August 1999
August 31
Well, here it is, the last day of August. For me, the last day of
summer vacation. The last Sine Wave entry for this month. The
Last of the Mohicans. Well, okay, maybe not that last one, but things
are going to change from now on with this site. Not too much, but there
will be changes in September, like some new Nalenna stuff, more Utah photos,
and more computer game-related content.
Success! I'm done with the notes on Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice.
Now I can finally get some rest, although not a lot of rest, because I'm still
here writing this web page, aren't I? Things have gone really slow
lately. Too slow...
I got two thirds of my book read, and I still have to have it done tomorrow.
I can't stay up as late, though, so I'll do it during the day. I can't
believe school is starting already! It feels like summer has barely
started. Tomorrow will be my last day of freedom, and then it's time
for the homework and the lectures to... well, not start, because I'm already
doing work... but they will be assigned every day! That means not as
much time to devote to this site. I'll still do this daily update, so
don't worry.
I finished the first three chapters of my book, but I must admit I slacked
a little. I still have a lot left to read, and I'm afraid I may not
get it done! I'm not worried, though... I can always tell people I didn't
have time because I was doing projects for the Utah trip. Multiplayer
Drakan isn't as buggy as it used to be, and it only crashed once yesterday.
The Winsock patch is coming out, so it will be goodbye to Directplay as soon
as it's ready. I bet everyone will be willing to make the transition.
The book Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice by Mark Plotkin is really good
and informative and it shows you all sorts of cool stuff about how plant
species in the Amazon Jungle are used for medicine and other uses.
They could be useful in modern medicine if there was more study of how shamans
use plants. I recommend this book to all those who are interested in
science or adventure.
It seems people are wondering why the Drakan forum people are so nice,
and why that game is so much fun to play. I think there's a little
more maturity in that group because all the teenieboppers are on the Quake
3 forums talking about what a bunch of l33t d00dz they are. Drakan
won fans by its good gameplay in the demo, not by empty promises and wallowing
in past glories.
Well, I should get started on my Internet notes of my book, Tales of a
Shaman's Apprentice. Sometimes I feel lazy and put off doing things,
and I must admit this is one of them. You won't see much more from
Nalenna or the Utah trip page for a while now, but I will keep doing my daily
journal update like I always do. I hope I don't have a ton of work
to do, or else I won't be able to hit that October 15 deadline for my new
game.
I saw The Sixth Sense today, and it was really good. There are a
few plot twists in there that nobody would even guess. I recommend
that you see it right now. I haven't seen Blair Witch yet, so I don't
know which is better, but The Sixth Sense definitely made me think.
There was really more of the psychological element, not just special effects.
The Haunting remake was just the opposite: all special effects and minimal
story.
Four more days until school starts for me, and I've only begun reading
Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice. It's actually a pretty interesting
book because it talks about the ways and methods of a lot of other cultures.
It also talks about how deforestation is destroying natural treatments for
diseases. I've started a report with six key points for each chapter.
That's what I have to do before school starts. I'm also going to scan
and copy the "Official Utah Trip Poster."
I got my senior photos taken at Proex today. I was going to be dressed
formally, but then I looked in my yearbook and nobody from last year's class
was, so I decided to go casual. I also looked at some of the quotes
they had, and it seemed like they all just chose some random gibberish from
a list. Do all yearbooks do this, I wonder? They must, because
for something so stupid to happen it has to have the excuse of being a tradition.
Today, you can see my reports on the archaeology and paleontology in southern
Utah. Since I saw both an archaeological dig and a plateau with dinosaur
tracks, I became interested in learning the techniques used for those sciences.
I'm not really a professional, so you won't find anything on my site that
you can't find on others, but I do have pictures that I've collected from
several other web sites, and I've included links to them.
Well, I finally beat Drakan: Order of the Flame (on medium difficulty).
It's an awesome game but it's kind of short. I play multiplayer sometimes,
but the game crashes frequently. I think the problem is with the Directplay
system it uses, which was really designed for low-action games like chess.
There's a limit of 4 players on each server because it tends to crash with
more than that. They're working on a patch to fix that.
I'm finally an Xtreme Gamer on the Drakan forum, which means I have more
than 30 posts on there. One of the most Xtreme posters is Conner Macleod,
with 698 posts so far. Not only that, but his posts are long and well
thought out, too. I wish I had more time to devote to games, but alas,
I have a book to read for school. I put a list of humorous observations
about Drakan on this page. It was started on the forum, and they asked
someone to put it on their page, so I volunteered. It's the link below
the Drakan forums one.
I did a major update on the Links section of this page. Also I'm
going to include a lot more on this section of the page and do more reports
on stuff. For example, I've been talking about Drakan but I haven't
told you where my first contacts with the Outside World have been.
I started looking at ActionXtreme's forums, and just recently I registered
to post messages and give my 2¢ worth to the group.
I saw Bowfinger today, and it was really funny. I especially loved
the spoof of Scientology, and the scene at the end with the ninjas was just
hilarious. One good thing is that it actually has funny jokes rather
than just novelty gross-out gags like in American Pie.
There's not much news today. I got to the Volcano world in Drakan,
and I've gotten the Mourn Bringer, which steals life from its target.
There seems to be some kind of knight that throws lightning spears.
I don't know how much longer I have until the end, or even what the final
level will be like. I have yet to use that Rift Crystal that I found
in the tower... forgive me, I just love this game!
My final exam is due the day after tomorrow, but I'm not worried.
I already did a lot of stuff on the Internet, so that can be my final project.
But I still have to answer some essay questions. No sweat, huh?
Excuse my lack of focus, but it's almost 4 in the morning, and I really need
some sleep. I've gotten rid of my Drakan preview because the game is
already out and my info is outdated. Look for the review sometime in
September.
So far I've gotten to the Night Islands, which are just like the Islands
except it's nighttime and Arokh, the dragon, has been captured. Finally,
an excuse to cross a level on foot and see all the sights up close.
I've been reading the forums and it seems nobody has found the axe with the
most lightning charges. The official "lightning axe" only has 5, but
Vykruta's Axe, found in Alwarren, has 25. To get it you need to find
a key somewhere...
Today was probably my last chance to play much of Drakan. I've got
two school assignments due Thursday, and another due on September 1.
You won't be seeing much new stuff on this page, except for a daily entry
like this and my book notes, which I'm doing online. By the way, I've
added Planet Drakan to the links.
I've reached the Islands on Drakan, but I don't think I've gotten far enough
to give the game a full review yet, so for now the preview is staying.
Did you see the new photos on my Southern Utah trip page? There are
42 new ones, including a lot more pictures of the group. Others are
similar to the ones I took. I've moved my e-mail address to the top
so people will see it more easily.
I saw Mystery Men today and it was pretty good. Ben Stiller was great
as usual in his role as Mr. Furious, who is possibly derived from his guest
appearance on Friends where he also gets really mad. My favorite character
was the Blue Raja, who threw forks and spoons at the villains, spoke with
a British accent, and didn't even have any blue in his costume. I loved
how all the wannabe heroes kept fighting with each other and arguing over
little details.
I just played the System Shock 2 demo last night. It's a good game
but it's really complicated. You have to specialize in one of three areas:
weapons, computers, and psionic powers. First you go through a training
session, and then four years later in the game, you go aboard a spaceship
where something has gone terribly wrong and there are "hybrids," alien zombies,
running around. You have to make your way through the ship, collecting
stuff, opening doors, and fending off hybrids. I haven't played through
the whole demo, but as soon as I do I'll tell you more.
It's official, Drakan is out now and I have it! I had to go to the
Mall of America on a crowded Saturday afternoon, but I got it, and it's everything
I expected it to be and more! The mountains! The snow! The
caverns! The rock-throwing giants and poison-spewing Crow Dragons! I've
been playing it all night tonight, but tomorrow I'll change the Drakan preview
into a Drakan review! Look, all the sentences in this paragraph
end in exclamation points!
Hey, guess what? I just got Drakan and it's AWESOME! The gameplay
is really good, the sound is superb, and the graphics are just excellent!
Check out this cool screenshot from the game:
I still have to read the book Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice. I've
just started it and it's pretty good. The book tells the story of the
journey of the author, Mark Plotkin, into the rainforests of Brazil to study
the medicines used by the shamans of different tribes. Those medicines
might be key to curing many modern diseases, but if the rainforests continue
to be cut down, the trees on which they grow will become extinct. It's
a constant struggle between nature and human development.
Sparrowslain's new page freezes up Netscape 4.61! It's not her fault,
though - the ad program at the top of the screen causes the links not to work
when clicked on. Yes, it's the same problem I was having before with
Netscape, and it's bordering on annoying. I hope Sparrow finds a way
to get rid of that problem.
All right, I was wrong! DRAKAN IS OUT NOW! at least according to
the forums. I haven't been to Best Buy yet so I don't know what the
deal is, but if I find it there today I will buy it for sure! First
I have to finish my journal and get it ready to turn in tomorrow. Good
thing I've already written it. I ran it through Microsoft Word's grammar
checker and it came up with some pretty outlandish suggestions, like suggesting
the word "their" instead of "there," even though "there" was correct.
It also recommended against using the passive voice to describe action.
My patience is really tried by that sort of suggestion!
I went to Best Buy and Target and neither of those stores had Drakan!
I don't know what's with all the people on the forum saying they have it already
- for me, the game just isn't out yet. Tomorrow I'm going to look in
the other Best Buy. It's a longshot, but if I get there early they
should still have a copy. I saw that System Shock 2 is out, but I still
haven't played the demo so I don't know yet if I want it. I didn't
see Outcast, but I've been looking into getting Descent 3. There are
too many good games out there!
Today I watched a movie I rented called "The Ballad of Little Jo."
It's about a woman on the Western frontier who dresses up as a man to avoid
harassment from ruffians. She keeps up the charade and does a lot of
things like herding sheep and going to saloons. One day she sees a Chinese
man about to be hanged, so she saves him and hires him for her ranch, and
after he finds out she's really a woman they fall in love. Nobody else
knows the truth about her until many years later after she is dead.
It's a good movie and I recommend it to everyone. I also rented a made-for-TV
movie called "The Mogul," also known as "The Ratings Game." It's a sendup
of the TV battle for ratings, and it's about a producer who rigs the ratings
board so that he can make it look like his lousy show is more popular than
the World Series. It works, and soon he has a bunch of other, equally
bad programs on the network, but the ratings company begins to suspect foul
play. Also, the producer is losing the respect of his girlfriend, who
first gave him the names of the ratings families. It's really funny
and it's worth it just to see the parodies of popular TV shows.
I'm not going to complain about having so much work to do before school
starts. I'm just going to stay up late. But I will not give up
on this web page. No way José, especially not now, because soon
people will see my photo log, and they'll have to go through this page to
get there. And even having only a few readers is a start.
Although that site is run by religious prudes who cower at the sight of
violence and sex, Gospelcom's mini-previews
are actually quite informative. They even count the bad words and tell
you how much violence and nudity is in the movie! You can get more out
of those previews than with others - if you can step around the BS they spew.
For example, you know the children's animated movie called The Iron Giant?
It seems that after a deer is killed by hunters (that's not the offensive
part), the boy Hogarth has a discussion with the giant where he claims, get
this, that animals have souls! Oh no, that's blasphemy! Where's
my crucifix to wave at the screen? But seriously, if anything has a
soul it is more likely to be animals than humans. Animals are not as
arbitrarily hateful and self-destructive as people. (Well, maybe cockatiels
are, but they have to be.)
It's official! Drakan will be in stores on the 20th, and I plan to
be in Best Buy on that day getting it and bringing it home to play.
Some ignorant people think that just because a game has a woman as the main
character, more guys will buy the game just so they can look at her.
Well, how do you account for the poor sales of Riana Rouge or Space Bunnies
Must Die? Those games both had busty women as main characters but since
they were bad games, nobody wanted them. Drakan is a good game with
good graphics and gameplay. Even the demo is so good it is still being
wildly discussed in the forums. The game Outcast is coming out around
the same time, so if you like adventure, look into it. You can get the
Outcast demo from the September issue of PC Gamer.
My Utah journal is done! WOOHOO! Now all I need to do is download
all my photos to the Internet and make captions for all of them. This
is gonna be so much fun I can hardly stand it. Too bad I have so much
homework, before school even starts, mind you, that I won't have any time
to play Drakan! Let's change that woohoo to a boo hoo.
I have Netscape Communicator 4.6 running under both Windows 95 on one computer
and Windows 98 on another, and they both get the same problem sometimes.
Occasionally, clicking on links will do nothing, and if you close all the
windows it thinks it's still running. You can fix this by pressing ctrl-alt-del
and if all the browser windows are closed and you still see Netscape on the
list of programs, select it and click end task, and then just wait a while.
A window will come up saying the program isn't responding. Click end
task on that window and start up Netscape again. Everything should
be back to normal.
The Sparrow's Nest has moved! Sparrowslain can now be found at her
new personal site, sparrowslain.8m.com.
One game she is recommending now is System Shock 2. I haven't played
the demo, so I couldn't tell you what I think of it, but it sounds promising.
It's a space action/adventure where you sneak through a ship and try to
outwit SHODAN, the evil computer. You also have to fight off a race
of organic beings and a bunch of killer robots like in other shooters.
My page currently remains under the Cloak of Invisibility, it seems.
But once I tell my class on Thursday that the Utah trip info can be found
right here, on my little page, the Sine Wave, my readership will at least
go up by 1 or 2 people. You couldn't even count that in the percentage
increase because you can't divide by zero. Tomorrow my trip page will
be done and you can see all 160 or so photos I have scanned in! You
can also read my journal, or at least part of it.
All of the graphics I have made and put on my site, except for the really
big ones, are GIFs instead of JPEGs. I've never really liked JPEGs.
Text in the image always has fuzzy stuff around it and if you look closely
you can see how everything is separated into little squares. Even though
there can be only 256 colors in a GIF, at least the transition is lossless.
I mention this because I had to convert all of the images on this page into
256 colors and you can see some dithering (blending of dots of two colors
to give the illusion of a color in between) in my Southern Utah Expedition
graphic.
I am starting the transition of my Utah journal from my logbook to the
Internet. You can click on the link on the left to look at it.
Soon I will have a photo gallery and a few new essays, plus the online chapter-by-chapter
review of the book Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, which I'm supposed to be
reading for school. It's about an ethnobotanist who goes off to some
other country and talks with people from tribes to try and get information
about medicines and herbs. I'm supposed to have it done by September
1, which means it'll be a while before you see anything about Nalenna's new
Nebula or Ethereal Light. I've made a promise to myself that I'd have
Nebula done by October 15, so you will definitely see it either on that day
or some time before.
I have a few pictures on the bottom of the links section that are actually
not on my server, but the servers for the national parks I've listed.
Does that make me a thief? Perhaps, but probably not, because I never
take credit for actually making those images. When you take a screenshot
from a video game or a movie, you are not "stealing" from the company that
owns it. Nor is it stealing to include links to other sites from your
own. Of course, my Utah photo gallery will be all pictures taken by
me and my tripmates. I just got some of those photos back. Some
of them didn't turn out, but most of them are okay. There are some pictures
worthy of turning into posters, and others worthy of being eaten by a chihuahua.
One word of advice: the Vivitar A35 is not a good camera. In fact,
it is a terrible, awful, and cursed camera. The first roll of film
I put into there didn't take pictures, even though it went through all the
motions. Same with the third roll. As for the second one... although
the great Vivitar says it's "splash-proof" and "water-resistant," when it
got dumped into the Colorado River the film disappeared, the inside was
foggy for a week, and the flash stopped working. So much for that camera.
Well, I didn't get to see Mystery Men today and I probably won't tomorrow
because I have a lot of rented movies that are due. Yesterday I wasted
my time by seeing one of the worst movies in history, McHale's Navy.
If the TV show was as bad as the movie I'm glad I grew up after its time.
It has no plot, bad acting, and all the scenes seem jumbled together.
It seemed like it could have been a much better movie if they had done it
right, but sadly they messed it up worse than the Haunting remake. I
have a lot of other stuff to do besides watch movies, like my trip report
and book notes. Homework before school even starts. What a life
I live...
I said I would be back and here I am, fresh from the canyons of the West,
with a new attitude, a broken camera, some great friends, and a peeling sunburn
on my ears where I forgot to put sunscreen. I'm in Minnesota once more,
away from the small ghost towns and tourist spots of Utah and Colorado.
About that broken camera - it's really kind of a funny story, and I'll tell
you all about it when I put up my Utah Journal on this site. First I
have to get my pictures back from the photo shop, and I won't have the panoramic
shots until Wednesday, so you won't see any of the more spectacular views
until then. I used to think America was completely urbanized and suburbanized
and that there were no more areas of noncommercial land to explore.
Now that I've been on this trip I realize that there are some pretty cool
vistas in our own country, such as the tall cliffs of the Kodachrome Basin,
the bumpy paths of Moab's Klondike Bluffs, and the treacherous slot canyons
of the Rockies. One of the coolest places I saw was the pseudo-marine
environment of the Great Salt Lake's Antelope Island, with its hills and
beaches that almost resemble a cartoon background. Other places have
become tourist traps, the worst being the racket that is Yellowstone National
Park, which should be called Yellowstone National Outdoor Shopping Mall.
The rainbow cliffs, geysers, and mud pools are incredible there, but the
campground is overly packed and there are gift shops everywhere. But
I guess that should be expected - Yellowstone is THE national park in America.
Most people have never even heard of Kodachrome.
I've missed a lot since the beginning of the month. I still have
yet to read all the new stuff on the Drakan forums, but I've read all the
info on the Sparrow's Nest, and it seems Sparrowslain is still looking forward
to Drakan, but she is also waiting for System Shock 2, the sequel to the underrated
first game. System Shock is a first-person shooter/RPG that was released
before Quake and has a lot of revolutionary ideas that only recently became
standard, like ducking and jumping, smart AI, and object manipulation.
Somebody e-mailed Sparrowslain, insulting her, and she flamed him, point-by-point,
on the front page. She's still making fun of Ravensoft's systems coordinator,
Kenn Hoekstra, for his ignorant speeches and management of the Heretic II
forums. Don't get on Sparrowslain's bad side, or else she will never
let you live it down. As for Drakan, it is officialy finished and will
be released on the 20th. Or maybe on the 18th. Whenever I see
it in Best Buy or Target - that is the only time I care about.
I haven't seen it yet but I've heard Mystery Men is good. It's an
action comedy about a city that is taken over by villains, and the official
hero has been captured, so they have to send in substitutes to rescue him
and defeat the forces of evil. Ben Stiller plays Mr. Furious, the leader
of the superhero wannabes, whose power is getting really mad. I'm going
to see it tomorrow. Roger Ebert didn't like it because he thought -
get this - the special effects were "too good." That's almost as dumb
as when one of my counselors on the trip said he didn't like Fleetwood Mac
because their songs were "almost good." Ebert liked the awful Haunting
remake but not Mystery Men. I just don't trust his reviews anymore.
I'm going to check my e-mail now that I'm back from Utah. Let's see
what people have been saying about my site! Here we go... ...
... ... well... ... ... um, it seems like I
have no new e-mails! That's weird. I must have misspelled my e-mail
address in the link at the bottom of the page or something. I just
sent an e-mail to myself through that link and I received it okay, so the
only answer is that nobody reads this page, or else nobody cares enough to
contact me! You know what that means? That means I can put anything
on this web page I want and nobody will be there to tell me off! But
if lightning strikes and word spreads about this page I could get in trouble,
so I'd better keep it G or at least PG-13 rated.
Tomorrow I'm going to start putting my record of the Utah trip on the Web.
I'm not going to entrust it to my high school, the School of Environmental
Studies, because I already got burned with the Florida site. When school
starts I'm going to, as Rage Against the Machine says, take the power back
and transfer the Florida trip report from there to here on the Sine Wave.
The image links on my Drakan preview are broken because the Drakan homepage
(www.drakan-game.com) has been removed!
It just gives an error about a page not being found on the server. The
images I have used are now "forbidden" to view on the Internet. I'll
keep them up until I know whether or not the page is gone forever or if it's
just temporarily malfunctioning or being reconstructed.
The images had actually just moved, so I added www. to the beginning of
the links and deleted the "drakan99/" part of the directory and now everything
is back to normal... I hope. Tomorrow I'll check all my other links
and update them as needed.
Well, this is it. My final news entry until August 15, when I return
from my field trip to Utah. When I get back I will check all my links
and do a full update of everything. I may even write another Nalenna
story about my trip, like I did with the Cannon River. I'm taking a
regular camera and 4 special disposable ones, so there will be no shortage
of pictures when I return. Until then, I will keep a light heart and
fond memories of Minnesota, but I will bring back new memories of my travels.
If I do a Utah web page, I'll put it on my server instead of doing it for
the school. I did a Florida trip web page but they still haven't put
it up yet. If you look under Field Experiences for my school (the SES),
you will find a page about Florida, but it is minimal and unfinished.
It doesn't even have photos of the campsites, cities, and animals.
A new company called Appeal has made an adventure game called Outcast.
I mention this because I played the demo and it has a lot of stuff I've never
seen before. Even though it's in a low resolution, the graphics are
3D-accelerator quality without actually requiring a 3D card. It has
full antialiasing, which is absent from even Unreal. Also, the landscapes
are made using voxel technology, which is totally different from most games,
which use textured polygons. Voxels need more disk space but offer some
advantages over polygons, like more rounded-looking mountains. I'll
have more on this game after the trip.
I don't have much time left to write anything, so I will say this: I will
return, and I will not give up on this web page. I'm sure there are
a lot of sites that started out like mine, and I hope word will spread about
The Sine Wave. So I bid you farewell, my friends, as I head off into
the canyons.