Journals

I've a slight confession to make. I've no idea if Archie knows of this place , but a good few years ago this shop , the "Jolly Rodger" managed to break about every piracy law ever. The guy literally just bought games , bypassed their security systems , and then sold them for a much lower price.My confession is that this is how I acquired my first copy of Half-Life , along with opposing force and a shit ton of maps. At the time I was only about 8 so I didn't give a shit , but then some time ago - when Steam started to become prevalent - I decided I'd go out and genuinely buy the game. When I activated the game , I'd also managed to get Opposing force and Blue shift with it as well! Rewarding me for being a genuine customer for once!

I just had to give money to Valve for what they've done!

Liebe ist fur alle da , nicht fur mich

Apart from the apparently random rammstein lyrics , I've got higher prelims in two weeks. Talk about unprepared.

For all of you that don't know of the scottish education system ( and probably english as well I'd assume) , you go through 4 phases when doing exams.
The first phase is the prelim , an exam , usually of slightly higher difficultly than the actual exam. Prelims will not only give the pupil , myself , an idea of what grade they'll get in the exam , but can also be used as evidence to increase your grade if you fuck up in the exam. If you balls-up your prelim , or if you haven't actually covered the whole course when you get the prelim , you'll do a post prelim. It's exactly the same as prelim , but just done later on.

After those two stages , you are set with the actual exam. The final stage is appeals , if you are absent from the exam because you are sick / injured / dead , your teachers will put forward an appeal based on your prelim / post prelim results. The better you do in your prelims , the higher the chance that your score will be upgraded.

And since the prelims are the "all-cure" , I don't think i'm going to do too well in them. We've done fuck all preparation past-paper wise in english , and haven't finished the course in music or in physics.

Katrina? Naw , we in Scotland like to name our hurricanes somewhat differently..

.. hurricane bawbag.

I fucking hate Windows.

A few days ago XP started to cock up , I wasn't able to change any settings due to the control panel giving me rundll errors. Because my computer is an HP Media Centre , it has a seperate partition which has a factory copy of Windows installed and all the drivers , so all I needed to do was pop in a disc which would copy all the factory files onto my hard drive.
After the ridiculously long 5 hour recovery , The computer failed to even boot up. Bastard.
I have a copy of Windows 7 lying around which I was thinking of upgrading to soon , so now was the perfect oppurtunity. Choosing the "non destructive" installation because I've been formatted before and it's been FUCKING ANNOYING.
So , I turn on the newly installed computer , everything seems fin - WHERE THE HELL ARE ALL MY PROGRAMS?

Windows decided that the program files folder was of no significance and deleted the whole thing. There goes Steam , Photoshop , reason , All my maps , my custom textures...

Bastard.

So I decided i'd grill a naan bread and have my usual "naan pizza" , although two minutes after I put it in it managed to catch fire and almost set the whole grill on fire.
Needless to say I got my fire extinguisher out and blasted that bastard back to Bangkok.
Tidying up the masses of chemical dust left everywhere was a pain though.

Fun times for me! Person I was seeing went out with someone behind my back , My results in recent school tests have been dissapointing in everything apart from maths and physics , having to rush to find someone for prom and generally having shit depressing boring days.

And some people wonder why i'm a pessimistic cynic..

In other news , my competition is slowly coming together , with 1 1/2 rooms done. No way i'm going to have it done by the deadline...

Don't think I'm really going to be in the partying mood for a LONG time..
Last night was a normal party with all my friends....
...and then one of my best friends got molested / raped.

Got to love the fact that mapping greatly helped my understanding and performance in my graphic communication and maths classes..

who says gaming makes you dumber?

The link is here if you want to vote for these guys ( I will be forever grateful if you do )
For the past few months i've been following a band called XAVIA , they've got this really cool but quirky style of like a mix of Pendulum and Muse, which makes for some pretty good tracks. Last week or so they got into a competition where pretty much the band with the most votes gets to play the main stage at a festival called the Wickerman , based around the pagan ritual. If everybody would be awesome enough to vote for these guys , then we'll be able to get them yet even more in the spotlight and get more people knowing about them.
XAVIA at the scottish alternate music awardsHere's a link to one of their tracks , Hate this & I'll love you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwedKdEh8d4&feature=related

I guess there's always one upside to the exams..

.. gettin pished afterwords.

Edited because my posts don't make sense:

I think i've managed to fuck up my general music exam. Some asshat at the SQA thought it'd be a good idea to have the first 'excerpt of music' to be an orchestral version of the Go Compare advert theme.
Not only did I hum along, but it took over my head for the whole of the paper. Couldn't get anything right!

oh, and for any of you beautiful people who don't know what it is, listen to this pile of garbage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_-9QFvhQWo

I hate revision. I hate exams.

Well , surprisingly , I think I've done a pretty good job with BOG:S
If you don't want to have the intro spoiled , skip this.

I tried to give a reason for the player to get a weapon. Unlike most maps where they are just laying around , this has a point.

In the map , you are faded in to a view camera looking on a small alleyway with a forcefield covering it , protecting some fragile crates and the conditioning for a combine factory. A metrocop sees a fault with the barrier and walks through, and has a go at the control panel. A citizen decides he can gossip to his friends and leans next to the forcefield emitter. The idiot metrocop buggers it up and gets himself killed - Overheating the forcefield blowing it up , and igniting the poor citizen , giving the player access to the crowbar the metrocop was using. The fragile box is highlighted to show the player something important is in there - and that's an HEV suit. As soon as you break the box, a nearby citizen yells at you ( Thanks to MegaJohnny he has custom voices) , trying to grab your attention. He wants help but tells you you can get there by busting into a door. This door has 4 highlighted locks.
The rest is unfinished.
If you want to test this map so far , Please go into the map vault and download it.

EVEN BETTER ANNOUNCEMENT
Considering I really want to start anew and even though I have my roots here , I want to grow up , and be a bit more serious.
I had requested GrimReafer to Change my name , and he has done so.
Some may know me called this on my Email. Or my current steam name.. or my facepunch user... Et cetera.
So , No more Mr. Good map , Hello "Instant Mix"

Title : Sweet jesus.

I have no idea why I came back to this site.
Honestly , no idea. I've spent years on Facepunch and I plan to do so.
Although my mapping skills were greatly increased by the good people of TWHL.
Looking through my previous journals.. Christ - to think I came onto this site when I was 9.. Almost 5 years ago.
It is so weird. Just to think.
No wonder I'm the top in my graphics class!

Anyway , Basically I'm going to be popping in now and again. I'm improving my modelling skills :, and hopefully to start practicing on rigging. That and faceposing. When That's done , I may have a stab at Cyclone , Although I still have the ideas jotted down on paper and on .vmfs , it will probably never happen.

So really , this is just to say , Hello , and goodbye.