Archive for Sep/Oct 2005
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Details Regarding August 2005 |
| Oct 27th, 2005, Noon+01min: Good Afternoon and HAPPY HALLOWEEN !
Well, if I
said I was busy it would be quite an understatement this
week !
After all,
isn't it really nice when you actually get something for Christmas that you've wanted
for years, but finally stopped asking for because no-one
would listen, and then all of a sudden actually
get it this year ? . . .
Whatever I decide, it will indeed be a simple RPGMaker for the mere fact that DragonBASIC has such a limited command set and ability to do any complex calculations as any decent RPGMaker would require ! . . . Another Religious Woodcut from Jack Hamm:
. . . Your Screenplay for this week, for HALLOWEEN:
Pet Sematary The Creeds move to a small town in
Maine and become friends with an Click Click
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| Oct 20th, 2005, 1:39pm Good Afternoon !
She also said that she is going to bring this issue up in the Church Vestry Meeting this Sunday to see if we can post a notice that we will no longer serve illegal U.S. immigrants, no matter how many people you may have in your family. My views on
this ?
There is such a thing as not having children so I cannot hold too much pity for the parents; only the children who were needlessly born and brought into this world. They are the ones who really suffer, and the blame is entirely the parents'. Entirely. This is my own
opinion but I will stand by it. It does seem however that some people deliberately breed a large number of children with the hopes that a few of them may survive because they are inable to even properly care for one or two; and that is beyond sad .. 1. I think in most cases, it is okay to have one child, even if the parent is not working but receving SSI or some other benefits. 2. Two children are okay provided either the Mother or Father (and married) is or are both working. 3. Three children if you are financially wealthy and have a large enough house and finances to cover the mounting expenses of keeping track of 3 children. 4. Four children IMHO is outright too many unless you are exceptionally wealthy and can care for all of them with equal respect and love; but I still think this is too many children to give birth to with the overpopulation we have in the world today.
How do you
feel and what are your ideas on this controversial
subject ? Another Religious Woodcut from Jack Hamm:
. . .
. . . Your Screenplay for this week, before the month of HALLOWEEN:
The Prophecy Martin is a priest who has lost his faith and became a cop instead. The archangel Gabriel has started a literal war in heaven, because he dislikes that God cares so much for the humans. As long as there is a war in Heaven, no souls can leave the dead bodies. Gabriel searches the earth for souls he can use in his holy army. Martin figures out what's going on and joins forces with Gabriel's army. Click Click
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| Oct 14th, 2005, 10:02am Good Morning !
Okay, now if
you are looking for the perfect codec, that is, a
video codec that compresses deeper than REAL, then set your sites
by clicking
Not only can you use the Windows Media Video 9 directly inside VirtualDUB (no need for messy Windows Media Encoder !) It's encoding time for maximum quality is pretty close to 9fps after my VHS filter clean-ups on the 2.0ghz computer and it can give me good quality for the elusive meg-a-minute I've been seeking yielding 700 minutes or 11 hours and 40 minutes at 29.97fps on a regular 700mb CD if played on a computer. I Received
similar results with XVID with the
exception that XVID doesn't allow you to
save off your parameters but over-compensates for this
with considerably faster encoding time. XVID
also doesn't cheat and skip frames for high action scenes
like WMV9
does and
doesn't screw up when real video artifacts (like plants swaying
in front of someone's face) get in the way. As with any high compression for use with codecs that can handle it, the picture is bound to get a bit blurry so feel free to overcompensate and save your source with extra image "sharpness" to make up for the difference. You may need to decrease your k/sec if you oversharp since video is a "viewed" estimate when compressed with intelligent codecs.
Please remember that the source is from a videotape. I had to run a ton of filters to take out the snow, dancing bottom track-bar you get with VCRs (that's a bilinear resize adjustment), and pops and hiss. Naturally if your source is DVD instead of VHS as I used, the quality will be considerably higher. Remember to click on for XVID Decoder Options and checkmark as ON for all of: Deblocking
Y Ah ! Now you see that it is indeed possible to have higher compression and better picture quality than commercial RealMovies which starts to bottom out at 220kbits/sec and you won't have to resort to buying overpriced $19995 RealMovie Encoder and you won't overtax your computer's resources playing them back ! What level
audio should you record your videos at for best quality
and compression ?
I MAY set it so all companions can attack in combat, but based only upon their level and abilities. I would like not to do this, preferring companions to be on the sidelines out of combat, but even if the player's weapon hits all attackers like an automatic crossbow, I cannot easily see the player bousting 16 critters in one fell swing. New images are inserted yielding additional new 16x16 pixel images, 4 added for Weapons, 4 added for Armor, 8 added for Companions, and 16 more added for Items. This means, yes, you can draw your weapons, armor, Anime Portraits for your companions (or use the portraits in any other Sprite Message) and have images for each of the fixed 16 items. All items/spells/critters/ and anything else all have fixed values for price/value/abilities so don't ask for custom values for them. However images for the 16x16 icons, the font, border frame, and names for any and all items in the game can be changed.
Remember,
this is supposed to be the Mother of all simple
RPGMakers for any platform that is just what I intend
for it to be ! I haven't
done keys (for opening locked doors) yet and was trying to
decide how I would do this. Probably it will be similar
to current As for Key
Items or Tokens, I am thinking of allowing up to 45 of
them, being displayed as a single 8-char. text item,
similar to current
Well, with Halloween en route, I see that Amy has volunteered me (gee I didn't know !?) today at 3pm to help unload the some-odd 1,000 pumpkins for the Pumpkin Patch today at church. Tomorrow Saturday I assist from 10am-NOON at the Church
Foodbank, however there is also the Church Bazaar from 9am-3pm ! So I will . . . Back from Church.. The Pumpkin Patch thingie isn't until tomorrow. Instead I spent a little time and helped some people at the church get their booths all set-up for the bazaar.
I found that while there are indeed several genuine home- baked goods at a Church Bazaar, the majority of them are not. They are purchased from a supermarket, shifted from their original plastic packaging and then handwrapped in foil and marked up double purchase price you would pay in a store ! Yeeph ! Tomorrow I get to Church at 9am to see what good items I can buy for gifts for Christmas, then assist at Foodbank at 10am, finish at noon, then return to the Bazaar to shop a bit more, then at 3pm help unload pumpkins ! Man am I
going to be tired after all of this or what ? . . . Already it's
9:08pm here and I have yet
to finish this update ! ... I
haven't gone into detail into politics or the state of
the world recently. I checked
with Ms. Chris about it and she said that we are in the
end times. Another Religious Woodcut from Jack Hamm:
. . . Your Screenplay for this week, before the month of HALLOWEEN:
BONES Jimmy Bones is respected as the
neighborhood protector. Click Click
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| Sep 29th, 2005, 10:38am Good afternoon ! I know everyone has been a long time in waiting for it but it finally arrived !
Well,
maybe not that cool .. This prior week however, my A/C (pipe-heating for all apts) gave out and YES I did stay home on that 103° degree day ! I put wet towels on my back and worked on the computer hoping it wouldn't overheat. When I slept that evening, I laid down the couch with dry towels and waking in the morning finding them all wet ! Phew ! I hate summer ! Talking with some of the other tenants they said they vacated their apt that day and went to a motel. Well, naturally the A/C is working great now since it's a cool day, and yes, it is fixed so it will still be cool on this Suummery weekend we are going to have. Dad
upped my allowance a bit too so me and . . . I -
have decided what to do regarding my GBA
RPGMaker in the works. Well, unless each of you Worldbuilders out there are going to plonk out 8 16x16-pixel custom images per custom sprite, I think you'll rapidly get used to and appreciate the ease of only having to change one 16x16 image with a 16-color palette to make the player or any other sprites look like what you would like them to look like. My
biggest challenge now is to have any object call another
object. That's
where I'm having trouble coding right now. If
- I cannot grasp how to write code for this, I may have
to resort to some of current . . . Another Religious Woodcut from Jack Hamm:
. . . Your Screenplay for this week, before the month of HALLOWEEN:
BLAIR WITCH PROJECT The Blair Witch Project tracks the doomed quest of three film students shooting a documentary on the Burkittsville, Maryland, legend of the Blair Witch. After filming some local yokels (and providing only scant background on the witch herself), the three, led by Heather (something of a witch herself), head into the woods for some on-location shooting. They're never seen again ... Click Click
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| Sep 22nd, 2005, 9:25am Good Morning ! Well, Dad called me this morning bright snap early and instead of asking to see if he wanted me to walk with him (our usual morning walk) this morning, offered for me to sleep late.
And 2 &
1/2 hours, here I am finally awake. Thanks to the very generous space from Gina, I have posted ALL of the Add-Ons and they are now up and downloadable ! There are a
little over 1900 graphic Add-On images alone to help you in your
Worldbuilding for Click If for some
reason it won't go there, well, it's probably gotten
really busy in there so try again in a few minutes ... . . . It seems that after Hurricane Katrina that a new hurricane is on it's way named Hurricane Rita. I don't mean to be cynical but could this be God's way of saying, "Oh no you don't get away that easily !" ?
We keep this
up and God won't need to come here and lay waste to the
Earth for judgement; seems we're doing a good job of it
already ! . . . We already
have a new Piano Player for the church. Oh, and
usually after class we have a Joke and a Prayer. "So it came to pass that Abraham bought himself a computer and was showing it to his son Isaac. It came with all these great programs, I can get search for phrases in the Bible and everything !"
Abraham put a hand on his son's shoulder and said reverently, "No my son." and then pointed up. "The
Lord will provide the RAM." . . . Progress on DragonBASIC
is really going smooth now.
I will try to set it to do this additionally for map data and item creation. . . . Here is another religious wood-cut of moral and judgemental interest:
. . . Your Screenplay for this week:
SHOCK TREATMENT A private investigator endures the
rigors of an insane Click Click
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| Sep 15th, 2005, 3:34pm Good Afternoon ! I sure do
have the sleepies today. It's cloudy out, not enough to
get rain but enough to miss sunlight. Well, me, the choir director, Dana (this is how you spell her name !), and the choir troupe went to go see Dana's Organ Recital. She did a great job, with only a few problems.
This Sunday will be her final day. Shirley, the choir director is already making plans for "simple" songs to sing after that, but this Sunday where she will be present is going to be a DOOZIE of a Sunday anthem ! It will be a combination Indian and English song complete with drum-rhythms. The only thing that's missing would be an indian rain stick and indians dancing around a bonfire. . . . I have been reading a bit more about the news and wanted to make a comment regarding the atheist father who has partial custody over his daughter that cropped up in the news recently. His argument is that it is against his constitutional rights for his daughter to say, "One nation under God." Well, if you're not familiar with an atheist, it's someone that God does not believe in ! (joking !), No in truth it
means someone that does not believe in God. Kind
of like a monkey that doesn't believe in trees, yet has
not only climbed them, but picked fruit from them, and
made a home in them despite the disbelief of them. You can read
the article by clicking The solution
I see is a simple one. If he protests, then show him that his "constitutional rights" are just as ridiculous and in NO WAY should schools bend to conform to him. For if this
were accepted, what next ? Our own currency ? "In God* we Trust" Where the * would have to include a footnote so as to somehow not "offend" those outside a majority faith ? No, I think this fellow (and others before him - read this same court case in 1994) is trying to get something for nothing, and at the same time, attempt to (rather unsuccessfully I might add) injure and besmirch religious organizations everywhere.
. . . I have come across a collection of wood-cut artwork that portray a series of religious concepts that question our motives and beliefs. While I cannot claim to ever entirely understand the mysteries or miracles of faith, and/or your beliefs, I would like to share one of these with you each week to keep your head and heart spinning:
. . . DragonBASIC
goes exceptionally well ! . . . Your Screenplay for this week:
Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood I am including him in the screenplays
here because for a LONG time when Fred Rogers was born in 1928 and in 1953 he started a series for public television called, "The Children's Corner." It won the Sylvania Award for best locally produced children's program in the country. Later in 1966, he produced the "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood," series. Fred Rogers was the composer and lyricist of over 200 songs, the author of numerous books for children, including the First Experience series and the Let's Talk About It series, and the author of many books for adults, including the Mister Rogers Playtime Book, You Are Special, The Giving Box, Mister Rogers Talks with Parents, and Dear Mister Rogers: Does It Ever Rain In Your Neighborhood?. His most recent book, The Mister Rogers Parenting Book, was praised by Publishers Weekly for the "qualities of warmth and attentiveness that translate very well into this brief yet thorough parenting guide." Fred Rogers also received more than 40 honorary degrees from colleges and universities, including Yale University, Hobart and William Smith, Carnegie Mellon University, Boston University, Saint Vincent College, University of Pittsburgh, North Carolina State University, University of Connecticut, Dartmouth College, Waynesburg College, and his alma mater, Rollins College. He died in 2003 after a short battle with stomach cancer. Click Click
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| Sep 8th, 2005, 9:18am Good Evening !
Well ..
she's home now, I've got all sortsa presents for her and
we'll see her Friday. . . .
As for Shirley, our choir director, she is in a contract for the next 2 years so she can't go just yet. (phew!) cause I don't know how we would do choir without her ! . . . I imagine by now all of you are aware of the problems that are occuring in Louisiana. Hurricane Katrina swept through and while it killed several people, further more was the damage it did, over several hundred million dollars. Louisiana is literally underwater. A $10.5 billion disaster aid request has been sent to the President. You can see
the . . . Progress
continues in GBA
His
technique on allocating direct memory will greatly
increase my RAM size (since I won't be using 4-bytes to
store a single byte of info) for GBA Thanks, Axel !! . . . A tip for today:
Instead, use an audio tool such as AudioFORGE to cleanly convert it to MONO audio first. Then convert that MONO audio to a MONO audio *.WMV file with no errrors. . . . Your Screenplay for this week:
It's dark, dank, and gloomy. The
human survivors are trapped, prisoners in a structure
from which all the escape routes have been cut off. Click Click
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Now these aren't just any old gifts
but items people have let me know and have been pining on
for years but haven't fought down or been able to find or
buy it themselves or make a real public announcement over
it.
I have wrestled so many different
ways on the GBA RPGMaker that I'm not
entirely sure how I want to proceed with it where it will
work. I'm hungry to get back to programming
Windows and making a new better 
cause
frankly, programming in DragonBASIC
really sucks 
compared to GFABasic
!
Well at the church foodbank we are
starting to crack down on illegal immigrants now. Our
data-girl, the one who does both the paperwork and
determines who does and does not get groceries popped an
artery today, and although there were =12= people in the
family, she only authorized a 2-person-bag because they
had been coming to us for a year now with zero
identification of any kind except for their
children's IDs and our data-girl informed them their
first visit that they can never come again to receive
food without proof of U.S. residency.
LEVITICUS 12:
Is this truly practiced today
?
Should we, the people of the U.S.
continue to pay either through taxes or charity or both
to support families that do not exercise birth control
with full knowledge already knowing that they will
be incapable financially of caring for these children and
already have pre-meditated thoughts of other people being
forced to care for them in their poverty and possible
added inability at doing so either from lack of proper
education and/or upbringing ?
I have started to restructure the
memory layout for GBA 
Well, true enough after getting my
flu shot it sure feels like the very next day I got the
flu. 
So I guess I'm a little ill now
.. Didn't go to see Dad today.
My experience ? It's a definite
toss-up between Microsoft Windows Media Video
9 and XVID. Both are
100% Freeware (if you download them
from the link above) ! 
Don't believe a movie can be 1-minute
long, at 30fps, 352x240 and still under a meg ? Download the
1-minute sample I prepared sized at 1.0mb from Vietnamese Music
Video, "I
Will Love Again" by clicking 
Progress on GBA 
. . .
probably get to church a little early
to see what is there.
Homemade goodies at a Church Bazaar
??
There is - quite a
bit happening. My Dad, stable, feet on the ground, never
has his head in the clouds, is perhaps one of the most
level-headed persons you could know and solid as granite
said to me recently that if we have another disaster for
2005 then it will NOT be a natural one, but something
is going on. He said that in all the years we've had,
we've never had this many "natural" disasters
or a greater loss of life from natural disasters.
just told me to enjoy today at 65° that it's
going to get back up in the 90°s this
weekend ! 
Ah ! But WINTER is surely
on it's way by now riiaght ?!
Well sure !
I asked Dad about it. He said that we
are having a kind of greenhouse effect where because of
pollutants and damage to the ozone layer in the sky, it
is highly active for new tornadoes and hurricanes to
follow.
Isaac said, "But father, won't
it run out of memory ?"
She has a bit of difficulty reaching
the foot-pedals (because she is so cute/small, no,
not short, but small; she looks like a little girl), and for the grand
finale she was really tapping those toes out pretty far
to hit the bottom pedals. 
My sister was involved in an
automobile accident a few days ago.
She also just celebrated her 42nd
Birthday 2 days ago topping her at 42 (she's always 4 years
older than me despite my valiant efforts to get older
than her !) so you can see what my age would be.
Dayna, the nice piano playing girl at
Christ
The King,
the church I go to, is going to work in a different city
she said. I spoke with Fr. Bryant (our celebrant) and he assured me
that all will be done to find a new piano player for
church.
Thanks to Axel, one very good DragonBASIC
programmers, has shown me how to directly modify
byte contents (needed cause I am allocating space
out for the 64 text pages entry in Sprite Messenger).
When you are converting either *.Mp3s or *.WAVs to Microsoft's audio
format, *.WMV, if you want your
destination to be MONO audio whereas the source is
STEREO, do NOT use Microsoft's auto conversion, it will
be poor quality.