Category Archives: Geek

Bagpacking

I have moved! =] Rocket Queen the great has let me sit in her ASP server instead of me having to contend with Brinkster.

Oh, and I’ve changed the default skin to Green! Before this, it was Under Construction. If you thought I was corniness in a 2-minute cup, check out Framed, a cute little weird skin. There are more skins to choose from, so click on Change Skin to give yourself a change!

Finally, I’ve added LJ’s Den, a friend’s website, to my About Me section. He’s the one who pointed me in the direction to learn CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), which makes the site’s text look good! 🙂

I’m getting sickeningly hard-selling promotionally talking. Just look at my previous paragraphs. Having to type promotional copy for work does have its effects. 😛 I’ll stop here because I’m sounding too much like a salesman.

Housebreaking Problems

I came back to my old host, Brinkster. Why? Because the new host’s server was cranky about my Microsoft Access MDB (Microsoft Data Base). This was the same problem with my very first host. That would make Brinkster my second host.

Don’t worry about reupdating your bookmarks – both sites redirect to each other, keeping the links, when I ask them to. If one server screws up, I can always activate code to pass you to the other server. The coolest part of this is that it actually remembers what page you were at!

I’ve updated the blog system – the archives work now!

Also, I’ve added pictures to the Models section! No more boring text for you modern high-speed surfers! (Also, a whopper download for those on slow connections… 🙁 )

Yeah, yeah, I know – boring old site updates. What about me?!? (You came here to know how I’m doing, riiight?) I’m fine. I’m alive. I’m typing this at the computer. I guess your concern is not needed now – I’m not self-pitying now. I’m not reiterating how lame I am and how I have no life. No pity required.

Wise Quote: “Whatever’s written in stone can be cut away with diamonds.”

However righteous you may be, you can still be bought over with big enough a reward. Howzat for my wiseness today?

Wise but misinterpreted Quote: “If the eyes are the window to the soul, then the mouth is the door.”

It was supposed to mean that you look deep when people look in your eyes, but opening your mouth totally screws up your ‘beautiful soul’ personality. My friend (a female, at that!) interpreted it as ‘French kissing can get you anywhere’. I didn’t get it. If you did, or if you got a different interpretation, please please reply to this post!

Back In Rhyme

I haven’t blogged in here for quite a while
This is because I’d to format my PC
I tried hard to copy one stupid file
Some DLL can’t read from the CD
I’d buy Athlon XP, best of the crop
With it a branded Asus motherboard
With an overclocker fan stuck on top
Plus casing with fans to lift till it soared
Excuse is lame, especially a crime
Haven’t studied my entire semester
Guess what? I have exams in two weeks’ time
And my eyes look like that of a panda’s
Give me another sticker for effort
It’s much harder blogging in a sonnet

More Subdue Advertising

Heck no I’m not paid to advertise friends’ sites – I just do it out of charity (doesn’t that sound even more pathetic?)

Meet ShadyET, whom I bugged repeatedly to get a blog. Ah yes. She got a blog. She made herself a blog. (Saved a lot on the most weathered ears in town – mine!)

Who has the right personality to write a blog, anyway? Is it in your genes? Just because you’re opinionated, it doesn’t mean you can upkeep a blog. If you’re not opinionated, then your blog would be a daily diary (boooring!)

I remember reading from Brickchick that there were two types of bloggers. Designers and writers. I fall somewhat in a limbo; a no human’s land. (Politically correct eh?)

Being a programmer at nature uses logic. Designing is artistic creativity and aesthetics (that I don’t have!) I can only do graphics based on real life, because nature has rules and logic that govern the way a tree grows, or how light falls on an object and casts a shadow.

Writing, however, requires verbosity and good English. Text and philosophical thought appeals more to writers. Grammar is important, too – if you weren’t a stickler for detail, you wouldn’t be able to write a program. You’d have to follow the computer programming language’s syntax very closely in order for anything to work. Notice how there are lots of programmer/writers, but few designer/writers?

Albert is a
Programmer
/ Writer =]

If it isn’t obvious to you now (because I have confused you so much already) I am a programmer/writer! Whee! Now if only I wasn’t a procrastinator, I’d make a simple quiz that would tell you what category you fell in, complete with banner (like above)!

Glaring Notebook Under Construction?

Yep, that’s right! Not only has Glaring Notebook Under Construction the skin been added to the skins list, it’s the default skin! Before this, it was the nauseating Infinity skin.

It’s been awhile since I touched graphics again. I started off in computers doing mostly programming – LOGO programming (that was a nice hybrid of programming logic and graphics!) BASICA taught me about proper program control structures, while QBASIC was my first full-fledged programming language.

Soon after the antiquated 6-year-old 486’s BIOS chip fried, I played with Visual Basic 6.0 on my current system. When I got my Internet connection, I downloaded Quake 2 Transformer plug-in player models, always wondering how cool it would be to play as one.

Within 6 days, I made a model. I made one after the other. I made Quake 2 plug-in player models, dude! I even made a section devoted to my creations! I learned HTML and made my website just to showcase them!

Each model needed a digital texture wrapped around it, and this was where I picked up computer graphics. There was a great play of shadow and highlights just to achieve the effect of 2D translated and wrapped on a wireframe. Although I didn’t use layers to do my graphics then, I still enjoyed making photorealistic textures (well, not even close!)

Also, the models moved, and I had to make them look fluid. However, I still suck at animating! 🙁

College, work, and having only a 100 Megabytes of hard disk space forced me to game development. (This includes making maps and code tweaks.) At work, I reverted back to my old hobby – programming – but this time, webprogramming! Programming for websites is a whole lot different from programming applications or games, but I found it fun nevertheless because of the huge tie-in with HTML.

So why am I telling you this story, anyway? Will I ever get to the point? You can only hope.

The point is: I made this skin to get back in touch with my graphics skills. How’s that?

I am pleased with it.

Oh, and one of my wise Quotes forced down your throat: “I don’t pay to learn; I play to earn.”

Quote Me!

Here’s yet another minor update. I’ve added two quotes, in no particular order, to the Quotes page.

“A screw is tighter at first.”

Do you need an explanation for this? I made this with two meanings, try guessing more!

“If the eyes are the window to the soul, then the mouth is the door.”

This is yet another double-edged sword; another dual-meaning quote. Meaning number one would be: If the eyes can tell you a lot about the person, what more his or her words?

How am I? What makes me come up with these whacked up quotes anyway? Boredness. Philosophical pondering. A lighter head. (Yes, I just got a short haircut, and I am enjoying stroking the close shaves!)

Glaring Notebook's Siemens C30On another note, I must tell the world about my handphone’s wonderful buttons. Those wonderful rubber buttons which do not rock loosely like the Nokia 5110/5130, are big and round, and most importantly, tactile!

There is a certain feel to pressing such a button on my Siemens C30 (if you’re wondering why it’s not made Siemens’ style, that’s because it was a Bosch handphone, bought over.) It’s not as robotic and cold as a plastic keypad on a Nokia, nor is it as flat as a Motorola clamshell handphone.

The button really depresses and sinks in at least 1 millimeter (don’t know why I spell it that way, considering the Americans still use the Imperial system.) The best part is that the key bounces back, with a low pop sound! You can feel the “force feedback” when pressing the keys! I found this tactile output very, erm, fun! Imagine bubble wrap, but without the bubbles popping!

Notice another thing about its peculiar, unique shape? I’ll tell you later what its connotations are!

Back. For Good?

“Even heroes have the right to bleed” – Five For Fighting, Superman

So I usually don’t use other people’s quotes in my blog. So I don’t even use my quotes in my blog consistently. I originally planned to, anyway – I’d write a quote, and talk all about it, and the events/stories that happened that made me coin that quote. My blog was supposed to be like that.

Where have I been? Why haven’t I blogged? Simple. As of late, I was destressing a different way – playing computer games, be it Max Payne, Quake 3 Arena Instagib, Counter-Strike, or even the dangerously addictive Spider Solitaire.

I’d come home with a weird feeling of having not accomplished anything, like something was not right. Nothing was wrong, but I still felt that the air was uncalm. I’d come back with low self-esteem, with a strong feeling to rant (and blog!) but I went for computer games. I forgot about blogging temporarily.

It was a trained reflex. While waiting for my computer to connect to the Internet, I’d play Spider Solitaire instead of doing something more productive. Whenever I got stuck, or braindead, I’d load up Hard difficulty and prove once again that that was a lesson in futility. That was not good.

Back to the topic – me! (Who else?) I’ve been feeling depressed lately, on and off, over a few SMSes, and over certain incidents. No particular incident was solely responsible for me being down; it was a few totally unrelated incidents coming together in ironic ways to give me a combined message.

Only now I can write about it. Why? My computer is still too slow for the games I want to play. I am seriously considering a major upgrade, once I know precisely what to get.

But then again, having a slow computer (a 486 for 6 years until the end of 1998!) helped me develop my skills as a programmer and debugger.

I haven’t been online on my home PC for a week. My siblings have screwed the phone bill with their daily Neopet feeding. I don’t just hate the site because it’s addictive, I hate it because I may someday have to take part in such a huge-scale project.

Ugh. I just took a Spider Solitaire break. I have to dissasociate boredom and slow connections with Windows games.

Drat – I can’t even remember what I wanted to type, having spanned this over thunder and a whole day of sleep! Nevermind then, enjoy my latest article, My First Clubbing Experience!

System Always Down – Drop Day

Back up (back up)
Grab a mouse and draw a little flowchart
Hide the bars and look away to act smart
Why’s primary keys not in the table?
Here you go create another table

(You wanted to) SQL – I put on a little conjob
(You wanted to) ASP – I copied a table drop
(You wanted to) 5 page report Monday on the table
(You wanted to)

I don’t think you trust, in, my
Self-taught programming skills,
I cry, when I don’t have the most kills

Screw up (screw up)
Take time off to play a little NASCAR
Jump on ramps to fly away past the star
Why’d you leave the door up to the swivel
Don’t you know that we are techie people?

(You wanted to) Grab a form and go down to meet the techie
(You wanted to) Clear the cache to flush away the proxy
(You wanted to) Why reboot server? It is not stable
(You wanted to)

I don’t think you trust, in, my
Self-taught programming skills
I cry, when I don’t have the most kills
In, my self-taught programming skills
I cry, when I don’t have the most kills

Beta (testing)
Deadline (coming)
Office (freezing)
PC (crashing)
Codes better be done at the end of the day
Codes better be done – why have you forsaken me?
In your site, forsaken me
In your scripts, forsaken me
In your code, forsaken me

Oh, trust, in, my self-taught programming skills
I cry, when I don’t have the most kills
In my self-taught programming skills
I cry, when I don’t have the most kills

Hello World!

Programmers do need to say, “Hello World”! We coders are stuck behind the computer for hours, slaving away to bits and pieces of cryptic code! (This also explains why we’re so cryptic ourselves…)

What if the code doesn’t work? FUBAR, that’s what. It’s FUBAR or “Hello World”. It’s easier than composing a whole blog entry (like I’m doing now) and then finding out that your code doesn’t work!