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May 31, 2010

Solving Computer Problems

Filed under: Overidon News — Tyler @ 10:30 pm

Over the past few days I’ve been having some computer problems. My Microsoft Vista Laptop has been having trouble starting properly. The computer will boot up, then prompt me for my password. But after the main desktop shows up and begins to load the programs in the bottom right of the screen and the gadgets on the sidebar, the computer would stop loading. The little light that says whether or not the hard disk is being accessed would blink every 10 seconds or so, but it wouldn’t do any real work. When I would click on the “Start” button, nothing would happen, and I’d be lucky if I’d get the spinning blue circle thingy to pop up.  So my computer was just hanging there and I tried pushing my power button but nothing worked. DISCLAIMER – I AM NOT GIVING YOU ADVICE ON WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR COMPUTER I AM JUST TELLING A STORY ABOUT MY COMPUTER. IF YOU FOLLOW ANY OF THE STEPS THAT ARE PRESENTED IN THIS ARTICLE BY READING THIS YOU HEREBY ACCEPT THAT YOU DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK.

So then I unplugged my laptop, shut it, then removed the battery. This does a rather unpleasant shut down for the computer, but it was all I knew how to do to shut it down. Then the next day I talked to this cool girl at my Starbucks and she said that I could just hold down the power button on my laptop and if I held it long enough it would power down. So I tried it her way and it worked! So when I restarted the computer I was prompted with the option of safe mode, or a bunch of other options. I decided to use safe mode. I wasn’t exactly sure what the problem was, so I did a virus scan. The virus scan said that I had a few viruses in my email and that it took care of them but I wasn’t satisfied that that was the only problem. I also ran the disk defragmenter program and disk cleanup. The whole process took a long time and I remember eating a lot of watermelon while waiting. I also deleted Skype from my computer because that was the last program I installed before I had my problem. So I restarted my computer and things booted normally and I thought the computer was fixed.

Then a few restarts and one day later the same problem happened again and I wasn’t able to finish loading up my computer. I was perturbed but I didn’t give up. So this time I restarted the computer and went into safe mode again. I tried running Windows Update, to see if I was missing any drivers. The reason why I did this was because I ran this one Widows diagnostic program, (I can’t remember what program it was that did this) and it said I was having driver issues. But when I tried running Windows Update in safe mode nothing happened, even though I had networking enabled. So then I read that if I held F8 while booting the computer I would be presented with advanced booting options. So I restarted the computer and held down F8 but my computer wouldn’t get past the first screen. So then I let go of F8 and passed the screen, and then held it down again. Then I was prompted with the Advanced Boot Options screen. I then chose the option of “Restart the Computer with the Last known Good Configuration.” That at least got my computer to boot. But then I remembered that I tried that once before and that was only a temporary fix to my problem. So I tried running Windows Update. It took a little while but I downloaded 5 updates to my computer, 2 Important Updates and 3 Optional Updates that related to system drivers.

I restarted my computer with the new updates and it loaded up the desktop about twice as fast as usual and now I’m able to write this blog post so I guess it worked.

-Tyler

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May 30, 2010

Changes to the Book I’m Writing

Filed under: Tyler's Mind — Tyler @ 8:21 pm

I’ve made some changes to the book I’m writing. At first I was writing a book that was based on Final Fantasy I but now I’ve decided to write the story without any Final Fantasy references. The story was always in its own universe, but now I’m taking out the specific Final Fantasy items and character names. The story is now going to be told from the first person perspective in past tense. It is going to be told from the perspective of a young fighter named, Thax. I am currently in the stages of writing the BIOs for the characters. I am having a lot of fun writing Thax’s bio, and it is really helping writing about what his parents were like. I am also writing about who his father worked for. It is very exciting writing the bio and it feels great dusting off this story after taking such a long break from writing on it. It really would have been a shame if I just scrapped the story. I did hand write 250 pages of it already and pretty much did a draft of the entire thing. But I am currently reading, “How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy” by Orson Scott Card and I am loving it. In the book it says that you should often take some time to think about your stories and let them gestate in your mind before writing the final drafts. And this is exactly what has happened with my story. I finished writing the first draft in late August 2009 and now I finally feel like I can dig back into it. This is an important lesson to think about for writing. Don’t give up on stories when you feel like they may not be perfect. Let them sit for a bit and them come back to them with a fresh mind. This way you can iron out flaws and come up with new ideas.

May 29, 2010

Cool Fibonacci Sequence Video

Filed under: Observations — Tyler @ 11:45 pm
Hand Fibonacci

Did you know that the bones in your hand represent the Fibonacci Sequence?

There are certain patterns that recur often in nature. The Fibonacci Sequence is one of them. The Fibonacci Sequence is a cool series of numbers that build off of each other. So an example would be: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21… and so on. The Fibonacci Sequence is very similar to the Golden Ratio. This ratio is what we see when we look at a Nautilus shell, and it is even visible when we look at the bones of a human hand. Watch the video below to see more examples of the Fibonacci Sequence in nature.

May 27, 2010

I just got Served in Master of Magic

Filed under: Reviews — Tyler @ 11:32 pm
Owned

I got banished

I haven’t played Master of Magic for like, 10 years or so. And man, this game is fun. You get to be a wizard who has magical powers, and you command an army and build a civilization of one of many races like Orcs, Klackon, Humans, and Elves…not to mention the awesome Lizardmen and Draconians! This game is totally awesome! It is kind of like games similar to Civilization and I hear that it is based on the Master of Orion universe (loosely). But I think this game is really excellent. It was made in 1994 and it works on the program DOSbox (DOSbox is an MSdos emulator that lets you play old school DOS games on a PC). Here’s a link to DOSbox if you want to check it out. If you want to check out some info on Master of Magic and want to download the manual and spellbook, here’s a link to a cool abondonware website. Yeah so let me tell you about why I posted that picture of a dragon dude getting banished. Basically that dragon was me, my wizard, I named myself “Overidon.” It was great. I started with two units, one unit of orc spearmen, and one unit of orc swordsmen. I was pumped. I found these ruins supposedly guarded by giant spiders. I recently finished recruiting some shamans to help my soldiers and I was excited to kill some spiders. Well, what happened when I got to the ruins was that I didn’t just have to fight some giant spiders, there were magical sprites there too. Sprites kind of look like white butterflies and they shoot magic at you. I was very worried. So almost instantly the Sprites opened fire on my shamans and killed all of them in like three hits. I was horrified. I imagined my poor shamans having their limbs ripped off and heads exploding from Sprite magic. Blood flying everywhere. So I tried to have my spearmen and swordsmen run away, but they all died. I bet they were trying to run into the mountain but they got run down by the giant spiders. Huge webs of sticky silk slime pulled at their legs and made the swordsmen trip on the rocks. Then one of the giant spiders must have opened it’s mandibles wide and munched off the heads of the swordsmen one by one…leaving spinal cords squirting out people juice for several minutes.

Master of Magic Town

This is what it looked like when I wanted to build more shaman!

But I wasn’t discouraged. I decided to build more forces, this time multiple units of swordmen and shaman, and even a unit of spearmen. And I ordered them to do some reconnaissance on one of the nearby Klackon villages (Klackons look like big beetle people). And I left a single unit of swordsmen to protect my home village. Well, when I got near the enemy village I had by units check on the strength of the forces there, and guess what? My troops were outnumbered and outclassed. So I ordered them to return to base and regroup. But then, out of nowhere a unit of Klackon raiders decided to attack my city. I tried to build more troops, but it was no use. They were just 2 days away. And my army was 10 days away. So I cast spells on my unit of lonely swordsmen, giving them iron skin and increased strength. But when it came time to fight the Klackon halbrediers, they got slaughtered.  The Kackons must have chopped my orc swordsmen’s arms and legs off. And eaten the dismembered bodies. I bet there was blood and guts everywhere. So then I lost the battle and the raiders instead of just destroying a building or two, they decided to hurt the great wizard, Overidon! And they banished me to another realm. So now I have learned a valuable lesson. Don’t leave just one group of soldiers defending your home base. This was a lesson hard learned. But I hath learned it well!

-Tyler

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