Planetperson

Thank you.

No sub. But hey, it was way better than actually practicing or taking an exam.

Groovy. Hey man, where do people come off saying you don't exist?

Wednesday, January 17, 2007 Today was my second day of exams. Sorta. We have an entrely different schedule from normal for exams days. Exams are split up into three days with three exam periods each -- that means I have only three (longer) classes in a day rather than the normal nine periods. For example, I had periods 1, 3, and 4 yesterday -- three of my hardest classes. Of course, if someone has a free period, lunch period, or class that doesn't have an exam, he or she doesn't have to attend a class for that period. Periods 3, 8, and 6 were assigned today -- for me, that translates: no exam, free, ... orchestra. While fine arts classes never have exams, the administration (because they're deranged) requires fine arts students to show up for their classes anyway. So that means that I had to get up at 10:15, leave the house at 11:00, show up for this one class at 11:30, and go right back home at 1:00. I tell you, this is the way school should be every day. I actually woke up by my own power this morning; and I wasn't sleep-deprived or anything, even though I went to bed past midnight. The sun was actually up. I had a nice bowl of Quaker Oatmeal Sqares in front of the computer, checking out the revamped Bionicle.com. On a normal day, I certainly don't have time to check the web! Then I walked out the door without even my bacpack -- didn't need it -- and my dad drove me to school. All I had in my pockets were my cell phone and six bucks in case I wanted to take the bus and train home. When I got to school, everyone who had 6th free (which I don't) was leaving the building. Usually when I arrive at school in the morning, I'm half-awake and everyone's walking sleepily through the parking lot in the same direction as I am. This morning, I was shocked to see half the school going in the exact opposite direction as I. It was like I was showing up bright and early for school when it had already ended! Here I am, surrounded by cars picking up students on their way out of the building, and I'm climbing out of my dad's Camry saying, "see you later!" Very weird experience, I tell you. I strolled right into our practice room without visiting my locker or anything, still wearing my jacket from the freezing cold outside. "Did you just get here!? You had to show up only for this class? That sucks!" a friend says to me. Soon our teacher slips Pirates of the Carribean into the DVD player and we watch it on the projector screen for an hour and a half. My dad picked me up from a bookstore nearby at 1:15. So to summarize my day, my daddy dropped me off in the middle of the day to a place where other kids were corraled and picked me back up again not too long afterward. So did I really go to school today? Or was it daycare? Or the movies?

Shadow's a black cat, right?

Monday, January 15, 2007 Hey guys. Here I am, at 11:25 PM on the night before my semester exams start, posting a blog entry for the first time in several days. Sorry I haven't posted an entry in a while, it's just been one of those weekends where I'm not paying too much attention to my blog. Just a summary of what's been happening in my life lately, both on- and offline: Semester Exams. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I have three of my most rugged tests tomorrow. I've studied a bunch, but I'm still screwed for Bio . I'm in the middle of constructing some more content blocks to the right, adding Blog Tools and a content block with links to About Me and PM Me. Me and my dad are setting up some shelf cases in the basement that we got from Ikea. Guess what I'm gonna put in them . I'm also learning more and more about .zip archives, such as... well... how to unzip them . Seriously though, I've been fiddling around with Biomaniac's offline MNOLGII file and Crystal Matrix's BS01 archive files. It's been cool. I wish I were taking some sort of computer or web design class. That may have to wait for college, maybe . We got rid of our Christmas tree at last, much to the dismay of my cat, Shadow, as she had made a little habitat in there (good tree water, you know). I finally got Bionicle Legends #6 in the mail on saturday and read it. It's a very well-paced book, although it has an even more dreadful cliffhanger than Bionicle Legends #5 . Just as Greg said, of course, there are no Toa in the book at all, which kinda gives the story a different flavor from the usual Bionicle tale. I'll post a little mini-review sometime or another, just like I did with 4 an 5 . Don't think I've forgotten that reference project o' mine. With the Toa Mata finished, I'm working on the Turaga .Oh, wanna hear something funny? I must've been tired while making flashcards for American Lit. I said that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Dependance. Hoo boy, history may have turned out a little bit different if that were true.

No RSS for Windows Internet Explorer, eh?

Thursday, January 11, 2007 Click here (iTunes software needed). This is one of the (best) episodes of the Brickfilms.com podcast . I definitely have this on my iPod. Here's the RealPlayer file: link.

Hmmm... alright, I'll edit that info into the list in a sec. Piraka Fusion I knew was Chocolate Frogs, should've put that down.

Right you are. Changed.

As also displayed in one of the content blocks on the right side of this blog, here is a list I have compiled of photo galleries of LEGO BIONICLE Building Challenge winning-MOCs over the past few years. If you see one of your creations listed here and want your BZPower username listed alongside the link, feel free to let me know. If there are any errors with credit given for something you created, let me know that as well. Rahi Contest Crystal Climber Metru Mantis Phase Dragon by Locutus of Bohrok Proto Drake Silver Chute Spider by Diosjenin Spiny Stone Ape (WIP)|Spiny Stone Ape (Final Model) by -Shannara- Tunnel Stalker by Pekel Vahki Hunter "Yari" by animalman1 Toa Contest Krakua Dark Hunters Contest Charger by J.T.Silversmith Conjurer Darkness Firedracax by Toa Hagah Master Guardian by -Shannara- Kraata-Kal by Makuta/nuva/kal Lurker by Tok Minion by TakuaToa Primal by Pekel Silence by Locutus of Bohrok Spinner by ~GreenBionicleGuy~ Piraka Fusion Contest Piraka Fusion (Grand Prize) by ChocolateFrogs Piraka Fusion (First Prize) by Sidorak the Feared Think you can help complete the list? PM me with links. Thanks to Selena Osiris for the links to the Charger, Firedracax, Guardian, and Kraata-Kal galleries. Thanks to Shine for the links to the Silver Chute Spider, Spiny Stone Ape, Primal, Proto Drake, Metru Mantis, "Yari," Spinner, and Vahki Hunter galleries.

OK. But only if you rip mine out first.

That's what my parents said . Fingerprints?

Saturday, January 6, 2007 Look back at yesterday's entry, which was about my brother's school getting canceled. Well, we have a plot twist, friends. I was in one of my high school classes yesterday when another student said to me, "Someone broke into your school." "What?" I said, at first a little taken by surprise, since my old grade school doesn't come up in conversation much anymore, especially with students who didn't go there with me. Sure enough, he told me that someone had broken into the school and vandalized it. The kid pulled out the paper and showed me the article. What I read was pretty shocking, and evidently the business about the school being closed because of mechanical problems had merely been an unconfirmed rumor. Some vandals had smashed in the glass doors of the preschool/kindergarten wing. They went inside and then got hold of about ten of the fire extinguishers and sprayed their contents everywhere -- on the walls, in the drinking fountains, and other places. They probably would have trashed the place more if the dust from the extinguishers hadn't set the fire alarm off. They must've bolted when that happened, taking the fire extinguishers with them -- there had to have been at least five or so people there if they were able to carry off that many containers. Personally, it sounds like the eigth-graders to me. The police department itself is saying that this typically would have been done by young people, and I think this is kids who just don't want to go back to school that badly. Clearly they went over the top. Most of the time when kids mess with stuff in the school, it's to spite the faculty's ignorance. But this was different. This time, there were no unlocked doors or open lockers. This time, they actually caused damage to cause damage. Too bad. Although my brother isn't complaining, of course.

Thursday, January 4, 2007 Today was my first day back to school . Felt like a monday . Gotta hate those. So I have to get up at 6:40. I come downstairs after washing my face, getting dressed, etc. I'm eating a bagel when we get a phone call. My dad picks up. "Hello?" ... "This is he." ... "Oh...really?" ... "Alright then... would you happen to know what the reason is for this?" ... "So, you're not really sure, you're just happy to pass along the news ." ... "Right, right. So, this is just one step of the calling tree...do you have the list? Who do I call next?" ... "Alright, thank you, buh-bye." That's my brother's grade school being closed for the next two days due to mechanical problems when he was supposed to go back today like me. They never did that when I was there .

Artpad has its fallings -- although it requires no legwork, it is generally not a... precision art-making tool. But, y'know, it's the ideal alternative to for some members, especially younger or newer ones, to post art without having to figure out a Brickshelf/Maj account, or take time to figure out how to upload files to the internet. Although the reality is that those image-hosting websites are quite simple to use, lack of familiarity with the technical stuff or the sign-up process can cause them to refrain from doing so. As people know, the reason members use it so much is because it's highly convenient; but the problem is that it is a program that is not really capable of generating art at the calibur of what many members are accustomed to. That's why many people dislike it so much -- they wanna see good art, art that makes them feel like time and effort was put into it instead of having been done in just one sitting. If people use this program to display what they truly feel to be expressions of their good art on the web, that's totally fine by me. It's not offending anyone. If people are using it to make art just for the sake of posting art in the forums because it's so easy and quick to do so, I have a problem with that. Get replies in your art topics by showing creativity, not stick-figure Barraki.

Put a content block right at the top of the page that has an image of a really official-looking blog team badge in it. Impress authority upon the reader right off the bat.

The screen is pointed away from the driver . I never even caught that! So useless . Nope. Just rocks with holes in 'em. No, seriously, I'm betting there's speakers hidden on the backside of the rocks.

Wednesday, January 3, 2007 That's right, we got locked out of our house yesterday. My parents just walked right out the door without checking for keys. That's the price you pay for wanting to spend time at the park, I guess . How did we get back in? Well, our neighbor still had a key to our house from the time she looked over our cat while we were gone over Thanksgiving. Yeah, I have some thanksgiving for that right now . Actually, there was one problem -- she was at work and we weren't even exactly sure when she would be back. We left a note for her to call my mom's cell, and then we just went off to kill time. We went ahead to the park for a few hours, then we got in touch with some friends. We went over there for dinner, and it turned out to be a pretty nice evening. They have a Wii . Conclusion: neighbor called us, left key under our mat, we went home.

Tuesday, January 2, 2007 First of all, allow me to say happy new year! I sure am looking forward to 2007! Secondly, sorry about the fact that I haven't posted since... the other day... I forget which one exactly. It was about iPods. Guess what -- this entry's about iPods too! Looking back on Christmas shopping at Office Max... I cannot tell you how many items had a totally unneccessary iPod station built into them. I mean desk lamps, televisions... dishwashers . Serously though, it's so needless . Why not listen to your iPod on the nifty little headphones that come with it? Doesn't make sense, right? Come on, does Apple really need to have a foothold in the household appliance/office supply industry? Anyway, I thought I'd give you a tour of things that I may have seen. Here's an iPod station, straight up. It really eliminates the hassle over those clunky earphones, doesn't it . An iPod DJ mixer. Well, they sure don't make records anymore, now do they? You know, the first thing I look for in a car is whether or not it has an iPod docking station. "It's our newest model; it has every electronic gadget or accessory you'll ever need in a car -- it's practically wearing glasses!" the car salesman says. "Well," I start, giving him an inquisitive look, "you know... I would like to drive a car around that has iPod-cradling capabilities..." "Oh... well... I'm sorry, but between the in-car teethbrushing system and the automatic channel surfer, we were not quite able to --" "NOPE -- NOPE! DEAL'S OFF, I'M OUTTA HERE!" Here's some desktop speakers with an iPod station, just in case your original iPod earbuds break and you want to replace them with a $30 piece of equipment. Time, temp, alarm, radio report... iPod -- all the start-your-day essentials. iPods really rock. This thing works fine... until the speaker shatters your iPod with intense sound. Give up smoking, take up iPod. This one may actually make sense, as the backlight of the iPod screen goes off way too early -- especially when viewing photos. When the baclight's off, it's impossible to see the screen. An iPod port with a TV attached to it -- no, it's actually an iPod port with an FM radio transmitter attached to it! Looks like a screen, don't it .

Read the last entry, it'll make sense . (I took this on my webcam, sorry.)

Thursday, December 27, 2006 Or rather, in my hand.

School on the 22nd? I'd ditch . Wish I had a TV in my caf, though . And going on a trip? Eek, I can't stand it when I have to pile into our sedan not long after the school days have ended. Luckily for me, I'm not goin' anywhere this year, which is really a relief .

Wednesday, December 27, 2006 As I type, dozens and dozens of Quicktime movie files are being converted to iPod-acceptable .mpeg files through iTunes. For them, this is near the end of a long journey, a voyage from their original urls to my video iPod. The only problem is, however, that this near-final step will most likely take a few more hours to complete. Ah, everyone loves the old quicktime movies that LEGO employs the European animation company Ghost A/S to produce every year. The movies add a unique richness to the BIONICLE experience by giving life to the brand's colorful toys. Wouldn't it be great if one could simply pull them out of his pocket to watch them whenever he wanted? Achieving this goal, as I have painstakingly found out, has turned out to be a very long and frustrating pursuit. Reasons for this may be the fact that I absolutely hate the iTunes software (and, truthfully, anything with a trademark small "i" in front of it); or it may also be the fact that finding all of these movie files and gathering them from various places on the internet has been very difficult as well. Whatever factors are responsible, I can tell you that this seemingly wild goose chase has been one heck of a voya nui ("great journey," for those of you less atuned to the storyline). I am here to tell you that I have almost come to the end. The first step was finding all of the movies in the first place. There were some very decent places to visit when looking for the video files: Bionicle.com itself; the Ghost A/S gallery; the Ghost A/S LEGO BIONICLE Archive; Bioniclub.cz; some advertizing company's site that I forgot the name of and doesn't have the movie files anymore anyway; and, before it went down, Bionicle Sector 01. Ever since I discovered the "right-click, save file as..." method of downloading movie files from the web back in 2005, I have been collecting files from the web -- Uhh... ... ... What's this? Okay, no joke, while I type this, a window has just opened up, reading: "iTunes has encountered an error and needs to close. We apologize for any inconvenience." *smacks head* ARE YOU SERIOUS!?!?!?!? It's taken forever to convert those files! Okay, I'm not too worried, just annoyed. I just gotta open up iTunes again to continue converting the files, and it will be just fine. I'm sure that this interruption hasn't affected the files that have already been converted so far. *goes off to check* Yes, I was right. No crisis. I just need to start the process up again to finish off the other files. *goes off to do that* Alright, I've done that. It's working again. Now, where was I? *scrolls up* Oh, right, the files. So yeah, I made this special folder on my desktop which held another special folder that held my collection of Bionicle movies that I had been gathering from the web ever since 2005. Here's even an example of what I discovered while tinkering with Quicktime. Anyway, I organized the special folder to my liking, but throughout the better part of 2006, my computer had this bug that made it unable to play the audio to the majority of my movie files. The picture worked fine, but I could not fix the darn sound. The funny thing is that this whole thing started not long after I bought my video iPod and downloaded the iTunes software and a more recent version of Quicktime onto my computer. Well, a month or so ago, the thing somehow fixed itself and just went away, much to my relief. Now I was once again in top-notch shape to get those videos into my pocket. Just a wee problem, though. Actually, a HUGE one. iTunes is the most finnicky software I have ever encountered IN MY LIFE. It's a nightmare -- it takes a long time to do anything; it absolutely must sort EVERYTHING alphabetically, which I don't want it to do all the time; the iPod MUST be ejected before disconnecting the USB cable, or else all of the songs on it get deleted (which I know from experience); and the iPod only accepts its fancy mp3 files -- what a wuss. Well, the iTunes software wouldn't allow me to import my Bionicle movie files becuase it couldn't recognize the file types (which are classified as "any file"). So, I spent a few minutes just this morning converting them into Quicktime .mov files. If it gets me that much closer to achieving my goal, I'll take the time to do it. Double-click, File, Save As..., Save in folder..., OK. Double-click, File, Save As..., OK. Double-click, File, Save As..., OK. That goes on several dozen times, and I have a folder full of .mov files just waiting to be imported into iTunes. Import them, I was able to. I even sorted them into playlists by year. I could actually play them in iTunes! I was very impressed by how the software automatically makes thumbnails for the videos. That was cool, although that does have a downside in that I can't change the darn thumbnails when it picks a bad frame. Then I hooked up my iPod and tried to make a simple download of the files onto it. Then I get this funny little message saying something along the lines of "Some of the files, inluding [all of them], were unable to be dowloaded because the iPod software does not recognize the file type. *smacks the already swollen bump on my forehead* Well, that's what this conversion process is all about. All of my Bionicle .mov files are being converted into .mpeg-4 files, which I will soon be able to finally download onto my iPod. I just have to see how this whole thing turns out. ...! What's this? It's done! All of the files are done! Well, BZPower, I'll tell you how it ends later, when I have at last ended it . See you again soon.

Ohh...so unneccessary...