Current mood:	good
Current music:	Tool - Lateralis

A foolish friend being lost to thanatos, the likes of which balanced by positive news
Yeah, I know I haven't updated this journal in a bit, but that's because I've not adjusted to having this responsibility (again?). Bear with me, people ;_;...

Overall, the past week or so has been rather eventful, but not worth documenting entirely, I think. Too much time wasted in-between activities that could have been done much faster, such as acquiring food, trading belongings, etc. However, as always, the essential matters do call attention. The most prominent of which, sadly, is that a friend of mine from the local area, one whom showed much promise for becoming great, has exposed a terrible flaw that will most probably destroy any potential he may have. Around two nights or so ago, he came to me and admitted his use of narcotics, backed up by some petty, cliche rationalization; "i just use them the same way a scientist uses a microscope... to enhance my hearing and senses and to help me be much more creative," he said. This nonsense upset me greatly, so I decided to make the effort to show him the reasons why one would never want to do such a thing. I explained to him that he can redefine the activity and results all he wants, but all these efforts at rationalizing the use of drugs are shattered when put in front of the essential truth behind the action, which is that marijuana and every other associated drug, whatever it may be, when taken for the purposes that unite them, act to destroy the mind's functionality. "hitting it" (the slang term for using drugs) causes unpredictable disruption and distortion to the mind, taking the responsibility of thought away, with the only thing left over after one "shakes it out" (another slang term, I guess) is permanent damage in the form of destroyed brain cells, which dictate mental strength. How can that contribute to learning, when your means of thinking, of recognizing reality and understanding it, is being broken down and turned into crap? You just end up a babbling, slowwitted sponge of a human being, with your vocabulary reduced to "woah..." and "dude...." Or, in other words, "cooked" (yet another slang term, this time representing mental degeneration). No matter what I said, though, all he replied with was "i feel as though it's enlightened me," and "you would think differently if you tried it!" proving that he just pretty much ignored everything spoken, yet, ironically, proved that what I was saying is true. My reasons given are reality-based truths, nonnegotiable and nonrefundable. How can he just continue to deny? So, I got harlock to assist me, and we three created a chat room through trillian to allow harlock to take up the boxing gloves. His explanation proved to be more oriented in exposing the value behind refusing drugs, using a good example, outdoing my effort at shooting off factual discourse that assumes one shares the values necessary to understand the reasons given (life is learning -_-). Well, during harlock's effort, my friend quickly thanked him for his time and took his presence elsewhere, leaving us to wonder if our efforts made a difference. I can only assume that his quick leave was due to being alarmed to the truth of the words spoken, but nothing is known for sure so far. If there is anything positive to be said on the issue in the future, I'll keep this journal updated on that news. Now with that said, it's time for...

::GOOD NEWS!::

I don't think I put this in my journal yet, but someone I know from the local area was kind enough to give me his old video card, a RADEON 9500 NON-PRO AGP. This is a huge upgrade over what I was using previously, an XTASY-brand GeFORCE 4 MX 420 PCI (gotta love those caps enhancing impact, lol :D). The technology itself of my old card might be somewhat comparable to the radeon, but the fact that it operates using the PCI port rather than AGP is a serious bottleneck to performance in everything involved in modern computer use. Now with my new AGP card, programs load faster, there are less system hang-ups, and, of course, gameplay is seriously easier to handle now (and capable of being much better looking, too ^-^). Now, if only I can do something about upgrading this 56k connection...

I finally figured out a critical theme-integration idea for Arms of Morpheus, my current game project, and it has helped immensely to further my conceptualization of the game. You see, I'm using the ohrrpgce (official hamster republic role playing game creation engine) for development, and I was stuck trying to figure out how to incorporate my combat ideas into the battle engine successfully. If anybody reading this entry has ever used the program meaningfully, they'd get ideas as to why I'd have some problems. The engine is quite strict about how the battle system operates, being built on a structure similar to final fantasy 4's system, albeit with some added tweaks and improved functionality. It's great for what it does, but the fundamental design is hard-coded, and can't really be transformed into anything else. So, knowing this, I had to approach brainstorming differently. After playing around with the engine, the solution hit me. As usual, it was a simple and obvious one -_-. Reintroducing myself to how great the overall engine is, I realized that almost anything will work out provided you build ideas on top of its capabilities while respecting the engine for what it does, rather than attempting to force ideas onto it and make it adapt to them. It's too stubborn to agree to the latter ;[. Now, with the new ideas I concieved using that solution's logic, all my concepts integrate and act totally in accordance with what the ohrrpgce offers. Yay! btw, I'd explain what ideas I'd talking about exactly, but I don't want to divulge anything during this stage of creation. Patience!

Harlock introduced me to a web hosting service that offers an exceptionally good package of " 500mb, 5gb monthly transfer a month, with 50 pop3 addresses, as well as the ability to have up to 100 subdomains. the server also includes support for cgi, php3 and 4, mysql, etc, basically everything," quoted from him directly. And what it costs? Nothing finanical out of the user, supposedly. " it's totally free for 3 years, then after those 3 years you can either cancel or subscribe to a pay package. i think one of the ways they're getting away with it financially is that the free one comes with a non-personalized domain name, something like 2435809245.honk.com, and they charge $6 a year for registering a domain name" more quoting from Harlock Hero (hope you don't mind!). I haven't looked into it myself yet, but it sounds great so far, and presents me another excellent hosting opportunity I can use. It expires on the 20th of this month (janurary 04), but I plan on subscribing soon. Like, 'within the next several hours of this post' soon.

As for myself, I've been frusturated with my lackadaisical approach to the visual arts, specifically drawing and the like, and have been desiring to pick up the pen once more (where have I heard that before? deja vu -_-;) to pursue further development of my visual artistic skills. I have all the tools necessary to do it both competently and goodly, so it should come down simply to a matter of willpower when pursuing this task. I mean to do this because this skill is very important. Not only do I enjoy the results of drawing in themselves, but the skill is necessary for the ease of execution behind my other art-related tasks, such as game creation and website design. In the future, after I move from my current location, I plan on pursuing my much-delayed music potential. The reasons behind not pursuing that right now is because it isn't a effort-halting element within my current projects, and also because it would cost me a good deal of money to pursue the tools of composition and education (keyboard, midi equipment, books, etc.). Anyway, to motivate myself, maybe I can have a drawing to present every journal update, with a link to it. I can use my future hosting (which will most probably be the offer talked about in the previous paragraph) to host the images...

That's about it, for now...

... I feel uncomfortable ending entires so suddenly, without an ending statement of some sort. :/ Ah well, what needs to be said is said, so fair enough, I suppose.