Author: Tim Froehlich

O.o

Twas a good day. I stayed home yesterday to mow lawns, sleep, and play a little Fable. It was nice – it was a really pretty day, definately worth the mockery I recieved today. In any case, we had a quiz in Global about the European countries – I got the 5 capitals, definitions, and seas right, but I couldn’t remember ANY of the minor countries (post soviet), so I’ll probably get like a B on that. But anyways – I was back up to 132 pounds last night, although I wieghed 127 today. This can’t be normal, really. O.o

O.o

Classes have been going well – I’m really enjoying learning Java. It’s fun, even though I’m doing very minimal stuff. I failed a math quiz, unfortunately. I don’t get it – I understood everything perfectly, but the 5 questions on there were extremely hard – much harder than the ones we’d been practicing. I only actually answered one of them. *sigh* I don’t really like my math class all that much. English has been pretty good, not awesome. Global is great – Ms. Rumney is a really great teacher. I’m not doing very well in Chemistry – I can’t figure out this Scientific Notation (yes, it’s simple, but I suck at it, there’s a reason I’m in Course 2 Math) and I’ve slipped up on a few assignments so far. I just need to get on my feet.

O.o

Contuining in my rants, I have a little blurb on Fable, and about the outcries of dissapointment most audible of Penny Arcade. Fable ahs turned out to be a big dissapointment to many because of the extreme hype thrown out about it. The problem is, they had to drop so much stuff due to time and budget restraints. Mostly time, though. They spent 4 years on the game, so..

Here is a bulleted list of sutff they dropped:

-Two player co-op

-Heros as adversaries (heroes would eventually track you down and fight you for reputation and stuff)

-A whole lot quests

-A bundle of various/minor things (like taking clothes from people you kill, kids getting haircuts after you, etc.)

In short: Fable’s vision didn’t live up to Fable’s reality. (Stolen from Tim Buckley)

O.o

hsnh

You’re a “Yellow Angel” which means

you’re probably really motherly. You’re not

like a soccermom or anything but you’re

protective of those you care for and you’d do

anything for them. You’re usually the wiser one

in your group of friends and you’re a good

psychiatrist because you’ve been through a lot

of stuff and know the best thing to do in every

situation. But you don’t take any crud from

other people and they respect you for your

ability to stick up for yourself and others but

you don’t pick pointless fights just because

your mad. You’re very controled and can deal

with anything with a calm smile. (If you cannot

see the picture, go to my homepage and scroll

down near the bottom. I have the results from

all my quizess that have pics)

What Color Angel Are You? (PICS)

brought to you by Quizilla

You know, there’s all these quizzes I want to take but they’re all like “Girls only!”, so I’m all left out. *sniff*

O.o

A fair amount of sutff has happened in the recent days. I have a lot of rants to make. Hehe.

First: the principal. Everyone knows he sucks, and I’ll explain why.

He’s enforcing the dress code. Probably a good thing, right? Well, not the way he’s doing it. First week of school, no warning, very sudden. I’ve also heard that they don’t actually make clothes that suit the dress code (they have three tests – if you stand up straight with arms slackened at the side, and you can feel skin on your fingers, you need a longer skirt/shorts/whatever. if you put your hand on your shoulder and you feel skin, you’re violating the dress code. you also can’t have any of your belly or back showing.), but the thing is, its not gonna help anything. His reasons were “to create a distraction-free and safe environment” – and unless every guy in the school is an obsessed pervert, that’s not true. I don’t sit in math class and miss the formula for slope (or whatever) because the girl across from me has her shoulders showing. Please.

He’s forcing much tighter rules on passes throughout school. Which, I can explain very vlearly why it won’t help. Before him, during your lunch period you could go a few places without getting a pass or permission, like the main office, attendance office, most of the classrooms in E building, and the library. The way he has it now, you cannot leave the cafeteria/quad for any reason without a pass. When you can’t walk 20 ft from the quad to the guidance office to change you schedule becuase you don’t have a pass, that’s just beurocracy. You can’t go to the library without a pass. Nothing, nada.

He doesn’t allow any electronic stuff to be used on school. Sounds fine, right? The problem is when it comes to stuff like study halls and lunch. Study halls can be deathly boring if you can’t go anywhere. So basically, you have to sit and do nothing. Funny thing is, he thinks the same rule can be applied to teachers. My German teacher was telling me what he did to a teacher who was in a study hall (that is, she was the one taking care of it), and she was on her laptop, doing work, which, I might mention, all teachers do. The principal comes up to her and says she has to get ogg her laptop so she can make sure her study hall is safe and in check.

Bull. Beaurocracy.

He’s overworking teachers – he’s taken out some of the rules set to keep teachers from being overworked. My German teacher is a prime example of one those who has been shafted by this whole thing. She teaches 5 classes of German, which should exempt her from having to take a study hall, but under his new rules, she gets to do that, plus, her room is taken by a spanish teacher 1 period every day, and she’s handling the German exchange.

He won’t allow food outside of the cafeteria. Not even in the quad. It’s understandable to ban it from being in the halls, but that’s easy to do! There are hall moniters everywhere, they can just tell the student to go eat in the cafeteria. The problem is the classrooms. For those of us who do not have a lunch, we have to wait forever to get a pass so we can eat at all in the classroom. His reasons were retarded – he wanted classrooms to be safe and clean. Teachers can handle that, they always have. More beaurocracy.

He’s switching homerooms to first period, which takes away my chance to see a lot of people before school, and it adds 10 minutes to my time with my German teacher. Icky.

So that’s my rant about the principal.

…

An okay day, my classes aren’t as awesome as they were yesterday, for a number of reasons. My chemistry class now sucks. I just have no friends in there, at all. It’s weird thinking about the fact that I had no friends in most of my classes at the beginning of last year. But this really annoying kid, whom I’m sure a lot of you know, Greg Galyanov moved into almost all of my classes. The only classes I don’t have with him are Global and Programming. A minor thing, but he’s pretty obnoxious.

I’m planning on getting a decent amount of sleep tonight. I haven’t had enough lately, and it’s caused me to slip in Chemistry. Which doesn’t help my opinion of chemistry.

To add on to that, I’ve been losing weight, which, at this point, just isn’t healthy. At the moment I weigh 123 pounds, so at my current rate I’ve been going down a pound a day. :-/ I don’t feel sick or anything, I just haven’t had time to eat and such. Plus, we don’t have much food that I’m interested in eating. But I’m not that worried about it, I just don’t wanna be a super stick. Anyways.

O.o

*reflects upon today’s date*

*realizes it’s past midnight*

*discontinues reflecting*

Friday afternoon I walked home with Ben, Paul, and Zach, and we temporarily parted ways so that Paul and I could get pizza. It was good pizza (sammy’s) and we walked to my house, chilled, and we all spent the night at Zach’s, though Ben walked home just before midnight, so technically he didn’t. It was fun, we watched TV, played Apples to Apples, and ate pizza, watched videos and sort of played games. I got home about noon and Paul left my house about 1:00. Twas all good.

I’m very hungry for pizza right now.

EDIT: I guess as any diehard fan is obligated to do, I must mention that new screenshots and several more previews of Halo 2 have been released. No, I’m too lazy to give linkage, but I will say I was tricked by those fools. It’s all the product of a media embargo that was lifted 12:01 AM Friday, which I failed to realize was under Pacific Standard Time. So Thursday night I stayed up till 12:30 AM wondering why the new previews and shots hadn’t been posted. I was rather sad to hear they ditched the ATV (APC) for multiplayer, at least. I was also slightly irked by the symmetry between the Covenant and Human weapons (carbine/battle rifle, beam rifle/sniper rifle, plasma rifle/SMG, brute shot/rocket launcher [the differences for that one is obvious but the point still stands]) but I trust Bungie enough to smooth it out. Plus, the build they were demonstrating is at least three months old….very, very comforting.

O.o

New schedule:

1 – Honors German 3 (Bronfenbrenner)

Note: I had every intention of dropping this but my dad later found 3 colleges that do requires 3 years of one foreign language, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain myself the the teacher or to my guidance counselor.

2 – Honors Math 10 (House)

Note: I really wanted to get a different class, but, such was not possible.

3 – Principles of Engineering (Peters)

Note: I had to drop Digital Engineering and take this so I could fit programming in.

4 – Honors Global History 2 (Rumney)

Note: I had Pipia before, and she was bad. She was a first time teacher. Huzzah.

5 – (semester 1) Introduction to Programming 1 (Teukolsky)

5 – (semester 2) Introduction to Programming 2 (Teukolsky)

6 – Honors English 10 (Asklar)

7 – Physical Chemistry (Smith, B)

8 – (day 1) Study Hall

Note: My guidance counselor didn’t actually put this on my list, so as of right now I don’t know who it’s with.

8 – (even days) PE

8 – (days 3, 5) Physical Chemistry Lab

Comment if you have a class with me. I’m annoyed that I had to move Chemistry, because I was in it with Zach and Jared, which includes PE and study hall, but, maybe I have other classes with them. Chances are I do. I had two classes with people I knew and that was it. Chemistry, and sort of German, but that class sucks anyways.i know I have classes with people in programming, though. And hopefully PoE (principles of engineer) too. Huzzah.

-.-

This was quite possibly the worst first day of school, ever. It was crap. My schedule is insanely retarded, I have no programming and I can’t get out of German. German sucks. Math sucks. Global sucks. Lunch sucks. English sucks. Everything…just…sucks… the ONLY two classes I can enjoy are Chemistry and Digital Electronics. The only two classes I have multiple friends in is…Chemistry…and…NOTHING ELSE. I have an appointment with my Guidance counselor to change the schedule, and I’m thinking maybe if I switch to combined I can take programming. I need to switch this schedule around.

I cannot go through school like this. I just can’t deal with such terrible classes.

O.o

You are Blue

What color are you? (Anime Pictures)

brought to you by Quizilla

If an Electric Dragon flies by your house, all the electic appliences over surge and your TV flickers...

Your an electric Dragon! Well, Well, Well, Speedy!

Electic dragons are just do darn quick, which

means you must be quick at something. Whether

its running, swimming, or answering questions,

you are super speed. But of course, you have a

craze for video games or computers. You can

play amazingly at any game or at least try to.

Go you!

What elemental dragon are you?

brought to you by Quizilla

Artistic

You are naturally born with a gift, whether it be

poetry, writing or song. You love beauty and

creativity, and usually are highly intelligent.

Others view you as mysterious and dreamy, yet

also bold since you hold firm in your beliefs.

What Type of Soul Do You Have ?

brought to you by Quizilla

vamp

You are Form 9, Vampire: The Undying.

“And The Vampire was all that remained on

the blood drowned creation. She attempted to

regrow life from the dead. But as she was

about to give the breath of life, she was

consumed in the flame of The Phoenix and the

cycle began again.”

Some examples of the Vampire Form are Hades (Greek)

and Isis (Egyptian).

The Vampire is associated with the concept of

death, the number 9, and the element of fire.

Her sign is the eclipsed moon.

As a member of Form 9, you are a very realistic

individual. You may be a little idealistic,

but you are very grounded and down to earth.

You realize that not everything lasts, but you

savor every minute of the good times. While

you may sometimes find yourself lonely, you

have strong ties with people that will never be

broken. Vampires are the best friends to have

because they are sensible.

Which Mythological Form Are You?

brought to you by Quizilla

You represent... anger.
You represent… anger.

Mad at the world, eh? You have a tendency to…
freak out easily. Overly emotional about
everything, you’re most prone to bouts of
cruelty and moodiness. Other people may be
afraid of the fact that you explode so easily,
but at least you’re honest… even if you’re
honest about not liking anything.

What feeling do you represent?
brought to you by Quizilla

Wow. I love quizzes. Especially that mythological creature one. Vampire…mmm…I don’t imagine vampires in the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” or “Blade” way, I think of them more as outcasts, a thick, heavily armored king off in black, majestic castle, sitting at his throne, leaning on his knees, holding his sword in dismay, alone. And of course at night he goes out to find a bear for a snack. None of that human eating stuff. Yickth. I tried finding a picture to illustrate my words, but, oh well. I still like that vampire one. Heh.

O.o

Apologies for not updating in such a long time. Especially Gwen, who informed me at least half a dozen times that my blog was “boring” for the past week.

-.-

In any case, I’ve had a rather null week, basically tonight’s sleep will end it all with a big question mark and begin the school year. I might not sleep, I uually have trouble sleeping on the night before school. Summer hasn’t been what I had hoped for – I mostly get the feeling ebcause of the two weeks a bit after camp (the one right after was wonderful), spent waking up very late and doing very little. Summer hasn’t been bad, I just wanted to end it better. Sam’s absence will be….very noticable….tomorrow. It’s not gonna be the same.

We miss you man.

I’ve basically been playing The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind all week. Fun game, not the best RPG ever made, but continually entertaining. For those of you who don’t know, Morrowind is essentially the first open ended RPG ever made. It has some 10-12 factions and guilds you can join, which make up probably 250-300 of the quests you can do, while the other 100 or 150 are just out there for you to discover. The only problem I find with the game is that everything is minimalistic. The interactions are basic and very black and white. The characters and buildings are not very unique from eachother, and all the names are very random and not easy to remember. In any case, it’s still a game worth playing.

I’m ready for school to start.

O.o

I know you’re all bored of these Fable posts, but I promise, this is the last one until The 17th or 18th. Gamespot did an interview of Peter Molyneux, the lead dev on the Fable team. This was an absolutely FABULOUS interview. It gives huge insight on all kinds of things – the gaming industry, British culture, the development of Fable, and it’s really very cool.

Linkage

This really prompted me to do a little blurb on gaming and the like. Molyneux is really a great guy – you can tell from the interview. Something that he mentions in the interview is that Fable was brought up with very grossly exaggerated expectations. They were expectations that Molyneux said himself that he planted, and later regretted because he knew his team couldn’t fulfill. He talked a lot about how the project evolved as time went – they set out to make the greatest RPG of all time. That’s what every team making an RPG sets out to do. Because if you shoot for anything less, you’re gonna get less. He doesn’t believe they made the greatest RPG of all time, and I find that a very brave statement for him to make. This interview alone has restored my faith in Fable.

As for the gaming industry in total, I now feel a lot more enlightened on the whole process. The gaming industry is often interpreted as run by single men, who can afford to stay at work for 12 hours each day – because they want to, because they have no responsibilites. Molyneux touched on the fact that over the course of 3 1/2 years, 20 babies were born to families on his team. The gaming industry has changed. Maybe that’s what it used to be, maybe there are still a few companies out there still like that. I don’t know. As the makers of games have changed, so have gamers. Gaming once used to be a very limited field of people. Up until about the time of the Nintendo and Sega consoles, not many people were into video games. PC games were non existant until Windows 95 came out. Computers weren’t nearly as user-friendly 10, even 5 years ago, and thus that has opened up the PC world to those not as much into gaming.

The whole point of this, really, is that I’m amazed at how the whole industry has advanced. Molyneux said he wanted games to become on the same level as books and movies. I think we’re almost there. The only thing left is for the press to embrace what is now equally important to our culture as books and movies.

O.o

Gamespot has posted by far the most helpful review on Fable thus far. Definately worth a read, since it’s only 3 pages. (boy do I hate IGN’s excessively long reviews)

Linkage

It gave Fable an 8.6. At this point I’m still looking forward to it, but I’m hoping it was all an attempt by BBB to figure out how to improve the game.

O.o

Ben made this…so…

01) Name? …i’ll amuse you. my name is tim.

02) Starting comments? that first question was retarded. i mean, everyone knows MY name! or they should.

***HYPOTHETICAL***

03) If you could have 2 super powers, what would they be? teleportation and transformation

04) If you were a super hero, what costume would you have?

tight black leath—ahem. black silk cape, green + black carbon fiber/kevlar vest, black long sleeve shirt (silk), black baggy silk pants, black kevlar helmet, and excessively thick and durable boots. black and green. and a riot shield (black and green). and a bandana. that’s green too.

05) If you could choose the color of the sky, what color would you choose? green

06) If you could choose the color of the SEA, what color would you choose? black

07) If you were an adventurer, what would be your weapon of choice? a flail. unless it’s a modern day adventurer, then I’d have to choose a G3SG/1. (H&K sniper rifle)

08) Pick a place in the world that, if it sank into the ocean and was never seen again, you wouldn’t care about? CANADA.

09) If you could transform into an animal, what animal would it be and why?

flying squirrel, because squirrels are cute and they’re probably about as nimble as mammals get.

10) If you could kill the makers of a certain commercial on TV, what commercial would it be? those stupid, retarded time warner cable commercials. all of them. I hate them all.

***FAVORITE***

11) Word? …penguin…(heehee Colette!)

12) Flower? potato. not really, probably a tulip..

13) TV show? ooh, tough one. Cosby Show, possibly Family Guy

14) Video game? FFVII

15) Place to eat? CHILE’S!

***WHAT COMES TO MIND WHEN I SAY***

16) Potato? a potato.

17) German? everything that comes to mind involves hitler. it may be because I just watched a documentary on greece and how it got invaded in WWII

18) Pooch? a dog.

19) Lion? kenya.

20) Skeleton? a skeleton.

21) Pop-tart? toaster

22) Menstrual? …

23) Fluffy? a very furry poodle

24) Nothing? cake.

25) Cellular? a cell phone.

***NEAR WORST CASE***

26) You’re tied up in a sack, along with some potatoes, some twisty-ties, and a small American flag. You’re in the back seat of a car being driven off to somewhere by an armed kidnapper. What do you do?

eat potatoes until you have anough room to move semi freely. gnaw through the sack with your teeth and make two slits for your hands. take the american flag and twisty ties, looping them together. choke the kidnapper with makeshift rope-thingy, sell the car, buy an HDTV and go home.

27) You’re stranded on a desert island, except that the sand is made out of needles, and you have a sword in your stomach. Also, you spontaneously combust every 5 minutes, and the undead red baron is flying in circles overhead, waiting for his chance to strike. What do you do?

well you obviously wouldn’t know that you’d spontaneously combust every 5 minute unless you’d gone through it, so, we can assume I’m undead. that reduces the threat of the red baron, and makes him a target to maintain survival.

***END***

28) List these on a scale from least to greatest:. (?!? i dunno what I’m supposed to be listing…)

29) On a scale of 1 to 10, pick something and rate it, make it clever! woo…ummm….life. life is about an 8 right now. yep.

30) Ending comments? i want more of those “worst case scenarios” and “what comes to mind” things. otherwise fun.

31) What you wish your name was? i actually like my name.

O.o

Continuing with my gaming phase over the past few days…

A game I’m really looking forward to has finally gone gold. Fable, an RPG long in the making, is going to ship on September 14th. (I already have mine pre-ordered from EB, although I’m too poor to get fast shipping, so I’ll have to wait 5 days. :-()

EDIT: I just learned that they offered free 3-day shipping! Huzzah for not waiting over the weekend!

In any case, IGN has done an excellent review of it, which covers most of the bases. They ended the article by stating it wasn’t as good as KotOR, which has been hailed as one of the greatest RPGs made to date. Having not played the game yet I can’t really make a fair comparison, and I find it almost impossible to believe that Big Blue Box, the developer of Fable, would abandon a few really cool elements such as being able to steal clothing from your enemies, and seeing young children get haircuts like your own (you can do that, you know, get haircuts and stuff) is something I just don’t understand why they would drop.

EDIT: It appears TeamXBox has made a review as well, which has a little bit more informative (IMO) than IGN’s. Here it is. They gave Fable a 9.1, whereas IGN gave it a 9.3. Gamespot has yet to make a full review.

O.o

My week hasn’t been all that great, but, things have been up and down, and I’m a bit bored.

So I decided I should do a little review on Dead or Alive 3. Daniel and I bought it a few months ago for 15-ish bucks (used). It’s a part of a series, although I haven’t played the previous two. There’s another one coming out soon, Dead or Alive: Ultimate, which promises to be good as well. Here’s a quick rundown on it all.

Graphics: Being a release game, it’s very, very well polished. They did a superb job on the models, each of the characters has its own look, (including the females *mutter*) and you even get that whole “each individual strand of hair” look. Very solid.

Gameplay: What it lacks in originality, it makes up for in a very solid, balanced set of characters. There are 13 characters total, each having 3 different costumes (different models or colorings), some with more. Each character has between 60-200 moves and combos available to do, and each of these have different animations, some of which provide for a very cool looking fight scene. (Daniel can tell you the same thing) It’s all fairly well balanced, too. As for the story mode, the plot was weak, easy to complete, and more like something they threw in for the heck of it. Each character had a 1-2 minute cutescene after having completed the story mode, which were quite cool, but still weak in plot. There’s a sparring mode in which you can just fight an invincible opponent, go through all of your moves list, focus on specific combos, really a very nice touch. The shining star of the game is the versus mode, which comes in two version: 1v1, and tag team. Tag team works like it sounds, you slap in your ally at any time, and occasionally do combination attacks along with your ally. When it comes to levels, there aren’t too many, (about 10 for 1v1, 5 for tag team) but each has its own effects (explosions, breaking through walls, jumping off ledges to new areas) and all look very pretty.

Sound: This aspect was also slightly lacking, as the music was not of the greatest variety, and did not support the mood of the game well. Each character also had all their own sounds, usually for each move and combo. Sometime a little reptitive, but not usually.

My score: 8.7

…

Busy day, indeed. Sam spent the night last night (he came over about 6:00) and we had a lot of fun. We watched a lot of Family Guy and Chapelle’s Show, played DoA3, laughed at my brothers antics, listened to music (of many assortments), and talked. It was really, really, really good to have him over for the last time. We woke up about 12:00 today and he left abotu 1:00 PM. Afterwards I walked down to the Commons with Christopher and Jonothan and ate lunch at Benchwarmers, then took a bus to the mall and walked around, they bought CDs, I just listened to stuff, got a moccha, my dad drove over and we watched The Village (good movie, definately not Shyamlyan’s best, though), and we came home. That was about 9:30. I watched a little bit of Starsky and Hutch (very funny) with my dad and Christopher.

I’m tired. Very, very tired.

…

After spending a total of 5 hours in the car we finally got Jonathan AND Christopher back, but Jonathan’s bag didn’t show up, so that’s no good. It’s nice to see them again (my hyper activity failed after 5 hours in that car.) and all that jazz. Jonathan brought Seasons 1-3 of Family Guy with him, so…heh…we managed to get to sleep about 4:30 AM, not too late for me but we woke up at 8:15-ish for church, so, I’m running low on sleep. :-/

I got a couple compliments on my haircut at church, which really makes me happy, heh…apparantly it “amuses” Sho…I’m wondering what that’s all about.

I’m not feeling too great, so ‘ll be heading out now…

^^

14 hours until I see Christopher and Jonothan.

Woot.

I wrote another letter to Elizabeth.

It’s in the mail.

I’m hyper.

I’ve been listening to techno for 597 minutes and 37 seconds.

Heh.

10 hours.

That’s a long time.

I may not sleep tonight.

I’m just that hyper.