Spring Break
Ahh, It's so nice to have a break from school.  I've been enjoying sitting around and doing basically nothing all week.  I had planned to work on some mods and stuff, but that didn't happen, heh.  I've just been surfing the 'net and playing games and stuff, and getting lots of sleep.  Nothing beats sleeping straight through the time you would normally be at school... too bad my mom usually gets me up around noon though :\ - but it WOULD be a nice feeling! ;)

     Slide Section Update
I started playing slide again this week and broke a couple more records (slide1 and slidefox).  More people need to play that and send me demos. :)  Spin, the guy who was running Spin's Slide Speed Centre, has become a little busy with life, so I guess I'm the only one who has a slide record site op now... :\  I merged all the records and demos from his site with what I already had, so now there's a pretty full record table.  Check it out in the Mods / Slide section (or just click here), and darnit, play this mod and break some records! :)  At the very least check out some of my demos.  The slide1 one is pretty amusing. :)

     Random Thought
Um, why do people take dumps?  Maybe it's just me, but I usually tend to leave it there and flush it.  Taking it would just be... rather disgusting, well, unless it was around me and there were no toilets, then I'd be like "Yeah, take your dump!  And don't come back!"  I guess "I'll be right back, I'm gonna go leave a dump," or "Wait a sec, I'm gonna go flush a crap," does sounds kinda funny, though.  You could always use a more scientific explanation like "My absence will be short.  I must purge my body of fecal matter," or a more creative approach such as "Hang on, I've gotta go drop some kids off at the pool," but "take a dump" ... it's just wrong.  "Next time on Nova: Joseph takes a dump where no dump has gone before."  Yeah, well, what do you expect?  It's random!

     Link o' the Day
What do you get when you steal a couple giant cell phone costumes, put them on, go around taking people's cell phones, destroying them, running away, and video taping it?  Probably something along the lines of this.

 
     Grendel and Beokitty
I haven't drawn a whole lot lately, but getting extra credit is always a good excuse to draw some new stuff. :)  I drew Grendel, the big, purple dinosaur, entirely with my tablet.  It took maybe 4 hours or so.  I need to work more with this stuff and get it down to an art, literally. :)  Now I kinda wish I did a better job on the skin rather than just doing doodles with black, but oh well.  Don't worry, Grendel loves children... but I'm pretty sure he likes the taste of healthy, well-built men better.  The Beokitty (take off of Beowulf, only it's not a wolf, it's a cat, get it? hehe.. heh heh... hmm, yeah, that was bad).  Anyway.  That was just some random character I drew while taking one of Ms. Howard's impossible AP Bio tests. :)  I scanned it in and traced and colored it in Photoshop (with the tablet).  It was inspired by looking at some of J.Axer's work the night before.  It's not the best, but hey, I think it's OK for a first shot at "furry art." :)  I probably would have done these on darker backgrounds had I not had to print them out, but, well... at least it adds some variety :).  Check 'em out in the Art / Computer Graphics section.

     AMC Winner
I found out yesterday that I received the highest score in the American Mathematics Competition.  I was rather surprised.  I only answered about half of the questions.  It turns out it was on the announcements a while before, but I didn't here it.  Ms. Gray caught me at the Academic Challenge pizza "party" and informed me, though.  I was 2 points short of going on to the next level: 90 out of a possible 150 (the minimum for the next level is 92, though it was 100 in previous years, but they had to lower it this year because the test was harder).  I must have answered all the questions I did answer correctly, because I vaguely remember something about calculating the score I would have gotten on the minute possibility that I answered them all correctly.  It was 90-ish.  Now I wonder if I had randomly bubbled some of them and gotten any right if I would have scored above a 92 or lost points (points are deducted for incorrect answers) Oh well, I don't think taking another one of those really hard tests is something I'd look forward to anyway.  They're almost as tough as Ms. Howard's AP Bio. exams :).  I've got my little AMC winner pin.  I'm happy :)  I also got the solutions booklet.  Too bad I don't have the questions...

There was one problem I remember being rather difficult.  It was something about figuring out the probability of a guy winning a lottery if both this guy's ticket and the winning ticket had... something about logs.  The answer was B, and here's the explanation:

In order for the sum of the logarithms of six numbers to be an integer k, the product of the numbers must be 10^k.  The only prime factors of 10 are 2 and 5, so the six integers must be chosen from the list 1,2,3,4,5,10,16,20,25,32,40.  For each of these, subtract the number of times that 5 occurs as a factor from the number of times 2 occurs as a factor.  This yields the list 0,1,2,-1,3,0,4,1,-2,5,2.  Because 10^k has just as many factors of 2 as it has of 5, the six chosen integers must correspond to the sic integers in the latter list that sum to 0.  Two of the numbers must be -1 and -2, because there are only two zeros in the list, and no number greater than 2 can appear in the sum, which must therefore be (-2)+(-1)+0+0+1+2=0. [Follow?  Good! - yeah, right]  It follows that Professor Gamble [he's the dude with the lottery ticket] chose 25,5,1,10, one number from {2,20}, and one number from {4,40}.  There are four possible tickets Professor Gamble could have bought and only one is a winner, so the probability that Professor Gamble wins the lottery is 1/4.

And there's another explanation, but it's about twice as long and harder to follow - breaking it up into a bunch of cases.  I might have been able to figure the problem out if I had remembered anything about logs, but not in the amount of time we were given.

     Science Fair
Andy and I won regional science fair (which was pretty small this year)... of course, we were the only senior team project, so it made it kind of hard to lose :).  Later they decided to combine the junior and senior teams (all 4 of them), but we still won, heh heh.  Sticking motherboards in liquids... cooling them... overclocking them... fun stuff, might as well be a science fair project! :)  It's been a good week.  Busy, and I didn't sleep much, but a good week nonetheless.

     Time to Archive
Wow, I have most of this school year (and all of this year) on here so far.  I'm thinkin' it's about time to archive some stuff!

     Random Thought
Why are donut holes solid?  Maybe they're supposed to be donut wholes? :)

     Link o' the Day
School Uses Backstreet Boys to 'Torture' Students.

 
     New Art
Hrm, it's been a while since I last updated.  RealLife(tm) has been keeping me busy.  I've had a crapload of school work to do - haven't been getting much sleep.  Check out the Art / Computer Graphics section, there's some new stuff for your viewing pleasure.  It's just some whacky stuff I put together, didn't take long, but you can stare at it for hours and get a decent migraine ;)

     Stuff
I'm messing around with ASP and SQL database stuff.  I'm planning on totally revamping the Digital Paint site.  It kinda needs it :)  I've got some cool stuff in mind.  Once the news and everything is in a database, there's all kinds of stuff that can be done.

     Random Thought
Why is gas a liquid?

     Link o' the Day
There's something awful on the 'net... and it's right HERE.

 
     POTW Perl Script
I finally got around to creating a CGI program for the Pics o' the Whenever.  It has an index system (which needs some work, but it gets the job done for now) which displays all the thumbnails, and when you're looking at the full images, you can browse through them (previous, index, and next down at the bottom).  It would have probably taken a lot less time to just manually create a bunch of html pages, but hey, it was good experience and it will prolly pay off in the long run. :)  Check out the index here (or click on the POTW above and then click on Index).

     New Short Story
I put up a new short story, D5.  Check it out in the Art / Writings section.  I wish I could have expanded it more, but the word limit for the thing I was submitting it to kinda put a damper on that.  Perhaps I'll write a not-so-short story later along the same lines.  It has a lot of potential. :)

     Random Stuff
"I find your lack of underpants disturbing."
"Han will have those underpants down!  We've got to give him more time!"
"You are unwise to lower your underpants."
"I see you have constructed new underpants, much like your father's"
"You came in those underpants? You're braver than I thought."
"These underpants might not look like much, kid, but they've got it where it counts."
"A tremor in the underpants.  The last time I felt this was in the presence of my old master."
"Yeah, well short underpants is better than no underpants at all, Chewie."
"Your fathers underpants. He wanted you to have them... when you were old enough."
"Luke, help me... take my... underpants... off..."
"You look strong enough to putt the underpants off a Gundark."
"Maybe you'd like it back in your underpants, your highness."
"Attention. This is Lando Calrissean. The Empire has taken control of my underpants, I advise everyone to leave before more troops arrive."
"She must have hidden the plans in her underpants.  Send a detachment down to retrieve them.  See to it personally, Commander."
"Use your harpoons and tow cables, go for their underpants.  It might be our only chance!"
"At last we will reveal our underpants to the jedi.  At last we will have revenge."

Replacing key words from Star Wars with "underpants" is so much fun :).  Man, I need to update the jokes section...

     Link o' the Day
Squirrel fishing!  It's a pretty nutty way to do it. :)

 
     Computer Graphics
I put some (well, just one right now) pictures up in a new art section: Art / Computer Graphics.  I'm also experimenting with a new table style (in the Art section).  It used to be like that of the Mods section.  Check it out and lemme know what you think.  Oh, I also fixed some minor bugs on the main menu over on the left.

     Random Stuff
I was glancing through some recent headlines, and some of them struck me as rather humorous.
Front Page:
"School makeup days more likely" - than what?  regular days?  (actually, the way our school year has been going...)
"NYPD officers cleared in killing" - Sounds like murderers are wiping out police officers left and right.
"Birth control may bring new problems for deer" ... ... umm ... only on Hilton Head *beats head against desk*
Life:
"Yellow-bellied sapsucker winters on island" - Darnit! don't we have enough politicians here already?!  Oh, wait, it's a bird.  When I saw the picture of some dude below that headline I thought it was about him.
International:
"Pope says sects should heal divisions" - Sects!  It does a body good! Sounds funny when you read it out loud :).
"Villages bracing for more eruptions" - Won't touch that one.
Business:
"Some funeral homes taking wares online" - Wow, even the undertakers are getting into the software piracy business ('warez' is the l33t version of 'wares,' in case you didn't know).  I guess it's the kinda stuff people are just dying to get, heh heh *smack* bad joke.

     Link o' the Day
Dilberito - Yeah, it's what you think it is.

 
     Writings
Finally got around to linking some stuff I wrote a while back.  I just put it in the Art section.  Literature is an art, right? :)  Check out the Art / Writings section if you wanna read some stuff I wrote, including the famous jitspoems! :)

     Random Thought/Rant
School is but an interruption in sleep.  A rather long one at that.  It's so cruel for school to be placed right in the middle of the time it's natural for me to sleep.  I go to bed around 2:00-3:00, get up at 6:30, go to school, get back, crash around 3:00-4:00, get up around 7:00 for dinner, start homework around 8:00 or 9:00, about 3 hours worth.  That leaves about... 2-3 hours of free time.  Another day drained by school.  No wonder I never get anything done...

     Link o' the Day
This is a real winner: "No sex, please -- we're NASA."  Just read it -- funny stuff.

 
     New Art
I finally got a hold of a digital camera to take some pictures off all the 3D physical art (mostly ceramics) I've made somewhat recently.  Check them out here (the Art / Ceramics section).

     Random Thought
Another reason I don't like Win98:  It keeps popping up with those annoying messages saying "You are low on space on drive ___"  Ugh, come on!  I've got 40 megs left!  That's a lot for me!

     Links o' the Day
A few political parody sites: allgore.com, algore-2000.org, bore2000.com, gwbush.com (I guess Bush didn't register ALL the domains that could be used against him... and something about his name reminds me of "GWBASIC" :).

 
     GeForce in!
Thanks to all the people that gave me input on that last post.  I went ahead and got the first available card tho, which ended up being the Leadtek one.  With my TNT I was running Quake3 at the normal video settings at 640x480 and getting pretty decent frame rates: 50/60's+.  With my geforce, I turned everything up as high as it would go and set the resolution to 1024x768, and it's still faster :)  Wow, it looks nice too.  I was gonna take a screenshot for the POTW, but for some reason the screen shots don't work.  They're a bunch of gibberish then a huge black area.  Other than that, everything worked perfectly.  I installed the drivers, shut down, put the card in, turned the computer back on, and it worked.  I don't think I've ever seen an installation work that smoothly before.  I still haven't put the cover back on my case... not going to test my luck THAT much :)

     Digital Paint Paintball II Client v1.6
I finally got around to throwing my new Paintball2 maps and some other misc stuff together for the 1.6 client release.  More info on the DigitalPaint page.

     Random Thought
I found it rather interesting that the benchmark graphs for Quake3 were on a scale from 0 to 120, while the graphs for Unreal Tournament went from 0 to 40.

     Link o' the Day
This is probably the funniest Matrix parody thing I've seen yet: cr0wbar's bastardization of T H E  M A T R I X.  You have to hang out on IRC a lot to understand half of the jokes, though.

 
     NST Rocks
Shine re-introduced me to NST (NPherno's Skin Tool).  I had used it a couple times back in the days before QME supported the skin directory structure correctly (a LOOOOONG time ago) and hadn't really given it a second thought when the latest QME came out.  Now that I've played with it again.... This is what skinmapping should be like.  You can select triangles in a 3D textured view, then put them on the skin and move them around to your hearts content.  Unfortunately it's for Quake2 models only.  After I figure out how to get .md2's to convert to 3dsmax properly (and save texture mapping coordinates), I might write a tutorial on it.  In the meantime, you can grab it here and play around with it.

     GeForce Video Card
Hrm.  My parents ordered me a Creative Labs 3D Blaster Annihilator Pro (quite a name:) for Christmas.  It's been on backorder for quite some time now (still haven't gotten it).  I'm thinking of getting a Leadtek Winfast Geforce256 DDR (another nice name:)... I have no Idea how these cards compare.  I wish there was an up-to-date page that had reviews of the cards with Geforce256 DDR cards and side-by-side benchmark charts/graphs.  I looked around for a while, but sites were either old (having TNT2 or V3 cards as the latest - most hadn't even updated at all this year!) or not very helpful.  *sigh* perhaps I should add some benchmarks and stuff here.  I don't have that much in the way of hardware though :)  Voodoo1 vs. TNT vs. Geforce... heh, there's a fair competition :)  Well... I could get companies to send me free hardware! (yeah, right :).  Anyway... If you have any Geforce info that might help, drop me a line.

     Misc. Stuff
Ever wonder what 3D artists like myself are doing during these long periods of time between page updates?  Mmmm.... too bad I can't tell.  You'll find out soon enough though. :)  It'll be cool.

I got this email today which I found rather humorous:

Al Gore gave a speech a couple of weeks ago about how his faith is so important to him.  In his attempt to convince the American people that we should consider him for president, he announced that his favorite Bible verse is John 16:3. Of course the speech writer meant John 3:16 but nobody in the Gore camp was familiar enough with Scripture to catch
the error.  Do you know what John 16:3 says?

"And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me."

     Random Thought
I think randomly, therefore I am.

     Link o' the Day
Something you've probably been to some time or another... then lost the link and forgotten about it... Bert is Evil!

 
     "Whoa"
I hadn't checked my NedStats in a while.  I'm up to 18999 hits... nice even number, almost :)  I guess I got linked somewhere, either that or NedStat borked with all this Y2K stuff going on... oh yeah, forgot, that's a bunch of Y2Krap.  Nothing happened :)  Here I've been rambling on about stupid stuff and people are actually looking at this site... oops.

     Nice LAN Party
Wow - That's a new record.  Six fully functional computers in my living room...  It made for some pretty insane Q3 matches on small maps.  We played a few matches on that little map that's all yellow fog.

     Random Thought
There are three types of people in this world: those who can count, and those who can't...

     Link o' the Day
Ahh... nothing beats seeing a potato(e?) fired though a melon at 550 MPH...  Actually, now that I think about it, there are a couple... um, never mind.  Anyway, check out the BFPG.  You'll be impressed.  If you're not... move a little to the left.  That's good.  Stay right there.  *FWOOOOMP* ... That would make a nice headline.  "Unimpressed Audience Member Vaporized by Flying Potato."

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