I spent my Spring break in Spain on a class trip. It was about 10 days and we stayed in Madrid, Seville and Granada. We also stopped in Cordoba and Toledo to walk around and whatnot. I saw such beautiful architecture and landscapes and an unbelievable amount of olive trees. Seville was covered with orange trees, but supposedly the oranges were bitter so I didn't eat any. Toledo was sword heaven. Every other shop was calling my name. Unfortunately, I was low on euros and all of the banks were closed, so I didn't get to bring one home.

My favorite part of the trip was the people I was with. There was such an awesome group of people who, for the most part, got along so nicely. We had such a great time, and the trip would not have been as good without them.

Coming back to the states, we landed in a nasty little storm and the landing was rather bumpy. All is good. I took a lot of pictures and a bunch of them are for textures I will try to make.

Anyone else do any traveling recently?

Going to meet Kane, leader of the Brotherhood of Nod in person in a couple of hours.
He's in the Netherlands to promote the latest episode in the Command & Conquer Tiberian/Tiberium series.

Yes, i know, they fucked up C&C4 pretty bad, but im going to play it anyway, because it has GDI, Nod and Kane. Plus, it's the last in the series.
Call me crazy, but i don't care.

I FIGHT FOR NOD!

Edit: Mission Accomplished!
I shook hands with Kane (!!!) and got a signed limited edition of C&C4.

I don't have pictures, but i do have some video footage. It's not much, but i'll see if i can get something out of it.

The neverending curse

Don't you just love silence? Especially when it's time to sleep?

I've been deprived of good ole silence for years. In about 2002, the old bitch next door got herself a new dog. An apparently prize-winning German Shepherd. She got up every day at 6.30 in the morning and let the fucker go outside. Of course, since she never allowed it to have any contact with the outside world, the SOB would bark at absolutely anything from behind the fence: people passing by, cars, birds, garbage, hearing my voice from the other side of the dividing wall, or just because. This usually went on until lunch, and then let it back out until dinner. The only period of acceptable, continuous silence I could get was 22:00-6:45. And since my school had classes late, after having dinner and shit I could only go to bed after midnight. Then of course I wouldn't plan to get up before noon. This fucker ruined my sleep patterns.

And of course, if you tell the owner of such a dog anything, they just don't give a shit.

We moved to a new house last year. At last I would forget those fuckers. How wrong I was.

At the new house, it wasn't just one. It was two fucking barkers with no time restrictions. Area diagram below. The first one, labeled 1, is a large dog which I've never seen- it's outside my field of view. As soon as they let it out to the back yard, it started barking nonstop with its very loud voice. This could be at any time of the day, or any time of the night. After some time, we discovered this was especially bad at about 4 in the morning when certain cat passed by on a wall. Luckily, this one has been pretty silent the past month or two (knock on wood).

Then was the second one, labeled 3 (yeah wrong order). There was an old ancient, peaceful and silent balding yellow dog, until one day (not long after we moved in) they got him company: A young, small brown Boxer with a not too loud, worn out high voice -yet still terribly annoying. This one is random. We don't know its reasons, but it also barks continuously at... anything. Just because. It can bark for days without rest. Right now it's been yelling since yesterday, with only a pause between 2am and 6am. You can guess how I slept.

And finally, 3 or 4 months ago they finished a small housing building with 4 balconies facing back. People started moving in. Right there, at the last balcony, lives number 2: A German Shepherd. Sometimes it's not there, but when it is, it barks. Loudly. Very. Like the others, just because. Any time of the day or night. This morning this one teamed up with number 3 to fuck up my sleep once again. Both shut up at about noon.

Then also, this morning there was one replying to 2 and 3. Luckily, it's not a regular customer. But still joined them this morning to piss me off even more. It's somewhere in the orange area. I've never seen it. But I don't care about it, I believe I'll forget about it if the others shut up.

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Note: Not to scale. My bedroom is at the red spot. It's about 20 metres to number 3, and 25 or less to number 2.

I've already given up. Not even the police gives a shit, they don't come when I call them about this. Does anyone here know how to... ahem... "take care" of this issue? I'd have already shot them all but my father has a strict no-shooting policy (and this isn't Texas). I don't know what to do.

Edit: Wow, long post. Gotta stop doing that.

Happy Pi day!

I just have to mention something that occurred earlier today. I'm currently working with my uncle who is in the moving-business. Today we were going to help a student move from his dorm to a proper apartment in another part of town, and his father wanted to help.

So, as I was stacking boxes and whatnot into the elevator at the ground floor of the apartment complex, the guy's father suggests that he do the stacking and I do the unloading on the second floor. I proceeded to the second floor to wait for the elevator to appear, but after waiting for around two minutes the damn thing still hadn't showed up.

I could hear muffled noises coming from downstairs and I thought that the old man had managed to get himself stuck or something, so I rushed down to help. It turns out that he had pressed the button to go to the floor he was already on and had not noticed this, so he had unloaded all the boxes onto the exact same place there were at before!

A failure of the highest calibre indeed!

Ever felt like your friends don't give a damn about you?

It happens to me all the time. I have a couple of friends who say they're my friends, but they seldom remember me if I don't call first. I'm already a background element in everyone's lives. I'm the decorative NPC. I'm the optional quest nobody's interested in.

It could be easy to say that I have nothing to give, but that's not true. I care, I'm always there, they always have my unconditional attention. Yet I don't see any of that come back. I'm always the last option, the oh-well-if-there's-nothing-better. Is it asking too much to expect the same from them?

I know that as a computer geek I shouldn't expect to have a girlfriend, but a friend or two at least? Are my expectations so unrealistic? I'm starting to think they are. Actually wanting my friends to pretend they're friends? Pfft. Who would come up with such a thing.

Example: two days ago, one of them tells me one of his (female) friends wanted to see a movie. She said "Bring a friend, I'm coming with one too". Of course, only a week later I hear of this event. He then adds, "I'm sorry, I have to confess you weren't the first one I thought of". Well, not a surprise for me anyway - I'm never the first one anyone thinks of. Sometimes, not even the last one.

Then there's my other friend, whose friendship, company, support and overall giveashitness I appreciated the most. At one point we didn't go a day without talking in one way or another. But not now. For months already she hasn't written anymore, doesn't call, doesn't text, doesn't reply to emails, doesn't get online (to, say, msn) for weeks. She insists everything is alright, but (due to all the above) I still feel that "I don't care" vibe coming from her. She did call me for my birthday, though. But that's it. Is this all a joke? I just don't understand.

Life is always teasing me. There doesn't seem to be anything in it for me.

TLDR: I'm depressed, I feel worthless and forgotten.

Made this for Urby.

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Hope this wasn't a part of a surprise or anything... :p

Have you ever considered the possibility of replacing fossil fuels with more exotic sollutions?

Dayum. Dear Esther is really starting to look bloody amazing.

If you liek StarCraft, read on.. =)

I found a thing called chaos launcher that lets me play StarCraft in a window:

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I guess this has been around for a while, but i never knew about it.
Get Chaos Launcher here!

Also found a working portable version of SC that works flawlessly in my vista 64-bit, that is about 138MB in size. PM me for the source if u interested!

I'm so mf happy!!
= D

I've been re-playing Red Alert and a few other somewhat aged games recently.
Replaying older games makes you remember the simplicity most of them had back then. Whether that's a good thing or not differs between games, but sometimes it's good just to play something that you don't need to think about as much.

I'm writing this from the Internet Cafe' I have gone to for many years now. And in doing so, I can download everything I want. So I am now downloading:

Battlefield 2
Serious Sam HD
Phyconauts
Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl

I would like to take a moment to write about a certain type of person that really bothers me.
A type of person that I, for lack of a better term that doesn't involve copious amounts of swearing, call idiots.
History has been plauged by these people; Hitler, the KKK, a suprisingly large amount of people in my school. They, suprisingly, have a thought process. It goes like this:
This person is different > I don't like this person > Since I don't like them, they're inferior > Since they're inferior, I can do whatever I want to them.
Frankly, I'm tired of dealing with them, tired of hearing about things they've done, and it has to stop.
In the event of alien contact, how will we be able to deal with it, when we can't even get along with others in our race? If someone with a different nationality, skin colour, customs, or way of thinking can't be treated with an equal amount of respect, how could we possibly do that with an entirely different species from another planet/dimension?

Yes, it's more of a sore spot for me, because I'm one of the "different people", being a computer nerd in a school populated by computer illiterate people. But it's a valid problem, and one humanity had better sort out soon, or nothing will improve for us.

Thanks for your time.

So neat bit of javascript code here.
Enter this in the toolbar, and the whole site you're on becomes "editable" to a point. It's client-side, so don't expect to change anything and save it.

"JavaScript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0"

Sorry ahead of time Rimmy.

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So,

I had my first day of Uni today. I'm studying Civil Engineering, and am already starting to stress.

My maths subject sounds impossibly difficult, and the many assignments for my other subjects will take alot of time and higher order thinking - things not required in high school.

Oral presentations are going to be prevalent - one of my weak points is public speaking, so now I'm stressing even more.

People keep mentioning MatLab, SolidWorks and PebblePad, is anyone familiar with those particular programs?

I found myself falling asleep in my 2 hour long Engineering Materials lecture, as the chemistry he was explaining turned into crazy theorems and concepts which completely lost me.

My subjects include: Mathematical Methods for Engineers 1, Sustainable Engineering Practice, Engineering Materials and Computer Techniques.

Tomorrow I'm off to get my textbooks, configure my laptop to work with the university's wireless network, and spend 3 straight hours in maths lectures and practicals. Oh joy.

Well there you have it, folks! What do you guys have to say. Anyone else completed/completing/wanting to complete an Engineering Degree? Anyone in the same or similar situation as me, or have been? Anyone got any advice?