Unfortunately...I'm Still Alive

Well, I'm here. I'm writing up a PowerPoint presentation to use in my speech for my Communication Studies IA(are you regular readers sick of those 3 words yet?)

The Devil(colloquially referred to as school) has been keeping me down as of late. The good thing is, all the stress of schoolwork has driven me to find good music to listen to while toiling away in the labour camp. So without further ado, I present my top 20 songs for the past month and a half:

1) One Four Love Part 2 - Mos Def and some other black guys
2) Down Goes the Devil - Channel Live
3) Lock It Up - Channel Live
4) Alcohol - T-Pain(yeah...the fact that I'm listening to him surprises me too)
5) In the End Remix (I have no idea who did this song, but it sounds GOOD!!)
6) It Was a Good Day - Ice Cube (I vaguely remember bitching about the virtues of this song in a previous blog post.)
7) Rob and Sherri - Matthew Dear (This is really creepy if you're not used to techno... lol)
8) Satisfaction - Benny Benassi
9) Bitch/Technologic Mix - Benny Benassi
10)Session - Linkin Park (If I remember correctly, this was on the Matrix soundtrack.)
11) Clubbed to Death(Kurayamino Mix) - Rob Dougan (Another song from the Matrix soundtrack.)
12) Still - Common, Talib Kweli and Gangstarr
13) Rhymes and Ammo - The Roots and Talib Kweli
14) Sea Weeds - Captain Dan and the Scurvy Crew (pirate rap is teh HAXXORS!!!)
15) Mad Izm - Channel Live and KRS One (All time favourite people!!!)
16) Sex for the Sport - Channel Live (Another all time favourite of mine...seriously.)
17) Homicide Ride - Channel Live (Yeah, I have a thing for them.)
18) Burning and Looting - Bob Marley and The Roots
19) Come Fly Away - Benny Benassi
20) Baby You Got Me - Erykah Badu and the Roots

Time for some video love kids:

Don and Sherri by Matthew Dear


Yo Ho Ho By Captain Dan and the Scurvy Crew


So...what else have I been doing that is uncharacteristic of 16 year old kids with CAPE exams?

Well for one, I've been playing Devil May Cry 4 and Left 4 Dead like crazy.

Another thing is that I've been investing in an eye patch and a peg leg so I can join Captain Dan and the Scurvy Crew after I leave school. It'll probably be the only future I have ahead of me...kidding...lol.

Yeah, that's about it.

Peace out people,
Gavin.

Something Not Related To School At All

Have you ever noticed that while computer graphics are getting better, the illusion of realism is spoiled every time the scene starts to move? That question was aimed at gamers really.

Today, I was googling up on some DirectX info. I saw some pretty photorealistic shots, but realized that in the videos, as soon as there was motion of any kind, the realism disappeared.



DirectX9, despite its age, is still pretty damn capable. DirectX 11 also seems to be shaping up pretty well.

If you've noticed, I haven't used the word OpenGL yet. I still can't get over what the Khronos group did. Maybe 3 years down the line, they'll come up with something cool, and I'll look at openGL again. I'm considering installing Vista over XP on this PC, but I don't know. Maybe I'll just wait for Windows 7 (which by the way is coming soon.)

I LOVE UBUNTU!!!

Maybe I said that before, maybe I didn't, but its the truth. It may not be uber-pretty, but its cool. The only thing is, I don't really have that much of a practical use for it, apart from having an OS that not many other people I know have. Dumb reason, right?

Yeah, I know.

I got an early build of the Linux source code (as in version 1.0). I don't plan to build my own distribution, but I was just curious as to how the code looked. Its yucky, but understandable. After a few books worth of assembly tutorials, that is.

Next thing to rant about, Alpha Centauri.

This game is about 10 years old by now. It doesn't matter, its still deeper than most strategy games out nowadays. It has that Civilization feel (its made by Firaxis, the same studio that does Civilization) but with a sci-fi twist. What I love are the quotes, I always feel smarter for listening to them. lol.

I don't particularly think they should try to make a sequel, they might ruin it. Lets hope that Alpha Centauri always stays cool.

Peace to the People,
Gavin.

Woohoo!!! Level 60!!!

No, I haven't actually wasted that many hours of my life on a certain RPG. Rather, this is my 60th post on Happy Desolation. As you can see, I decided to celebrate with a new blog layout(Shit, do I know how to party or what?). Anyway yeah, its back to school for me.

School is not treating me very well at the moment. Nor am I treating it very well. As such, I propose to hack the school's network.

Ok, fine...maybe thats a bit too extreme. Still doesn't make it any less fun though. lol. What I really want though, is for June to come. By June, this damn school should be just a distant memory in the haze of cigarette smoke, liquor, loose women and computer parts. Oh well.

CAPE Unit 1 (thats the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Exams) is coming up within like 2 months, so just like during CXC time, I won't be blogging as much. There might also be a surprise coming up for all you loyal readers.

Write to you guys later!!

Microsoft Word 2007 is a B****

So kids,here's my latest bitching topic. I'm working on my Chemistry project which I got for the holidays. I'm on the second to last topic, so I'm almost finished. Out of force of habit, I press Ctrl+S to quick save on a regular basis(like every 10 minutes or so).

So I press it, and it brings up the huge "Save As" dialog box. I decide to refrain from cursing at that point and just save over the document, which would have the same effect as the quick save. It's located on the base C:\ drive. I click the button. The little green bar on the status bar at the bottom of the screen fills pretty quickly, then it appears again. About 85% of the way through it stops and tells me there is an error in saving chemproj.docx. I curse.

My little brother hears me and laughs.I decide to try it again. Hmph. Same f**king thing. I decide to outsmart Microsoft and copy the entire document to an empty word document and saving it. Didn't make a scrap of difference. I got an error there too. Shit. I do a bit of googling for a solution, since I typed a lot and I don't want to have to retype it.

I see somebody talking about disabling their firewall and antivirus. I'm skeptical, but desperate, so I try it. Nope, no such luck.

I resign to my fate of losing the 3 paragraphs I wrote. I close it, and give up for a few seconds. I decide to open a blank document, type some crap, and see if it will save. It does. I decide to try saving my project again. It doesn't. >_<

I scream, and try the tactic of copying the whole document to a blank file again. I save it to My Documents, and somehow it works.

Its pretty damn weird.

Right now however, I'm just thankful that it worked. I'll figure out the issue later. There is no way I was planning to lose 3966 words of information that was hell to find.

*Sigh*
Oh well. I just had to let it out. I also did a Twitter post about it. For those of you who don't know, besides being an aspiring computer programmer/neurosurgeon, I also want to be a PUA. You can see the Twitter status update on my other blog.

Thats about it still, so I'll write up something some other day. Wish me luck on the project.