Microsoft Strikes Back

I'm pretty sure we all know about the Conficker worm.

And we all know about Microsoft(right Mom?).

Put them together, and what do you get?



(No, that's not a serious pic, and I linked to it from Gizmodo by the way...its not my invention.)

"Is this guy for REAL?!!" you ask yourself, while laughing hysterically.

Nope, I'm just a figment of your imagination who writes this blog.

Anyway, those of us who use Windows Live Messenger have had to tolerate that piece of crap called the Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner anytime we transfer files. Scanning my files every time I send and receive them wouldn't be so bad, but it always seems to freeze my PC (and no, its not a memory or processing power issue, the OneCare scanner just sucks). Yes, that's right. The WINDOWS LIVE ONECARE SAFETY SCANNER sucks, and I hope it's mother gets run over by rabid, castrated, hellbound MOUNTAIN GOATS!!! (Yes, I know you can turn it off, and I did that, but I just had to get that out of my system :D)

So, I check out the BBC World News website today, and what do I see?

Well, I see Microsoft out to release FREE anti-virus software. Yup people, that's right, free like beer!! Its called Morro. And it won't come bundled with the latest version of Windows (probably due to antitrust concerns....you can't expect to be an evil megacorporation without some consequences now, can you? You should follow Google's example...lol). I wish them all the best with Morro, but I hope they remember to make it so that it doesn't piss people off.

Windows has actually been pissing me off a lot lately, and I don't know why. I suppose its WMS(think PMS style symptoms, but as it pertains to Windows...yup lol).

So will I actually be using Windows 7?

The answer is, yes, I will.

Why?

Because Windows has a monopoly on gaming. And as both a dedicated gamer and aspiring(read: wannabe) game designer, I have no choice but to stick with established traditions(at least until I get the resources to run a campaign to put Linux on top as the ultimate gaming system :D)

Anyway, onto less serious issues:

First of all, I've almost beat Devil May Cry 3. The final fight with Vergil is really difficult...and its pissing me off. But I will persevere (this is coming from the guy who fought Beowulf about 15 times lol).



I love this song. I feel like a complete dork for not remembering the name of this song. The instrumental is wicked, although the vocals are sort of crappy.

Next video:



Yes, Will Smith used to be a rapper,for the benefit of those of you who never knew that (this means a lot of people, surprisingly). This was like the cool song when I was in Grade 5 or so. (Its still cool to me, and you people can't tell me shit otherwise :P)

Here comes Men In Black...Galaxy Defenders...
With a theme song like that, it could have been a cool Saturday morning cartoon. In fact, it had a cool Saturday morning cartoon at one point. The score for it sounded pretty cool too. Here it is for your benefit:



Anyway, I'm done writing enough crap for now. Its 2:24, but I don't want to go to my damn bed. I think I'll go read some Questionable Content, and then go eat some Oreos, then vomit them all over the floor.

Goodnight World!!
*Exits stage left*

I Feel Like I've Been Here Before...ughh...

As you can see, if you scroll down to the bottom right corner of the page, you'll see my Irrlicht-Python integration tutorial. Its not the same as the original version I first posted, because I lost that in a tragic harddrive crash :).

I think its better than the original though, because this one is larger in scope. In the last one, it simply rendered a texture to screen using Python script. In this one, it does all of the following in Python script:

1)Creates a cube scene node.
2)Loads a texture.
3)Applies the texture to the cube.
4)Writes my name at the top-left corner of the screen.

I think it's a job well done. I'd appreciate corrections or improvements of any sort. I plan to do a second part to the tutorial which would cover the integration of classes. If all goes well, that should be ready within the next three days.

Anyway yeah, enough programming talk.

I've been working out a bit lately, but its not enough to produce any results within a reasonable time frame. I need to get intense with it. I'm going to start keeping records of everything I eat and how long I exercise for. I was reading somewhere, and it said that to lose a pound of fat per week, you need a caloric deficit of approximately 3500 calories a week or 500 calories a day.

I intend to reach this by skipping, jogging and weight lifting. I like dancing (despite not being able to do it to save my life), but I don't think I dance enough for it to be a worthwhile contribution to me losing weight.

I need to find the motivation to use this summer wisely. I should be able to lose about 10 or more pounds by the time I get back to school. Wish me luck people.

Tata for now,
Gavin.

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.

The New Year's Nerd

Well, I finally did it.....Sort of.

I've partially purged myself of Microsoft's sin. I've dual booted Ubuntu 8.10 on my computer. I still have XP (since most of the things I use are on Windows), but I have Linux. Gotta keep my options open, y'know?

Ubuntu is damn pretty. It proves that you don't need fancy hardware acceleration and transparent menu bars to have a good looking GUI. I love how Python is so tightly integrated with the Ubuntu shell. In fact, if it weren't for the games I have on Windows, I'd gladly switch to Ubuntu at any time. Now if only I had a credit card so I could donate.

I've grabbed most of the apps I think I'll need(namely Blender, The Ur Quan Masters, Anjuta IDE, plus some plugins). The only problem I've had so far is with the sound and getting a recent version of Flash Player, but its cool, I'll have them fixed WAAAY before the New Year.

Well, I most likely won't be updating tomorrow...so Happy New Year when it comes!!

Later,
Gavin

OMG!!! Really?

I don't believe it.

It turns out people actually DO read Happy Desolation. Wow. I feel umm, accomplished.

Anyway, I passed all my unit tests, but didn't really excel(except for Maths and Comm Studies). Oh well.

My exams started this week. So far, they have been GREAT!!! I feel great after leaving them because I know I've done well. I have Chemistry, Physics and Math next week. Guess which one I'm worrying about? Thats right, Chemistry.

I haven't sat down to program anything for a while. I'm going to do some stuff over Christmas so I don't get rusty. But, thats after I finish my Communication Studies Internal Assessment, Biology Meiosis models and some other thing I can't remember at the moment.

I'm just taking the night off since I'll have the weekend to study.

Thank you all my loyal readers. I love you all....sort of...not in a sick way..I think.

Later..
Gavin

The Nerd Report

I just could NOT less this pass me. I mean, how awesome is this??!!

Click meeee!!!

Cognitive computing huh? Well then, I guess I'd better reread my old,worn copies of Neuromancer and rewatch my rotting Johnny Mnemonic DVDs, because as soon as self-aware, thinking computers take over, I'm screwed. lol.

I have worked on a neural network simulation in C++, but its pretty useless as far as actual function is concerned. Just a bit of number crunching(but then, in the end, everything is).

Still, this is pretty interesting. Thank God my original ambition was to become a neurosurgeon. Chances are by the time I get out of medical school they're still going to be messing around with it. Maybe if I get lucky I can work with them. Who knows?

Lets hope this thing pans out.

Oh yeah, I have 5 unit tests next week. Luck, you say?

Ha, I don't need luck.

I need a miracle.

Peace,
Gavin

This Year's Darwin Award Goes To....The Khronos Group

Yann L Moderator Member since: 2/6/2002 From: Breizh
Quote:
Original post by speciesUnknown
Its nice to know why, but what concerns me is what do we do next? The only alternatives to windows PC's for gaming, without a more up to date OpenGL, is Cider on apple machines, or consoles. For indie game developers, this means XNA, therefore the Xbox. Either way, MS now get a further increased share of the video game market, to the point where the effect of free market competition is non existent.


But what can you do if the only real competitor kills itself with a stunt that would be the digital equivalent of a Darwin Award ?


I'll make the explanation of problem at hand short. OpenGL 3 has come out. Nobody likes it.

I guess that April Fools joke of mine now is an April Fools reality of mine. FUCK!!! This means I probably should have listened to Marc. In his mortal words, "Forget cross-platform, DirectX rocks." He was right I guess. Famous last words? If I get my way, yes.

First Bernie, then OpenGL. What will die next? Will Smith?

Well, I guess that DirectX reading up I was doing came in handy anyway. Now if only I could find a working .X file format exporter for Blender, I'd be a happy boy.

I really can't believe this. I was looking forward to objects.

Later,
Gavin.

My Internet Connection Isn't Working, Do I Need More Memory?

Really, if you read the topic of this post and thought that needing more memory was seriously the answer to that problem you need to turn off the computer now and go back to playing with stones in the mud.

My internet connection, despite recently being upgraded to 5 MBPS is so damn slow. My computer is also on its way out. I'm getting bashed in OGame. I had no fun last night. BBSpot took 10 tries to load. Deus Ex : Invisible War is annoying with all the running up and down.

I think I'm finished complaining.

I don't really have much else to say, apart from the fact that I have a MD5 loader which analyzes the content of MD5 mesh files. No rendering is done yet though. That's about it.

Bye,
Gavin.

The Latest From The I

I just decided to update the Source of War design document and show it to you guys...so, knock yourselves out. Remember, its MINE...and I will sue, it saves me the work of actually making the game.

Read this doc on Scribd: Source of War Design Document Version 1.1

I also decided to give up on OpenGL...or at least I'm having an existential crisis. I'm still going to do the Skeletal Animation Tutorial though, so don't worry, my fellow brethren who I betrayed.

Just because I'm giving up OpenGL doesn't quite mean that LunaLib is out of the picture. I'm still going to work on it. Its just that from now on, I'll make directX my favourite development platform.

As I said, existential crisis.

Too bad I don't really have much more to talk about, so...here's a Smash video:



and:

Later!!

Crank Dis And Nilwinds....

Just in case you're wondering, the second part of the title of this post is not what it sounds like when a pirate tries to pronounce my name. Actually, its the name of a new project of mine. Those of you who know me are probably thinking, "Great, another incomplete project." Actually not this time.

Why?

Because the resources will be as easy to obtain. I was planning to do a traditional 2D style Final Fantasy-ish RPG. Therefore for the graphics, I can use RPGMaker graphic charsets, which can be created at this site. All I need to do is the following:

1)Create a Map Editor and a map file format
2)Link a scripting language(preferably GameMonkey, to keep it simple).
3)Create the main game executable.
4)Rinse, wash and repeat.

Some of you may be wondering what the story will be like, as an RPG is nothing without a story. I won't reveal any details here, but I will tell you its based off a short story I wrote a while back(that no one has ever seen, or ever will see, or that will see not the light of day).

Anyway, moving on to topics that normal people can understand. I found the video below on youtube. Did you know that they have a whole youtube group dedicated to Crank Dat videos? Nah, neither did I.



That was hilarious though.

I go back to school on like the 8th or so of January, so I'm gonna live it up while I have my freedom. That means I'm going to play as many video games as possible!! I'm gonna play until my frontal lobe shrinks to the size of a peanut!!!

By the way, remember to add me on myspace at www.myspace.com/gavin468.

Merry Christmas everyone! Don't drink too much eggnog or you might explode!

Friday

Well its finally the end of the week, meaning its time to relax and play Doom 3. This week was hell. I had to rush a Biology project on Wednesday and Thursday night, but hey, it turned out pretty decent so HA! I haven't made any progress on my previous suggestion, instead I decided to delay that for a while and create a game engine for my personal use, using the knowledge I have gathered over the years.I want to write my own physics engine and use openAL and openGL. I also got a new graphics card. Its a halfway decent Chaintech Nvidia GeForce FX 5200, 256 MB 128 bit card. If it really works as well and has half the features it claims it does on the back of the box, then I'm set for the next 2.5 years. So I'm in a pretty good mood. I'll set up the card tomorrow.

Tata,
Gavin

Another Post

Well, I'm still fairly new to blogging, but I figured I should talk about C++(since I have nothing else to write).

*sigh*

C++ is a programming language. Nuff said.

Okay, I'll try and be more specific than that. C++ is an object oriented, general purpose programming language created by Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup in the early 1980s at Bell Labs. It supports features such as operator overloading, preprocessors, templates, encapsulation and inheritance.

So how does all of this mean remotely anything a man addicted to Pepsi?

Well, as an ardent follower of video games, I should point out that C++ is general purpose, for all the right reasons. C++ can be used to program everything, from operating systems to video games.(I really learnt it for the second reason).

Well, all that aside, Christmas is coming up really fast. I actually hope that this holiday drags along, as when I return to the loop in January, its gonna be nothing but work and sex. Ermm, well mostly work.

This Christmas, I plan to visit friends and family and brush up on my C++, and actually start a useful project. My idea was a COM control to replace Flash.

We all know Flash is good for 2d stuff, and 3d can be faked, but Shockwave is sorta slow and not used much. My idea was to create a COM control based off the Irrlicht Engine(http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net) and openAL. This allows graphics and audio to execute as a control inside a webpage. I was planning to use Python as a scripting language to control all this. I haven't come up with a name yet though, so for now I'll call it Cerberus. Imagine:


Oh well. Oh yeah, Lunatek is the name of my company. It currently has 3 employees. We mostly work on ...nothing. Oh well.

Pepsi calls, ADD is at my door.