Iruini Nuva

Yes folks, Biotech has stepped up the development of 'The Insurgent'. As many of you know, we've been working on a massive graphics upgrade. Now you can see how it's turning out: (this pic is only a clipping from a larger image) Pretty cool no? You can see another pic over in the Biotech Menu to the right. Keep yours eyes open for more updates. Well folks, I can't post new entries, but I can still do some sort of edit to the old ones. Ordinarily, I'd refrain, but this is a special occasion. I just got promoted! Woot! So now I get to have the pretty rainbow Huna and close all those nasty little spam topics that everybody likes to make. Anyhoo, just thought I'd put that out there.

I just realized I've been completely ignoring this thing. So now I'm returning. On a whim, I decided to try to figure out what the server message 'Servo, ergo sum' means. I'm taking my second year of Latin right now, so that helped. I knew that 'servo' means 'I serve', and that 'sum' means 'I am'. But the 'ergo' confused me. After a bit of conversation with my teacher, we determined that the phrase meant 'I serve, therefore I am.' You've gotta admit, Binky's been creative with these. I was in another fencing tournament yesterday. I did pretty well during my preliminary rounds. I made it through the first direct elimination fine too. But then a problem arose. Because of my standings in the prelims, I ended up having to fence the top fencer in the event for my second DE. I held out for about half of it, then I pretty much bombed the rest. The guys been fencing for probably 20 years, so I wasn't surprised. Even so, making it that far was pretty good. I ended up becoming 7th in the state.

As everybody knows, today was Halloween. People know today even better as the day that you get free candy. Naturally, I decided to go out and get some myself. This time, my dad let me go a little farther than usual. I ended up getting about 3 pounds of goodies! For a person used to getting 15-20 pieces, that's pretty incredible. For my costume, I was lazy and just put on my fencing gear. That was actually a very good choice. It was around 30 degrees outside. That stuff is thick enough though, that I was able to maintain a comfortable body temperature. I was going to go out as something along the lines of 'My Dog Ate My Homework'. But we were having a hard time keeping the stuffed dog attached to the paper. After I got through gloating over my hoard, I went upstairs, and took a math test. There has also been another event in the past few days that I've neglected to mention: My Mom's birthday. I think she turned, well... *subject change* As a present, I decided to make her a nice little computer game. Seeing as she enjoys fall-related things, I chose to base the game around that. You play as a little girl wandering through a corn maze seeking the perfect pumpkin, picking up fall leaves along the way. Sounds kinda boring, but for a person who avoids computer as much as possible, it's pretty neat. I decided to make it more interesting for me by making it isometric. For those of you GM users out there, you know how difficult that is to do. I also decided to put in a nice little day-night engine to take the place of a timer. You have to have found the pumpkin and be out of the maze by dark. Here are some pics of the game: Daytime Nightime That's all for now.

Nasty little thing still won't work right. It has a fresh OS, new hardware, all the diagnostics check out, but it still corrupts files. Must be something in the file itself. Oh well, easy to fix. *bangs on case* All better. (hopefully). Even with it's problems, the system is generally working like a charm. No viruses. The thing boots in under 30 seconds, and all the games run fine. So I guess I shouldn't be complaining too much. In other news, as usual, I went to my fencing class today. For the first time, I beat this one 10 year old (I'm 15). I can usually slaughter someone that age, but not this kid. He's usually the one winning in the 10/12 and under events at tournaments. Typically, I'll lose against him 4-5. This time, I beat him 5-4. That was pretty cool. B) That's all for now.

The hard drive arrived today, so we'll see how it turns out. It's formatting as I type (currently 37%). Once it's done with that, I'll just install windows (and any necessary drivers) and practically have a new computer. Those people at Tiger Direct® are pretty quick about sending their merchandise to you. I ordered the thing 3 days ago using the standard 3-7 day shipping rate. Interestingly enough, they had a 3 day option for about $12 more. I'll keep y'all posted as to how the whole thing turns out. In reference to the previous entry: I did end up shoveling the driveway.

Yep, it's snowing again. Started around 13 hours ago and still hasn't stopped. It'd getting close to a foot deep! It's pretty rare to get a snowfall this big this early in the year. Actually it's pretty rare to get one this big at all. Natrually, my mom decided that I should be the one to shake the snow off the trees, regardless as to whether or not I was in the middle of school and wearing a t-shirt and shorts. But I'm a good person and did what she said. Got covered in snow too. Wouldn't be suprised if she wants me to shovel the driveway later today too. :annoyed2:

I just found out today that most of those 88 viruses technically aren't 'viruses'. A couple are trojans and the rest are adware. Oddly enough, I've gotten a grand total of 1 advertisement from the combination of all 80. Sometimes having a corrupted OS has its advantages. Even so, the computer is on quarantine (I'm using a different one right now) until I can wipe the drive. Not sure that even that'll help though, seeing as the drive itself has bad sectors. So I decided to buy a new one. 250GB for $60! Soon I'll be able to get some decent work done again.

As many of you know, the things been corrupted for a year or so now, but today, it got out of hand. I decided to try to repair the system in an attempt to remove those annoying bugs (mouse freeezes, etc.). So I start the installation, and it asks if I want to install the new updates. Unlike usual, I say yes. So it installs, says some files were messed up and that it couldn't install them, and kept on going. I boot it up, and find that it had installed some little virus update program. It pops up a couple error messages telling me my computer is infected (which explains all the bugs). So I search around for a program, scan the system, and find that the thing has 88 viruses!! Don't believe me? Here's the proof. I think my system is too far gone by now, so I'm gonna get me a new hard drive and start fresh. And don't worry, they're stuck only on that system (which is now quarantined and about to be cleared), so I haven't put on BZP for you guys to enjoy.

Here it is! Yes, it really works (you don't have to read all of this )! Structure: This is pretty much a human sized version of a zamor launcher on steroids. It can launch four zamors at once and hit accurately at about a 15ft range. The shots spread about 3ft apart at that point. There were a couple challenges that I had to overcome. 1) The pressure that needed to be exerted. 4 Zamors take a several pound push to shoot. The structure had to be able to withstand both the pressure and the sudden release as the shots were fired. It ended up having 7 interlaced beams running through as the main sub-structure. On top of that, it had 5 beams distributing the pressure between the 4 launchers. These too, were interconnected to each other at many different points. Even with this complex setup, it took a while to get everything to the point where a strong shove wouldn't just blow the front off the model. 2) The size. It would be pretty simple to make a small shotgun about 3 inches long. But that isn't very cool, nor can it have nearly the same range. So I decided to enlarge it. This caused a number of problems. Axles aren't very good at holding up against pressure when they're long. They would have buckled and snapped if I had tried to shoot it with that design. That problem was what prompted me to interlace them to the extent that I did. After quite a few hours, I got it to the point where it would fire the bottom two launchers without any problems. The top half was a different story. With my hand under the gun, there was nothing to provide a counterpressure against the force exterted on the pins (remember, it takes a several pound push to fire this thing). The solution was fairly simple. I placed small extentions near the front of the gun. That way I could hold it from the bottom, but still support the top. You can these extensions in this picture. They're the pieces that my middle finger is on (just below the upper launcher). In the end, I was able to create a gun that could hold up against anything and could fire 100s of rounds consecutively without requiring any tweaks or repairs. Firing: To fire the gun, you press on the back end (where my hand is in the pic above, or immediately below the second gahlok shield in the others). The high pressure required to fire this had an unexpected benefit: Increased range. I was expecting this thing to shoot around 4-5 feet. It ended up doing 3-4 times that. Plus because of the way I had set it up to distribute the force, it had better accuracy, no errant shots. But that's enough description, I bet y'all want to see this thing. Angle (shows some structure) Front View Top View Side View Bottom View (shows a little of the structure)

For those of you who don't know me too well, I typically use that phrase when I'm happy (Bionicle obsession, I know). And happy I am, I just became an Outstanding BZP Citizen (Premier OBZPC to be exact). *faints* To continue my rant on how bad my judgement is about news, well, this time I actually judged good. Not that I had really expected it to make the news though. *sigh* I remember freaking out about my proto for my first month because I couldn't figure out where the darn bar was. :blush: I did manage to figure it out eventually though. Anyhoo, just wanted to tell the world.

I was supposed to take the PSAT for practice today. I'm not a Junior yet, so I can't take the test for real. I was supposed to take it via my state's talent search program. So early this morning I got up at 6:30 (a quite unearthly hour) and started preparing for the test. :wakeup2: After about 10 minutes, the phone starts ringing. Who in their right mind would call at 6:40 in the morning??? The call was one of the teachers from the school where the test would be held. It turned out that the test was canceled. Happy Fikou!! They hadn't stated why the test was canceled, so we called back for details. I'm not supposed to divuldge too much information on the subject. Lets just say something unfortunate (bad enough to shut down the school) happened to one of their students while he was in a car. I assume that y'all can figure out what that means...

Yessiree, it hailed today. Well, technically, it hailed a little bit and snowed the rest of the time. First snowfall of the year. It's actually a little late for the first snowfall of the season. Oftentimes the snow comes in September, once it came even in late August. This year it was still in at least the 80s throughout August, so we didn't get much snow then. In fact, it was still pretty warm up until a week or so ago. Then the average temperature dropped quite a bit - like 10 or 20 degrees. The coolness is kind of refreshing, but I still prefer 90 degree weather more than 30. But I can't help that. The snow came on rather suddenly, first with the hail (the ice was significantly smaller than golf balls), then it rapidly shifted into the white fluffy flakes of frozen air, water, and dust that everybody recognizes. Naturally, I went outside barefoot. I usually do it quite a bit during winter, even if there are several inches of snow on the ground. I figured it would be a good idea to get back into it again. After wandering around a bit on the half melted hailstones and snowflakes, I grabbed a good hunk of the stuff, and...well...*coughateitcough* Then a I promptly went back inside and settled down next to a heater vent.

I went to a fencing tournament yesterday - correction, I fenced in a fencing tournament yesterday. I've got a couple bruises to prove it. Most of the were from a round with a 'C' rated fencer (for those of you who don't fence, this is very high for someone under 18). I'm still unrated, though I've been within reach of an 'E' rating a number of times.I was able to knock most of his attacks away from the target area, so they just hit off target areas like my arms or unprotected fingers (painfull). I don't really feel the hits from direct thrusts, but those nasty whip/flick attacks that this guy does make themselves noticable after a couple hours. Back on topic, I had 5 preliminary rounds which would detemine my position moving into the Direct Eliminations. I placed around the middle of my pool; having been put into a round with fencers who were all higher rated than me, that's actually pretty good. I went into the DE's at 10th place out of twice as many fencers. I made it through my first DE (my opponent started at 7th), and progressed onto the next. This time I lost by 3 points, making the final score 12-15. Even so, I ended up being the highest ranked out of that round. Of course, losing that round meant that I was out of the tournament. I checked on the overall tournament rankings this morning. I ended up placing 7th. I was 3 points, 3 stinking points away from getting a national ranking. x2 *sigh* I'll just keep practicing for the next one.

So I happened to wander on BZP a little while ago and I notice a nice little interview with TT Games is on the news. I click the link and start watching the video, then I hear Binky say "Iruini Nuva asks..." and I pretty much think: Did he really say my name? So I listen to it again, yep, that's me and that was my question. Then I got really excited. I hadn't thought the question was very terrific, but as I said a couple posts down, I tend to be a bad judge of the Mods/Admins opinions. Well, I keep listening and found that his answer was something I hadn't expected. I was thinking he'd say something like "We learned that working as a team gets things done" or something else that people always say when asked that question. Then he comes out and says how suprised he was by our passion about Bionicle. That was pretty cool. B) I'm so gonna save that video.

Ooh, they do? This is probably the second time I've seen one. I guess it's becaue stores don't sell things like that.

Well I went to a pumpkin patch with the rest of my family. Everything was pretty normal. Lots of pumpkins, lots of dirty pumpkins, some with good stems, some with bad stems, some with no stems at all...you get the picture. After wandering about for a bit, I stumbled across something rather odd: Tell me - are pumpkins supposed to grow like that??