Testing, Testing, 1 2 3

So I got my midterms back this week, and things are looking pretty decent. I aced Stats and Atmospheric, and goofed up my Calc. Pretty much went as I expected.

I actually managed to do so well in Atmospheric that the prof had me go over the answers to the test in front of the class rather than her.

Other miscellany: I got new shoelaces to replace my unicycle-eaten ones, winter is quickly moving in, HalfLife 2 is a pretty sweet game. That's all I can think of right now.

You just keep on trying 'till you run out of Cake

I picked up the Orange Box on Friday, and have been successfully wasting time ever since. This is a good thing, because I don't have much else to do this weekend, seeing as there's a bit of a lull between my assignments.

Peggle Extreme was thrown in as a freebie, which is nice because it was a small download and helped kill some time while the other 8 gigs or so got sucked through the glorious series of tubes that is the internet.

Portal was an absolute blast. The only thing bad about it is that it was far too short. It's really nice to see some innovation in the realm of first-person games. I think I'll need to add the Weighted Companion Cube plush toy to my xmas list.

Half Life 2 is a few years old now, but since I never played it back when it was new it's proving to be a real blast all the same.

I haven't even touched Team Fortress 2 yet, and I'm sure it'll be a while before I get through all the 4 halflife packages!

Definitely worth the $50.

Shoelace Malfunction

My unicycle ate my shoelace today.

I think in future I'll tuck my shoelaces into my shoes. Luckily I didn't damage anything else when  fell off.

Twirling, twirling, twirling toward unicyclery

Yesterday I was down at the bike shop getting a few repairs and upgrades to my unicycle. I got the wheel trued, got a quickrelease for the seat clamp, and got a pair of new pedals.

I spent a little time in the saddle this afternoon and managed to pretty much nail idling, as well as rolling into and out of the idle, and also get backwards riding down pretty good, including rolling in and out of it. Sweet! I can also free-mount directly into idling or backwards riding (in addition to the regular forward riding).

Zombie Monitor

So today I come in from cycling, wake up my G3 and... the monitor isn't working.

Now, that's not to say it wasn't displaying an image; it was displaying it just fine, except about twice as bright as it ought display it, which is no good. In fact, I could quite easily see the retrace lines, which you most definitely shouldn't be able to see under normal operation.

Being the handy guy I am, I went and ate dinner. After I was done my dinner, I cracked open the monitor and re-adjusted the primary brightness setting on the flyback transformer, all while managing to resist the temptation to lick the big red wire (it's important to not lick the big red wire when working inside a monitor).

Of course, what I neglected to do was to check and adjust the focus while I was in there, as the brightness change drew it slightly out of focus. Perhaps if I'm feeling impish some other day I'll crack it open again and give it a tweak. It's not all that bad, really.

I'm just glad I don't have to buy a new monitor right now. All 3 of my current crop of monitors are on their last legs, but they'll hopefully hold together until next summer.

Rewind

I spent some time out on my unicycle this afternoon, seeing as it's probably going to be the last nice weekend of the year, and practised my backwards riding. It's coming along nicely, but I'm still pretty wobbly and haven't gone more than 10 feet or so. I think with a few more days in the saddle I should be doing ok.

I wasn't feeling 100%, though, and I'm not entirely sure why at this point. I wasn't feeling sick at all, just a little bit out of it. Maybe I just didn't get enough sleep, what with being out partying late last night.

Vancouver Photos

I finally got around to sorting and organizing my Vancouver pictures. I moved them out of the vacation dump and into their own gallery.

There's not any new photos, so if  you looked through them before there's no need to look at them again.

Relatedly, I really need to upgrade my server. Sloooooow!