Fanime 2011

Califur 2011

Fanime:
Was my first time actually attending the con this year. There wasn't much to it in reality, there was a lot of video rooms with anime playing and then there were two dealer halls. One hall was for the artists and their personal works and the other hall was for dealers who kept saying they were artists and they had personally made these hats or other items that they more than likely had not made at all. The con itself reminded me of Anthrocon from the many times I had gone to AC years past. It was just a large dealer show and sell with little happening elsewhere cause it was poorly set up. Unfortunately this convention didn't have a bunch of awesome looking fursuiters running around, just a lot of scantly clad women. It also lacked in the department of a bunch of friends to hang out with though there were still a few that I enjoyed hanging out with.

Califur:
I actually really enjoyed this con this time around. Like last year it was a last minute ordeal where I managed to get a ride with my furry housemates and friends down to Califur as well as stay with them at the con. The con was once again mostly about hanging out with friends from the south Cali area that I haven't been with in a while. Zot, Margo, Frost, and many other new and familiar faces. I didn't have much money so I almost had to ghost the con but I'm glad I didn't since the two things that I actually really enjoyed at the con was the FNL skits and the Cabaret. Though it sucked that the Cabaret was held up for an hour because some sick and dumb con goer was caught jerking off somebody elses dog in the hallway, a second time. Really, keep your sexual fetishes and kinks to the proper areas but jerking off an actual dog in public? WTF is wrong with these fucking furries now a days? ugh. Despite that disgusting fiasco the Cabaret went off well enough. The best act up there, coming ahead of the really funny yiffy lube and the bad fursuit 80s porno, was this smoking hot female that knew how to dance and make the floor drop the greens (for charity). I could swear that even the so called 'gay' furries were straight for at least the amount of time she was out there in the audience.

Some gripe that I have about Califur though is the crap that happened behind the scenes. Both FNL and the Cabaret were forced to bring in their own equipment. I mean curtains, poles to set those curtains upon, projector, screen, ect. Califur was lacking in so much in these departments, in stuff that was supposed to be provided for these events. Worse was that the people that was working for the con with some of the audio/video stuff and some of the FNL and Cabaret stuff had to pay out of pocket to get those supplies ASAP and then were not compensated for gas or other stuff by the con. That's about as bad as telling the GoH that they have to pay for registration (on top of paying for their own room, flight, ect). I can't say for certain if I'll make it down next year since it all depends upon my finances and travel accommodations but one thing is for sure, I'm more than likely to ghost the con next year if they don't have their act together. Also, get some fucking card readers for reg! A cash and check only registration is retarded! Also, fire the head of the networking and/or registration system cause having registration open up only to not work immediately afterword cause of shitty programming skills of some narcissistic, self centered furry is also bullshit.

Social Engineering:
So this friend of mine had been complaining in a very passive aggressive way about how they didn't have enough money to go to AC but really wanted to. They became more desperate as AC got closer and began to say some pretty stupid things like being someone's art slave to actually selling off their droid cell phone to try to get to AC. I decided to help him but in an completely fucked up way, the way the military taught me (and a way that I really despise being used even though it still works from time to time).
Let me put some back story on my military boot camp training. At boot camp the instructors there were there mainly to berate and belittle what independence people had in order to better train them to support each other (their shipmates) while in the military. This was mainly needed because of the strict sleep, eating, and physical and mental training you had to go through in boot camp. If you were too independent then you'd easily crack under the pressure because you would feel like you couldn't rely on others but if you were relying on others to help you out then you'd never feel alone enough to give up.
Now, back to my little social engineering experiment. In order to try and help my friend out I did what my instructors did to me, I belittled him openly over twitter. This was done in the hopes that what friends that he had, either those that didn't quite know of his plight or those whose minds were just on the edge of helping him out with money, would actually band together in a (hopefully) "I'll show you" attitude and not a pity or sympathy bonding. Strangely enough it worked, though random people hated me and talked shit about me on the internet, I laughed (cause they were stupid and didn't know what was going on).

What if social engineering didn't work:
Sure, there was a chance it wouldn't work so what would I have done if it didn't? Nothing. If it failed I couldn't of explained how I was trying to help my friend cause even after explaining then why didn't it work? In too many cases people are angered when you try to help them but fail to fully fix what ails them to trying to explain how something was SUPPOSED to work when it didn't will just fall on deaf ears. Worse is that I would have made more enemies than friends in that regards (though in most cases it comes from people you normally wouldn't care or hand out with anyways).

Why try to help someone when there's more to loose than gain from it? Well, why not? There shouldn't be any reason why one person should help another. There shouldn't be only benefits to helping another out nor should you be constantly weighing the pros and cons of helping someone out, especially if it's a friend. If there's a chance that what you do can help someone out, then why not do it?

yes session, as in two sessions in a semester where each session is 8 weeks. Anyways, this session, which i'm just ending the 2nd week of, is already going kinda lousy. I'll have to pick up the slack for the rest of the weeks. This session I have Practical game design online and discrete mathematics. Both of which are alright but I'm still having those early weeks trouble.

For the game design class we have to do some game design documents, something i've never ever done before, and this class doesn't teach you how to do them, just expects you to know how to do them. Bad, bad fucking really bad there. So instead of having to spend my time doing what the class needs me to do I have to instead learn how to write these documents out and then write out a ton of them for the first and second week. Second, I have then submit a document on a game I want to design and make for this class in Game Maker 8. I should have that done soon enough.

Discrete math, on the other hand, is going no where fast. The book needed for the class is bloody expensive at the school, about $250 new, $140 used, or try their 'rental' program where you pay the money to use it for the class then return it to book store afterwards. Sounds good if only it wasn't $79 for that. Instead I searched through Amazon online and found a used one for $50 from a third party vendor with good rating. Bad move there, the vendor sent the wrong book and it took them over a week to get it to me. Least I got a full refund for it but it also means I had to look elsewhere for the book and thus went to Amazon directly and bought it used from them for $70. I 'should' get that book on saturday. If I don't then I just lost a whole grade point from my math class.

My motorcycle hit the 8000 mile mark not too long ago so yesterday I got some oil for my bike and changed the oil and filter for my bike. Accidentally overfilled my oil after draining the old oil out so I had to drain nearly half a quart out of my bike before it reached acceptable levels. After that I brought my bike into the shop today for service and tune up and got everything working like new again. They also helped drain just a little more oil out of the bike as there was still just a little too much in there.

Changed banks. Chase's new non free anything business method sucks so I got my money out of there before they fined all my money away in one month. Moved the cash to a bank just next door to the chase I was going to, and a credit union too so it's capable of allowing me to transfer funds to my navy federal account for free. downside is that since i'm new to their bank they have a limited week long hold on any checks deposited into the account so all of my money is in limbo right now and I can't pay any bills until next month.

I managed to sell off some of my items I was selling. Got rid of the 2 Nvidia high end graphics cards to a friend whose previous card was crapping out on them. Still that leaves me with one Cougar 1Kwatt power supply to sell off along with my other items i'm selling.

so for my new class in Psyc on leadership and motivation the team i'm in will have to come up with and execute something that helps to gives back to the community, ie community service. the one idea I pitched was doing something at a childrens hospital to try and bring something to those kids less fortunate. An interesting thought but I need to get some more information about how to do such a feat such as all the pre set up, how to talk to the hospital, and such. could anyone give me some pointers on how to set up an event like this? It may or may not pan out but I'd like to get the information and pitch it to the team for class.

Adam Atomic Talks Canabalt - IndieGame: The Movie from IndieGame: The Movie on Vimeo.

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still selling off my Honda Rebel 250 with some damage that needs to be fixed like new pegs and new rear brake pedal but still runs perfectly, asking $500 or less. Also selling off the headlight strobe separately and the tail light brake repeater at half off retail.

New thing i'm selling off is two high end Nvidia GTX 470 graphics cards at $225 each.
Also selling off a 1000w power supply for them at $150 which is made by Cougar.


Getting on with life. I passed my last two college classes, computer applications for business (A+) and Physics (B). Physics was a pain in the ass but I somehow got a B out of it, that made me so happy. so i'm between semesters with the next one starting up a week into Jan i think. Either way i'll be playing a bunch of catch up on games i bought during the tons and tons of Steam game sales from November and going on even now. Though mostly i'll be kicking back and relaxing till next semester starts then it's back to studying.

Christmas is so close and i'll be heading up, after getting some sleep, to my friend's place to spend some time and party with him and some friends before staying with my mom for Christmas.

So far so good, now back to play.

tis the season of gifts so why not buy something that I'm selling?

1: offering an old modified Xbox with 250gb HDD preinstalled with hundreds of old nintendo/super nintendo, sega games and even some xbox original games on the HDD. system with adapters and controllers i'm asking about $50.

2: selling off my old Honda rebel 250 motorcycle (2008 model). the motorcycle was only slightly run over (sideswiped) and only needs replacement front pegs and rear brake pedal. the gas tank has a dent in the right side as well but otherwise the bike runs perfectly. This is a bike perfect for beginners or those that want a cheap and easy to use street cruiser. Asking about $500. picture of bike. saddle bags come free with bike but are also damaged and don't fit the bike anymore.

3: motorcycle mods, selling one brake light modulator which provides attention getting flashes of your brake light. asking bout $25 for it.
also selling one headlight modulator for about $60.

4: selling off old gamecube with one corded controller cheap. also selling off all gamecube games for about $1 for each game. also selling three wavebird wireless controllers for gamecube/Wii, asking about $40 each or $100 for all 3.

please contact me anytime with any questions you may have.

was amazing though not without a bunch of crap filling my life months beforehand. So the pains I was having for the past few months was mainly from the fact that I had little to no money to pay for anything. for the most part I was just barely passing through the months and paying for rent and food but I always had to pay late, nearly 2 months late, for my bills. Finally I caught a break by getting some contract work with the census which helped keep me afloat for nearly a month and help pay off my phone and internet bills which were about to get disconnected. mid way through this month i finally get the loan check i applied for 2 months back (Wells Fargo fucking sucks) and a bit of the school loans for my school (extra money that is left over after cost of tuition and such gets placed in my hands). so finally I have a bit of money on hand to buy food, pay bills and relax on that part so I may focus more on what I need to do.

During that time though I managed to hit up two parties in the past few months. One was the Halloween party at Firon's place. that was a fun time spent eating good food and playing games with friends.
Now skip ahead to a week ago and I'm up in Sausalito drinking beers with some awesome people in the gaming industry. I finally met Manny who is an awesome guy i've been playing with on the TF2 Studio Rumble server. Also met another guy i've played with on TF2 and even on League of Legends, Avery. the rest of the people I met there worked in different fields of the industry but all were some great people to talk to and hang out with, even this guy. overall the experience was cool. I just hope the next party or convention I go to I get to hang out with these guys cause they were awesome. here's some photos I took and my videos.

Now it's thanksgiving and i'm bout to chow into some turkey and other good food. I'll be up in Concord for the weekend and i'll be checking out the deals at the stores hoping to see if there is some great deals on computer parts.

It's called the Honda Air. http://www.laautoshow.com/DC10/Honda.html

The Philosophy of Game Design part 1 of 4

that got me thinking a bit more about game design and made me wonder. If games are moving into a new medium of their own, and constantly changing with the time, then how would the ending to Halo Reach be looked at in this regard? Sure there have been a few games before where the main protagonist of the story would die either because they self sacrificed themselves for some greater good or glory or, in the case of playing the character good or evil and you play them as evil, your character gets killed off (which is still kinda a sacrifice for the greater good). But Spoiler Alert I can't remember any game prior that has the main protagonist, you, get placed in a fight against overwhelming odds with absolutely no chance of winning and when you finally loose all you're health they skip to the cut scene where they have the hordes of enemies come up and brutally kill off the character (they even have a narrative afterward to cement the fact that this character is dead and in no way is ever going to come back). Is this showing that the industry is slowing moving towards stronger story with better character development in order to provide more depth to that universe that the player is playing in? Also is killing off the main character going to happen more often but also in more cliche ways? ah questions questions.

I'm reminded of that episode of South Park where people fart into wine glasses and smell it cause they're just so full of smug.

I bet these guys do just about the same thing and think their shit doesn't stank.

This article made me yes so hard!
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/8120-Experienced-Points-A-Fanboys-Guide-to-Fanboying

and the follow up:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/8149-Experienced-Points-Your-Favorite-Game-Sucks

I'm now attending DeVry and am aiming for a Bachelors degree in game simulation and programming. My first class for this semester was english critical thinking. tomorrow will be math pre-calc. i'll be done with these classes in 8 weeks and then i'll be starting on some more programming classes catered more towards my career path.

I've looked at loans through DeVry and other places to help pay for living expenses and unfortunately thanks to the government there is no longer any private subsidized lenders I can apply for. The loans are now all done through the school for the Stafford loans and after going over the paperwork it seems that most all of the capable money I can get through the Stafford loan is going to pay for my tuition which means I need to get co-signers to help me get loans through banks to pay for my living expenses. bah. well here's hoping that my first attempt here for the co-sign loan works out.

can't seem to get a loan from anywhere so here's hoping that someone who reads this can help me out. I need $420 to pay for rent. I can't pay for any of my other bills, hell, i haven't payed for my phone bill for this month so here's me asking. if anyone has any money to spare I need some immediately to stay living in my house or be evicted. so Anyone?

enter the spirit hood. I saw this thing while at comic con. actually I saw a couple of these and I tried twice to win one in a raffle. I'm not sure what it is about these but the raffles here drew the largest crowd out of the entire con (excluding the big name signings. Now this seems like an untapped market for furries. All someone would need to do is start making some generic ones for sale at conventions and/or offer personal hoodies for more. Hell I'd buy one if there was a dragon hoodie made of my character.

Besides that, I had fun at Comic con though I'm probably not going to another for quite a while. The cost I paid for the ticket at last years comic con was $100 for 4 days, next year is even higher and I still don't have much money to do anything with currently. I'm thankful I managed to drive my butt down here and have my friend help put me up in his house for room and board and also get a free night at a hotel at comic con (since I only went 2 days). Though for my time at Comic con, even though I enjoyed it, I never attended any panels. Now a days it's almost impossible to attend a panel unless you wait in line for half the day, which most of the people did for the bigger panels. I spent the 2 days I was there in the main hall looking at the many different booths there selling stuff and found only one thing worthy of buying which was on a $5 special for comic con instead of the typical $20. The book I bought was Flight from image comics and is something I'd recommend for people to pick up. For many of the other items I got they were from freebies from many different places. I picked up a few posters that I'd put up in my room, a few comics, some inflatable toys and a few shirts for free. Could of gotten more but walking around for hours upon hours straight was incredibly tiring.

In any case I took many pictures and have all the pictures I took uploaded here in my picasa albums. The videos I took I uploaded to my youtube page and linked those previously.

Original Ghost Busters car

part 1 of inflatable sword fight in the park

part 2 of the inflatable sword fight in the park brought to you buy Bioware and Dragon Age.

Finally got a hold of someone that could tell me the reason why I was denied and it was because I have at least 3 debt collection agencies holding me be from getting any and all loans. You know those medical bills that i can't pay because the other person that sideswiped me didn't pay for insurance and gave false information to the police for her phone number and insurance and completely dodged any communications from me? yeah all those bills went to collections and now i can't get loans.

So essentially i can't go to school cause I can't get loans. I can't get a job and go to school cause I can't get loans to pay for school (I won't get scholorships from part time schooling), also I can't get a job and go to school anyways unless i find a job that pays $15/h and always gives at least 20 hours a week to me. If I try for a full time job my school loans will start getting interest and i'd have to start paying those off, or at least the interest, which means i'd have to start paying $200 a month anyways for that too while paying the $600 for just my home, phone, and internet bills and $250 for food, and paying off the nearly $10,000 of medical bills that have an insane interest to them as is. It took me a year and six months to pay off my first motorcycle of about $1,600 payment (the other large amount was paid for in large part as a gift from my mom) and I was making $13/h at my last job.

So who is there to help me? Not even my mom can pay for me living here and I can't move in with my mom cause the house is has no room.

for anyone that can find any factual information on this person I need it, especially their address. this is the name and last known good information on the person I need to sue.
Marisol Quintero
4534 Jonquil dr. San Jose ,CA 95136
drivers license# california B983358.
vehicle identification number: 2B3HD46R72H139465. Dodge Intrepid. Plate #5XQV672
no phone number information provided was correct for the driver or passenger in the car.

and last but not least, I'm sick and fucking tired of people telling me to just let it go because this person I need to sue might not have any money anyways and blah i shouldn't spend any more money on trying to do this anyways and instead just pay off my debts, blah fucking blah. Seriously, whats with this fucking attitude? I've talked to lawyers and they told me to give up on suing her cause it's not worth the time and effort and extra money I have to spend on just trying to get money from her. I've talked with insurance companies and they told me I might as well just give up. The only people that tell me to give up are these fucking businesses that just want me to pay them and then give up themselves when they have to shell out anything while the people that tell me to keep pushing to sue this person are, for the most part, my friends and family.

omg, so i went today, 3rd time this month, to DeVry. this time I talked with the dean of the field of study i'm looking to jump into. This guy is fucking amazing because he's got a shit ton of knowledge with him. I stayed there for nearly 2 hours talking with him about the school, the game industry, and many other things that came up no matter how strangely related it seemed. this guy gave me a warm fuzzy feeling in my stomach just hearing his stories and what the field of study is planning on doing if I join.

after talking with him we went to a class that was half an hour before starting and looked at some of the higher end programming that i'd be learning. Half an hour later I was hooked. I have a real good feeling about this, even though I don't have a real good grasp on my money situation. still, it looks like I may choose to hit up DeVry this fall for the rest of my college learning and i'll be learning from industry veterans in the game programming and simulation fields.

All I have to do now is go back there on monday and talk with the person i was talking with before and I should be fully set up for the fall semister at DeVry.

also known as the article that says the iPhone 4 algorithm is to blame.

lets pull out the juicy tid-bits shall we?

Apple's explanation is that the iPhone—including 3G and 3GS—has always displayed too many bars given a certain level of signal strength

so they are saying they allowed the phone to display more bars than it's supposed to. why? well that's actually because they changed the algorithm back in 2008 to purposely show more bars where there wasn't supposed to be bars

"Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength," wrote Apple

Time for some math. five bars minus two equals three. a three out of five reception equals 60% reception strength for most everyone that has five bars. You know, a 60 out of 100 in school is a D. A D letter grade is what Apple found acceptable for their phones? WTF?

"Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don't know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place."

Really? so no iPhone user has, technically, ever had five bars for their phone ever?


bleh. whether you have an iFail or not is not the point here. The point is the fact that Apple has purposely been lying to their customers about the signal strength for the phones for nearly two years now and it's only taken a poorly engineered next gen phone for them to remove that lie, only to make it seem like that new iPhone 4 doesn't loose as many bars, since more than likely it'll show only an average of 3 consistently.

And yet another thing to add to my bag of asses that I dislike about Apple.