Topics

16

Off Topic / What kind of pet should I get?

« on: February 25, 2015, 06:22:23 PM »

My cat has recently disappeared and while I am still saddened over his loss, I am also incredibly lonely with literally no one to talk to in person through most of the day, and would like some sort animal companion for carrying out conversation and shenanigans with. I really like cats for how smart they are and that they can be let to roam free without much issue.
My cat may have been attacked by coyotes but it was the first in over ten cats to live in this property to succumb to such a fate, so I don't fear much for it's safety as long as it isn't a lame out of shape indoor cat when we get it.
But I really don't feel up to having a cat again due to having lost one so recently.
I don't want a dog (even though they are awesome, they are a big liability in case they injure someone).
We are thinking about getting a goat, but we don't have the caging for one and it would be a while till we can set it up.
So in the meantime we need another idea for a pet. We've been thinking about lizards and birds but there are certain things about caged animals I am not fond of, and I wouldn't want a bird unless I could let it fly around but our trailer is tiny and there are several eagles and owls in our canyon that would probably quickly pick off an inexperienced housebird if let outside.
Turtles are smelly so I am not too fond of them.
And fish depress me unless I can get a huge aquarium for them, and again I don't have too much room for such things.

Anyone have pet suggestions?

17

Off Topic / Fact of the day: Did you know almonds used to be poisonous?

« on: February 18, 2015, 06:14:33 PM »

Almonds, a delicious addition to cereals, cakes, candies, and great for just snacking, were once deadly. Some still are.
Bred from a drupe related to the peach, the original bitter almonds would kill you, and were slowly bread for sweetness. Most grown almonds are descended pretty much from one tree they found with a genetic defect that made it's almonds tasty instead of deadly. For quite some time until recently many popular recipes would still call for the deadly bitter almonds in combination with some sweet ones.

I like almonds but I find it interesting that once someone eating almonds would have been considered crazy.

18

Off Topic / What is your favorite food.

« on: February 17, 2015, 08:17:39 PM »

Even though I enjoy cooking fancy foods I most prefer spaghetti and could eat it all the time if I had the opportunity (other people who didn't get bored of the same food). What is your favorite food, Blockland?

19

Off Topic / The worst piece of advice you ever recieved

« on: February 17, 2015, 08:25:27 AM »

One day I was pulled aside to be told "It's ok to be normal" and I shouldn't worry about trying to do something important to make the world better...

 if you have some piece of advice people have given you that you equally reject, (or find irritating/unapplicable/forced upon you) I would be interested to hear it.

20

Off Topic / My cat's gone

« on: February 12, 2015, 05:48:25 PM »

I dunno if hes still ok I just speant all day looking for him. I am worried he was attacked by coyotes last night but cant find any evidence of where he might have been taken.
Hes the most awesome cat ever and is really nice and good and would sit on command or do other weird tricks, he actually acted more like a dog cause he would roll over for you to pet his belly and if you scratched behind his ear just right hed do that foot flippy thing. He also played fetch. He was a really good cat and I miss him alot.

21

Off Topic / Be careful of Staples protection plans.

« on: February 11, 2015, 07:30:16 PM »

You may get forgeted over. You may not get your money back.
Their plans expire 3 months before advertised expiration periods for what the customer service agents deem a "buffer period".

While working at Staples I was the top sales person at my store, and one thing I was always encouraged to push was the protection plans, being told it was in the customer's best interest and they would be covered for pretty much all damage for one year following the manufacture's warranty. This is a lie. They will not cover you if they can deem the damage "environmental" from either the sun, rain, or animals (which goes against their claim that you get it specifcally if you have pets to protect them from pet related damages). This is also a lie because they randomly cancel your protection plan so you cannot be covered if you happen to file the claim in time, but other wise their ambiguous rules about when the proper time is leaves one unable to determine when they should file a claim to get their money back. It is the most horrible waste of money I have ever witness and is close to criminal in actions in my opinion although I am sure there is some legal bullstuff that they hid in the corner of a store somewhere that stated all protection plans actually run 3 months less than advertised.

22

Creativity / Cooking | Featured Food of the Week: Eggplant!! (Lazy Eggplant Parmesean)

« on: January 13, 2015, 07:49:17 PM »

Pictured: Sweet-Potato Chips in Coconut Oil

Skip to Recipes

Food is good. Tasty food is better. Being a the chef of many a delicious dish is not out of your reach, the first step is the courage to try cooking [size6pt](and of course permission from your parents if you are too young to use the stove)[/size]

Share your favorite recipes for your fellow Blocklanders to try here or maybe learn a new recipe yourself. If your recipe is popular enough I will try to be sure to post it up here to be found easily.

Food of the week
EGGPLANT



Eggplants are awesome.

There really shouldn't need to be any more explanation than that, but if you are not convinced here's some info.
They are one of the only plants that provide a significant source of nasunin, which protects cellular structure from oxidation. They are also high in several forms of vitamin B while being extremely low in calories.

Furthermore they are extremely versatile. Eggplants have made their way into the cuisine of many countries in many varieties of dishes. From ratatouille in France, to Eggplant Parmesean in Italy, the Greek moussaka, all the way to India to be used in curries and chutney varieties.

While there are many ways to cook eggplants the way to best get the most nutrients out of them is simply sauteing them in vegetable broth in a pan for seven minutes stirring occasionally.
In most cases you do not need to prepare the eggplants beyond washing and cutting them up, the skin may be tough though on globe eggplants and can be removed before cooking (although this is less necessary for Japanese or Chinese eggplants, being much thinner), and adding acid such as lemon juice can help prevent them from oxidizing and turning brown as you cook them.

23

Games / Suikoden II is on PSN

« on: January 12, 2015, 06:03:07 PM »

I dont have internet so I am left out, but heard through the grapevine of this games release, but I recall fondly on my childhood memories playing this game, collecting squirrels, managing a castle, fighting epic duels. Seriously one of the best games I have played still to date, there is such a variety of content and a moving storyline that  resulted in one of the only times I have ever had a videogame bring me to tears.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suikoden_II

24

Off Topic / I'm 24 Now

« on: January 08, 2015, 09:08:30 AM »

Sheesh this whole getting old thing is getting old.

25

Off Topic / Bah I need a cheap development laptop

« on: January 05, 2015, 12:28:12 PM »

This laptop is aging fast and currently is useless for development meaning whenever I program I have to hop between computers with this laptop needing to be in range of wifi and my development desktop not being able to be connected to the router due to being situated in another building.

As such I need a laptop that can resonably run a multithreaded program with moderate opengl support, hopefully avoiding an onboard intel graphics chip.

I have no money, so I know everyone is quick to suggest these $1000 beasts, but sadly I can't have it.

Been looking at newegg and the closest I could find to what I want was a $498 acer, but I would hope for something cheaper, perhaps skimping on the graphics card a bit (i'd still like it to be above a G100 of course)

Were any of you looking at cheap laptops already, and could point me in the right direction?

To be more specific I am hoping to find
>=2gb ram
intel processor, >= i3
hard drive >= 250gb
nvidia graphics of some sort

26

Forum Games / Spidrman Advents

« on: December 16, 2014, 11:30:56 PM »

Help a rober

Only you can assist the spidrman

27

Creativity / Creating a java OpenGL implementing engine type dealio

« on: December 15, 2014, 04:51:50 PM »

So the past few months I have been teaching myself more programming languages and stuff cause all my tools kept failing me. (unity stopped working unless I could connect to internet which I have no ability to on my working computer, UDK licences randomly failing, also needing an internet connection to resolve, basically the whole world relies on internet too much for the fact that not everyone actually has it yet)

As such when I got to the point where I was like "ok well enough time has passed I wanna make a game now" I realized I had too many games on my queue of things to make and wanted an engine open enough for me to make everything efficiently so with lack of any prior knowledge I started peicing together more and more complicated rendering things. Finally I am getting to the point where I would like to release it soon but I keep feeling discouraged, being secluded from society only to occasionally get internet to talk to random people online, and having no real sense of actually making an impact. But then I remembered well partly why I am making this engine is for everyone in my shoes right now.

People who just want something basic to make some simple games or prototypes thereof quickly. Many engines I have tried and frankly enjoyed (including Loom being developed by Blockland's friend Kompressor, I still felt required too much of a departure from the framework I had already been trained in, mainly flash development (which actually was very similar to loom looking back on it, but internet issues, and the fact that I can't ever remember how to use the Ruby interface lead me away from that platform) I wanted something more bare-bones but flexible that I really only would have to code the overhead gameloops and have the system handle everything by itself. After many iterations I am finally honing in on a more concise version using LWJGL as the main rendering implimenter that should allow for people besides just me to make sense of and use for developing simple 3d games.

Which brings me to this thread. I have a hard time wanting to continue something unless I feel a nagging sense in the back of my mind that people will be disappointed somehow if I don't finish it. So even really if no one is like on the edge of their seat waiting for me to release this, knowing that there is the possibility someone out there will be spamming the refresh key in aggravation flags in the back of my mind what I should be doing right now, which is finishing up this engine. So in terms of deadlines, New Years is always a good one, mind you my leaky roof leads it to be dangerous to program whilst raining and we have unfortunately entered the rainy season here in California, that said I will still try to finish this in the remainder of this month for a whole new year of programming and design opportunities thusly opening up.

TLDR:
Making yet another java-based engine for 3d games, will release for people to use if they want. Aiming for new years.

28

Off Topic / Homemade shell topping for icecream

« on: December 14, 2014, 02:20:09 AM »

Hi there, here again to tell you all once again about something else amazing you can do with coconut oil!

So I was like I want icecream with chocolate topping but didn't really want to look up a recipe so i just went for it and heated up about two table spoons of coconut oil. After it melted and was warmed sufficiently, remove from heat and stir in approx 1.5 tbsp chocolate powder and 3tbsp.
From there you'd need some sort of additional thickener, I was looking for some marshmallow but couldnt find it so if someone tries that let me know how it turns out, I just was like screw it and used some of the icecream i was serving it with, like 1tbsp, and a bit of banana.

Once applied to the icecream the coconut oil hardens into a shell topping. For better results I think you could use powdered sugar but I didn't have any on hand to try it with.

Top with pecan meal and bananas as well and maybe a cherry i dunno.

 

29

Off Topic / Arghh theres nothing to do

« on: December 02, 2014, 03:02:23 PM »

I am just going to rage here to get this out of my system

So after spending the past two days trying to fix the roof ahead of the heavy rain, I successfully reduced the amount the roof leaks by maybe 20%. It did happen to reposition all the leaks however so now I have an entire different ncollection of items receiving water damage.
This means I cannot really use any electronics without fear of them getting rained on while in use (I am scared to even be on this laptop) and my internet is too terrible anyways for me to make use of it.
I would rather be programming right now bug again rain plus electricity equals ruined computer so I have to stay on drip duty protecting my stuff.
Oh but why dont i just get away from it and visit a mall or something?
Lolnope, no car and the only bus stop is five miles away down a rainy busy highway you are technically not allowed to walk down plus I don't have a jacket so it makes going outside at all a drag. I would be ok with doing yard work taking advantage of how the rain cakes up the ground making it easier to dig into but the rain isnt going to let up at all today and as mentioned above I have no jacket so that would be stuffty
I cant really write or anything cause its difficult to find a sufficient dry surface to place paper on. And my hands are still too dirty from roof tar to allow me to wash dishes without worrying about contaminating them with toxic chemicals
I can't do laundry even though i have no clean clothes because i have to do laundry by hand and since it is raining I can't hang clothes to dry afterwards.
I'd try cutting my hair but because the water delivery truck didn't decide to come last week on account of thanksgiving and still has yet to show up, I don't want to waste our dwindling water supply on a shower afterwards. I mean I guess it is raining I could just stand out side afterwards and let the rain rinse out my hair but that seems a bit ghetto, and because I have no jacket I would be drenched all over not just my hair but because i am still filthy from the water proof tar I wouldnt be able to towel myself off without ruining yet another perfectly fine towel on account of my complete inability to loving do anything successfully.
I would just curl under my blankets and hide from this insanity only wait a drip just formed over my bed and ruined my blankets yay

30

Forum Games / Bomb Diffusal Adventure! MISSION FAILED!

« on: November 23, 2014, 12:02:50 PM »

*In the background play the track Propellerhead: Bang On!*

You are this dude. It was just another day at work when you turn around and osht a bomb!
Hurry you gotta do something about this! AHHH!