World of Arcana

Two pieces of update:

1. I learned this weekend how to make Facebook applications (essentially I had to teach myself PHP and SQL, which is quite mentally draining). It’s called “MyCast”, and it lets you ask the question - “If a movie was made about my life, which famous celebrities would I choose to cast as any of my Facebook friends?” and it answers the question “If my Facebook friends all had movies made about their lives, which famous celebreties would the cast as me?” (credit to Derek for first coming up with this idea). You can download the application that I made to your Facebook profile here.

2. I took the liberty to upload another East Carolina track for you to listen to. It’s a demo of an instrumental that Stu and I wrote a while ago called “Abacadaba” (which is simply the form of the piece, a rondo of sorts). It’s me on accordion and clarinet (which I had only started playing two week prior to the recording, so I took the fact that I only had one bad note as pretty good) and Stu on acoustic guitar. 

Abacadaba [Demo]

Download “Abacadaba”

First I said I’d blog about Josh. So here’s a funny story about Josh:

Today, Josh and I were both sitting in the staff office, and I writing an e-mail and he’s all like, “Are you blogging?” and I’m all like “No!” and he’s like, “Will you blog about me?” And I’m like, “K”.

Also, Colby wanted me to come up with a World of Arcana logo so that he can make “T-shirts and pillowcases”. I’ve kind of fulfilled his request. Because the only art tool at my disposal is Paint, it’s not great, but it’s a nice rough outline:

I look forward to seeing the T-shirts.

Oh, and Leslie, if you’re reading this - the bean dip was delicious.

I hate Colby. I hate Colby.

So does the guy at the laundromat.

I do not hate Noah.

But the creepy guy who lives next to the movie theater does.

Today, between research for my massive Economics paper, I snuck a quick look at my e-mail inbox, and was delighted to discover that East Carolina had been accepted into the Masters of Song Fu competition!

However, our spot would be given up to another artists if I did not submit a photo and biography by 6:00 EST…

I was soon forced to close the window and continue my investigation of unemployment rates of the past 9 quarters (including and not including part-time workers!), and at 3:15 PM, when school let out, I was both elated that we had made the competition, and scared out of my mind that I wouldn’t be able to find a computer to submit the information. Luckily, I went over to my friend’s house, and he let me use his computer, so I think East Carolina’s going to be okay for the contest.

Then I went into my friend’s basement and proceeded to lose 4 Mario Kart races in a row.^*

^{*I did win both songs I did in Guitar Hero though, so it’s okay.}

It’s been awhile since the last update, partially due to my busy schedule. Since my last post, I mainly was not writing because I needed to devote most of my energy into studying for the AP Economic exams. Luckily for you, the reader, this was not all a waste, because I did write a new song while I was studying - the economist’s love song, currently titled “Have Faith (feat. Adam Smith)”, and I may record that and put it up at some point in the future.

Also last week we had a band concert, where I was required to play the crazy synth parts in Peaches en Regalia among other things, which was fun, yet crazy tricky (I had to play on two keyboards at one to keep up with the song. But I have gotten positive feedback, so I guess it went good).

In addition, I have finally beaten Sam & Max 205: What’s New, Beelzebub? I had mostly been distracted and too lazy to have gotten around to the end. Once again, I will reiterate my belief that Season 2 hasn’t had any highs like there were in Season 1. I don’t know if Telltale is planning a Season 3 (I can only assume that they will), I hope that they can figure out what made Season 1 better than Season 2, and fix it. I’m not quite sure myself. One theory I have is that, since Season 2 had more of a planned story-arc, and Season 1 was more self-contained, that finishing an Episode in Season 1 just gave you more closure and a greater sense of accomplishment than just solving the next step in a series. The other issue I really have with Season 2 is that even though the idea was to create a fuller story-arc, to me it doesn’t really make sense. The overarching idea of the season is that Bosco is missing, and you need to find him. However, this isn’t really a driving force - who cares if Bosco’s missing? That’s not the thing that you can drive approx. 15 hours of gameplay from. Anyway, there goes my minor rant.

And finally, me, Stuart, and friends have finished recording “The Chemistry Album”. Stuart and I are thinking about potentially putting all of our East Carolina albums on the site for free download soon, so perhaps you will be able to hear all of the new tracks in a few days.

Two parts to this post:

1. Last night’s episode of Lost, for those of you who saw it, was pretty incredible. I feel like this episode is the turning point in the season - up until now, conflicts have been set up, i.e. freighter people helping the losties? (hint: no) and whether they were going to attack the barracks (hint: yes). This episode started to resolve the conflicts and answer some of the questions brought up in the first part of the season. So yea.

2. Continuing with yesterday’s post, I’m going to give a list of my favorite TF2 custom maps below:

CONTROL POINT MAPS:

• cp_jailbreak_b3 (or cp_jailbreak_b2)
• cp_orange_x (or cp_orange_x3. Not cp_orange_x4)
• cp_orange_tower
• cp_toyfort (and any variation thereof)
• cp_tron_final

CAPTURE THE FLAG:

• ctf_avantown
• ctf_convoy_v2
• ctf_royal_b3

CHALLENGE/CREATIVE MAPS:

• cp_bestinclass_v2
• cp_highclass_v2
• volleyball

BAD MAPS:

• ANY surf map

I’m currently “working” in my “spare time” on two maps: The first is a one-team capture the flag map (i.e. one team tries to capture, the other team tries to prevent) taking place in a 3D version of Kanto (i.e. The world from Pokemon red/blue/yellow). Red team starts in Pallet Town, and needs to take the intelligence from Professor Oak’s lab to Giovanni’s gym in Viridian City, where the Blue team starts. The second map I’m working on is a “challenge” map similar to Best In Class - except instead of having a separate course for each class, there is only one course per team, but certain obstacles can only be overcome with a specific class, and the whole team needs to work together. Aw, how heartwarming.

So I guess I lied, here’s a third part to the update: I was reminiscing with some friends today of literature that we read in Elementary and Middle School. Here are some recommendations/anti-recommendations:

RECOMMEND:

• The Rats of Nimh
• Bridge to Teribithea (spelling? too lazy to check)
• The Frog and Toad series

DO NOT RECOMMEND:

• Johnny Tremain
• Kavik the Wolf-Dog
• Junie of the Wolves