your blows, and can attack while you're attacking. And part of the AI scripting became a little obvious after a short while. If you charge at them while ready to strike, they'll attack at the exact moment that you reach them. It's okay though, the magical weapons were neat and some of the spells were cools. Visually too, the art direction here (and in a few other areas) was really solid. Really captured the atmosphere well.

I need to get some more mapping done this week. I'll be damned if I don't get that map done (at least an initial version) over the summer. I blame all the photographying for distracting me.

Gotta register for class. I start school in a month and twelve days. Sigh. I can't believe so much of the summer is gone, and how little time is left in my free life.

Here, this should help with all the crap I've been spewing lately.



Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go find something to settle my soul for the upcoming week.
-Cril

I said I'm sitting here watching
Matchbox hole in my clothes
I said I'm sitting here wondering
Matchbox hole in my clothes
I ain't got no matches
But I sure got a long way to go

The Beatles - Matchbox

Red Stain Blossoms

This is going to be a rehash of a certain past post, so feel free to call it quits here. Loads of angst-y, pointless and hypothetical questions and premises below.



I am getting really freakin' sick and tired of my desperate need to be proven right and worth while. Why do I ask someone for their suggestion, just to turn around and fight them on it? I have this burning craving to challenge someone and to come out on top. Seriously, what the hell? There are 6.7 BILLION other people on the planet. Why am I so fixated on the concept that my point of view matters more than any of the others? It's such a futile effort to stand up and scream "I'M SIGNIFICANT!" when, well, I'm not.

I need to get it into my head to just shut up, suck it up and leave things be. There are a lot more people with opinions in this world, and who's to say that the way I perceive the universe is relevant? Besides, the sheer ratio of them to me makes it pretty clear that I'm not as special as my subconsciousness wants me to think.

I just get so wound up in the need to assert an opinion and have it validated that I can't step back and realize that am not the end-all or be-all of... Anything. And once I discover what I'm doing or if someone calls me on it, like today, I get introverted and introspective and don't want to be around anyone until I have it figured out and fixed.

But something tells me there ain't much fixin' that can be done for this flavour of problem. Maybe I'm just a selfish, self-absorbed guy, plain and simple. And the way I try and troubleshoot that is to be alone, so that there isn't anyone to be selfish to. I don't want it all to be about me, dammit. But for some reason I can't unhook my mind from this snag that what I think somehow takes precedence.



One more time, with feeling: "I am not special. I am not a beautiful or unique snowflake. I'm the same decaying organic matter as everything else."
-Cril

I wanted to explode
To pull my ribs apart
And let the sun inside
Red stain blossoms

Elbow - Ribcage

Eve

It's late, and here I am sitting down to pound out a few hundred words. Knowing how slowly I write, I should probably be on my way to bed, but... I don't want to.

It's another 'eve of something I don't wanna do'. You know how it is. For whatever reason you really aren't looking forward to tackling tomorrow, and so you stay up late to put it off. And then you're sleep deprived, and end up taking on whatever it is without you're full mental faculty. Sigh, good times. But for the inquisitive among you, no, it's not anything significant. It's just something... I don't wanna do. Not a big deal in any way, I could probably even get away with skipping it. But instead I'll suck it up and do it. Besides, to quote comic-strip fatherly advice, "it builds character."

It's been a pretty uneventful week so far. The bosses are going to be out of town for the next week or so, so work is a bit quieter. We got a long list of objectives we want to tackle in the mean time, though. Aside from that... I've been doing a little bit of reading, watching a little bit of TV, playing my way through Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (which actually isn't too bad). I've been drawing, listening to and sorting music, and now I'm writing. I was hoping to add photography to that list, but the gods of the postal service obviously have other plans for me.

Oh, and I've been mapping. Not that much, actually - the three or so hours I spent on it today is all I've done over the last week and a bit. But it's coming along. I have roughly 70% of the level layout and populating done, and after that I need to set up navigation, scripts, and then balance, balance, balance. Mind you, I am modeling my first level after a real location, so it could just be that it's a natural zombie strong point and there's not much I can really do to make it more challenging. But it's coming along. I even have a few odd plans to expand on it, but that's quite a ways off yet. Here's some of what I have so far:



For as intuitive and well put together as Hammer is, once you have a populated area it really becomes difficult to tell what's going on. It certainly gives me new respect for professional level creators, and makes me wonder how they approach it.

And, of course, the obligatory sketch. Sometimes I get in a groove where I pound out three or four or six or eight decent, solid sketches in a row. I am not in this groove right not. I haven't been too terribly pleased with anything I've done over the past two weeks or so. But today I made a piece referenced from some concept art for Batman: Arkham Asylum. I think it turned out pretty well:



Of course, comparing it closely with the original the proportions aren't right, the colours are a bit out, and the expression isn't quite faithful. But on its own... It's probably the best thing I've done over the last ten or so sketches.

You know what I absolutely love? When you listen to a song a bajillion times over, and then *snap!* the lyrics just come together. It may be the chorus or a line or just a single word, but all of the sudden you have clarity for a single portion of the song that brings the larger meaning together. The entire meaning and message just make so much sense, you can't believe how well it fits together. You wrap yourself up in the melody the first few times, but once that magical key is discovered it's like the song lifts you off your feet. It such an exhilarating sensation.

I thought that the word 'mirrorball' was just some sort of gibberish, but it came up in conversation the other day and I found out that it's like one of those disco balls. Elbow's Mirrorball goes "You make the moon a mirrorball / The streets an empty stage / The city's sirens, violins / Everything has changed" Ah-HA! How did I not know that before? It just works so well. It's so obvious how it impacts the remainder of the song, I had no idea what I was missing out on. I love the imagry it creates.

In Gordon Lightfoot's If You Could Read My Mind (I was actually listening to the Scala & Kolacny Bros version when I made this discovery), "I'd walk away like a movie star / Who gets burned in a three way script / Enter number two / A movie queen to play the scene / Of bringing all the good things out in me / But for now love, let's be real / I never thought I could act this way / And I've got to say that I just don't get it / I don't know where we went wrong / But the feeling's gone / And I just can't get it back". I'd never quite made the connection between the first and last half of the stanza. In particular, I always though "let's be real" was a cheap shot in an arguement and that "I never thought I could act this way" reffered to doing things you didn't anticipate. But, really, it's reffering to a layer of surrealism. "Let's be real" becomes a lot more literal, and "act this way" refers to pretending and not just doing something. Well, not necissarily. The genius of this whole verse is that these meanings can go either way.

It may have been poor perception and understanding on my part, but once I realised the different angles to interpret these lyrics... It makes the song(s) that much more... Incredible. I don't know why, but I find it to be truly fascinating and exciting when I make these connections. It's like I completely rediscover the song.

'Eve of something I don't wanna do' anxieties aside, I feel a bit wound up at the moment. I feel like I need some release, but I don't know what form that'd come in. I feel like there's something buried deep inside that I need to express or let out. Like I said, I don't know what it is. Maybe I just need to sit down for an hour or two and really indulge my introspectiveness. Gah, I wish I knew what it is I need/want to get at.

In other news, if someone finds a used 50cc (or less) scooter for $1000 (or less) in the area, let me know. Now there would be something fun to do for the summer.

Sigh. I miss my car.

Well, it's time to suck it up, stop stalling, go to bed, and face down that thing I don't wanna do. Like I said, I don't fear anything bad happening or worry about some horrible consequences. I just. Don't. Want. To. Do. It.
/blargh
-Cril

It's been a bad day
Please don't take a picture
It's been a bad day
Please

We're dug in deep the price is steep
The auctioneer is such a creep

The lights went out, the oil ran dry
We blamed it on the other guy
Sure, all men are created equal
Here's the church, here's the steeple
Please stay tuned - we cut to sequel
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down

R.E.M. - Bad Day

Tick, tick, tick.

It's a Sunday night at... 9:50PM. It's cloudy outside, almost like the sky wants to sigh and let out a torrent of rainfall. Hm, that sounds therapeutic.

I actually *gasp* logged into Facebook this last week. I generally don't do anything else but reply to two or three friend requests from people who obviously have the wrong person. I highly doubt that Mr Spalding from Colorado can tell that I'm such a fantastic and unique personality to befriend solely based on my sparse profile.

Among the plethora of other invitations (legit friend requests, a bajillion invites to a bajillion pointless apps), I took a quick scan over the news feed that displays all the updates from friends. Apparently an past friend of mine from high school is engaged to the chick he's been going out with from the same period. Good for him. It intrigues me that all there was to give it away was the small "Andrew _ is now engaged" status update. That certainly is one helluva way to announce something so significant in such an insignificant manner. It sounds like something I'd do.

Moving on, it's been a pretty uneventful week. At work we're doing a major reshuffle and reorganization, so it took two long days to get most of the work done. I'm sure it would've been three long days, but we had Friday off in lieu of Wednesday for Canada Day.

Which means that I'm currently staring down the remaining two hours (10:02PM) of a long weekend.

I wish I could say that I did something fantastic with the three days. But I didn't. I drew and read and gamed and napped and mapped and made music and walked and biked and stood outside during a thunderstorm. And I did every single one of those things without talking face-to-face with another soul.

So there you have it. My friend announced he's getting married, and I spent a weekend completely void of any company. Unless you want to count the cats romping around the house or the digital escapades shared with someone on the far side of the continent.

Anyways, I need to put said felines to bed, fold and put away laundry, brush the teeth, sync the iPod, and do all those other things necessary on a work night.



10:11PM. Tick, tick, tick.
-Cril

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Pink Floyd - Time