Breaking Down Barriers June 30, 2009
Posted by mitchfrizzell in Awesome, Comics, Geeks.add a comment
There are two things people notice about me when they get to know me a little better. The first thing about me is that I love routine. I read one X-Men, one Pokemon and one FMA a day, and no more. I play certain games on certain days, and I read a specific amount of pages in my book a day, and no less. Most people probably think that I’m a little OC. But, I’m not, really. 
The other thing is, I’m a geek. And a rather large geek at that. I like Star Wars, Star Trek, Pokemon, Nintendo, Final Fantasy, and above all, I’m a big super hero fan.
Being a geek, the natural progression of my state would be getting into the comic book world. While searching for a Nintendo magazine down here, I happen to see an issue of Superman: Birthright, but in Spanish. I decided not to get it. Then, a couple of days later, I bought it. I’m a huge Marvel fan, so getting a DC comic was a little hard. But once I ripped into (carefully opened, so as not to damage) the plastic sleve, I loved every second of it. I’m planning on buying the whole series (of 12) before I go back to the States. And at less than $2, it’s a real bargin.
I never thought I would get into comics, but since I did, I actually find myself liking it more than anime and video games. I’m planning a weekly visit to a store that sells comics (I know of three, but I’m not sure if any of them are really “comic book stores”) so I can combine my two favorite personality traits. All in all, I can heartily recommend Superman: Birthright, after reading almost half of it, and thouroughly loving it.
My Half-Year Resolutions (And a Short Shopping List) June 20, 2009
Posted by mitchfrizzell in Awesome, Geeks, Random Info.add a comment
Although I didn’t set any resolutions this year, and I horribly failed last year’s, I do have a couple of things I want to do (and get) this year.
1. Master C – My original goal for his year was to master Python, and I can safely say (while trying not to sound too prideful) that I’m pretty good in it. C, however, is going to be a lot harder. I’m planning this feat in two stages. First is my List Program and second is my PMRL.
List Program is a simple non-Windows program with an xml database (need to read up on xml again) that basically just records lists (or lists of lists). PMRL is a simple Pokemon game that is a hybrid monster raising, stadium battling, and rogue-like game. Planned versions 0.1-0.5(ish) will focus on raising; 1.0 will introduce battling; and 2.0 and onwards will feature dungeon gameplay.
ETA (Estimated Time of Accomplishment): 2 Weeks to finish the basics, up to 3 or 4 months for the programs.
2. Upgrade my laptop – I’m eventually going to buy a new laptop (there are some beautiful ones under 500 bucks floating around the internet tubes), but until then, a couple of good upgrades are going to be required.
First off, I desperately need a DVD burner (less for the burning itself, and more for the drive’s speed). My current drive is very slow, a normal show (350 megs) takes around 3 minutes to copy to the HDD (USB 2.0 gets it done in less than 20 seconds). The second upgrade is Linux. I’ve been wanting to make the move for a while, as I’m rather sick of Windows. Once I get some codecs going and a comic reader, I’ll be great. The third and final upgrade is a new battery. Hopefully that’ll increase my unplugged life (but at my current 20 minutes, anything is going to be good better).
ETA: Linux, less than a month. Others, up to 6 months, most likely.
3. Finish Gundam – Remember my goal of watching every Gundam ever made? Well, it’s almost come to fruition. I’ve only got Seed, Seed Destiny, G Gundam, Turn A Gundam, and Gundam 00 S2. Granted, that’s 175 eps and two movies (planning on watching Turn A movies), but it’s a lot more than half way. I’m planning on doing some discussions based on the various Gundam (and perhaps Macross) universes. I’m really loving Seed, anticipating Turn A and dreading G.
ETA: End of the year.
4. Get back into reading – I’ve hit a dry spell in reading, but I’m hoping to get back into it. Starting with Hitchiker’s Guide and its many sequels. Hopefully I can find another series to quench ny thirst once those are done.
ETA: 3 Months or so.
5. Buy Crap! – My shopping list is rather long, and my shopping currency… well, I have no money.
Zombies!!! (Board Game)
X-Men Alert! (Board Game)
Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 (Comic collection of giant size X-Men and the frst ten issues of the Uncanny X-Men)
Pokemon Ruby (GBA game, to follow the manga)
PS2 or WII + a buttload of games (for PS2 mostly Gundam)
ETA: Whenever I get a job…
Well, there you have it. My resolutions and shopping list. Tune in soon for my completion posts.
X-Men Alert! for Zombies!!! Are Coming June 12, 2009
Posted by mitchfrizzell in Awesome, Geeks, X-Men.add a comment
I’m currently in a zombie mode… again. So recently, I’ve been playing all the zombie games I can get my hands on (Resident Evil, Flash games, board games, etc.). After finding and downloading the excellent PnP game, Zombie Plauge, I looked around for some decent zombie minis. This is when I stumbled upon the board game Zombies!!!
Zombies!!! is known for a number of different qualities. The positive one is that it comes with 100 plastic zombies and 6 plastic “shotgun guys”. The other, less appealing quality is that the rules are not the best, and sometimes cause game sessions to be several hours long. It’s also known for having a buttload of expansions.
However, a few changes to the rules results in quicker game time, and best of all, it’s only 20 bucks. But, since I’m a collector/painter at heart – not a gamer – I’m very excited about the 100 zombies to paint as I see fit.
I’m also in an X-Men mode right now, and I’ve been looking around at the various collectable minis games that feature the X-men, trying to pick one. Marvel Battle Dice was my original choice (due to the fact that it’s not full of repeats like the HeroClix game), but according to some sources, the scale is not consistent over the line. HeroClix is my choice right now (despite the repeats), but I’ve also found a new love. X-Men Alert! is an oldish board game (haven’t read a lot of reviews, so I can’t really opine on the quality) that comes with 18 unpainted X-Men figures, including Professor X. Prime candidates for me to colorize!
All in all, Zombies!!! is my first $20 choice and X-Men Alert! is no. 2. Be on the lookout in the future for my reviews and painted figs.
Get Rich Quick Online! June 9, 2009
Posted by mitchfrizzell in Awesome, Geeks.add a comment
No, really. In my quest to make $20 (more on this in a later post), I’ve gone through most of the ways to make money online. Some are more useful than others, while some are absolutely worthless. I’ve decided to share my experiences here to enlighten anyone who might be interested in spending hours making no money. (Note that this is not a list of links, but a gathering of my insight)
Online surveys
Most people who use the internet have seen the ads: share your opinion to make easy money. Filling out surveys is actually one of the few ways to make real money online. The drawback? Most sites require you to be in the States. Sites that offer international surveys e-mail you when a survey is available; and the e-mails are few and far in between (note that this is also the case with some State-side sites also). It’s not going to be a full time job, but it’s definitely a good way to make some cash in your free time.
Tips: First off, find a site that pays in money, not in products or deals, unless that’s what you’re after. Second, sign up for multiple sites at a time. The frequency in which you get offers will multiply if you’re on more than one site.
Ad Viewing
Ad viewing is simply going through a list provided by the Ad Viewing site, and viewing another site through a frame. If you’re not cheating with multiple open windows, then your account will get credited. However, these sites can be very decieving. The rates you start out with are very high (sometimes up to $0.25 for a 30-second view of the ad), and then drop to even a cent after the frst day; or in the case of one site I tried, they stop crediting your account altogether.
Tips: Number one tip is if you’re alone, don’t try this, it’ll most likely be a waste of your time. If you should try one, make sure they pay through a well known service (translation: PayPal), just to be safe, and to know you can actually acess the money.
If you find a genuine site with good referral rates, it might be worth it to get together a group of friends and work together. ($.10 per referral view, 10 friends and 10 ads per day = $10), in five days, each of you has 5 bucks for 25 minutes work each (it seemed like it was going to be a lot more before I wrote it down). But, it’s most likely a waste of time.
Blogging For Cash
Blogging for cash consists basically of reviewing products or services for a small reward.
Tips: Sign up for multiple sites, and see if each site allows you to have multiple blogs. This will increase the amount of offers you’ll recieve, and in turn, the amount of rewards. This is the area I have the least experience in, as I’m still waitig for my first offer.
Selling Pokemon Cards
Yes, I played Pokemon when I was younger, and I still play the games and read the manga. I’m a fanboy. However, back in the day, a Holo Charizard was worth $27, so I decided to see how much my cards might get me. I got my stack of holos and promos (about 50) and headed over to a site that buys the cards. My most valuable card, an Ancient Mew promo, was worth $2 (and I know I must have had around 15 of ‘em, I just don’t know where they went…), and altogether, I would have gotten a total of $10 for my holos (Holos not on their “wanted” list were going for $.20). Adding all of my other cards, I might have gotten another $5 (normal cards were going for $.01), so it just wasn’t worth the hassle. However, if you have a good amount of cards, check around on some sites to see what you might get (remembering that it might be more profitable to sell it on Ebay).
Real Job
This is the most stupid one on the list. Go out and get a real job (remember, this post is about making money online, so I don’t literally mean “go out”). This is a very profitable area if you possess any computer skills. The bulk of the money is going to programmers (and the buku bucks are in Flash Game Development), so if you’re any good in that, you’ll have an easier time getting a job. Besides programming, anyone with some kind of certification or degree in a wide array of fields will have an easier time also (examples are Web Development, translation, etc.) However, if you don’t possess any skills like those, or they are too new, be prepared to get pocket change for working long hours.
Tips: GetAFreelancer.com Period. It’s the site I always use, and it’s a great place to find a job, or someone to do a job for you. You can search through jobs yourself, see them in categories, see them in an RSS feed, or even have them sent to your inbox. The first thing you need to do is set up a nice looking profile, complete with a small description of your skills and whatever else you think pertinent. The most important thing in this area is honesty. Be honest, do a good job, and you’ll get good feedback, speeding up the job hunting process a little. (Should you need an alternative, there’s a UK GAF, elance, and rentacoder to name a few).
This Month’s Picks (Sep. 2008) Part 3 – Mahita & Python September 10, 2008
Posted by mitchfrizzell in Digimon, Geeks, PC, Python, Update.add a comment
This time around we’ve got some junk about my site and my programming. I’m really focusing on Python, trying to learn it really well, and hopefully, it’ll help me get a decent job some day. As for Mahita, it doesn’t really help me do anything, I just really enjoy sharing very insignificant stuff with a very small group of people. So, without further… never mind, just read.
Tag Cloud: As I posted a while back, I made my own little tag cloud to cover up the fact that the old one didn’t work like it was supposed to. The only real problem is that it looks like crap. I’m planning on making one more like the official one, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. I’m planning on making a small Python script that scrapes the categories and number of posts on my blog (most likely from my dashboard) and makes a nice little list of tuples. It’ll then calculate the amount of increase in font neccessary for each one and print out the correspoding HTML. Now that I have a little more free time, I’m going to work on this. The hardest part is thinking up the formula…
Banner: Back in January of 2007 I got my current banner (which is still awesome). But, it was my original plan to cahnge the baby out every year. I desperately need one now, and I’m in the process of thnking whether I want Gundam, Macross, Mospeada, or Digimon. I’m leaning towards Macross or Mospeada; I guess I’ll let fate decide as I look for a nice render.
DigiFind: As I stated in an earlier post, I found a new love in the newest Digimon game, Digimon World Championship. One of the main goals is to collect all 200+ Digimon. However, this is harder than it sounds as some you have to evolve these monsters, and the requirements vary from type to type. So, borrowing the info from the Evolutions Guide from the GF board (Thanks so much BitZero!!) I threw together this program. You simply enter in any Digimon’s name and it compiles a list (a wx TreeCtrl) of all the Digimon’s possible descendants. It works like a charm, and if I can get some permission from BitZero, I’ll be posting the source and the binary in the future.
FireFox Add-Ons: I’ve always been interested in Add-Ons, and since my RSLF didn’t really work out, I’m planning to trying to convert the idea into an Add-On. The basic idea is to search a text for any RS, MU, FU, etc. URLs, and add them to a list in the sidebar from which the user can then open them up in tabs. This saves us the hassle of having to drag the links to the tabbar (or whatever it’s called) when the people are too lazy to make <a> tags. I know there’s probably a similar addon out, or one that makes URLs into <a>’s, but I still want to get into addon designing. More on this if I ever even get around to it.
Well, that’s it for this month, tune in tomorrow for a Gundam 00 Review, and Friday for a Castlevania: DoS review.
How To Be An Intimidating Geek September 21, 2007
Posted by mitchfrizzell in Awesome, Geeks, Random Info.add a comment
There are certain people who have a knack for teaching, and they can make the most complicated subjects seem very simple. However, there are others who have a knack for the exact opposite: they make certain, rather simple subjects seem extremely boring and complicated. But, at the same time, they are revered as very smart people. How can we become one of those persons? Here are some tips for those of you who wish to join this group.
I Hate the Internets August 3, 2007
Posted by mitchfrizzell in Geeks, Random Info, Web Programming.5 comments
Have you ever worked on something for a long time, hoping to achieve a certain goal only to realize that the higher powers (in my case Gore and his cronies) have deigned a different course for you? Well this happened to me recently, and it was a real break to my internet confidence. What exactly happened?
Well, I’ve been working on my computer hacking skills (I put aside my bo staff skills training and whatnot for now) and my first step was basic web programming. I studied HTML, XHTML and CSS, taking a quiz for each to make sure I knew what I was doing. I was ruled 95% in both HTML and XHTML and 92% in CSS. That’s pretty good, right?
The next step in my journey was to take the Exam offered by the W3CSchools. I spent a few days studying, and finally got the courage up to take the exam. However, I was not accepted. Why? With an average of 94% on the quizzes, and days of study, I could have aced the exam. I wasn’t accepted because I didn’t have $59. Yeah, you have to pay to take the exam. Instead of making you take the exam and pay for the certificate, they make you pay to even load up the page. So, I put the idea (and the link) on the back burner for now.
I should have known that a certificate recognized by most major universities wouldn’t be free, but that’s me, I don’t think about that. Will I take the exam? Yeah, I will, but only when I have a spare 60 dollars. I’ll get over my hate of the Internets soon, but I need a little grieving time first.
