Archives
Welcome to the DarkMercury.net Archives!
You're now viewing my old entries in order from oldest to newest.
This is opposite of the other pages where the newest posts are at the top.
Monday, October 17, 2005
Flight Team results
Back in Spring Semester of 05, myself and the other flight team officers looked to each other and set a goal for our team. We decided that this year, we were going to do well enough at the Regional NIFA Safecon Competition that we would be invited to the national competition. The KSU flight team has not been to the national competition in 19 years. So, let me tell you that this was no small feat; to revamp the team, practice, learn, and keep up with everything else in our lives. A lot of you all know that I haven’t been around a lot for a while. This is why. October 9-16 was the Regional Competition at Western University in Battle Creek Michigan. It was one of the best expiriences of my life. It was cool to see all the other teams and planes and talk to them. It was also really cool to see our team come together from almost nothing and perform so well. Usually 3 teams from our region (about 7 colleges) make it to the national competition. This year they were only going to take the top two. Western Michigan always wins first. Ohio State University always wins second. The third place spot is always fought for. Last year we lost the third spot to Ohio University by 6 points out of hundreds. This year Ohio State University is hosting the National Competition, so it turns out that they go to nationals no matter what. This means that there was still a spot even with W.M. in 1st and OSU in 2nd. Well, this year we worked our asses off all semester and all week. It came down to the awards banquet Saturday night. Our hearts on the line as they announce each of the top 10 winners of each event. When it came down to it, the Kent State University Precision Flight Team….came in second place! We even beat the “unbeatable” Ohio State! That means that the only reason Ohio State will be at nationals is because they are hosting it! It’s so awesome! If you work hard enough for anything you can do it - ANYTHING!
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Quake 4
Quake 4 came out recently, if not today.Those of us who went to Quakecon already played it a little.
Maybe LAN Party friday night to try it out?
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Site upgraded to 2.4 pro
I know it doesn’t look very different, but it’s running on 2.4 pro instead of 2.2.1 free now. Much more features, so I will be expanding my site. The features section has already been touched up. Also upgraded to RSS 2.0 Will do more later.
Friday, October 28, 2005
Quake 4 sucks
Monday, October 31, 2005
Burke Lakefront Flight
When my mom was in high school, her family had a foreign exchange student live with them. Her name is Sinni and she is from Finland. Well, she has been here in the States since the beginning of the semester. Yesterday was her and her daughter’s last day here, so we went for a quick plane ride. We left at 5:00pm and got up to Cleveland right at sunset. It was my first time to Burke Lakefront airport. I’ve gone there in flight sim, but it’s not quite the same. The buildings are so much closer to the airport than flight sim shows. Even crappy old Cleveland looks sweet at sunset at 500 feet. I thought they were going to get some pictures, but they apparently forgot. Oh well. I love flights like this because it reminds me why I’m putting so much time and effort into this profession. There’s nothing else in the world like it.
Friday, November 04, 2005
Quakecon Video Soon!
what you’ve all been waiting for..
I’m really getting into Adobe Premiere! My quakecon movie is about 40% done. I’m working on the super-huge long tribute video, which will then get broken down into funny stuff, a shorter version, and maybe some other ideas. Hopefully should be done with the first one near the end of the weekend?
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Quakecon Video Released!
The Lo-Res first version of our trip to Quakecon is available for download from our special Quakecon 2005 page located here. Even though it's lo-res, it's still a 138mb file with 320x240 video, and xvid compression. My server will probably take forever to upload it to you, so watch that page for new sources, in the next day or so. I'm going to put it on a server at KSU so you don't kill my connection at home. Rick will release his two videos in the coming weeks, so watch for those as well!
Friday, November 18, 2005
Website Testing
I’ve been playing around with my website lately. Trying to make things a lot more standard and add a bunch new features. A few things are obvious like the gigantic eclipse to the right, and some things are not as obvious, such as the restructured header at the top. I added my post about the UT2k4 tourney to the features section because it was just too good to be a normal post where it would never be read again. Tell me what you think of what I’ve done, or maybe what you’d like to see. I always enjoy comments.
Thursday, November 24, 2005
And I shall call him minimac…
http://www.theapplecollection.com/Collection/PaperMac/
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
LAN Tomorrow. Starts noonish…whenever..
Monday, November 28, 2005
A little busy? School Sucks
I know I complain a lot about how I have so much work to do all the time but with my senior year coming to an end and almost being finished with everything, all I do these days is work. Well, that’s what I should be doing. What I’m really doing is playing Q3 and watching anime.
Let’s start off with Aviation Law and Safety. I was assigned to a group of 4 a while back, assigned a court case 199 US 194(i think), and an ambigous due date (sometime next week). As of yet, our group has not fully met and of course it’s me who’s emailing everybody trying to get their lazy asses to the library to meet. It may even be due Thursday. Not sure. Good thing there is no paper or I’d be doing that for everyone. 15 min presentation for this, google doesn’t give any more information than the actual case summary, which is written in legal speak, and even there doesn’t say much.
Next will be Physiology and Human Factors in Flight. 3-6 page paper and 15 min presentation. Would be doing lots of work on this if I knew what my topic would be. Totally can’t think of one. Human factors is boring.
Applied Transport Category Aircraft Systems. 8-10 page paper and 20 min presentation on the Dehaviland Comet. That won’t be too hard if I actually get moving on it. Severe lack of motivation at the moment though. Both this and Human Factors are due around Dec 7-9. Not exactly sure.
Commercial 3 flying: Almost ready for my Commercial checkride. 5 hours of fun that day, whenever that is. It depends on the weather. Very nervous about that. I need to have it done before next semester or I’ll get behind again. I’ve only just barely caught up.
Continental Express Internship: I’ve gotten most everything I need to turn this in Feburary. It’s about the only thing I’m not severely behind in.
And then the week after all this is due: IT’S FINALS TIME can’t wait.
Monday, November 28, 2005
PHP iCal + Gallery
http://darkmercury.net/cal.php
http://darkmercury.net/gallery.php
Beta of the php icalendar feature. As of this moment, it is using a default calendar, and not any of my stuff. I put it in an iframe, and it doesn’t look that great. I’m playing with it, may scrap it. who knows. Any feedback is welcome.
Edit 9:26pm: I added my current schedule as far as I know it through Spring Semester. iCal is supposed to automatically synch it to the web, but right now that’s not happening. It still looks pretty right now, even though it’s a hassle to update. I’ll keep working on it.
Edit 12:17 next day: Added photo gallery using the same iframe javascript for testing purposes.
Edit 11:34: Added Flight Team Photos (ones you havent seen yet) to the gallery. It’s actually worth a look! Really cool. In no paticular order.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Regarding the SnoFun thing
Rick told me yesterday that Will and he and some other people I guess want to go to seven springs or something for the skiing. He also told me that Will doesn’t want any newbies along to slow him down. I can only assume he means me, maybe among others. Oh well, it doesn’t really matter this year because I don’t have the money for ski-blading anywhere, and even if I did I’d probably fall and hurt myself again. This would be bad right before my commercial pilot practical test. I don’t have the money to even afford rent anymore cause we’re still down one roommate! So who the fuck knows what’s going to happen!? It’s so awesome!
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Papers
I am horrible at working on projects before they are due. I can only focus just before it’s due, like the night before. Otherwise I just get carried away by hyperlinks. Especially in wikipedia…that site is the worst when it comes to me staying on topic. I spent the entire weekend working on my de Havilland Comet 8 page paper and just barely got it finished. I have to make a powerpoint on my court case for Aviation Law and Safety and research for my CFIT 6 page essay tomorrow, write the essay and do powerpoints on both the Comet and CFIT on tuesday. Tuesday is my law and safety presentation. Wednesday is my comet and CFIT presentations. I can’t wait until finals where my workload will be much less!
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Schultzie got hacked!
I find it ironic that Schultzie, the most security-paranoid one of us all got hacked due to IIS with no firewall and access to everything. I even LOLed.
avsi.ing.unibo.it was where the image used in the “hacked” signature was from
Whois output for: unibo.it
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Xmen 3
http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/x3
It will probably be sweet. Xmen 2 was absolutely amazing.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
And the winner is…
For the last year or so I have been wrestling with my KSU cumulative GPA to get it over 3.0. It’s a stubborn little number, currently paused at 2.957, and with my internship coming up, I need it defeated. Internships require a minimum GPA of 3.0, and although there are exceptions, I want to be accepted without any exceptions, under my own power. Well I had the last of my finals yesterday, so except for flying I’m done for the semester. I’m thinking that I got 3 A’s in all of my classes this semester, which should hopefully do the job, but only time will tell in the coming week or two…
VICTOLY! 3.020
Sunday, December 18, 2005
It’s Time to kick ass and chew bubblegum
and I’m all out of gum
Commercial Checkride tomorrow (Monday). Passing it means I can be paid to fly, which is indeed my original goal of getting my private license all the way back in Feb of 2004. The day starts out at 7:30am with a quick flight to finish up my required hours and then the checkride starts at 10:30am. Probably a good 2-3 hours of oral exam followed by an hour and a half flight. Long day, but I think I can handle it. If all goes well, I should be free for the rest of break with nothing to do except a few trips (maybe Ohayocon, going to DC somewhere in there) but the rest is free for LAN parties and stuff. Will update after the ride tomorrow!
Update:
I did the oral exam today and got a 93%. Even though that’s an A, I still feel like I didn’t know that much. I hate sitting there looking stupid becuase I don’t know anything. He asked me a lot of little things that I wasn’t prepared for. Anyways, we didn’t fly because the clouds were too low for some of the manuevers that I have to do, so the flight has been rescheduled to Wednesday at 10:30am. I like splitting it up anyways. Will post more upon completion.
Update 2:
I’ve spent the last few days sitting around the airport trying to get good enough weather to fly, but it never came. The airport is closed for christmas right now, but I will get another chance on Dec. 30th.
Update 3:
December 30th was a very cloudy day and not good for flying. My next chance is Jan. 3rd in the morning. By this time I’ll be so out of practice that I’m sure to fail.
Friday, December 30, 2005
LAN January 1st
Normally I post LAN stuff on the DGS site, but I thought it would get more exposure here. Normally my LANs are plagued by the lack of chairs and tables and space. Well, I bought the huge table that is in my computer room, and a set of four metal generic chairs. This should help a little bit. If there are too many people for the computer room, we can move to the living room and someone can bring a spare table or something. I want to make an interactive sign-up thing. Maybe that will be the next website project I will take up. I only make progress on those when I have some sort of paper due in school. I’m rambling on now…so in conclusion…LAN Jan 1st - 1pm - got enough chairs now! kthxbye!
Saturday, December 31, 2005
2005 in review
not as bad as 2004
JanuaryWent to Washington DC with Alison
Went to Ohayocon with yash
Break wrist at Brandywine
Very busy Spring 05 Semester starts
Febuary
Cast comes off wrist
March
Pass Commercial 1 Final Checkride - Worst checkride ever
Design KsuAnime.net with mambo
Go to Arcadia, CA for Spring Break like usual
April
Start Instrument Training
May
Very Busy Spring 05 Semester Ends
Begin work at KSU Airport
Begin Summer 05 classes (2)
Become training manager for flight team
June
One year with Alison
July
Got my instrument rating
Begin Commercial 2 course
August
Summer 05 classes end
QUAKECON!
Went to Niagra Falls with Alison
Begin Commercial 3 course
Very Busy Fall 05 Classes begin
Become very busy with Flight Team (only 2 months to practice!)
September
Yash gets pissed off
Finish Commercial 2 course
Serenity movie comes out
October
Re-create the DGS
Flight Team competition! Awesome! Second Place!
Quake 4 - much less awesome!
November
Quakecon video done
Become webmaster for flight team
December
Get bogged down with lots of finals work
Very busy Fall 05 semester over
GPA over 3.0! woots!
Yash gets a little better
Oral part of Commercial 3 checkride 93%
Yash gets pissed off again
Write this stupid post
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Joomla!
I don’t know why, but I like web design and tinkering around with websites. Could never do it as a job though.. Some of you know the project I have been working on since the week before finals week (known as week of hell). To distract myself from doing my real work, I started work on the KSU Precision Flight Team website. I used Joomla for this, which is pretty much just Mambo. I made the KSUAnime Site with Mambo in early 2004, and can’t say much has changed. Joomla is the same thing as Mambo but open source I guess. I thought Mambo was open source, but since I am a proponent of open source software and I’m curious by nature, I tried Joomla. I’m definately a lot better at the Joomla/Mambo system then I was when I designed KSUAnime. Looking back, I don’t even like the anime site. I think a new skin in the near future is in order for that site. But back to the Flight Team site. I spent a lot of time on the skin of it, trying to make it look like the flight team jacket and had to fight a lot of CSS to achieve it, but it looks good now. Now I’m trying to add the endless amount of content and information. I know that once I move it to the KSU server all hell is going to break loose. The only problem I have with Joomla is that it has to systemize everything. I can’t just add a random page, it has to be a member of a category or something. And I don’t like the publishing system. Everything content-wise is added by a user, who by default has no access to “publish” anything, and so everything he writes stays hidden until an admin comes by and says “ok” and publishes it, so it appears on the site. Not a bad feature if that’s what you’re looking for. However, I am a very lazy admin, and so everyone’s posts will go by unpublished forever. Would be fine if I could change the default access level, but no. Best I can do is make everyone an admin, and then all hell breaks loose again. For what I needed, which is pretty much contact info, team info, and most of all - the events calendar schedule, it’s okay. I think the site has really come together and I’m pround of it.