Welcome to MekTrix 4.0

First I was in a generic modern city, which was being attacked by non-specific monsters, possibly something to do with a Matrix remake – Neo was there. In one shot he had two binoculars and when the camera went away and came back one was a gun.

Having evacuated the city, I was back home; my primary school playgroud to be precise. I did something I can’t remember which involved standing up for a black man’s rights, which got me kicked out of the community, and hence the community bomb shelter. Velociraptors then came, and a competition was held to see which outcast would be let in. The first question was “Find the magnitude of the vector (x, 50)”, to which people complained one couldn’t get a numeric answer to a question with variables. It was amended to “Find the magnitude of the vector (45, 50)”, which I managed to get to 5 * vector(9, 10), before the raptors started arriving and I ran to a thin space behind some lockers where I hoped they couldn’t reach. They did manage to surround me though, which is where the dream ended – I assume we all died soon after :/

This teaches me two things:

o) Standing up for people’s rights and hence going against the majority in an emergency situation can be more trouble than it’s worth

o) The magnitude of (45, 50) is 5*sqrt(181)

My lame, old, probably copyright infringing wallpaper of Cloud in front of the ShinRa Building made in into the Italian Wikipedia o_O

Ho hum, at least this shows the automatic recovery systems work – I was back online and serving before I’d noticed PuTTY had disconnected~

I’m also back on the front page of hits for “Shish”, above MSDN \o/

Off on a wander~

Leg 1: Straight North:

Figuring I had no real plan of where to go, I decided to see how far I could go in one direction. Down the road and into the woods at the end, after only a couple of hundred meters I find a nice tree to sit in, and start reading. The book in question being “Look to Windward”. I took it out a couple of days ago on the basis that I liked “Excession”, but have been lacking time to read properly. As I read, the noise of traffic was still quite loud in the background, despite being quite far from it and having the sound muffled by greenery; I soon grew used to it though. Not so easy to get used to were the mosquitos, which annoyed me, but I don’t think I got bitten. I also got to witness a squirrel fight.

Leg 2: Still North; Through the Woods:

Starting to ache from the uncomfortable sitting position, and with light fading, I set off again deeper into the woods. There’s a surprisingly straight path going through them, which I followed, stopping off briefly for a lie down in some sort of ivy. I figured this’d be a nice place to sleep, but I never got back to it :( Slightly rested, I went north still, and into the next town. This proved to be the stopping point of my northern route; I had some idea what was east, so I went west.

Leg 3: West:

Getting deeper into town, it seemed most of the shops were closed; I continued on in the hope of getting to the major shopping center in the next town. A couple of uneventful miles later, I did, and it too was closed — the only thing open late at night was McDonalds. Seeing as the town was getting populated by groups of youths with their ghetto music (the word “ghetto” was featured in every sentance. Literally. “Livin’ in the ghetto. With ma bitches in the ghetto. Ghetto ghetto ghetto. Homies in the ghetto. Yo, it’s the ghetto.”, etc), I turned round and went back.

Leg 4: East:

Going back, I get the feeling I managed to intimidate people, what with being large, teenage, dark clothed, alone, etc. Some random guy seemed quite relieved after I’d been following him for a couple of miles, then passed without mugging him. I got back to the first turning point, and then further onwards. Mostly along main roads, I stopped a second time for another chapter. Still mostly uneventful, I went north for the second time.

Leg 5: North:

Going along another main road, this one being in the middle of nowhere, I noted a massive number of snails. That was all. Eventually I got to the river, and started pondering Narcissu, with the characters going on their journey with no particular aim. I would’ve continued through the river, but I figured hypothermia was bad, and I was carrying a library book I shouldn’t get wet. So, further east.

Leg 6: East:

Going through the more residential area, there are a lot of houses which all look the same. I’ve no idea how far I walked, but it was quite a way, until I ended up nearing my school, which was also closed.

Leg 7: South, Homeward:

Figuring I was getting tired, I set my target to be the nice tree I’d been reading in right at the beginning, so I could get some sleep. The route was quite similar to the one I normally take home, but walking through woods with no light was a lot harder than normal — thankfully, the path was very dark grey in contrast to the surrounding dirt’s black, so I managed to get through without trouble. Popping into the second bit of woods, it was too dark to see the path at all; after a couple of hundred meteres stumbling through brambles, I turned back :(

Leg 8: To Home:

Getting out of the woods as painfully and blindly as I got in, I gave up hope of spending a night with nature, and went home as per normal. Part I picks up the end of the night, which was terribly anger and depression filled, compared to all the fun I’d been having all evening…

A conversational summary, merely as background for part II:

o) Sister was watching internet TV

o) Mother requests computer for work

o) Sister refuses to get off despite good reason

o) Mother yells

o) Sister storms off in a hissy fit

o) I point out that maybe she’s clinicly addicted; she gets very stressed when someone so much as suggests she leave the internet for a couple of minutes

o) Mother says maybe I’m addicted

o) I point out I’m quite willing to get off computers, when there’s a good reason to

o) She tells me to, because she says so (no reason per se)

o) I ask for reason, and point out that I’m on the computer in the first place to look for university open days, as she told me to.

o) She tells me normal people go talk with friends and other such

o) I point out that that’s what I do, via computer

o) She tells me to go outside, read a book, go shopping, do anything that doesn’t involve a screen

o) I do exactly as she says (Part II details this)

… 6 hours later …

o) I come home to find her crying about how worried she was about me, and she goes on about how I don’t listen to her.

This being after I got off the computer, in the middle of something (I hate leaving in the middle of things), with the only reason being that she told me to, with the thing I was doing being something she told me to do, in order to do what she told me to.

With the incessant regular nagging over things where I’ve clearly and repeatedly said I’ve heard and will get to it ASAP, one wonders quite what’s going on in her head that she still thinks I need to be told everything several times, and still thinks I don’t do things when asked :|

So several months after getting into xclannad* so I can run Kanon SE, I finally get round to ordering a copy as a birthday present for myself (up to now I’d been working with the free demos). Several days later, it arrives \o/

But oh no! The box is ever-so-slightly squashed and deformed, presumably from being pushed through a letter box that was, when accouting for bubble wrap, too small for it. As fellow box-fans** may appreciate, I was a little upset at this. But oh well, life goes on. The game itself was fine, albiet tainted with the twinge of imperfection…

And then this morning, what do I find? Another copy of Kanon has been mailed to me! And this one, externally at least, is perfect. I’m someone who gets terribly upset when things lose their perfection, no matter how trivially – to get a second copy which I can keep safely stored away from harm is quite possibly the best error I’ve ever been involved in, and the birthday timing is quite miraculous ^___^

Thank you himeya shop <3 ED> And yes, I checked to make sure I didn’t order two without noticing — the “My Order History” page shows one order of one item, so I’ve no idea where the second came from.

* No, I still haven’t done anything more than a few superficial touch-ups. With all the docs & comments being in Japanese, and releases being only once every few months with massive changes, it’s a pain to work with…

** How many people here can say they’ve ever paid enough attention to a box to be amazed by it? My favourite boxes so far are the Amazon ones – the intricacy and inginuety used to make sure the products stay safe in transit may be superfluous to most, but to me, they’re beautiful

Just as I was getting into the swing of learning new, interesting, and useful things, school comes along :(

I’ve learned more Japanese through 4 days of Slime Forest than I have from 4 years of German lessons in school. I blame slime forest being fun~

I’ve also learned to love glib – it makes C into an actual usable language \o/ IrcIndex has been redone in C, and now searching takes 0.5 seconds to load the index and 1 second per 5000 lines of output, on 150MB of test data. Indexing is still horribly buggy and only works properly in the perl version, so I’m not releasing anything yet :/