In the dark I thought I heard somebody call

asdf

SQL is beating me up. Well. I'm rewriting the database schema for my archive site thing and I have yet to figure out how to do what I want simply and easily. I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually, though.

also, music: Josh Ritter - To the Dogs or Whoever and it is STUCK IN MY HEAD FOREVER.

Ben.

I hate you XD

I was like "Wtf link? Weird, ok, haven't talked to Ben in a OH SWEET GOD CLOSE THE WINDOW OH SHIT OH SHIT"

For those in question NSFW

Also, hi everyone =D

asdf jkl;

that link won't work if I'm asleep. Yes, my server is still located in my bedroom.

I finally just learned HTML.

You may all laugh now.

(At least I know that HTML isn't short for "Hotmail", I know people who think that)

Go take the survey and see what you get.

I fixed a dumb bug in phantomnation!

Uh, if you called map_resize with corner values that resulted in a map with zero area, it would let you. And there was some confusion I don't quite understand still, how if the map had tiles and was set to zero-area, the tile's memory wouldn't be freed.

And I had to re-download the GLu dev files (evidently they got left behind when I did a dist-upgrade), and while doing so I noticed there's a libglpng library. That should make loading textures SO MUCH EASIER, since I wouldn't have to write my own weird texture loader (I had libsdlpng, so I was going to write up something that turned a png into a sdl texture, then converted it into a opengl texture... but that would be a bad idea), which would totally save time. And effort!

It's May 4th!

uh.

See, two-or-so months ago I made myself an ultimatum, the deadline of which is TODAY. It was, uh, regarding WHAT TO DO WITH THE REST OF MY LIFE*, which explains (in part) why I have been kind of spazzing out about long-term plans for the last few months. But hey, deadline today.

And so there are still pangs of OH GOD, YOU CAN STILL BACK OUT, YOU'RE TOTALLY GOING TO STARVE TO DEATH (or FREEZE) SWEET JESUS because hey, oh god, I can still back out, (etc).

BUT ANYWAY LET'S SEE HOW THIS GOES.

* I realize, generally speaking, that someone my age isn't really expected to know what to do with the rest of their lives. But hey, I know what I don't want to do: work at some lame job for years and turn into some suburban vampire.

Also, I made yet another Gestalt layout. It almost displays correctly in Firefox!

This would be so much more true if WoW was like, three times the size it is.

So I was reading a fic and it had a word count at the top, and I figured 'hey, I could time how long it takes me to read this and figure out how many wpm I read' only I didn't actually think of that until I was two thirds of the way through, so I don't really remember the start time.

But it took at most ninty minutes to read fifty-two thousand words, so um, I'm thinking a reading WPM of five hundred seventy-seven is pretty good.*

Man, I read a lot. Fifty-two thousand words is published novel length, and I can blaze through it in an hour and a half.

* Average reading speed is two hundred WPM. Excellent reading speed is apparently around one thousand WPM. So, yeah.

PEOPLE SUCK ASS.

Er, more on this later, when I stop having an anxiety attack/emotional breakdown as everyone around me desperatly seeks to destroy my life and everything I hold dear.

^_^

Okay, so I have a THREE DAY WEEKEND coming up (any enthusiasm there you see should be read as highly sarcastic) whcih means I am free from Saturday morning to Tuesday night.

I am thinking I should get someone to go draining with me, to that one Dinkytown/University drain me, Charlie, and Emily visited years ago (I'm pretty sure there was a prototypical 'draining report' posted to the blog, but hey I don't remember when it was so you don't get a link) and got all of, like, 300ft down before going back. Mostly because I sucked.

Nevertheless, it's THREE YEARS LATER now, at least, and I think we should go for it again.

(even though I kind of expect John to make frowny faces because... he hates freedom, and Charlie to be inept, and... I don't even think Candice checks the blog ever. So I'll end up going draining alone again. Seriously, if I die I'm totally going to blame you guys)

[EDIT] okay, or not. No three day weekend; they just messed up my schedule. downsides: well, more time at the soul-crushing job, maybe I won't get to visit Arise! for cupcakes today. upsides: more time to spend furthering my hopeless co-worker crush. and I guess $69.37 more in gross income.

Today's Deeply Meaningful dream:

Gerard Way talking about how he wasn't allowed on the hyperspace ship to Mars because he was on a no-fly list on account of not having a work ethic.

So, that's the first time I can actually say concretely that hey, my dream appears to be based totally* on what I del.icio.us'ed over the past few days.

*Well, except for the 'totally random people are getting put onto the no-fly list because of incredibly dumb reasons' article, which I didn't bookmark.

Also, this morning I coughed up blood when I brushed my teeth! Being sick: not for me.

And I got a cover of "Sugar, We're Going Down" as played by a string quartet. There's apparently a whole "Tribute to Fall Out Boy" album. That's so cool.

My subconcious is so much more creative than my concious.

So I have to work tonight (in fourty-five minutes for now, realtime, actually) and I decide to go to sleep early, so I'll have like eleven hours of sleep and so I don't have to worry about my alarm exploding all over my brain.

I sleep for three hours, wake up, stay up for three hours. gg me. At this point I get on AIM to share the news about scientists finding an Earth-like extrasolar planet (seriously, why is everyone not freaking out about this?) and end up, as previously mentioned, staying up for three hours.

So I ended up getting something like five nonconsecutive hours of sleep. This always happens when I try to get, like, thirteen hours of sleep.

But I woke up from a dream about video games with a nice idea.

Okay, the game I was playing was this weird kind of Journey-to-the-West-retelling everyone has heard of. I think the main character was inspired by the Goku character from Elf Only Inn. yeah. And there was some other Goku character too, one with an actual monkey face (and a lot of bishounen angst, which is a hilarious juxtoposition), and blahblahblah. The second party member you get (Goku-monkey was the third) was some nondescript girl character, I dunno.

But anyway, one of the areas you keep traveling through ingame was this big clearing. Really really tall redwood-style trees made up the 'wall' around the area, and knotted roots and whatnot made height-differentials in the floor, etc etc. It's big and peaceful and (most importantly) the room extneds way above your heads, but there's no way to get up there.

Enter SPIRIT WORLD VISION. Apparently it's activated by touching a mushroom? Nice implications there, brain. But the big peaceful clearing turns into a gigantic spiritual chaos. Lots of weird armored ghosts with flamethrowers (than can totally 1hk your dude!) and weird mice with glowing eyes. But also: there are these weird baloon things. You touch one, your character grabs on and you go shooting up in the air, with different colours being different heights reached. There is, of course, some complicated path up to the top but I kept missing the first jump and then getting killed by the flamethrower ghosts. And you want to get to the top because there were... medallions? Rare collectable items, I guess, that had some use.

It seems like a nice mechanic. SPIRIT WORLD VISION. yeah.

ANALYSE MY DREAM WHILE I WORK.

(not spellchecked because that 'fourty-five minutes' has turned into 'half-hour' and oh god still not ready)

I was up for 18 hours, and then I slept for 11 hours. mmm. It's nice to be back in my natural rhythm (for those who don't know it, my normal waking/sleeping pattern involves staying up around 20~ hours at a time and then sleeping for 10~ hours. you could see how this could cause problems) even if it's only for a day or two.

I bought books! Bomb the Suburbs, Anarchism and other essays, Technoscience and Cyberculture, and Beyond Good and Evil (although my version has a differently-coloured cover).

The clerk at Arise! made a joke about getting some light reading. Sadly, this is light reading for me.

Too bad Arise! doesn't carry math books, because I am really wanting to learn some actual, like, useful math. Because pretty much every bit of math I learn becomes useful while programming, almost instantly.

p.s. still freaking out about what to do with my life.

Never let a fat middleaged mexican woman dye your hair, even if it's at a professional salon.

My hair went like this, in the span of 8 hours:

Really bitchin bright red highlights
Really bitchin dark red highlights
Kinda akward maroon highlights
Pinkish/maroon higlights
Bright as hell bubblegum pink highlights

I am now stuck with a 3 month permanent bring pink highlight job.

Fuck.

I just spent the past two hours of my life playing Singularity.

Sadly, once you beat the game there's really no point to play over again. Hopefully in a few releases the tech tree will be broad enough to not be, uh, lame.

"(iv) use the Delicious Software to operate nuclear facilities, life support,
or other mission critical application where human life or property may be at
stake. You understand that the Delicious Software is not designed for such
purposes and that its failure in such cases could lead to death, personal
injury, or severe property or environmental damage for which Delicious is not
responsible."

ah-huh.

Hey Xax, you know "Everything bad is good for you"?

Well, it's hilarious. Anyone 30+ on Amazon.com gave it shit ratings and talked about how everything the author says is bullshit or not backed up, etc.

Anyone 29- is practically heralding the book as being one of the most important "studies" ever made.

It's kinda hilarious, because, you know, all the 30+ people are just bitching because they're from the generation the author talks about being left in the dust now that us youngin's are all videogame and TV'ed up.

So. I'm learning how to swing dance via dance club at my college.

=D

didn't die while draining.

I'll edit this post with a recap later.

next time, I'm bringing a ladder, for serious.

(and the edit!)

okay. so. Set off around four fifteen in the morning, arrived at the drain entrance (same one as last time) at around four forty-five.

The entryway is really misty, seriously. I don't know if I just didn't notice this last time, but the area was suffused with mist. At any rate, walked right up to the 1600ft marker where I turned back last time. As with last time, the water spread out at this point to cover the entire floor. But this time, I didn't care. So I just walked on through, getting my feet slightly damp, and after twenty-five or so feet the stream receded to cover only the center half of the drain. That made me feel kind of lame.

This time I wasn't really paying attention to the offshoots— there were several of them, most were really short (I'm talking under one hundred feet, in most cases under twenty-five feet) and most (but not all) ended in the same kind of circular vertical drain I described in the last post.

There were a lot of Moose Youth Pluto tags on the walls. Although my favourite was one next to the first circular manhole-size chute in the ceiling of the drain— an arrow pointing to it and the words "don't look up". ...Of course, I had to look up. It actually kind of looked like a straight chute up to ground level, although I honestly have no clue. Depth perception + vertical distances + narrow chute = no clue.

At around... I think it was the 3300ft marker, there was an offshoot drain about twenty-five feet deep, from which a lot of water was pouring down. It was loud enough so that one could hear it from the 1600ft marker, actually. But hey, echoes. Labelled on the left side of the entrance was "upshits creek" and then a name I don't remember.

There's a "almost there (100 yards)" tag on the wall at one point before that, I assume pointing to the 'upshits creek' entrance, although since there's another offshoot like, fifty feet further on that I didn't explore it could be pointing to that, too.

Anyway. Between there and the end of the drain, pretty much the only significant thing was another short offshoot, this one reeking really strongly of metal.

5500ft. End of the drain. There's a circular vertical drain, and this one is big enough so that I can see the top of it without stepping inside (which is good for two reasons, those being 1) I don't know how deep the water inside them is and 2) there's a lot of water coming down inside the entire circumference of the drain. seriously, it's like rain) and it appears to simply be the 'main drain' of another, higher up drain.

In fact, I'm fairly sure all of the circular drains are connections to other, higher up drains. Hence, next time I go back I'll be bringing a ladder.

Tags nearby: "I broke the law. It was fun" & the ubiquitous MOOSE YOUTH PLUTO.

On my way back I went in the 1600ft drain and found my vague suspicions were correct: fifteen-or-so feet in, there's a sleep slope (like, 80 degrees up) and another fifteen-or-so feet past that, there's yet another circular drain. Did not try climbing up the slope; even though it's maybe four feet tall it's still covered in gross brown slime.

Next time I really need to get someone to come with me, because hey, using a ladder means potential for FALLING TO ONE'S DEATH. also: I need to get a folding ladder.

I still find it hilarious that we have a grand total of ONE POST in ALL of 2006.

So, now is the time to spill my recent reading material all over you.

And, be grateful: this is probably the only time I'm ever going to actually warn about content of any kind, ever, so enjoy it while it lasts. I'm not even going to be that specific. But yeah, this is (obviously) going to be kind of heavy on derivative works of all kinds, mostly fanfiction, and there's some RPS thrown in there and (again, obviously) a bunch of slash.

Read it anyway.

And then, of course, the length warning. When I say something is 'long', I generally mean, like novel-length, at the least. Usually I mean series-length. When I say 'short' I usually mean what most people mean when they say 'long', because they're illiterate. Allocate some time.

Starting with some of spiralhollow's shorter stories, one about magic and the other about technology.

From there, of course, it's a short step to an e2 writeup about magic and technology. Or rather, magic and science. And from there, to outer space and stars.

But E2 has a lot more (wonderful!) content aside from scifi. Humanity, and life, and dreams, and of course, it just wouldn't be e2 without fables.

But that brings me to the first long work here, The God Eaters, which is an actual published novel these days. Which is totally awesome.

And now, unrelated to any kind of narrative thread I'm attempting to establish in this post, have some Hitherby Dragons. Really, all of Hitherby Dragons is wonderful, so it's hard to excerpt particular segments, but... some are more wonderful than others.

There are some stories about topics dear to my heart, too. Like, transhumanism, or hey, love. It's not that obvious, but I'm kind of a hopeless romantic. A hopeless romantic who dislikes happy endings, because they always feel so forced.

And sometimes I get depressed and have to read depressing stories to feel better. And hey, sometimes I like to read triumphant stories! And sometimes, I just like to read stories.

It wasn't until I noticed how little most people read that I realized how much I read. Because I read a lot. A lot of it's kind of the 'junk food' of reading material, but I still like it. I like it a lot.

You know, I'm pretty sure I still have the backup copy of the Technomancy blog somewhere on a CD.

Anybody want that?

BLOG NOW HOMEPAGE

POST OFTEN MORE

WOO

Because Charlie wanted to know, and because I always get a little uncomfortable when the most recent post is about porn, because you can never tell when everyone will stop posting and leave the post about porn as the most-recent for the next two years.

So, a lot of Serious Architects have been using shipping containers to build houses or apartment buildings. They are generally larger multi-container structures, which is not how I'd do things, as I am poor and containers, while cheap, are still not that cheap. I've seen them range from $75 (for one made from wood) to $260~ (for a 20' metal container) to $1500~ (for a used refrigerated container) to $2000~ (for a new metal container), and seeing as I am poor I'd likely aim for a larger, decent-condition container and see where I can go from there.

I think what I'd be trying would be more like the tiny houses trend more than a big architectureal challenge. Less 'containers as lego blocks' and more 'this holds 2261 cubic feet of space; how do I get the most usable area out of that?', I suppose.

But really I am tired of paying the majority of my paycheck towards pointless housing, with only the promise of further rent hikes in the future.

(and as Charlie pointed out, the biggest issue would be finding a location to put the thing. 20' or 40' shipping containers can't just be thrown around all willy-nilly. whatever, I'm sure I'll either work out location or try a solution unrelated to shipping containers)

Sweet monkey jesus. Yesterday [FURRY PORN AUTHOR 1] reviews my fics on AFFN, today I find out [FURRY PORN AUTHOR 2] +faved my porn on y!gallery while I was away from the internet.

uh. Names not mentioned because I'd be mortified if they actually found this post, but. AUTHOR #1 is like, way more popular than me (mostly because he writes multiparts in popular fandoms, but) and it was very ! to find three reviews by him in my inbox.

AUTHOR #2, on the other hand, was kind of my inspiration for PORNS when I first started writing. Seriously. Way more !!! than AUTHOR #1.

In unrelated news:

• CR & the MOO are down indefinately because no one ever used them and I can't sleep with my computer on.
• So, I'm thinking about seeing if I can buy a shipping container to live in instead of shelling out $565 useless bucks every month for this apartment. We'll... see how that goes

In related news, I'm thinking of writing more porn. We'll really see how that goes. I'm so lazy.

Oh yeah, and I drew this. (but you might not be able to see that because it's on my server which is only on when I'm awake. if you can't, try again in 8 hours). John says I should be a fashion designer when I grow up. I... disagree.

Brian hates freedom. He won't tell me why, but I know it deep in my bones. Why, Brian? Why do you hate freedom?

The XAX show has a new special co-star, Brian!

Muahahaha!

Anyways, college, stuff, things, not much to say, quit WoW, drawing, um... run-on sentances, owning at my classes, taking actual dance lessons etc.

Also, XAX, here's a good thing to do which I AM CURRENTLY DOING:

Look up on MONSTER or JOBTRAK or anything, for a low grade IT job.

Basically right now I'm on the verge of quitting target when I move and landing a job running around telling people how to install ram, update drivers, install windows, and send attachments in the e-mails all day and getting good hours and paid at least 12$ an hour for them.

They required an A+ certification but all I had to do was tell them that A+ certifications are bullshit and I can do anything on it anyways, I just don't feel like taking the classes for something I already know. Went over well.

Seriously, 12 an hour, "did you plug your computer in?"

MUCH BETTER.

Do it =D

Let me tell you about my day.

I get a phone call from Kirk last night, at work, at 23:20 or so, saying basically "hey I am leaving town tomorrow morning so if you're not working we should hang out". I am scheduled until 6:30. I ask to leave early, and I get off at 2:00. I call him back and walk to the Bedlam, where he's currently located. We hang out and talk until around 5:00, at which point I leave and he presumably falls asleep (he had to wake up at 8:00 to hitch back to Kansas City). I catch the light rail + busses back to my apartment, where I shower and pass out. It's around six, I think? My computer was on and I couldn't sleep with the constant humming noise, so I queue up all my Sufjan Stevens music, because that disrupts the noise enough. Exactly 2 hours, 25 minutes later, I am woken up by the end of the Sufjan Stevens music: Sugarcult was the next band on my playlist. So now I am awake. I do the dishes and stuff, and then idle around on the internet until 11:00, at which point I head to the Bedlam again to volunteer. I get there a little past 12:00, and proceed to mop and shovel and construct for four hours. And then I head back to my apartment with a slight divergance to Target to finally get some sponges that don't suck and a toilet brush (and a crankable flashlight for emergencies while draining), for which I pay something like $1.35, because I totally forgot I received a Target gift card like, three years ago that I never used.

So now it's 17:20~ and I'm home and I am going to sleep until 20:00, at which point I am going to have to get up and head to work. Except I might not actually be due there until 22:00, which would mean I could sleep an extra hour. But... who knows. Evidently, I don't.

In conclusion: THIS DAY HAS BEEN HECTIC. I can't wait until all the snow melts so I can just wile away a weekend underground.

p.s., someone else should post, I am getting tired of THE XAX SHOW, STARRING XAX, WITH XAX. um.

So here's a summation:

• Entered graffiti-covered entrance. A few feet in, I turn on my flashlight and discover that there is a giant gaping hole in the floor a few feet ahead, which explains why there was no water coming out of this drain.
• I skirt around the edges of the hole. It's only a few feet deep, but it's got a fair amount of water rushing through it, and I would rather not get wet because it's below freezing out. So there's a decently broad ledge around it
• One of the things you don't notice from photographs of draining expiditions: your depth perception is totally messed up. There's not a lot of light and what with the lack of landmarks it's hard to tell just how far ahead you can see. So I see what looks like two pillars in the distance-- one flush with the right side of the tunnel, the other crooked and maybe leaning against the right pillar? But no, that's not it-- it's steps! The right 'pillar' was the steps themselves, the left pillar was the water rushing down the slope. So.
• After the steps I get out my non-sucky flashlight (i.e., not the pocked maglite) and continue on. The tunnel gets a little narrower and changes texture. Also, there is a offshoot tunnel. It's narrower and about as tall as I am in the very middle, and since I want to avoid walking in the water I have to stoop to do walk up the tunnel.
• This tunnel turns! and turns. it's significantly more crooked than the main tunnel. It eventually dead-ends in what looks like a rain chamber-- water keeps falling in big drops down to the chamber floor, at which point it runs out down the tunnel I was travelling up. I don't check it out in a lot of detail; I'm trying to avoid getting wet.
• So back down to the main tunnel! It is at this point I notice the bright orange distance markers on the walls. Evidently, the tunnel I just went down starts 660 ft. from the entrance.
• And so I keep walking down the main tunnel. At around 1575~ ft there's another offshoot tunnel-- this one is much wider, slightly taller, and it starts halfway up the main tunnel's wall, at about shoulder or neck height. As far as I can tell, it looks like the water there flows down a steep step. I decide not to try and scramble up there, because water is sheeting down onto the floor and (say it with me this time) I don't want to get wet. After this offshoot, the water in the main tunnel becomes deep enough to cover the entire floor. I decide to turn back, because I'm alone and using two flashlights with who-knows how old batteries, and I don't want to get wet.

So I guess I'll try again in the spring once all the snow has melted and it's warmer and dry! But this was totally awesome! But more interesting than the first expedition.

I just imbided something like 3600% of my DV for Vitamin C. Beat that!

See, um, the market at the Midtown Market sells these fancy fruit drinks (they're really good, and they're fairly cheap-- $4 for a litre) and one of them is this C-BOOST drink that contains 4800% DV Vitamin C per bottle. And I just drank 3/4ths of a bottle.

I fully expect to start manifesting Vitamin C overdose symtoms now. I think one of them is your blood rusting.

My hair is all salt-and-pepper (I never quite know how to punctuate phrases like that. I have the same issue with "ne'er d'wells") around the temples. Seriously. I mean, I have grey hairs all around my hair, but they're not concentrated enough to be noticable. Except around my temples! Boy howdy, if I didn't have this terrible haircut I might even look dignified!

Sometimes I feel like I should be worried by the fact that I got my first grey hair when I was around 13, but most of the time I am just like I ALWAYS WANTED SILVER ANIME HAIR :D :D.

As I said on LJ, I FEEL ACCOMPLISHED.

I think next up would be map interaction-- I want to be able to mess around with maps without having to put them together in a text file beforehand. But really, who knows.

So apparently Second Foundation has a myspace account.

I really have nothing to add to this, except for of course Kata hangs out on myspace. of course. Stupid practice internets.

HEY BEN

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/4750331/

YEAH

WOO!

Okay, so NEWS UPDATE going on here:

CR is up! xaxxored.dyndns.org port 2000
the MOO is up! xaxxored.dyndns.org port 7777
my website is up! try to guess the URL.

Anyway, as this was originally the 2001 backup of CR (and it went down in 2003) so, um, there's some data loss there, but really, no one cares but me. I wiped all the old pfiles because of Issues, so if you want to actually get on you're gonna have to contact me first so I can auth your character.

But really, I'd suggest you migrate over to the MOO. It's so much easier to use*. Character creation is on, so you can just up and join any time. Once you get into the first room just @go #99 to get to the actual game world, which is something like two dozen rooms. Use @exits a lot, there are some hidden exits.

* Seriously. Does anyone remember the antics of JOHN JOHN MAKE A MOODS SYSTEM JOHN JOHN ADD MORE WEAR LOCATIONS because the MUD code was confusing and weird? With the MOO I got annoyed at not having any equipment so I made my own wear system. In which you can have any amount of wear locations, with whatever names you want. Not just, like, "body" or whatever, but also "halo" or "wings" or "tail" or "giant pulsating eyeball" or "fluorescent aura".

So, um, use it. I'll try to keep it up often, but really, who knows.

In other news, I have a dentist appointment in six or so hours! hmm.

Hey, Twin Cities peeps: who is up for some exploration antics? I figure near future, but not too near future what with the thawing and melting and whatnot.

I am bored and just purchased a book called "Access all areas" by one Ninjalicious, and even though a lot of it is a rehash of the Infiltration web site, well, this dude is the one who wrote all that on the Infiltration site, so.

RANDOM CODE STUFF:

/*
  Brian Elias
  2/15/07
  Dave Harden
  CIS10
  Assignment 4.4
  file:  a4 point 4.cpp
 
  This program prompts the user to input the age and gender of
  any guests attending a movie.  Then the program will display
  the amount of guests between certain age brackets, the amount
  of guests of certain genders, as well as the average and
  highest/lowert ages.  Of course, though, the user can stop
  entering ages by inputting a negative number.
*/
//******************       this line is 70 characters long **********
#include 

using namespace std;

int main()

{
    int attendeeAge;       //The age of the guest
    int averageAge;        //The average age of all guests combined
    int sumOfAges;         //The sum of all of the guests' ages
    int count0to18;        //The number of guests from ages 0-18
    int count19to30;       //The number of guests from ages 19-30
    int count31to40;       //The number of guests from ages 31-40
    int count41to60;       //The number of guests from ages 41-60
    int count60over;       //The number of guests over 60
    int youngest;          //The age of the youngest guest
    int oldest;            //The age of the oldest guest
    char attendeeGender;   //The gender of the guests
    int countMale;         //The number of male guests
    int countFemale;       //The number of female guests
   
    count0to18 = 0;
    count19to30 = 0;
    count31to40 = 0;
    count41to60 = 0;
    count60over = 0;
    countMale = 0;
    countFemale = 0;
    oldest = attendeeAge;
    sumOfAges = 0;
   
    cout << "Enter age of attendee (negative number to quit): ";
    cin >> attendeeAge;
    while (attendeeAge >= 0)
    {       
              if (attendeeAge >= 0 && attendeeAge < 19)
                   count0to18++;
              else if (attendeeAge >= 19 && attendeeAge < 31)
                   count19to30++;
              else if (attendeeAge >= 31 && attendeeAge < 41)
                   count31to40++;
              else if (attendeeAge >= 41 && attendeeAge < 61)
                   count41to60++;
              else if (attendeeAge > 60)
                   count60over++;
                   sumOfAges = sumOfAges + attendeeAge;
                  if (attendeeAge <>= 0)
                     youngest = attendeeAge;
                  else if (attendeeAge > oldest)
                     oldest = attendeeAge;
             
              cout << "Enter gender (M or F): ";
              cin >> attendeeGender;
              {
                  if (attendeeGender == 'M')
                     countMale++;
                  else if (attendeeGender == 'F')
                     countFemale++;
              }
                      
              cout << "Enter age of attendee "
              << "(negative number to quit): ";
              cin >> attendeeAge;
    }
    cout << endl;
    cout << "age 0 to 18: " << count0to18 << endl;
    cout << "age 19 to 30: " << count19to30 << endl;
    cout << "age 31 to 40: " << count31to40 << endl;
    cout << "age 41 to 60: " << count41to60 << endl;
    cout << "over 60: " << count60over << endl << endl;
    {
         if ((count0to18 + count19to30 + count31to40 + count41to60
                 + count60over) > 0)
                 {
                   averageAge = sumOfAges/(count0to18 + count19to30
                   + count31to40 + count41to60 + count60over);
                   cout << "males: " << countMale << endl;
                   cout << "females: " << countFemale << endl;
                   cout << "The average age was " << averageAge
                   << "." << endl;
                   cout << "The youngest person in attendance was "
                   << youngest << "." << endl;
                   cout << "The oldest person in attendance was "
                   << oldest << "." << endl;
                 }
         else cout << "Nobody attended the show.";
    }       
    return 0;
}

This is another day in which I wake up having a story mostly put together in my head. This is unsettling. At least this one doesn't require any drawing.

Maybe I should elaborate. Back in Ashland, and really for several years before that, almost every dream I had involved exploring. They were, for the most part, dreams in which there was no plot or characters or setting, just me looking around inside weird buildings (concrete monoliths, dusty barns, mansions, etc) with no other point.

I really liked them.

Recently, I moved. I don't remember anything specific about my dreams after having moved to the Twin Cities but before having gotten my horrible job, but I do think I stopped remembering my dreams.

Of course, after I got my horrible job I just kind of... stopped getting enough sleep. So that was bad. But recently I've been getting more, and each time I remember my dream it's a story now: last time it was this bizarre tale about demons and angels (which I am going to have to elaborate about in a later post, I guess-- and in case you're wondering, this is what that last post was about. I tried out that whole "mysterous post that makes no sense except to the author" deal, but I'm really bad at it and it's stupid anyway, so), this time it was a weird romance.

I'm not quite sure what this means, or even if it means anything, but it's a nice change from not remembering my dreams at all-- I can safely say that the most disturbing thing about getting a job was the lack of all dreams.

I am having difficulties.

I woke up slowly and there was a wonderful idea in my head, almost all there. It was a story. I wrote down the dialogue before it faded. But now I can't remember what they look like.

VEXING

Target sucks: Discuss.

And now I have added a little section on the sidebar that lists all the tags we have used. Note that currently it is a very short list. So, um, start using tags. Preferably tags that make sense. OR WHATEVER. Also note the edit links. Right now I think they show up for everyone; I don't know how to specify "only display for admins" yet. Although, clearly, you have to be an authorized user to actually edit whatever post.

I'M BAAAAAAA-AAAACK!

Because I apparently hate myself, I decided to try and re-read the blog archives. I got about two months in. It's seriously painful how much of a technomancy fanit I was back then. Of course, you can only tell that if you read the technomancy blog, and I don't think anyone else here did. Still, you can tell how stupid I was. Also: way too many ellipses. and painful teenage attempts at "random".

In conclusion, I hope when I look back at this archive page some six years in the future, I hope I seem as silly and uneducated to my future self as my past self looks to me. Growth is a good thing!

And now, some content: SOME OF YOU MAY HAVE HEARD that I have been programming recently. I have. What I am programming is somewhat-tentatively called 'phantomnation' and it will be a hex-based tactical RPG. The next lengthy post I make will probably be me extolling the plot ideas I have. But this post is about technology. The game exists partly to finally get some ideas out of my head, but mostly just to improve my programming skills to the point where I can try to code some useful projects.

That being the case, it's very amusing to read all these game-programming tutorials and be told again and again that Game Programming Is Hard Work. I mean, sure, making any non-trivial program is going to be hard, but this is the most basic non-trivial project I could come up with. Presumably those notes are aimed towards the kiddies that have no clue how to program but want to make shiny flashy games, e.g., me six years ago.

Your link of the day is to the Osmose & Ephémère projects, which are how I think computers should approach 3d environments. I don't care about photorealism: if I wanted photorealism I would GO OUTSIDE. I want shiny floating transparent visuals with disturbingly apoclyptic scenery.

You...suck Ben. <_<
Also, this layout, on my screen, has the posts waaaaay down on the screen, you have to scroll a while to find them.

Okay, I'm going to rewrite this layout again. Because apparently, I still have too much free time.

[EDIT]: okay, done. There are probably a lot of issues still (like the archives display kind of sucks) but whatever, it's better than it was before.

[EDIT^2]: And now archives display in a non-sucky manner! Although I am really feeling the lack of the various quick-edit links.

HELLO BLOGGER.

Man it's been a long time. A few updates:

• I started using my old 2001 backup of CR again. It's actually not that 'far behind' in regards to stuff, because the only areas that had been edited were by me, and I was only editing my own areas. Although I think the mood system wasn't finished at that time. ON NO, it doesn't matter that such because of the following note:
• I messed around on the MOO a whole lot. It's actually starting to not suck! um. ITS SO EASY TO EDIT STUFF. As opposed to nagging at John for months to get him to add a wear location or two, I WROTE AN ENTIRE EQ SYSTEM MYSELF. With as many different wear locations as you want. eee
• However, I can't host either right now: my network is down because, mostly, I don't know how to do this whole 'ethernet' thing except in the abstract. So no hosting for either CR or the MOO for now. wah.

...no one reads this, do they?