Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper

Heeeere, Covenant, Covenant

Friday October 15, 2004

Woot! So, I managed to last a half-hour with halo tonight! I think it might be because I was talking with my kiddos while I was playing it. Maybe that kept my stomach distracted…. But I got off the ship finally, went through several checkpoints, and got in my first vehicle!! =:) It was pretty funny. I walked up to the back of the vehicle, faithfully hit my “e” key as instructed to get up into the gunner’s position, and just kind of waited. And waited. And waited. And… well, finally hopped out and got into the driver’s seat. I probably did something stupid and shot my driver or something, but anyway, managed to get the vehicle moving. =:) Maybe Read more…

Life in General

WordPress Style Switcher

Monday October 11, 2004

OOOH–almost forgot! I spent a bit of time playing around with WordPress today–feeling bored/non-challenged/whatever and all. My first thought was to go with the Kubrick template for WordPress. It looks pretty sweet and all, but it looked like it would be difficult to add easy on-the-fly style changing, and that bothered me a smidge. So then I stumbled on Alex King’s EXCELLENT WordPress styles page. WOW! Found some REALLY nicely-done styles from his contest page. And, to make matters even better, he’s written some really nice plugins for WordPress–one of which allows you (the web page viewer) to easily switch styles. So I’ve plunked it in, spent a bit of time tweaking things here and there, and voila–here you have Read more…

Life in General, Movies

Fahrenheit 9/11

So, now I’m just depressed. Having never paid much attention to things political before a month ago, I was hoping to spend a solid month investigating said things, get a healthy bit of knowledge, and be well-armed with all the information necessary to vote responsibly in less than a month. I believe that now I’m more confused than I was before watching this movie. From an art-form perspective, the movie was well-done. I’ve not seen any of Michael Moore’s movies previously, I don’t believe, but he seems to do a good enough job of getting his points across artistically. He definitely carries an agenda, but so will any piece of political “information”, I believe. Like my Dad used to say, Read more…

Video Games

on the war on simulator sickness

So, I played halo for a bit the other day. =:) My theory is that I can gradually convince my body to not react negatively to these video games. I have no research or reason to believe that my theory is correct. Rather, I think, I am driven by a desire to be able to play this bloody game, and participate in online sessions without tossing my cookies. I played for about a half hour on Friday, just a smidge longer than I knew I should have. I noticed that I started burping a bit (lovely reading this much detail on a web page, no??), and I think that’s when I need to stop. I played a little past that Read more…

Video Games

the war on simulator sickness

Friday October 8, 2004

I am determined to figure out how to beat simulator sickness. There has to be some tricks or something to get my body to not be confused/sickened/making me feel like puking. Wish me luck. And let me know if you have any secret hints!!!

Life in General

the war on boredom

Wednesday October 6, 2004

So, here’s the thing. I get bored VERY easily (like you care…). And, to make matters worse, I have a love/hate relationship with both Mozilla Firefox and Opera. I run Linux, of course, and as such, don’t have the option of using Internet Explorer (Bill of the Gateses hasn’t seen fit to provide a version for Linux yet, and oddly enough, I’d not use it even if he had). So, my options for the browsing of all things webbish are limited to Konqueror, Mozilla and its derivatives (Firefox, Galeon, Epiphany, etc.), and Opera. Of all of these, Opera wows me the most. It is the simplest to configure, it does everything I want it to from a user interface perspective Read more…

Music

mark knopfler – shangri-la

I really dig Mark Knopfler’s music. Maybe I’m getting old and sedentary. *shrug* At any rate, his new CD is very good, if you’re into this kind of music, imho. And I always have been. Loved Brothers in Arms. I particularly like “boom like that”, “song for sonny liston”, and “postcards from paraguay”. Man, I sure hope I don’t start liking country music when I get old and senile. If I do, someone please shoot me with my Airzooka.

Video Games

halo and motion sickness

Tuesday October 5, 2004

So, I got Halo for the PC, got all excited about it, figured I’d spend a few days learning it, then take my game online and trounce any unsuspecting fellow halo-ers soundly. I cleaned off the hard drive *excitement building*, made room for halo *excitement building*, installed halo *excitement building*, all the while listening to the awesome sounds and looking at the incredible graphics *excitement building*, rebooted *excitement waning*, and started the game. WOW. Amazing!! The graphics and sounds and interface are absolutely amazing. I love how they help you learn by making it part of the story. The motion-configuration (look at these 5 places on the screen, now tell me, does that look good or do you want to Read more…

Life in General

what on earth am I here for?

Sunday October 3, 2004

“The Purpose Driven Life” is the book that I’m currently reading through. It is REALLY good!! I struggle greatly with reading through books in general. I have no problem starting them, but being consistent and reading them through to end is not my bag, baybee. That is, unless it’s a good action/adventure/spy/geek book. Then that’s a different story. But anyhow, this book is different. It is meant to be read in 40 days, so the author has written the chapters into day-sized segments. Now, what this translates to for me is it takes me roughly 2 days to get through a day-sized chapter. Kind of like the Seinfeld episode where Jerry and George realize that, working at full capacity, together Read more…

Life in General

wordpress oddity

Wednesday September 29, 2004

So, this is weird. I thought I was going nuts! I’ve not used any blogging package other than wordpress before, so I don’t know if this is “normal” or not, but it seems a trifle silly. By default (and by “by default” what I really mean is “you can’t change it easily”) wordpress will only show the date/time for a blog entry if it’s the first one for a given day. How annoying is that!?! Is there a reason for this, does anyone know?