FantasyJam

Please, if you care at all, visit my website and post in the forum. I really need some activity there. The site has my blog, which is updated frequently, but the really kewl stuff includes a chat room, forum, and video game reviews. There's also a bunch of Flash animations and games available, and you can leave comments on practically everything.

Again, visit my website at http://www.fantasyjam.net

My Blog Is Moving

I'm using my own site to host my personal blog at http://www.fantasyjam.net/blog/1 and I must say it's less of a hassle than Blogger. You could start a blog on my site, too, if you like.

Captain D

I was hired at the new Captain D's near here. I'm supposed to get ready and start sometime in October. The hours will be random but always during the daytime.

This is a second job. My primary job is one I'm not even supposed to reveal to anyone, because I signed the whole NDA thing and am under contract. However, it is a telecommuting job, and it pays very well.

Moving on, though, this Captain D's job is uncertain. I'm hired, yes, but I won't be working much right away, and I have to go through a two-day training class before I can start. I'm not sure if I will even be paid for the training, probably not, and it seems like I will be competing with a lot of people to keep my job.

My ultimate goal with this job is to get a minimum of 6 hours in each week. I will get $6.75 per hour, so multiply that by 6, and yes, I have $40! After two weeks, I'd be paid $81, just enough money to pay for a new cell phone, I think. The cell phone is a must, because I will have to call for a ride whenever I get off work. I may get a cell phone before that time. I just have to wait and see what happens.

Site Undergoing Changes

Go to http://www.fantasyjam.net

The site is now using Drupal. I still need to set a few things up and decorate everything with my own layout (instead of the Drupal default look), but I believe the site is going to be better than it was before.

Arkham Asylum

Go HERE and enter the sweepstakes to have your own likeness in an upcoming Batman game!

I'm Josh, and I'm a sad, sad human. So what?

PurrCrabs, from Syboard, actually said this (look in title) in the shoutbox. I'm sad, yes, mostly because my life sucks, so I won't argue with him. I do manage to stay happy-looking everyday, and I rarely complain about anything, so you can't honestly say I'm a crybaby or even that I'm lazy.

Moving on, I was asked by several people, least of which, Sui, about my daily schedule, because I switch my regular internet habits constantly. Sometimes, I'm on AIM from 3am to 5pm, never idle. Other times, I'm not on AIM at all or idling from 9pm to 12pm, and I frequently log into AIM and back out.

All these frantic habits are causes by my lack of sleep, poor eating habits, bad hygiene, and common work-related problems. I'm out of school, and I tried being a night worker, but that wasn't working out, so I started a daytime job, which is still proving to be difficult (due to lack of work), and I'm definitely not a daytime person.

If I could be active at night, making all the noise I want, working whenever, I would be in bliss.

That is not the case, and I'm sure my schedule isn't even interesting, but you can look at it if you like...

12am - 3am: play games, work on website, do whatever, because I'm bored and absolutely cannot sleep. Never could sleep at these times, not even when I was in school.

4am - 6am: sleep

6 - 7am: wake up, drink something (usually just tap water) and go back to sleep

7 - 9am: sleep

9 - noon: breakfast (rarely), feed dog, shower (every other day), look for work, and if I have work, do it.

noon - 3pm: watch my little brother, study whatever I feel like reading (story or coding or even just a picture or song), write notes for small story ideas, lose most of the notes accidentally, feed the dog... all at random times.

3pm - 5pm: waste time, usually watching my little brother... yell at brother for making messes, be relieved when Dad gets here to take over, watch the clock.

5pm - 7pm: read stuff, take out trash, do laundry, eat dinner, discuss maybe watching a movie but never actually watch anything, snack on leftovers while cleaning the kitchen.

7pm - midnight: I call this my true free time. I'm never really bothers at this period of the day, and most chores are done. I usually feed the dog again at this point and sometimes take the trash to the curb. During this time, I post on my blogs and journals, play a few video games, and usually find creative projects to work on. Sometimes, however, I just play around with the computer and post on forums.

Ubuntu Intrepid Alpha 5

I boldly upgraded to an upgrade only a few have upgraded to thus far. Okay, bad Star Trek rip-off, but I upgraded from Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04 LTS) to Ubuntu Intrepid (8.10), and it fixed and improved so much!

PCSX finally works, but pSX still won't open. PCSX is my emulator of choice, anyway. I use PCSXbox on my Xbox, and it works great, so I may very well play PSX games on PCSX, as well. I already played Brave Fencer Musashi to check the performance level of PCSX, and I was wowwed.

The Windows driver for my wireless card is no longer necessary. The card was basically plug-and-play, so yay! This saved me a lot of time, because I have a lot of trouble getting Windows drivers installed. Well, I think the only proprietary driver I need is the one to make my ATI card work. I may try the open source alternative, though, because ATI has bad, very bad, customer support, especially for Linux users.

Current Ubuntu Hardy users may want to upgrade to Intrepid right now.
To do so, just open a terminal window and type "update-manager -d" without quotes. It will check for updates like it normally would, but it won't ignore anything. At the top of the updates list will be the newest version of Ubuntu.

The upgrade to Intrepid isn't perfect at the moment. I had to fix packages (redownload them) after installing, so I'm sure a clean installation (via CD/DVD) would be better for newcomers. Ubuntu Intrepid is scheduled to be released in October, so look forward to it, and don't give up hope for Linux!

Shadow: the Cat

Hey, loyal readers!

I thought I would take a picture of him while I was in Windows. My LifeCam doesn't work in Ubuntu. Shame on Microsoft for giving me a free webcam that requires Windows! Hehee....

I'm making a few new friends via CraigsList, too. I met a cross-dresser, a Microsoft executive (or so he says), and even a Christian version of myself, minus the nice typing skills. I'm keeping them on my GMail contacts as casual chit-chatters or pen-pals.

I'll be posting a few personal images on SheezyArt as well. I have neglected my artistic talents a bit recently, and I really need to let loose a mighty rawr every once and again. I've already done that once about two weeks ago with the Nanaki fan art. If you don't know who Nanaki is, he's the red lion with the flaming tail and the insane amounts of jewelry.

Part-Time Tele-Commuting Job

I have been crazily replying to CraigsList entries for a while, and an actual opportunity actually presented itself. I'm now a member of the support staff at a service for Flash-based work. Basically, I help people with their Flash problems, be it coding or basic technical problems. I can't divulge any more than that, because I would be in violation of the NDA.

I'm not counting on this job to last a very long time, and I don't expect much of a workload, so I'm still actively searching for a job.

New motivation: Ubuntu.

I'm slowly moving all my development into the Ubuntu community. From now on, all the games I create will work in Ubuntu and Windows, possibly Mac. Currently, the only games I made which work in Ubuntu or on a Mac are my old Flash games.

Anyway, I'm still looking for good animation software. Here's the alternatives I found for Ubuntu and what I'm still missing:

Avast: available for Ubuntu as well but not necessary and doesn't monitor the system. I could also use Clam, which is a native Linux app, but, if you're serious about safety, Clam doesn't monitor your system. Nothing monitors the system in Linux. It just isn't necessary, because you have complete control of what runs and what doesn't. Basically, Linux monitors itself.
Blender: It actually works better in Ubuntu. The game engine is still a little confusing, and shadowing is not supported in stand-alone runtimes, so you need to use textures for everything in your game projects.
DirectX: I can use OpenGL instead. There are plenty of open source OpenGL-powered 3D engines to pick from, and I have my eyes on Ogre, using Blender as my modeler. Any recommendations are welcome.
Flash: no good alternative yet. You have PyGame for programming games, but that's not helpful for animations. I tried Flash4Linux and all the apps based on it, but those require some sort of compiler, and I don't really know how to get them working.
Photoshop: GIMP works well, but I'm open to change. If I can get Photoshop CS3 to work in Wine, I'll go that route. Otherwise, I think GIMP could grow on me. I'm also considering Inkscape for vector art.
Runescape: works in Ubuntu. I don't play it, though. If I ever get bored, though, I know I can start a character on there and hack away at trees.
Sony Vegas: no good alternative yet. I need a good video sequencer for music videos and simple editing. I'm hoping for some transition effects and color filters.
ToonBoom: Synfig Studio is pretty good, but it's still in early stages of development.

Flash isn't available in Ubuntu (just the browser plug-in), but I can use Wine to run a very old version. I need to find an alternative to Flash CS3 for animation, but I can code 2D games in Python/PyGame.

I hope you consider moving to Ubuntu. It's free, and it's more secure than Windows. Plus, almost every good piece of software is either on the installation DVD or add/remove menu!

Yahoo!Lottery?

Days ago, my cousin told me he won $200,000 from the Yahoo!Lottery program. I told him it had to be a scam, but he refused to believe that fact, and I gave him the best advice I could: Ask Yahoo! itself.

Here's a fairly old (but accurate) Yahoo!Mail help topic: CLICK!
In that topic, the question was about Yahoo!Lottery. There is no Yahoo! lottery, meaning they don't give anyone money, but there is a lottery site run by Yahoo!, and it's located here: http://lottery.yahoo.com

Again, Yahoo! does not give you money, and they wouldn't ask for money to do so, either. Sorry, cousin, but you've been scammed. I hope you didn't send that $200!

Video Game Bash #7: Microsoft Exclusives

My last weekly Video Game Bash was in May. Sorry to anyone who kept wondering when the next one would be posted. I was tired of bashing games, so I took a very long, very unnecessary break. I'm back with Video Game Bash #7:

I hate how Microsoft throws words like "Only on XBOX" out without any meaning behind them. It was a marketting ploy, a good one at that. Sure, Halo was exclusive to the Xbox, but it didn't stay that way, not even for a very long time, and it wasn't brought to PC via an emulator, either!

Wait, I have to revert what I said, "and it wasn't brought to PC via an emulator," to "and it was coming to the PC via hackers until Microsoft decided to port the game to Windows Vista."

I mention this because of a now abandoned project, CXBX, which was planned to convert Xbox XBE files to Windows EXE files. It was something Microsoft didn't like, because they want money above anything else, and Halo was probably already planned to be ported eventually... so Microsoft completely disregarded the exclusiveness of Halo on the Xbox and brought us a slightly improved Halo for PC, which also had an optional modding studio called Halo: Custom Edition.

Thanks, Bungie. I bought Halo for my Xbox, when it was brand new, and I never saw any new content for it; these PC players got frequent updates and a huge modding community with an official level editor! Why can't I have the new features, too?!

This didn't end with Halo. No, this continued through Halo 2. Once Halo PC was released, Xbox got a bit of a consolation prize, Halo 2. It sure was great... for a few hours. Unfortunitely, Halo 2 didn't have a level editor, but it did look better and have greatly improved weapon assortment. Also, the vehicles were breakable, stealable, and boostable, wait, isn't that the same as stealing?

Anyway, I bought Halo 2 on its release date, just so I could be one of the cool guys for a short while. I even got the Limited Edition version of the game, which really didn't offer anything special other than the neat case. After that, I realized I didn't like the campaign. I was really only playing a multiplayer fragfest. I already had that from Unreal!

Moving along, I kept hoping for Live updates to fall in my lap, since Halo 2 was able to be played online, but I didn't pay for Xbox Live. No way! I had XLink Kai. This is where Halo 2 shined. For hours, every single day, I would chat with 6-15 other players in the matches, and some mysterious ghost character would show up. He would appear, disappear, he never walked, he even threw grenades backwards and always stuck someone. It was freaky, but I was a geek, so I knew something fishy was going on. I got into the modding community and learned all I could about softmodding my console, just to modify Halo 2. I was really inspired, I know.

Long story short, I modded Halo 2 (even made a few Halo 3 style weapons), but it was very difficult and nowhere near what you got to accomplish with Halo: Custom Edition. After a while of being bored of Halo 2, even after modding it, an expansion pack (the Multiplayer Map Pack) was released both on Live as a download and in retail stores as a DVD with some rather dull video content as a bonus. It was pretty neat, but it didn't entertain me at all, because it was pretty much just for multiplayer matches and didn't even offer any interesting gameplay changes; no new weapons or anything!

Once Halo 3 was announced, all Halo 2 players shit their pants at the thought of how awesome it probably wouldn't be. However, it was the driving force in Xbox 360 sales, and I can't argue that Halo 3 is bad, because it is actually quite awesome. The point of my saying this is simply: I don't have a Xbox 360, so I was actually happy to hear that Halo 2 was coming to PC. Unfortunitely, it was being made specifically for Windows Vista, which is the biggest pile of shit I ever saw... and I see a lot of shit.

Moving on, Halo 2 was no longer an exclusive to the Xbox, and the PC version got a built-in level editor. (Bungie was kind enough to supply two new maps to the Xbox version, Derelict and Hang 'Em High. Yes, Halo 1 conversions. Sad, isn't it?) Halo 3 got a built-in item-placement engine called Forge, which everyone considers as a level editor. I can't help but wonder whether or not Halo 3 will be released for PC in the next couple years, and, if it is released for PC, I'm sure it will have a level editor, as well.

The moral of this drastically long story is: Don't trust Microsoft.
Oh and the only advice you should take from this post is that the Halo series isn't "Only on XBOX" and Halo is even the most likely Xbox game to be successfully played through an emulator.

Hope you enjoy all the goodies hidden in this post. See ya!

Broken Antenna

All this time, well, for the past week (or longer), I have been pulling hairs because of the constant disconnections from the home network. I thought it was a virus, even though I wiped my PC clean just weeks ago. My antenna is apparently cracked open on one side, which makes my connection less constant. I'm just getting a little jumpy sense my virus attack. It pushed me to install a secondary operating system, Ubuntu.

It's funny. In WinXP, I have constant errors and program crashes. In Ubuntu, almost everything works as I want it to. That includes my Windows drivers! Yep, my WinXP drivers work better in Ubuntu than their native habitat. As I type this, I wonder how (and when) my antenna broke and how long these Windows updates are going to take to download.

Just out of shear boredom (as I wait for downloads to complete), I guess I can add a new Video Game Bash. I'll start one now.

MCR (MyCokeRewards) Codes

I'm giving away 15 MCR codes! You can simply comment on this blog, asking for the codes, or you could join Syboard and send me a private message there.

I'm accustomed to people asking why I'm giving these codes away (instead of using them myself), and I must explain: It's an advertising gimmick. It makes people visit my blog more than normal. Also, I already got a bottle opener from MCR last year. I would rather just give the codes to someone else than spend them on the crappy prizes. Hopefully, my codes will help someone get a good prize.

The video game bash will be back shortly.
(I got tired of bashing games for a while.)

AMV and New Story

A few days ago, I mentioned I was making an anime music video for YouTube. I created the DBZ Megamix AMV, so check it out! CLICK HERE!

Also, today, I created a new blog for a story I've had stuck in my head for ages. Check it out as well! CLICK HERE!

Connecting to Xbox

Long story short, I had to reinstall drivers for all my devices and forgot to install the driver for my Ethernet port. I was so ashamed of myself when I finally realized the driver was missing, but here's the real kicker: My Ethernet cable is broken!

After digging through my box of wires, I found my backup cable, so I'm using that to retrieve my videos right now. I'm trying to collect my DBZ videos to make a kick-ass AMV or anime music video. It should be available on YouTube once I finish it. *wink, wink, nudge, nudge* I'm only missing one episode (as far as I know), so I'm off to find a download. Cheers!

utorrentapp

The title of this blog post is not referencing utorrent or the bittorrent community, but there's a new virus going around, and the name it usually seems to go by is "utorrentapp.exe," but why am I announcing this?

Just a few days ago, I contracted the very same virus, and I'm honestly not sure what causes the infection, but there are many possible culprits, including a slight visit to porntube, even if it was involuntary.

Anyway, at first, I thought I could just clean the system with my anti-virus options. I eventually tried AVG8 again, and it found the virus but wouldn't do anything about it. I hate AVG. Moving on, though, I tried reinstalling Windows without repartitioning, just because WinXP was pretty screwed up thanks to the infection. As expected, the virus was still on there, so it was jumping around wildly. I didn't want to lose everything, because I didn't have much backed up at all, but everything had that nasty virus in it, so I just decided to start fresh.

I completely wiped my system, repartitioned the C drive for Windows XP Pro, and repartitioned the D drive for Ubuntu 8.04, and this is pretty much where I am now. WinXP is back to normal but has almost nothing on it, while Ubuntu has a lot of useful apps but no way of getting online (yet), so I'm salvaging what I can from the internet to rebuild my Windows collective, and, at the same time, I'm trying to figure out how to install my Windows drivers on Ubuntu.

The anti-virus app I'm currently relying on to keep me safe is Avast, and I strongly suggest you use it as well. I'm also looking for some nice games to play on Ubuntu, but I'll post my findings in my other blog, Search for Video Games.

Wireless blues? Router blues.

I finally determined a quick fix solution to my speed problem. Turning off my router and letting it sit for a bit before turning it back on actually makes it work better! I've gone up to 75kbps now! Wahoo!

If you have problems with your broadband internet speed being at a rate similar to dial-up, do what I did, unplug your router and wait a while. It works. In another day or so, I'll let it rest for maybe ten or twenty minutes and hopefully get my top speed again, which is about 500-700kbps.

In other news, I have a couple games I'm working on. One's an arcade game, the other is a role-playing game. I may update my list of commercials in just a moment, so check that out as well. It's right below this topic.

Hilarious Videos 2008 - Battle of the Batmans

I decided last year that I wanted to compile a list of the funniest and most addictive commercials I know of, but I haven't put forth the effort to make that list until now. Fortunitely, a new Batman spoof encouraged me to make a list on my blog, and I think it deserves the top spot on the "Top Ten Commercials of 2008."

Obviously, I'll have to update this list as the year continues, so keep checking this topic for updates.

Top Ten Most Addictive Commercials of 2008

1. Battle of the Batmans
This is a parody (or mockery) of the Batman franchise, and I love it. It is probably the funniest clip I've ever seen. Ever; not just out of all the Batman parodies. Just watch it.

2. Kamehame Haaa!
Dragonball Z: Burst Limit seems like a pretty crappy game to me, but the commercials are funny as hell.

3. *punch* Wake up! Bad guys!
I went to see Hancock, and it wasn't really what I expected, but the commercial was pretty awesome. I suggest you still watch the movie, but the good action is in the beginning of the movie. Want more? I found a site that sort of brings realism to the movie: http://www.hancockwashere.com

4. Hitler Got BANNED!
This is a joke that's been around the net for a while, but I only saw it this year, and I still found it hilarious, so I'm counting it. You should do a search for more "Hitler Got Banned From" videos. There are tons of them.

5. COMING SOON!

Reverting

The title of this post is for three reasons: I have to master Tony Hawk again, I'm going home, and I'm switching from GIMP back to Photoshop. I'm just sick of GIMP. Photoshop was simply easier to use.

Also, yesterday, I installed Perfect World, a free-to-play MMORPG. I'm getting my character set up as I type this. The biggest problem I've had so far is with the installation, but that's mostly because of how big the game is, two gigs. I'll play Perfect World casually for a few days and post what I think of it soon.

On a more personal note, I got into a kind of a fight with my cousin, Charlie a few days ago. He instigated the fight, but I don't think he was in a good mood. Seriously, I think he has PMS or something. One minute, he's all happy-go-lucky; next minute, he's
throwing television remotes and cursing. In all honesty, though, I didn't act very mature, either, because I got too angry with him to keep myself under control. Now, Charlie seems to be holding a small grudge but won't admit to it. I apologized for what I did (threw a pizza and knocked over some junk outside) and plan to go home in a few days to finally see my Dad and get some much needed sleep.