Today I encountered a commenter on Cerulean Studios’ blog, named John, who stated the following:

I’ll be honest and say that I’m one of many who have pirated an alpha build of Astra without an Astra account. I do realize that I’m missing a number of features but… I don’t feel like I’ve lost out. I upgraded to Windows Vista when it launched and wanted a pretty new IM client… and Astra was the top choice.

John also went on to state a caveat to all other pirates who would dare steal Cerulean Studios’ next flagship product, Trillian Astra, that in its essence said that the alpha build had a lot of bugs and the user pirates at his or her own risk. He also stated that there is no reason for anyone to want to get in on an alpha program to quickly. To his statements, I must ask: When is piracy okay?

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Today is Physics Day, a day where our entire Junior class (Juniors take Physics here) goes to Six Flags: Great Adventure and rides roller coasters all day. I’m absolutely terrified of both heights and sharp turns from drops, and roller coasters have both. However, if any day, today was the day to conquer my fear and finally go on a roller coaster, even if it wasn’t one of the more harsh coasters in the park.

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After forever and a half, you can now download THE ENTIRE SOUNDTRACK, plus extra tracks! I’m incredibly happy to see it done. Took a few hours to finalize everything, but it’s over - they’re all downloadable right now on the Golden Sun Soundtrack page.All files are, as usual, encoded in 80kbps MP3. I’ve listened to them, and they sound great - way better than what I had previously. So, I hope you’ll like them as well.

There are some people, however, I should thank for introducing me to this quick, high quality method of getting the soundtrack. The first is holyice7, who taught me how to take CaitSith2’s game audio rips and make them into lossless WAV format, making the entire “recording” part of the recording moot. I, of course, must thank CaitSith2 and give him credit for ripping the files initially. The soundtrack wouldn’t have been done for MONTHS if not for his rips and holy’s tips. Thanks to both of you, truly. I do believe thanking Cindy from Golden Sun Realm goes without saying - she made the original soundtrack, and since then we’ve become good friends, even if her track naming isn’t spot on. ;)

And yes, holy, I can’t wait to see what you do with your own soundtrack that you’re making ;)…

So, now not only will they be linked to on Golden Sun Realm as originally planned, but as not originally planned may be used for a jukebox project by Max of Golden Sun Syndicate. GSS is the other Golden Sun authority on the ‘net, and I hear frequent talk of collaborations between GSR and GSS, even a possible merge, though I can’t speak for the webmasters at all. However, it seems like the soundtrack will be put to good use!

And don’t worry about my bandwidth - I’ve got so much I don’t know what to do with it, and unless I suddenly become one of the internet’s top Web 2.0 sites, I won’t be running out anytime soon. Download as much as you want (but don’t KILL me). Oh, and if you really don’t want to waste your time downloading each track one by one, go get yourself a healthy serving of Firefox with some DownThemAll on the side.

UPDATE: Now you can download it via BitTorrent! Go to the Soundtrack’s page and download it either from Demonoid.com or from The Jason Effect - both are the same. PLEASE SEED THE TORRENT!

And lastly, enjoy, enjoy, enjoy…

~ Jason.

I’m not going waste words: I’m re-redoing the soundtrack. Sound bad? Actually, it’s good. I realized that I’d recorded all of my previous 53 tracks WRONGLY… in short, they’re not the quality they should be. That’s always bad. I had forgot to change the sound setting on VisualBoy Advance from 22Hz to 44Hz, basically halfing the quality that I wanted. I’d been wondering why they sounded just like Cindy’s old tracks… and now I know.

So, the soundtrack is going in a different direction. I will not be re-recording every single track. Instead, thanks to a user who I will credit once I’m done in a nice “I give thanks to these kickass people” speech, I’ll be using the actual game audio files! I had originally intended to make the soundtrack this way, but couldn’t figure out how to convert them into any real audio format. Now I can convert them to WAV, which is very nice. And they sound great. So, I sacraficed complete pride in myself for quality, because that’s what I care about most - it doesn’t matter if it was recorded by me (well, yes to a point), but it does matter if the end user gets something that’s of great quality, and in order to do that, I’m using the game rips, even if it makes my job a helluva lot easier.

It also means that the soundtrack will be done… today! So, be patient as I wrap things up in the next few hours!

~ Jase

“Cabaret” is a show that the students in the school’s Concert Choir create at my high school. It’s basically a string of Broadway songs, one after the other, in constant succession. The students pick the songs, and there are a vast amount of soloists doing their own chosen songs (18, to be precise), as well as a few full-choir numbers, where all 100+ people get on the stage and do a choreographed dance to some Broadway song.

Last night was Cabaret ‘07, and while not nearly as entertaining as previous years, it went off without a hitch. And the best part was, it was my first time doing my own solo Cabaret piece! We have it videotaped, but the video camera my mother used to tape the performance is so damn old that it doesn’t connect to a computer. So, we need to take the tape to a guy to make the tape into a video file. I was actually going to use YouTube to put the video here, but seeing as I don’t have the video… I can’t do that yet.

I performed “Reviewing the Situation,” from my favorite musical “Oliver!”. Being Fagin was a blast! I love my accent ;)…

Anyways, whenever I have the video, I’ll post it here. It might not be for a while, but such is the price of owning a camera with ports that date back to my old PowerMac. Cheers to everyone who participated in Cabaret, and greater cheers to the open call soloists! Now we can all take Memorial Day Weekend off to relax!

Yesterday was Charter Day here in our lovely little town. Charter Day is exactly what the day is, the day the town was chartered. In reality, it’s a big advertisement festival in the streets. Everyone goes to the center of town, sets up shop, the police close off the roads, and people run around with money and keychains for the latest company booth they passed by. Verizon also decided to set up this charter day, with two large Ford SUV’s, several booths with flatscreen TV’s, a stage with one of their ad banners hanging in the back, and employees with TV’s over their heads. Check out the Verizon takeover:

There was much more going on at charter day, so read more for info.

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Yes, not only am I writing a Physics Journal, but I can link inside of it.

Okay, I can’t really do that, but I can have some fun with it. In fact, the assignment entails us doing exactly the same thing that any D’ni student or guild member would have done - conduct experiments, document every step, and draw intricate sketches of the work. Most people won’t go to great lengths with their Physics Journal, but I intend to make it exemplary. No detail will be left undocumented, and there will be ample sketches. In fact, I’m excited! It makes me feel more like an engineer already, and even a bit like someone who would have lived in D’ni.

Here are a few ideas myself and my partner have for our project; the idea will be finalized this weekend and research and development begins immediately:

• Cathode Ray Tube
• Plasma Globe
• Solenoid Powered Shake-it-Up Flashlight
• Something with a Laser (optics experiment)
• Static Electricity Generator

What’s cool about the Myst series? The D’ni make education sound like something awesome. Which, in part, it very much is. Now, if only I were smart enough to beat Riven!

Let’s face it. A Palm Pilot just isn’t fun anymore. The company seems to be on its knees, begging for survival, and I, with my Palm TX, feel like I’m now forever trapped in a cage with this doomed company. After a year, the TX screen has broken, and I’m wary of sending the Palm back for repair. I don’t want a used TX in worse condition than my own. But then again, I don’t have the money to get out of Palm’s grasp.

The problem with watching this company wither away is that so many customers have stuck with the Palm standard for years, even a decade or more, and to see all that get washed down the drain is heartbreaking, if not only because all of our worldly mobile data is stored on these devices. The Palm Standard, as I will call it, does not cross over to Windows Mobile - we cannot get the same software, hotsync our existing data into a Pocket PC, and we can’t keep anything that we’ve kept on these devices for the last umpteen years. But it seems in time we’ll be forced to move. There’s no new handheld since 2005, and there doesn’t look to be one. The Lifedrive was recently taken off of the market. Palm, as far as we all know, is a dead company. It’s even losing the Smartphone race - it seems like Blackberry dominated long ago. Convergent devices aren’t specific to Palm anymore; the iPhone is probably the best recent example, and will more than likely sell far more than any Treo in history has.

What, then, is the incentive to buying from Palm? If it were a charity foundation, there might be a reason to buy one of these outdated devices; but since they are not, there is no reason to purchase a Palm Pilot anymore. And when students are bound on purchasing such a device, as I did, for schooling as other purposes, several students may fail to take into account the technology factor.

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So, I recently ordered a Nikon D80 from DigiCombos.com, a Brooklyn-based camera store (yes, we were wary of buying from there), and everything arrived intact and perfect, and very fast, too! We had ordered it two days before it arrived. I’m impressed with the company, and before I say anything about the camera I want to state that DigiCombos is a WONDERFUL place to buy a camera and has absolutely INSANE prices. So, this is what we got for about $1400:

- Nikon D80 (body)
- 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G ED-IF AF-S DX Zoom Nikkor
- 70-300mm f/4-5.6G AF Zoom Nikkor (not as important as 18-70mm lens)
- Wide angle + macro attachment (macro!)
- Three lens filters
- Addon flash piece
- 1GB SD card (will replace soon with another 4GB)
- Tripod
- Mini tabletop tripod
- Hard carrying case
- Soft carrying case

Now, if I had just bought the camera body and the 18-70mm lens, that would have cost $1250 at B&H Photo, and then I’d still have to buy a case and such! So I’m really happy with the decision, and even more with the camera. So, for some test-shoot photos, have a look inside! (Yes, I am FINALLY also adding photos to the Freedom of the Seas post.)

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“Why didn’t he say anything two days ago, when he got back?!” Well, for your information, I was tired! I had just finished an interview at Drexel. I’m quite confident that I’ll be accepted into their summer mentoring program for Engineering. However, all aside, I’m back from the cruise and feeling great. More than great, in fact. So great, that I think I’ll explain a little bit about the trip, and share some nice photos, too. If you want to see some photos and learn something about my amazing trip, just read on. Read the rest of this entry »