Geiodo

Last night, we had a couple friends over to dinner! Our crazy neighbor drove her van into another neighbor’s driveway – Which somehow made the car all ready inside that driveway dissapear. All the while, our crazy neightbor seemed to be outside the van, but still driving it.

While still glaring at us, she got into her car, got out, pretended to have just noticed us, and yelled “OH *!” After which,the street turned into a giant waterway, banked by exotic plants, and filled with some giant seaweed…

Our crazy neighbor proceeded to hop into an amphibious schoolbus (Which had just appeared), and drive down to the other side of my vision. During all of this, I think that the guests we had over were teleporting between seats… When the schoolbus reached the other side of my vision (which took about one second), this side happened to be an unexistant fork in the ro – waterway; Our crazy neighbor then decided to jump out of the schoolbus (while it was still going about 60 MPH), leaving it to float down the left canal. Our crazy neighbor finally landed on a speed boat half a second later, and then another half second later, she had gone UP the right canal. (Yes, the water was flowing UPWARDS).

After that, it turned into a road again, and we, for any reason OTHER  than following the crazy neighbor…. Followed her. At this point, one of our guest a started acting like the grandpa of the family, and said, wisely, “We’d better hope we don’t run into her again…”. We, however, did. She was in the top of her speedboat – Well, now the speedboat was the van that she had parked earlier – throwing insults at us. I can’t remember what she was saying, as I could only sense the insults with some sixth sense. They were very rude, however.

We drove up, and parked the car on a cliffside SMALLER than our car.

Finally, the dream ended.

(At this moment, Opera is being a bad browser, and putting all indents at the TOP..)

Sadly, I don’t have a regular bloging time – Which means that I can go anywhere between a couple days, and six months, before posting anything new on this blog.

As a result, my readership is down to my loyal, imaginary fans, who spend every second of their life trying to comprehend the mysterious meaning of my words. I’d be happy just having them, but they don’t do much to affect any stat counters.

So what do I blog about?  This? I guess so.

But then… That makes me all done! The problem is, I can never find anything to blog about.

Sure interesting things happen all the time, but they would bore you out of your mind. Either I am so secretive, that I dare not blog about such things; Or, the things that I would blog about, would, as I said, bore you out of your mind.

Instead, I will do what any good gaming company does… Perplex you with tantalizing photos, instead of confusing you with spiky code:

It’s been quite a long time since I last blogged about anything… At all. Not that anyone really reads this, but, it’s nice to pretend.

Anyways, why not blog about my browser issues?

As of late, safari, the only truly decent browser EVER, has been giving my computer quite the hard time.

It started with this simple bug: When running things in browser, at the same time as other applications, it would cause “Freezes”. Freezes are mini computer freezes, which last for UP TO a second, and then allow the computer to resume work. However, they tend to come in packs..

I eventually got used to the mini freezes, however, they developed… They mutated… Into a worse problem… Of doom… And lots of dotdotdots… Scary…

If too many of these freezes occurred, a complete computer crash would be caused. (“You need to power down your computer”).

Surprisingly enough (to you), I do not mind these crashes because I loose my work – I save every second, and in fact, I need to do so in order for my scripts to run. The REAL issue, is total computer failure. If too many computer crashes occur, computer failure comes; The kind of failure that requires complete hard drive wipe/replacement, and TRULY looses all of your work.

After a while, a predecessor to the current mutation occurred… The YouTube crash. While playing a video on youtube, the system would start having those mini freezes. However, they were not ordinary mini freezes… If I started getting those freezes during youtube, I would have 1-3 seconds to close the youtube window, which takes longer due to the fact that the computer is freezing through all of it. If I did not close the window within three seconds… Complete computer crash.

Things got so bad, that I started flinching at anything that even resembled the animation of a computer failure! (When the computer fails, it is sort of like a vertical motion transition screen).

After that, things truly got bad. It didn’t matter WHAT I was doing, youtube, outside applications… Safari would cause crashes. Random crashes.

And the final mutation was beyond a crash. Instead of seeing “You need to power down your computer”, the computer just turned off, making its little death pistol “pew”.

If you are wondering how I know this is safari, my computer leaves convenient logs of what happened before the crash. And each and every one of those logs said the same thing: “SAFARI DID IT!!!”

At that point, I made sure I had all the browsers possible, and then I ceased all use of Safari.

The rundown:

Opera is pretty good, but it has major issues with copy/paste, text boxes, and Unity web player controls – Which makes it a non-optimum tool for testing my games.

Chrome does great with regular internet surfing, copy/paste, and text boxes, but it does not have very good bookmarks, leaving Opera as my main research browser. Chrome too has major issues with the Unity web player.

Firefox does quite well with the Unity Web player, although I had to do some modifications to my code. However it sucks at connections – various chats that I use to communicate with testers will not work, making chrome dominant for non-videogame work.

Internet Explorer just plain sucks, it is the dominant browser for sending insults to/wanting to delete. No offense to you windows users, but jeez! You could do better.

At this point, I am typing to you from chrome, with firefox open as well. Opera stays closed most of the time, unless I need quick access to my research resources.

So, the irony here? Apple’s own application is the downfall of Apple’s own computer.

-George (Yes, I have decided to use my real name.)

P.S. Don’t take this post negatively. Just laugh at it, and pray that I don’t loose all my stuff.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything but gaming ads, so it’s kind of hard to criticize something that doesn’t lie that much.

Anyways, here is the latest bing fail. I’ve always hated Microsoft (Since I got a mac, and learned they were different), but I didn’t know they would go this low…

At first glance, this image implies that the system uses some kind of image analyzation program to detect the size of the dog. (Not only would this be a technological feat for search engines, it would also imply that the system has text recognition, and knows that to look for.)

However, a closer glance, shows that the picture of the chihuahua is actually smaller, in pixel size. “–images by size.” basically means “–images their size.”, and not “–images by the size of what they capture.”

That picture of the chihuahua could just as easily be a high-res picture, completely outdoing the  monster dog.

Further investigation (A visit to bing.com) shows, that not only does it use IMAGE size, you don’t even get to specify pixel range! All you get are the four options: Small, Medium, Large, and Wallpaper!

Well, I found the problem, and it was in google.

I was told, by the documentation of google, that the inut function (The function containing my loading code) would only be executed when the extension had fully loaded. Only one problem.  It was executing my loading code, before the wave API had a chance to load!

In other words, it was trying to do something, before it even knew how to do it.

Google, you drove me nutty.

Anyways, I have the system totally working.

Google wave, I have to say, is one of the only web apps that I took over an hour to figure out.

Google wave is like email on steroids. You can send multiple people a “Wave”, in which users use a comment -type content submission system.

These “comments”, are called “Blips”. Quotes “For The Win”.

Blips can be edited by all people, and I’m not 100% sure that they can be edited at the same time. I’ve tried, but it got pretty confusing. I’ll jut pretend that you can’t.

Although two people cannot edit the same blip at the same time, two people can create two separate blips at that same time, and see each other typing.

One cool feature about wave, is it’s ability to embed what they call “Extensions.”

These extensions are in a way, a replica of the flash player. They are a JS API for web based web apps. They use HTML for the JS, and GUI, which I have to say, is pretty cool.

I recently found a percentage bar extension, which, sadly, I’m not too impressed by. The GUI is great, and for that, I am using it, however, you are left to directly enter the percentage. I wanted it to instead take in a fraction, and from that generate a percentage.

So far, I have THAT done well, however I am trying, and failing at having the system save – AHA! Breakthrough… Explanation coming. – save the values.

However, when trying to resurface the values, only one attempt has worked, and I cannot replicate the results. All of my resources are pointing to this line of code – and even though ti works later in the script, it STILL refuses to work.

Line alert(“eviil” + state.get(‘in1′));

Alerts have worked before, and actually ONCE returned the correct value. It’s evil. Just plain EVIL!

Until….

That breakthrough. I think I know what might be wrong. state.get(‘in1′); might not be directly returning a string.

Perhaps creating a variable, specifying it as a string, and tTHEN setting it, will change my results.

Programming… I love it, but it drives me nutty when I can’t figure something out.

Here is a nice example of ad sneakiness, found on fail blog.

Most ads are much better at concealing their truth, than this, however this clearly explains what ad producers like to do.

At first glance, that ad says this: Our loss weight tea will lose you that much weight!

However, the ad simply says this person lost that much WITH the weight loss tea. That means that she could also have been doing any number of things, from liposuction, to giving birth. (Obviously the fat was from a baby.)

Depending upon “interpretation” (Word bending), Weight loss tea, can be anything between a magic potion that actually does induce weight loss, or a Japanese ritual tea that people would drink to celebrate weight loss. It could even mean that the particular flavor of tea was drunk on the day that someone broke the biggest loser all time record!

Which means, that the weight loss tea could actually be some store brand, or water with nasty leaves in it.

In other words, it could be an ad for regular tea, made to look more appealing by making it imply weight loss.

Never. Trust. Ads. (Unless the ad council made them.)

Anti Ad Intro.

Ever since false advertisement was banned (Whenever that was), ad producers have been very, very, sneaky. As the ban on false advertisement only extends as far as direct confirmation, ad producers have simply learned to work around the law; – They have found a way of doing legal false advertisement.

Implications. People around the web, and on TV, use implications to mislead readers into thinking that what the ads say is true. – When in fact, when an ad says “Done this with that”, the implication is that with means “only with”, however, if the company were to be sewed all they would have to do, is claim that the meant “with that, amongst other products.”.

Just for fun, and no practical reason, when I surf the webs, and see a false ad, I’ll blog about it, and point out all the sneakiness.

A couple nights ago, I decided to look out the window, at the stars,at 12 AM. To my surprise, I found that three of them were smudged!

I immediately thought “Galaxy!”, however the night time air had made me so tired. My mind struggled between sleep, and staying awake; Which very much frustrated me.

The second night, I realized that I was awake, at four in the morning. I could also see the “Star Smudge” (Galaxy in my mind) from my window.

I had talked to dad about the smudge the previous morning; All he said was that he didn’t know what to make of it.

At that point, I was set on getting the details. I scrounged around for a pen, and notepad, and drew out the constellation around it. It looked sort of like the Big Dipper, but with the cupped part missing, and in it’s place, the smudge. I was thinking about naming it “The molten Dipper” (At that time I had no clue it was Orion’s belt), due to the fact that the cup looked like it had melted, and was falling to the floor.

After that, I began to think about blogging about it, and making a photo shopped recreation of it. I ended up not, however I’d like to now…

It’s not nearly as apparent, but that gives you a sense of what I was seeing.

On the final night, something about the thought “Sleep” got me to sit straight up (Ironic…), and remember the “Galaxy”. I looked straight out the window, to find the sky FILLED with stars, thousands of them! (Imagine if the street lights had been out on that night!), and right in the center, more visible than ever before, was the “Galaxy”. However, I at that point thought it looked more like a comet..

The best thing was, it was only 11:30! My parents had started getting ready for bed only half an hour ago!

I struck at my chance, and asked dad to take a look. All he said was “it’s just the stars” – I immediately protested “That is not the halo of stars! No other stars have that around them!!”. Luckily, my mom had followed, and she had a go. I directed her eyes at the three stars at the top of the image, and had her look down to where the smudge was. “It’s a nebula.” she said! That thing had been bugging for three nights! (Possibly four, but I remember three…). I was relieved to know what it was!

She told me it was part of Orion’s Belt, and pointed my attention to a bright yellow star. I cannot remember if it is moving away, or towards us, but I remember reading from a Steven Hawkings book, that light waves bend in spectrum when the source is moving away/towards you. I think that red means it’s heading towards you, and yellow was away.

Someone from Star Trek should at that to their warp effects… (And not make the stars look like they are going that fast, and then when out of warp have them be that far way) (It took warp 3 to get to Jupiter, and yet they still had stars buzzing by at that speed as if you were going across the galaxy!)(Episode about a pre-warp five test.)
I just realized that I have devoted an entire paragraph to criticizing Star Trek…

I’ll get back on track… The skies at that time were beautiful, filled with stars. I’d never seen so many in my life, except once, at a camp – Shooting stars all over the place. I have always wondered how there could be so many [shooting stars] in that place, and so few here. But it just now hit me! We have street lights here, and those shooting stars are kind of faint. Also visible, straight up, was a HUGE circular nebula! It was the coolest thing I had ever seen.

I was working on a martian world, and a friend gave me a wonderful idea! A death brick.

Upon touching the death brick, your vehicle goes… Well, insane.

It’s a big hit – but not much of a secret (As I have not hidden it yet).

Another friend made this funny quote:

“Have YOU ever wanted to die? Well, now you can with our new death brick! Deathbrick comes in 5 different colors and a custom carying pouch for convinience! This special offer is limited time only! Get your death brick for 19.99 at your local retail stores! Only from Flyco.”

Here is another, lol:

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