Kyle's Log

Christmas video games

Kyle — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 11:52:32 +0000

For Christmas this year, I got two video games. Unfortunately they are both extremely short, and I finished them both in 2 days.

First is The Matrix: Path of Neo for the X-Box. I scoffed at this title when I first read about it, remember ing the sour experience that I had with its predecesor, Enter the Matrix. But after reading a couple of reviews I decided that this had something more to offer and had to try it out.

I was supprised to find that the gameplay was very addicting and fluid, especially the hand-to-hand combat system which was really satisfying and crunchy.

The second game that I played was Ultimate Spiderman for the Nintendo Gamecube. This title was really dissapointing.

While the story missions were really great, they only took a few hours to finish! That would have been fine with me, but the developers stripped out all of the fun webslinging mechanics that were so addicting in Spiderman 2.
I knew that these games would be short, but I had expected them to have more replay value than they do. Fortunately I have friends that would like to borrow them, so they aren’t going to go unused. Moral of the storry? Rent people, rent!

Lethargic and loving it

Kyle — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 11:22:05 +0000

Actually, I’m not really loving it. The Fall semester has ended and I am still breathing. Unfortunatily the Job at UC Davis isn’t working out. It turns out that the University does not want to hire an undergraduate from an outside institution. Dr. Cheng (who would be my boss) suggested that I try an internship with them, which he could use to justify hiring me in the future, but this doesn’t make any sense right now, since I need a Job, and don’t want to go part time at Sacramento State University.

I may have a job this Spring at the University help desk. An internship, a part time job and 13 units is too much, I think I’m going to have to pass on the internship *sigh*. So I’ve been waiting to hear back from the University about the help desk position. I hav e been told that I have the job, as long as my class schedule doesn’t cause any conflicts.

So I haven’t had much to do for the last couple of weeks, and have felt completely useless. After all of the work that I put into the electron microscopy software for UC Davis, I’ve felt kind of burnt out and haven’t felt motivated to touch a line of code since. Fortunately I broke that trend today, as I’m upgrading my laptop to dapper drake (the Ubuntu GNU/Linux development release), and have been scouring bugzilla and malone for something to squash.

New blog, new job

Kyle — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 09:01:53 +0000

My search for a new webhost has ended for now, after receiving an account at wordpress.com. I decided a while ago that I don’t want to host it myself, since that usually gives me the excuse to spend way too much time hacking python scripts and getting absolutely no work done. Now that I actually have a real job, that is something that I can’t afford.

Yes you heard right, I do have a job. Soon I will be involved in the development of some new software for cryoelectron microscopy at the University of California, Davis. Unfortunately, this has given me the oportunity to look at my first real FORTRAN code. Scary, scary stuff.