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I just saw the movie Hostel, and like most new horror movies it involves college kids going somewhere they probably shouldn't.  In this movie, some kids go to a country I won't name to get some action.  Things go better than planned and before you know it the helpless kids are getting tortured by masked assailants.  The plot isn't anything new to me but the gore was substantially better than anything I've seen in the past decade.   I  went to see this with a few teenage friends of mine, for what reasons I will not name but in general I had a pretty good time watching this movie but it wasn't anyting new or exciting.  I give it a 7.5 out of 10.

I work at a local Wal-Mart, and today I was just fired.  My manager called me to the manager's office and said she wanted to go over the new schedule with me.  A co-manager was there with her that wanted to talk to me.  She told me that they suspected that employees may be stealing products from the store.  Now, that day I had bought some food to eat from the deli.  I went to go pay for it on the register that my friend worked at.  He told me that he couldn't ring in my products.  So, I talked to him for a little.  I forget that I hadn't paid for it; it happens, you know?  I go to the break room to eat my food, but they are having a meeting.  So, I eat my food in the bathroom.  I finish eating my food in the stall, but forget to throw out the bag that I got the food in.  Later that night, like I said before, my manger called me to the office and the co-manager said I was being fired for stealing.  Goshdarn, they are pretty friggin' strict these days.  I told them I'd pay for whatever it was that I forget to pay for.  They said, "No, it doesn't work that way."  So, I'm unemployed, I'm drunk and feeling sorry for myself and I don't know what to do.  On the form confirms my unemployment, it says and I quote, "Fired for stealing a pizza stick."  They are pretty much a pizza hotpocket that the deli cooks up and serves.  Let this be a lesson to you: don't steal from the company you work from.  Although I didn't intentionally steal it, I got fired nonetheless.  Have a nice day.

I was on my way to the supermarket this morning, and on the lane that takes you to 101 west, a truck drove past me that said on the side, "North east building: Our erections last longer."

Anyone else see anything like this?

http://www.gamingnexus.com/Article.asp?ID=2&page=1

Wow.  That's all I have to say about that.

Form your own opinions.

(And let me say that all five of those games are my favorites too.)

Dear sir,
 this mail will definitely be coming to you as a surprise, but i must
crave
your indulgence to introduce myself to you.
  I am Miss Marah sadija, former mistress to the son (Qusay) of the
Iraqi former leader, Saddam Hussein.
 I am an Ethiopian, by birth and i am presently in a refugee camp in
Zimbabwe, where the living conditions are unbearable.
  I do not wish to take your time with a lenghty mail, but i have to put
this proposal to you so that you can assist me.
       While i was still in contact with Qusay,he made a deposit in my name
to a security firm in Spain, which has an affiliate branch in
Amsterdam.
This deposit was made in my name and the secret code and necessary
documents
are presently in the possession of an attorney, presently in London.
  This deposit was made in the form of a consigment and the content is

a
considerable amount of money in United state dollars which i cannot disclose
to you for security purposes, until you have confirmed your willingness to
assist me.
 I would be pleased and grateful to you if you could assist me in
collecting this consignment on my behalf from the security firm in Spain,
upon which i will be offering you a percentage for your efforts.
 The attorney in London, will arrange an authority to release and pay in
your name which you will tender to the security firm coupled with all
necessary documents that will back up your claims in collecting this
consignment on my behalf.
 I have to stop here now as your response will determine our
subsequent corresspondence. Please feel free to dis-regard this
proposal if it is not in line with your principles.
For security reasons please reply to marahsadija@netscape.net

Allah bless you,
Marah Sadija.

The crap people send you these days.  Like every refugee camp has a computer with a modem.

It seems that in these days, any form of multimedia, comfort, or entertainment that I like, is viewed by the general public as sucking horribly and completely stupid.  If I like rock music, it sucks, and only hip-hop is good.  If I like Fruit Loops, Cherrios are better.  If I like big-breasted woman with blonde hair and a small ass, impossibly large-breasted brunette woman with big, fat asses are the way to go?  Also, why do people feel the need to TELL me that what they like is better?  If it's so better, why do I like it?  I'm a reasonably intelligent human being, so it can't be because I'm a complete moron.  Why is nudity on TV so offensive, but large men in tight pants and shoulder pads slamming into each other, breaking each other's bones and causing life long crippiling injuries any better?  It seems that a guy getting shot in the face is more acceptable and intelligent than a sexual innuendo.  Every movie that I like is deemed stupid, inferior, unoriginal, and such, but what everyone else likes is better.  Why is it that a gay guy doesn't like being called a fag, but I don't care if I'm called a lazy, good for nothing, dirty french moron?  Why is it that I have no class?  Why is it that I have no taste?  Why is it that everyone seems better than me?  Why?

In this competition, your goal is to add text to the speach and/or thought bubbles to add a story behind the comic. You can make it funny, serious, or whatever, but try to keep it reasonably clean and intelligent. Your comic for this week is:



Have fun, thy brotheren.

The other day, I was flipping the channels and landed on Mad TV.  The current skit was of an easier to make meatloaf which was also supposed to be fun to make, I think.  Anyway, after the introduction and explanation, you see a man pour the powder into a bowl with water, milk and some eggs, then hold the bowl down below the counter and proceed to beat the meat violently.  It then cut away to a mother walking to her two kids who are playing at the kitchen table and ask them both which one of them wants to beat their meat.  It then ends with the title of the product, and a close up of the man shaking his beating hand and trying to catch his breath.  

What is your favorite skit from your favorite show of the same sort (i.e Saturday Night Live)?

I just got this very confusing email.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ATTN,
Dear love one,

MY name is george mamadou age 27 a student of computer science.

I am writing with deep sorrow and weeping concerning my condition of living here.
My life is in danger crying for your help in a family of seven (7) concerning the death of my father and brother. My father is Dramane mamadou a well known rich man. we are occupaying a small village near abidjan capital city of (cote d ivoire) being a well known cocao and coffe producer a transporter, gold and diamond dealer.

The sudden disapearation of our father and brother brought our family separation from each other, but for me I am with my uncle at bassam a town close to abidjan. On the 9th of may my father was arrested by unknown soldiers at about 8pm when we were taking our dinner in the presence of our mother and his children they kill him and his body were not seen till today, after his arresting my elder brother 30, went in search of him was beaten and he became parallised of which he later died in the hospital here.

On the night my father was arrested, the soldiers looted our home took away my father coffre-fort (save) contaning his jewelries and money valued over fifty five million fca (55,000,000fca) it was after the second raiding of our home that I ran away because these men raped my younger sister age 17 and turtured my mother becaused she resisted in opening the family safe, still mouring for the death of her husband and son on her sick bed she revealed the family WILL, which is my purpose of writing.

For we northerners have been marginalised in this country and my father been a rich man from the northern side was assasinated out of greediness by his business/political opponents, with the intention of claiming his wealth, and they succeded even his younger brother was murderd also.
Now I am afraid becaused of my age I don't know what to do I discoverd in my father's will that he deposited Seven Million Dollars ($7,000,000.00) for the family now I am the only hope of the family.

My sick mother and my sister's situation lead to my surferings now, due to the political situation in this country, I have to leave my education to support my poor family, the condition here is too bad for us, we are refugee in our mothers land for now and I don't know when this will be over, unless you help us but now we have decided to seek for your assistance to provide us with the account where the money will be transfered to as our father's foreign partner.

Because of my age, I don't know what to do. If we don't do something now we may also lose this money, so we need an external Asissitance that will present as our father's foriegn business partner for the claim of the money, PARDON if you can help my family out from this by asissting us for the transfer and investment in your country, you will have your reward and percentage is negotiable and this is our only hope for now.

Please help us confidentialy as you can and God will bless you and your family.

Yours sincerly

mamadou and Family.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't know what to make of this.  Should I reply or just ignore it?  It doesn't appair to be spam and the email address proves he is who he says he is.

Can't see why he's looking to me for help.  He's older than me, and nowhere near me.  It's not a mistake of address; he sent it to roberteric@rain-day.com.

In this competition, your goal is to add text to the speach and/or thought bubbles to add a story behind the comic. You can make it funny, serious, or whatever, but try to keep it reasonably clean and intelligent. Your comic for this week is:



Have fun, my children.

In this competition, your goal is to add text to the speach and/or thought bubbles to add a story behind the comic.  You can make it funny, serious, or whatever, but try to keep it reasonably clean and intelligent.  Your comic for this week is:



Thanks to EvenWolf for the image.  If you do not have enough room to write what you need to, just resize it with your favorite image editing program.

This will close on 1/21/04.  Good luck.

I think I once saw a caption contest on the competition forum, but since no one is doing one now, would anyone be opposed to me starting one?  It'll be a hell of a lot more interesting than my Programming contest  :

I just bought a DVD/CD burner drive, and I've been having some problems.  First, why does it take so long to convert an AVI to MPEG-2 (720x480)?  In the program that came with it, it said that it would take eight hours to transcode it to the format.  The file was 588mb, and the resulting file size is estimated to be about 6 gigs.  Can someone give me a little helpful info?

I've recently been going through all my old CDs, wishing that they were not scratched beyond recognition and still playable, when I started my search for effective methods on CD scratch repairing.

Cleaning your CDs
-------------------------------------
First, you must wash the CD off in cold water.  After you have thoroughly doused it, get a lint free, abrasion proof cloth and rub the CD from the center of the disk to the end.  Do this all around the disk until it is dry.

Removing minor scratches
-------------------------------------
There are many good professional scratch repair kits out in the market today, but if you're as lazy or crafty as I, you'll want to find a way to do it yourself at home, with home materials and chemicals.  You'll most likely have a bottle of rubbing alcohol at your house, but if you don't, you can get it from your corner drug store for a couple of bucks, or shillings.  First, rinse the CD off in cold water.  When it's nice and wet, put the folded cloth over the bottle tightly, then tip it long enough for the cloth to soak up a sufficient amount of alcohol.  Put the CD on a flat, hard surface and rub the cloth from the center of the disk to the end, all the way around.  Change the pressure you are applying according to the severity of the scratches.  Then, rinse the CD off in cold water.  Rub it off with a cloth to dry.

Removing major scratches
-------------------------------------
Rinse your CD off in cold water.  When it's nice and wet, rub some toothpaste on it.  Trust me, it'll work.  Rub the toothpaste in it good, then with that cloth I had you used to clean it, wipe the toothpaste from the center of the disk out.  After that, rinse it off again with cold water.  Never use hot water, or it'll cause serious damage to your porn...er, game CD, or whatever...

If it still doesn't work, try again, or get a scratch repair kit.  If it still doesn't work, I hope the CD wasn't something important.

I have a good deal of free time now, so I'm considering writing a book, novel, short story or something.  After my recent novel binge (I can't help it, I'm addicted), I have been considering writing about a little topic that's been haunting my mind for a few years.  

So, to get to the point: does anyone have any tips on improving one's writing style?  Currently, I can write fairly well, but I can't keep a flow that all authors have that allows them to keep their readers interested.  I guess this skill has to do with not falling into too many unimportant tangents, or not using funny little metaphors, but I'm not sure.  It's more like a magic trick that no one is willing to show me how to perform.

If you have any tips, tricks, secrets, mystical chants, or know of any fun sites that can help a sad little man improve his writing style, please post it.   

Edit: Yes, I know I could just as easily go browse the web or study the writing styles myself, but you must have guessed by now that I'm lazy and enjoy having other people perform little tasks for me.  

* Robert Eric tips his hat

I'm getting my significant other a minivan, and I'm constructing a room for the our baby-on-the-way.  Toys, crib, colorful wallpaper, plush carpet...

How about you?

Alright, the last one bombed, so I have a new one.

This time, create a game/program that allows platform jumping.  I don't care how you do it, just do it.  This is obvious, but make it in AGS.  Don't worry about graphics, or sounds.  Of coarse, you CAN make your graphics pretty and the sounds soothing, but it's not required.  The only limitation this time is that there must at least two platforms to jump from/on.

You have until forever to make it, if you actually DO decide to enter this contest.

In the world of AGS game creation, you must think of a plot, draw the graphics, record or compose the sounds/music, then slap it all together.  AGS has come to the point where you may not even need to do any programming to make a decent game.  But, there comes times where you may want some more creative parts in your game.  

For this competition, you must make a 'game' that does what I say it should do.  This first one will be easy, and as we go on, they will become more difficult.  You don't need dazzling graphics or quality sounds to win this competition.  The one who can create a 'game' doing said task with the neatest and quickest code will win.  

The task is: Create a one-room, 8-bit game that will fade the background out and in depending on which hotspot the player steps onto.  

Limitations, new and as said above:
- One room
- 8-bit
- You CANNOT use the standard AGS fadein, fadout functions!  I suggest you learn how to read and write to and from files, for loops, and palette manipulation.

You have two weeks.  Begin!

This is a proposal for a programming competition.  What I have in mind is for people to try to create something that does what I say it should.  For example, I may say: "Create an 8-bit fading program.  You must have the program fade out to black, then fade back in.  You must make your own functions to this task.  You may not use the built-in fading functions to do this," then anyone can upload the program and post it for judging.  Whoever can do this and have the code as efficient and quick as possible will win.  This competition may be useful for people to practice their programming abilities in AGS and newbies to be able to see some cool code.  What do you think?

http://www.thedierks.com/allowe/video/YouFeelBetterInaPeugeot206.mpg

If anyone knows what song that is that plays at the end of this little commercial, please let me know.

(This commercial can be found on Al Lowe's website.)