Monthly Archives: March 2002

And on the 25th day he rested…

Just look at the irony of the last post.

1200 hours 19th March 2002 until now (around 0900 hours 20th Match 2002!)

(Note: I will be using 24 hour time throughout this post.)

Do you want to know what happened to me after that? (Even if you don’t, I’m forcing you to read about it anyway, so please do!)

At 1300 hours, I took a 15 minute nap, considering I hadn’t slept for 25 hours then. I was supposed to leave at that time for college to hand in my project and take a progress test from 1400 to 1700 hours.

At 1630 hours, my dear colleague called my handphone. At home. Okayyy…

Rush, rush! Thankfully, the taxi was cheap. I reached there around 1730 hours.

Luckily for me, I got to hitch on another progress test on Friday.

So, how did I feel? Strangely, after 0500 hours, I didn’t feel sleepy anymore.

In fact, I was headbanging to the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers – Instrumental #2, Incubus – Hilikus, and Hoobastank – Crawling In The Dark!

I’d never headbanged harder to music before this. Maybe it was sleep deprivation, but it sure had a wonderful effect – unlocking and releasing sugar from your body’s glucose store?

I was alert enough, I even programmed a HTML page with JavaScript to play Counter-Strike’s C4 sound after an hour’s mark!

The sound never reached my brain.

So much for breaking whatever 72-hour record I had.

Here’s a record for you. A blog post rhymed, paragraphs in ABAB format. A pain.

Suffice to say, I did it! (Read through this again.) Have I gone mad?

The Jolly Well Comeback

Yay! I fixed that bug that wouldn’t allow you guys to have your catty comments on my blog after clicking on the Replies: link below the post!

Are you happy now? Start ranting back! Click that itty bitty Replies: down under!

What is wrong with my body’s biorhythm? I did not sleep from 1200 hours 19th March 2002 until now (around 0900 hours 20th Match 2002!) I was doing a long procrastinated college project (I still have two more on the 23rd!) Luckily, my dad let me stay back at my computer-equipped house (my grandma’s doesn’t have one) so I could finish up the %$(*&^ project, which I did, crappily, of course. (What would you expect within 3 days?)

I have become such an insomniac, such a 3-hour sleeper, that people actually look up to me! I was up till 5 AM with my friend who also had college projects to finish, when I called ICQ quits (though still connected) and said my byes. He said:

Hah I have outlasted Albert the insomniac. I am king… zzz

Later in the day, he sent an SMS to me, saying:

Another 36 hour insomnia marathon. I think I am getting used to… zzz

(To the aforementioned person, no offense – the messages were cute, and you should be jumping out of your long-empty bed in joy!)

So far it’s just over 21 hours. I’d have 3 hours left for sleep before I hand in my college project (hence my lack of sleep, duh!) Wish me good luck! (I’m sure the cars slow down when seeing zombies cross roads, right?)

Illogical quote of the day:
“I’m so happy, you’d swear I’m on anti-depressant!”

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.”

Linkage Where Linkage Is Due

I finally updated my About Me page, so for those of you who wonder where my Links section is, it’s there! Please tell me if I left your link out, so I can ponder who the heck you are, demand an undisclosed sum, and then add you to my links!

Procrastination is not my middle name, as there’s as many letters in procrastination as there are in my full name! I wrote an updated version, with more crap in it, before I formatted my computer, and I couldn’t find the file on all the CDs I burnt my backups to! I’d been pushing aside rewriting all that crap until just now, after looking through some blogs.

There’s just one scrawny little image, and it’s the least I could approximate as a digital representation of me. I might just gather a bunch of pictures soon, obviously in my photogenic days and dump them in a hidden page. (It’s only as of 2001 I miraculously became a swan, hehe! =] )

In case you’re wondering, where’s all my philosophical ranting lately? It’s not that I’ve had a brain transplant or something – I just don’t feel strongly enough about anything to write. When I get really peeved or worked out about something, and toss in bed thinking about it, that’s when it will all come out. A soulful, passionate post. (I am so corny.)

Oh, and not forgetting the almost related quote to my procrastination:
“5 minutes is not a measure of time but an expression.”