Cooking...?

Okay, so this doesn't quite fit into the nerdy theme of the blog, but I guess cooking kind of is nerdy.

I've always liked to cook. It's really fun, and perfecting delicious recipes is just one more reason to brag about what you can do. It's really exciting to try new recipes and see how they come out. I just made homemade caramel sauce to put in an apple-caramel cheesecake recipe. I'm pumped to see how it all will come out.

I also have a really good pizza dough recipe that my dad showed me. It's delicious dough, but the only way to make really good pizza with awesome flavor is to cook it in really well-seasoned cast iron skillets. Ask any of my friends, and they'll agree.

One of my favorites is my lava cake recipe. Have you ever had one of those mini chocolate cakes where the middle is still goo and when you cut into it, it runs out? It's warm, chocolate-y goodness with a moist cake to make it even better. Yeah, I've got a recipe for it and I can 9 times out of 10 pull it off. There's always that funky one every few times that manages to over-cook... but chocolate cake is still delicious too!

Do any of you guys have good recipes that you like to make?

Firefly

So I just watched my first episode of Firefly last night. It's pretty tough to explain the show because I've only seen the pilot episode, but I'll give it a shot. It's futuristic, kind of like a Star Wars theme. There's a ship of crooks, though they're really just scavengers trying to find things like food to distribute to people. It's a very poor universe; people are starving and the government isn't helping out the people. The captain of those scavengers owns a ship and they go on missions to get paid. They are a very poor bunch. I can't give away much more without giving away the whole thing... So if you're interested, you should go watch the show. Unfortunately, there's only one season of the show because it got cancelled.

I played some League last night. I destroyed going mid. I got super-fed early game and started killing everyone. I think I ended up 16-5-9 or something like that. We played a game before that, but we lost :(

Picking computers

Something that I am respected for by my friends, I guess is the best way to put it, is my taste in computers. I am always looking for cutting-edge technology. When it came time to get a new computer, I knew all of the available options and what out of those options I wanted. Fast processor, good screen, dedicated graphics card, a solid amount of RAM, etc, etc. I picked a very nice computer at a very reasonable price. My friends all liked my choice and looked into computers like mine.

I've had several people approach me and ask me what kind of computer to buy. I'm currently helping one person find a laptop for college and another that will play games well, but not break his bank account. It's all in looking at what someone needs; someone who just wants to browse the web doesn't need an i7 processor with 12 GB of RAM and 1 TB of hard drive memory. However, you don't want to skimp out on a cheapie i3 processor which isn't too much better than going with any other duo-core. The middle of the road processor is the i5, which is what I see most people need. I went for the i7 because I needed my computer to be fast enough to be able to run some heavy-duty engineering programs with no problem. The basic requirements that I believe all people looking for college should have are:
-i5 processor (or better, depending on the major)
-4 GB of RAM (It's hard to find anything less than that any more. For gamers, 6, 8, or 12 will be better.)
-An art history or a math major doesn't need a dedicated graphics card, whereas someone who will play more games or run intensive programs will. Beware on this one - always look to see if the graphics card is integrated with the processor (the Intel "i" line has integrated graphics cards with their processors). If you need a dedicated one, make sure your computer has one.
-Windows 7 of any kind will do. Don't get Vista, and XP is getting outdated. It's hard to find programs for it.
-A decent size. 15" is a good size. It's a little on the heavier side if you are going to be carrying it up hills. 13" is acceptable as it reduces weight, but be prepared to pay more for it. Computer companies know that students look for smaller laptops. Two computers with the same specs but different screen sizes will have different prices; the 13" will be more expensive than the 15".
-Webcams are nice to be able to chat with Mom and Dad at home, given that they have a laptop with one.
-Something that mine doesn't have, a fingerprint scanner. These nifty devices are cool because if someone sees that the laptop has a fingerprint scanner, they're going to be less likely to steal it, as it adds more security to your computer.

These tips are all given that you are buying a PC. Macs are a whole different story.

Tablets

Has anyone considered getting a tablet? They're pretty slick, especially if you get the right setup. I have one that I'm hoping to get for college to make taking notes easier. It is an Asus Transformer Prime, which is one of the top of the line tablets. Reviews are saying it's even better than the iPad 2. What's cool about the Transformer series is that it is a tablet, but with an extension dock, you can make it into a laptop with a touch screen. There's also an app you can get that allows you to be typing notes away on your keyboard and say the professor starts to draw a graph; all you do is you draw the graph on the touchscreen, and then you can drop it right into your text notes, and even resize it while it's in your text. The battery life is around 16 hours with the dock, if I remember correctly. I'll pull up a link when I get on my laptop.

EDIT: I found the link to the tablet: http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Transformer-TF201-B1-GR-10-1-Inch-Amethyst/dp/B0067PLM5E

Diablo 3

Okay, so here's where my embarrassment lies: I tend to jump into games that have a series, but start on the second or third one. I've done that with a good amount of books too, which is pretty upsetting. So I played Diablo 3 on a friend's computer and I loved the game so much, I bought it. However, I have never played Diablo 1 or 2. I really like the game, so I might plan on playing them at some time, but it still bugs me. I get the storyline pretty well, but I feel like I would understand it better if I had played the first two games first. Does anyone else do this?

Weekend Fun

So I had some friends over for the weekend and we just played video games until 3 AM. It was a good time.

One of my friends crashed, while the other stayed up to play League with me. We decided to troll a few games with the "Ultimate Bravery" builds: completely randomized builds for completely randomized champs. It was hilarious; we won almost all of them, but because the rest of the team carried. There was one in particular, though, that we lost. Both my friends and I were playing, and I was playing a support champion without a support build (an Ultimate Bravery build). I ended up carrying the game because three people left the game. I won my lane, but we got pushed in the others and ended up losing. To the AI. How embarrassing... The funny part was seeing a support with a random build go 15-5-18. It was ridiculous.

The other awesome part about the weekend was DIABLO 3. AHHHHHHHHHH. My friend let me play a little on his laptop and I decided to buy it. I don't normally drop 60 bucks on a video game, but the game is sooooo good. I've gotten started, I'm only about level 10, but I can see why people say it's a time suck. First of all, it's an 8 GB game, and with my crappy internet, it took me 3 hours just to download it enough to play it. I haven't even finished downloading it yet. Second, the game is addicting.

We also played some Magic, but that wasn't really a highlight. I worked on my blue-black control deck, one of my friends is fixing it up for me. The two friends who came over made an angel deck, which was pretty beast. I played my best deck against it and lost once, then won once. The first game was longer, but the second game was much more BS for him. I had some of the best cards in the deck out, and my life was almost 30 more than starting health.

So no, I didn't go to prom. I played video games instead :D

A penny for your thoughts

I'm sitting here scanning yearbooks and thinking about how technology is going to advance in the next five years, ten years, twenty years. This tedious process of scanning yearbooks probably won't be happening in five years. They'll probably come out with digital copies of them along with the original hard-cover ones. But to think of how scanning is going to work in the future? I bet they'll have machines that you can insert a book, it might rip off the covers, and scan the book, and bind it back together for you after every page is scanned. I wonder how long it would take to develop that technology. How long is it gong to be until paper becomes obselete, if it ever does? That would eliminate so many jobs, such as my dad's in the local paper mill. But what about the environmental payoff? I love to see the development of technology because I believe technology can be cleaner than our traditional methods, like hybrid cars and electric cars, but at what expense do these new norms bring us?

Google Drive

If you use Google Docs, you may have heard of the new Google product called Google Drive. It accesses your Google Docs and allows you to put all of your Google Docs files and any other files you decide to drop in there. It is a server system that puts a folder on your desktop and syncs regularly with the server. You can put this folder on any computer you want and drop files to the server from any computer. There are also apps for smartphones that allow users to drop files from their phones. From there, you can open the folder and drag your files on to any other computer. It's like a giant USB drive with no extra hardware. Sounds all fine and dandy, right?

Wrong. Google may have done this product in. The terms of use that nobody tends to read includes one statement that may turn off any observant user:

"When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide licence to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.

The rights that you grant in this licence are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This licence continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing that you have added to Google Maps)."

So. Google has rights to every bit of data (pun intended) you put in the Drive. Even if you stop using Drive, they still have rights to all those files. So the moral to this story? You won't hear me saying this often, but I would suggest turning away from Drive if you have information that you really don't want anyone else to read. I would suggest something more like Dropbox or Microsoft's SkyDrive, both of which claim no rights to your data.

Finally figuring it out.

Okay, so here's how it's going down. I've got two options for everyone who wants to watch my games. I finally figured out how to record games, but I have a second option too. You can watch me play live through own3d.tv. I just made an account, and I'll try to stream it whenever I play. I'll update this when I'm about to play, so then people will know when to log on to watch it. The URL to check is: http://www.own3d.tv/live/311538

*EDIT* This may in fact be a lie. I tried using the new programs, but it 1. Causes a screen glitch, making it so my mouse pointer isn't where it really is and 2. Makes the internet super laggy. So I'm back to square-one on trying to figure out how to broadcast my games.

*2nd EDIT* Played a boss game support. Went 2-4-14, I helped kill ALL the people!

Typing

I don't often think about it, but I think the younger generation is better at typing. I think it's interesting to think about, really. I am a much better typer than my parents. They do the "hunt-and-peck" method, whereas I'm more of the "home row, traditional typing" kind of guy. I haven't taken a typing test to see how many words per minute I can type, but I bet it would be up there, given that I have a good keyboard that doesn't stick, unlike the one I'm using right now in the library. This thing is terrible.

Also, do you ever have to look at your hands when you type? I normally don't have to, but if I'm typing with one hand like I am now (I'm pressing a yearbook to the glass of a scanner as I type this), I do have to look. But now that the page is scanned, I can type with two hands and not be looking at the keys, but at the screen and all the typos I'm making, which I automatically correct.

Is this weird?

What I did last night

Ummm... After I got home from Jazz Band practice at 8:30, I had enough time to play one game. I played support and died a whole bunch. My laning partner from Searsport didn't die once, though, so I did my job pretty well. He got fed (meaning he got a bunch of kills, experience, and money to buy items), and ended up winning us the game. It was pretty sweet.

That's pretty much it though. I don't know if I'm going to be able to play tonight... I have lots of stuff to do. But we'll see.

League

So, I just hit the cap of the League leveling system, which is level 30. By being level 30, you can do quite a few things! These things include:

1. Be a part of the Tribunal, which is the LoL judiciary system. You get to choose whether or not to punish players who have been reported for doing bad things in the game.

2. Play ranked games, so you can play against other players and rack up your ELO score. You can Wikipedia "elo" if you don't know what it is. The players with the highest ELOs compete in tournaments for prize money, not that I'll ever be in one of those.

3. Ummm... brag that you're level 30? It's not that special.

Yeah. Woooo. I got level 30 everyone!

Webcomics

Do you guys read webcomics? It's pretty random, but I do follow quite a few. They give me a good laugh in the morning, since we don't get the newspaper anymore. I read Questionable Content, which is one of my favorites. Though the content is somewhat questionable (viewer discretion advised), it is always funny. Except for guest comic week, that sometimes isn't quite as funny. If you start reading it, you have to start at the beginning, #1. It's a long way to catch up (over 2000 comics now, I do believe) and the artwork sucks at the beginning, but you can't read a story half-way into it. It just doesn't work.

Another one that I follow religiously is XKCD. It's insanely funny. It's stick figure people doing wacky things, but it's not what you would expect. It's a comic about "romance, sarcasm, math, and language," as it says on the front. Though they aren't all hilarious and some of them require a basic understanding of calculus, it's a good comic to read. That one you don't have to start at the beginning, but if you see the guy with the hat, you won't understand it. Also, the mouseover text is some of the best stuff.

I will be hopefully on League tonight, and I think I finally figured out how to record games. I have a program and I tried to record a few last night, but I forgot to hit the record button...

Posting More Things

So, the program I downloaded wouldn't work, as it seemed to only record my Skype conversation and not the screen itself. I'm looking into different programs, so again, hopefully I can have something for you guys to see.

Umm, I don't really have anything new to say. I played some more on Friday, but it was too late for me to actually post something, as I just wanted to go to bed. I had one good game as an AP Carry, I went 9-5-12. It's a bit high on deaths, but I was doing really well. My attacks were dealing about a thousand damage apiece about 20 minutes into the game. One of them was dealing 1400 plus another buff, depending on who I used it on. Most champs in that game had about 2000 health apiece, so I went around killing people, but some people from my team would wait until I dealt a massive amount of damage, and just when I'm about to finish them off, go in and take the kill. That's why I had 12 assists - I had 12 kills stolen from me (for future reference, "ks" means "kill steal").

I played another game with a pretty powerful champ called Jax. I was an AD Carry, and my attacks were dealing a good amount of damage. I went 12-2-7, which was pretty good. I was playing with one of my friends and he got really mad at me because I kept ks-ing him. It was a good laugh though.

I would have posted yesterday, but we had a track meet in Caribou. I got up at 6 AM and got home at 11 PM. I was pretty wiped, so I just came home and crashed.

Tonight's League Plays...

So, I just got done playing a couple of games of League. Normal games last about 40 minutes apiece, though I've been in some as short as 20 minutes and some as long as 70. However, tonight I had two good, normal games.

I played two different champs tonight, one called Alistar, the other Soraka. Both of these champs I decided to build support because with my friends, I play support champs. I didn't do so well with Alistar, and we lost that game. We did win the game I played with Soraka, though. I had 3 kills, 1 death, and 10 assists, which means I got last hits on 3 people throughout the course of the game, I only died once, and I helped take down the enemy team 10 times. I'm still trying to figure out how I can record all of this, but I promise I'll have something soon!

League of Legends Background

Okay, now I believe it is time to explain LoL. Many of my posts will be about this game, so a good understanding of it will (hopefully) clear up any confusion before it even starts.

League of Legends is a RTS (Real Time Strategy) game developed by Riot Games. Players are formed into two teams. The objective of the game is to destroy the other team's Nexus, a generator on the opponent's side of the field. In order to reach it, a team must push down three towers in a lane, and then two that protect the nexus. There are three lanes that you can push down to reach the nexus: top, bottom, and middle lanes. Specific "champions" are better at pushing different lanes.

The current meta of the game is that you have an AP Carry mid, an AD Carry top, a jungler, and two champs bottom. AP stands for "ability power" and AD stands for "attack damage." Champions have moves that scale off of either AP or AD. In the LoL map, there is a place called the "jungle" where champions can battle with NPCs to gain experience, rather than playing against other players. Some of the creatures in the jungle give players buffs, and it is the jungler's job to distribute the buffs to his team as he sees fit. The AP Carry blasts opponents with powerful attacks that deal massive amounts of damage mid to late game. AD Carries use their basic attacks and their abilities to tear opponents apart. Supports keep other champions alive, and bruisers are good at damaging opponents so the rest of his team can take them out. Tanks are good at taking damage and dragging them into the middle of his team so everyone else can kill him.

There are tons of champions out, each with unique moves and purposes in the game. Support champs often have healing moves and mana-regen moves. Tanks have buffs to give themselves. AP Carries have moves that, if used in the right order, can often take down other champs with one blast. AD carries have powerful attacks that repeatedly diminish health. In order to play the champions, you must either play the champs that are free during any given week, or purchase one.

Of course, not every champion is played the same way. There is some leeway with them, and it comes in the forms of runes, masteries, and items. Runes are things you can buy out-of-game that affect how your champion plays in-game. Masteries are points you gain out-of-game to buff your champion in-game. Items are things you buy in-game for on-the-fly situations. Some items give mana, some give health, some give regen, some give armor, some give magic resist, the list goes on. Many items give more than one buff at a time. But knowing everything about it isn't necessary to know at this point.

Sorry this post is so long. I think that's a pretty solid background on LoL. I'm looking into ways to record my games so I can upload them to YouTube and then put them in my blog so you guys can see the game in action. If you have any questions, just leave me a comment and I'll let you know about it. If you're interested in playing, you can look at the game and download it at leagueoflegends.com

Portal Putty

Hmm. Something that ties in everything that I was planning on writing about in this blog...

Portal is a game series made by Valve. It was originally released as part of the bundle package called "The Orange Box," which is available on both PC, PS3, Xbox360. The PC version was mostly distributed through Steam. The bundle included Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, and introduced Portal into the world.

The storyline of the game is quite complicated. The main character (named Chell, not that it really comes up in gameplay too often), must complete tasks presented by GLaDOS, an artificial intelligence that has been put in charge of Aperture Science. Chell completes these tasks by using a "portal gun" to shoot portals on cement surfaces in order to move through each level. You must overcome obstacles such as turrets, lasers, and pools of deadly chemicals. The driving force to complete all the puzzles was the promise of cake at the end, but GLaDOS lies. The cake is a lie. (If you ever hear anyone say that, now you know where it comes from.) Portal was a huge hit in the gaming world; it got to be so popular, they made a second one: Portal 2.

Portal 2 was a huge improvement off of Portal, which was spectacular to begin with. GLaDOS, after being defeated by Chell in Portal, has been awakened. Chell was imprisoned in Aperture since the end of the first game. She now has to break out of Aperture if she wishes to live, as GLaDOS now wants revenge on her. In Portal 2, Valve introduces three gels: propulsion gel, repulsion gel, and conversion gel. Propulsion gel obviously propels, often over large gaps of flooring. Repulsion gel allows Chell to bounce higher than the normal jump, which lets her reach ledges normally out of reach. Conversion gel gives Chell the ability to make portals on surfaces she normally couldn't make them on, such as metal. (Portals only hold on cement, and metal just bounces the rays off.)

This post is getting somewhere. A product has been developed (sold on ThinkGeek.com) to make "Portal gels." They don't work like they did in the game, but they are pretty cool. They are solid putties, but also have liquid properties. They drip, bounce, stretch, shatter, and all sorts of other stuff. You can pour it out, but collect it together and hold it in a ball in your hand. It works by using the PDMS's (Poly Dimethyl Siloxane) high molecular weight, which gives it a "characteristic polymeric relaxation time," which means that it relaxes from a stretched state through thermal vibrations. The boric acid in it gives it more solid properties than liquid properties, though. The crosslinks it creates are dynamic, which means that it isn't stuck in one state. The science behind the product is mind boggling!

I think the post is long enough and that last paragraph made my head hurt, so I think now is a pretty good place to leave off. I'm going to leave some cool pictures of the stuff down here so you can "oooh" and "aaaah" at it. Here's a link to the putty and where you can buy it: http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/e970/

Posting something...

Okay, so here is a look into my secret life of not being a gamer... I play League of Legends, also known as LoL. It's a pretty social game, which is why I enjoy it so much. I play with my friends, some from Bucksport, some from Searsport. I've even made some friends from other countries. Even though I play, however, I still wouldn't consider myself a "gamer;" I don't pour ten hours a day into the game, I don't spend hundreds of dollars to buy new skins for my characters. I just play with my friends because it's a social extension, even when I can't be in the same room as them. I also play Magic: the Gathering. It's a card game that lost a lot of steam in the 90's, but has recently picked back up. I think the other part of this blog is going to touch on some new tech stuff as I find it on the internet, some cool tech news articles and whatnot. We'll see as we go though, so stay tuned.