September 1999
September 29
I just realized that I started
both my entries for the previous two days with the word "Well", so I went
and fixed the earlier one. Variety is the spice of life. I
might not have an entry for tomorrow, though, because I'm camping out overnight
for a school activity called BioBlitz, where we study plants and animals
and do a lot of other fun stuff, but I've been really tired so my brain
didn't absorb all the information about it. So, I guess I'll take
it as it comes.
The Drakan patch is finally out,
and it really fixed up the multiplayer game. Most of the single player
quirks are still there, but multiplayer has really improved a lot, especially
the ground game. The magic attacks are less powerful, so now you
can't just camp by the thunder hammer and zap your opponents to smithereens.
And Master of the Dragon - even with only 2 or 3 players, it's fun, but
I'll really need to see it with 6 to 8 before I can judge it.
Well, it's been another long
day. I still have to catch up on Last Chance to See, but I didn't
even get that done today. There's not really much to say - I played
some more Commodore emulated stuff, and I finally got Omicron to work.
That's another Compute's Gazette game that I used to talk about all the
time in the fifth grade. You control a ship that you thrust around
with the control pad or stick and bounce around a ring while destroying
whirling blue things before they turn into yellow destroyers.
It was homecoming coronation
day at Eastview today, a traditional ceremony for a school too young to
have tradition. I won't bore you with the details, but my trip there
saved me from having to take a test on the book Last Chance to See without
reviewing my notes. Last Chance to See was written by Douglas Adams
and Mark Carwardine in the 1980s, and it's about their travels into Africa
to observe and study endangered species. The second chapter was about
the Komodo dragon, which is the largest lizard in the world, over twelve
feet in length, with strong jaws and a venomous bite. Few people
have survived a dragon attack.
Speaking of dragon attacks, I
can sense that the Drakan patch is near, and then the multiplayer will
be fixed. I heard it's really a lot of fun now that they've reduced
the power of magic attacks, so people can't just camp in the middle of
the Sanctuary with a thunder hammer. The bows and arrows are more
powerful as well. I remember once I was playing against Sageous,
one of the developers at Surreal, and he told me that the blue arrows were
useless against someone with dragon armor. Well, they're not now,
so be prepared for some flying fury on the floating island.
I downloaded some more Commodore
emulations of games I used to have, but none of them can yet hold a candle
to the masterpiece that is Crossroads II. This game is so fun, I'm
wasting all my time with it instead of doing other stuff. I'm really
sorry, but that's how good it is! Here, let me explain it to you:
from the intro screen, you're seeing a digital representation of Darwinism
in action. Creatures spawn into the world, and then they start attacking
different species, but not their own. This is happening with upwards
of 40 monsters on the screen at all times, and they all use their own AI
code simultaneously. Eventually enough creatures have been destroyed
in a cloud of dust and only the strongest remain, racing through the map
at breakneck speed (it gets REALLY fast after a while) picking up all the
remaining powerups.
It's Sunday night again, and
you know what that means. Time to change my intro line yet again.
I also added this vertical line in between the two main sections.
I've been trying to send Sparrowslain an e-mail, but the server keeps rejecting
me and sending it back. I don't know what the problem is, but from
what I can tell, the 8m server doesn't recognize the username. I
used to be able to get through just fine - what happened?
The Drakan story now has a title
graphic, but I haven't been able to add much lately. I've had to
read stories instead of writing them. The latest assignment for AP
Lit class is a James Joyce story called Araby. It's a weird little
tale of a boy who is infatuated with his friend's sister, so when she mentions
a bazaar called Araby to him, he gets on a train and goes there, and then
he realizes he's driven by vanity. I know people have been complaining
about Drakan's anticlimactic ending, but Araby's ending really doesn't
wrap anything up at all. If you really want a challenge, try reading
another one of Joyce's works called Finnegans Wake. It took 17 years
for him to finish, and it's 700 pages long, and it appears on the surface
to be nothing but gibberish. But once you look deeper into the story,
you'll find out it's somewhat profound gibberish.
There's a little battle of words
going on at the Drakan forum between the Immortals and the Blood that Binds.
It's actually pretty funny, rather than being just another flame war.
You can check it out here.
I hope the patch comes out soon so more orders can play against each other
and we can see some real challenge. I'm not in an order, though -
too much school stuff to do. But such is life...
After much searching and snooping,
I finally found an emulator for an old Commodore 64 game I used to play
called Crossroads II. I searched in Yahoo for "commodore" and followed
the links to the Frodo emulator, and then I went here
to get the game files. Crossroads II was only available in
the December 1988 issue of Compute's Gazette magazine, and it was one of
my favorite games and arguably one of the best games of all time, no kidding!
All the graphics were 8x8 pixels, and they weren't even sprites, they were
modified text characters. You played as a person with a laser rifle,
and the goal was to shoot enemies and collect whirling things called "spars"
to build up your shields and go on to the next level. Here's a screenshot:
Yes! Friday is upon us,
and now I can finally get some sleep for my weary mind and body.
But first I have to get my music, the two Drakan level themes that aren't
playable from the CD, onto my site. First, I record the music as
CD quality .wav files, and then I convert them to smaller ones compressed
in MP3 format. I'm sure few people will actually want the music,
though...
My news entries have been pretty
shallow this week due to my lack of sleep. I've only gotten about
4 hours a night, which is half of how much I'm supposed to get. But
I'll probably be staying up even later when the Drakan patch is released
and it doesn't freeze up whenever I try to play Master of the Dragon.
I really want to play in that mode because being the dragonrider is where
I shine. It's cool to be on the dragon and have everyone fight against
you.
I tried playing Quake 2 today.
I haven't even patched it yet and it still works better than Unreal.
The weapons are better, too, which is better for multiplayer. There's
no automatic Quake 2 server, so you need to have an address book of sites
to look. Unreal has a server finder, but when I try to use it, it
crashes my computer. Unreal has so many problems on my computer,
it's not even funny.
The D3D version of the Unreal
Tournament demo is available, but I'm waiting for the latest PC Gamer to
see if they have it. Supposedly, they totally redid the code to Unreal
to make it playable on the Internet. It's a contest between that
and Quake 3 Arena to see which will be the more popular multiplayer-specific
game. There seem to be a lot of MP games lately. I guess people
are tired of writing lines for computer-controlled characters in games,
or it's another fad to cash in on.
I read over on the Drakan forum
that Microsoft DirectX 7 is available now. I just downloaded it,
and I'm going to see if it makes a difference in game performance.
People are saying that it has little difference on most new games, but
old ones that used to be slow now go faster.
I took the ACT test last year,
in April, and I still haven't gotten my scores yet. I have a feeling
they lost my test or misplaced it or something, and it's really important
that I get those scores. It's so blurred in my mind along with a
sea of other numbers I have to remember. How did people survive back
in the past, before they had all these numbers to assign to everyone?
I think numbers were just invented to give people more labels to remember.
And the flames continue in the
Drakan forum. Some psychotic former programmer - I won't say his
name because that would just give him attention, which is what he wants
- is spewing his bile all over the place and ruining an otherwise interesting,
courteous gathering of ideas. Today he was saying the same old racist
and insulting remarks, and I decided that was enough. I removed all
my posts from the topics he started. Sometimes if you ignore a problem,
it'll go away. I hope this one does.
I have more photos from the Utah
trip, this time from Emily. I'll scan them in on Friday when I have
some time. I'm also going to change it so the page for each photo
opens in a new window, which will make it easier for people because they'll
only have to load all the thumbnails once.
I wrote more of my Drakan story
today. I'm now up to the part where Rynn gets Atimar's book and goes
into the cathedral to get the soul crystal. It takes surprisingly
long to describe the most basic parts of a story, I've noticed. The
Drakan patch is coming very soon, and I can't wait to play deathmatch with
more than 4 people. Maybe I should write a story about that, too...
I am so not ready to turn in
all my Plotkin stuff. I put off my summary report until the last
minute, and it's due tomorrow, and yet here I am at 12:35 after midnight
typing this instead of doing my work. I've already done the "main
stuff"; now all I need is to organize it. So, I can't do this anymore...
so I bid adieu to all.
Whoops, I forgot to change my
tag line yesterday, so here it is today. I've been thinking more
about my seemingly unstartable project, Ethereal Light. I have such
ambitions for that game, it's not even funny. Do you think ambition
can be the killer of something which could be good? I don't even
have the tools to create a good game - most developers have 3D Studio Max
and a bunch of other fancy development programs. What do I have?
C++ Builder 3.0, which is not even the latest version. So we can
rule out the idea of EL being a competitor in the graphics and sound department.
I guess I could have the story going for it, because most games only have
a minimal story.
I remember when there was a show
on TV called Roar. It had an interesting plot, good characters, and
spectacular visuals. And it only lasted for one season. Roar
was one of the best shows, a saving grace from the bland apartment sitcoms
and crime dramas infesting the rest of the air time, and it remained relatively
unknown until it just... faded away. Now, as I look at the fall TV
lineup, I only see a few shows that I might even want to glance at.
Maybe that has its upside - I mean, TV is a wasteland, pandering to the
lowest common denominator while bombarding us with annoying songs to try
to get us to buy their products. We all know the song, "Fresh goes
better with Mentos fresheners..." and it's lurking in our subconscious
minds. It's the Evil Empire. But Roar was such a good show...
We had a test in school on the
book Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice. This time, it actually focused
on the themes, and I was able to put my notes to good use. I was
asked to write about one theme, and I chose the indigenous cultures.
After Mark Plotkin, the author, finished his studies, he worked with the
interpreters and shamans to form Shaman Pharmaceuticals, which studies
and uses medicines derived from rainforest materials. They even have
a web page, www.shaman.com.
I tried playing the Drakan multiplayer
game Master of the Dragon today. I got the dragon twice and scored
24 kills before the game crashed and I had to reboot the whole computer.
Oh well... it's fun while it lasts... I think Master of the Dragon could
be a lot more fun with 8 people. But I guess we're going to have
to wait for the patch for the Winsock play instead of the lousy Directplay.
Speaking of dragons, if Peter
Dragon from Fox's new sitcom Action is any example of the kind of character
we'll be seeing in the new millennium, then we're heading toward destruction
for sure. Don't get me wrong - sometimes I enjoy that kind of in-your-face
attitude, but that show just sends out bad vibes. But maybe it's
supposed to do that. Action is kind of funny, but I wouldn't want
to see too many shows like it. It's bad enough having all the Friends
clones on the networks.
I'm sorry for being so negative
today, but I've been having this feeling that lately the world has been
turning back toward intolerance and stereotyping. It's mostly on
TV, with the all-white lineup on NBC and the stupid jokes on the zombie
sitcoms. But it seems to be everywhere these days. In the comics,
there's a new one called "The Boondocks" featuring our friend racism, and
"Cathy" has been regurgitating its stereotypes for ages now. On the
Drakan forums, a new flamer is spewing schizophrenic insults and controversy
at everyone. In the movies, well, I'm not so sure about that.
At least the movies are getting more diverse roles. But the place
I've seen it is in the place I spend a lot of my time these days: the good
old School of Environmental Studies. There's no intolerance, but
there are stereotypes up the wazoo. If I have to read one more "I'm
a white man leaving 'civilization' for the woods - here's my reflection
on life" story I'm going to be sick. For example, early last year
they assigned The River Why and A River Runs Through It, which is fishing,
not hunting, but it's the same idea. Then they gave us Walden, by
Thoreau, and Encounters with the Archdruid. Those are all very good
books, but I want to see something from a point of view besides those of
a white male. At least they gave us Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
of the Ibo people in Africa, and this year we're going to read Ceremony
by Leslie Marmon Silko, a Native American woman. But I get the feeling
that the school is just adding those as tokens... or maybe I'm just seeing
things that aren't there. It's late, and I'm tired, so it's probably
the latter. zzz...
I'm not even finished with the
first part of the first level in my Drakan story. I've included the
drunken orc with the liquor jug and the cave by the ocean, but I left out
the parts about Duncan's axe and the orc in the outhouse. I'm trying
to make the story so that it's not so obvious that it comes from a video
game.
Well, it seems Drakan fever is
dying off and there aren't as many posts on that forum as there used to
be. All the regulars are still there, and there are the same old
questions about the runeblade, the grimstone mine generator, etc., but
there's a decrease in the amount of excitement over this game and the level
of creative spirit. Lately it's been a lot of speculation about the
upcoming patch. The editor feels like it'll come far into the future
because the patch isn't even out yet. I made another mod, this time
making the game easier instead of harder.
I have so much stuff due for
school, it isn't even funny. I should get more done during my free
time, but I have to balance my real life time and my Internet time.
I haven't been getting much e-mail today, but I guess that's no different
from most days. Nobody's given me any feedback on my Quake mods or
Doom levels yet, but I'll always be waiting.
As long as we're in our fit of
nostalgia, reviving old games with new mods, I thought I would put up some
Doom levels that I made over 4 years ago. They are five main levels
plus one "bonus" short level. Just a note: these levels do not work
in multiplayer. At all. But I guess if people want to play
other people, they would have at least Quake, preferably Quake 2 (but not
Unreal, its net play is terrible). Each of my levels has a different
theme. I've noticed that some of them don't work on all computers.
I made them for The Ultimate Doom, which has the extra episode. I'm
sure you can find a patch on one of the Doom sites.
I finally got around to playing
the System Shock 2 demo, and is that game ever complicated! I spent
the first half hour completing training and the second half hour running
around on the ship, trying to figure out all the controls. Then I
got killed a bunch of times by the Hybrids, and if it wasn't them it was
the gun turrets. It's a hard game, but it is truly immersive.
Things are going on all around you, and there is a lot to take in.
If I had to compare it to any other games, I would say it's a cross between
Metroid, Myst, Daggerfall, and Quake, taking the best qualities of those
games and putting them into one. It's made by Looking Glass, the
same company that made Thief: the Dark Project, and it uses the same 3D
engine.
I started writing the Drakan
story, and you know the saying "a picture is worth a thousand words"?
Well, that's kind of true, because I'm not even done with the intro scene
yet. I fear the game may not translate well into a book the way it
is, so I'm taking a few liberties with the story. For example, in
the game, Rynn's hometown is not mentioned by name, but the legends say
it used to be part of Mt. Tibor, so I called it Tiboria.
"Better late than never" is a
good motto, and it certainly applies to what I've just put on this site:
Quake mods from 2 years ago. Not Quake 2, but the original Quake.
I would have put them on here sooner but I didn't think anyone would be
interested. I also made a file for Drakan that makes the game harder
by reducing the potency of health potions and making weapons less durable.
I read on the forum that some people thought the game was too easy, especially
the second time around, and that they were waiting for Nightmare mode in
the patch. This is the next best thing.
Guess what? Some other
pre-editor editors on the forum liked my Elemental Blade mod, so now they're
awaiting more as soon as the editor arrives. I can't wait until I
can make my own levels, because I have my own vision as well as the Drakan
level designers. First, I'll find a way to make Arokh more involved
in the game. Then I'll get rid of all the pointless crusher and jumping
puzzles. That reminds me... I didn't get a chance to start on that
story because I was busy doing homework and putting up my Quake files.
I'll start on it tomorrow.
I just went to the meeting at
the School of Environmental Studies about my upcoming trip to Costa Rica.
It won't be for a while now - it starts March 1 - so I have plenty of time
to get ready for it. My last trip was to southern Utah, and we did
a lot of camping and endless hiking. This time, they say there won't
be any camping at all! That means no more pitching a tent in the
bitter cold of the night on the fire ant-infested ground! I doubt
there will be bitter cold anywhere this time, as it is a marine climate,
much like Florida. Speaking of that, now that I'm in school again,
it's my chance to, like Rage says, "take the power back" and get my Florida
trip page on this site. If you look on the SES home page, http://www.isd196.k12.mn.us/Schools/ses/,
you will see that it hasn't been updated very well. I manage to keep
my site updated better than that, and I'm only one person! I'm not
insulting the school - it's an excellent school, but its web site needs
some work.
It's time to get real, and by
real, I mean serious about Drakan. I'm going to start writing a story
based on the game, and it will have screenshots as illustrations. After
I write the story, I'll add on to the end of the game. I'm thinking:
Rynn and Arokh catch Delon, but not in time to escape being sucked in by
the rift. They are warped to the continent across the sea from Rynn's
homeland, and Arokh crashes into the ground and his wings are injured,
so he can't fly for a while. So they walk across the land, which
looks kind of like the Islands level, and they discover that this place
is... the Homeworld of the Giants! I'll think of more later, when
I finish the original story.
I found a much better source
of plot spoilers in movies: the site for parents called ScreenIt.
This site gives every juicy scene in each movie, including almost the entire
plot of Stir of Echoes. At least they didn't give away the twist
to The Sixth Sense...
I finished my first Drakan hex
editing project today: a modification of the first weapon that makes it
more powerful and gives it fire and lightning powers. It's called
the Elemental Blade, and I've added it to my Drakan links. Don't
try to use it in multiplayer, though, or the servers will reject your game.
I've considered making my brother
a part of this web site, but he seems too interested in playing Darius
to do anything else. I don't know who else would be willing to write
stories and make games for free to put on this page. I could start
collecting Drakan mods when the editor is out, and recommending them to
people. That will mean more quality content and more time to work
on my own games.
I know you hate to hear me say
this, but... there's no news today. I have been trying to hex edit
the Drakan resource file, and now I've changed the starting weapon into
an all-powerful Dagger of Destruction. This is what I do while I
wait for the editor to be released. I hope it's a really good editor
that lets you do a lot of things besides just make levels.
I don't really have a paragraph
for that headline, I just need some filler to make up for the fact that
I don't have much to say today. Or I could make up something about
someone I know from the Utah trip, Eli, being in a band. You see,
it's called the Purple Hermans, but Eli proposed a bunch of name changes.
That part is true, but I'm going to say one of them is Cinnamon Sin.
That's kind of a cool name, don't you think?
Nalenna. What can you say?
A name that doesn't make sense, and I haven't updated it in so long.
I've had enough time to work on stuff, so there should be something else
there. But there isn't, and that's the problem. Nalenna is
suffering because of this daily journal, and my constant visit to the Drakan
forums. I think I need to focus harder and maybe get a second person
working on all this.
Time to change my quote again.
Today I read this weird story by William Faulkner called "A Rose for Emily"
and I think the whole thing was a symbol for something else but I can't
quite figure out what. I know Faulkner wrote a lot of stuff about
the Civil War and life around that era, so I think it might have something
to do with the North and South. The story was about a reclusive woman
who was snobby and arrogant and refused to do anything, and after she died,
visitors got to see her room. This was for my AP Literature class,
and if the rest of the stuff I have to read is so strangely symbolic, I
don't know what I'll do.
Nothing new really on the Drakan
forums. We're still talking about bugs in the game, when the patch
is coming out, etc. While I'm looking forward to the patch for better
net play, I really can't wait to get the editor and start making my own
levels. I made a few Doom levels back when it was popular, but I
never actually put them on the Internet. If you want to try them
out, e-mail me about it.
My brother is always playing
Darius on the new computer, and it doesn't run on the old one, so I tried
installing Drakan on the old computer so I could play it. My old
computer is a Pentium 133 with a Voodoo Rush card. First I had to
delete a bunch of games to make room for it. After I installed it
and opened the program, the screen started going funny, and I remembered
that some systems require the desktop to be set at 16 bit color.
After restarting the computer and changing the settings, I tried Drakan
again and it worked! The screen was too dark, so I turned the contrast
and brightness up to almost the full level. The frame rate was around
5-15 FPS, not good but not totally unplayable.
I saw Stir of Echoes today, which
is another ghost story. It was really good, and a lot creepier than
The Sixth Sense. There were more disturbing visions and hallucinations,
and a lot more of the psychological horror that was lacking in other horror
movies (like the Haunting remake). Horror movies seem to be very
popular now, starting with Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer,
and with a lot of new ones on the horizon, like Stigmata, Bats, and Scream
3.
It's Friday, and I feel like
I have some control back in my life. Next week I'll be able to do
that forest plot thing, and I'll get all my homework finished and ready
to go. When I get some excitement in my life, I'll add more to this
page, but for now, this is all I have to say. The same thing every
entry: things are going slow. Do I really need to update this every
day? Oh well, I'll do it anyway.
I'm thinking about changing the
name of my writings and games page from Nalenna to something else because
Nalenna really doesn't make much sense. I always said it came from
the Japanese word "narenai", but the truth is I just made it up one day.
The new name has yet to be thought up, but it should be something understandable
and at least a little memorable.
Well, it's finally settled: this
year, I'm totally out of control. My school schedule is so hectic,
and I have a bunch of stuff that I'm not really sure about, like a study
on a little section of land in the forest. I've been missing out
on that a lot. I'm sure glad I don't have any AP classes tomorrow,
or else I'd miss the project entirely.
This is the first day since 1988
that all the digits in the numerical representation of the date are all
identical. And I didn't do anything to celebrate! No special
parties, no special announcements on this page... nothing! Oh well...
I still have at least a month to work on Nebula, but really, the only one
enforcing that deadline is me. I should be working on the game more
and playing Drakan less, but like I said, I'm a lazy lizard and I get bored.
You'll see the game... that's a promise. A real one, not a vaporware
industry one. Because The Sine Wave will never be an industry page.
Not much happening lately.
Most of the Drakan servers are full, and now I'm just trying out stuff
in single player. Most of the forum questions are like "how do I
get the runeblade" and "I'm stuck in the islands," but there have been
some good topics lately. Lately I've been a bit curious about the
seemingly unsatisfying ending, and whether there might be another.
Everyone says there isn't, but since the Surreal team hasn't spoken up
on the matter, I'm not so sure.
I've been reading some theories
about the universe in the school library, and there's some pretty weird
stuff. One interesting theory is that life is just one in an infinite
series of dreams, and that each dream level gets more and more disorderly.
For example, when we're dreaming, we don't realize it at the time, and
when we wake up, we remember the dream being illogical and random.
Well, what if we were characters in the dreams, and when we die, our dreamers
wake up and, compared to their universe, our lives seemed illogical and
random as well? There are a lot of phenomena left to be explained,
and it seems that with each discovery we make, there are more possibilities
for new ones than there ever were. It's a strange theory, but intriguing.
Well, my book report notes were
worthless. The school gave us a quiz where none of the questions
had anything to do with the six topics they told us to focus on.
I'm never trusting them again. Lately I've been playing Drakan multiplayer
a lot, but it keeps crashing and lagging. The patch should fix things
right up.
The TV Guide with the fall scheduling
came today, and it looks like it's going to be the same old stuff rehashed
into a slightly different setting. You've got your apartment sitcoms,
your family dramas, your primetime soaps, and your new animation effort.
Has every good idea on TV been taken, or are networks just afraid to go
for new stuff? The show Harsh Realm looks interesting, but none of
the sitcoms appear to be worth their air time.
My new game, Nebula, will be
a space-style shooter in first-person view, with you aiming a laser cannon
and shooting asteroids, enemies, and enemy shots. I haven't even
started on it yet, but I promise you it will be ready by October 15, no
question about it. About Ethereal Light: I don't even know if I'll
be able to finish that one. It's just too ambitious, and I'm only
one person, not a team of skilled developers. I should be able to
write more about the plot, though, so check back on the Nalenna page every
once in a while.
Today was Labor Day, so there
was no school, but it's a good thing I read Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice
because the notes are due tomorrow. They said have it ready by the
first day of school, but I guess not enough people did. I fear I
won't do so well in school this year, because I have a tendency to procrastinate
and put everything off. It's really late, so I'd better get some
sleep...
Well, it's Sunday night, and
time to change the line at the top of this page. Not much else to
talk about, though. I've been posting on the Drakan forums that sometimes
the fog is a little off, and how the gore level affects the gameplay instead
of just being for censorship. I'm playing through the game again,
and I think I've found all the secrets.
Yesterday I saw The Thomas Crown
Affair. Apparently, it is a remake of a movie from the 70s, and it's
about a businessman who is also a thief and the woman who chases after
him. It's a cat and mouse type of story, and it has a few plot twists
to keep the story interesting. There was some humor, but like Bowfinger,
it was more sophisticated than juvenile gross-out gags.
There's one Drakan review so
far that doesn't mention Tomb Raider, but nobody has e-mailed me about
it yet. I put some suggestions on the forums, but people seem to
be able to sense unpopularity and steer clear of anything I've written.
Whenever I post, the topic will be devoid of further posts until it reaches
the archives. I don't know why this is happening - maybe Zeoc isn't
a memorable name?
Okay, maybe "loathe" is too strong
a word. It's more like "don't think it's as good as it should be."
Their main problem is with the multiplayer, which is buggy and crashes
with more than 4 players. Surreal is releasing a patch to fix that,
as well as other problems. They're also releasing an editor, which
I hope gets here soon so I can work on my own levels and weapons.
(That is, when I'm not programming Nebula... heh heh heh...)
The reviews for Drakan are coming
in fast and furious, and the reviews are pretty much all good except for
ones that are written by Tomb Raider fanatics. Everyone compares
Drakan to Tomb Raider just because the main characters are slightly similar,
and they always draw other comparisons too, even though they are very different
games. In fact, I'm going to have a little contest: If you can find
just one review of Drakan that doesn't mention Tomb Raider or Lara Croft,
I'll give you... um... well, I'll put your name on this page and call you
the Ultimate Internet Champion, and you get bragging rights.
You know who gets offended by
South Park? A lot of people. You know who gets offended by
my page bashing the Movie Morality Ministries? Nobody. That's
one joy of anonymity - you can say whatever you want and no one will be
offended. The Sparrow's Nest gets about 70 hits a day; so far I've
gotten about 0.01 hits a day (just counting any e-mail I get; there could
be thousands of lurkers seeing this right now). I must admit that
I'm one of those 70 hits a lot of the time. I don't have a counter
for this page anymore...
School's turning out to be okay,
as long as I can keep all my assignments ready and on time. But I'm
too much into other stuff, like this web page, to keep my concentration
on my homework! Speaking of that, I really don't have anything to
tell you today. Really, my mind is blank. Peace out.
Well, it's the end of one era
and the beginning of another as we head into September and yet another
month is put into the archives. Today was my first day of school
as a senior in the School of Environmental Studies, and it was really weird.
First they made us do all these group activities and take personality tests,
and then they gave us this total crock of an article on niches to read.
It started out talking about how every species has its niche, and it said
that breeding methods have little to do with how many of a species there
are. Then it goes on to describe the breeding strategies, even though
they are way off topic, and it does a lame job of trying to tie it all
together at the end. Also, it says that humans are the best niche-fitters,
when in fact we're one of the worst, and that's why we have to change our
environment all the time.
It's time to say goodbye to sleep
and hello to crankiness, and after that, madness. So brace yourselves
in the coming month for the Adaptation of Zeoc to the School Schedule.
Ha ha... the flying monkeys are coming to get me! Hey, who are you
looking at? I thought so! Okay, I'm really tired now, so I'll
just go to bed...