Fred Duck Talks

日 - 10月 4, 2015

Hello

I suppose I haven't written here for a while. It happens. So, even though much of this site is dormant, I still got a new server and reuploaded most of it.

Of the eleven letters on the index,
b is still dead since that site was indexed somewhere else.
c is fully-functional as far as I can tell, but since I haven't even clicked on it yet, that's not as far as it sounds. However, when FDN was originally designed, it was made to be modular and portable, which is why dismembering it has little effect. :P
d was eliminated because DreamHost stopped running that this year.
e was updated.
f had its back button fixed. Two gallery links were tweaked since I now have enough space for all the gallery data in a single account. (!)
j was on the same server as b, so it's just as archived somewhere. For whatever reason, I forgot to make the j graphic clickable, so that's been fixed.
l is probably mostly broken links by now.
p is still accurate, I think.
t is...well, this is t, you silly goose. How did I get iBlog working again? Well, I'm glad you asked. First, I had to find it online, then download it.

iBlog is still available online .

It's like stepping back in time to 2007. What do you mean that's perfect since this page hasn't been updated since 2007?

Okay, fine, it's true.

Anyway, after downloading it, I fired up my 2007 laptop and grabbed the files off of that.

Oh. I was running 1.4.6 and while 2.0 RC3 claims it will import from 1.x, it doesn't work properly. 1.x won't work on this system, so...I get to painstakingly recreate each entry. For the moment, I'll just write this and post it from the old computer. I've no idea why it won't import but that's pretty annoying because I can't figure out how to recreate the theme, either.

Posted at 11:17 午後 Read More

水 - 5月 16, 2007

My Best Friend

I've just been thinking about my best friend a lot lately. She's a great girl, very bright and cheerful. Well, she's not always cheery, but when she is (which is most of the time, I'd say), it makes me feel a lot more relaxed and she makes me feel happier just because SHE'S happy. I guess that's one of the greatest things about friends. They can help you a lot when you're down. Problem is, when she's down, which does happen, it makes me annoyed at myself that I can't help her. She can handle whatever on her own, but I just sometimes wish I could do more.

But, thanks. For everything.

Everyone reading this should also take time out to thank their best friends.

Posted at 08:35 午前 Read More

水 - 4月 18, 2007

Too bad

I played Bleach: Blade Battlers, the newest playstation 2 Bleach game. I'm disappointed, again. I haven't felt the Sega Bleach games (apart from Treasure's 2) have been all that spectacular, so I had some hope for sony's (...Why? If Sega can't do it, why would I think sony could? Bizarre logic. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.)

Also, I finally got that Games section updated on the main page. Cool...except that it takes a lot of work to get it updated. >_<

Posted at 09:22 午前 Read More

木 - 9月 28, 2006

Batteries

Batteries are interesting things. They hold charges. Occasionally, people don't empty their pockets fully and later find them in the washing machine after all the cycles are complete. Er...I may have drifted off-track there.

Even more amazing is the fabled "battery gauge." How does it really calculate how long it will be until your device hasn't enough juice to work? I think it's by magic.

For example, my digital camera takes rechargeable AAs. My camera was used to take about 356 pictures yesterday*, on 4 batteries. The first pair lasted for 238 of them, the last 199 of which were taken within the same 2-hour span. So, my camera was on almost continuously for that time, during which I took about 50% of them with flash. And throughout that whole while, it warned me of a low battery. For 2 hours? Oh, no. Panic.

On the other hand, my cell phone has a 3-bar gauge in a cute battery-shaped icon. 3 means something like 100% to 10% charge. 2 bars means 20-30 minutes left. And 1 Red Bar means THIS PHONE WILL EXPLODE. (Well, eventually.) No, no. It means like...6 minutes.

So, how long does my phone actually last? I don't know, because I don't quite charge it every day. And like today, I occasionally run out of juice. Oops.

*Actually, 367, but I threw 11 away.

Posted at 06:42 午前 Read More

火 - 6月 27, 2006

Thanks, microsoft

Ack. There once was a useful piece of software called iView Media Pro. It used to be cross-platform, Mac and windows. Then, microsoft bought it because A) They wanted to kill the Mac version and B) They can't figure out how to program a new piece of software (or it was cheaper than crushing them, too). Sure, the open letter reads, "The product that was born on the Mac will remain on the Mac as well as on the Windows operating system." But do we really believe what microsoft says anymore? Check on the feature list for vista. Check out the cross-platform parity of its other products, like office. (Oh, no access? Not important.) How about instant messaging? That's easy enough, right? Ha ha.

I guess it makes sense, since they were definitely hurting for money. They jacked the price of their software up from $160 to $199 and did a sneaky thing with version pricing a while back. It's used to catalog graphics and create online galleries. There are a bunch of limitations, like # of images and Ver 3 apparently has a bad rep.

Recently, I had the misfortune to run into the program SD-Jukebox, used for putting "SD-Audio" music onto a panasonic product. It's windows-only and has one of the crappiest interfaces ever. There's actually a 1" x 4" box which is dedicated to showing how the transfer is doing. On the left side, we have a picture of the HDD and on the right, the memory card on the music player. PICTURES. Yes, those are necessary. And there are space listings. So, you know the total capacity of the HDD and the memory card. It DOES tell you the free space on the memory card, though.

Here's where microsoft helps: When you run out of HDD space, the program just hangs. You can't cancel it. No errors show up. Nothing. The filesystem simply halts with no message from the OS or anything. You can reboot, so I tried that. I deleted the music file in question. What kind of crap is this that there's NO information about what's going on?

As an extra bonus, when sending music to a device, it has to re-encode it with fun DRM, and that makes transferring music take longer than long. Not that you'd know because there's no overall progress bar, just a PER-FILE progress bar. You put a UI like that on a Mac product and people will never accept it. But here, anything goes.

Computing is not supposed to be about making the cheapest, ugliest things ever. Computers are supposed to make things easier and ought to be designed with that idea in mind.

Posted at 07:07 午後 Read More

月 - 6月 26, 2006

Study Japanese?

On Saturday, I picked up Brain Age, but in Japanese. I couldn't help myself...it was on sale for ¥2480 new. Sadly, this is because the store I went to (for the first time) was having a going-out-of-business sale.

I just played it and found my brain is 41 years old. I'm not physically 41. So, that's a bad thing.

Must...train...brain...

I also picked up "Bokujou Monogatari: Shiawase no Uta for World" for GC, which I hear is really good. Although it's not as if I have time...

Posted at 10:15 午前 Read More

日 - 6月 18, 2006

Study Cube

So, I bought a Nintendo DS Lite, finally. Got the Enamel Navy DS Lite, which isn't what I wanted, but all they had. =_= White definitely looks much nicer.

So far, I have a couple games, but also some study tools, like "漢字そのまま ＤＳ楽引辞典," which is a nifty little tool for looking up Japanese words if you can see and write 'em but not read 'em.

Lately, I've been using the über-cool (gratuitous use of the umlaut and word über, I know) Genius , which is a great way to drill memorisable items into your head. I've got a lot more Spanish firmly in place. They're up to version 1.5.4 now.

I also found my phone, the DoCoMo P902i has been superseded by the lamer P902iS, which has a smaller "private window" on the outside of the phone. I recently found that the private window will display an e-mail's subject line and sender when one comes. I have to admit that's pretty nifty, even if the Bluetooth is crippled like there's no tomorrow. (Which there may not be.)

Posted at 07:40 午前 Read More

土 - 3月 25, 2006

GameCube

I've been playing a few GameCube games lately. I just picked up Bleach, Wave Race: Blue Storm, and Naruto 4.

Naruto 4 has amazing graphics, but seems like a technique-less button masher. The arenas are really tiny.
Bleach has okay graphics, but is a little stiff. The AI is frighteningly hard. It ties in nicely with the DS game, which I also have, but no system of my own, yet...
Wave Race: Blue Storm is fun, but the control takes a lot of getting used to. If you get an angle wrong, you miss the buoys, and if you do that, it kills your turbo meter. However, it seems like using the turbo is a guaranteed way to mess up your race line. >_< Aren't they supposed to help? The game penalises you too much. And the constant messages it pops up are annoying; Gonna save. Save completed. Bleah.

The chatter is kinda nice, and variable weather helps spice things up. I'm not so fond of the dynamic track changes, like changing tides, but I guess that's just how it goes.

Posted at 07:54 午前 Read More

日 - 3月 5, 2006

Downward Spiral

I've been increasingly unhappy with my art and my latest project, so...things haven't been going so well.

I need to work on camera angles, but every time I do so, they skew back to normal.

Oops, this is all art-related! Wrong blog...

Ah ha! But it's really...dragging things down...

Little-known fact: I haven't even powered on my GameCube in over 10 days. How sad. I hope to rectify that soonish...Even though at the moment, I have exactly enough money to eat, but my next purchases will be a Nintendo DS Lite, to get that cool (I imagine) Japanese-learning software that's coming out, and Bleach for GameCube.

Posted at 07:13 午前 Read More

水 - 2月 1, 2006

Up and Down

Wow. I got Cosmic Fantasy-related e-mail today in which the writer mentioned it had been difficult to find the CFHP.

I was surprised. The last time I'd checked my CFHP ranking in Google, I'd been in at least the first hundred hits (that is, I've set Google to show 100 hits/page and it was on the first page). Now, the CFHP is entirely off of Google. Poof. Down to infinitely irrelevant.

I updated a couple months ago, but that's not good enough, I see! >_<

I've been slacking on updates because the rest of life has been so busy lately; I've just been doing FDN CGA, and not terribly terribly well at that.

Happily, The Cosmic Fantasy Home Page is still #9 on Yahoo!. Go...Yahoo!

It's raining today. I'm inside. I went out. It rained. I'll buy groceries later. In still more rain, doubtless.

Posted at 02:16 午前 Read More

火 - 1月 3, 2006

End Up

HNY. 2006. Must remember...to...write...

Pistachios are great. Except that if you eat too many, your jaw gets really tired and it hurts. So, don't eat too many pistachios. Or perhaps any nut. Or anything. Yes.

Don't eat.

Please mail me all unopened packages of snack foods. Thank you.

Posted at 06:09 午後 Read More

木 - 12月 22, 2005

Tail End

Well, here I am at the end of the year, brushing up and revising bits of my web page for public consumption. I made this page a whole lot fancier. I guess I just needed a place to put non-productive writings. ^_^; I also bothered to put up the old entries (which took about 10 min) because I hate it when content is lost, no matter how insignificant. (Although that doesn't explain why some of my profile page is missing.)

So! It's the x-mas season. Things are busy around here. Everyone's buying presents and things. But some presents are best left ungiven. For example, if someone takes a dump in a public stall, then closes the lid. Flushed or not, it's not fun to open later! >_< GAHHHHH!

Crude? Perhaps, but it happened to me today. Ugh.

I guess this isn't the best way to start this up again. ^_^;;;

Posted at 07:01 午前 Read More

日 - 4月 22, 2001

01/04/22

Last night, I went bowling for like 2 hours...I got my high score! 164! Yay! But then the second game I got 96...my wrist was killing me. And for the third game, I got a more typical 87, after which I decided to go play pinball. ^_^

Posted at 07:56 午前 Read More

木 - 4月 12, 2001

01/04/12

Cooool! Even though I accidentally ended up playing PSO for about 3 hours today, I think it was worth it. The first hour was with all new people and the last hour was with an old friend. That second hour...who should happen in but "Naska"! That's "Naska" as in "Pendako"! Wow! Of course, she was level 86, one higher than me. O_O And I'm guessing it's not her first character. ^_^;;;

So, it was a very interesting time. Sadly, though, I'm officially 2 weeks behind on CG (because I have one all ready to go...and another is 5% done). ~_~

What a neat contrast to yesterday, where I lost my Justy 'cause the game didn't load the Mine boss. ~_~ All I had was the stuff I had equipped...An Agito? O_O Dunno why I was using that, exactly...

I also feel really bad about not updating for so long. ~_~ I've been caught up in a vicious cycle of "PSO/e-mail/homework" over and over again for my free time. Such as it is...

Wah! I'm feeling guilty about putting up icky work, so I'm needing more and more time to come up with OK ideas and then to work on them and then more time to set 'em aside so I can go back later with a fresh mind and fix errors! O_O Sooooo time-consuming. I probably should just drop whatever weeks I've missed but I feel it's a light schedule, so shouldn't I be able to keep up on average? (I still intend to do last year's 4th of July pic...)

And what happened to WH updates..? Oh, yeah! Those are picture-based! Ha ha ha...

Stale Corn Pops taste bad.

And...FDN's reached 1000! O_O And the Guestbook has reached 2! O_O

Posted at 07:56 午前 Read More

月 - 3月 19, 2001

01/03/19

Saturday, the 17th of March in the year 2001 of the Common Era is a day that will live in infamy. I didn't play PSO. But I made up for that by playing twice as long today. ^_^; Oh! I also picked up a "Double Saber" today! Wahoo!

Sadly, however, I finally took the Ponderosa Ranch keychain off my keys for good today. It fell off just way too often, perhaps every few months. So...I'm down to 1.3 actual keychains. I used to have 4. What's left? The DC keychain and the main part of the plastic twirlie thingie.

And remember...if the milk smells funny, don't drink it!

Posted at 06:55 午前 Read More