Here's a temporary link to the folder: here. There will be links and thumbnails on files.snagger.org eventually but not until I fix my computer's random crashing situation. 
I never thought I'd say this at a school where I can easily avoid the sports-fanatic type, but wow. Sports are cool.
I just finished the season of intramural soccer tonight and I felt great after every game I played. Now that that's done, a bunch of guys in my quad have started playing touch football late at night outside. We get noise complaints, and there are a few great plays in every game, and it's an awesome time. It's so damn cool being quasi-athletic.
TV gatherings in my room are also awesome. They happen habitually twice a week, once for JBPH and again for South Park.
Guitar's still going well. I've found that Daughters is a rather easy song, so I'm picking that up along with a handful of other John Mayer songs. That's got my hands full for the forseeable future.
Then again, I also need to actually finish Max Payne 2 and start on Call of Duty.
And WTF happened to Phil. I swear that there is a God, because there's no other explanation besides his shittty luck besides the idea that the fella upstairs utterly hates him. First, a college student on scholarship working the graveyard shift at a convenience store is bad enough. Then he suffers a pain in his side and is taken to the doctor, only to be told that he's got a *load* of water in his spleen. Then they decide that his spleen hasn't been functional for most of his life, and the extra stuff isn't actually water but a second spleen ("Yeah, it's a set of tissues that are mimicking the spleen's functions," he explains) which is getting removed in the morning. So he's back in Dallas, having that done, and he's out of school for the rest of the semester. They're letting him off with dropping a calculus class and continuing the rest of his stuff normally.
The man just has god-forsaken awful luck.
And I've had some other smaller thoughts about my whole life direction thing. Andie, the new link over there, seems to have arrived at a great idea: start an intelligent version of Seventeen. She's perfect for the job, really. My latest thought has me coming back to video games, because they really seem to be my talent in life. (Not talent in that I'm God's gift to professional gaming, but rather a more analytical kind of talent.) What else is cool is that the academic world of gaming is growing - trade schools like Digipen have been up and running for a decade but true academic work is being put into it, mostly as offshoots of film departments and taught in the style of something like a combined film/literature course. SMU, for example, has just opened a game design school called the Guildhall, and it's run and taught by some of Dallas's best talent in game design (for no particular reason, Dallas came to be the capitol of PC game design, particularly shooters, in the 90s). I think I could stand to teach gaming. Grading papers would really suck, but hey, lectures would be awesome because I could just sit there and spout out all my theories of what makes great games. And those are the kinds of things I really think about when I'm in the shower and laying in bed at night.
I can't wait to play football tomorrow.
Blargh. I hate going a week without updating. But here I am!
-Halloween was a pretty damn cool weekend. Soph posted an awesome recount of the weekend's festivities over on pi, so go read that if you want the story. Pictures from the event, including pics from our adventures on 6th, will be posted soon. If they're not up this weekend, slap me and make me do it.
-I updated my box. Mommy needed a new one since the HD in her Gateway all-in-one failed. I wanted to get her one identical to mine, but alas, mommy is impatient and Fry's didn't carry the stuff. But they *did* carry the new Shuttle SB62G2, the one that has P4 + HT + dual-channel DDR400 support. So I'm now running that with a 2.8C (2.8GHz with HT and FSB800), and I shipped home my old case with a new hard drive and DVD drive inside.
-I have fallen back in love with guitar. Adam, one of the swank motherfuckers here in our clique, convinced me to bring down my guitar and amp on a trip home and play along with him (he plays bass). I acquired a John Mayer songbook and between that and our stupid Blink-182 jam sessions (so reminiscent of my last freshman year) it's quickly becoming an addiction. AND! This one goes out to the other JM fans (namely Sarah) - I'm learning Wheel. (insert smiley face here).
-I updated my box. Mommy needed a new one since the HD in her Gateway all-in-one failed. I wanted to get her one identical to mine, but alas, mommy is impatient and Fry's didn't carry the stuff. But they *did* carry the new Shuttle SB62G2, the one that has P4 + HT + dual-channel DDR400 support. So I'm now running that with a 2.8C (2.8GHz with HT and FSB800), and I shipped home my old case with a new hard drive and DVD drive inside.
-I have fallen back in love with guitar. Adam, one of the swank motherfuckers here in our clique, convinced me to bring down my guitar and amp on a trip home and play along with him (he plays bass). I acquired a John Mayer songbook and between that and our stupid Blink-182 jam sessions (so reminiscent of my last freshman year) it's quickly becoming an addiction. AND! This one goes out to the other JM fans (namely Sarah) - I'm learning Wheel. (insert smiley face here).
So I loaded up MP2 tonight (at last) and I've just now stopped playing, some two-and-a-half hours after starting. I finished Act I and I'm on the beginning stages of Act II.
Go play this game. In fact, buy it because even Rockstar deserves mucho dinero for this one, since it was with their encouragement and emphasis on production value that Remedy made this game one to remember. This game's going to get a full review once I finish it (which I anticipate will be sooner than later; reportedly this game's insanely short), but here are some first impressions:
-Visuals: awesome. The MaxFX engine is very framerate-friendly, so my relatively dated Ti4200 can run this game flawlessly with next-generation visuals. I'm amazed at the texture resolution (they've done it again!) and the character modeling and animation are second only to the most recent Tom Clancy games.
-Production value: holy. fucking. shit. Rockstar's done it again. This is the first game I've actually played that actually drops the F-bomb (Kingpin did it first in 1999). The attention to detail in this game is second to none. Remedy thought of absolutely everything in this game.
-Humor: The original Max Payne had a few moments of sheer hilarity (the V-trip scene, for example - "Max, you're in a computer game!"). MP2 cuts out all the cheese (including the scriptwriting) and the game makes fun of itself (particularly its predecessor) in nearly every level. And yes, Lords and Ladies makes its triumphant return. Is this not enough? My expectations are high for the rest of the game - Act I alone qualifies as Game of the Year. Expect a full review in a few days.
-Production value: holy. fucking. shit. Rockstar's done it again. This is the first game I've actually played that actually drops the F-bomb (Kingpin did it first in 1999). The attention to detail in this game is second to none. Remedy thought of absolutely everything in this game.
-Humor: The original Max Payne had a few moments of sheer hilarity (the V-trip scene, for example - "Max, you're in a computer game!"). MP2 cuts out all the cheese (including the scriptwriting) and the game makes fun of itself (particularly its predecessor) in nearly every level. And yes, Lords and Ladies makes its triumphant return. Is this not enough? My expectations are high for the rest of the game - Act I alone qualifies as Game of the Year. Expect a full review in a few days.
1. Fire (the Snapple drink) is quite a wonderful thing. Tasty AND keeps you awake. Oh man. It's how I'll be surviving Biology today.
2. I have discovered a recipe for ersatz Bawls. It's got none of the guarana or caffeine, but all the tasty flavor. Here's how it works: 1 part Red Flash (or Big Red might work, but Red Flash is the stuff we have here)
2 parts Sprite And don't forget to serve it on the rocks. Try it. I've found it's good for when I need a break from the ordinary. Oh, and the season premiere of JBPH is tonight. If you know not what that is, then you are worthless (watch fox at 8 tonight)
2. I have discovered a recipe for ersatz Bawls. It's got none of the guarana or caffeine, but all the tasty flavor. Here's how it works: 1 part Red Flash (or Big Red might work, but Red Flash is the stuff we have here)
2 parts Sprite And don't forget to serve it on the rocks. Try it. I've found it's good for when I need a break from the ordinary. Oh, and the season premiere of JBPH is tonight. If you know not what that is, then you are worthless (watch fox at 8 tonight)