The World is Pretty Odd
09/12/08 at 17:50 EST

I've tried this once before and failed, but my second attempt was met with a different consequence. I am, of course, referring to my day's efforts to hack the game script for The World Ends With You for the DS. As much of the binary code as I've deciphered, I'm reluctant to change too much at this point - it's pretty easy to re-write the literal dialog bubbles, but I have a sneaking suspicion that modifying the quantity of bubbles in any given scene in the game script will either result in undefined behaviour or just flat-out crash the DS.

Perhaps when all is said and done I can provide a means to share my revised game script with the world - if I do rewrite the entire game, that is. The proof of concept was a nice reward for me, but actually changing the entire script might prove a bit tiresome. It's a JRPG, after all. They love their dialog.
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Tagged under: gaming
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Hibernating
09/12/07 at 14:44 EST

So the site has been pretty inactive lately, a consequence of I myself being inactive lately. No progress has been made on my catch-22 job hunting; University degrees apparently don't carry any weight any more, which isn't entirely surprising to me - I've seen many a good thing become poor, withered, and/or useless when given enough time to become so.

Can't say a lot of interesting things have happened lately apart from IRL having the occasional Physics glitch. I also found the missing part I needed for my SNES to work, and in my mental dormancy I have decided to spend some of my time revisiting the 90s. Is it surprising that I've never played my way through Super Mario RPG before? Well, having acquired the original cartridge has provided some sort of nostalgia-induced encouragement I've needed to stick with it this time around.

Another part of my spare time is now being preoccupied by my goal to take personal "large-scale" programming a bit more seriously, and I've been met with some good and some lackluster results. All in all, I am quite fond of C# development, and the IDE I'm using (VS08) is a welcome change to the standard Wordpad/vim I've become accustomed to coding in. With any luck, I'll find some sort of resolve to carry on with it long enough to see some kind of reward for my efforts. Not too optimistic at this point; my body is currently trying to encourage the practice of hibernation. These cold, dreary winter days are best slept away, my friend.
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Tagged under: life
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There Will Be Mods
09/11/18 at 11:42 EST

So I've been modifying how my Wii runs Super Smash Bros Brawl lately with some decent results:



While it remains something like a 20-step process to get anything done and requires at least a rudimentary understanding of computer technology, I'm rather impressed with how simple the process is - at least, for me. Brawl modding has really come quite far, and I'd like to catch up with it to some degree if I can.

A friend of mine came up with a brilliant idea yesterday that will for the present remain undisclosed, but suffice to say it would make a very nice rainy day project. Given, however, that it requires a slight monetary investment, I fear I may need to put it on the back burner until the hunt for employment yields some actual results. I've considered putting a CEIL on the number of "thanks, but no thanks" industry letters I've received before I decide to settle for something less than half my worth.

I have my pride, but I also have my bills and my penchant for eating food on a regular basis.
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Tagged under: gaming
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Not Homeless
09/11/03 at 20:38 EST

Managed to make it to my apartment on time, so I'm not sleeping in my car tonight. Just a sans-furniture penthouse apartment floor. But I can't complain, since I made it here without anything terrible happening, and someone in this building is courteous enough to leave his or her wireless network unsecured.
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Tagged under: life
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A bit preoccupied
09/11/03 at 13:36 EST

I'm in an interview giving a demo right now. It's a good excuse to make use of the 'work' tab.
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Tagged under: life, work
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Refactory Warranty
09/10/31 at 16:54 EST

Just finished doing some code refactoring to make things a little more readable and coherent. I still have some redundant functions, but they're kind of nice to have around. One of them, anyhow. I should be removing the other some time soon. So what does this code refactoring mean for you, the reader? Nothing, you selfish brat!

Actually, that's not true. I made a small update to the navbar/update file so you no longer have to click "Back" followed by "Refresh/Reload" yourself when changing your preferences; I am no longer too lazy to do that for you and I now do that for you. Lucky you!

Well, I just got my hands on my brother's Dilbert DVDs. This is wonderful.
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Tagged under: site
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Captured Memory
09/10/30 at 16:55 EST

Earlier today I was struck with a recollection; a reminder of things still to be done. Though it has not yet become a problem, I've been meaning to add a CAPTCHA system to the comments page to discourage bots from flooding my comment approval queue. The system in place is presently very basic and makes no effort to fool OCRs. I don't know if I'll add defense against OCRs in the future or not, and the reason is twofold: one, I can't reliably test it right now, and two, it's going to be moot anyway: I'll eventually be adding support to prevent humans from spamming up the Comments box (not that it's necessary, I re-iterate) and at that point anyone who makes a spam-bot compatible with this site can let it spam as much as a human, because that will be limited as well.

For everyone who hates captchas, don't worry, I'm planning on keeping track of known human users in the future, so after you enter your first captcha, you won't see any. Again, this is in the future. You're stuck with it for now

EDIT: seems I've made a mistake in one of my parsers. Whoops, fixed.
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Tagged under: site
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Uneventful Days
09/10/28 at 10:50 EST

I've been meaning to write something as soon as something interesting has happened, but if I really wait that long I imagine some people would just assume my death is what resulted in this site's inactivity.

The bill for my car was a tad staggering given the mistake I had made; it was certainly money I would have rather spent elsewhere, but the fortunate thing was that the fellow I had purchased the car from was able to get the car up and running the next day, so I was able to make a second attempt to voyage to Mississauga before my parents left town for good.

Improvisation has always been an asset to me - which is good, because geography has not. Luckily I was able to travel most of the way here without making a directional mistake, and when I did, I was able to scramble about and wind up in a plaza in Mississauga barely a few blocks away from my brothers house. When I asked him to meet me there (something that wouldn't be necessary if I only had a map) he arrived on foot, which was a rather welcome sight.

So here I am, in an apartment building in Mississauga, sleeping on the charity that is my brother's futon - but he doesn't seem bothered at all; bad timing or not there's a cynical pleasure in knowing that he is currently the only member of my immediate family that has a job or a permanent address.

When I first arrived, the part of town where my brother lives was hit particularly hard with an infestation of Asian Ladybird Beetles ("ladybugs" to the common folk) and due to sloppy engineering, they're able to get inside the apartment through gaps and channels in the patio doors. I would have taken some impressive photos of the sheer volume of Asian Ladybird Beetles that I'm talking about, but my camera was packed away on Day 1 and there hasn't been a warm day since. Their numbers are notably fewer as the temperature drops, just like their numbers are notably fewer when they manage to enter the apartment to face an untimely demise. The exact numbers are unknown, but our kill count currently exceeds 300, by a considerable margin.

I'd like to resume development on this website, but apart from getting IE to co-operate with CSS, I'm a bit at a loss of where to go next. As a result, I've been playing around with C# again, and I'm kind of enjoying it. Took a look at a program I started writing (more as a proof of concept than anything else) and began refactoring the offensively sloppy code. If I can get it to work the way I see it working, I'll be having lots of fun with it - and maybe you will, too.
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Tagged under: life
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Stepping Out
09/10/19 at 00:09 EST

I've mentioned before that things have not had a tendency to go according to plan lately. Today would be another one of those days; I've managed to meet with unfortunate circumstances that have resulted in both a $200 towing bill and an inability to arrive at my intended destination. It seems I've done something erroneous to my car's fuel tank, and the bill to repair it (as if the tow wasn't expensive enough) should be arriving soon. I just love rising in sync with the sun.

Oh, and don't mind the "Site" tag - I guess I'll just mention now that I fixed a minor formatting issue and improved the search engine slightly - because we all know how "in" re-inventing the wheel is.
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Tagged under: auto, site
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Tying Loose Ends (Complete: 100%)
09/10/17 at 01:18 EST

I found myself the time needed to create the Media Review page tonight, and decided to induct it with a review of KHDS. Really, I think the review might have taken me longer to write - I'll try to be more concise in the future. That Gameplay section, really, is a bit too long.

I've also done my first bit of investigation into browser cross-compatibility, by starting with an easy task: disabling IE. It is not my intention to prevent IE users from viewing this website out of intolerance; nay, Internet Explorer and CSS just don't seem to get along with each other very well. I'll save further investigations for later.

Starting tomorrow, things should start becoming volatile, but by this time next week I expect to have some sort of brief stability in my living situation before equilibrium is delivered another jarring offset.

Also: though I may be damned, I finally scored 100% completion in KHDS. 51 in-game hours + a couple more well-spent? I think so.
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Tagged under: site
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