the new and the new old school

Mario Kart 64.  Man.  KB is addicted.

I love that she's so into N64 gaming.  It's the new old school.  I took it over to her house when she was tending her nephews for the night and left it there.  She has been playing ever since.

That being said, this semester is all about gaming for me.  I'm taking four classes and I think that I've had the most busy first two weeks of my college career.  Senior project is coming along nicely.  I've been working mostly on the sound and getting it to sound good.  We don't have a whole lot of good sounds to add yet (other than the ones already added, that is) so the music is very limited.  But nonetheless, I've been working like crazy to get what I can working.

My artificial intelligence class is going to be hard.  I can already tell.  Our first assignment is due in two days, and it is using python.  I have no idea how to use it, and the tutorial (homework 00 -- a non-credit assignment, but negative points if you don't do it) gave me a basic understanding, but I'm still worried.  I got my book in the mail.  1100 pages.  If I could convey sarcasm over a blog, I would tell you about how much I love carrying my book.  I have it at school with me today, and I'm not really thrilled.  Yes, class is almost over and then I'm going home, and I still haven't opened it.  Looks like other homework took priority and I didn't have time to get any of the hard class stuff done.  Awesome.  The funny thing is that the entire class is focused on Pacman.  Ha.

I have two film classes, one is a continuation of a class from last semester called Game Development 1. The unambiguously titled class (Game Development 2) is at night and is hard to stay focused after a long day.  My other film class is the only class I have on two weekdays.  Yeah.  I'm not a fan of classes all day two days a week and then ONE class on its own days each week.  I hate driving to school for one class.

And although I'm complaining, my earliest class this semester is 12:30.  Not too shabby.

So back to the fun part of gaming.  I did something crazy.  Or should I say, Krazy.  I bought a Kinect.

For those who don't know, that's for the Xbox 360.  It's made for playing your Xbox without controllers.  YOU are the controller (Microsoft's slogan for its new product).  It's pretty fun.  I played Kinect Sports and I was sore for days.  I'm excited for it to come.  

The reason that I decided to get my Xbox (which I haven't actually gotten yet) is because I wanted a console that I could play my game I'm making on.  It should be ready for me some time this week, so the Kinect should come about the same time I get my Xbox.  Now I just need to make sure that I don't waste my precious time on.  

Crap.  Now I'm sure that I'm going to waste my time.  I guess I can take it over to KB's house, but then I wouldn't be able to play my game on it for homework.  Why isn't self-control easier?

five. laura luisa triana aguayo

About the Loan

Location:	Guayaquil (Paraiso), Ecuador		Repayment Term:	14 months (more info)
Sector:	Services		Repayment Schedule:	Monthly
Activity:	Sewing		Currency Exchange Loss:	N/A
Loan Use:	For the purchase of a sewing machine.		Default Protection:	Not Covered

Laura designs and sews clothing from her home. She lives in a periurban zone called Paraíso de la Flor, located in an area characterized by its dirt roads and mountains.

As a child she learned how to sew because she enjoyed it. But having had her children without their father, she decided to begin working on a sewing machine that she bought when she was young. Little by little she was able to sew and have some regular customers.

Currently, she does her design and alteration business from home. She works from 9am until her orders are done. She completes her work mending, sewing and designing by the end of the week.

With this loan she wants to buy a sewing machine, cloth and string, because what she has is old. In the future, she wants to have a different location for her business and to be secure in old age.

Translated from Spanish by Flavia Garcia (vol), Kiva Volunteer

Laura, confecciona y cose ropa en su casa. Vive en una zona periurbana llamada Paraíso de la flor ubicada en una zona caracterizada por sus caminos de tierra y montañas.

Desde pequeña ella aprendió a coser porque le gustaba. Pero al ya tener a sus hijos sin un padre decidió comenzar a trabajar en una máquina de coser que se la compro cuando era joven. Poco a poco pudo coser y tener ya un número definido de clientes. En la actualidad tienen su taller de costura y confección en su casa, trabaja desde las 09h00am hasta que termina sus pedidos. Realiza su trabajo haciendo enmendaduras, cociendo y confeccionando para entregarlo el fin de semana.

Con el préstamo quiere comprar una máquina de coser, telas, hilos porque la que tiene ya esta vieja. En el futuro quiere tener un local para su negocio y asegurar su vejez

i'm tired and i want to go home

What can I say?  I've been horrible about writing.  And I know that I could just "vow to write more often" but we all know that won't happen.  I've been busy and blogging has been the last thing on my mind.

For those of you who haven't dabbled in my other blog that I have to keep for school, I would say, "why would anyone want to read this?"  So don't bother.  Sadly, it's linked up to my Google Buzz account, so everyone who is following me gets to read it.  Ha!

The last few weeks have been really hard on me and I've taken it out on those who are around me, and for that I'm sorry.  My classes are not going as well as I had hoped.  I started out this semester with an attitude that I was going to like every class.  I even told myself that about a computer systems class which is very hard.  I thought, "I'm going to be really busy, but it is going to be fun none-the-less."  Sadly, it hasn't been the case, and this week has really showed me how unstable I am in school.

I've been spending as much time as I can in my hard class, but we have a midterm tomorrow and I don't know how to do any of the problems on the practice test.

I have to build a unix shell (for the same class I have the midterm) and I don't even know where to start.

I have a film project due tomorrow and I haven't even started it yet.  I hope to get it done this weekend, but even then, that might be a stretch.

My other film class isn't going well either.  I have to have a working game by Thursday, and we can't even import the models for the player, let alone the environment, correctly.  We were put on "warning" and our game is probably going to get scrapped.

The only other class is my senior project which is surprisingly going well, but I hate being that guy who is leaning on the work of my group.

I spend so much of my time going from school work to emails to everything else.  On average I get 25+ email a day that I have read and respond to.  I'm overwhelmed.  Luckily today has been kind and I've only gotten about 10 or so, but the day is still young.  I'm stressed and I can't wait for some sort of break to come.

On top of that, I haven't been sleeping well... for weeks.  I don't remember the last time I made it through the night.  Huzzah.  I'm sure it's stress-related, but I'm almost to the point of not functioning.  I tried exercising, and KB was kind enough to come with me, but 6am was too early and I quickly lost motivation AND a running partner.

I'm sorry that this has turned into a pitty party, but I'm on my last leg...

and I can't buy lunch because I couldn't find my wallet this morning.  I'm starving.

back to work

Well, with a new (-to-me) computer, the semester is back in full swing.  And with school being in session, that means that I'm back to work!  Yay!

We had a demonstration to highschool teachers today and I think that it went pretty well.  We have a lot of cool things to show them and I'm really excited about how well our presentation went.  From the looks of it, we had the most entertaining and involving 30-minute block and our new group works extremely well together.  We even have a teacher that has come up to us a few times to talk to us about what her students can do to get into computer science.  Sweet!

happy flinstones day

Yeah, you heard me.  The Flintstones turned 50 today.  The amazing things you learn from using Google.

So we're (my classmates and I) sitting in class now waiting for the capstone class to start.  It seems that our game gained popularity.  More-so than we expected... or wanted.  We've been working hard to make our game look good in our presentation that we had on Tuesday, but we really don't want to work on it much longer.  It's a great idea and concept, but it's outside the scope of the class.  We could hack together a game pretty quickly, but making it fun to play and leveling out the players is going to me a ton of work.

For those that don't have any idea what I'm talking about, you can check out my other blog post (on the other blog) that I keep for the class.  So... yeah.

Other than that, life has been quite uneventful.  School keeps me so busy that I feel like I don't have a social life. Although, with the new computer, I was really sad that my pictures were lost, but I found some on the desktop in our home office.  How awesome is that?  I found some gems:

er is ready. :-)

setbacks

Temporary set back... mojolappy is out of commission. A tumble leads to a new computer. More on this story after the break... that is, when my new comput

fitting in

Hello readers from St. George!

Yes, Mojo has taken the trip down to the hot part of the state with KB and her family.  Apparently she got a lot of lip about inviting a boy down here, but she got over it pretty quickly.  We got in last night just in time to grab some food, set up my N64, play a little Mario Kart, play loud enough to wake other people up in the house and go to bed.

The funny thing is, I brought a lot fo videogame equipment.  I didn't go true "old school" on everyone and bring the SNES, but I wanted to.  I thought that it might have been (rather, "I might have looked") a little too dorky, but judging from this:

I think I'll fit right in.

idea generator

I sometimes wish I had an idea generator.  This semester, I've been told to come up with multiple game ideas.  I had to come up with a new game idea for a class (not the senior project) and what I came up with was a Bomberman-style game.  I used to love Bomberman and I played it on consoles, computer, and even my TI-86.  Yeah.  I was a nerd even back then!

But I'm trying to be original in these ideas, but I'm feeling like my ideas are starting to get a little repetitive.  Hmm.  Maybe if I came up with an idea generator where all I would do would be to add in some confines and it would give me an idea. 

Some of the ideas from my class have been interesting.  I've actually liked some of them, but hearing pitch after pitch has been a little hard to really focus on.  I'm getting tired and it's only the second week of the semester.  I think it's time to go on vacation.

Oh wait, I have one planned!  KB's family has invited me to go down to St. George with them this weekend.  It's going to be pretty fun.  I haven't been down there since I was in elementary school and I think it's time to go back.  It's going to be nice because they boys in her family are all like me.  They love games and they love CS.  This bodes well for me. 

I'm going to have to do quite a bit of homework while I'm there, so I might not be the funnest person in the whole world, but I'm going to try and keep that boring-ness to a minimum.  I've gotten a few assignments to do over the weekend, which I think is totally lame.  I can't believe that teachers think that over a long weekend, all I would want to do is homework.  Yikes.

KB, I wish we were leaving today.   

a new semester

And thus begins one of the most fun semesters I am going to have of all time.  Saweet!

This semester is the beginning of my senior year in Engineering Arts and Entertainment.  What does that mean?  Let me tell you.  I have four classes.

Film class number one: Game development.  Our first assignment was to play old school videogames from the NES and SNES and write about what it is about that game that I love. 

Film class number two: An introduction to film development.  We are going out and just making simple movies and learning about what makes movies so interesting.

CS class number one: Capstone project where I'll be creating a videogame to port to the Xbox 360.  I've already started my pitch which is Peggle but in space where you can manipulate gravity either as the level or in certain powerups.  Although even if it isn't picked (we whittle it down from 30 proposals to 2 games) the games I've seen in the other proposals would be fun. 

Lastly, the non-fun CS class, but I'm not focusing on that one. 

Doesn't that sound awesome?  Now I just have to keep up to date with each of them and not die under the pressure.  I'm sure this is going to be a blast. 

Studying videogames.  Who'd have thought?

perfect day

So camping was a blast.  I didn't tell you readers about it, but now you know.  I'm going camping... yesterday


Lars and I have been wanting to go up camping for a while now and the event with the Party Planning Committee that I got really burned at wasn't exactly what we were looking for, so we drove near a city in Utah called Kamas and entered the national forest to do some fun stuff.

It was a little bit of a process, but in the end, it worked out quite well.  We didn't know how many people were going to come until the day of, but we had plenty of food (in fact, we bought extra in Kamas and didn't touch it) and then made the drive.  Our campsite that we wanted to go to was already reserved out and we were too late to make reservations for the others (5 days advance notice?  What?) so we drove up in anticipation that we'd find one.  We did.  It was slightly hilly, but honestly, who cares, right?

A tinfoil dinner ("hobo dinner"), some hot chocolate, cobbler, and some guitar playing later and we headed off to bed.  KB and the girls in one tent (Yes, she has a nickname on the blog now) and the boys in two smaller ones.

Breakfast in the morning was simple.  We were going for simple cleanup so muffins won.  We didn't even touch the bagels.  We drove up to Mirror Lake (where we wanted to camp, but it was full) and walked around the lake.  It was fun.  There was a group with 3 iggies (Italian Greyhounds).

Then it was heading home (with a stop at Dick's Cafe in Kamas) to meet KB's family.  So I should explain that KB is somewhat obsessed with two things: Sprite and Benihanas. We met three sisters, a brother and each of the spouses.  10 of us, being loud, somewhat ignoring the chef... it was great.  I had a great time with them and from what I've heard, they kinda liked me too.  Awesome.

The evening ended with a walk around Temple Square.  What a perfect evening.

Oh, and one more picture of KB and I.  You know, for good measure.

nicknames are hard to do

So, I started dating someone pretty recently.  She is an amazing girl.  I only have one problem; I can't think of a name to call her on this blog.

Since the inception of this blog, I've started to use pseudonyms more prevalently, but I don't have one for her yet.  Most of the other people I talk about, at least the girls, have numbered nicknames because they usually have the same name.  I started this quite a while back when I was dating a girl with the same name as a friend.  To avoid confusion, there was 1 and 2.0 (because the second one was WAY more fun).  And ever since that time, anyone with that name gets a numbered nickname.  But this girl doesn't have that name.  Too bad.

That leaves me is right between a rock and a hard place.  We haven't really known each other long enough to have nicknames or funny inside jokes yet, although she does like the nickname of "Mojo" (but then again, who wouldn't?).  Hmmm.

I don't want to rush a nickname because anyone that would drive around the city, find a random house that left fireworks out, and then not only consider, but ACT on Mojo's idea of putting them on their porch to find in the morning...

deserves an AWESOME nickname.

thought provoking questions

The frustrations of my class seem more like a fire being continually fueled by new annoyances.  Here's the one from today.

Every week or so, we get assigned study questions that we work on and usually ask good questions about the information covered that week.  I like them for the most part, but I feel like the information is good, but the questions can be AWFUL.  

While working on one this week I came across this question:

In-and-of itself it's a good question.  I admit that it was good enough that I had to look at the key to know the answer was "d."  But here's what I thought was idiotic about it.  I cut off the next question:

Yeah.  You see that?  Now can anyone in their right mind tell my why that would be an "important concept of Biology" and help me to "make connections" and "not just fly by using memorization" in a class where each of those are what she sees as important in a class like this?  It's nothing but pure laziness and what seems to be a question based on busy work!

Breathe Mojo, breathe... 

the next step

So I'm taking the next step in interweb-itude.  It starts with my new email addresses, and ends with pure awesomeness.

That's right.  We're moving away from morganreynolds.info, and moving into the Dot Com world.

For the time being, morganreynolds.info will still redirect you to the new address, but from hence forth, we're going big with

iIsMojo.com

I'm pretty jazzed about it.  I know that this only makes me more of a nerd, but at least I love doing this sort of stuff.  I have to say, I was a little nervous that this wasn't going to work.  We had a little hiccup that seemed to resolve itself pretty quickly.

For some reason (I blame the cache) my computer wouldn't go to iismojo.com.  It just kept giving me errors.  I checked my DNS, all my forwarding information, everything.  Seems that once I used another machine (via VNC of course.  It's not like I'm going to get out of my chair) everything was working.  Cleared cache and an annoying restart later, everything on the mojoLappy was working just fine.  

I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to be doing with the old .info site for now, but I'm sure I'll use it for my portfolio eventually.  I'll let you all (aka, my mother) know when that day comes though.  

word of the day

I sure hope that everyone saw Dictionary.com's Word of the Day: morganatic

ouch

So this weekend, I did a bad thing.  I was so good all last weekend up until Friday.  I forgot sunblock and boy am I paying the price.

We did a campout near Morgan (the city.  Yeah, I know.  It was confusing all weekend) starting on Thursday and going through today.  But my misfortune would bring me to my knees on Friday and I came home early.  I drove late Friday night and got home around 11:00 to tend to my sun-scathed wounds.

But here's the really cool part.  Everyone kept saying that I should try this trick to heal a sunburn.  I figured that it couldn't hurt (too much) so I'd give it a try.  To be honest, I'm a little impressed and I think I might keep doing this in the future.  Now mind you, I've read some articles online that make it sound like you put it on and, magically, it's like you never were in the sun to begin with.  THAT is a little too far-fetched, but it worked on me.  My burns don't hurt.

So if you haven't already used the link from above, here's the trick:  Vinegar.

Yeah, you read right.  But read it again if you'd like.  See?  Still what you read before.

I was shocked.  All I did was take a shower in somewhat cool water (Come on.  I can't take a hot one with a sunburn), dried off, and them sprayed on the magic concoction (Can a concoction consist of one ingredient?) and I feel great.  I feel the burn, but the burn doesn't hurt.  I can tell my skin is a little upset, but it's like it was screaming at me, and I just walked out of the room, shut the door and put in some headphones.  Yeah, it's probably still screaming, but honestly,  I'm already jamming out and dancing in the living room.  Awesome.

So the weekend was okay.  I need to be diplomatic because I honestly don't know who reads this thing (cough.  Just my mom) but I feel like there was a lot of planning that went on, but the planning wasn't really organized in a way that made it clear to everyone.  The camping was great.  The spot was gorgeous, the pond was "stocked" with fish and we even had rented port-o-potties out there.  Meals were hit-and-miss though.  Some of the ingredients were missing for some meals, others were perfect pseudo-camping style meals.  I think that the planning people were great and they put a lot of work into this, don't get me wrong.  I just think there were a few miscommunications about activities and meals.

Sadly, by Friday, I was already hating life due to 3 hours of sleep and skin like unto a fried fish, so I called it quits and didn't stay for the boating planned for Saturday.  Oh well.  I guess I can learn to wakeboard some other time.

online treasures

Is this like my new email addresses?:

complex variables

Take one of these:

Add a couple of these:

Put them in this:

Subtract this:

And then for good measure, put this at the end:

And what do you get?

You got it.  Awesomeness.  

By the way, White Pine backpacking trip was a success.  We went up Logan Canyon on Friday morning, hiked (4 miles) to the camp ground, spent the night, came back down and made it in time for the demolition derby.  It was my first one ever and it WON'T be the last!

online treasures

Found this on a test I was taking online for a biology class.  I loved that it was part of the answer.

fish sticks and guitar music

My niece and nephews staying with us are pretty fun.  We just had dinner and they were a blast tonight.  I wasn't able to spend most of the day with them (like each day since Sunday) because I had a study group for a quiz I have tomorrow.  But when I came home, we had a great time.

Dinner was a classic dinner at the RFC.  Yeah, you guessed it.  Fish sticks.

We love fish sticks at this house.  We eat them all the time.  My father is actually quite in love with them.  We have them about once a week but tonight they were also accompanied by home made baked fries and a romain lettuce salad.  Yum.

But the best part of the evening was sitting in the front yard.  We haven't had a great bench in the front yard so it normally gets quite a bit of neglect.  But for Father's Day, we got my father a new bench and it's changed how we spend time here at the RFC.  It's warm so now we can spend as much time as we'd like out there.  We all sat around the yard on the bench and some camping chairs.  I got my guitar, my father played his, and we sang songs that the kids knew and loved.

Summer rocks.