http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/ This is just a personal web site with a little of nothing and a lot of everything on it. en-gb dcollins215@nospam.com (David) dcollins215@nospam.com (David) Sat, 04 Sep 2010 15:05:19 -0700 Sat, 04 Sep 2010 15:05:19 -0700 http://backend.userland.com/rss e107 (http://e107.org) 60 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.75.0
School's back in session. I'm in an introductory statistics course and an introductory speech course. Yeah, they're introductory, but we all need to start somewhere, right? I'm taking both courses for very good reasons anyway.

My understanding of statistics is a far cry from reality. An example: on the way home from work, a moose could step into the road and cause me to veer into a newly uncovered World War II land mine and blow my car fifty yards into the air, killing me upon impact with the unforgiving concrete below. By boolean (true or false, no gray areas exist) convention, if anything at all is false, the entire idea is false. So basically, it'll happen or it won't. There's no option except true or false, thus the moose in Pennsylvania setting off a chain reaction that kills me in the process has a 50/50 chance of happening. Yeah, sure. I know the odds are actually slim to none, but I want to take the course to figure out why and how to get the numbers myself.

I want to take the speech course for a way to defeat my stage fright. I can speak fairly well, I just can't get up in front of people very well. I hope this will help me to conquer that fear.

In other news: I have been losing a lot of time to Star Ocean: The Last Hope International. The game is incredible. I bought it when I purchased my PS3 however long ago and it fell to the wayside and I never got to play it. I'm glad I started. The game is incredible, and I mean it. I recommend it to anyone with a PS3 if you were/are a Star Ocean fan or even just an RPG fan in general.

Also, to those of you who pay attention to the Twitter feed or Facebook status updates, you may have noticed that I didn't get those pictures I promised up on the site. I haven't had the free time with classes starting up. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten them, it's just taking longer than I expected. I've been busy doing computer training and getting a couple iPods setup for a client. It's a lot of fun, but it means I'm out of the house and not working on my own projects. Thus, the images remain unuploaded.

That's it, I'm out. Move along now. More incoming as it arrives.]]> dcollins215@nospam.com (David) Fri, 03 Sep 2010 18:45:36 -0700 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.75.0 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.74.0 technically Friday anymore, but this is what you get so no complaining. Understood? I mean it now.

Seriously, quit with the complaining.

Well, it's coming to be that time agin. School will be starting up on September 1st. I'll make sure that everyone who needs a schedule gets a schedule. I officially am in a statistics course and a speech course, I'm working my hours over at the LAL again, if all goes well I'll be treasurer or maybe even vice president of SGA depending on how things work out, and I'm on the PA Board of Education. I'd also like to get into a slightly more serious computer aide and repair "business" on the side, but I think I want to wait a couple weeks to get into the swing of my new schedule first.

If anyone missed the news, Patrick, Jen, Crystal and I went to Baltimore last Sunday and we took quite a few pictures. Check the gallery to see them or the downloads to grab the bunch in 25%, 50% or full resolution.

I'll try to get some pictures tomorrow as Crystal and I will be heading to French Creek state park and possibly Hopewell Furnace as well. Depending on the time of day, I might see what I can do about a side trip to St. Peter's Village as well. I also stumbled upon a forgotten trove of pictures on an old external backup hard drive that I will be attempting to sort and upload in the coming weeks. Keep checking back!]]> dcollins215@nospam.com (David) Fri, 27 Aug 2010 20:00:55 -0700 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.74.0 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.73.0 aqua.org). It was a blast! The weather wasn't very promising to start the day, but it quickly cleared up once we got to the city. Everyone should visit the aquarium sometime as it's a beautiful attraction and it can be very educational. I especially enjoyed the new jellyfish exhibit. For as painful and scary as they can be, jellyfish are just incredible to watch move through the water. It's like a serene dance. Check out my images for the day here.]]> dcollins215@nospam.com (David) Mon, 23 Aug 2010 13:19:19 -0700 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.73.0 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.72.2
I've been on vacation this week and I will be as well next week. Hit me up if you want to hang out!

I have to run, so I can't spend much time with today's update. Rest assured, you're not missing anything. There really isn't anything going on. ]]> dcollins215@nospam.com (David) Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:06:19 -0700 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.72.2 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.71.0
I am now registered for classes this Fall, and I am happy to report that I was able to cancel my loan for the coming year as I have received both a PELL and a PHEA grant paying my way for the Fall, Spring and Summer. I am taking a statistics course and a speech course. I definitely need help with my stats and probability and my public speaking needs to get a boost or two. I'll let everyone know what my Fall schedule looks like when Summer finalizes the LAL schedule.

I also uploaded a cute picture I found thanks to GeeksAreSexy. Check it out here.]]> dcollins215@nospam.com (David) Fri, 13 Aug 2010 03:51:04 -0700 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.71.0 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.70.0
I haven't gotten word of that "big event" that I've been waiting for. It needs to hurry up. I've been going nuts waiting for it and I know I've been driving Crystal nuts at the same time. Believe me when I say that I really want to tell everyone what's going on.

What else is new? I picked up Katamari Forever and Brütal Legend on the PS3 as discs as well as the PixelJunk collection (Shooter, Eden, Monsters and Racer) as downloads. I'm sure those of you who get bombarded with my updates on Facebook have noticed the purchases and trophies from my PSN account.

I tried to sign up for classes in the Fall again. My student account tells me that I don't have an eligible account to sign up for classes and my staff account tells me that I don't have the proper permission to sign up. Plus my FAFSA student loan seems to be gone. I have to go talk to a couple people tomorrow after work.

It also seems as though I will be able to jump on the SGA officer's list again this coming semester as Treasurer, so that's one thing that should be going well at least.

Oh well, this isn't my Friday update, so I'll get going here. Look for something tomorrow.

How do people come up with new content to post things dozens of times per day? I just don't get it. Whose life is that great and eventful anyway?]]> dcollins215@nospam.com (David) Thu, 12 Aug 2010 11:24:01 -0700 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.70.0 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.69.0
I wish I could update with everything I wanted to type in here, as there are a couple rather large developments coming down the road, but I can't! It may be agonizing for you all to have to wait, but believe me when I say it's even worse for me to not say anything!

I can tell you that I had a great dinner with my grandmother and wife at Shady Maple tonight. It has been far too long since I had the opportunity to eat there and both the food and company were awesome. When I stopped in the restroom to wash up before we left, there were two armchairs, a couch, modest carpeting, mood lighting and wood paneling. It's a shame when a restaurant restroom has better furniture than me. A damn shame.

Also, big weekend coming up! Crystal's company picnic is tomorrow so we'll be at Dorney Park all day long and on Sunday is my "company picnic" of sorts at my boss's house. It'll be a bit packed, but it promises to be quite fun!

I hope everyone has a great weekend! Stay safe and cool.]]> dcollins215@nospam.com (David) Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:55:45 -0700 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.69.0 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.68.0
Not much.

I feel so tired and stretched thin lately, but I don't feel like I have an excuse. Or that could just be my viewpoint on it.

As you all should know, I've graduated now, but I've been stressing out about what to do: enroll and keep moving toward a Master's degree or get into the job force and use what I have to earn my way toward a career and pay my way through a couple classes at a time and get it gradually.

I hate the thought, but I think the decision has been made for me. All my waiting and thinking has left me with little to no time to get back in this coming semester, thus I think I'm going to look for a job. I have an Associate's degree in Computer Information Systems and in a couple weeks, I'll be fully CRLA certified to work as a professional level tutor. And to top it off, as of Monday, I'm officially able to call myself a substitute professor. I'll be covering three days of Introductory Mathematics for one of my coworkers at the college. Major kudos to me.

In more personal news, I've been trying to make headway on building a game that I can call my own. I am using the Unreal Development Kit (UDK) from Epic Games, the same engine behind all the Unreal and Unreal Tournament games as well as numerous other AAA level titles.

I am at the point where experimenting is getting unproductive and I want to actually get work done. I have successfully added materials with basic diffuse and normal maps imported, but I haven't deciphered the more complex stuff yet. I've also done my fair share of mucking around with the level editor. What I'm trying to work on now is model (or mesh) creation.

Now, I've been a big proponent of Open Source to everyone who will listen to me. As some of you know, I enjoy the Blender modeling and animation suite. Powerful? Check. Feature-rich? Oh yeah. Free? Sold. I've done some basic modeling in it before, but nothing too major. And I never touched on one of the techniques that the pros use constantly, UV unwrapping. Well, it turns out that this is required for my model to function in-game.

Little did I know this would be a several-day affair. It was long and hard, but I got some basic unwrapping done and I got a basic crate model into my game after only two days of work. Only to learn that apparently, there's something I missed as I can walk right through the object. Not very realistic. So back to the drawing board I guess.

Anyway, I won't bore you any more. That's the way of the world as it stands now. Take it easy everyone.]]> dcollins215@nospam.com (David) Sat, 31 Jul 2010 02:48:17 -0700 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.68.0 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.67.2
Otherwise, things are quiet here. I'd love to tell everyone that I have a lot of cool things happening, but I just don't. I have been getting into the PSN version of FFVII and Symphony of the Night. I've been going further and further in Heart Gold. Otherwise, all's quiet on the home front. I'll be sure you let everyone know if anything changes.

Let me know if you want to game a bit, I'm pretty free these days.]]> dcollins215@nospam.com (David) Fri, 25 Jun 2010 07:44:44 -0700 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.67.2 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.66.0
Without further ado: Megan Fox as a Narcissistic Lesbian Android]]> dcollins215@nospam.com (David) Mon, 21 Jun 2010 02:00:15 -0700 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.66.0 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.65.0 here. Subscribe with your favorite reader.

On a side note, I also tweaked the theme to not show the right column in the gallery to make some more room for images. In addition to that, I added a couple category thumbnails for the sake of consistency and formatting. And I uploaded a new gallery.

Be sure to read the description if you want to have any idea what the pictures are about. Note that the gallery may be considered NSFW. By some. Maybe not by others. It's tough to tell, but just be on the safe side. Link to the gallery here.]]> dcollins215@nospam.com (David) Fri, 18 Jun 2010 03:10:26 -0700 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.65.0 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.64.0
I have been doing my best to relax this Summer break. I have been playing a few games to try to get them out of my queue. And reading, and watching television, etc. You know, normal Summer stuff. What have I been doing you ask?

• Vampire Hunter D Graphic Novel, Volume 4 (Amazon.com)
• Return to the Labyrinth Volume 3 (Amazon.com)
• Alice in Wonderland (Amazon.com)
• Alice in Wonderland (The Surprisingly Not Difficult To Watch New Disney Version) (Amazon.com)
• Cowboy Bebop (Anime Database)
• Pokemon Heart Gold (Nintendo/Pokemon)
• Super Mario Galaxy 2 - Beat the game with some help from Amber and Chrys (Nintendo)
• God of War - Finally got 100% of the Trophies in the PS3 Remake of God of War(GodOfWar.com)
• 3D Dot Game Heroes - Tongue-In-Cheek Retro Game Ripoff/Homage Humor (3DDotGameHeroes.com)
  

And this is why I haven't been around lately. ]]> dcollins215@nospam.com (David) Fri, 18 Jun 2010 02:23:39 -0700 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.64.0 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.63.3
Anyway, I posted new info to the Panda3D forums and waited. I thought maybe the holiday last weekend was causing delays, but after a week, I'm guessing that I'm not going to get an answer at all. I checked earlier this afternoon and there were 65 views of my post, but not a single reply. No "This is what you do to fix it," no "Have you checked so-and-so setting?" and not even a "hehe, you suck at this." Nothing, nada, niet.

I have decided to try another engine. I'm attempting the same project in the Ogre3D engine. This one is high-quality, incredibly so in fact. The downside is that it's a rendering engine only. If I want networking, I add it in myself. If I want control input, I add it in myself. If I want sound even, I have to add it all in myself.

It allows for a lot of flexibility, but at an added learning curve. Oh well, we'll see how it turns out.]]> dcollins215@nospam.com (David) Fri, 04 Jun 2010 07:11:12 -0700 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.63.3 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.62.3
Project failed.]]> dcollins215@nospam.com (David) Thu, 27 May 2010 06:59:22 -0700 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.62.3 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.61.3 dcollins215@nospam.com (David) Thu, 20 May 2010 15:00:16 -0700 http://dcollins.comatosegroup.com/news.php?item.61.3