I hadn't logged into GameFAQs in forever until a few minutes ago. I was just randomly curious as to how many hits my Rumble Racing FAQ had gotten lately. But on the contribution page I noticed that they had a help item I hadn't seen before: Formatted FAQs.
After reading it, it looks really simple. It's just slightly adapted MediaWiki markup. You put a special first line of your file that their server will see and go "oh hey this is a formatted FAQ" and then shit works.
Having read this I'm very tempted to actually release version 1.7 of my Rumble Racing FAQ as a formatted FAQ. I've had it sitting here for quite some time, because any time I update my FAQ my inbox gets spammed from other FAQ sites saying "omg can we host ur faq". I think they scrape for changes in update date on all the game pages or something because Rumble Racing isn't exactly the most popular game in the world.
Anyway, so tempting to redo my FAQ with real formatting instead of bullshit 80 character/line limits and whatnot. Nobody has a screen that small anymore, and nobody fucking prints out FAQs.
I mean, shit. I can even use images in their formatted FAQ format. Not that I have any (and they do restrict the images to things that actually pertain to the FAQ, so people can't abuse it to have fancy title graphics or section headers or whatever), but I do have an ASCII art diagram of one part of one track that could stand to be redone in MSPaint or something, and I could make shitty track maps showing where all the shortcuts are, which would greatly help since I currently just have textual descriptions.
And fuck, if you use the section header markup it makes your table of contents for you. No more having to build it yourself, no more tedious section name copy/pasting so that they're the same in both places, and no more shitty search keys for use with Ctrl+F. Just put the section headers where you need them in the FAQ and the table of contents/navigation to specific sections just happens. There's even markup for linking inside your FAQ for all those "and for a reference on $item, see $section" crossreferences.
I've been putting off making a website version of the FAQ for a while. I had one constructed from FAQ version 1.4, but never actually released it anywhere (and it was a pile of shit). The main trouble was navigation. Unless you want to use frames (which are balls), every section of the site needs to be linked from every page, which results in an exponentially increasing amount of work as you realize "oh shit this content needs its own section" and you have to edit the link into all the rest of your pages. Server-side scripting languages like PHP come to the rescue here, I can just set shit up with the navigation in its own file that gets included in when the page gets generated, so the navigation only exists in one place on the server.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Abyss installed to the hard drive...
The load times were GONE, but it kept crashing on transitions from one area to the next, or to the battle screen. I should have done my research first, it looks like I need to enable compatibility mode 1. I feel like I should do some playtesting to see if it works, but that data originally came from the epic PS2HD.com compatibility list that died a while back and they've never failed me before.
There's also a note saying "Use MDMA0 to avoid freezing". This is interesting because I'd left the ToxicOS HDD mode option set to Default and almost everything's worked fine. This might fix some of my issues with Guitar Hero crashing when loaded off of the HDD. Compatibility Mode 1 slows down HDD access (I believe to the speed of the optical drive), since some games have issues if they get their data too quickly (lol wut). MDMA0 is a hard drive mode that has a transfer speed of 4.2MB/sec. I'm not sure how exactly Mode 1 and MDMA0 will interact, it seems kind of redundant to me. I'm unable to find anything stating what mode is used if the setting is left at Default, but I can guess that it's probably the fastest mode the drive supports, which is UDMA5 for my Maxtor drive.
It's always irritated me that lists of games that say "enable mode 3" or whatever are prevalent, but what exactly the modes do isn't really widespread. After doing some research, Modes 1-3 are consistently the same thing through all the various HD loading methods.
Mode 3 is the most commonly required mode, followed by Mode 1. Some games take Mode 1 and Mode 3. Very few need Mode 2, and I believe a mere handful need ToxicOS' Mode 4. The vast majority of games can be run without any modes at all.
There's also a note saying "Use MDMA0 to avoid freezing". This is interesting because I'd left the ToxicOS HDD mode option set to Default and almost everything's worked fine. This might fix some of my issues with Guitar Hero crashing when loaded off of the HDD. Compatibility Mode 1 slows down HDD access (I believe to the speed of the optical drive), since some games have issues if they get their data too quickly (lol wut). MDMA0 is a hard drive mode that has a transfer speed of 4.2MB/sec. I'm not sure how exactly Mode 1 and MDMA0 will interact, it seems kind of redundant to me. I'm unable to find anything stating what mode is used if the setting is left at Default, but I can guess that it's probably the fastest mode the drive supports, which is UDMA5 for my Maxtor drive.
It's always irritated me that lists of games that say "enable mode 3" or whatever are prevalent, but what exactly the modes do isn't really widespread. After doing some research, Modes 1-3 are consistently the same thing through all the various HD loading methods.
- Mode 1, as previously mentioned, slows down HDD access.
- Mode 2 disables DVD9 (dual-layer DVD) support. Very few games need this mode.
- Mode 3 makes the bootloader (in my case, ToxicOS) unload itself from memory after it launches the game.
Mode 3 is the most commonly required mode, followed by Mode 1. Some games take Mode 1 and Mode 3. Very few need Mode 2, and I believe a mere handful need ToxicOS' Mode 4. The vast majority of games can be run without any modes at all.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Tales of Fridays!
Last semester a portion of CAINE decided to get together every Friday and play the Tales of Vesperia beta for the 360. I wasn't involved in this, but after they finished it was decided the next one would be Tales of The Abyss on the PS2, but a multitap was needed. I could provide, so I said so.
At first I got kind of stuck with melee class characters. I can play melee to a certain extent, but the Tales series' guard mechanic is like lolwut. Finally we got to the point where we got another ranged character, Honya switched over to Anise, and I got to play ranged support. There hasn't been a problem with me dying too much since.
The ranged support in the Tales series is a weird class, because they have attacks and party healing. I'm used to both of course, but only one at a time. Plus the healing spell I have takes about four years to cast, and my target could very easily die during its casting time if we're on a boss fight. It heals for a lot though, so I just have to fire it off a little prematurely. (LOL THATS WHAT SHE SAID)
The rest of the time I pwn things with my bow. Seriously. There's a guy in Cheesedonia that takes random bullshit from you and then offers you the ability to craft stuff. The amount you pay him directly affects what you have a chance at getting. We decided to craft a bow, and paid the largest amount we could. From the available selection of items at the time (yay GameFAQs) I got the best bow possible, which put my attack power up to being 300 or so higher than the rest of the party's. Coupled with the fact that the crafter is in a low level area that we had to go through to progress the story, and a lot of encounters were ending in one second because I fired a single arrow.
The world needs more offline co-operative RPGs like the Tales series.
The only real down points of Abyss are the load times on the world map. Whenever we go out to it, get into a fight, or come back to it from a fight, we get to look at a black screen for several seconds. I'm taking my PS2 over there (armed with DMS4 Pro modchip, ToxicOS 0.41, and 200GB Maxtor hard drive) and we're going to see if installing it to the hard drive improves those load times at all.
You'd think it would, because optical drives are slower, but the amount of improvement in load times when installed to the hard drive varies greatly by game. Guilty Gear Isuka has these crazy load times whenever you select anything from the main menu, start a fight, etc. that completely disappear when installed to the hard drive. The Guitar Hero games, however, still take a fair amount of time to load, though it is slightly faster.
At first I got kind of stuck with melee class characters. I can play melee to a certain extent, but the Tales series' guard mechanic is like lolwut. Finally we got to the point where we got another ranged character, Honya switched over to Anise, and I got to play ranged support. There hasn't been a problem with me dying too much since.
The ranged support in the Tales series is a weird class, because they have attacks and party healing. I'm used to both of course, but only one at a time. Plus the healing spell I have takes about four years to cast, and my target could very easily die during its casting time if we're on a boss fight. It heals for a lot though, so I just have to fire it off a little prematurely. (LOL THATS WHAT SHE SAID)
The rest of the time I pwn things with my bow. Seriously. There's a guy in Cheesedonia that takes random bullshit from you and then offers you the ability to craft stuff. The amount you pay him directly affects what you have a chance at getting. We decided to craft a bow, and paid the largest amount we could. From the available selection of items at the time (yay GameFAQs) I got the best bow possible, which put my attack power up to being 300 or so higher than the rest of the party's. Coupled with the fact that the crafter is in a low level area that we had to go through to progress the story, and a lot of encounters were ending in one second because I fired a single arrow.
The world needs more offline co-operative RPGs like the Tales series.
The only real down points of Abyss are the load times on the world map. Whenever we go out to it, get into a fight, or come back to it from a fight, we get to look at a black screen for several seconds. I'm taking my PS2 over there (armed with DMS4 Pro modchip, ToxicOS 0.41, and 200GB Maxtor hard drive) and we're going to see if installing it to the hard drive improves those load times at all.
You'd think it would, because optical drives are slower, but the amount of improvement in load times when installed to the hard drive varies greatly by game. Guilty Gear Isuka has these crazy load times whenever you select anything from the main menu, start a fight, etc. that completely disappear when installed to the hard drive. The Guitar Hero games, however, still take a fair amount of time to load, though it is slightly faster.
lol internet drama
So apparently Honya (of Yuri on the Chalkboard fame, also CAINE's showings director and the maker of our club t-shirts) helped spark up some internet drama a couple days ago.
As I saw it, it began with some comments on Honya's blog, Lyrical Spark, on the post about Scarlet Meister, an unofficial Touhou game. The post was made in 2008, but this didn't deter the drama. People were posting saying "the music from this game is stolen from newgrounds artist KgZ" and so forth, one poster even going so far as to say Honya stole it. One poster even used the name "Obviously From Newgrounds".
Then tonight in our usual escapades after a meeting Citrus discovered a thread on /jp/ (I have no idea how fast /jp/ moves, and all threads on 4chan dissapear eventually, so no point in linking it) with a Newgrounds URL pointing to a thread on their forums containing, alongside a small amount of text (posted by KgZ) a link to Scarlet Meister's developer's site, and Honya's blog. Reading this thread pieced together the rest of the story.
KgZ discovered that his music had been used in this game without his knowledge. Newgrounds, being who they are, immediately raged and went into attack mode, spamming the developer's YouTube (which resulted in the removal of several videos), and basically doing /b/-style harrassment. Meanwhile, other people are busily insisting that he should sue because the music is Creative Commons by-nc-sa, meaning the original creator must be credited, no commercial use without explicit permission from the creator, and any derivative works must be released under a CC license; and the developer is charging 750 yen for it.
750 yen isn't much (about $8 with today's economy), so it basically covers the media cost and not much more.
Then someone rained on the raiders' parade and posted a screencap of the credits plainly showing that KgZ was credited. KgZ immediately shifted to "I'm credited so I'm ok with it".
As of now the saga is at the point where they're trying to convince the developer to go ahead with the production of his next game, and apologize for the entire ordeal. As one can easily imagine, it's difficult since Japanese developer = not the best English in the world, and American Newgrounds users = no moon rune knowledge. Fortunately some people who knew the runes came along and are trying to help KgZ communicate with the developer.
All I can say is: lol internet drama
As I saw it, it began with some comments on Honya's blog, Lyrical Spark, on the post about Scarlet Meister, an unofficial Touhou game. The post was made in 2008, but this didn't deter the drama. People were posting saying "the music from this game is stolen from newgrounds artist KgZ" and so forth, one poster even going so far as to say Honya stole it. One poster even used the name "Obviously From Newgrounds".
Then tonight in our usual escapades after a meeting Citrus discovered a thread on /jp/ (I have no idea how fast /jp/ moves, and all threads on 4chan dissapear eventually, so no point in linking it) with a Newgrounds URL pointing to a thread on their forums containing, alongside a small amount of text (posted by KgZ) a link to Scarlet Meister's developer's site, and Honya's blog. Reading this thread pieced together the rest of the story.
KgZ discovered that his music had been used in this game without his knowledge. Newgrounds, being who they are, immediately raged and went into attack mode, spamming the developer's YouTube (which resulted in the removal of several videos), and basically doing /b/-style harrassment. Meanwhile, other people are busily insisting that he should sue because the music is Creative Commons by-nc-sa, meaning the original creator must be credited, no commercial use without explicit permission from the creator, and any derivative works must be released under a CC license; and the developer is charging 750 yen for it.
750 yen isn't much (about $8 with today's economy), so it basically covers the media cost and not much more.
Then someone rained on the raiders' parade and posted a screencap of the credits plainly showing that KgZ was credited. KgZ immediately shifted to "I'm credited so I'm ok with it".
As of now the saga is at the point where they're trying to convince the developer to go ahead with the production of his next game, and apologize for the entire ordeal. As one can easily imagine, it's difficult since Japanese developer = not the best English in the world, and American Newgrounds users = no moon rune knowledge. Fortunately some people who knew the runes came along and are trying to help KgZ communicate with the developer.
All I can say is: lol internet drama
Thursday, February 18, 2010
what the shit
I've been trying to enter codes on My Coke Rewards, but 99% of the time the site won't load, and the remaining 1% it loads but I can't log in. I think I got the last code entered using their bullshit yahoo widget thing that I run in a VM of WinXP SP3 because I don't trust it, but I'm not sure.
What the hell is going on with My Coke Rewards? Their site used to be responsive and now it won't even load most of the time. Regardless of the browser I use. Firefox, Iron (which is a custom Chromium compile), or Opera, it doesn't matter.
On the subject, three more points (one 20 oz. or 2-liter) will put me at 666 points.
Edit: I guess I shouldn't say it's unresponsive in Firefox without actually testing it in Firefox. It loaded snappily, happily logged me in, and I found that I had indeed gotten the last code through. Empirical evidence (pings timing out, and Opera/Iron having the same unresponsiveness) led me to the reasonable conclusion it wouldn't load in Firefox either. Weird.
Take that, Opera fanboys. All seven of you.
What the hell is going on with My Coke Rewards? Their site used to be responsive and now it won't even load most of the time. Regardless of the browser I use. Firefox, Iron (which is a custom Chromium compile), or Opera, it doesn't matter.
On the subject, three more points (one 20 oz. or 2-liter) will put me at 666 points.
Edit: I guess I shouldn't say it's unresponsive in Firefox without actually testing it in Firefox. It loaded snappily, happily logged me in, and I found that I had indeed gotten the last code through. Empirical evidence (pings timing out, and Opera/Iron having the same unresponsiveness) led me to the reasonable conclusion it wouldn't load in Firefox either. Weird.
Take that, Opera fanboys. All seven of you.
AVGN Losing His Anger?
I've noticed a change in the Angry Video Game Nerd's most recent videos. If you've been following them, you probably have noticed it as well.
The reviews aren't nearly as angry anymore. I don't know if he's running out of steam or what.
Now, in the past, he's taken breaks from shitty games to go over other things, like with Nintendo Power, Chronologically Confused About Movies, and Chronologically Confused About Zelda. Maybe that's just what this is. Hopefully that's just what this is. There's plenty more shitty games out there just waiting to be torn apart. He hasn't even done most of LJN's shit, and the on-going joke is that he hasn't touched E.T. on the Atari 2600, universally regarded to be one of the worst games of all time if not the worst game of all time.
His latest videos have been more in the vein of "Here's a classic game. It's awesome but frustrating and completely unfair in parts." Which reviews does that statement bring to mind? For me, it's Metal Gear and Ninja Gaiden. Metal Gear was further back, but between that and Ninja Gaiden was the Castlevania 4-parter, where he only really bitched about Castlevania 2 and the N64 games (because, to be honest, Castlevania 1, 3, and 4 are awesome, and a lot of people hold Symphony of the Night in high regard even though it went from being a linear platformer to being an exploration roleplaying game).
Then there's his most recent video, Swordquest. It's more of a documentary of the downfall of Atari in the Video Game Crash of 1983 more than anything else. He barely comments on the games, except to generally describe them and make fun of old Atari graphics and sound effects.
Right now, he's just the Video Game Nerd. Hopefully with his next video he'll become the Angry Video Game Nerd once again.
Also, I think it's about time to begin including PS1 games. He's done Independence Day, but there's so much other garbage on the PS1 that can be easily torn apart. There's also the angle of a game that's likable but with critical flaws that he could revisit. And I personally have some Gameboy Color games I wouldn't mind seeing him do a review of. As in, I'd send them to him if necessary. In case you're wondering (or in case he's reading this), I have:
The reviews aren't nearly as angry anymore. I don't know if he's running out of steam or what.
Now, in the past, he's taken breaks from shitty games to go over other things, like with Nintendo Power, Chronologically Confused About Movies, and Chronologically Confused About Zelda. Maybe that's just what this is. Hopefully that's just what this is. There's plenty more shitty games out there just waiting to be torn apart. He hasn't even done most of LJN's shit, and the on-going joke is that he hasn't touched E.T. on the Atari 2600, universally regarded to be one of the worst games of all time if not the worst game of all time.
His latest videos have been more in the vein of "Here's a classic game. It's awesome but frustrating and completely unfair in parts." Which reviews does that statement bring to mind? For me, it's Metal Gear and Ninja Gaiden. Metal Gear was further back, but between that and Ninja Gaiden was the Castlevania 4-parter, where he only really bitched about Castlevania 2 and the N64 games (because, to be honest, Castlevania 1, 3, and 4 are awesome, and a lot of people hold Symphony of the Night in high regard even though it went from being a linear platformer to being an exploration roleplaying game).
Then there's his most recent video, Swordquest. It's more of a documentary of the downfall of Atari in the Video Game Crash of 1983 more than anything else. He barely comments on the games, except to generally describe them and make fun of old Atari graphics and sound effects.
Right now, he's just the Video Game Nerd. Hopefully with his next video he'll become the Angry Video Game Nerd once again.
Also, I think it's about time to begin including PS1 games. He's done Independence Day, but there's so much other garbage on the PS1 that can be easily torn apart. There's also the angle of a game that's likable but with critical flaws that he could revisit. And I personally have some Gameboy Color games I wouldn't mind seeing him do a review of. As in, I'd send them to him if necessary. In case you're wondering (or in case he's reading this), I have:
- Spy vs. Spy (classic MAD Magazine feature, horrible game)
- Galaga (it's Galaga in name and ship capturing mechanic only)
- X-Men Mutant Academy (can be beaten by crouching and mashing punch, and the special moves are impossible to pull off in a fight)
- Bill Elliot's NASCAR Fast Tracks (original GB game that tries too hard to implement real racing situations like having to actually stop in your pit box)
my diet is awesome
In the past hour or so I've had the following (in order):
- Three Newman's Own Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups (I'd try out Reese's Dark if there was a store in Charlottesville that carried them)
- One 20 oz. bottle of Coke Zero (this one and the previous one at the same time, on the way back from the grocery store)
- Two Wild Grape Pop Tarts (wayyyyyyy too sweet, holy fuck they need to lay off the god damned frosting)
- Eight T.G.I. Friday's Honey BBQ Wings ($wetnaps -= 2;)
- One Cracker Barrel Extra Sharp White Cheddar cheese snack (I accidentally got white cheddar instead of regular, but the regular ones aren't extra sharp... I know "sharp" and "extra sharp" are subjective terms, and the "extra sharp" white cheddar doesn't taste sharp at all, but still...)
- One 12 oz. can of Cherry Coke Zero (still working on it, actually)
god dammit
"just one more tweak... there, done."
"oh wait, I should change that..."
fuck. stop tweaking the fucking theme and go to bed already.
"oh wait, I should change that..."
fuck. stop tweaking the fucking theme and go to bed already.
catching up
For whatever reason I keep getting behind in watching anime. I spent the last few hours catching up on Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood and Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu. Luckily I'm only two episodes behind overall.
I haven't caught up on Chu-Bra! yet. I'm feeling kind of tired (even though I got up at 4 PM...) so I might get some sleep for a while. I think the hideous amount of light my bedroom now has during the day even with the blinds closed is affecting my sleep.
I'm kind of hesitant to mention Chu-Bra! on my main blog due to its subject matter, but all the same, it's hilarious (except for that PMSing teacher). The rest of the world could very well prejudge a person if they knew that the person in question watches anime about middle school girls that are obsessed with underwear. Just because I like it in 2D doesn't mean I like it in 3D, and most of the world has trouble differentiating two dimensional fictional characters from reality. Sad, I know.
I also haven't watched Railgun 19 yet. I have Mazui's subs, but some part of me is hoping that Ayako will release the episode at some point.
Since I normally go out on Thursday mornings around 7:30-8 AM for an hour or so shopping for groceries with my mom, I don't feel like I'll be very cognisant at that point. I'll probably get some sleep (even just a few hours will help, perhaps I should type up my huge thesis on sleep scheduling and adjustment) so I'll actually be awake.
It fucking pisses me off that both of the frozen convenience items I like have trans fat. It's not like I have a lot of choice, we shop at Giant (which has been removing products from their shelves for no reason lately) and we live in Charlottesville (where we get everything ten years after the rest of the world). So I've been getting White Castle burgers and T.G.I. Friday's Chicken Quesadilla rolls. Both have one gram of trans fat per serving. One by one I've eliminated all of the T.G.I. Friday's frozen things from contention even though I like them.
My only alternatives are store brand stuff (which isn't so bad, but the portions are tiny), shitty tv meals, or frozen pizzas.
The store brand stuff has the usual takeoffs of national brand things (mozzarella sticks, jalapeño poppers, etc.) and a few extra things including a whole bunch of /(scallop|shrimp|steak) wrapped in bacon/ items that are admittedly delicious.
Shitty tv meals are shitty. That's all I can really say. I can never get one of those things heated up evenly.
Frozen pizza is awesome, but since Giant is actively reducing consumer choice, I can't get the varieties of Red Baron pizza that I want. All they have is cheese and pepperoni, with two different crusts. I want either the five cheese or the supreme. But no, they had to remove those so they could put more Freschetta and DiGiorno trash in the freezer case.
Also, how does one heat up a frozen pizza such that the center isn't molten? I sense a major problem with putting the pizza directly on the rack. Last I checked, electric stove with heating element in the bottom + pizza grease dripping down onto hot heating element = potential for fire. Plus even if it doesn't set the house on fire, I don't want to have to clean the burnt grease off of the bottom of the oven.
My last alternative is the "fried frozen stuff" section. I've had the dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets before, but if I eat fried foods regularly I'll probably have a heart attack before I turn 30.
Why are there no good frozen convenience foods? Every single one is either grossly not nutritious, tiny, impossible to heat correctly, or expensive. And the serving sizes are so small (presumably, so they can misrepresent the item as being more nutritious than it actually isn't by having lower numbers in the nutrition "facts") that it's a waste of energy to heat up only those few.
Ugh, I'm just going to go get that sleep that I mentioned about four miles up the page.
I haven't caught up on Chu-Bra! yet. I'm feeling kind of tired (even though I got up at 4 PM...) so I might get some sleep for a while. I think the hideous amount of light my bedroom now has during the day even with the blinds closed is affecting my sleep.
I'm kind of hesitant to mention Chu-Bra! on my main blog due to its subject matter, but all the same, it's hilarious (except for that PMSing teacher). The rest of the world could very well prejudge a person if they knew that the person in question watches anime about middle school girls that are obsessed with underwear. Just because I like it in 2D doesn't mean I like it in 3D, and most of the world has trouble differentiating two dimensional fictional characters from reality. Sad, I know.
I also haven't watched Railgun 19 yet. I have Mazui's subs, but some part of me is hoping that Ayako will release the episode at some point.
Since I normally go out on Thursday mornings around 7:30-8 AM for an hour or so shopping for groceries with my mom, I don't feel like I'll be very cognisant at that point. I'll probably get some sleep (even just a few hours will help, perhaps I should type up my huge thesis on sleep scheduling and adjustment) so I'll actually be awake.
It fucking pisses me off that both of the frozen convenience items I like have trans fat. It's not like I have a lot of choice, we shop at Giant (which has been removing products from their shelves for no reason lately) and we live in Charlottesville (where we get everything ten years after the rest of the world). So I've been getting White Castle burgers and T.G.I. Friday's Chicken Quesadilla rolls. Both have one gram of trans fat per serving. One by one I've eliminated all of the T.G.I. Friday's frozen things from contention even though I like them.
- The mozzarella sticks get crumbs everywhere
- The buffalo wings sauce literally tastes like hot sauce mixed with butter, the flavors of the two aren't blended at all
- The honey bbq wings are sticky and I have a finite supply of wetnaps
- Both varieties of wings are with the bones, which is massively not convenient
- The potato skins never have the amount in them that $number_of_servings * $serving_size suggests they should, they're usually one or two servings short
- The quesadillas only come two to a box and while they're good out of the microwave they are a lot better cooked in a skillet with some oil, which takes more effort than I'm usually willing to expend for quick tasties
- The spinach and artichoke dip is another thing that would make me consume my chips faster than I really want to
My only alternatives are store brand stuff (which isn't so bad, but the portions are tiny), shitty tv meals, or frozen pizzas.
The store brand stuff has the usual takeoffs of national brand things (mozzarella sticks, jalapeño poppers, etc.) and a few extra things including a whole bunch of /(scallop|shrimp|steak) wrapped in bacon/ items that are admittedly delicious.
Shitty tv meals are shitty. That's all I can really say. I can never get one of those things heated up evenly.
Frozen pizza is awesome, but since Giant is actively reducing consumer choice, I can't get the varieties of Red Baron pizza that I want. All they have is cheese and pepperoni, with two different crusts. I want either the five cheese or the supreme. But no, they had to remove those so they could put more Freschetta and DiGiorno trash in the freezer case.
Also, how does one heat up a frozen pizza such that the center isn't molten? I sense a major problem with putting the pizza directly on the rack. Last I checked, electric stove with heating element in the bottom + pizza grease dripping down onto hot heating element = potential for fire. Plus even if it doesn't set the house on fire, I don't want to have to clean the burnt grease off of the bottom of the oven.
My last alternative is the "fried frozen stuff" section. I've had the dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets before, but if I eat fried foods regularly I'll probably have a heart attack before I turn 30.
Why are there no good frozen convenience foods? Every single one is either grossly not nutritious, tiny, impossible to heat correctly, or expensive. And the serving sizes are so small (presumably, so they can misrepresent the item as being more nutritious than it actually isn't by having lower numbers in the nutrition "facts") that it's a waste of energy to heat up only those few.
Ugh, I'm just going to go get that sleep that I mentioned about four miles up the page.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
this is the life
I'm eating ghetto nachos and browsing the internet.
All I need is alcohol to complete the equation.
I have some, but it's those small 50mL bottles (rum and Bailey's). Since there's so little of each in the bottle, I need to make their use awesome. Therefore I'm not just going to indiscriminately drink one.
By the way, ghetto nachos are when you take sliced cheese and break it up into smaller bits and then put one bit on a chip and eat it. It's what you make when you're too lazy (or lack the shredded cheese) to make real nachos. I have Garden Fresh Gourmet Unsalted chips and Sargento Pepper Jack cheese.
Oh yeah.
All I need is alcohol to complete the equation.
I have some, but it's those small 50mL bottles (rum and Bailey's). Since there's so little of each in the bottle, I need to make their use awesome. Therefore I'm not just going to indiscriminately drink one.
By the way, ghetto nachos are when you take sliced cheese and break it up into smaller bits and then put one bit on a chip and eat it. It's what you make when you're too lazy (or lack the shredded cheese) to make real nachos. I have Garden Fresh Gourmet Unsalted chips and Sargento Pepper Jack cheese.
Oh yeah.
more theme win
After having to override some of their CSS with good old !important, and fuck with some widget templates to add wrapping markup for comments, I now have comments themed.
The way this skin I'm modding lays out the comments is fucktarded. It defines a huge margin for the comment and then uses positioning to place posters' avatars inside that margin, rather than just using float and height and letting everything sort itself out automagically.
Srsly, whoever made this skin, lrn2w3cboxmodel moar.
Also, what the fuck, the link that says "X Comments" isn't showing up on any of these posts. I originally had them disabled, but now I've got them enabled (and Reader Comments set to "Allow", and all the other comment-affecting options I can find are enabled) and they aren't showing up. Also, I have Reactions enabled and they aren't showing up either. What the fuck, lrn2code, Google.
Okay, it appears that if something is disabled in the blog posts widget, it's gone forever and nothing will make it come back, ever. Even if it was disabled by default. Talk about shitty code.
The way this skin I'm modding lays out the comments is fucktarded. It defines a huge margin for the comment and then uses positioning to place posters' avatars inside that margin, rather than just using float and height and letting everything sort itself out automagically.
Srsly, whoever made this skin, lrn2w3cboxmodel moar.
Also, what the fuck, the link that says "X Comments" isn't showing up on any of these posts. I originally had them disabled, but now I've got them enabled (and Reader Comments set to "Allow", and all the other comment-affecting options I can find are enabled) and they aren't showing up. Also, I have Reactions enabled and they aren't showing up either. What the fuck, lrn2code, Google.
Okay, it appears that if something is disabled in the blog posts widget, it's gone forever and nothing will make it come back, ever. Even if it was disabled by default. Talk about shitty code.
Fuck this belt
I've had a D-ring belt for what seems like forever. I honestly don't remember when I got it. It was a damn good belt up until it started falling apart right where the D-ring clamps it.
So recently I got a new D-ring belt. This one isn't so good. Allow me to itemize the differences between my current belt ("Fail Belt") and my old belt ("Win Belt"):
Fail Belt:
Pros:
Pros:
In case you're wondering, the brand name on Fail Belt is Vineyard Vines.
In before someone interprets D-rings as a metaphor for breasts.
So recently I got a new D-ring belt. This one isn't so good. Allow me to itemize the differences between my current belt ("Fail Belt") and my old belt ("Win Belt"):
Fail Belt:
Pros:
- Easy to put on and remove
- Thin material
- Not wide at all
- Small D-rings
- Refuses to stay as tight as I want it to
Pros:
- Thick material
- Nice and wide
- Huge D-rings
- Always stayed where I put it up until it started falling apart
- The end of the belt was bent around the wrong way when it was sewn back over, which resulted in it catching on every single belt loop as I tried to remove it.
In case you're wondering, the brand name on Fail Belt is Vineyard Vines.
In before someone interprets D-rings as a metaphor for breasts.
First real post
So after what seems like an eternity I finally beat Guild Wars: Eye of the North a couple nights ago. I abused consumables to get through Destruction's Depths (everything's fine until the Destroyers rush you when you get to the Norn NPCs) and then after over 9000 times dying on The Great Destroyer I decided to just spam Pain Inverter on him and he went down pretty quickly.
This means my ranger has completed all of the story of Guild Wars now. I turned in the full Hero's Handbook for some Norn points (which took me from r6 to r7).
This also means I finally have Hard Mode unlocked in Eye of the North. Now I can finally use Hard Mode to farm experience for my dervish so he can get Legendary Survivor. With the HM +50% experience bonus and a scroll of adventurer's insight, he gets 594 experience from one of the now level 30 Snow Wurms outside Boreal Station.
Speaking of my dervish, I've now gotten him to Amnoon Oasis. Since he hasn't gotten to mainland Elona yet, he hasn't had the opportunity to do Hunted!, so if I ascend him in the Crystal Desert before doing Hunted!, he'll get that nice fat 50,000 experience from beating the doppleganger. I've already got a plan for defeating the doppleganger too.
Since the doppleganger can't use PvE-only skills, I can take Aura of Holy Might to give me an all-around attack damage boost that he can't use. Secondly, the doppleganger has 480 health, and I have 595 (which I could take to 625 if I had a +30 health scythe mod), so I have a nice 115 health buffer to operate with. Third, the doppleganger has 12 in all attributes except weapon masteries where he has zero, so I'll be dealing more damage than him anyway. All three of these things combined together should equal doppleganger rape. Then it's back to killing Snow Wurms until I get Legendary Survivor.
Also with HM unlocked I can join speedbooking groups to turn in minimal Hero's Handbooks for quick points and leech off of raptor farmers for Asura points.
Man, going through the southern Kryta missions with my dervish was so fun. Most of the enemies are undead, and I'm running a build with Eternal Aura and Avatar of Balthazar. Eternal Aura recharges all dervish skills, which makes Avatar of Balthazar maintainable. Avatar of Balthazar, among other things, converts my attack damage to holy damage, which gets doubled vs. undead. My damage was in the triple digits and I think I saw it peak at 336 with a well-placed Mystic Sweep.
Go Guild Wars!
This means my ranger has completed all of the story of Guild Wars now. I turned in the full Hero's Handbook for some Norn points (which took me from r6 to r7).
This also means I finally have Hard Mode unlocked in Eye of the North. Now I can finally use Hard Mode to farm experience for my dervish so he can get Legendary Survivor. With the HM +50% experience bonus and a scroll of adventurer's insight, he gets 594 experience from one of the now level 30 Snow Wurms outside Boreal Station.
Speaking of my dervish, I've now gotten him to Amnoon Oasis. Since he hasn't gotten to mainland Elona yet, he hasn't had the opportunity to do Hunted!, so if I ascend him in the Crystal Desert before doing Hunted!, he'll get that nice fat 50,000 experience from beating the doppleganger. I've already got a plan for defeating the doppleganger too.
Since the doppleganger can't use PvE-only skills, I can take Aura of Holy Might to give me an all-around attack damage boost that he can't use. Secondly, the doppleganger has 480 health, and I have 595 (which I could take to 625 if I had a +30 health scythe mod), so I have a nice 115 health buffer to operate with. Third, the doppleganger has 12 in all attributes except weapon masteries where he has zero, so I'll be dealing more damage than him anyway. All three of these things combined together should equal doppleganger rape. Then it's back to killing Snow Wurms until I get Legendary Survivor.
Also with HM unlocked I can join speedbooking groups to turn in minimal Hero's Handbooks for quick points and leech off of raptor farmers for Asura points.
Man, going through the southern Kryta missions with my dervish was so fun. Most of the enemies are undead, and I'm running a build with Eternal Aura and Avatar of Balthazar. Eternal Aura recharges all dervish skills, which makes Avatar of Balthazar maintainable. Avatar of Balthazar, among other things, converts my attack damage to holy damage, which gets doubled vs. undead. My damage was in the triple digits and I think I saw it peak at 336 with a well-placed Mystic Sweep.
Go Guild Wars!
theme testing
I kinda like this theme, but I need multiple posts here to make sure everything interacts properly. Hopefully it should work as I've already set it up, and not require any more tweaks.
In case anyone's wondering (or actually reading this, lol), this is the Minima Black theme that I've edited. I got the Churuya background off of Sankaku Channel (search for "churuya wallpaper" and you'll find it). The posts, header, and sidebar have rounded corners in Firefox and in any browser that happens to support CSS3. The opacity on them (which only works in compliant browsers, basically all browsers other than IE) is 95%.
The thing I'm posting again to test is that I want each post on a given day to have its own 95% opaque background, rounded border, etc.; rather than all the posts for each day being in one continuous "block".
Rounded corners are teh sex, CSS3 is going to be so awesome once it's finalized and implemented.
Edit: yay, it works.
Edit 2: I just noticed that the timestamps for these posts are wayyyyyyyyy off. What the fuck.
Edit 3: lol, I guess I could have changed my time zone setting. Why the fuck does it default to GMT -8 anyway? Because that's where Google is? Fucking west coasters thinking their time zone is the one America works off of.
Edit 4: I mean, seriously. Couldn't they figure out from my time zone setting for all their other fucking services that I'm on eastern time?
In case anyone's wondering (or actually reading this, lol), this is the Minima Black theme that I've edited. I got the Churuya background off of Sankaku Channel (search for "churuya wallpaper" and you'll find it). The posts, header, and sidebar have rounded corners in Firefox and in any browser that happens to support CSS3. The opacity on them (which only works in compliant browsers, basically all browsers other than IE) is 95%.
The thing I'm posting again to test is that I want each post on a given day to have its own 95% opaque background, rounded border, etc.; rather than all the posts for each day being in one continuous "block".
Rounded corners are teh sex, CSS3 is going to be so awesome once it's finalized and implemented.
Edit: yay, it works.
Edit 2: I just noticed that the timestamps for these posts are wayyyyyyyyy off. What the fuck.
Edit 3: lol, I guess I could have changed my time zone setting. Why the fuck does it default to GMT -8 anyway? Because that's where Google is? Fucking west coasters thinking their time zone is the one America works off of.
Edit 4: I mean, seriously. Couldn't they figure out from my time zone setting for all their other fucking services that I'm on eastern time?
also, cocks
I set this up for daily life bullshit that I don't want to be clogging up my actual blog.
So a week or two ago I walked 3.5 miles across the city in the snow uphill both ways to CAINE house just so I could participate in Tales of Fridays. I was fine with the entire hike, but apparently my feet were moving around inside my boots because I ended up with a huge blister on my right foot and a smaller one on my left foot. These both went away in a couple of days but hurt tremendously.
While I was there the trees we have between our house and our neighbor's house decided that this most recent snowstorm was just too much for them and a few of them fell over. Three of them were leaning on the house, one fell on the driveway. One of the ones leaning on the house was right outside my bedroom window. So I got to sleep underneath a tree for a while until my parents brought in the tree guys to cut them down. Now it's just excruciatingly bright in my room. I need some black curtains that will completely cover the windows or something.
The trees didn't have far to fall, so our house isn't really damaged. They were Leyland Cypress trees, which the tree guy said succumb to snow fairly quickly. Well, it took about four feet of snow over the period of a month and a half but they did.
My tendonitis has been flaring up like crazy the last few days. I have it in my right wrist due to not using a mouse properly. It's not the tendon in the carpal tunnel, so I can't really say "lol carpal tunnel syndrome" but it doesn't change how much it hurts. I have a wrist brace that I've been wearing, but I don't think it's possible to make a wrist brace that's comfortable and that breathes, so I keep having to take it off. This tendonitis is the original reason I use a trackball instead of a mouse. Now I'm hesitant to switch back because I love my trackball. I've even adapted to playing games with it. Even first person shooters. I was horrible at first but once I figured out how I could use it to my advantage everything's been fine. Now I actually laugh at the mouse users for having to pick up their mouse, move it, and put it back down again to get more space to move it.
The thing that sucks about my trackball is that it's a Kensington, which by itself is awesome, but they've stated that they have no intent whatsoever of updating MouseWorks to work with Windows 7. Which means when the time comes for me to migrate to Windows 7, I get to find a new trackball. They claim that Windows 7 allows you to configure it to an extent that they feel comfortable not releasing their software, but I call bullshit. As far as I know, Windows (regardless of version) won't let you remap the buttons or configure them at all.
I'm aware that Logitech makes trackballs, and they make awesome products, but I don't like any of their trackball layouts. Either the ball is in a weird position or there's no scroll wheel, or there aren't enough buttons. I have four, being left, middle, right, and double click. I want to keep this setup. FML.
So a week or two ago I walked 3.5 miles across the city in the snow uphill both ways to CAINE house just so I could participate in Tales of Fridays. I was fine with the entire hike, but apparently my feet were moving around inside my boots because I ended up with a huge blister on my right foot and a smaller one on my left foot. These both went away in a couple of days but hurt tremendously.
While I was there the trees we have between our house and our neighbor's house decided that this most recent snowstorm was just too much for them and a few of them fell over. Three of them were leaning on the house, one fell on the driveway. One of the ones leaning on the house was right outside my bedroom window. So I got to sleep underneath a tree for a while until my parents brought in the tree guys to cut them down. Now it's just excruciatingly bright in my room. I need some black curtains that will completely cover the windows or something.
The trees didn't have far to fall, so our house isn't really damaged. They were Leyland Cypress trees, which the tree guy said succumb to snow fairly quickly. Well, it took about four feet of snow over the period of a month and a half but they did.
My tendonitis has been flaring up like crazy the last few days. I have it in my right wrist due to not using a mouse properly. It's not the tendon in the carpal tunnel, so I can't really say "lol carpal tunnel syndrome" but it doesn't change how much it hurts. I have a wrist brace that I've been wearing, but I don't think it's possible to make a wrist brace that's comfortable and that breathes, so I keep having to take it off. This tendonitis is the original reason I use a trackball instead of a mouse. Now I'm hesitant to switch back because I love my trackball. I've even adapted to playing games with it. Even first person shooters. I was horrible at first but once I figured out how I could use it to my advantage everything's been fine. Now I actually laugh at the mouse users for having to pick up their mouse, move it, and put it back down again to get more space to move it.
The thing that sucks about my trackball is that it's a Kensington, which by itself is awesome, but they've stated that they have no intent whatsoever of updating MouseWorks to work with Windows 7. Which means when the time comes for me to migrate to Windows 7, I get to find a new trackball. They claim that Windows 7 allows you to configure it to an extent that they feel comfortable not releasing their software, but I call bullshit. As far as I know, Windows (regardless of version) won't let you remap the buttons or configure them at all.
I'm aware that Logitech makes trackballs, and they make awesome products, but I don't like any of their trackball layouts. Either the ball is in a weird position or there's no scroll wheel, or there aren't enough buttons. I have four, being left, middle, right, and double click. I want to keep this setup. FML.
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