The Password Is "Ice"

Went ice skating today with my sister. i am glad to say that i did not fall one time and that i felt very comfortable on the ice, being that it was only the third time being on the ice in my life i was pretty proud of myself.

Played a board game with my parents when i got home. my dad purchased some old games from the auction house down the road so he was super excited to play one of them. he suggested the game sorry. I HATE SORRY. so stupid, it is the only game where one can make progress and lose it all at the end by the hands of a fellow player depending completely on chance. at least with risk or stratego if you lose with a lead it is all your fault. but in sorry everything is chance so i hate it. anyway we ended up playing password. a mimic of the old 50's TV gameshow and one of my favorites to watch, mainly out of nostalgia of a time i was not a part of.

I am going to start putting my minecraft updates at the bottom of my posts from now on. since they will probably be daily and they are the least interesting. while playing today Steve started his building project. a giant skyscraper with a ton of glass. should be very cool when it is all done. i worked on the global minecart track all day. i finally understand the redstone circuits. they all run on Boolean math and can be very confusing at first. i successfully setup two small circuits today, one that is a track switcher and another that allows a cart to be deployed. i ran out of iron before i could completely finish the whole track system, so now it is cycling back on the same track every time leading to there a limit of 1 cart on the track at a time. in the future my plan is to have 10 carts circling the world at all times so one only has to wait at maximum 10-15 seconds for a ride to show up. will be extremely convenient for everyone, especially when i add in the track that goes down to Joe's tunnel system.

Here are some pictures of our server at the moment. we are all very proud of it.

The House Joe Made and Base of Operations

Inside The Pyramid 

Steve's Building Project

A Look From Afar

My Server Never Sleeps

The world is happy place now. Steve and i FINALLY found a way for him to play on my server. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so now this brings the amount of people on the server to 4 since outside people can connect to it. Steve also said he plans on inviting some of his friends so the amount may be increasing. i am so excited to finally have a true minecraft multiplayer experience. also he showed me how to use the function keys correctly so now i can take screenshots and go into third person within the game. our next mini-project is setting up a rail system with a switching station with red stone so that one only needs to flip a switch at a grand central terminal and go anywhere on the map.

After the first night of using my wakemate i am happy to say i slept productively. i am still evaluating this product for its merit. i was looking at the leaderboards and apparently someone in Sweden got a 93 score. i do not know how one can sleep that deep. must be sedated or something.

I Wonder How Well Dinosaurs Sleep

When i got to work today i knew i was going to be an extra person so i was mentally preparing myself to have a terrible day, but when i got there my boss said that they had way to many people and that if i wanted i could go home. well i am not about to miss out on having another day off even though i am broke. so i went home.

While playing minecraft today i decided to visit the nether world, which requires me to restart the server with different properties. instead of letting me use a gate the server is dumb and forces me to manually change stuff. anyways i walked a bit in the nether and got a ton of glowstone, so i decided to get back to the regular world. when i restarted the server and rejoined it had spawned me somewhere completely random. i had no idea where was and i did not have a compass because i did not think i needed one. so i was lost...in a game as large as the earth. i walked for about 20 minutes southeast in the direction to where our house would have been. no luck so i had to restores from a backup at 12:03 last night. so i lost all the work i did last night between 12-6. lame because i had finished the floor of my pyramid and now i have to do it all over again. i am just glad Joe had not done anything in that time frame, it would have been real hard to break the news to him that i fucked it all up. but he is out of town at a funeral right now leaving the apartment to myself for these two days. which is awesome.

Received my wakemate wristband in the mail today. so tonight is going to be the first night i start tracking my sleep. i do not know how gimmicky this product is, but i guess i will find out. the concept is pretty cool. they use the technology hospitals and health care facilities use to monitor peoples sleep to track ones sleep at home. all in a nice little felt covered wristband. my review of the product will probably take about a week to formulate, but i am excited to see if it works. it is meant to wake one at their optimal REM cycle so that person feels refreshed and not groggy.

James Pero

Designer / Developer / Producer / Video Editor

Twitter | YouTube | Tel: 407.536.7376

Saw a segment on family guy about Jurassic park the other night so of course that meant i needed to have a Jurassic Park marathon. which always leads to me checking on the status of the Jurassic Park 4. last time i checked it was just dust in the wind, but apparently it is a serious endeavor now. Joe Johnston the director of the third Jurassic park said he is going to start working on it right after he finishes Captain America. he also said that it would kick start a completely new trilogy that takes the series into a completely different direction. should be very interesting. i hope they find out the raptora are smarter than they had originally thought and that they are equivalently intelligent to humans and chimpanzees. would be interesting to watch a movie about a species 65 million years old that have the same potential as man. i know that is what they were leading on about in all previous 3 movies so it is only a logical step to show them in the next movie with a rudimentary civilization with tools and such.

Apple Accepts American Express Cards

Woke up early(11:00) and went to IHOP with Joe and josh. the crowd is completely different at noon then it is at midnight. very sharp contrast. i had to work a crap schedule today, got stuck doing rooms as an extra person. the only good thing about being an extra person is the chance of going home early which happened tonight. got home an hour early to attempt for the millionth time to setup a public minecraft server so my cousin can play with us. as usual it ended in tears. we have given up on trying to get this to work until the actual multiplayer is a finished product. the main issue seems to be the fact that i have no idea what i am doing. i am supposed to forward a port. so i follow all the instructions in the YouTube video but it still does not work. so i have no idea.

Apples quarterly earnings came out today. turns out their iPad profit is more than their entire laptop line profit. which is pretty amazing. it is only  hair short of trumping their entire computer line. as far as i am concerned that is a pretty successful product. Tim Cook the COO of apple had a funny quote about how all the other tablets are bizarre. which is true i have had the chance to mess around with the galaxy tab, and i am honestly not impressed. it is nothing compared to the iPad. i honestly think it is as simple as these companies do not spend enough time and resources into developing individual products. no other company seems to understand that when you release a product, that is your product for the next year or so. that is what is wrong with the cellphone market on a whole. every other month a new android phone comes out that is not really a significant improvement over the last, which leads to the android that came out 9 months ago being obsolete and unsupported. it is a tragedy that companies do not work like apple. when apple comes out with a  phone, or a anything really, that is their product for the next 365 days. so within those 365 days they are working on the next generation. when if you look at the android timeline they spend maybe 3 months on a phone.

I still have not heard back from US Steel up in Detroit. i was really hoping it would work out. i would finally be living comfortable for once. but no....so now i think i am going to start applying to places around here. i was looking on monster and there are a lot of drivers wanted. i do not know what this job entails(driving, duh) or how much i would make. i do enjoy driving when i have a reason to drive.

I got a credit card in the mail from American express the other day. i honestly do not know anywhere that even accepts that card, but i digress. the letter was in excited font to inform me that i had been chosen to have their oh so special card. so i opened it just to see how special it was and it has an annual fee of 95$. are you fucking kidding me?!?! who the hell would pay to own a credit card? and why would they act like it is some kind of privilege for me to have it. they are obviously sending these out knowing they will be getting a hundred dollars a year guaranteed.

Teefury is a site that hosts a t-shirt for one day only. a very cool site that helps artists because all the shirts are uploads from people around the world. the one today is awesome. it is a Mario-House mash up and i just had to get it.

I am working on a post that should clarify exactly how i feel about the video game industry. i have tomorrow off so i should have time tomorrow to work on it. i might even do a good EA post.

Pyramid

Had a good day off today. went to the pool hall with Joe and josh for a little bit. realized once again how bad i am at billiards. while we were there we also played ping pong, i went 2-2. after that we ate at applebee's, after we were seated i got up to use the restroom because my hands felt like i had bar all over them. i found a 10 dollar bill on the ground. i went back to the table and i was like "hells ya i found a 10" i got a total of three high fives. however after closer inspection of my total cash on my person it turned out to be my own 10 i dropped. so Joe reneged those high fives at once. the waiter was really cool and even commented on my einstein shirt. i got the fiesta lime chicken like i always do, delicious! after that we went bowling with Alissa at glass lanes. we wanted to go to miracle lanes were the games are only 99 cents each. but they are stupid and close at 9. i do not understand that at all. anyway i bowled like crap because my head hurt. know how one feels when they stand up to quick, well it felt like that but constantly. not a fun feeling. went back home and talked josh into getting minecraft. he helped a great deal with the Pyramid project.

I finished my pyramid tonight finally. i am so happy, it is definitely the most impressive thing i have ever done in a video game. what that says about me i do not know, and i do not care. i will have a video of the time lapse up tomorrow when i finish it. much to late to work on it now since i am getting up at 10 tomorrow for breakfast. however i do have some pictures of it finished.

Perspective of the House

From the top floor of the house

Josh and i stayed up a bit after Joe decided to go to bed. he helped me clear more than half of the inside floor area. the object is to make the inside a level surface requiring us to dig out at least 10,000 blocks in the process. overall it was an extremely successful night.

Lying About Pyramids

Watched the invention of lying last night. Now one of my favorite movies. Such a simple concept but Ricky did a fantastic job flushing it out into a film. The plot of the movie is man never evolved the ability to lie. So everyone tells the blunt truth, which leads to some very funny dialogue especially when Ricky goes on a date with a women clearly out of his league. Somehow he gains the ability to say something that is not so(a lie). Since no one knows what a lie is everything he says is taken at face value. He unfortunately says something about a man that lives in the sky and that people do not go to a world of nothingness when they die. Making him a messiah to the people around him. Essentially he invents religion. I highly recommend this movie, hilarious dialogue.

I do not know how they got so many people to participate in that film, but they all had small parts. Like on scene each from Jason bateman to John hodgman. It was crazy. Almost every scene had someone new. It almost seemed like Ricky said he was doing a movie and people lined up to be in it. One of my favorite parts was Steven merchants small bit. I was surprised that Karl pilkington was not in the movie at all. Seemed like something Ricky would do.

i have finished 3/4 of my pyramid in minecraft. i would have had to finished tonight, but i ran out of materials. so tomorrow when Joe gets back on we can get me the final amount so i can finish it. i just have to decide what i want the inside to look like.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Pyramid of Aristotle

Had the day off of work so i spent most of it just sitting in front of my macbook messing around. had to go to my parents house to change my headlight that went out. of course it was sub-zero temperatures while doing it. my dad did all the work i just held the flashlight, can not wait until i have a kid.

Went to the bowling alley with Joe and Jackie. bowled pretty good for not stepping foot in an alley in over 8 months. left early and went back home. Joe and i played some minecraft on our server and we both made quite a bit of progress. Joe has given up on his castle and has decided to assist me with my Pyramid project. he widened a tunnel underground 3*25*really long. mainly for materials for construction projects going on right now. honestly 90% of the work on this pyramid is clearing the work space on the map before the work actually commences. i finally succeeded in the starting of the outer framing. Joe came up with an idea that i should make it out of cobblestone steps instead of the blocks themselves. making the whole structure traversable abound its face. i had thought of this and disregarded it due to the immense amount of additional work it would create, but Joe talked me into it. the problem is for every 6 cobblestone blocks one gets 4 steps. so with a 60% return rate i am going to use a ton more material than originally calculated. i did the math and for my pyramid i will need 20,00 cobblestone blocks to create all the steps necessary. which is crazy. also i looked at the size of the Pyramid of Giza and mine is almost exactly 1/3 the surface area(not volume since mine will be hollow), which is pretty awesome. from where the top of the pyramid will be one can start to see the framing coming together around it. here is a picture of the progress. i will put together a time lapse video when it is all finished.