Taniith’s Relto

Last week, we had the 2 (and 6) year anniversaries of when URU was canceled. On that day, one of the NPCs from the game posted on their in-character forum. Thus began the lead up to today. For a while now, they’ve been promising us the source code for the game. As of today, they have taken the first steps toward that by opening a game shard. Myst Online is now available for free to the masses; anyone who wants to can download the client and play.

I’m still waiting to get the source (well, I really just want the source for the tools so I can try porting them to Maya), but this is a great step.

I would ramble, but I have stuff to do. So, I leave you with that.

-K

Ok, time to get this insanity down.

(more…)

Remember in that last post, when I commented that DigiKey only sent me 2 of a part instead of 8? Well, guess which part I screwed up on? Yeah. So, now my idea of working on the code over the weekend is busted because I still only have one controller. I guess its for the best, as I have a final project for music and studying for linear algebra to do. Oh, and I have to go buy a pop-rivet gun to make these enclosures.

At least I can use the now worthless circuit board to help me get sizing for the enclosure.

-K

The parts for Heek showed up in the past few days, with the sheet aluminum and circuit boards arriving this morning. I soldered up the master board and connected it to the bread boarded player controller I have and everything worked. But I also discovered something. It turns out that DigiKey somehow gave me too few of one important part. I ordered 8 of the i/o expander chips, and they sent me 2; but they labeled the bag as having 8. Great. Thankfully, they are good people and a quick phone call was all I needed to get them to ship me the other 6. It was too late to get them out today, unfortunately, but they’ll go out on Monday. They even offered however fast I needed them, but in the end I went with the same old priority mail (takes 3 days to get here every time) so I don’t have to worry about signing. All at their expense, of course.

My food just arrived, but the guy forgot the baclava. Ironically, I only ordered the baclava so it would be above their minimum delivery amount. I would be fine without it, but now he’s going back to get it.

Finally, I just had a conversation with my dad. He wanted to know how my classes were going, and I commented on how I keep getting into these interesting conversations with Prof. Bianchi (digital music courses). We had an interesting debate about how good WPI is (or can be) for people trying to be artists, with me saying how if you want to be an artist and have no prior skill, WPI is not the place to go. At least, not on its own, and not yet. Don’t get me wrong, I love IMGD, but without my CDIA background, WPI wouldn’t be enough on the art side.

My dad didn’t get it, and I said ‘why do you think I went to the CDIA first?’. I figured he understood by now, but his response was ‘I have no idea’. WTH?! He still doesn’t get why I did it. Somehow, I feel like this is always going to be the case and its just kind of aggravating. Thankfully, said delivery man arrived before the conversation could turn into an attempt to explain it again.

Interestingly, Bianchi does some work as a lecturer of some sort at the CDIA. Small world, eh? ;p

-K

Its a good thing she’s already with someone. It wouldn’t work too well. It’d be a terrible idea. Dwelling never does anyone any good.

Keep working. So much to do! Stay occupied. Don’t give yourself time to think. Don’t let yourself see two days in front of you.

Don’t get angry. Don’t let them get to you. Do your work and let them fail. He’s smart. He knows who deserves the credit.

Don’t blow the gig. Don’t overstep your role. Teach them through other means. A job is a job. Go too far and you loose the job.

Stop thinking about it. Her. Stop

Stop

Fuck.

*end venting*

Back to soldering.

-K

In the comments of a post yesterday, I said “I swear to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, if anyone like this dies tomorrow…..”. I guess I should have made a broader statement about bad things happening on my birthday (like a plane crashing in the water). I should probably go read the news now and find out what happened, besides the ten seconds I saw walking through the campus center.

-K

Note to self: when you pre-order on Amazon, make sure you didn’t pre-order it already a month ago… especially if you remember reading the description already!

Yay for being able to cancel an order.

In other news, my first set of PCBs arrive Monday! I’m really excited. I certainly hope they work, but even if they don’t it’ll be so cool to be holding a stack of PCBs that I designed myself. Who ever thought I’d be doing that? Oh, and props to SparkFun for the great tutorials on using Eagle to design schematics and PCBs.

-K