Portal:Prelude is OUT!

I'm posting, and I'm Still Alive.

I've been anticipating this mod for all of one week, and it's finally out! Shame you can only get it off FilePlanet. I've been waiting in line for a while now, and I've only moved ten places.

Expect a review or something once I get it downloaded.

Sick.

I'm sick today. I just feel terrible. Maybe I'll try playing a online game. I certainly have the time to do so.

Darn. (Gmod)

Garry's Mod has a virus. I've been playing Team Fortress 2 lately, but found myself wanting to go online with GMod today. I usually read the latest posts in some forums on Facepunch, so at least I found out about it before I could get it. There's an antidote out, but I'm going to wait for Garry to update it before I go online again.

Why, Shipping, WHY?

Why is shipping so slow and expensive? I've been meaning to get into real robotics for a while: I guess Lego's robotics kits do count, but I've always wanted to use actual microcontrollers. I decided on Atmel's AVR chips. It uses a programmer, and my favorite out of the ones I've seen, the AVRISP mk2, happens to be available at a vaguely nearby store (Digi-Key); it's in Wisconsin, I'm in Michigan. Shipping is expensive, but should've been quick at any rate.

It wasn't. While the programmer arrived in perfect condition, it took a whole week. Is shipping really that slow? I've had cross-country packages arrive quicker!

I ordered the other parts for my first robots from Jameco. Despite my best attempts, I couldn't keep my order to only items that could ship immediately. 2-4 days later, they call to tell me they've got it ready to ship.

The waiting is killing me. I'll post when they come.

What Ate My Time? (Part 2)

Sorry it's late; I've had a busy week, occasionally without power/internet.

The second time-waster I've been hooked on recently is Garry's Mod. If you haven't used it before, you need to get it and any Source game. In Garry's Mod, you can access props, items and characters from any Source game, and use a set of tools on them in an environment. It doesn't sound like anything when I explain it, but it really is awesome. By itself, it's only a $10 purchase, so I really had no reason not to buy it. Now I only have to buy the rest of The Orange Box; I only have Portal.

In other news, my laptop doesn't seem to want to let me click in a certain area of my screen. I just installed Vista SP1: could this be the source of my problem?

What Ate My Time? (Part 1)

I've been wasting my time on two things. Actually, my time spent on this isn't quite wasted. I make money doing it, even if I only make $0.03 a minute. It's Amazon Mechanical Turk. If you haven't used it before, you should go check it out. It's great if you have a lot of internet-based free time. As I write this, I have over $6! That's almost enough to buy two packs of Altoids, if only I could eat them. I also could buy a VHS tape, which could actually be useful. And this is just from 3 to 4 hours of my free time. Imagine what I could buy after a month!

Martian Conspiracy!

Looking at the new photos from Mars, one oddly sticks out. This one:

It's very clearly a square on the Martian surface. Mars is the 4th planet, and a square has 4 sides. A coincidence? At first, yes, but then we can look at this:

It's a picture of the hexagonal clouds on Saturn. Saturn is the 6th planet, and a hexagon has 6 sides. I think the only way to solve this mystery is to go look at the other planets.

So...

It being Memorial Day, only a select few stores are open. Fortunately, GameStop was one of them. I managed to pre-order the Spore Creature Creator, which the guy there didn't know existed. "You mean for DS?" was what he asked me. I got him to check the database again and he found it. I spent the whole $10 on it so I can just go in and pick it up next month. I also went to get Wii Fit, but it turns out they only had boxes in the store to tell people it existed. It was still a positive experience though.

Happy Pi Day!

How did spend Pi day? Sick in bed. At least I can play Brawl online while I heal.