all things me

Why does university always get my pulse running high?

Today I’ve been panicking about my very first faculty exam (book exam for a course) for which you have to enter by filling in an envelope. Well, I’ve just recently decided I’m going to do the exam and last week when I mailed the examiner, he was abroad and said that he’d mail me more info next (this) week. Yesterday he had mailed a group email about the amount of pages to read and what to read. Today I quickly checked what we have available here and decided the material I’m going to read. I have no idea if I have time to read all 400 pages well enough. Just now I was waiting for confirmation on my choices and the time was running short. Luckily, after a little investigation I found out that people haven’t been writing the literature on the envelope because the examiner never gets it before the exam and the literature is agreed upon via email. Phew.

So, I just dropped my very first exam envelope in the box. The exam is on 27th so I hope I’ll get the confirmation soon enough. I’m going to do some heavy reading for a week.

I don’t use the JavaScript version of Alex King’s Since Last Visit hack/plugin because I don’t like to depend on JS. And I didn’t even get it working back when I tried it out

After keeping the comment referred to in my previous post I noticed that the targetted post was showing new comments. So, I added a requirement to the database query in function ak_new_comments: and comment_approved not like 'spam' making it say

if (isset($ak_last_visit)) {
 $last_visit = date(“Y-m-d H:i:s”, $ak_last_visit);
 $comment_date = $wpdb->get_var(“SELECT MAX(comment_date)”
 .”FROM $tablecomments ”
 .”WHERE comment_post_ID = ‘$post_id’ and comment_approved not like ‘spam’”
 );
 if ($comment_date > $last_visit) {
  echo $html;
 }
}

around line 178. No more ghost comments.

(Database studies came in handy, yet again.)

I got a genuine looking comment to my post on games suggesting a game site. It wasn’t exactly relevant but close enough. I checked the commenter’s referrer and even though it wasn’t from one of those disgusting gambling/medicine/loan sites it was a weird looking Google search. The spammer had searched for fitting keywords (puzzle and games) AND the string “leave a comment” which rang my alarm bells. I checked a few of the first links and found a similar comment (under a more suspicious name) on another site. You ain’t getting through here, buddy.

Shame on you!

It’s 11:15 pm and I’m ready to go to sleep.

I’ve been feeling a bit hopeless/aimless/procrastinating in my studies. Courses aren’t either taught this year or they don’t fit in my schedule — if there is a possibility to go to lectures, I go. Still, I’m slowly approaching the limit for bachelor’s degree.

Today there was an info meeting about the new degree structure (Bologna — will be unified in all of Europe, at least EU, or something like that) and I thought of a good plan. There is a 3 year transitional period during which I’d probably get master’s degree done if I really wanted to, but I’m afraid to take the risk so here’s what I’ve been thinking: I’ll do my bachelor’s degree and then change to the new structure. The BA gets approved automatically as a part of the new 2-step degree, and I’ll have “easier” terms on the master’s degree (as the basic and intermediate studies are broader than in the new system). However, I need to do two “maturity demonstration” essays (answering questions about the theses to demonstrate grasp of topic, major subject, and mother tongue) even though this old system only has one — but I’m sure they are no biggie.

*happy sigh*

I’m getting there… Some day I will have a nice degree. What I’ll do after that is a whole different headache.

It’s soon been a month since the digital media techniques exam and there is some sort of rule that the grades must be given in a month. So, I went to my portfolio to see if the person who’ll check my work has left a message.

Boy was I disappointed. I was expecting a hi at least, but there was a message by “Donald Duck”, titled “Title” saying “. . . .” (all in Finnish though, even the dots). Wow. I’m touched.

Darn, I should’ve made the program only mark posts as deleted but still keep them in the database… it would’ve been interesting to see what that deleted message contained (the post IDs are 1,2,3, and 5). But then I would’ve needed to mention that in the documentation.

After finishing the first PoP, Sands of Time, I knew I wanted to get the sequel too. The first one was a bright coloured game where the prince looked like a sweet young boy. In Warrior Within, the Prince had apparently found the warrior within and become a harsh looking guy. The game is also gloomier with hard rock type of music and dark colours. I don’t complain about that at all — the music is very good. The ladies in the game show even more skin than in the 1st part, which I didn’t think was possible…

The camera annoyance I complained about in the first game has mostly been corrected. There are times when you can’t see properly because the camera gets stuck in something. Knowing which way to jump, especially from poles and especially when you don’t have much time to think, is still a puzzle and eats a lot of rewinds.

The fighting is more sophisticated in this sequel. I used to handle most of the enemies in the 1st part by vault-over-and-slice (some you didn’t vault over though without getting thrown on the ground). Now there are more moves and there’s a possibility to use double weapon attacks which are very nifty. Then again, grabbing a poor soul and slicing it in two is a lot of fun — that you can’t do with both hands taken.

Most of the enemies are nice to fight against, but I can’t stand the ninjas that hop over you in silly splits and slit your throat. Uh. They are ok one-on-one but whenever there are several against me, they drive me nuts!

The areas aren’t as straightforward as in Sands of Time. I spent a lot of time wandering around — until I realized the map can help somewhat. It’s also a bit annoying that once you think you’ve got rid of an enemy in one place, if you go back, they’re revived.

There is a nice twist towards the end and it’s enjoyable to see (well, play) the story unfold.

The font used in subtitles is a copperplate type of font (all letters look like capital letters). It’s a poor choice, because not only is it ugly (and huge), it’s also harder to read than a regular font.

The game has a big replay value because at least I didn’t get all the life upgrades or artwork chests on the first try — and it’s always nice to play the game from the beginning because you know all the neat tricks that you learned as you went on the 1st round. This time I’m following a walkthrough to ensure I don’t miss anything. It pays to get the life upgrades because they open an alternative ending AND you get illustrations in the Extras. In Sands of Time there were “secrets” where you got longer health bar but in my opinion they were more obvious than in Warrior Within. Although, I may have played in a too light-up room to miss some suspicious cracked walls or whatever.

I don’t know if that’s all I was going to write about, I tried to make mental notes while playing. I’ll have to add to this if I remember something while playing it through again.

Trivia: Monica Bellucci does the voice of Kaileena. She played Persephone in Matrix movies. (Not my favourite character in Matrix, didn’t like the accent.)

Game’s website

It’s weird that nowadays people don’t buy trousers that fit. Either they’re too short or too long and they have to wrap half a meter of pantleg up their shin…

So, my article on cascading stylesheets came out on 31st. It was nice seeing my own handiwork in an actual magazine — along with pretty pictures by my namesake. Not that I’ve been dreaming of journalism since I was a kid (my friend and I made a magazine for our class, though, in early grades) but what can I say, it was a lot of fun to write for fun for a change. Oh, what am I talking about, I write here all the time! Anyway, you know what I mean.

I had told my father before (response: “uh-huh…”) and when the magazine came out, I showed Mum (response: “what am I supposed to be looking at” and then “oh, that’s what you’ve been up to! Getting all those mysterious envelopes”). Luckily the people at work were a bit more enthusiastic, otherwise I would’ve jumped on some table and shouted I got published in a magazine, dammit! Oh, Grandma asked me questions about it when I told her beforehand, so at least I got to tell the whole story to someone

Today I got my extra copies of the magazine. I sent one to my grandparents, Dad took one (on the excuse of paying most of the tool that was used to write the article… it’s his fault, he never took the money from me), and I’m keeping one wrapped — I also have the one that came in the mail on the day it was published.

So, the story: the editor had read my blog which he’d found via a blog list. Mum always asks why I bother with my homepage. Now I can tell her, and other heretics, that you can get a job (or at least freelance assignments) by bothering with homepages.

Isn’t this nice. Spammers are visiting my site and leaving very kind comments.

Yeah, right.

It’s a great website of yours. I surfed by and found it very informative. Bookmarked and check you back in a while

Please don’t.

Best content I ever seen. Huge amounts of live feeds, high payouts. Realy cool.

Yup, exactly. Aren’t my live feeds and payouts really smashing?

Great site guys, please let me know if you are interested in exchanging links with us.

I’m a girl. Singular.

One of the email names is ‘otard’ — ‘retard’ more like it.

Oh, good laughs. Or not. I won’t even start on the grammar of these things!

[edit: Apr 4] I was baffled as to why I was getting comments every 10 seconds or so. Then I realized I had updated my WP files last night because I thought there was an error (which in fact was caused by a plugin) and had forgotten to do my thang (yes, thang) to the trackback file. Now, I did it. [/edit]