Rakion is going live December 1st, with open beta right up until the launch date. Woohoo and all. Can't wait to see if they're ironed out the class balances and all.
Mahalo
11.28.2005
Observations
Every time I wipe my hard drive I seem to get a little nostalgic. So I went through my old back up cd's and looked at stuff I'd made or written years ago. And so I went through my web spaces and found There are little bits of me all over the Interweb.
Of course several of those sites harkened back to my time with Vampire: Redemption and one of those many of you will remember from my infancy on the internet. And all of them were before I learned CSS, if you can't tell by the sizing issues and frames and tables that I used prfoundly. But all in all they're a part of me.
How many of you can remember your first web address? We've all built a web page at one point, whether it was more recently in the form of a blog, or way back in the day with the geocities page builder. What was your first web address? Mine was www.geocities.com/paris/metro/6409/. This was also followed shortly by my fortune city account which the next to original ORTWAS site was found on. There are several other sites still on that fortune city address, but I'm not able to log in to them anymore so the early ORTWAS site will have to do for that shard of my life. Many of my early sites don't exist anymore because the services have gone out of business or been bought out and removed, so that's pretty much all that's left.
Mahalo
Of course several of those sites harkened back to my time with Vampire: Redemption and one of those many of you will remember from my infancy on the internet. And all of them were before I learned CSS, if you can't tell by the sizing issues and frames and tables that I used prfoundly. But all in all they're a part of me.
How many of you can remember your first web address? We've all built a web page at one point, whether it was more recently in the form of a blog, or way back in the day with the geocities page builder. What was your first web address? Mine was www.geocities.com/paris/metro/6409/. This was also followed shortly by my fortune city account which the next to original ORTWAS site was found on. There are several other sites still on that fortune city address, but I'm not able to log in to them anymore so the early ORTWAS site will have to do for that shard of my life. Many of my early sites don't exist anymore because the services have gone out of business or been bought out and removed, so that's pretty much all that's left.
Mahalo
11.27.2005
Computer Viruses and The Art of War...
As you can tell from the title I've had a trying 24 hours ridding my computer of various viruses and such. It was an epic battle and in the end I emerged victorious, though there were many casualties.
"While heading the profit of my counsel,
avail yourself also of any helpful circumstances
over and beyond the ordinary rules."
So I had to remove my Anti-Virus program for a brief period of time. I had bought a cheap one because my McAfee CD was nowhere to be found. So I uninstalled the old one when I found my CD and installed McAfee. For some reason my McAfee AVP would crash and so I was left with the sole defenses of my firewall for a scant few days. Apparently that was all that was needed for the insidious forces of the interweb to crawl its way into my system. It had some help though, I believe.
"If he is secure at all points, be prepared for him.
If he is in superior strength, evade him.
If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to
irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.
If he is taking his ease, give him no rest.
If his forces are united, separate them."
So with McAfee finally working last night I was incredibly surprised to find a huge alert pop up from both my AVP and firewall almost simultaneously saying that things were going very foul indeed. Running the scan produced the horrible finds of not only Browser Hijacks, Trojans, and several other nasty things. I was forced to lock down the network to try and contain everything and then I got to work on removing things. I had to split my tricks between my Spyware cleaning, registry cleaning, and AVP. I had to do this all simultaneously because as soon as one stopped and cleared it would pop up on the next scan. I had to hit everything at once. I was growing frustrated and tired at this point. It was going on towards 2am before I set up Virus Scan and went to bed, all traffic blocked and my computer removed from the network.
"In the operations of war,
where there are in the field a thousand swift chariots,
as many heavy chariots, and a hundred thousand
mail-clad soldiers, with provisions enough to carry them
a thousand li, the expenditure at home and at the front,
including entertainment of guests, small items such as
glue and paint, and sums spent on chariots and armor,
will reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day.
Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000 men."
I had to break down and buy the latest version of Virus Scan last night in my battle. I got to the point to where my older version simply wasn't picking anything up and Ad-Aware was also coming up with nada after probably the 15th scan, but still I was getting desktop pop-ups and browser hijacking. So with my troops in place I went about the ordeal of scanning, finding, editing the registry and scanning again.
"It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted
with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand
the profitable way of carrying it on."
The viruses had the advantage in that they didn't need to worry about getting tired or frustrated. I kept a cool head and continued my attack on the invaders that had held my computer hostage.
"When you engage in actual fighting, if victory
is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and
their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town,
you will exhaust your strength.
Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources
of the State will not be equal to the strain."
I had laid seige to my own computer for close to 24 hours now and I had come to a certain point where neither of us was budging. I had decided that enough was enough and I fired my final salvo...I formatted my hard drive. That's not to say that the invaders didn't go down without a fight. Somehow the F1-12 keys were disabled on my keyboard and made it incredibly difficult to continue into setting up a new Windows installation. That would be when I had to get inventive. I stole a page out of David's book, a trick I saw him do a long time ago...I reprogrammed my keyboard. Through an act of High Geekery a while ago I had learned the ASCII and binary values for such an act, and I remembered David doing something of the like several years ago and so I went about the act of kludging together a small config script in the dos shell I had to install. Don't ask me why I still have DOS disks but I do.
"Thus the highest form of generalship is to
balk the enemy's plans; the next best is to prevent
the junction of the enemy's forces; the next in
order is to attack the enemy's army in the field;
and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities."
So needless to say I'm back and pretty well drained. Why, you may ask, did I not just reformat from the beginning. The answer is simple...I didn't want to. I was determined that I could beat this thing without resorting to the Great Wipe. However in the end it was that sort of short sighted arrogance that led to about 24 hours of me fighting this thing to a standstill. And so that was my weekend...how about you?
Mahalo
"While heading the profit of my counsel,
avail yourself also of any helpful circumstances
over and beyond the ordinary rules."
So I had to remove my Anti-Virus program for a brief period of time. I had bought a cheap one because my McAfee CD was nowhere to be found. So I uninstalled the old one when I found my CD and installed McAfee. For some reason my McAfee AVP would crash and so I was left with the sole defenses of my firewall for a scant few days. Apparently that was all that was needed for the insidious forces of the interweb to crawl its way into my system. It had some help though, I believe.
"If he is secure at all points, be prepared for him.
If he is in superior strength, evade him.
If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to
irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.
If he is taking his ease, give him no rest.
If his forces are united, separate them."
So with McAfee finally working last night I was incredibly surprised to find a huge alert pop up from both my AVP and firewall almost simultaneously saying that things were going very foul indeed. Running the scan produced the horrible finds of not only Browser Hijacks, Trojans, and several other nasty things. I was forced to lock down the network to try and contain everything and then I got to work on removing things. I had to split my tricks between my Spyware cleaning, registry cleaning, and AVP. I had to do this all simultaneously because as soon as one stopped and cleared it would pop up on the next scan. I had to hit everything at once. I was growing frustrated and tired at this point. It was going on towards 2am before I set up Virus Scan and went to bed, all traffic blocked and my computer removed from the network.
"In the operations of war,
where there are in the field a thousand swift chariots,
as many heavy chariots, and a hundred thousand
mail-clad soldiers, with provisions enough to carry them
a thousand li, the expenditure at home and at the front,
including entertainment of guests, small items such as
glue and paint, and sums spent on chariots and armor,
will reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day.
Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000 men."
I had to break down and buy the latest version of Virus Scan last night in my battle. I got to the point to where my older version simply wasn't picking anything up and Ad-Aware was also coming up with nada after probably the 15th scan, but still I was getting desktop pop-ups and browser hijacking. So with my troops in place I went about the ordeal of scanning, finding, editing the registry and scanning again.
"It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted
with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand
the profitable way of carrying it on."
The viruses had the advantage in that they didn't need to worry about getting tired or frustrated. I kept a cool head and continued my attack on the invaders that had held my computer hostage.
"When you engage in actual fighting, if victory
is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and
their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town,
you will exhaust your strength.
Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources
of the State will not be equal to the strain."
I had laid seige to my own computer for close to 24 hours now and I had come to a certain point where neither of us was budging. I had decided that enough was enough and I fired my final salvo...I formatted my hard drive. That's not to say that the invaders didn't go down without a fight. Somehow the F1-12 keys were disabled on my keyboard and made it incredibly difficult to continue into setting up a new Windows installation. That would be when I had to get inventive. I stole a page out of David's book, a trick I saw him do a long time ago...I reprogrammed my keyboard. Through an act of High Geekery a while ago I had learned the ASCII and binary values for such an act, and I remembered David doing something of the like several years ago and so I went about the act of kludging together a small config script in the dos shell I had to install. Don't ask me why I still have DOS disks but I do.
"Thus the highest form of generalship is to
balk the enemy's plans; the next best is to prevent
the junction of the enemy's forces; the next in
order is to attack the enemy's army in the field;
and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities."
So needless to say I'm back and pretty well drained. Why, you may ask, did I not just reformat from the beginning. The answer is simple...I didn't want to. I was determined that I could beat this thing without resorting to the Great Wipe. However in the end it was that sort of short sighted arrogance that led to about 24 hours of me fighting this thing to a standstill. And so that was my weekend...how about you?
Mahalo
11.25.2005
NaNo...Epilogue
Well I officially verified my word count this afternoon and I'm an Official 2005 NaNoWriMo Winner, as you can tell by the small graphic to the right. Yay me. Now to just get everything else back on track. *sigh*
11.22.2005
NaNo...Day 22
I finished my story this morning, weighing in at 52,631 words. It'll probably shrink some and grow some over the next couple of weeks as I edit it a bit. It is very much an unpolished diamond at the moment, but all in all it turned out pretty decently. That is all for today.
Mahalo
Mahalo
11.21.2005
NaNo...Day 21
And I made it!! I crossed 50,000 words this morning and still have about two chapters left to write to wrap everything up. I may not push it past or even to 55,000 but it'll probably be pretty close. I'd have kept writing this morning but my mom showed up to do a little christmas shopping. Looking through friends' blogs and LJ's I noticed that a friend of mine is in the same boat that I was in last week a la "Loathing...There's no Fear to it." It seems to be a common ailment according to the forums and such, but the only advice I can really give is stick through it and the story won't turn out nearly as bad as it appears from inside the jar. My opinion of my own story went from total crap to pretty cool, in my opinion. That's not to say that it isn't total crap, but to me it turned out kinda cool. So in a couple of weeks I'll be posting it up chapter by chapter and you guys can tell me whether I just wasted a month of my life or not ;)
11.20.2005
NaNo...Day 20
I'm at roughly 47.5K words as of this morning. Yes I could have finished it this morning, but I want to plan out the last chapter a little rather than flying by the seat of my pants. I have a lot of things to reveal and I'm not quite sure how I'm going to make it all unfold. I have at least four major plot points that absolutely have to happen nearly simultaneously and I have to try and bring them around without just making them sound corny as well as make them sound plausible. I'm not going to reveal exactly what, since I'm gonna make everybody wait. I'm going to post the story here after I've given it a little bit of polish. But other than that things are about normal around here.
Mahalo
Mahalo
11.18.2005
Nano...Day 18
Well as of yesterday morning I had crossed the 40,000 word mark. It was a great relief, especially since the words just seemed to flow yesterday and I had 4,000 words under my belt before I even knew it, which was my goal for yesterday, just so i could break 40K and take maybe a day or two off. There's a story or two that I've been neglecting since I started NaNo and I should really get back to those. I need a change of venue for a day or two.
Mahalo
Mahalo
11.16.2005
Loathing...There's no Fear to it...
I'm happy to report that i've crossed the 36K word mark this morning, which leaves me with some easy going for the next couple of days. I'll still write be sure of that, but I don't feel nearly as rushed lately. But there's something that I must get off of my chest. I heart NaNo and everything like that. no biggie there, but it's kinda like, at this point, I hate writing the story. That's more than likely my inner editor giving it one last go to fuck me up before I complete this thing, but let's be honest at this point. I've been writing this story, gun to my head, for a little over two weeks now. It's not the story that I dislike per se, but the fact that I'm doing it just for the word count. The big thing is that I'm ready to wrap up the story, on more than one front, but I'm gonna have to drag it out for another 14,000 words, which Is doable, but it feels like I'm almost throwing fluff in there at this point just to stretch it out a bit and that's why I'm not so much in love with the story as I originally was. The exploits of Elias Burke, aka The Viper are many and varied, and I planned to reflect that a little more than I did, but the story kinda took itself over and didn't really lend to me giving out one or two more flashback types of deals. Now that I'm past the point of no return, and wouldn't anyway at this point, I'm discovering that there's a few characters that I meant to showcase more than I did, and certainly wanted to breath a little more life into through backstory and such, but it seemed that I was doing that a little much through the first half of the story and so it just seemed to get into repetitively ending chapters of "lemme tell you a story about..." So I steered more and more away from flashback and went more for the here and now, and in the process people like Edgar, even one of the other main characters Shin Lao, and Detective Skinner got chopped down. Now I've told a great deal of the story through Skinner's eyes so he's kind of become fleshed out throughout the book, but Shin Lao at one point was a fully fleshed out character through the many adventures, and I won't hesitate to mention she was pretty fecking cool. Unfortunately through the NaNo process she got chopped down from a bad bitch of an assassin who could kick anybody's ass on her own to a kind of a sidekick type character. This disappoints me, but will be addressed at a later moment.
11.14.2005
New Favorite Passtime...
I have discovered the Joy of Albatross 18. It's something of an online Golf game that I'm digging the hell out of the last couple of days. I'm still a rookie and don't have any of the cool gear, but I've been trying to find an online gold game as Hot Shots doesn't have anything of the sort. It's got the cutesie anime type of graphics but it's a blast against other people. So far I'm 2-1 against other people. if I could only get my putting together things would go much better for me I'm sure. But that's the only gripe I really have about the game. The greens are kind of hard to read. Instead of like other golf games where it'll show you the twist and lie of the green, this one relies on dots that, in theory, will show you where the ball would lie if you putted it through the center of that particular area. I'm not quite a gold legend...but I'm working on it.
Oh and as far as NaNo goes I broke 30,000 words this morning!! Only 20K more to go and roughly 16 days to do it in. I feel i'm in good shape at this point. I'm now dropping into the intense part of the story so it should write itself before I know it.
Oh and as far as NaNo goes I broke 30,000 words this morning!! Only 20K more to go and roughly 16 days to do it in. I feel i'm in good shape at this point. I'm now dropping into the intense part of the story so it should write itself before I know it.
11.11.2005
NaNo...Day 11
Well I crossed over to nearly 22 thousand words this morning. I should be closer to about 25-28, but my mom had been down for the last 3 days or so, so I didn't get much writing done. I had also meant to write some last night, but decided to play a little CoH instead. This worked out perfectly since I really needed to clear my head a bit and relax. Hopefully I'll make up the last few days this weekend and be back on pace where I want to be. But all in all I think I'm a little ahead of the game in comparison to several thousand people. This makes me feel a little better about things as if I keep this pace up I should bit 50K by around the 23rd.
That's not to say that my story hasn't had it's share of problems. I decidedly ran into pacing problems yesterday. I realised that I'm just about halfway through the 50K and a good deal of the story had been revealed. I'm going to be forced to reveal the hook a little sooner than I'd expected, but as I lay awake at about 1am last night I worked it all out in my head so that was one obstacle worked around. Though if this were a Shakespeare play, this would be the point of the Climax, which would then start the downhill slide in the story to the conclusion, so by that pattern, I'm still good to go. All in all I've gotten a little further along than I thought I would so I'm proud in that regard. When the NaNoWriMo is over with, i'll probably post the story up here, chapter by chapter and take thoughts on it. I'm still wanting to do something of a web comic/graphic novel type of thing with it, as I think the story in my head will translate to that medium much better than it's translated thus far to words.
Mahalo
That's not to say that my story hasn't had it's share of problems. I decidedly ran into pacing problems yesterday. I realised that I'm just about halfway through the 50K and a good deal of the story had been revealed. I'm going to be forced to reveal the hook a little sooner than I'd expected, but as I lay awake at about 1am last night I worked it all out in my head so that was one obstacle worked around. Though if this were a Shakespeare play, this would be the point of the Climax, which would then start the downhill slide in the story to the conclusion, so by that pattern, I'm still good to go. All in all I've gotten a little further along than I thought I would so I'm proud in that regard. When the NaNoWriMo is over with, i'll probably post the story up here, chapter by chapter and take thoughts on it. I'm still wanting to do something of a web comic/graphic novel type of thing with it, as I think the story in my head will translate to that medium much better than it's translated thus far to words.
Mahalo
11.08.2005
Life, The Universe, and Everything...
So while I've been writing this novel for NaNoWriMo I've been drawing inspiration from all over. Obviously due to the story that I'm telling I've been watching a lot of the Hong Kong action flicks. Some recommendations that I might make for those of you out there who haven't sat through a movie night with me before are: The Replacement Killers, Hard Boiled, The Killer, and Full Contact. You'll also note that these are all Chow Yun Fat movies, and most of them were directed by John Woo. The Replacement Killers would probably be more accessable to most people as it was produced in the west. The Killer I recommend getting the subtitled version, as the dubbed version fails in the way that most dubbed movies do.
Also, strangely, I've been re-reading the books that make up the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. I just finished, as you can tell Life, The Universe, and Everything. I just started So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish. However it doesn't stop there, as there was a newer book that he wrote before he died named Mostly Harmless. I have that as well as a short story involving Zahpod Beeblebrox that I don't know about yet, but it has to be interesting. That's all for today, I have to pound out a few thousand more words before I truly relax for the day
Mahalo
Also, strangely, I've been re-reading the books that make up the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. I just finished, as you can tell Life, The Universe, and Everything. I just started So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish. However it doesn't stop there, as there was a newer book that he wrote before he died named Mostly Harmless. I have that as well as a short story involving Zahpod Beeblebrox that I don't know about yet, but it has to be interesting. That's all for today, I have to pound out a few thousand more words before I truly relax for the day
Mahalo
11.06.2005
A New look...
As I'm sure the couple of you who read this have noticed, but I've changed the look of the place. Mostly this is influenced by the story that I'm writing for the NaNoWriMo, but also because I had wanted to give it a new look a long time ago and just never had the time to learn where blogger places a lot of it's tags to do much. There's gonna be some more changes in the next few weeks to be sure, and possibly a new title. But in the meantime...baby steps.
First a few explanations on a few things since I know a bunch of people are gonna complain about the colors and such. First I wanted to keep it a simple scheme, I don't like a lot of clutter and streamlined is the way to go. Second, there's just something about that little Sepia Tone button that I love when using drawings for backgrounds. White seems to stark and grey just makes me wanna go hang myself. I'm purposely keeping some of the things in the light blue because I didn't want it to go too beige on everybody
Third, that handsome gentleman in the corner is one of my favorite personal RPG characters. That's a character I originally created for a game called Feng Shui, which is an action movie RPG. His name is Elias Burke, known around the mafia/triad/yakuza scene as The Viper. He is also the main character in the story that I'm writing for the NaNo. That's a sketch I did when I first started playing Feng Shui back in probably 92 or 93.
All right, enough explaining myself on my own blog, hope everybody enjoys, if not...I'm not changing it unless I come up with something better...which is doubtful
First a few explanations on a few things since I know a bunch of people are gonna complain about the colors and such. First I wanted to keep it a simple scheme, I don't like a lot of clutter and streamlined is the way to go. Second, there's just something about that little Sepia Tone button that I love when using drawings for backgrounds. White seems to stark and grey just makes me wanna go hang myself. I'm purposely keeping some of the things in the light blue because I didn't want it to go too beige on everybody
Third, that handsome gentleman in the corner is one of my favorite personal RPG characters. That's a character I originally created for a game called Feng Shui, which is an action movie RPG. His name is Elias Burke, known around the mafia/triad/yakuza scene as The Viper. He is also the main character in the story that I'm writing for the NaNo. That's a sketch I did when I first started playing Feng Shui back in probably 92 or 93.
All right, enough explaining myself on my own blog, hope everybody enjoys, if not...I'm not changing it unless I come up with something better...which is doubtful
11.03.2005
Inspiration needed...
So as I counted on I've reached a part in my NaNoWriMo story where I'm at a bit of an impasse. The real problem is that I've essentially written myself into a corner. Where I've taken the story up to this point will take an act of god to push my way through. If I do that I may not be able to get the story back on track for quite some time and will take me forever to rectify. The simple solution to this is to delete the last 500 words and re-write, which I don't want to do for several reasons, one of which being that I'm losing 500 words. The other is of course that I'm trying to strangle my inner editor for this thing. So for inspiration I've decided to watch the Replacement Killers. It's a fabulous movie aside from the fact that It kind of neatly wraps of the atmosphere I'm trying to take this story. I'll let you know in 1 hour and 35 minutes how things are going :)
11.01.2005
It has Begun...
No I'm not talking about City of Villains...that began last saturday. What I speak of is the National Novel Writing Month. And quite proudly I've written my 3000 words for today. We'll see how things progress as the month continues. I'm writing 3000 a day so that I have some padding on days where the well seems to run dry, giving me a little bit of time so that I don't completely stress out come the 20th and vapor lock because i'm feeling so rushed to make up 10,000 words. It goes until the end of the month, but I'd like to give myself a little leeway. Guess I'll finally get to write the great american novel I've been talking about for years.