Journals

Remember my fringe journal I posted last year? Well, things have developed a wee bit since then:

Around September time I applied for a technician job at my university's student union - I luckily managed to get the job but because I was working full time at the 'ol hotel chocolat, I had done about 1 shift between getting the job and finishing our production of Guys & Dolls ( feb 2016.. so almost 6 months).

Within the last few months ,I've gone from knowing a thing or two about tech to being able to plot, mic, setup, soundcheck and live mix a band ( on some decent peices of kit), use and rig lighting fixtures and consoles, and know almost every bit of troubleshooting under the sun.
I've mostly only used Analogue sound desks (Image is a midas verona 400, big and heavy desk that needs two people to physically set up - great guy to use) - Desks that are entirely physical, that is they don't make use of microprocessors to alter the sound- but yesterday I had to learn, within the space of an hour for a live band, how to use one of the worlds most common digital desks, a Yamaha LS9. ( spoiler: wasn't easy, but managed to set it up and sound great )
Who knows where I'll be in a couple more months time! I've been told from multiple sources that EUSA (The company I work for) is fairly well known in Scotland for making some really well trained staff - I had gone to PLASA ( Lighting & Sound expo ) in Glasgow with a couple colleagues - just by wearing our work shirts, we were literally handed business cards and offered jobs then and there!

I'm currently about to apply to work at the Gilded Balloon over the Fringe, so instead of volunteering to do the lighting op for a show, I'll hopefully be one of a team to overhaul our students' union, setup and mix several acts in a day, every day, for just over a month. And get paid too!

Gilded Balloon is one of the most popular venues, alongside the Assembly Rooms and Pleasance. These three get most of the big names.
If you don't know anything about the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.. well, it's the worlds' largest arts festival.

Oh yeah, Guys & Dolls, never mentioned that. Nothing too major, just, y'know, Sky Masterson. Was good, but was completely disappointed with our tech & set; every review mentioned that. However I'll take this from a renowned harsh reviewer:
Oliver Barker’s Sky Masterson has a strong stage presence, especially when he abandons the Presleyish curled lip he overuses at first, but his singing does not match up to his acting, or to Millar’s huge voice. Nevertheless, he has just about enough pizzazz to carry off Luck, Be a Lady successfully.
....ehhhh, I'll take that as a "good actor with an improving voice". I never realised how nervewracking it is to read reviews about yourself.

We will be in Stockholm from August 15 to August 21, 2016.

We have to deal with complex entity systems quite often in Goldsource. Until recently, I used to start working on them directly in Hammer without any preparation beforehand.
However, as a computing student, we've been taught Oriented Programming and the analysis and design process. Basically, it's about finding requirements for a software and designing the code before actually starting coding it. Naturally, I wondered: why not try the same for Goldsource entities systems? I always struggled to make complex entity systems and the method I used to use makes the system a real pain to build, to understand and to maintain, so it sound like a good idea.
So here it is, I tried to design the entity system of an elevator using the software Visual Paradigm with an object diagram. Each type of entity is a class and each entity is an object. Targets are represented with dotted arrows.
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=A52162CFA2ECDDBB!28411&authkey=!AN3aD6RykHcT_i8&v=3&ithint=photo%2cjpg
Classy, isn't it? The only problem is: for some unknown reasons, it doesn't work… -_- But I'm working on it!

"Teh epik master plan"!

"Teh epik master plan" is my own brilliant plan used to escape the cruelty and sadness of the F2P world. Sort of like Team Fortress 2's separation of P2P players and F2P players.

I am currently an F2P player if we forget the piracy (that's how I have Half-Life in the first place). And I became bored of it! Being F2P is poop! And a pirate...

Therefore, I developed one of my biggest plans of my life - "Teh epik master plan" a.k.a 'Operation Green'.

So, if you came to see the plan itself, here are the steps:

1. Create a bank account (mine will be a savings account, since I'm 14)

2. Create a PayPal account

3. Acquire some 'resources'

4. Link the debit card (or a credit card) to the PayPal account

(Optional)5. Validate the PayPal account

6. Buy a copy of Half-Life 2

Of course, I've only done step 2. However, what bothers me the most is how I have an OK amount of real cash, while I'm a hobo when it comes to virtual cash. Nevertheless, I am a genious!

So, I always thought (when I was 10) that putting 10 KM (BAM, a currency) in my DVD-ROM will actually buy me the game. Turns out that it wouldn't. But now my opinion is greatly changed:

2010 - putting money into a PC buys a game
2013 - using credit cards buys a game
2015 - using credit cards or PayPal can buy a game
2016 - using my plan I can buy a game

AND, from now on, I will only use torrents to test the games I buy!

I will inform you in another journal about this plan, and I'll tell you if it worked.

P.S. For you "Git a j0b m8" posters, I can't have a job because I'm 14 years-old.

Unfortunately, I have some errors when attempting to compile the Half-Life 1 SDK, gonna do some searches and see if I can fix it ^^

I have left the palindromic age.

Need to do a lot of shit this year.

[EDIT] Got a pair of Sennheiser CX 300-ii earbuds from a friend, my last earbuds were "Canyon" and lasted my 4 years, but holy shit are these new ones better!

TAKING ENVIRONMENT ART TO THE NEXT LEVEL

Hello
I have just found an interesting article. I wish i could grow a talent

http://80.lv/articles/next-level-of-environment-art-david-lesperance/

In my last journal I wrote about how for university we're making a model aircraft which has to be capable of carrying a 32oz bottle, and it must also be capable of being disassembled to be carried in another model aircraft.
Today we had the flights, and my team's plane performed fairly well. It had one problem, in that the landing gear wasn't rigid enough and the wheels were too small, so it caught on the ground a lot and flipped over when that happened. We had three flights, but there were also three failed attempts where the plane flipped before it left the ground, and on one of the flights it flipped on landing.
We fixed the problem with some zip ties however and none of the flights after that had any problems.
I'll upload some pics from my phone and write more about it tomorrow, but until then I will leave you with this very important piece of news:

Got a new RC car! Kinda...

While it's not totally new, it's new to me. It's a 1988 Tamiya Grasshopper II. It's as old as I am!

Video
Slow Motion 240fps

My old boss gave it to me as a gift because he hadn't used it in quite some time and left the batteries in it to leak and get the controller all nasty. I cleaned it up, replaced some battery terminals, re-soldered some joints and it works great!

Here's an album of the tear down - Tear-down and a cat

It finally happened, at last!

I tried to make a map for Team Fortress 2 for the first time, and guess what:

On the 22nd of March 2016, I, at last, became a Source mapper! Finally, after so much trouble around getting Hammer to not show the 'default scheme not loaded' error, and then after finding the most stunning solution, I launched Hammer 4! It worked!

I immediately started browsing for the grass texture, and after going through many blend textures, I found one of the most generic ones used in Half-Life 2. I made a brush which was 512x512 units big in the top view, and, of course, I put the skybox correctly.

And I can freely say how one of my biggest wishes were accomplished, which is actually being proven by the fact that it's raining (at the time of writing). Therefore, I'll celebrate this exact day every year.

So, since I already knew some things about Source mapping even if I never mapped for it at all, I proceeded to put some displacements into my first map, which I had done. I inserted some player spawn entities, one for each of the teams (remember, Team Fortress 2), and I also included a wooden box into the map thanks to Source's beautiful func_physboxes. And then I compiled the map, but I, as you could have thought, forgot to include a light entity. But, despite my earlier experiences with the VHLT compilers (they leave it dark, no fullbright), I still knew that the map will be lit. Because Source's compiling tools are different.

And it was lit, it also had a wooden box whose properties I had edited before, so it wasn't made out of glass. The map was very tiny, but big enough to be playable. Sadly, it was bedtime already

I already knew so much about Source mapping, yet I had no experience in it! Well, that's all because of the tutorials on this site, and probably some YouTube ones there and there. I used to read them a lot, that's why I made the map without errors out of the first try, and it wasn't that empty, since it had a breakable (ugly, but breakable) wooden prism in it.

So, that might just start my 15th evolution (which only affects me). Yeah, I had 14 of them... the latest one happened in January 2016. And the one before that happened in the winter of 2014, when I just started mapping.

The problem with VHE turned out to be that I didn't launch it from the correct folder. I had to go to my Team Fortress 2 folder, and then into the "bin" folder. I found hammer.exe there. But I actually discovered that on my brother's laptop (my brother is 5, but he understands mapping and such), while I was trying to make a map for it for the last time. I used my brother's laptop because Team Fortress 2 was downloading on mine, so it wasn't installed yet. And my brother and I got entirely surprised how there weren't any errors when I clicked on File-->New... And then I saw the tip of the ice berg, it seemed to be too good to be true, but I did it, and now I'm unstoppable! I can't wait to play with the cubemaps, and that flashy normal mapping, oh, especially with the physics...

Of course, my ever-lasting quest still continues, as I've found a new goal to achieve. I only have 2 games left to make maps for, Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike Source, and then, my quest will be almost complete.

I started writing a novel this week.

It's a historical fiction based on a family friend set in WWII China.

I just played some Russian military mod of HL. The USA invades your counttry and you have to fight them back. Prepare to get heavily wrecked by the US army and their troops, light and medium tanks, and worst of all, the machine gun nests. I swear, those machine gun nests added at least 20 hours to the gametime since I didnt quicksave as often as I should have.

The mapping is alright as you can see in the screen shots, but what you dont see is that the mapping is actually extremely sloppy. Loads of areas to get stuck in and visual glitches. Instructions appear as on screen game_text and in some cases you have about 5 seconds to read it or fail to know what to do. Alot of doors are breakable(but they dont open) so if you dont whack every door you see you will get stuck too.

The mod contains all of the base op4 assets but I suspect the biggest reason the author used op4 is for the friendly soldiers.

I must say this mod is pretty unforgiving. Combat is very tough even with the op4 weapons in stock. There are many US soldiers coming and they wont hesitate to rush at u from any direction or hide in some dark area and ambush u. Expect every US soldier to carry grenades or noob tubes. And the worst is how they can see you perfectly from behind thick plants where you have no hope of seeing them. Same goes for the tanks. Did I mention the machine gun nests? They will reck u hard. They dont work like normal machine guns, they spray shotgun shells extremely fast from extra long range. Dont even THINK about rushing them or even picking at them from long range. You will have to be extremely careful. Not only can they take you to school at extra long range, they can actually bend at a 90° angle to spray you when you think you are save. And there's a random weaponstrip somewhere in the mod so don't bother saving ammo or whatever.

It says theres 2 endings, but really there's almost no difference between them. Basically one 'ending' will let you get to an extra level which I thought was unfinished, because nothing happens in it. And another map was about 2 seconds long. About 7 or so maps are copied due to the routes splitting between the two endings, but there are no differences between them.

Overall I think this mod is very different from you standard mod. If you are looking to get recked by US soldiers then this is the mod for you. It's difficult, but not impossible and you might make it to the end if you be careful and find a way thru.

(I wish someone would stream this mod so you can see how tough it is, lol)

"She'll never drown with those floatation devices on her chest."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2codXzXtc30

btw. a great vocal trance song

I use XT9. It may or may not be the best option out there, but it works for me. I like it because words require less key presses than the length of the word being entered, and also because since there are less keys (or touch-screen equivalent) they are bigger than on a Qwerty keypad, giving me more area per key and making it less likely to press the wrong key.

Now, I'm not an expert in phone software, but if I had to do an XT9 parser, these are the rules I come up with without much thought:

• Look for words matching the current input;
• Of the above, prefer complete words that match the length of the current input;
• Of the above, or if there are no direct length matches, pick the most used;
• Give the other words in a list sorted by frequency of use.

• If you don't want to keep track of the user's frequency of words, there are statistics on word usage for pretty much any language to help with that.

It's not particularly hard, right? I haven't put a lot of thought into it and I'm pretty sure the above rules would do a pretty decent job. The Samsung phone I had generally got it right. But the current Android keyboard and any alternate keyboards I try prefer to do it this way:

• Look for words matching the current input
• Ignore one-letter words (trying to write "I" results in "g" unless I tap the letter I from the list)
• Of the word matches found, disregard frequency of use and instead:
• - Pick any words with special characters (such as áäéëíïóöúüñ)
• - If none have special characters, prefer the longest word available even if there are other words matching the length of the input
• - Pick the least likely word possible. The statistics will help achieve this.
• If a valid word is entered and it isn't one of the above, autocorrect-substitute it with one of the above.
• Finally, provide a list of alternative words following the above rules. If you run out of screen space, leave out the common words. You'll auto-correct them out anyway.
• For inputs over a certain length, don't bother matching or suggesting, just spew out the gibberish the user obviously wanted to type.

Which do you prefer?

I don't know about you, but i'm 22
In other news there might be a TWHL Tourney around the corner.