I never go to work!

For those of you with kids (or with adults), They Might Be Giants do tons of kids stuff. They have a couple DVDs on ABCs and 123s, a kid's album, and even a book that Alli hasn't read yet. Every Friday they release a Family video podcast, so check em out!







The second song in that last video is actually one of our drinking songs. Anyway, all their podcasts can be found here and probably on iTunes. Disney handles their kids stuff too, so its weird to buy TMBG things from Disney.


To switch to the exact opposite gear, George Carlin had his usual HBO special. Enlightening as usual. He gives some parenting advice, provides some insight into American thinking, WWJD, etc. Don't watch if you don't like bad words or criticism on religion or the US. Otherwise, enjoy.



Man, blogging is easy if I just post things other people make!

I'm a particle man?

I seriously don't have anything to talk about! I'll show some pictures from a few of my projects though. Hey, maybe we should have some kind of community blog for all of us. If I was seeing Seattle more, I'd have more to blog about, but it's hard to blog about homework.


Graphics class:
Ok, this might not seem impressive, but usually when people do graphics programming, they use some graphics tools. In this program, I'm finding the color of each individual pixel on my own. So, lots of lighting, 3D geometry, and algorithms. This class has several projects, but I like the way this one looks.



Networking:
A semester long project to make a networked game. I finished the game pretty quick, it's very simple. The networking part of it has me pulling hair though. Maybe when I finish, we can play via internet!



Our semester game project:
Schizm Fighters! It's a multiplayer battle game where you cut the ground and try to get other people to fall off. I did all the graphics stuff (including the particles). Since it's just a semester game, we probably won't be able to finish it, but we're going to try to have something playable at least.














For next year, it looks like we may be making a Zelda-style adventure game (smaller though, 3 dungeons or so) with cool mouse-gestured-based action system. For yearlong projects, they usually assign some art students to it too, so I think it could be really fun and stylish. We plan to win all the awards.

Happy Pi Day!

It's Pi Day! A very important day of the year for people who like Pi or pie. At the very least, each some pie today, to celebrate a popular number. It also happens to be Einstein's birthday. I myself don't believe this to be a coincidence.

So, as everyone knows, at MS&T (previously known as UMR), St. Pat's is a big deal. This year marks the school's hundredth anniversary celebrating the holiday, so it will be crazy. I predict a few casualties, no joke. Many recent alumni across the country have even migrated to Rolla this week to go crazy. While it was tempting, I am bound to my homeworks. This will actually my first year in a few years that I won't be partying for an entire week with others that understand the holiday. A few of us are at least going out on Saturday, hopefully finding a good drinking establishment, as I haven't found one yet. I will probably share stories of past St. Pat's adventures, possibly inspiring the saint into others. Like St. Pat, most people don't like snakes, so I imagine it will be easy to relate to him.

Also this week I will probably be getting a visit from Sam and Dustin. They are both considering moving to Seattle, so they want to check the place out. I'm planning to power down some work this weekend so I can dedicate some time to them. We will probably visit Downtown Seattle and Pike Place Market, and Sam probably wants to visit the Digipen art campus. If weather permits, we may go hiking. These will be the sort of things I will take all visitors to do, eventually refined into "Kelly's Seattle Visitor Guide For People Who Are Only Here A Few Days". It will be a grand guide of 3 or 4 things, and even some bonus stuff like "Feed Kelly" and "Do Kelly's Homework", and of course "CHORES". It's great to have visitors!

My are Riley fought online, and it was a worthy duel. Dumb as he is, he has a good handle of Sonic, Pit, and ROB. They were good fights, even though he is stinky, fat, ugly, and idiot.

You heard me.

Update: No visitors! Sam got screwed by a teacher or something, so the trip is postponed.

You're either on the bus, or off the bus

So the new Smash Bros is out, and I think I've been talking about it since August or so. It's fun! For those who don't follow games, it's a game featuring lots of Nintendo characters like Mario and Link and Donkey Kong all competing against each other. And it is only a matter of time before I'll be playing on the internet with friends and family in Missouri. So, it is a good thing I'm ahead on my work. Oh yeah, anyone who gets the game, let me know so we can exchange friend codes.

I finally saw the movie Across the Universe, which is a musical with all Beatles songs. They work in the songs so that they fit what's going on too. There were parts of the movie that were pretty weird, but I liked it. I think it might have been allegorical, but I'm not sure. Like, there was a character that seemed like she was supposed to be like Janis Joplin, and another one like Jimi Hendrix. They weren't them of course, they were just similar. And the main characters might have respresented Paul and Linda, and after that I don't know. There was some cameos too, like Bono singing "I am the Walrus", and Eddie Izzard doing "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite", and Joe Cocker himself sang "Come Together". Anyway, I imagine it's only for people who like the Beatles, and even then, not for the kind of fan that thinks the Beatles should be left alone. I myself like to see reinterpretations of recognized stuff.

It looks as if my entire month of August will be open, so I will probably be home that whole time. No promises, but that's the plan at the moment. Back to games!