01/08/10 by Garvar at 3:31pm EST

Gross.

Though this code was the base for the engine used for my weblog, going back to this non-automated server-end stuff is just...blah. So I doubt I'll be posting here much, you can check the link above for a more active account of what is going on with me.

So this post must obviously have a reason - earlier today, I was met with the good fortune of finding both an N64 and a copy of Starfox 64 at a second-hand shop, so I now own a physical copy of my beloved SF64. Beyond that, it got me thinking - well, a combination of that, and people pestering me, to pick up BRW again. I mean, I never properly ended it, and the ending is, in my opinion, the brilliance of the entire project. So, no promises or anything, but I've been planning to bring this back for a final run. Hopefully!

07/12/08 by Garvar at 12:06am EST

Just dropping a line to confirm that I am not dead or abandoning BRW or anything, but my muse has decided to go on summer vacation while I'm stuck working full time and such, so I think I'll just officially declare a break from the comic until September. Then we'll get back on board, and since I'll be living with my co-writer for the next twelve months, I expect the comic to come to a close before the end of summer 2009.

The question is where to go from there.

07/01/08 by Garvar at 8:25pm EST

Golly-gee Christ things have been hectic and busy lately. Just got back from Ottawa-ish and did a quick trip to the osu filehost mirror chmod to prevent bandwidth explosions from happening again. Gotta play with the DNS some more before everything is back in order but I'm hoping to sort that all out within the next 24 hours.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to let a few people know that I'm not dead.

06/01/08 by Garvar at 11:13pm EST

New comic's up. Based on how long it took me to type this, I figure I don't feel like talking right now.

Busy busy busy. Never a dull moment.

05/25/08 by Garvar at 9:20pm EST

We're back, baby!

So, yay. Been busy as hell this weekend, coding and skinning. And right now I just got hit with the strangest, strongest urge to eat popcorn so I'm off to do that.

05/22/08 by Garvar at 8:55pm EST

Rrgh.

Damn Post function hit an error and became corrupted during overwrite and it took me more than a few minutes to find out what had gone wrong. Ah well. We're fine, now.

05/22/08 by Garvar at 3:16pm EST

Windows is back (at least temporarily), Photoshop is back, and Starfox is on a DVD somewhere. Things should be back in order this weekend.

So I was prompted to poke around Wikipedia on the subject of Guitar Hero today. I've known about Guitar Hero: IV for some time now, but was a bit skeptical toward it after the sour turn GH3 took on the series (I appreciate the large track list, but I was very dissatisfied by that which the list was populated with). My outlook on GH4 has taken a turn for the better. It seems like Guitar Hero IV would be better named Guitar Hero: Let's Copy Rock Band But Improve Upon It, which is good news, because Rock Band is a fun idea...it's just executed a little poorly, as I have stated in the past.

I was reading some confirmed bands, shrugging to myself with an "eh..." at each one, until I stumbled across the footnote that GameInformer suggests GH4 might see something from Dream Theater.

Dream
Fucking
Theater.

I can't even begin to count the number of times I've said "Rock Band needs to have some Dream Theater in it" (among other, more niche bands to my liking), and here that opportunity may be brought to light.

What's more, and almost promises to be a guaranteed hit with picky music connoisseurs like myself is the song creation editor. The composers among us will have the tools to create music for GH4 and distribute these songs freely to other gamers online.

I happen to have a composer for a friend, including the sheet music of upwards of two hours worth of fun, heavy music he's authored, including the Starfox metal debut track "Cover You" and instrumental cousin "G-Diffusion", so I just know this game is going to be a fucking blast (read: enormous timesink that will cost me my university degree if I am not careful) so long as the editor is not as gimped as Brawl's level editor, which does not seem to be the case.

Add that to the company I'm going to be sharing the house with and we have ourselves a regular group activity. I hope either Lo or Sulara know how to sing...

This is going to fucking rock, Mr. Enis.

05/18/08 by Garvar at 10:27pm EST

Hello internet.

So on Friday I finally did the final rounds of preparation legwork necessary to format my computer. On Saturday, I decided to give my computer a completely fresh start - this was after, of course, the Windows installer decided to corrupt the partition it was going to install to, so it was Ubuntu installer to the rescue to format my harddrive. That was fortunately successful.

Downside is, Windows XP Pro SP2 is too stupid to recognize my harddrive, because blah blah SATA blah blah RAID drivers blah blah. I am currently without Windows until I either: A - buy something or other, or B - get myself the necessary drivers on a floppy and attempt to get windows to detect the harddrive that Ubuntu quite happily works on.

So, having ndiswrapper already configured on it, awptop (my ghetto circa 99 laptop) has been getting lots of attention, and lately I've been amazed at how co-operative it's been. I decided to attempt to set my mp3 player up (Zen V Plus) to work under this strange foreign distro...plugging it in naturally did shit-all as expected, so I ran a google query, and two minutes later, typed in a few sudo commands and bam, device was recognized and battery was charging. Did some wrong stuff for about ten minutes then ran another google query to get it to communicate with a media manager so I could put files on and off it, and three MORE minutes later, it was 100% set up. So after my frustrations yesterday, I'm happy that today's been more successful.

Got mono + IDE running, too. monodevelop might very well be the first IDE I've ever actually enjoyed using. It's just...so straightforward.

Brother bought me this movie called "Ricky-Oh" for my birthday the other week, and I watched it on Friday. Have to admit - it was very entertaining. Recommended for fans of Kung-pow. Not quite the same kind of humour, but it's even more over-the-top than Kung Pow was. Awesome movie.

Speaking of awesome, still playing The World Ends With You. 60 hours and counting; that game is still the best handheld game I've ever had the pleasure of witnessing. At a friend's recommendation I've given Crisis Core a bit more effort - on Hard, of course, because Normal is so fucking easy it's just not worth playing - and, despite some of the "Very Hard" missions, I'm no longer getting irrevocably raped in battle. Sure, a handful of the missions contain enemies that kill me in one hit, but the storyline battles allow me to survive up to five consecutive attacks, so that's fantastic. I can live with that.

Now, I just hope it doesn't get any worse.

Also, I don't know if you've pieced this together or not, but no windows == no comic. This should be fixed before next week, though.

05/13/08 by Garvar at 9:22am EST

Okay.

Posting at work~ I joined the dark side of the force at work a couple weeks ago (to the layman, I transferred from Development to QA) but I suspect as of yet they're not exactly ready for me, as there's no imperative work for me to do, but at the same time I don't need to do any core training because I've done that already. So most of my time is being spent reading/poking code, running tests, and reading up on OpenGL. Ho hum.

Weekend was pretty eventful, as I'd mentioned earlier. Went to my brother's house, where he promptly left me to my own devices while he went to a party somewhere. That's fine.

He took the 360 with him.

But that's still fine - there was a treasure trove of Dreamcast games waiting for me to sink my teeth into, including the infamous Typing of the Dead. I do believe it is the cheesiest game on Earth, and little did I know, the copy of House of the Dead 2 + 3 that I picked up earlier that day contained the exact same game, save for SHOOTING zombies instead of TYPING THEM TO DEATH. So that's hilarious. Got to take a peak at Jet Grind Radio (Shibuya represent) as well as another infamous title, Tokyo Bus Guide. Decided to give No More Heroes for the Wii a spin to see if I liked it. I'm not sure how repetitive the gameplay will feel over time, but it's certainly fun enough, the story and direction feel really well done, and after I adapted to the utter pixellated feel to the graphics I got into the visuals a bit. I would have preferred a more refined Wind Waker approach, but whatever.

So three or four hours or however much time I was left alone to my brother's games later, I conked out, woke up in the morning, went to the 'rents house, shenanigans ensued. Went to a comedy club for my birthday, which I quite enjoyed, then went drinkin' with a few of the ol' gang. While there was no CON, still plenty of fun to be had. Golfed the next day with awpmom before heading back to Burlington, and it wasn't until this morning that I realised I had forgotten to get me some RAM. Bugger.

Maybe I can talk my brother into it somehow.

At any rate, I think I'm good to go with BRW for a little while, and having this Friday off means hopefully I'll be able to get two comics in. Gotta reformat my computer hardcore though, so I'll do that this weekend if I get the chance. Thing is, I don't know if I'll be out of commission (I love my Photoshop =\) and if I am, not sure how long for. Hoping it won't impact the site at all...though, much to my dismay, I'm going to have to actually just buy WinXP Pro, since I have no idea where my XP disc is.

Sorry Ubuntu, but you're on the sidelines for this one.

Oh, did I mention? I love working Flex hours. I was playing The World Ends Wtih You - still - this morning, and decided, rather than leave for work, I'll clear a few more areas in TWEWY first, so I did. I'll probably be stuck here for an extra 20 minutes or so, but it was worth it. TWEWY is just so good.

05/13/08 by Garvar at 12:53am EST

I put more work into tonight's comic than I had anticipated, but I decided to experiment with it a bit to give a more comic-ish feel to it. Plus I was stumped for a while.

Pretty tired, weekend was busy as hell, lots of stuff to talk about, I'll blog at work in the morning.