The Twilight Sun

This is really amazing. Go here and scroll to the bottom video. Watch it and be amazed.

For the past week I was on vacation, so I didn’t really get a chance to post here. Sorry!

During the past week, I was doing this crazy 25-foot-long picture maze - I’ve only done about 13 our of 50 pages of it, and it just keeps going and going - and I thought, "I have some spare graphing paper from my math classes… why don’t I try to make my own maze?" So I tried it. I managed to make a rather nice maze - not a picture maze, of course - but my scanner here keeps cutting off the edges of the blasted thing…

I’m working on getting it in properly, but for now I’ll keep you busy with another maze.

start ==================== finish

Wasn’t that fun?

Having installed Ubuntu myself, I ran into a few annoying (but fixable) problems. I have an HP Pavillion dv900 series laptop, with the touch-sensitive media buttons and a built in wireless receiver. When I installed Ubuntu, I found that (a) my wireless connector wouldn’t work, and (b) that my audio wouldn’t work.

And later, when I fixed (b), I found that Pandora wouldn’t work either. Oh, the horror!

I talked with my Ubuntu-using friend again - knowing another Linux user is a great help! - and I found I had to use something called "ndiswrapper" to use the Windows drivers I had for Linux, to fix my wireless problems. Let’s see if I can dig up the link he gave me… Here it is. Starting from section 3.3, I followed the instructions, and it worked. The only problem is that the light next to the on/off switch for the wireless is always orange, it never turns green (on). But that doesn’t affect the fact that it works.

The audio problem… slightly trickier. I actually can’t remember what fixed it, but it was a pain to solve. I guess I wasn’t very helpful on this one.

And Pandora.com, the problem seemed to be that I didn’t have Flash installed, but when I installed it, it still didn’t work.. suffice to say, it was annoying to try to fix, but eventually I got it.

I can’t overstate the importance of being able to talk with someone else who has Ubuntu while doing this. It’s a huge help.

Recently, I was chatting with someone on IRC who ran the Ubuntu distro of Linux on his computer. I’ve been wanting to try Linux for ages, but I never really succeeded (mostly because I was worried about partitioning my hard drive…).  This time, though, this person helped me the whole way, and now that I’ve done it and know the steps, I found it actually pretty painless.

(Except, if you have an HP Pavilion dv900 series, there’s a lot of hardware difficulties between it and the "Gutsy" version of Ubuntu.. so go for Feisty until Hardy comes out. More on that in another post.)

I’ll put down the steps I personally had to follow, but before I get started, there’s a liability issue I want to get out of the way. These instructions may work for you, and they may not. You follow them at your computer’s risk. Notably, I think the partitioning may be the most potentially dangerous.

First, you’ll want to download either the "Gutsy" or "Feisty" Ubuntu .iso from ths page. Save it somewhere (Desktop works), and open (or download then open) a program that can burn .iso files to a CD. I myself used UltraISO’s free trial.

Run UltraISO (or whatever you decided to use), and open the Ubuntu ISO file you downloaded before. Put a blank CD (NOT DVD, supposedly that won’t work) in your disc drive. I can’t remember what I selected to burn the iso to the CD, but it’s more than likely in the Tools menu. Make sure you’re burning the ISO to the CD, and not to some other format on your hard drive.

Let the burning process go through, and the CD tray will probably eject. This new CD is your Ubuntu "LiveCD". You can put it back in your computer, then restart, and your system should boot from the LiveCD instead of from the hard drive. The LiveCD will boot Ubuntu up purely in RAM, and almost anything you do from the LiveCD Ubuntu will be as though you had never done it when you boot down from Ubuntu and remove the CD. This means, it’s a good testing ground to make sure Ubuntu will work with your system.

Play around with Ubuntu a little from here (WARNING: It IS possible to botch things on your other OS from here, but it’s generally obvious when you do), and get a feel for it. The two taskbars can be dragged to the top or bottom of the screen; the equivalent of Windows’ "Start" menu is called "Applications" and has the Ubuntu logo on it. plus there are Places and System menus as well.

When you decide to go with Ubuntu, you have two options, only one of which I’ll be going into (the other is pretty straightforward anyways). You can either partition your hard drive (taking space from your other OS and leaving it free for what we’re doing), or you can uninstall/reformat your drive (in which case, MAKE A BACKUP, because EVERYTHING WILL GO.) We’ll handle the partitioning pathway, which will result in a dual-boot system with both Windows and Ubuntu on it. And I’ll assume you’re running Vista, even though in all likelyhood you’re not. Look up an Ubuntu chatroom and ask for help there if you’re on XP, or something else.

Alright. Boot down from Ubuntu, remove the disc, and restart. You should be in Vista now. Unless you want to potentially lose files or break Windows, you’ll want to run the Disc Defragmenter first. When that’s done, go to Start, right-click Computer, and select Disc Management. Yes, I didn’t know it did that either. You’ll want to select your Windows partition (it’s labled), and find the Shrink option.

 The Shrink utility will calculate how much space can be freed up, and put that value in the input box. Unless you’ll be using Windows a lot more (and Ubuntu’s worth it when you have the know-how to work it to your will), you might as well leave the system-generated value as it is. Click OK.

Like I said, this is the dangerous part, especially if you didn’t defrag your drive like I said. After it finishes, put your LiveCD in the drive, and restart your computer. You’ll notice, if you look around, that nothing you did when you had the LiveCD in before, is there. That’s the point of a LiveCD: testing and getting a feel for it. (And it comes in handy when you need to fix something on a computer you can’t boot into the default OS on, I hear)

Click Install on the desktop, and follow the instructions. When you get to the part asking you what partition to install, most likely you’ll need to select "largest continuous free space". This will select the area we freed from Vista by Shrink’ing it.

And now, give it some time to install. When it’s done, restart (and REMOVE THE LIVECD, or you’ll boot into the LiveCD instead of your new Ubuntu installation), and you’ll come up with the "GRUB" boot handler. Now… depending on certain factors, you might have two "identical" Windows options. One of them is your system restore partition that the manufacturer made for you. It might be a good time to learn which is the restore partition, and which is your real Vista OS, now.

And now you get to boot into Ubuntu. We’re done! Next post, you get to find out what problems I ran into on my HP Pavilion dv9000 series laptop.

One VERY VERY useful Linux program is Wine, which allows you to run Windows programs from Linux. The existance of Wine is the only reason I decided to try Linux, and it’s really, really useful. If you’re planning on getting into Ubuntu, check out Wine (and more importantly, its known-supported-programs AppDB).

Sorry about the long wait, but there’ve been some things that kept me from editing when I wanted to. I mentioned posting on Synaesthete next, I think? I don’t think it’s a complete enough game to warrant a full review, but it’s definitely worth posting my thoughts on.

Synaesthete is a small music-and-rhythms game, comparable to DDR in terms of gameplay, but more of a platformer than an arcade game. (And let me note, I don’t really understand "platformer" beyond it meaning "you pick things up and go through levels". Please correct me if I’m wrong.) You control a small Gumby-esque character called the Zaikman (named after Zach Aikman, one of the game developers) through three Visions, each with three Stages each.

To complete a Stage, you must travel along a rather linear set of rooms, clearing each room of enenies in order to procede. To do this, a "reciever"-esque item appears on screen when required, with colored bars falling from the top of the screen to the "receiver" spots. This is where it’s similar to DDR. You also have to keep moving, so as to not get damaged by the enemies, and you only have so much health before you’re defeated. To help with this, with around every stage you complete, you unlock a "spell", of which you get three of at the beginning of a stage. I found Equilibrium to be the most helpful of the spells, personally.

At the beginning of the game, you have two difficulty options, based on the RPMs of old-style records. After completing all three visions, and the final boss, you unlock the third and fastest RPM. When you complete a stage, the ring around the stage entry spot becomes the color of the highest difficulty you’ve completed it on: green for easy, yellow for medium, and red for the hardest.

It’s a great game, and one that definitely deserves one or two play-throughs. It lacks a lot of replayability however, except for completing all stages on difficult, so you’ll probably drop it after a few days. I wouldn’t just ignore it though. Try it out, you’ll be hooked for a few days.

Synaesthete Game Website

P.S. I almost forgot to mention, this game was designed and developed by a team of students at Digipen. Great job!

Hullo everyone, I’m writing from Las Vegas! Not exactly the place a "minor" would usually want to be, right? Usually. Except for the fact that for Christmas my sister got four tickets to a Hannah Montana concert here.

That’s right. I, Jonathan, have returned from a Hannah Montana concert, also featuring Aly & AJ. It was more fun than I thought it might be, though, considering who the star of the concert was. For one, Aly & AJ have some great songs on their Insomniatic album, which I had to pick up afterwards. For two, Aly & AJ "look awesome", to put it mildly.

We had pretty good seats, but my ears are still ringing from the loudness. Luckily I found out that the little flaps of cartillage up and to the front of your earlobes are good earplugs.

I didn’t enjoy Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus particularly. She’s not bad, but I’d much rather go to an Aly & AJ concert after seening them open Miley’s. Nothing against Miley, though!

A little trivia about me, in relation to the concert: In Aly & AJ’s Insomniatic album, my two favorite songs are Potential Breakup Song and Chemical React, and my favorite of of Aly & AJ (*cough*) is AJ.

Signing off (and going to play Synaesthete, which I’ll post on next!),
~Jonathan

Just a quick post to mention to everyone, on the topic of a rare few e-mails I got before pointing Jonathan.com to my blog:

Some people seem to have been bragging to their friends that they "own Jonathan.com". "Hey, look, this is my site. I’m so cool, aren’t I?"

Well, no, you’re not.

My father has owned this site for a long time, almost since I was born. You can check most any Internet domain registrar to check this, I believe.

And no, I’m not selling it, either. Sorry.

To the legitimate readers and visitors to Jonathan.com, thank you!

With the help of my father, I’ve added some pictures of me (and a car) to the top of the blog. While all three of those handsome guys up there is me, the car is just there to look good. And it does!

Also, this blog can be reached from several URLs, the three I prefer - in order of best to worst - Jonathan.com, Twisol.com, and twisol.squarespace.com. (Yes, I own Jonathan.com!) All three of those are the same blog, same me, so use whichever you like to come by.

Oh, and I’ve now had this blog for about a month! Woohoo!

~Jonathan

Alright everyone, sorry I haven’t posted lately, but you know what Real Life can be like. This is the first of five reviews on the games included in Valve’s The Orange Box. First off will be Portal, which is my second favorite of all five games. I’ll review Team Fortress 2 next round (my first favorite game).

.:Overview:.
Portal, while a relatively short game, really lives up to its motto of "Thinking with portals". The basic premise is that you’re a test subject in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center, and you are sent through a total of 20 testing chambers, with a computer AI named GLaDOS guiding you. Along the way, you acquire the Portal Gun (to fire blue portals), and later additional functionality for the orange portal.

.:Gameplay:.
The game’s major focus revolves around Portals. With a portal in one location and the opposite portal in another, the two locations are merely a step away from eachother, even if they’re miles apart! This simple idea allows for a very unique style of gameplay, and the inclusion of "portal physics" (you retain all forward momentum as you pass through) creates some very interesting maneuvers, such as "flinging" - jumping into a portal on the floor and out of one on a wall - and a technique fans call "bouncing" - jumping into a portal on the floor and out of one on the floor.

.:Storyline:.
You might not expect a game like Portal to have much of a storyline, but it really does have an interesting backstory. Aperture Science seems to be a rival of Black Mesa, the government entity we all know and love from the Half-Life series. GLaDOS, the computer AI that guides you through the complex, seems to be the only sentient being besides you, which raises the question: where is everyone? And then there’s your character, who is named Chell (and is female). There is some speculation that she is/was a part-time employee at Aperture Science, based on some things GLaDOS mentions. (If you’re curious by now, GLaDOS stands for Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System.)

.:The Test Chambers:.
Alright, so we have Portals. Where do you get to use them? The test chambers, of course! During the course of the testing, you may be asked to place boxes on buttons, guide energy orbs into the receiver, or make your way through a room chock-full of aggressive turrets, and every chamber requires the use of portals. Flinging and bouncing are also common, and very, very fun to use. There’s 20 chambers in all, and at the end, you’re promised cake! What a reward!

.:Achievements:.
This is something I really like about Portal. After certain points in the game, you get an Achievement (such as when you receive the complete portal gun). If you manage to fling yourself far enough, you can get an achievement. Falling 30,000 feet also nets you an achievement - yes, thirty thousand. There are six Advanced chambers based on chambers 15-18 that are unlocked after you complete the main game, and every two you solve grants you an achievement. There are also three Challenge modes you can play for each of those six levels (except not Advanced): Least Steps, Least Time, and Least Portals. It’s a rewarding feeling to have managed all six Advanced chambers!

.:Conclusion:.
Some say Portal is the first perfect game. I don’t think there is such a thing, but Portal is the closest game I’ve seen to that point. Why is Portal not perfect? Everything is great, I haven’t said a single bad thing. I’ll first say that some levels are extremely hard - mostly the Advanced ones - and attempting the Gold Medal score on any of the challenge modes is enough to make you play Team Fortress 2 instead ((true story!)). On the whole, however, Portal is an awesome game, and I give it a 10/10. (Perfect, to me, is 11/10 - un-attainable!)

Alright… first off, I know I haven’t been posting like I just said I would be(!), but it’s been a little busy around here, being the week before Christmas and all. And The Orange Box took up a lot of my time too… you can see just how much at my SteamID page, if you really wanted - it’s right here. But this means I’ll probably have a Portal review coming up, and Team Fortress 2 after that. TF2 was definitely a nice surprise when I first played it… never thought it would be quite so fun!

I’m sure you’re wondering what I got for Christmas, hm? The ones that stand out most in my mind - not that the others were less great! - are The Orange Box (which you know of already), two new Wii games, and a brand new, beatiful, and sleek LAPTOP. I’m using said laptop to post right now, actually. Woot!

Now, with the post out of the way, I’m off to enjoy my presents.

~Jonathan