Dev out

This is Chris… signing off.

The trip will include the following travel plans:
Texas -> Amsterdam -> Paris -> London -> Dublin

Why have I code-named this trip Euro-Tex? Because a good friend of mine (see previous article about his visit) visited in 2009 and this time not only is he going to revisit… but I am going to pay a visit to HIM in Europe too! Hopefully…

Anyways, prepare to be bombarded with a huge blog article very soon where I will brief you on my current status and events.

Au Demain,
Chris

You should keep a watch on that profile, because soon I’m going to be adding more C# tutorials now that I’m getting back into game design.

More importantly

UNCHARTED 2: AMONG THIEVES IS THE GREATEST GAME EVAH!!!!

Well not Evaaaahhhh…. but it’s up there for sure. It’s amazing, if you have a PS3, why are you wasting your time reading my blog? Get the hell out of here and go play that game NOW. I don’t care if you cant afford it, steal it, do SOMETHING. It’s too good to pass up.

Look forward to a video review of that game… if I can set it up… it is a GREAT GAME… I can’t stress that enough.

Well that covers the blog title eh? Oh you want to hear more about me? Certainly. Well lets see, I recently took a liking to Transportation Tycoon deluxe (I made a video about my day playing it on my youtube account). I need to workout more because my physical fitness level is pretty bad right now I think? I have been listening to a lot of anime theme songs lately and I have read over 70 manga books in the past few weeks… thats about it right now. Check back later?

Cheers,
Chris

So my main focus of research at the moment is Tales of Pirates. I have some ideas for some events, let me know in the comments if you like any of these(they are all for Tales of Pirates):

• Once per month(1st Friday of the month): Players may fight a team of 4 GM’s with their team of 4. They will be rewarded 100000 gold each for every GM they are able to kill. If they kill all of them they receive a bonus 1 million. Limit 2 fights per group.
• Once per week(Sunday): 10x EXP + Special Vendor that sells special items for Sunday deals.
• Twice per day, 2 days a week(Saturday and Wednesday): Hexathon!!!!!! (Research it)
• Once per day: Special Forging vendor opens and sells Gems + Refining Gems at half price.
• All the time: Vendors that sell specialized items at regular price.
• Twice per day:Monsters spawn in an area, these monsters drop very valuable but useless items that are good for gaining gold.

Email me at admin(at)thepctakeover(dot)com if you are interested in being a GM.

Cheers,
Chris

Ive got tons of goals to juggle… prioritizing is a bloody mess, and to top it off I’m getting no sleep at all!

My plans involve the following I hope to accomplish throughout this year:

1. Achieve all A’s (4 A’s 3 B’s so far)

2. Write at least half of my book.

3. Become a woopyland crew member or find a way to keep WL alive. The crew member part is important, some damn bastards are really getting on my nerves telling me what I can and cannot do when THEY themselves don’t even deserve to be in the crew by common standards.

4. Get whoolie and I’s podcast rolling. I’ll be making an article about that tomorrow I think.

5. Create a small game with the UDK, perhaps get the “mygame” site up and running (see last article)

6. Make more youtube Tuts.

7. And finally… dear god… finish woopy tower defense.

Au Demain

-Chris

Site 1: My book – The site I will be pooling all the data on my upcoming novel series I plan to write.

Site 2: My Game – With the release of the UDK, I have gone hard to work on the idea of game design once again.

Check them out… I’ll try to make a new article soon…

Very Dutch! Those two words could briefly describe his main personality. As for the rest of his personality… let’s just say he’s an interesting individual with bad taste in food. He dislikes chocolate, cheese, cereal, and other tasty foods. He drank more Dr. Pepper than iced-tea, hot-tea, and sweetened-tea for Christ sakes! Not to mention he mocked America when he was given the chance (not very often). Other than that he was a great friend to have around, always making interesting conversation and keeping my family busy. The couple of weeks I spent with him will go down as one of the best times of my life. Anyways Ill move on to the important stuff I’m sure you are all waiting for, the result of his stay!

Beginning his stay I introduced him to Ethan, Nathan and Matthew. He seemed to like all three of them, Nathan with his charming set of words, Ethan with his lengthy vocabulary and many questions and stereotypes to offer, and of course Matthew with his mockery of Ivar’s lack of American Football knowledge and fun personality. That saterday we took Ivar to a gun show! Texas’ gun shows are famous for it’s wide variety of guns from around the world including high caliber riffles, pistols, knives, you name it! Living 16 years of his life in The Netherlands, a country with laws against owning a gun, Ivar was shocked to see so many of the deadly weapons his liberal secondary school had told him to stay away from. He learned that day (and the day we drove to the gun range – see next section) that guns are harmless when treated with respect, he also learned to admire America for it’s civilian rights to own guns.

Next it was off to shops such as Walmart, the Galleria, and the Houston Market Square where Ivar would learn the value of an American dollar(powerful!)! He bought 10$ shoes at Walmart and some books at borders, while I bought some books and some chocolate to boot. All buying done, it was off to the gun range to shoot two 22. caliber pistols. For a first time shooter he did fairly well with a couple of bull’s-eyes. There he learned that guns are VERY necessary – they can be tons – o – fun.

After some hard earned relaxation at my house, playin Halo 3 and a variety of other games as we enjoyed licorice, stroopwafels, and some manga – we were off to see some attractions around Houston, such as the Capital One building and Kehma boardwalk where Ivar got a small taste of American roller-coasters and a classic “drop from mid air” ride. On nights like those we dinned at fine restaurants such as the Aquarium, the Spaghetti Warehouse, and of course Olive Garden. One attraction we visited was the Museum of Natural science in Houston, where we saw the butterflies and other insects along with the 3D Shark IMAX.

Before his departure, we took Ivar to the NASA Space Center in Houston to see the shuttles and other space exhibits. Ivar and I coordinated between cameras on different floors of the building, making sure to take lots of picture ( see the image gallery coming soon!). Ater NASA Ivar began a long road home starting with a game of Black Jack at the airport and some final sad goodbyes, hopefully the same will happen next year.

Questions:

What was your opinion of Ivar?

He actually fitted the image of an intelligent American, rather than an intelligent Brit. He was always very kind and wasn’t rude often. He’s every bit as eccentric as on the interwebz though.

How tall was he?

I think he was 6 Ft, because he was maybe half a centimeter shorter than me and I am 6 Ft maybe 6 Ft 1″.

Does he really sleep with dolls?

Yes, he does.

Will you likely meet him again next year? If so will it be in Texas or the NL?

Well despite Texas being a big and beautiful place, I’m not sure if he would like to waste his money TWICE for the same state. I would be honored if he did but I would probably suggest meeting him for a trip to Germany or something of the sort.

Did he get on your nerves?

Well once, perhaps. Not very many times – that is to be sure. He does dwell on the same games for long periods though.

Well that concludes his stay and my review of it! Look forward to a picture gallery and perhaps a PODCAST! PODCAST!

Cheers — Zeph

Sentence Structure:   95%

Reading Comprehention:   95%

College Algebra:   84%

Essay(on a scale of 1 to 8): 8

zOMG an 8!?!?! I was the only the entire symester to score an 8 on the essay portion (or so I am told). As you can see Im all set to take college level courses and increase my GPA and credits!

Course Line-up:

• Pre-AP Algebra 2 (full year)
• Pre-AP Chemistry (full year)
• Pre-AP English II (full year)
• Pre-AP World History (full year)
• Dual Cred French (full year)
• Dual Cred BCIS (1 symester)
• Health (1 symester)
• Dual Cred Speech (1 symester)
• -Undecided-

As you can see I am screwed unless I put on some montage music every night and spend 4 hours on HW. Wish me luck…. I guess…

Next Article: More Camp, My new PC, and a visit from a good friend.

Until next time,

Zeph

In this article I will post the list including things I have done and things I haven’t, I will keep track with a simple x.

50 Things to become a true geek:

1. Be able to name the three connectors, PCI Express, DDR Memory,  and Dual-channel RIMM [x]

2. Benxhmark your computer [x]

3. Build a hackingtosh(mac on a pc system) [  ]

4. Beat Quake(the game) in less than an hour. [  ]

5. Calculate a pitchers earned run average. [x]

6. Know the 14 basic HTML tags. [x]

7. Bypass the content filter on public computers. [x]

8. Run applications off USB. [x]

9. Pick a real lock. [x]

10. Straighten the pins on an older CPU. [  ]

11. Get through to executive customer service. [x]

12. Wire your home with ethernet cables [?]

13. Use Photoshop to edit an image. [x]

14. Say no to extended warranties. [x]

15. Tell Dr. Pepper from Mr. Pibb. [x]

16. Install a hard drive in a laptop. [x]

17. Protect your Wi-fi. [x]

18. Replace the controller board on a hardd rive. [  ]

19. Use a digital camera in manual mode. [x]

20. Mooch Wi-fi off of a neighbor. [x]

21. Pull off an elaborate prank. [x] (Oh yea, more on that in a blog article in the future)

22. decorate your room using only printer paper [x]

23. Set up a RAID [x]

24. Program and build a simple micro controller circuit. [  ]

25. Solder like you mean it [  ]

26. Securely erase your data. [x]

27. Rip your CD’s to FLAC. [x]

28. Stream your movies, music, and photos to any TV in your house. [x]

29. Recite Pi to 23 decimal places. [x] (3.14159265358979323846264)

30. Dual-boot your PC [  ](soon)

31. Get into a windows if you forget your password. [x]

32. Watch TV shows on the internet legally. [x]

33. Install and configure a virtual machine. [  ]

34. Explain what E=MC^2 means to a Liberal Arts Major [  ](soon)

35. Run multiple monitors like a pro. [  ](too expensive for the time being)

36. Protect your browsing history from snoops. [x]

37. Know the most important linux commands. [  ]

38. Rocket jump without using a macro. [x]

39. Create a custom animated spray for a source engine game [x] (counter strike, woopy texture)

40. Avoid DRM whenever possible [  ]

41. Download flash video and bend it to my will. [x]

42. Debate whether the Imperial Star Destroyer or the USS Enterprise is the best star ship. [  ]

43. Install third-party firmware on your router [x]

44. Build your own computer. [x](Next article will be about my new gaming rig Im working on)

45. Overclock your PC and tune your BIOS. [  ]

46. Find everything you need to know online [x](Forget google, up with bing.com!)

47. Use remote Desktop[  ] (almost)

48. Write a complete “Hello World” app. [x]

49. Rip a DVD to H.264 [x]

50. Get around in DOS. [  ]

51. BONUS: Be prepared for two of the following: A robotic uprising, zombie appocolypse, an alien invasion, or an earthquake. [x]

Looks like I have 16-17 things to do before I can claim this title, I’m willing to bet I will complete this by May next year. Email me at Xylogeist@aol.com for details on the components of the list.

By the way:

I FULLY endorse bing.com. Who would have thought that google would be dethroned? Microsoft has outdone themselves! What an amazing search engine! I encourage all of my readers to use it, join the revolution!

In the next installment – my new pc, my second week of camp, and of course details of a good friend that is visiting.

Cheers,

Zeph