Today I’m releasing Galamay Area 2/Version 2. It’s a custom-made age for Uru Complete Chronicles that I’ve been working on for more than 7 months, and I’m finally releasing it. To download it, get the Uru Age Manager and download it from there. For more information about Galamay, visit the Galamay Log (It’s In Character, so might not provide much information). Happy exploring!
A Series of Tubes
An archive of old posts.
Monthly Archives: July 2006
My Childhood is Being Remade
First the Transformers Movie, now this. My childhood is literally being remade in photorealistic 3D. What was wrong with the actors in turtle suits?!
My favorite movie as a kid
Seriously. Look at the above and now compare to below:
The Ninja Turtles as of next year
And now the Transformers:
Good old Optimus Prime
Optimus….Prime?!
I can’t believe they’re remaking these two shows/movies (I only liked the 3 TMNT movies, not the animated shows…) are being remade. I’m too young to be nostalgic!
edit: RARG why won’t this work…
It’s not a big truck. It’s a SERIES OF TUBES!
I’ve renamed my blog. Obviously. Wanna know why? Here’s why.
Apparently, the internet is not what we thought it was. According to the Unite States Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, the Internet is a series of tubes. Well. Um….Ok? Tubes. Right. He stated a few days ago that
An Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday; I just got it yesterday . . . because it got tangled up.
and also this
The Internet isn’t something you just dump things on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes!
This was all in response to the cry out for Net Neutrality, and blatntly displays Senator Stevens’ extreme lack of knowledge about the reality of the Internet.
Then again, maybe he knows something we dont?
Ideas on Dreams
I used to have a dream theory, which stated that the instant you realize you are dreaming is the instant you begin to wake up. This made perfect sense, because as you begin to regain conciousness you become aware that you were dreaming, so I figured they were connected.
Well, it appears I was wrong. I learned yesterday about Lucid Dreams, which are dreams that you can control. This occurs when you’re dreaming and you realize you’re dreaming. You are then in control of your subconcious mind, allowing you to do virtually anything in your own little dream world! This idea really appeals to me, because I think it would be extremely cool to do anything I wanted and not be restrained by physics or laws or any other restraints in the physical world.
The Wikipedia article lists ways of having Lucid Dreams, such as reality tests. These involve doing things in the awake world which usually do not happen in the dream world, such as pinching youself and feeling pain, reading text properly, etc. The idea is that if you do these tests enough in real life (where they will always pass, you feel pain if you pinch yourself and text does not change by itself), you will eventually dream about yourself doing one of these tests, and of course the test will fail in your dream (where you feel no pain and text can change itself at will). When you see the test fail, you realize you are dreaming and are placed in control. Very cool.
To help myself try to become Lucid and have better dream recall, I have started a Dream Log to record any and all dreams I have in. Congratulations, you can now read my subconcious mind. Freud would have a field day 😛
The Emperor
Hail and Frisco to the Emperor of the United States, Joshua A. Norton. Even though long dead, nobody has filled his vacant space as Emperor of America, and so he remains our Emperor. Hail and Frisco to the Emperor!
(To whom I now owe $50 :P)
RAWA and the Town Hall Delay
All you Uru fans out there know about the Town Hall meetings. They are meetings between the Myst/Uru fan community and members of Cyan Worlds or the DRC (D’ni Restoration Council, which is Cyan’s In-Character group and the focal point of the Uru Live storyline). There is currently a Town Hall meeting taking place on the D’mala shard in the Town Hall Neighborhood, with Rand Miller (one of the founders of Cyan Worlds and the current CEO, I think). This meeting was originally planned for yesterday, but RAWA (Richard A. Watson, another very influential and senior member of Cyan Worlds) posted the following on the official forums two or three days ago:
I’m very sorry to have to announce this, but something has come up and the Town Hall with Rand needs to be postponed by 24 hours. It will now be held on Tuesday, July 18, at 9am Cavern Time.
It’s postponed for a nice reason, and hopefully you’ll agree that it was worth the extra 24 hour wait.
🙂
RAWA
This of course got everyone very excited, because we (being the community we are) automatically jump to conclusions and assume the best. Uru Live Beta is starting! However, now the meeting is going on and RAWA has posted this:
The “surprise” for tomorrow’s town hall is not going to happen tomorrow after all. Due to circumstances beyond Cyan’s control, the earliest it can happen will be late next week. The C.O. Meter will be knocked down a few notches to commiserate the delay.
Argh! Ok so we have to wait another week until we get out surprise. Oh well. Oh and the C.O. Meter is the Cautious Optimism Meter, which is what we Uru fans are supposed to have. Cautious optimism. Screw that, says I. I predicted the return of live, and even got the date for the announcment right. I’ve known that it would come back from the moment Cyan got back on their feet. I don’t have an ounce of Cautious Optimism in my blood, just full blown optimism. : D AND I’M PROUD OF IT!
New Art Stuff
I bought some new supplies yesterday for comic-making (I’ll post the first one soon). I got 3 pens (one Copic 100 black regular and one sketch, as well as a Micron pen for tiny stuff) and 2 kneaded rubber erasers (plus a normal one). I’m drawing on a large Bristol pad (11″ x 17″) for the comics plus a 11″x8.5″ one for other stuff, and a 11″x8.5″ sketch pad for other other stuff 😛
Current Score
Dav’on – 2
Junee – 6
Fallstar – 10
Baryon – 2
Gmz1023 – 1
JW – .5
LegoAddict – 2
quahog42 – 1
Korora – 1
Zero – 3
D’nial – 8
Momruoy – 2
Halvor – 1
T’layeh – 3
Greedo – 1
Legend
Second Place | First Place | Newest Score
Host: Zib Redlektab
Current Image(s)
Old Images
All old images can be found here. The puzzle image is #.jpg or png and answers are #a.jpg or png. For example, the first image is 1.jpg and the answer is 1a.jpg. Guest author’s pictures have their name abbreviated instead of a number (Eyes Only = EO, D’nial = d, Fallstar = f, Momruoy = mo).
Myst V on Intel
I have an intel-based mac, and I am trying to install Myst V on it. Even though the game is Mac compatible, it was never made to run on mac Intel chips, and thus the problems. Ubisoft released a patch, but it really does not work. I have tried almost every method suggested to me so far, and the most useful have been the new patcher, and the following hack. The patcher does basically all this for you, but this is an explaination of it.
(Note- I did not figure this out. It is taken from Luis Carlson’s Technoblog. The specific post can be found here. I have modified it a bit to work better, but other than that it’s all his)
The following information is not to be used by anyone because the EULA might prevent you from doing so. It is for informational purposes only and mainly takes place on the command line within the Terminal.
cd ~
mkdir myst5 && cd myst5
jar xfv /Volumes/Myst\ V\ EOA/setup.jar
cp -r /Volumes/Myst\ V\ EOA/support .
at this point, type ls and look for a long string of letters and numbers. copy this.
cp -r /Volumes/Myst\ V\ EOA/setup/INSERT LONG STRING HERE/md5 INSERT LONG STRING HERE, TOO
curl -O http://www.kpdus.com/jad/macosx/jadap158.zip
unzip jadap158.zip
./jad com/installshield/wizard/service/file/PureJavaFileServiceImpl.class
open -t PureJavaFileServiceImpl.jad
Look for public String[] getPartitionNames(). This is the place that caused the pesky error. What happened is that Intel Macs currently are missing a Java library that will provide the installer with a list of partitions for the computer. All we have to do is hard code that list and we are home free. Change it to look as follows.
public String[] getPartitionNames()
throws ServiceException
{
String as[] = new String[2];
as[0] = “/”;
as[1] = “/Volumes/Myst V EOA”;
return as;
}
Save and close the file. Back to the command line.
mv PureJavaFileServiceImpl.ja{d,va}
javac PureJavaFileServiceImpl.java
cp PureJavaFileServiceImpl.class com/installshield/wizard/service/file/
java run
Now, in the event that it creates a binary which doesn’t work, uninstall myst v (leave the /myst5 directory you made), and just run the installer from the disc. Because we changed something in Java, it should now work correctly. 🙂 Happy Myst’ing!
Eh, screw that. Nevermind, as the above obviously does not work.
More Reasons Ubisoft Sucks.
Being a Myst fan, I obviously hate Ubisoft. For those who don’t know or understand why, it’s becuase they were the publishers Cyan Worlds was working for for a long time. They own the rights to Myst III, IV, and have the licences for V. They were the ones who originally published Uru Live, and pulled it’s funding when not enough people signed up for it.
They’re the ones who are responsible for what happened to Cyan Worlds in September of last year.
They have manufactured an anti-piracy program which has the ability to shut down your computer if it suspects piracy. And that means if you have the disc in one drive and are burning another disc in another drive, it will shut down your computer, potentially doing lots of damage.
This is the huge capitalist pig of a game publisher.
And on to today’s topic, their support. The support form I filled out to get help with installing Myst V on my mac (read the next post for info on that) is pretty good. They have a platform selector (with every platform they publish games on, which is virtually every one), and then a game selector, then a selector for the type of problem. I filled this out neatly, and proceeded to tell them my story and ask for help. I must have mentioned the fact that I’m trying to use their stupid patcher to get it to install on my INTEL BASED MAC at least 4 times.
I just now received a reply from them (very prompt, congrats), which was somewhat confusing. Here’s a sample.
– Updating your video drivers:
Please visit your sound, video, and 3D card manufacturer’s websites for the most recently available drivers for the components in your system.
Major video chipset manufacturers web sites:http://www.nvidia.com – GeForce/TNT/Riva/Vanta/Etc models
http://www.ati.com – Radeon/Rage Pro/Rage 128 Pro/Etc models
http://www.3dfx.com – All Voodoo model cards
http://www.s3graphics.com – All Savage model cards
http://www.matrox.com – G200/G400 modelsOnce you have downloaded and installed these drivers according to the manufacturer’s suggestions then follow the next step.
– Updating your Directx:
Download and install DirectX from http://www.microsoft.com/directx. For more help with this, please search the Ubi Soft Database for how to update drivers.– Please check to see if there is a patch available for your game at http://support.ubi.com/patches.php
This is ridiculous, because my software updater automagically updates my drivers (all of them). That’s a link to www.MICROSOFT.com, the guys who make WINDOWS?! Oh wait, theres a patch available! Oh that’s right, THE PATCH IS WHAT I’M COMPLAINING ABOUT. Another sample:
– Try running the game from the executable
Instead of starting the game from the start menu or the Autorun menu, try running the game from the executable file in the game’s installation directory.– Close all programs running in the background
To do this in XP:
Go to the Start menu, and choose Run. Delete anything on the Open line that you’ll find there, and type in the work MSCONFIG. Click on OK, and that will bring up a program called the System Configuration Utility.Look down the list of startup items (not the tab labeled Startup), and choose Selective Startup (if it is not already selected). If you don’t see this, make sure you’ve clicked on General, near the top of the window. Once you’ve chosen Selective Startup, uncheck ‘Load Startup Items’, and leave ‘Process System.INI file’ and ‘Process Win.INI file’ checked. Once you’re done here, click OK, and let it reboot your computer.
Look at that. Last time I checked, Mac OS X does not have an Autorun menu. Last time I checked, there is no Start Menu or an option called Run to choose. Last time I checked, Process System.INI and Process Win.INI didn’t exist on my computer, and last time I checked I WAS RUNNING OS X 10.4.7, NOT WINDOWS XP, YOU STUPID MORONS!
I read the e-mail carefully, and not once does it mention Mac OS X.