Jer & Russ' Day Of Fun Grown-Up!

01.22.2009

This past Saturday, my good close personal friend Chas along with myself, ventured out to do things that we had never (or seldom) done. No no, nothing kinky.

I picked up young Chas around 9:30 in the morning and carted him off to Nashville. We had an odd errand or two which was taking us to Nashville, so we were going to enjoy it. Sure, pretty much everything we had planned to do in Nashville could have been done in Huntsville, but there's nothing blog-worthy about that. So off to Nashville we went!

Our first stop (bank and gas station not withstanding) was J Alexanders where I introduced Chas to Steak Maui. Good, manly steak, marinaded in soy, brown sugar, ginger, and a couple of other things for 4-7 days. Yes, I talk to the wait staff too much and find out things.

Afterward we made our way to Frugal MacDoogal Wine & Spirit Warehouse, where liquors can be found 20% cheaper than in Alabama. With a combined 9 bottles of liquor, it's possible we may have qualified as bootleggers when bringing it back across the state line but I can't find anything concrete to back that up.

On the way back home (yes, we only did things in Nashville) we decided to up the ante by stopping by Madison Guns since both Chas and myself have been interested in taking up shootsmithing. Chas is a little ahead of me since he's inherited a .38 from Old Man Poplin.

Steak, liquor, guns. If we had some tobaccy the ATF would be all over us.

Instead we stopped by the comic store on the way back to Jer's house.

Permalink road trip

227½ft³

01.19.2009

I've come to a time I've been dreading as it pertains to my ever growing collection of the sweet binary media known as DVDs. I'm running out of room.

Now that I can once again use my back door, I've moved the DVD cabinets that used to live in front of the door to the spare, waiting to be painted bedroom while I figure out what to do with said cabinets. I don't really have room for them in the living room, at least anyplace where they wouldn't be in the way. The 5 cabinets primarily hold seasons of TV DVDs - and not all of them, at that. Each cabinet takes up roughly 45½ cubic feet, and I think was advertised to hold 88 DVDs. I took a rough sampling of what I've got stored in those 5 cabinets and found the following:

• There are at least 23 different series with more than 1 season.
• Those 23 series total 117 seasons of TV.
• Those 117 seasons are contained on about 580 discs.

Years ago I reduced my CD storage space by ripping what I normally listened to, storing the CD in a binder/case, and chunking the jewel case. I'm wondering if the same method will work with 580 TV DVDs.

People tend to borrow my actual movies, so it makes sense to keep those in the original boxes, but seldom do I loan out my TV series. There's not a lot of re-watching of a series. Except for an occasional Friends or Frasier, I can only remember watching Babylon 5 and ST:TNG more than once.

If I go through with this, I would undoubtedly save the original boxes/cases somewhere, more than likely thrown up in the attic in case I ever wanted to re-pack them and trade them in after DVDs go the way of the VHS.

I want something more sturdy than a nylon binder - I've just had bad luck with the sleeves in those things. I came across a 600 CD aluminum case for $29.99, or I can get it from an oddly similar site for $37.99. Both sites are owned by the same guy in Canada, so maybe I shouldn't be too paranoid. I haven't taken the next step to see how much shipping would be.

One of the 600 CD cases takes up 205 cubic feet. 22 cubic feet less than the 5 cabinets I'm using. That's a big freakin' case. Maybe I need to find something a little smaller. That stacks.

Permalink movies/tv/dvd

Torqued, Part 1

01.09.2009

For the past 5 weeks, I've been trying to get a handle on the Torque Game Engine. This is one of those projects I've been putting off for years that I'm finally going to make time for, being the eventual making of the wrestling game I've always wanted. I've talked about it before, and realistically I'm years away from making said wrestling game, but to get to the knowledge level needed to make that wrestling game I've got to start somewhere. Enter baby step #1.

I'm [arguably] a coder. Really I'm more of a hacker/cut-n-paste coder. All I've coded for the past 10 years are web applications, so real object-oriented code takes a little while for me to wrap my brain around. Torque uses a C++ style scripting language to do all kinds of cool stuff. I've got 4 books and access to tutorials, websites, and forums galore to help understand that code. If I can find where in the code to start messing around, I'll be good. After 5 weeks, I can tweak the player settings and place objects on a mission map directly in a file, but so far I don't know the right place to change things dynamically in the game. That's not to say I can't find out with relative ease, it's just that these baby steps I'm taking are extremely small.

Being [arguably] a coder, my biggest unknown in playing around with a game engine is the actual models themselves. People, vehicles, buildings, terrain, weapons. Luckily, one of the reasons I picked Torque was there is an ample supply of models that work with the engine - some free, some for a reasonable price. With those models, I can limit my bug tracking to me messing with the code, not wondering if some 3D model I've cobbled together is constructed correctly.

So after 5 weeks I can take my purchased dude model and run him around my purchased city block models. He can't shoot anything. Nothing can shoot him. He can't die. He can't even change the speed at which he runs. The bad part is that the tutorials and books are geared toward an earlier version of the engine which has changed greatly since they've updated the graphics and shaders (whatever they really are). I think I can figure it all out, it's just some more baby steps.

But this is the basis from which I can start to learn even more. Like shooting. Shooting is good.

Permalink game dev

62

01.05.2009

Today would have been Mom's 62nd birthday.

I had heard something second hand at the Spiritus Xmas Party about how to celebrate Mom's birthday. At first it sounded a little sappy, but the more I thought about it the more it made me smile.

I left work and went by Party City and picked up a big honkin' helium birthday balloon. I brought it home and attached a little note I wrote to Mom. I took the balloon outside where it was just beginning to rain after threatening to do so all day. I kissed the note and let the balloon go, watching as it rose into the gray sky as the rain started to come down a little harder. I watched as it rose higher and higher, until I couldn't see it any longer.

I stood out there in the rain for a couple of extra minutes, talking to Mom, telling her that I love her, and I miss her. Then I smiled as it hit me that the balloon was heading toward Florence. Maybe it'll stop by my grandparents and pick up a couple more messages to take to Mom.

Permalink mom

The last hours of Xmas vacation

01.04.2009

Tomorrow morning it'll be time to go back to work. I was last at work for the majority of the work day on Dec 18, 2008. Yes, I am well aware of the intricacies of the workings of "the system" and how to use them to my advantage, so don't hate the playa.

I've enjoyed my vacation time. In years past, I was ready to go back to work after a week or so off. Now that I'm 39¾ I find that I could pretty much stay on vacation 24/7 if I were fiscally able. In fact, there's loads of things I wanted to get done over the past 2 weeks that I just didn't have enough time to get done. With the holidays, there was plenty of traveling to visit relatives, quality times with miscellaneous loved ones, and digesting (yeah, time to get serious on that diet again - *brrrp*).

The weather has worked against me more than I thought it would. One of my little projects was to clean out the garage and use the storage building that I've got in the back yard. The ground has been abnormally soft in the back yard, probably due to having dirt hauled in to fill my little sink hole along with the planting of extra grass in October. When I walk across portions of the yard I sink a little (I'm a good dirt compactor). There's been a lot of rain and I don't know how well a damp yard would hold up to me scurrying back and forth with loads of garage crap. Over the past 2 weeks, the yard hasn't dried out enough for me to not sink a little when I take a step, so the garage has not gotten cleaned out.

I had hoped to make more progress on my Torque learning, but a combination of my brain not wanting to cooperate along with finding other excuses has gotten me behind. At least I have 2 clean bathrooms to make up for it!

I really felt like Xmas vacation was over Friday at 4:00 - that's when I normally would take off from work and begin the weekend. To tell the truth, I was a little down when I realized that. I felt like I was a kid again and it was time to go back to school when I'd much rather stay home and play with my toys. Maybe that's what I should do for the rest of the day?

Hmmm, where's that wrestling ring Evil Matt & Rynn got me for Xmas?

Permalink rambling random