Journals

HOLIDAYS!

Actually, not quite. Got a final in a few weeks but it's easy so I'm not concerned.

Also, 4000th login.

Map reviews inbound.

I'll be reviewing/rating maps for the better part of today. If you'd like your map checked out, simply let me know, and i'll bump it to the top of the queue.

I usually try to rate every map that i can in the vault that i own the game for, but i've been neglecting this for some time.

If you like, specify your preferenced review tone, to "mild", "medium", or "omg that is fucking harsh", and i'll comment/rate appropriately. =)
***

EDIT: got through 6 maps today:



[url=][simg][/simg][/url]

A friend shared this with me:Yep, this is sad...
They should actually see us as this:, either a roman. Because we're the descendants of dacians and romans.

Fun with malware.

I just recently got infected with the Windows 7 Antispyware 2012 virus, and man, they make these things nastier and nastier every time.

i'm pretty sure i contracted the the problem by accidentally clicking an ad banner, and then when avast popped up, i chose the wrong action rather than "open in sandbox" or "cancel opening".

After infection i could not:
-access msconfig
-open anything pined to the taskbar without it poping up and starting a new instance of itself (msv.exe win32)
-open any gadgets or sevendeskbar(dockable toolbar program for win7) without it popping up.
-could not open firefox without it being automatically pinned to the taskbar, for a nefarious reason no doubt.

Thankfully, i could still access the internet and find/download the fixes. I'm just finishing an anti-malwarebytes scan now to make sure it's gone.

I would highly recommend to anyone to copy your windows/system32/msconfig.exe, zip it, and put it someplace you'll remember in-case this or some other thing happens to prevent you from accessing it. (you can copy and paste it to the desktop and run it as administrator if your own msconfig gets corrupted)

Lastly, i'm adding some things to my security, as recommended by Penquingboy, all for firefox:

-disable java plugin
-install addon: flashblock plus
-install addon: adblock plus

Cheers, and Careful browsing to all, and to all a good night!
CT

so instead of posting to the compo thread, whoever comes across this gets to read it.

I am here to rant about all the mishaps during my attempt at compo 31.

1. Didn't go to this site to find out their was a new compo until after about 1/3 of the compo time had passed.

2. Didn't remember to go back to the site to download the texture pack and start working on it until over a week after, about 1/2 into the allotted time.

3. Didn't get to really start until about 2 weeks left.

4. Restarted my compy after a windows update. Hammer 3.5 nor 3.4 no longer work with windows 7 64bit. :(, which means no model previews (Now how am I going to build collision brushes to match the models?)

Stuck using Hammer 3.3...

5. Waited until about 4 days before due to try to compile any of my maps... "AllocBlock: full" Error. My maps were supposedly too big.

6. Tried to refit my maps to make them smaller, but still no luck.

7. Resorted to resizing the textures to free up memory the map was using - this took about half of a night, but then the colors were distorted when pasting them into PS to resize... :(, so I had redo several of the textures, and they still aren't correct!

8. Spent the rest of that night replacing only half of the textures on ONE of my maps.

9. 2.5hrs of sleep later, day of the deadline, approx. 4hrs left. Almost finished retexturing the same 1 map of 4 to 7 I had planned.

10. Said forget this - I was proud of what I had built, but it wasn't functional yet, and no where close to even a super shrunk short mission. Not worthy of representing my capabilities.

But maybe two good things....

Things can't be worse for the next compo... (or can they? switching to source and not knowing how all the extra entities work? that's what TWHL is for!)

11. Steam is having a great Autumn sale! I bought 8 items from my wish list on sale... and bought 8 more cheap fun games!

12. I will still work on my short mission using just the textures provided and upload... later...

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.

It's been 24 hours since I've completed High School and University awaits next year. Recently I've sifted through the shit I've posted as journals ever since I joined and man, just by looking at them I should've had a live journal back then! My grammar has improved slightly since then...

I've lost pretty much all of the motivation I've had in regards to mapping but yet I still stick around a mapping based site. I may one day open up the SDK / Hammer 3.5 but for now, it'll be a departure from blocky architecture and moving on to a course in acting. If that doesn't work out, I'll be starting vocal lessons and learning Korean (read, write, speak) soon so I hope those will aid me later on in life.

As for now I'll be lurking around not logged in as per usual. Laters~

Sooty, one of my two cats recently got diagnosed with a tumour in her throat. Today it was clear that she could no longer swallow food and the vet had to put her down.
She was 19 - in the family since I was one year old.

Gunna be honest. Not coping too well.

Watched season 2, episode 5 of The Walking Dead. I have to say, I can't wait till this season is over. From ep. 2 onwards it got way too predictable. Not to mention boring. Exactly how long are the writings going to stay on the farm? No doubt dragging it out till the end of the season. Not to say the seasons been terrible, but it hasn't been particularly good either. Certainly not on par with season 1, in any way.

My latest project:
There was a screenshot here once

It's a low-power, silent, home server. It will serve my website and a couple of game servers. It's running FreeBSD and lighttpd. I put it together using these parts:
[list][li]Motherboard/CPU/GPU: Asus E35M1-I Deluxe - It's a Mini-ITX motherboard with an integrated dual-core AMD E-350 APU (CPU and GPU in one) running at 1.6 GHz. It's low-power and made for passive cooling. Has features (which are useless to me) like USB 3.0, 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 3.0. Built-in SATA 3.0 controller.[/li]
[li]2x4GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1333MHz RAM - This as much and as fast memory as the motherboard supports.[/li]
[li]Antec ISK300-65 Mini-ITX case - Case with room for 2 2.5" drives and a slim optical drive and comes with a 65W fan-less power supply[/li]
[li]OCZ Vertex 3 Series SATA III 2,5" SSD - 120GB Max Iops - Max read 550MB/s write 500MB/s[/li]
[li]2x Enermax CLUSTER UCCL8 80mm case fan - These turned out to be louder than claimed in reviews, so I'm ordering new fans to replace these. Because the computer is extremely low-power I can run these at minimum speed.[/li][/list]

I had this dream last night. I was a NAZI soldier sent undercover to Holland. I can't remember what for, though. I walked across the border and I lived with a local merchant, somehow fighting crime but also pretending to be a defenseless nobody, until somehow I found out a plan to frame me for something I didn't do. I had to clean my name somehow, so I walked to the next village and entered a tailor's shop to have a new suit made. While I was there, a woman burst in asking, in German, about the lead tailor. I most naturally nodded my head in his direction, and then I sat next to the tailor assistant's desk. Without looking away from her work, she talked to me:

(in German) I didn't know you could speak German.
(in German) Yes... uh... a bit.
(in Dutch) That's great, it might come in handy.
(in Dutch) Indeed it might! But I'm not fluent enough.
(in Spanish) What about Spanish, can you speak Spanish too?
(in Spanish) Sure I can! It's easy!
(in Spanish) That's awesome!

After my new suit was finished I was captured by some CIA or German equivalent, I guess thugs in Blues Brothers-like attires, that were bent on convincing me to turn myself in and accept the charges for the crime I was being framed for. I was then presented with a gorgeous looking lady who had been paid to pretend she was a prostitute that witnessed my (still unknown to me) illegal actions. She then whispered in my ear that I seemed to be a nice guy and she actually wanted to get laid when this was over. (at this point I should have guessed it was a dream, but no)

I was taken to a building that looked just like the American Congress, which was closed for the day but the thugs had the key to it. I was taken to a room that looked like a kindergarten but "mixed" in between the children were a handful of men in their 50s, in suits, cutting and pasting random scraps of paper. As I got closer to them, it became apparent that their job was to decode steganographed high-security messages hidden in the advertisements posted to the local papers. The lady pushed me to the side and told me (in English) she had just learned I was being framed once again. As she was telling me this, I noticed one of the men was holding something up in the air, very still. I realised he was filming me to frame me yet again for something, so I looked straight into the video device with an evil grin. He immediately noticed and pointed it away, so we took the evidence and walked away unnoticed. Now I could return to "my" village (where the army or police or some generic law enforcement group was expecting me) to clean my name once and for all.

I woke up before I found out whether they believed me or not. And before I got the chick.

I picked up my pre-order of Skyrim today on the PS3. Unfortunately, I don't have a HDTV, so there's some problems with resolution (particularly annoying since I can't see anything on the bottom bar, including my health bar) but otherwise I'm having a blast with it.

I am, as always, playing my kahjitt assassin. I'm such a sucker for sneaky bow shots. And now I can add dual dagger backstabs to the list

Purchased a Radeon HD 6950 to prepare my computer for 2012.
Games i want to play:

Battlefield 3
Skyrim
Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Next year: Quad core and new motherboard.

Been on another really weird shoot recently. If you successfully guess what the subject matter of the program I've been camera op on is, you win the prize.






Also, Suffering from a gratuitous hangover, but I thought you might get a wee giggle from these two photos. My drunken "DO NOT WANT" expression when glomped by fat birds made me laugh when I saw the photos.

I am home again. I can't express my happiness, especially towards the fact of having privacy again and a non-smelling toilet.

I am currently rediscovering how to use a mouse. For some reason I still try to move my fingers on the mousepad instead of moving the mouse :).