Hi all,

Quick note: I'm doing a project for my English group class that would benefit from readers and commenters hosted here: http://anuntitledgeneration.blogspot.com/

if you feel like helping out, it would be appreciated.

The business of bussiness

So I feel like I've been in classes a good 3 weeks, and this is definitely Thursday. For some reason, I've got it in my head that time should be passing much faster than it is, so I've got to do all my homework now. I've pretty much done nothing but homework, classes, sleep and eat. The good news: I'm really far ahead on homework. The bad: I'm pretty tired and getting a cold.

Also, for those so inclined, I've played braid some over the weekend. It is a really fun puzzle/platform game:

http://www.braid-game.com/

I'd recommend it.

First Day of School

Classes have started....

and finally the wait is over.

I actually happened to have almost all of my classes today, which is pretty cool (as I got to see all of my professors). So far so good. I'm enrolled in Physics 122 (Electricity and Magnetism), Math 334 (2nd accelerated series), English 200 (American writers in Paris), and Computer Science 311 (foundations in computing). My physics professor seems a lot more enthusiastic about the subject than my previous one, which is good. The lecture part of the class is at 8:30 which is early but not heartbreakingly so. The math professor is an older guy who seems to know what he was talking about, although we'll see how good he is at explaining things. Mark Bun is still my TA for math. The English professor, was... an English professor, but the class is more based on shorter writing pieces, so I think it will be easier for me as my writing tends to be dense. I have not gone to CSE311 yet (as I was registered for the class about 20 minutes before the class started), so I have no idea what it is like.

Quick synopsis = over and out

Living in a house

Thought I'd post an update before classes started and I became too busy/lazy to update my blog. I'm now moved in to the house I'll be renting this year, and so far everything has been good. I've meet and got to know 8 of my other housemates (two haven't moved in yet), and overall I like the bunch. Loki and I have been cooking all of our meals (leftovers for lunch and cereal for breakfast, which sort of count), and it has been a lot of fun. I feel a lot more secure cooking for myself because if I mess up, I'm the only one that has to eat it. I don't feel burdened with necessarily making something good. So far meals have been limited to pasta, salad, burritos, and stir fry. Not a bad selection overall, but I'd like to get a bit more adventurous.

Birthday

Happy Birthday Isaac!

Why thank you, I'm so glad you remembered!


There, said it for all of you who didn't know my birthday was Sept. 12th, or were too far away for me to be able to hear you.

House + School = SchoolHouse

Hi All,

Blogger added google analytics which means I can see how often people view my blog, which is pretty cool. I found an interesting correlation as well:

The more frequently I post, the more people view my blog.

Obviously it is just happenstance, as I had no way of knowing how many people read my blog, so the number of viewers couldn't affect my posting rate.

In other news, I've officially moved into the house I'm renting for school this year. It is a 3 + 1 floor house (basement), and I'll include a "diagram" so that I don't need as much filler text.


Title           bedrooms        bathrooms         Other
Top Floor        3                   1 full               ...fans?
2nd Floor        4                   1 full               washer/dryer
1st Floor         2                   1 full + 1/2      kitchen with dishwasher
basement        0                   1/2                   washer/dryer

I'm living on the top floor and it hasn't been too hot so far. A few fans and a nice Seattle day fixed that problem. As one would probably guess I'm not renting that much space on my own; the house is rooming 9 guys + Loki. Not everyone is moved in yet (I think current count is 5 residence), but I've been enjoying it so far. It is nice having a full kitchen to cook on and other such amenities.

Technologic Commentary

So, most of my life is computers and electronics. I develop software at my internship by day. I socialize through internet forums such as Gmail, Google+, and Blogger. I burn away spare time playing video games (primarily minecraft recently). The only time I don't use a computer is when sleeping and traveling to another place to use a different computer.

Obligatory XKCD:

Recently, I helped Loki (my girlfriend) build a desktop from parts (it is usually significantly cheaper) for the purpose of having a computer more powerful than a netbook (and minecraft). I helped put it together and all that jazz yesterday evening, and it is know running and everything appears to be functional. For those that are interested, here are some specifications:

$415 pricetag
Quadcore 3.2 Ghz CPU
320 GB 7200 rpm harddrive
8 GB ram
Video card
     Radeon HD 4670
     1 GB memory

albeit that it still needs a case (so it can move out of it's cardboard box home) and it still needs speakers (I plan to give her mine).

I just realized that I didn't really have a direction to go after that, all right,
ABRUPT TOPIC JUMP
I'm thinking about moving my blog to Google+. It is currently new and fancy, and I already use it, so it would be easier to consistently update followers on how post-secondary education and life is going. It also might encourage comments so I don't feel like a total loner writing these posts for myself and me.Currently G+ is "invite only," but in reality everyone I know on the service has over 100 invites, so people should respond if they care about this move.

Game Design Brain Dump

So, this is partially because I said I would, and partially because I want to write this all down in one place. There is going to be a lot of technical information, so feel free to not read this (actually, I think you should, that way I can exercise my non-existent authority over you).

Premise:
    The goal of this project is to build a cross-platform modular role-playing game engine, capable of supporting many different flavors of campaigns and characters. I'm dropping the cross platform bit for the first revision (I'll be developing in Linux). At some point I may port the basic rule set to tabletop, primarily for playtesting, but that is a later goal.

Domains:
    Physical, Mental and social are the three domains. Domains contain the following information:

                 physical        mental               social
power       strength        intelligence       charisma
finesse      dexterity       wits                    manipulation
stamina    constitution   resolve              determination
status        location        control               emotions
state          health           mental state       spirit                    (equivalent to hp, mp, etc)
quantity    size              magical energy   spirit energy        (measured in Joules)
makeup    material        knowledge         preferences

specific names in the grid are subject to change, but these give the general idea.

Objects:
    All objects in the game world are composed of some combination of the three domains. Examples:
A rock only has a physical domain, it's location is, in a field, and it's material is stone. str, dex and con determine physical properties (elasticity, density, hardness, and other derived statistics), which will be largely determined by material with slight variations. Standard humans will have all three components. Ghosts will have a mind and soul. Note: The intersection of status and physical can list ambient instead of a point.

Time:
    I haven't thought this one through a whole lot, but here is what I have.
    Technical: A main loop will go through all "time control objects" and give them a tick. These "time control objects" then distribute ticks down to objects for them to store and use ("time control objects" are allowed to distribute more or less ticks than they are given). The main loop will wait after distributing a tick until all "time control objects" say that it is okay for time to proceed.
    Observed (hopefully): The game will run in real time with movement and such. Most selections will be made through menu. There will be spell effects that can change the flow of time, as haste, slow, and timestop. Battles will be done in a turn based manner, where all outside of the battle proceed at a slower time pace.

Actions:
    All objects are capable of performing actions (although many may choose not to (e.g. rock)). A list of possible actions and consequences will be a plug-in set based on the campaign. All actions are set within a particular domain. The success level of actions is determined in three dimensions: precision, power and speed. Attributes (power, finesse, stamina) in the associated domain determine a point in this 3-space, which is added to a vector created from choice (direction) and skill/effort (magnitude). Points in speed will iteratively reduce/increase the time to complete an action. Points in precision and power will be handled by the descriptive text. Objects will be able to exert themselves (damage state) to increase success (the effort component). If success is put against a defense, a portion of the listed effect will take place, which can possibly be tiered.
    Un-handled portions:
        effect of implements and tools (probably add additional skill, and maybe effect attributes)
        how skill and effort interact to create vector
        taking extra time to improve success (instead of hindering it)

Other Notes:
    knowledge will contain player skill values
    when a player casts a spell, they create a mental object with special knowledge entries creating/imbuing listed effects
    experience will contain player XP, which will be handed out by GM as of current
    skills can be linked together so that knowing one thing, makes advancing another easier

Summer Shenanigans

There haven't been enough of them. News at 11.

This summer I'm working the same internship as last summer. The project for Boeing is still in the works, so I've been polishing my work from last year and learning sql to work with the database. It's been a lot of fun, but commuting that long each day after living on campus seems like such an extended ordeal.

For those of you interested, I've recently continued playing Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. I'm aiming to complete all of the quests in the game, and I'm about 70% there. I've gotten to the point where the most damage an enemy could do in one hit is about 3 out of my 600+ health. For those of you who know more about the game, I've mastered all but three skills: athletics, security, and speechcraft.

Other activities I've been up to: (now in list form!)
Trying to think of things I want for my birthday.
Creating a setting and rules for roleplaying Xenosaga (a video game series)
Working on the production of my game (I'll probably post the details this upcoming week)
Making a mess out of my parents basement

Summertime Go!

Taken finals, moved out, unpacked at home, cleaned out mini-fridge and microwave, started application to computer science application, registered for classes, fixed girlfriend's computer, broke power cord to mine, caught up on email. * wipe sweat off forehead *. Time to finish CS application, look for a soldering gun to fix power cord, and work on personal programming projects.

Art Extravaganza

Here is a list of all my neat art projects this quarter. I left two out because they weren't really compositions, and more practice with the material covered in class. Enjoy.

wishlist

I'm still waiting for things to scan, so I figured I'd write another post.

Here is a wishlist of things that I want, ranked in order, for my nicer readers.

1. Free time
2. Home-Cooked meal (On campus food is starting to get old, mostly because I'm too lazy to go to the other food vending areas)
3. Acceptance to CS major
4. Fancy computer (for video games, explicitly)
5. All of my English credits
6. Gamecube or Wii (for Mario Kart Double Dash, the best party game ever)
7. For Kyle Edwards and Thomas Desilva to come to UW
8.  A long VGA cable (for projector)
9. A list of things that I want
10. ummm... recursion?

Busy busy busy busy busy....

Hiya everyone, sorry for being a bum and being out of all forms of
communication. Art has consumed my weekends and Math my weekdays.
Luckily, I'm currently scanning the last project for art that I have
to paint, the last assignment can be done on the computer, meaning it
will only eat 1/4th of my weekend. Art; the bane of my free time. In
any case... things have been going well. I keep finding out about more
services and utilities available to me through the UW; the undergrad
library has a large variety of (actually pretty good) computers. Some
of them have dual monitors and/or scanners and/or audio/video
equipment. In the same library there are also movies, so my roommates
and I watched Mulan (the Disney film) a few days ago. Next quarter,
I'm planning to take the last course in the Honors Accelerate Calculus
series, Advanced MicroEconomics, and intro Physics (which I have to
take anyway, because my AP test only counts for the non-calc series of
physics). I haven't decided whether I want to fill my schedule up to
18 credits, or what class I would do that with.

I may or may not post some of my artwork here. Depends on how lazy I
am next week/how much Minecraft I end up playing.

Tabletop games

I probably should provide some information about the other half of my life, tabletop gaming. For those of you who are unaware, I'm referring to games like Dungeons and Dragons, where a group of players all roleplay characters to weave a story. I'm currently playing in five campaigns or story arcs currently.

Bears and Octupi
So, the game is set in a world where Bears are the dominant race on Earth, with a technology level roughly on-par with the industrial revolution. But deep in the ocean lies in wait a unknown threat; an entire civilization of space-age octupi dwells in the depths. But they aren't happy with their sea-dwellings anymore. They want land.
We're playing this game in a system called GURPS, which stands for Generic Universal Role-Playing System, which, as it's namesake would imply, was generic and universal enough to have a whole bunch of semi-intelligent bears fight futuristic octupi in an interesting way.
I'm currently playing a circus bear, we've only played one session, so I haven't done much with the character yet.

World of Darkness
This campaign is mostly to try out the new system, namely World of Darkness, which is heavily based around vampires, werewolves, golems and mages. So, since nobody had any ideas for a campaign setting, everyone is playing themselves as if in the next year and a half, they had become Batman or Dracula.
The play-style so far has been really dark and gritty; physical and mental trauma are easy to come by, and hard to get over. This opinion may just be colored by the low power level of our current characters, but it doesn't really seem to be that way, based on how I expect characters to grow.
I'm playing myself as if I went to a wizadring academy, becoming a mage of time and fate. In our last session, we were being chased by the police after an encounter with a dark corporation with sights on killing unnaturals such as our new selves. Our car was crashed, and as we were being captured, Sam, a mage with affinity for magics that blow stuff up, cast a spell to shock (as with lightning) the police officer who was guiding him. In World of Darkness, magic isn't to be shown to those who are unaware of the unnatural world, and doing so can cause catastrophic paradoxes. In our case, Sam's lightning summoned the Grim Reaper. Now our campaign has an easily defined story, we need to unsummon death before he kills everyone.

Mortimor, Thomas and the nothingness
This is a run-over from last quarter, played on the Pathfinder system, which is based on Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, which is meant for heroic medieval tales. This story was started mainly for the purpose of a layover after our first campaign ended.
The story is pretty undeveloped right now; pretty much, there is several instances of nothingness consuming towns. Thomas (my character), a ten year old boy who was told his whole life he was destined for something great, went out to find out more about the nothingness. Thomas has no innate ability or talent, just the force of destiny, good luck and some companions protect the boy. Mortimor, one of aforementioned companions, and affectionately renamed by Thomas as Morty, is another interesting character which may drive the plot at some point. Morty wishes to improve quality of life by making undead perform the menial labour. Essentially, he is a Socialist Necromancer.

Final Fantasy X
This campaign is based off of the setting presented in Final Fantasy X. Basically, we hijacked the setting to play a similiar story in a tabletop roleplaying fashion. This game is also played on the Pathfinder system.
A brief summary; There is a beast called sin who is unstoppably powerful and kills many, many innocent people. There is a process where a person called a summoner calls down a "Final Aeon," a creatuer capable of fighting sin and bringing the calm, a period without sin. Unfortunately the calm is not forever, and sin returns in usually 10 to 20 years. Before calling the Final Aeon, a summoner must pilgrimage to each temple of Yevon.
In the campaign, the party is a summoning party; a summoner and her guardians.

Sam's campaign
This in an introductory campaign for Sam to learn how to DM (Dungeon Master), or run a game. The game is being played in the Pathfinder system. Basically, as far as plot goes, there are three demons who fight over the mortal realm. Power has become inbalanced, and these demons threaten the mortal world. The party is trying to restore balance and save the world. A little cheesy, but it's been fun.

Alright, this post is all together too long, but this summary will be accurate pretty much all quarter, so meh.

Classes, lots of them, everywhere!

So, I've been taking 20 credits this quarter, and while manageable, it is quite a bit of work. It doesn't help that I'm taking English and Art, it takes me a long time to write essays and make projects. I've been pretty booked as far as workload, which I'll use as an excuse for not posting and visiting my parents.

In other news, my old roomate, Jacob, the messy disaster that haunted the right half of the room, moved out. He is in a apartment in Northgate now. To fill the void, I have a new roomate Bruce. Bruce is of Korean heritage, and has a ridiculously large computer. Bruce is a Sophomore by years in college, and a transfer to the UW for the nursing program. A huge improvement over last quarter.

To accomodate our new roomate (and my Christmas present from Lynn and Blayne (thanks guys)), the room has been rearranged some, and now I have a 5' 11" screen in my room (sourced from a projector). Before classes started picking up, there were lots of video games, but recently I've used it for working on art projects because some of them can be done on the computer.

Alright, I have to wrap this up and go do math homework now.