Wednesday, February 29, 2012

My lack of staples

Just got back the first homework assignment we had to do for my nuclear engineering class. It was a resubmitted copy because due to communication errors the majority of the class did not follow guidelines that are imposed for all homework assignments, resulting in most people receiving scores of 20/100. After resubmitting my homework I got a much nicer score of 93.5/100, and seeing this in the top left corner made me laugh. I would of used a staple but my stapler was empty. :P Thought a paper clip would do but I guess not! Not like I really care though, it's only half a point and now I have more staples!

My day's been going pretty well. Every once in a while I think everyone can take comfort in apathy. Take a look at all of the things stressing you right now. Stop and tell yourself that you'll get through it. Tell yourself that it's probably not a huge deal on the whole grand scheme of things. That's what I do sometimes and it definitely helps me feel better. Once I realize that I don't need to be worrying about things, I can just relax and I feel like everything goes much smoother.

Here's a song by Glitch Mob, a band that's I've been listening to a lot recently, especially while I fly around in Tribes Ascend. Enjoy, and have a nice day. :)
Thanks for reading my blog. I'll try to post Minecraft stuff soon!

P.S. I drew this while listening to this song lol. 


Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Gotta love power naps!

I love taking quick naps when I feel sluggish and tired. It really recharges some of my energy. It especially works on days like today when I have 8 am class. :)

My day went pretty well. I just got back from the grocery store, I bought a lot of food which is always exciting for the poor college student who normally lives off a Top Ramen diet. I don't have a lot of homework tonight so I'm probably going to play some video games which will be exciting! :)

Right now I'm about to go to dinner, so it looks like it's going to be a short blog today. Check back tomorrow and hopefully I'll have an update on my Minecraft project, we'll see. :P Until tomorrow!

Monday, February 27, 2012

Lacking motivation

I remember a constant feeling I had last year, when I was a senior in high school. It was the feeling of senioritis which is characterized by lack of motivation in any schoolwork when you are in the final year of your high school education. I had felt like I had been moved along through the public school's digestive tract of education, and finally ready to exit the bowels.

With this feeling however, I looked forward to new things. I looked forward to a brighter future. Now I look at myself. I see myself again in college, disinterested in a lot of my studies again, and feeling like my purpose is to jump through an even longer series of hoops. But I am no longer a senior, I am a freshman again, and once again I have another 4 years ahead of me.

I wouldn't say I'm depressed, I am still enjoying video games and spending time with friends, but I feel like I'm just less and less motivated to do well in school. I always go to all of my classes, I always do all of my homework, but when it comes to studying I am weak. Unfortunately, this had led to me earning less than the class average in the majority of my midterms. I am barely passing multiple classes with Cs.

I want to feel inspired about learning again. I want to have passion and a drive, and a thirst for knowledge. But sadly it appears that I won't see that again in my near future for quite some time.

That or it could just be because it's a Monday.
(But probably not)

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Tribes: Ascend

If you enjoy first person shooters, jetpacks, and free games I suggest you check out Tribes: Ascend ASAP. Seriously, it's a fun game that is in free open beta. I downloaded it the other day and had lots of fun.


This isn't the first games I've played from the Tribes series. Out of Tribes 1, Tribes 2, and Tribes Vengeance I have played Tribes 2 exclusively for the last couple of years. I always encouraged my friend to get into it with me but they always criticized it for it's graphics, learning curve, or inability to be "fun".

Tribes: Ascend on the other hand offers fast paced, Tribes iconic action (jetpacks and skiing provide the mobility to the game that must be mastered in order to play well) while also generalizing the game to appeal to a broader community. One of my friends that never enjoyed Tribes 2 recently tried Tribes Ascend and told me he enjoyed it!

Probably the most rewarding feeling is the fact that I've played a lot of Tribes 2 in my day and felt like I was barely average skill level based on the rest of the Tribes 2 online community. After my first match in Tribes Ascend I realized that I was already far ahead of most players in the terms of skill level, just because I am already very familiar with skiing, jetpacking, and most of all using the spinfusor.

This game is definitely worth checking out. You won't be disappointed! Link to download site below. Have a nice weekend you guys. :)


www.tribesascend.com

Saturday, February 25, 2012

The storm

Last night we had some lightning. I went to a mexican food place with my friends that was open late (we went around 1 or 2 am). Because of the restaurant's close proximity to a college campus it was of course swamped on a Friday night, filled with people craving burritos. Suddenly the whole room went black aside from a few faint emergency lights and the glowing exit sign. Then it flickered back on, and back off. "Free burritos!" Was of course shouted by the swarm of college students with appetites.
The power didn't come back on, the customers who hadn't ordered were asked to leave, and we left shortly after. All of the streetlights were off. The whole street was submerged in darkness.
Later after I got back to my dorm hall someone said they saw green lightning.
Apparently Lord Voldemort's out there casting Avada Kedavra again, disrupting the college student's eateries.

In other news I've been playing more Dota 2. The lack of skill level of the players I am fighting is a little astonishing, but it might just be because the game is matching me with newbies since I haven't logged many matches in it yet. I usually play single draft mode because that's all that I can get into after a 2 min long game search. It's quite a lot of fun, I definitely love the new animations and voices. For example today I got first blood as Huskar. He said, "Hah, first blood, the gods were right to place their trust in me!" Or something to that affect. I think it's really cool that they say things like that. It definitely makes me feel like Dota 2's voices are far superior to LoL in comparison. |
More on that later, I've got more games to enjoy for now. :)

Friday, February 24, 2012

Pizza Time

I was sitting my room after hours of Dota 2 with my roommate and getting hungry for dinner. Then some of our neighbors in our hall said that they are going to make pizza for dinner. I've had the pizza they've made before and it was amazing! Like seriously they make it 100% from scratch including the dough. It's some of the best pizza I've ever had.

I gotta say I'm impressed with Dota 2. Probably the thing that I have spent the most time relearning in the game is the shop since it is no where near set up the way as it is in Dota 1. This will eventually be an improvement but right now it's funny how much I look through it like a little babby all new to Dota again. The graphics are great and I love the voices. It feels new, but it still has an enjoyable Dota feel to it.

Pizza, Dota 2, done with midterms, FRIDAY?
Awww yeaah

P.S. I'll try to post pics soon!

Thursday, February 23, 2012

I got into Dota 2 Beta!!!!

I have the best roommate ever! One of his tutors for his computer science class is the president of the gaming club at my school. After my roommate explained to him that I'm an avid Dota 1 fan and looking to play Dota 2, he contacted me and gave me a Beta key! I'm as giddy as a school girl, soooo excited to begin playing. As of right now I have to go run to take my Chemistry midterm, but when I get home I'm going to play some Dota 2!

All my invites have been distributed. But I'll keep you guys posted if I get in contact with some more keys :)

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Classes today

Today I turned in my debate speech outline on whether the US federal government should penalize companies who outsource jobs. I'd like to thank Shockgrubz and Jeffrey Ross for offering their testimony to the matter. The feedback is much appreciated!

Today was also part 2 of a lab I had in my Nuclear Engineering orientation class. Monday we measured doses of radiation with Geiger counters and experimented with shielding materials (wood, aluminum, lead, etc) to measure how well each material could protect from radiation.
This time on the other hand we had a lab on thermal hydraulics, experimenting with a natural circulation loop, which is basically a process that circulates hot and cold water in nuclear reactors using natural laws like gravity.

Meanwhile our professor told us about how some nuclear power plant operators are actually people with just a high school diploma who spent 2-4 years of intensive training to learn how to safely operate a nuclear reactor, but they make around $100,000 - $150,000 a year. He said that what most people say about the work is it's a mix of 99% boredom and 1% terror. (Boredom for the endless hours when the reactor is running properly, terror for the "holy shit oh god what's happening" moments).

Although the pay scale certainly looks sexy I think the boredom would quickly turn my mind to mush. I think I would probably prefer making less for a job that I enjoyed more. What I am really interested in is the development of more efficient nuclear fission power plants, or my dream of developing nuclear fusion power plants.
Nuclear fusion is what happens in the sun!

Another interesting fact we learned was that since nuclear power plants have built in automatic safety features, the whole meltdown at Three Mile Island could have been avoided if the plant operators had simply done NOTHING. That's right, it was their intervening that made the situation turn into a disaster. Poor guys, they probably felt like idiots.

But then I thought, isn't Homer Simpson a nuclear power plant operator? Why are the Simpsons usually portrayed as a poor family if reactor operators are supposed to make a lot of money? After running a quick google search I have determined that Homer is in fact a "safety techinician", not an "reactor operator".

Hour long Dota game before bed

Just finished an hour long Dota game. I played Enchantress. My team succeeded through most of the whole game but we epic failed at the end. We had an Ursa warrior who could of won us the game but was never with us so he would get disabled like no other.

Finally the situation was this: They had destroyed both our mid and bottom lane barracks, and only top lane barracks remained. We had only destroyed the enemies middle barracks. At this point I'm thinking the best option is for us all to push top, because this will prohibit the enemy team from easily going for the hat trick and getting mega-creeps. A Necrolyte on my team actually followed me and helped push top, but the rest all did nothing helpful. Finally we all lost a big team fight and the enemy quickly won.

But seriously, after an hour long game at 2 in the morning I hardly care about winning or losing, I'm just happy to be done playing. It just goes to show that you must have solid teamwork above all else, even if you're above the enemy players in gold and experience.

And yes Omni, Dota is fun, and I still prefer it to League of Legends. ;)
Night all

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

A lol from LoL

Today's post is going to be short because I don't have much time (a midterm tonight and a paper due tomorrow), but here we go:

So I've recently been playing League of Legends with my roommate quite frequently, since he and another person in our hall both enjoy playing it. Currently the champion he plays the most of is named "Lee Sin - The blind monk". We discovered something silly the other day while fighting an enemy Teemo. Although Lee Sin is noticeably blind (that blind fold and all), he's still able to become "blinded" by spells like Teemo's blinding darts.

I love silly little things in games like this.
Isn't he already blind?

Monday, February 20, 2012

Should companies be penalized for outsourcing jobs?

My assignment for my critical argument and discourse class is to write a debate speech on whether or not companies should out source jobs. I have already chosen a side to this issue, but I would like to hear what you guys think.

When US companies outsource jobs to India or China, it is making business sense to them because they are paying less for workers. The minimum wage is much lower in other countries than the US. They benefit from this practice, especially in the case of manufacturing. However, the act of outsourcing labor also hurts the people looking to find jobs in the labor market here at home, though, and some believe that we should penalize companies that do this, in order to persuade them to bring more of their business home. A solution to this problem would be to tax them more heavily, or on the other hand, offer tax cuts to companies who are not outsourcing workers, again to promote them to keep their business in the US.

What do you guys think? What are your opinions on outsourcing? I'd love to hear as many takes on this issue as I could, thank you.

In other news, my Monday went well, for a Monday and all. I have a very busy schedule this week, including two midterms and multiple assignments. I'll post again soon, thanks for following my blog. :)

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Gotta love the internet and the magic o' hollywood

I for one am pleased to be living in the age of information. It's very nice to be able to self educate yourself on anything in the blink of an eye. For example today I was doing my nuclear engineering homework. The question was talking about some weird equations and stuff that when I googled it there was only 1 result that was actually relevant, but that result helped me so much. It allowed me to finish my homework without having to contact my professor. It's truly a pleasure to take advantage of free information at your finger tips 24/7, and hard to imagine a world without it.

In other news I had a nice weekend. Spent some time with my friends that go to another school. It was good to see them. We saw the movie "This Means War" which was actually pretty decent. It definitely had some clever and witty moments.

There was, however, one of those ridiculous "did they really just do that" moments. At this exact moment my friend and I turned to each other with that look in our eyes, and both burst out laughing at the sheer improbability of it all. What happened was as follows:
Good guys in cars are getting pursued by bad guys in cars, good guys throw gas filled can toward the enemy car and bulls-eye a shot at it, which immediately ignites it and explodes the bad guys' car.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Someone pulled the fire alarm

So everyone had to go outside at 2 o clock in the morning, wait for the firetrucks to pull up, and then wait for a thorough search of the building to commence. All just because some guy pulled a fire alarm. But I was still up. I was up playing Minecraft, working on the underwater fortress project. Feels good to know that I didn't have climb out of bed to get dressed, I was already good to go, unlike almost everyone else on my floor!


My eardrums are still ringing. I should go to sleep, it's about 4am here, lol. Night night

Friday, February 17, 2012

Minecraft: Underwater Fortress update

I have finally finished laying the foundation of my fortress. When it's done I hope to have walls made out of glass on all sides of it, so you can can see the water on all sides of it. I'm just finishing up putting the roof on it. I used a bucket of lava to speed up this process. Lava creates stone when it flows into water, so I recycled the same lava-generating block in this process that lets me turn the water into stone on the top of my fortress. Here are some screen shots:

Still have a little more to go, and then I'm going to have to drain the water out of it! :O

Happy Friday! Hope everyone had a good week. :)

Thursday, February 16, 2012

How to buy a computer and not get screwed

In light of the fact that I recently just purchased a new computer (it's about a month old) I though I would write a blog entry outlining how to be successful with a computer purchase. Let me tell you my story.

For the past few years, I have used an a dell laptop that is about 6-7 years old. It's no surprise that it couldn't run the latest and greatest games, so I was looking for an upgrade. This is was my luck:
  • Bought a monitor off of my friend (I got a 21 1/2 inch monitor for 50 only bucks! I lucked out.)
  • Purchased a barebones kits off Tigerdirect.com (Motherboard, processor, HDD, memory, case, power supply, and cpu fan only)
  • Had two separate friends give me a keyboard and a decent enough graphics card for now. 
I can't stress enough how satisfied I am with my purchase. For about 350-400 dollars I have a pretty nice setup. My specs are: 2.8 Ghz quad core processor, 8 Gb RAM, TB HDD, ASUS motherboard, and 240 series Nvidia geforce graphics card. So far it has worked great for me, and all of the games I have played have ran completely fine. I HAVE NEVER BUILT A COMPUTER BEFORE. Don't be afraid of building your own pc. I bought a barebones kit because I wanted one less headache: worrying about compatibility. Building a pc is remarkably easier than it is often believed. I literally got my 2 packages in the mail (computer case in one, all other components in the other) around 3pm in the afternoon, and by the end of the day it was already up and running Windows 7 without any problems.

Lastly a word about Apple: I'm not in love with macs or macbooks. It's too much simplification for me. I like knowing I can always open up my computer's case and replace a part at any time. But, don't get me wrong, there are certainly enjoyable aspects of the simplification and user friendliness that Apple brings. For instance, I love my ipod touch and while I personally don't view ipads as a necessity, I enjoy using my friend's and wouldn't mind owning one. It's just mac computers that I haven't been able to get in to. Not to mention you can usually save a lot of money doing similar to what I did instead of purchasing a mac, but I guess that applies to any premade computer, not just macs in particular.

Good luck, hope my little story was informative to those of you out there that are considering a computer upgrade or buying a desktop pc for the first time. :)

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Economics and Engineering

I had another midterm today. I thought I came prepared, but totally didn't bring this chart that we were allowed to use that included useful formulas and other stuff. Hopefully I passed, but it added to my concern that I'm slipping behind on my grades. :(

In my Critical Argument and Discourse class today we each spoke for a minute about any issue we wanted to (the first time our teacher didn't assign us a topic to deliver an argumentative speech about). I went first, saying that I think we need more engineers in America. We need more people in science and technology fields. I spoke about how the job market for engineers is good, yet the largest majority of college majors are in liberal arts or business related fields.

I explained what I learned in Economics my senior year of high school. This was really the time I figured out a rough idea what I wanted to do with my life:
AP Macroeconomics quickly became my strongest class. I found out that I had a passionate thirst for knowledge about economics.  I was studying the history of economics on the internet for fun. I began reading economics books not required for class. I was hooked. I had finally felt like I had found a field of study that interested me and I would not only excel at, but also enjoy.

You see, the most important principle to the study of economics is scarcity. It addresses the question: How do we use scarce resources for unlimited human wants/desires? I was fascinated by this. In the first quarter of the course we studied the "Production Possibilities Curve" which can be seen as a simple example: A country has two resources to produce: guns vs butter. You pick a point along the curve and have a mix of output, how much butter and how many guns you can produce is decided at that point.

If we wanted more guns, we could pick a point to the top/left side of the curve, and vice versa. But how do we produce more guns AND butter? How do we expand this curve? 


The answer is of course: more resources, or better technology. Better technology means you can produce things more efficiently, cheaper, etc. In particular, what always interested me was more efficient energy. A childhood dream of mine has always been to break away from the world's dependence on fossil fuels and help find a cheaper, cleaner, and more abundant supply of energy.

This is when I realized something: Despite my love for economics, I knew I needed to become an engineer. You see, I didn't want to be the economist that's always telling people what needs to be done, how we need to do it, etc. I want to be the guy who took the task upon himself, even if he knew it wouldn't be an easy journey. Math isn't my strong point. Calculus isn't coming easy to me. But I know it's importance, and will learn it as best I can.

As of now I am a freshman at my university double majoring in Economics and Nuclear Engineering. My hope is that some day in my life I will be able to feel like I benefited the world. That I made everyone's lives easier or more comfortable. I just want to help people. I want to make the world a better place to be.

That's the end of my discussion, thanks for reading. Hope I didn't lose you in that wall of text.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

On a Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day, world. You're wrong if you think nobody loves you, because if you're reading this, I love you.
I'm having a pretty nice day. My mom sent me cookies, yummy. Classes weren't too bad today even though I didn't get good sleep last night. I still feel like I have a lot of homework to do so I don't know if I'll find time to work on my my Mincraft project.
My Valentine-grams were delivered. It was funny, my roommate was confused at first. Another guy on my floor had the same idea as me, but he wrote his name on the cards, so it was my cards that were more confusing. Unfortunately, most people were able to recognize me handwriting. The funny thing was my roommate was they one who couldn't recognize my handwriting, when we live with each other, so it's kind of ironic.

Hope you all have a happy day. Peace out for now.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Dodgeballs and togas

Well it's Monday. Luckily I had a good weekend. Saturday night I played dodgeball with some friends representing our dorm hall. Our team name was "The Short shorts". I do not own any short pairs of shorts, so my friend loaned me an extra short pair. I struggled to put them on while we were running to the rec center minutes before the event was about to start.

We learned there was an opposing team of smurfs, in the sense of the word used for describing players, usually in video games, who are very experienced but make new accounts in order to get into games with lower leveled (and therefore less experienced) players. In this case it was a group of dodgeball players that were in the dodgeball club at our school and picked the name "First Timers".

We learned this after losing to them in the semi final round. We ended up securing a third place victory for our hall. While disappointing, it was still nice that we actually placed in the top 3 and got a trophy. We had the idea of drinking from the trophy, but this failed due to poor design.
Later that night I had the pleasure of going to a toga party and learned how much fun it can be to shout the word "toga" in a crowded room. Especially in my case, because I arrived sans-toga. A guy approached me, introduced himself as Tom and asked:
"Where's your toga dude?!"
"Um I didn't bring one"
"Go steal a bedsheet off of a bed or something man"
"Really?"
"Yea, look there's one over there"

And then I rocked a fitted bed sheet with 2 safety pins and a clip. I later learned it was not only Tom's birthday, but also his house.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Minecraft project

I was thinking about what would be fun to build next in the land of virtual legos when my friend challenged me to build a large underwater fortress. I loved the idea, so I wandered around looking for some of the deepest water I could find. Finally a found a good sized, fairly deep spot. Turns out building walls deep in the water with a limited supply of oxygen (so you have to resurface every 10 or so blocks you lay) can certainly take some time! When I explained this dilemma to my roommate he gave me a wonderful tip:
You can make air pockets by putting ladders under water. The game can only have one thing occupy any block at a time, so voila a little cube where you can get air again is created! It definitely aided me in my struggle to build the foundation for my fortress. 


The picture is pretty difficult to see but it's me sitting in an air bubble/pocket I made with a ladder underwater with part of my foundation in the background. More pics of the fortress to follow when I finally get it built! I'm thinking about using glass on all the walls so I can see out through it :O

Finally on a totally unrelated note here is a picture I found on the interwebz that made me lol:



Saturday, February 11, 2012

A good laugh or two

For those of you that have never played the Press Space To Win (PSTW) game you're in for a real treat. It's as easy as it's name implies, do don't worry if you're not good at playing video games.

The game itself brags to be a RPG that takes less than 10 minutes, go check it out, it's a fun game

After you're done, enjoy this outstanding review of it on youtube: (It's a real review written by a player of the game, that someone made a funny video reading it)

Friday, February 10, 2012

Fri-yay!

Something silly my math teacher always does on Fridays is write the date as "Friyay" instead of "Friday". He knows a lot of us have checked out for the weekend and makes class fun.
Today's been a good day so far, I just watched the most recent episode of The Office which was really good. Hopefully I'll get finished with the majority of my homework in all my classes today and look forward to fun a weekend.

In other news Valentine's Day is just around the corner. I don't understand many people's animosity for the holiday. I see it as a day to express love for those people in your life who you love. Friends, families, etc. The holiday's connotations are certainly romantic, but that doesn't mean it can only be about expressing love for lovers.
For the fun of it I bought valentine grams to be sent to people on my floor, with little messages inside like "Oh baby I need you soooo bad, -your secret lover". They will be delivered on Valentine's Day. Included among the people I sent them to are guys that have girlfriends, so hopefully the confusion will add more to my fun. I'll update you when they are received, lol :)

But until then; Happy Friday!

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Work hard, Play hard

How did this happen? Homework can really pile up when you spend most of your time goofing off on the internet and/or playing video games. I just realized that I have homework in all of my classes. Time to get my priorities together. Also, after getting my recent midterm scores and finding out many of them were barely passing grades, I've decided to commit more of my time to studying (or to actually start studying in the first place, lol).

I'd like to take moment to thank all you guys for the supporting my blog. I've received a lot of positive feedback from all of you, and I love reading the comments left on my posts. If you're reading this, I'm talk to YOU! Seriously, I want to shake your hand and then buy you dinner.

Hopefully my homework won't take too long. I'll press on through it and then play some video games.
I'm so excited for Dota 2 by the way. Every time I watch this trailer I always get a gaming-boner and fanboy goosebumps. I'm serious.


Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Calculus class today

Today my Calculus professor said to us, "I'm aware a lot of people in our class still struggle with fractions, especially long complex fractions in derivatives. To help you guys out, we are going to do some examples, yay!"
He began a calculus problem that he had written down for today's lecture. About halfway through solving the problem he had picked, he was knee deep in a fraction wasteland and asked us to calculate a number since he did not have a calculator in front of him. He looked at us, and our blank faces stared back at him. Realizing the irony of the situation, I blurted out, "You brought this upon yourself!" He agreed and smiled, the class laughed, and we hastily moved on, as if he accepted that these kind of calculus problems were indeed tedious. Good times. He's a funny guy. :)

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

How fast the time goes

When I was in the 6th grade we did a performance called "Night of the Notables" where each of us dressed up as a historical figure for a night after writing a paper on them. We also had to know some of our chosen person's quotes. The person I chose was none other then Thomas Edison. To this day, I still remember one of his quotes that I used from that night: "The thing I lose patience with the most is the clock. Its hands move too fast." I can certainly agree with your perspective today, Mr. Edison. Tuesdays my schedule of classes are Microeconomics from 8-10, and Chemistry from 10-11:30. Every Tuesday I always think that I will have plenty of time. But before I know it, I've spent a couple hours on a few calculus homework questions, and it feels that the day has already slipped away.

On a more enjoyable note, that still relates to time, is the fact that I have played League of Legends more recently, and had a lot of fun with a champion named Zilean - The Chronokeeper. He has cool abilities that include a time bomb, speeding up/slowing down units, and bringing people back from the grave by turning back time when they die. He's the most fun I've had with LoL so far, but I have also only just started playing it! The nice thing about LoL is I have a lot more real life friends that play it then I do that play Dota.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Dota- Fun with axe

I just played a game with Axe, a hero I don't play a lot. I started off doing really well (5/0/3) but then lost momentum and we eventually lost. Here's the highlight reel:
I'm Axe (the red guy, if you don't play Dota). I'm laning against Naix and Sven. My ally is gone. After my creep wave dies, Naix moves uses Open Wounds on me, which begins to slow me. Sven follows up with Storm Bolt, stunning me. Axe has a passive move called Counter-Helix that has a chance to cause him to deal damage to enemies around him when he gets attacked, even when he's stunned. In this video I am almost killed by both of the enemies, but instead I turn the tide and kill one of them. (Axe's ultimate instantly kills an enemy if their HP is low enough). Here's a video! (Slowed to half speed)




Things like are the reasons I still have fun even if I lose the game in Dota.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Moar Minecraft

I've spent most of the day playing Dota with my roommate and messing around on minecraft. That is aside from the quick trip down to the lounge where they were having the Super Bowl party. Got some pizza, chips, cookies, and soda and then GTFO'd with my roommate to go play more Dota. He is getting better at Dota which makes me proud. He mostly plays Drow Ranger, Broodmother, and Juggernaut.

I built this little lava/water fountain tower thing today. It was fun, even though I realised quickly how such a simple project like this can require a lot of trouble shooting, especially when you accidentally smash the glass that separates your water and lava blocks -- causing the water to douse the lava out and forcing you to go get more!
I also built a portal to the nether, and started a little cozy house. It's fun learning more about this creative game.

Dota level 1 roshan kill

Here's a short video of my friend and I killing Roshan at level 1. We searched for guides everywhere and eventually had to just figure it out on our own, so I made this video for others. Basically you take Ursa Warrior's Fury Swipes passive ability at level 1, which causes him to gain +15 damage on each consecutive attack on a single target. Combine this with Lone Druid's Summon Spirit Bear to tank roshan, buy some defensive items + healing salves, practice a little micro, and roshan is dead before creeps even spawn. It's a huge advantage to start the game at level 4, and have an aegis, not to mention your allies each get +200 gold.


The trick is to never have more than 2 heroes/units attacking Rosh in melee range at a time, else he has a chance to slam the ground causing aoe damage to everyone around him.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

My first time playing Minecraft!

 Hey guys, I just started my first adventure in the world of blocks. I'm having a great time. I was literally just walk around, and then BOOM a wild cave appears:



 Then I ran into 3 diamond ore blocks! I felt so lucky!

All in all I'm having a lot of fun with this game, I'm glad I finally had the chance to start playing it just recently. I'm still a total noob babby and learning, but it's a good time. ;) I can totally see the appeal of this game.

Easter Island

The place I most want to visit in the world is Easter Island. I have been fascinated it since when I researched it for a school project "Where would you go?" back in the 8th grade. What fascinates me about this island is it's mysterious history and it's tiny size. The island itself is only about 9 miles in diameter. I think it would be awesome to take pictures there chilling with the statues.


What about you, my fellow bloggers, where in the world do you most want to visit? Imagine you could go anywhere, bring anybody, and do anything. :)

Friday, February 3, 2012

Fun Dota match to start my day

I played some Dota this morning before classes. I took Leoric and went bot with Jakiro. We were against a solo Juggernaut. This guy didn't know how to play very well/made mistakes, so we got first blood. Basically we stomped all over this team, but my favorite part was in the end when we were killing the World Tree. I was chasing a guy that I had just thrown my stun at, and suddenly their Tiny blinks in and tosses me into their fountain. I had roshed for the lolz, so I enjoyed watching the enemy trying unsuccessfully to kill me.
Tl;dr/Non-Dota savvy: I was protected from death 2 times because of my hero's ultimate ability and an item, so I enjoyed not dying in the end of the game when they thought they could of killed me: Here's a short video:


Available in HD!

Thursday, February 2, 2012

WarRock

WarRock is a free first person shooter. I have played it since it was in beta, and even bought a copy of the retail when it came out. Since I was such a loyal player, the game developers rewarded me with extra guns, smoke grenades, and healing kits for free on my account for life. In this game players rent guns rather than owning them. I have recently began to play WarRock again for nostalgic purposes.


If you don't spend real money on this game you won't be able to use as many featured guns and equipment, but I feel like this adds to challenge. Lastly this game is probably one of the most hacked FPS games in existence. If you can frequently win at this game without paying money or hacking, count yourself to be a skilled FPS player.

Story time: I was playing the other night and I had a hacker on my team. Despite our efforts to vote kick him out of the game he remained. We were playing in Close Quarters Combat explosive mode where each time has to win a set number of rounds to win the match. We were on the final round that would decide if we won or lost the match. Our team had all died except for me (yes it is possible to kill hackers... sometimes). I saw an enemy, and immediately started firing. He returned fire. I almost died, but then my hacker teammate began using his hacks to auto-heal me, so fast that my health bar never depleted. I ran into the enemies, full bear mode and just massacred everybody. We won. Probably one of the most hilarious victories I've had in that game.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Programming today

We talked about basic programming in one my classes today. We basically just covered how to input matrices and vectors, and use them for solving problems. When we were finishing my professor said, "Any questions?" I asked, "So what's the most fun you can have with this program?" to which he replied, "Not a whole a lot, however it's satisfying to get the right answers and successfully program, and you can impress girls with your skills... (meanwhile he looks around the class and sees a few girls) --or guys."

"Hey baby, I want to put the alphabet in a long matrix and then enter a function to place U and I together." That's right, the programmers get allll 'dem ladies. I'll have to try this sometime and report my results.