MMOs

I recently got moderately hooked (about 40 hours spent ) on DC Universe Online. This gave me the push to also evaluate few other games, specifically Champions Online and World of Warcraft. 

The UI is significantly worse in both CO and WoW - in fact, CO has a rather similar UI to WoW. However, WoW is TERRIBLY, HORRIBLY boring, unlike CO. 

The reason seems obvious. 

In CO, you start out by thwarting an alien invasion. 

In WoW, you kill a bunch of things, then another bunch of things, then another bunch of things, and so forth. 

Also, in CO as well as DCUO, you start with a movement power - flight, super-speed, parkour, whatnot. In WoW, about one third of the time is spent running s l o w l y back to the quest giver with nothing happening. 

Both CO and WoW use the, in my opinion, rather boring mechanic of target enemy, activate power, wait for recharge, activate power.... 

*Yawn*

Still, I'll probably keep on putting a bit of time in them, at least until I reach level 20 in WoW. 

Sucker Punch

I didn't like it.
It's a sad thing to say about a movie with obvious anime influences, not to mention
STEAMPUNK ZOMBIE NAZIS
but, there you have it.
I just find the injustices shown in the film to be of precisely the sort that makes me want to turn into a beast with a face made out of blades.
That sort of a thing.

Google Web Store

Hooboy.
I'm taking a look at

• Cloud9 IDE - I like it for javascript, and it integrates with Github. Not too shabby, although it's better suited for running on one's own server.
• Sumo Paint, which seems like a really robust paint package, more focused on painter-style stuff, though
• Pixlr editor, which is fairly impressive. Layers, shortcuts and so forth. I think I could do either digipaint or pixel stuff with it. 
• Email Game - I... think I can recommend it.  It's exactly what it says on the tin - it makes a game out of checking your Email. 
• Ajax Animator is so far failing to load.

Pixel painting....

I think I've tried out most of the software available. ASEPRITE is useless to me. Tile Studio isn't horrible, but it's lacking in features.

Grafx2 is at least somewhat usable, a rather nice pixel paint package, especially with limited colors. However, it's not that good for sprites and tiles. Graphicsgale is still close to the best. Paint Shop Pro 9 is very good for this. My experience with Gimp and Photoshop is limited, although I think they're probably pretty good, depending on configuration Paint.net is very nice, surprisingly. So is the new MS Paint. Simple enough?

 Title - and the key - for my last post is 'bits'.

Today's image with grafx2 and touchpad.

*edit* and tweaked in Paint.Net. I do like it for pixel-precision stuff, after all!

01100001 01101000 01110011 01110010

01110110 01100100 01101011 01101011 00101011 00011111 01101000 01110010 01101101 00100110 01110011 00011111 01110011 01100111 01101000 01110010 00011111 01100101 01101000 01101101 01100100 00101101

01001000 00011111 01110110 01110001 01101110 01110011 01100100 00011111 01100000 00011111 01100001 01101000 01110011 00011111 01101110 01100101 00011111 01100010 01101110 01100100 00000111 01100011 01100100 00011111 01110110 01100111 01101000 01100010 01100111 00011111 01110011 01110100 01110001 01101101 01110010 00011111 01110110 01100111 01100000 01110011 00011111 01001000 00011111 01110110 01110001 01101000 01110011 01100100 00011111 00011111 01110011 01101110 00011111 01100001 01101000 01110011 01110010 01110011 01110001 01101000 01101101 01100110 00101101

a little post

smaller and smaller...

Soon I'll just communicate in binary dots.

Mouse

I cheated, sort of . I drew big, resized, then fiddled. In my defense, I think the same
strategy is used by nippon ichi artists.

I intended to do more, but I'm kinda busy, I basically stole the time to do even this little drawing.

I started out with an idea....

...but it got away from me .

I'm out of depression.

Thought I'd make a note of it.

I'm also testing out keyboards, my old-borrowed mini-keyboard gave up the ghost.

Fortunately, I have a din-to-ps/2 adapter, so I can use any old keyboard.

Anyway, I'm currently typing on a Nokia Data keyboard, which I got for free from a friend. It's a bit stiff, perhaps due to lack of use, and the keyboard curves a bit too much for lap use, but otherwise, so far so good.

The other's a Schneider MF2, which has semi-mechanical switches, although it doesn't seem it's liked by many people. We shall see.

*update*: I liked that keyboard! But I broke it! ;_; Currently considering either BlackWidow Ultimate or Ducky Shine. 

Give peas a chance

Image via Wikipedia

I like puns.

Okay, so due to lack of money, I've had to get creative with food. Rice and carrots form the base, but dried peas - the worst kind, really - can be a great source of protein. 

I did make a mistake in my first attempt, putting in way too much peas in the risotto I made, also without first soaking the peas, so they didn't cook very well. They DO make for a handy tasteless snack, though - a handful of peas and a lot of water is a decent meal replacement when one's feeling too lazy to do anything.

In other news, I woke up yesterday and found myself in control of myself. It was a weird experience.... well, I'm in a weird situation all around, so I guess it's to be expected.
I'll Zemanta up some recipes - Blogger has a lot of new features, gotta try them out, wouldn't be proper otherwise. 

Related articles

• Simple Mushroom Risotto (thefatsausage.wordpress.com)
• Parmigiano-Reggiano Risotto (justpinchme.wordpress.com)
• Mushroom and saffron risotto (theitalianfork.com)

Some 'splainin

Okay, so my keyboard broke - or possibly the PS/2 connector on the motherboard, I'm not sure. To sum, I can only use mouse on my desktop machine, right now. 

There's also trouble and stuff, I'll elaborate if it's relevant after a while. 

I saw my dream notebook again.

It was interesting, obviously. This time, I saw a lot of moody and dark stuff in it.

I also dreamed a nearly complete story about a... well, it gets really complicated. It was about a shapeshifting two-hundred and forty-six year old amnesiac hero who cut off his head to forget traumatic events, thus submerging underneath a different shape and personality - only one of the personalities remembered everything, the others were unaware of each other, and none controlled the shapeshifting - the character's appereance just changed, depending on which personality was in control.

The story was about saving a bunch of genetically engineered children from an evil organization, which used insects and insect-based monsters, as well as owning a mundane private military, as well as learning to cope with oneself -

Oh, and there was an immortal deep sea anemone woman, who was apparently the mother of one of the children.

No wonder I sometimes prefer sleeping to being awake....

I'm not very good at drawing buildings

I can't even pretend I am. 

Still, not like I'll get any better if I don't draw, so there. 

Characters, creatures, objects and buildings. That's the stuff that needs drawing.

Maybe. Something.

I need to draw Something // Funny consciousness thingy

Practice. Based on a Sargent sketch. I need to draw lots, lots, lots more

I still have no strong desire or drive towards anything, but I think I can pretend I do, which may be enough to get my body moving, which is the important part. So, I'm trying to see if I can act (do stuff) by acting (pretending I'm someone motivated).

Now, it's very clear to me, that the part of me thinking in words, the one who tells me a story about who I am, is not actually the part of me that controls my actions. I _think_ it's the part that listens to the story, so it's somewhat possible for me to convince myself sometimes. However, it seems to be horribly unreliable -- basically, I don't listen to myself, I guess.

I still hate myself.

Not much here to see. Go read
http://www.agirlandherfed.com/

I'm really rather annoyed that I need to be in a sufficient amount of trouble to be functional.

Something nicer

Mm... Not completely horrible. Pretty bad, still.

I promised Ben something

It's not much of anything, though. I have some other doodles, too, but nothing relevant.

Despair and Depression

I seem to be doing worse. It's been eleven years, this fall, since I started at the university, and I keep on falling back to nothing.

I think one of the worst things that could happen to me, would be suddenly gaining a lot of money. It's quite possible I'd never do anything at all, if that would happen.  On the other hand, worrying about money is a total mind-killer for me.

Sometimes I miss those deepest parts of sleep, when there are no thoughts or sensations.

I think I've mentioned I sometimes draw in my dreams.  I had an informative one a few nights ago.  Apparently, I've drawn one hundred and thirty-five comic pages when dreaming. It's a shame...

The reason I'm not drawing is probably the same I'm not doing much of anything else, either. I have almost no desire or passion...  Strictly speaking, I'm doing actually BETTER today, since I'm capable of writing, but I was feeling terribly down last night.  I can hardly believe I actually drew what little comic there is currently, it actually seems beyond my ability to draw, focus and  organize.

Mmohdear....

Bite Me!

I know there's a lot of noise about this already, but it's really quite good.

Today's agenda:

• Walking
• Drawing
• Schoolwork
• Sauna
• Job Hunting