Imitation Of Life

Imitation Of Life

R.E.M.

Charades, pop skillWater hyacinth,

named by a poetImitation of life.

Like a koi in a frozen pond.

Like a goldfish in a bowl.

I don't want to hear you cry.

Thats sugarcane that tasted good.

Thats cinnamon, thats Hollywood.

C'mon, c'mon no one can see you try.

You want the greatest thing

The greatest thing since bread came sliced.

You've got it all, you've got it sized.

Like a Friday fashion show teenager

Freezing in the corner

Trying to look like you don't try.

Thats sugarcane that tasted good.

Thats cinnamon, thats Hollywood.

C'mon, c'mon no one can see you try.

No one can see you cry.

That sugar cane that tasted good.

That freezing rain, that's what you could.

C'mon, c'mon on no one can see you cry.

This sugarcane

This lemonade

This hurricane,

I'm not afraid.

C'mon, c'mon no one can see you cry.

This lightning storm

This tidal wave

This avalanche,

I'm not afraid.

C'mon, c'mon no one can see me cry.

That sugar cane that tasted good.

That's who you are, that's what you could.

C'mon, c'mon on no one can see you cry.

That sugar cane that tasted good.

That's who you are, that's what you could.

C'mon, c'mon on no one can see you cry.

Bits of KOTH

Here are some King of the Hill quotes that I find very funny :)
(from http://www.geocities.com/arlen_texas/kothquotes.htm)

HANK: So, are you Chinese or Japanese?
KAHN: I live in California last twenty years, but first come from Laos.
HANK: Huh?
KAHN: Laos. We Laotian.
BILL: The ocean? What ocean?
KAHN: We are Laotian. From Laos, stupid! It's a landlocked country in Southeast Asia. It's between Vietnam and Thailand, okay? Population 4.7 million.
HANK: So, are you Chinese or Japanese?

BILL: Even if they did serve us dog, I mean, who are we to judge other cultures?
HANK: Don't talk like that! The dog is man's best friend. You wouldn't eat your best friend, would you?
BILL: Of course not. Wait a minute, are we talking about some kind of lifeboat situation here? Because I don't want to commit myself.

LUANNE: Look, Aunt Peggy, I got my practice head! It's got real hair and everything!
PEGGY: Well, Luanne, it's a very nice hea --
LUANNE (pulls it away): DON'T TOUCH IT! Aunt Peggy, I can't let anything happen to this head before my final. This is my chance to prove it doesn't matter that I wasn't paying attention. I may not be book-smart, but I'm pretty-smart!

HANK: Just so you know, most states won't let you marry a plastic head.
BOBBY: I don't want to marry it! I just needed to practice my first kiss so I don't look like an idiot.
HANK: You're kissing a plastic head, and you're afraid of looking like an idiot?

HANK: We don't fish for the fish. Ninety percent of what I like about this sport -- and it is a sport -- is sitting in the boat doing nothing. And the icing on the cake is when God smiles on you and you hook one. And then when you're reeling it in, everything else falls away. You don't think about taxes or traffic or that pushy gal that's trying to get into the Citadel or who's going to take care of you when your mother and I are old and incapacitated. All there is is a man, a rod, a lake and a fish. And it all starts with a hand-dug American worm.
BOBBY: Uh, Dad...? Who is going to take care of me?

BOBBY: My dad says if God didn't want us to eat meat, he wouldn't have invented steak sauce. KID: Your dad says that?
BOBBY: Once.
MARIE: Bobby, did you know that the average person consumes five hundred chickens? That's enough chickens to feed an entire starving village. But they shouldn't eat them, because that's bad.

HANK: Who is calling me a liar, you or the machine? 'Cause I need to know whose ass to kick. CLERK: I'm not calling you a liar, sir.
HANK: Fine. Where's the ass on this thing?

BILL: I'm glad I'm not the only one who is disgusted by pornography. It's offensive! It's demeaning! It creates a standard of idealized beauty that your average man can't compete with. HANK: Don't worry, Bill, I'm not going to let my credit and good name be done in by a damn computer error.
DALE: Computers don't make errors. What they do, they do on purpose. By now your name and particulars have been fed into every laptop, desktop, mainframe and supermarket scanner that collectively make up the global information conspiracy, otherwise known as The Beast.
HANK: Dale, I'm having a problem with one videotape, not some high-tech boogyman.
DALE: You just be careful. Computers have already beaten the Communists at chess. Next thing you know, they'll be beating humans.

CONNIE: Parents are such a drag.
BOBBY: Yeah, they're always treating us like kids. We're not kids, we're pre-teens. Dammit.

HANK: Sounds to me like one of those pyramid schemes.
PEGGY: No, not at all. As the brochure describes it, it is not a pyramid, it is a triangle. And it is not a scheme, Hank, it is an opportunity. Good question, though.

DALE: Wait a minute. Every time I leave, you call John Redcorn. I know what's going on here. Your headaches are a desperate bid for my attention. But what do I do? I pawn you off on some Indian healer so I can have my Dale time at the gun club, or breeding show turtles, or on the Internet investigating unexplained phenomenona. God, I am so selfish!
NANCY: Stop blaming yourself, sug. In some ways, this is my fault too.
DALE: I don't deserve you.
NANCY: Of course you do. You are a sensitive, trusting, sweet, trusting man, and I don't deserve you.
DALE: Are you sure you're not an alien? 'Cause you just abducted my heart.

09042005

3 Years and Still Counting.. Rock On!! :)

Dead Fish

I remembered this one time when me and my girlfriend went on a date in SM North EDSA. We stumbled across this "love fortune telling machine" thingy. It was sitting just beside a Banco de Oro ATM, near the SM bakeshop, I think. This yellow love machine, well, it had many lights in it - and in the middle, decorated with some wacky font, it said that it was supposed to "judge" you on how "expert" you are with regards to the "love arena". You are supposed to place your left hand into this hole and the machine will try to predict how much of a lover are you by strange and hidden means (the whole process is entirely in a black box folks). Thinking that I could score a Love Casanova (it means that you are a love machine if you got that!) on this intriguing yet bogus machine, I immediately pulled my girlfriend's left hand just so she could see me triumph over this wacko. I was oozing with confidence back then. I even told her that I'd get the Casanova if I placed my hand there 'coz I was just so damn sweet. Well, you could say that it took me a lot of nerve from someone who understoond little about love. And so, without wasting anymore time, I reached out my pocket for a 5-peso coin, winked at her, placed my left hand into the contraption, and waited for 15 seconds while continually chanting the words "Casanova" inside my head. After 15 seconds of waiting, the machine finally replied..... well... it said that I'm a Dead Fish . Yep, that's right. And the worst part of it was that scoring a Dead Fish was the lowest score that you can get for using that machine. It was the least thing that I expected. I can understand scoring 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th to the highest.. but Dead Fish?!! man that stunk!! I mean didn't I get credit for making a lot of photo compositions of my girl at Corel? Or what about those sweet text messages that I composed myself? Or those other crazy love-related things that I made?! That would've count!! Well, surely, the machine didn't knew all of those. I mean for all I know, it probably would have just randomly selected an item from the list and then tell the person that "Okay, you are a dead fish. You are doomed for all eternity. Go home and just watch TV, loser". Anyway, the machine didn't give a clear interpretation as to what scoring a Dead Fish really meant. But also, im pretty sure that it doesn't take a rocket scientist just to figure out what scoring the lowest possible score and being tagged as Dead Fish really meant. It's pretty self explanatory... and to me, it simply means this - you just plainly suck at love. Well anyway, after a brief moment of shock, my mind returned back to Earth from its trip to "Mt. Ego" and with it were ammunitions of excuses for scoring Dead Fish that I was about to throw to my girlfriend. Well, she just laughed.. and said.. "Yuck". And what happened afterwards was history.

Back then, I really didn't accept that score and thought that the machine was just plainly bogus. But lately, I've been thinking that well, maybe the machine was right all along.. maybe I really was a Dead Fish and all this time, I've just been trying to act cool and patch things up just so I could pretend to be someone that I really am not. For someone who can't express clearly how he feels when there a lot of feelings to be told, for someone who doesn't feel a lot of anger when there are things to be angry about, for someone who forgets to care when care is needed the most, and for someone who neglects all the important things in life and blindly follows what he believes is more important.. well, that sounded a lot like Dead Fish to me.. and that surely did sounded a lot like me. Maybe the machine really did see what was beyond the me that I knew. Maybe I got more than what I invested out of the 5-peso coin that I dropped on the love machine. Maybe my girlfriend deserved more than just a Dead Fish boyfriend all along. It must have been almost like hell most of the time for her being with me - and for that, I feel really sorry. I know I can't change that now. What's gone is gone. But what I can do is just go on with my life and try to improve myself so that the next time I step on that Love Fortune Telling Machine, I'll score a Love Casanova.. errr.. maybe not that far.. maybe the 2nd to the last.. or maybe 3rd.. well, you know what, anything's good as long as its not Dead Fish! After all, I'm a hard working guy, not a genius. And just like I always say to myself, everything can be achieved with hard work.

-fin-

A Symphony of Light and Sound: Project Genesis

Well, first things first. I've ditched the entire zombie killing game. I've shifted my interest into something more interesting - towards interpreting sound through fine demonstration of computer graphics. It'll be like those media player visualizations - only that mine will be sequential. The concept that the CG will portray will be about the creation of earth - from the Archean to Phanerozoic eon (that is, from bacterias to end of Ice Age). Hence, it is absolutely essential for me to grasp some of the advanced rendering techniques OpenGL has to offer in order to produce breath-taking but non-photo realistic scene.. and as a preparation for this, I've enrolled myself in a CG class in BCIT and have dumped my two Java courses. This was a huge risk that I have to take in order to accelerate the development of my portfolio.

Getting back to the project, I'll probably have to mix a number of techno / rave sounds in order to produce an impression of the earth in the process of being created. And in line with this, I've already laid down the tracks for the portal scene (1st scene). I've selected the Shumacher track by DJ Visage. The 1st scene will last for 1.21 minutes and will portray our hero entering the portal and travelling back through time. This scene's gonna be good! I've gotta lot of good stuffs running in my head right now but the question is.. can I implement it? Well, only time will tell.

Anyway, here's some of the practice work that I've been doing lately. Here's a Gouraud-shaded scene, with dynamic lighting, environment mapping, and multitexturing applied to it.

14 x 7

That game programming summer class was a tough one.. I only had 6 weeks to do a whole lot of of things and boy, it sure kept me sitting in front of the computer 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. If I think about it again, it's really up to the learner to make the subject as tough as hell. If you want to gain more, then you'll have to work even harder. I'm kinda sad that its over but hey, I really enjoyed that summer class. Here are some of my creations within the class. I worked really hard on these reels so I hope that you'll enjoy it:

The tools used for these are the following:

Graphics Engine: OpenGL
Programming Platform: VC7 ++, Win32
2D Visuals (Textures, Splash Screens, etc.): Adobe Photoshop 7.0, Terragen
3D Model: 3DS Max Model and Quake 2 Model (via MilkShape)
3D Audio: OpenAL

Cybershrine

Easter Egg Hunt

Stream Valley

Underground Volcano

Spider Infestation

Going under water in Easter Egg Hunt

This fall, i'm gonna start making my portfolio. If everything goes well, then I'll be able to submit my demo reel in one of 'em big gaming companies and hopefully, they'll be generous enough to offer me a job ;) This will be a 3-month effort so it'll really be a tough one. I was initially planning to do a game on Naruto but I realized that my 3D modeling skills just plainly sucked so I decided to just go to a 1st or 3rd person shooting game whose plot isn't really that grand. It's like this: You're in charge of manning a gun tower and your task is to prevent the horde of zombies from getting inside the fallout camp and have a picnic out of the flesh of the town's last survivors during a virus outbreak. You'll have various weapons at your disposal but be wary that as the level increases, the zombies exponentially increases in number.. oh, and did I mention that they also become tougher? So, what do you think?

Anyway, just this afternoon, I borrowed Physics, Trigonometry and Geometry books from the library. I'll be using them as a reference as I go one with the project. I also bought this game by Microsoft called Dungeon Siege 2. I planned on gaining some more insights as to how I can apply real-game concepts into my portfolio but it turned out that I'm enjoying playing it more than just doing an observation on the game. Well, whatever happens, I'll see through this until the end and make sure that the job gets done even if it takes me 24x7.. uh.. well maybe not that far ;)

A walk in the seawall

It's a good thing google finally allowed the site to host photos. I hated using that Hello software that they had before that's why I didn't have any photos at all in my previous posts. Anyway, this city sure has a lot to offer to its people. Last week, I went for a walk to Stanley Park's sea wall and boy it feels like paradise. It's very peaceful out there.. just walking along the bay with cold air rushing towards your face.. it makes you forget everything. Too bad I ain't with Jen. She would have loved to see that view too.

Vacation!!

The term has finally come to an end. It's been really tough and exciting for me. I even dropped my math self studies just to have more time on these subjects. The exam was really tough and I had to spend the entire 3 hours just writing for answers! I'm always surprised and amazed at how some people manages to submit their papers with lots of time left before the clock expires. In my experience, I've never had the chance to do that. I always submit my paper a minute before the bell rings.. and that's how its always been ever since then :)

I did really good with the Blackjack project. I managed to pull out the GUI stuffs into the project and I'm really happy and proud of that achievement (did I spell that correctly?).

As far as grades are concerned, I don't know yet what I got. Well, I don't really care about the grades anyway. What I care about are the things that I'll learn.

Now, I have to prepare for the next subject which is my all time fave - Game Programming 1 :D I bought 4 game programming books (OpenGL, DirectX, AI, Data Structures) yesterday at an incredibly low low prize. There was a sale at Book Company and they cut the price of the book to 80% off!! As a consequence though, I ended up spending all of my savings (I was supposed to buy a webcam for that :( ) Today, well, I intend to rest and probably go to the park for a walk and probably draw anything interesting. Tomorrow, the battle begins again. Even though my vacation is only for 2 days, I'll make the most out of it.

101 reasons why I love watching Naruto..

Uhm.. honestly, I can't think of 101 reasons whiy I love watching Naruto. I just thought that it was a cool title and that it is used a lot (e.g. Basketball 101, 101 days, etc.) :D Im sure a lot of people out there also watch Naruto.. and just like me, a lot of persons out there are addicted to this great Anime.. This is one Anime that I get to watch a lot whenever I get so down. But what makes it so great anyway? What makes it so damn addictive?

Well, Naruto is a story of the struggles and successes of this kid ninja from Konoha who wants to become the Hokage (the highest ninja in the village). Things aren't always going his way but still, he keeps on trying and trying even if all the odds are against him. It's the burning desire to become great is what keeps him going; his determination to accomplish his dream is what makes him special. He says big things like "I'm gonna surpass the hokages and let the village acknowledge my strength" and "I'm gonna become the hokage" but inspite all of those braggings, he is still just a kid with armed with nothing but his big dream. I like the anime because in a sense, I can relate to what Naruto is experiencing. I also have a great yet seemingly distant dream. Sometimes, I think that I cannot have my dream come true because I don't know a lot of things for heaven's sake. But whever I feel that, I always say to myself.. "Fuck this brain.. I can learn those if I want to!!" "All I need is a lot of determination and an iron will to follow my dreams no matter what!!" "I've gotta be tough no matter what.." "Everybody has a dream.. but will it always remain one?? "..yep.. life can be very frustrating.. chasing a dream that you know is very distant from you makes you wanna give up a lot of times. To be honest, I've failed more times than I've succeeded.. but I firmly believe that its the will to get back on track and continuing on the fight is what matters the most. If everything seems lost and you don't know what to do, just believe in your dream and nothing more and you'll get back to track in no time. Its against all odds indeed :D

Naruto is a very lousy ninja. He is a very stupid boy who knows very little ninja techniques, unlike his comrades who has these large arsenal of skills at their disposal. But even though this is the case, he still wouldn't give up. He trains night and day just to become stronger than his comrades (he always boasts that he is strong but he knows that he is not). He is willing to sacrifice even his life for his dream.. for something he believes in.. and for those that he cares for.. And boy, these principles are so true.. without Jen, there wouldn't be anyone at all that will support and guide me. My parents don't believe that I can achieve my dream. All they say is that I should be focusing more on the ones that are more "reachable".. But what do they know about a kid's dream anyway??! But I don't blame them for that.. They only want what's best for me and they do not want me to push myself too hard.. but regardless of what they think, I'm still sticking to my dream so step aside mom and pops!!

Its really nice if you have someone beside you, believing in what you can do, acknowledging you, and supporting you all the way. It's really nice to have someone that you can lean on too whenever things get really tough. And for that, I am so grateful that I have my girlfriend with me. Without her, I don't know if I could have survived this journey alone.

Indeed, what separates cartoons from the real world is that cartoons are far more perfect than the real world. Cartoons always has a happy ending.. the heroes get what they want and everyone is happy. The real world is far more cruel than that. But I believe that similarities do exist between the two.. and that is to never give up and keep fighting until you find your own happy ending . Cartoon heroes don't get a happy ending only by sitting on a corner (unless the producer wills it to) but instead, they work hard for the antagonist to be defeated in order for the story to have a happy ending. And again, it all goes back to hard work, determination, and an a whole lot of patience.

Okay.. I think I'm all out of words now and I'm only just repeating myself over and over again :) So this is it for now. I've gotta watch part 5 of Naruto :D See yah.

A step closer to a distant dream...

With the term coming to an end, so does the tremendous increase of school work that the professors give their students. Well, I'm one of the unfortunate but lucky to experience that. This means that I have to work less with my Math self study and focus more on this project first. Basically, I have to work on this term project that we have in Java and it involvs creating a BlackJack game using the standard DOS Console. The purpose of the project was to see if the students can properly apply object oriented concepts into a working application but I definitely want something more than just demonstrating that. As an aspiring game developer (harharharhar!!), I want to be able to see through the challenges of implementing a BlackJack using a console interface and be able to reproduce that same experience when playing BlackJack in a GUI. This is pretty challenging since not only do I need to have a working game but also, I need to apply some good aesthetics to interface the game engine - but I'm not concern with that just right now coz I need to create the game engine before anything else. Right now, I am finished building the logical model of the game. I'll then translate those models into working classes maybe next week - after I full-proof my designs that is.

I know that this is an opportunity for me to practice developing games although its nothing as grand as Counter Strike or some popular games that you know. But hey, everybody's gotta start from something you know?! I'm gonna give my best shot at this one coz I know that this is a step closer to a distant dream that I have.

One the other note, a classmate of mine sent me a C++ file demonstrating 3D transformation. Honestly, I wanted to LEARN those badly but I kept the excitement to myself since I know that at the current level that I am right now, I wouldn't probably appreciate the value of it and even if I understand how it works, it would still sound Russian to me. I really should speed up with the math book!!

I'm planning to enroll a Game Programming subject and probably Calculus after this term (oh yeah!!!) and drop my XML course since I got bored at it.. and to tell you frankly, I'm really really really REALLY very excited!! Things are finally starting to go my way :D This is what I've dreamed of ever since I was a child and now, I'm finally getting a shot at it! Even though I still know very little about higher level maths, I'm gonna give it all that I got to learn those even if I end up wearing very thick glasses!! I really don't give a damn! Its all about determination baby!!