Illykai

For kitty_kitty_



For dasboy



For puddingqueen



And for just about everyone... here is a picture of me, at a sporting event, in colour, drinking a beer... a light beer... a light American beer. *snicker*

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

There is true expression on panel. But only one pixel is defective. Which one?


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   I love the fat raccoon.

I have come to the unavoidable conclusion that games with first-person perspective make me motion sick. Great.

So long since I have posted, sorry.

What does everyone think of seed AI versus other types of AI is what I am curious about, and what would you say are the main branches of thinking between types of AI coding structure?

Feel free to make your reply a new post instead of a comment/reply for the sake of pushing the information to people who are watching the community who could have opinions that will see it on their friends link. ;)

There may have been a bit of holiday mood going around for the next couple of days, sleeping in, eating giant burgers, making egg nog, possibly doing more shopping *cough*



There was also Die Hard, fuzzy Christmas slippers and wrapping presents in time for Christmas day, just lovely.



Christmas itself involved getting up and putting on my evil elf outfit and driving up to Dog's parents place. The small NJ towns and their cutesy festive ways looked just gorgeous in the snow. I think I gripped my hands to my chest and said the word 'quaint' about 15 times.



On arrival we had multiple types of meat before settling in for gifts around the tree. I love the family ornaments on the tree, from local sporting teams to hand made items celebrating family milestones the whole thing hangs together just beautifully... which would be difficult if the entire thing weren't 9 foot tall!



The best thing about visiting someone else's family for Christmas is you get to smile at all the cheer without being involved in any of the feuds. The Moraskis seem to believe pretty firmly in "leaving each other alone to play with our gifts" so after all the gifting everyone settled down with laptop/DS/computer and had a long and quiet day in the warmth watching a MythBusters marathon and sitting in the warm scent of roasting beef.



Christmas dinner was just lovely and a real compliment to the chef, the greens especially were welcome after a few days of heavy meat and cheese filled food.

Afterwards devolved into endless stories of travel, Australia, the weather and then embarrassing family tales that I wish I'd had in my repertoire years ago. Unfortunately jetlag, the warm house and several rounds of port got the better of me and I crashed out unconscious as soon as I sat back on the couch. I was supposedly pried out of the car still unconscious and hugging my new squishable T-rex for dear life, but was evidently steered into bed and separated from my shoes and coat as I woke up fully clothed in bed several hours later, yet again streaming sweat despite the freezing temperature.

Arright I've been a bit lazy with the blogging, but in my defense it's been Christmas and I've been visiting friends.

Last Wednesday it was time to transfer out to New Jersey to fatherdog's place in Hamilton. But first I had to fit all this shopping into my luggage. Woops.



Eventually it got in okay though and we checked out of the Mount Morris, which was a shame as it was a damn beautiful house and just the sort of lifestyle I could get used to. As we were waiting for a cab a town car showed up and offered to take us to Penn Station for less than the cost of a normal cab; I could certainly get used to being driven about in a town car also!



"Neither rain nor snow nor glom of nit" - the main Ankh Morpork NYC Post Office across from Penn Station.

Unfortunately that was the last of the good luck for our trip. For one thing the cold had shut down half the NJ transit system and so Penn Station was packed to the rafters with angry holiday goers. While waiting for tickets I was approached by a small queer goth boy who wanted to know "do you have to dye your hair to get it that way?" and then insisted that he usually dresses better but was Christmasing with family and had to dress normally.

The train set up in New York is to put it bluntly, bloody awful. They don't tell you which platform the train pulls into until 10 minutes before the train departs, meaning not only do you not have time to get to the train with luggage but also the entire station is filled with loitering passengers waiting desperately to find out when their train leaves. What then followed was a mad rush of boots and suitcases down a rickety escalator - not working of course and then a mad attempt to get people, luggage, large coats and New York Anger into the train carriage before it leaves. Thankfully there were some nice people behind us because my suitcase? Doesn't actually fit down the stairs.

This meant not only us not getting a seat, but the amount of luggage in tow meant that we were blocking part of the walk way and attracting glares from other passengers. The trip itself was fairly uneventful apart from the evidently mentally unwell person who got on at Newark, scared half the train and got off 2 stations later. Special mention should be given to the excellent sammiches available at Penn Station which made the trip quite bearable - the cold meats in America kick the living hell out of anything we have at home.





Now people have pulled faces when I said I was going to New Jersey for Christmas, but this is Hamilton, just down the road from Princeton and much of it looks like this. Quaint small town America, connected by endless, endless freeways.



Still Dog's house is mega cute :o)

Now figuring that I would be drained by the whole public transit in NJ experience the only thing I'd planned for the day was to see the mega stores so it was off to the Mall! I was quite surprised to find that the malls nearby are all strip malls with no indoor connections on the shops.



Everything's bigger in America! Alcohol seems to be sold by size rather than quality. Mind you at $38 a bottle for VSOP Cognac and $31USD for Piper Hiedsick? There seemed no point to choosing lower quality drinks.

Afterwards we hit up Wegman's which is a larger supermarket that rather impressed me; sure there's the spray on cheese and endless range of sodas you'd expect but Wegman's has a fairly significant range of whole grain breads, fresh greens and organic foods. The conclusion I have come to is that it is very expensive to eat well in America and very cheap to eat poorly. In the end the groceries came to about the same price as you'd expect a similar sized shopping basket to cost you at home, just some things are very oddly priced comparatively.



Of course I had *insisted* that I be taken to a Hot Topic the minute we were near malls, so here's me doing some obligatory alternative gone mainstream shopping. Sadly the goth friendly items at this particular Hot Topic were exceptionally limited, but I did get GIR hair clips, and that makes me happy.



To be fair the ridiculous patriotism is fairly understated out in New Jersey however I just had to get a picture of this mural.


The rest of the day was spent as it should be, with laptops out, in front of the TV, drinking ciders and talking nonsense. Hmm pleasant.