Eulogy

While fiddling around on my links right after I put up this new page, I was shocked and horrified by a rather sad event. MadPony.com is giving up the ghost. Yes, it happened about a month ago, but you have to remember that I haven’t had a whole lot of access to the net over that time period, what with the trip to the cottage and our connection being down for a while.

While it was never in my site’s bunch of links – or even my Internet Explorer favourites, for that matter – MadPony was one of the two (and a half) blogs that I read semi-regularly. The other and a half being GorillaMask and The Sneeze. I never read MadPony with a lot of consistency, but I’d visit once or twice a month to see what was up. It was strange that I was compelled by the idea of being able to see what the world is like through the eyes of female kind. Not something I would normally read, but somehow it dragged me in, as if there was some sort of unseen attraction that kept me coming back for more. As I said, this was a website based on things that I really don’t care about; blogging, shoes, horses, and a song called “Hot White Cum”.

The site was rife with hilarious (and sometimes sad) stories about the lives of the two girls that ran it. Some included tales of horrible trips to Target, grandiose parties, and my personal favourite, XTREME freestyle bed leaping. Most of it was what you would find in any old run-of-the-mill blog, and that’s what’s to be expected. And that’s what turns me off of blogs (though I know my new site is making me one hell of a hypocrite). I really don’t care what people do from day to day, what music they’re listening to as they type out their feelings, what has made them sad or lonely or depressed. But somehow MadPony was different. The Mask and the Sneeze don’t really have a lot of these elements, so I can read them without shame, but MadPony was just like any other blog.

It’s no secret that the girls that ran it are quite hot, but that’s not what did it. After a lot of thinking about it (which is another thing I don’t usually do), I discovered that indeed, I was intrigued by what happened to these girls from day to day. Perhaps not intrigued by them specifically, but just the fact that I could follow someone’s life a la The Truman Show. Maybe blogs aren’t so bad? Maybe I was just thrown off the trail of good ones by the legions of punk and emo kids who write their own and complain day to day about how everything sucks and the world is no fair. Maybe all those kids who think we care that they slit their wrists destroyed any interest I might have once had in blogs.

No. Really, I just found MadPony interesting because it provided a nice change in my usual routine of internet clickables. When you spend your days reading webcomics, news about video games, and random blather, you start to long for something different. Just like if you lived your life the exact same way from day to day, you’d need a change, just like in Le huitième jour. Indeed, I’m much like Harry, with MadPony being my Georges. Actually, that reference worked out pretty well. Uh, as long as you’ve seen the movie, that is. If you haven’t, you’re boned. So that’s about all I really had to say; kinda saddened by the loss of a good website (It’s still up, of course, if you wanna read the old stuff), but not in a way that it’ll really affect anything.

This sentimental moment brought to you by Ryan’s unhealthy lack of sleep. For if he was thinking straight, he certainly wouldn’t be writing anything to do with feelings.

Rebirth

There has been a very long pause in productivity for this site, but that’s only because it’s gotten a completely new look to it. Right away, I know that you’re thinking that it looks very similar to the style of GorillaMask, and it should, because I stole all the code (including the style sheet) from there and twisted it into what you see before you. Though I did slack off and leave a lot the same, such as most of the fonts and font colours. But I’ve gotta learn somehow right? Taking someone else’s work and warping it into my own sort of hybrid creation is how I’ve done pretty much everything requiring work up until now, including web pages, school work, and game coding in VB and RPG Maker. And plagiarism is one of the greatest forms of flattery anyway, isn’t it? Well even if it is wrong, at least I’m not trying to pass it off as my own.

Anywizzle, things are changing not only visually, but content-wise as well. No longer are those pain-in-the-ass full-length articles going to be the dominant part of the site. Instead, they will be put over to the side whilst this bloggish thingy jumps into the hot seat. The biggest reason for this change is that the news was the only thing I regularly updated, and I felt as if it needed to be given more of a chance to be an important part of the site. I was always making long news posts about things that I thought you should check out, stuff that happened to me lately (usually as excuses as to why I was writing no articles), and just random babble, rather than having the section dedicated solely to important changes to the site.

I was thinking about saving this change until the site turned 2 years old, but I figured that maybe the sooner, the better. After all, it wasn’t exactly the most appealing of websites, and though this one doesn’t have that much eye candy either, it at least looks like something that you wouldn’t mind looking at. And the anniversary is just far too far away. December is months away, and it’s also going to be a busy time, so it’s best that I went and got this out of the way during the summer when I’ve got my days to waste. ‘Sides, so many other sites I frequent have been changing, so I decided that I’d hop on the bandwagon and change mine too.

The first thing I want to draw your attention to is the new name of the site: Torrential Equilibrium. “The Page of Death” was really old and somewhat overused (do a search on Google), so I decided it needed a change. Badly. I’m still not sure how I came up with Torrential Equilibrium. My understanding of both of the words leads me to believe that the name makes no sense at all, but I think it sounds cool. Just like Genius Sonority (although they have a “meaning”, the words together are kinda senseless). If you want to try to make sense of the name, go look them up and draw your own conclusions.

You’ll notice that one of the most prominent new features is that slick little sidebar on the side (code designed by whoever made the Mask’s, and graphics designed by me in MS Paint). It doesn’t look all that spiffy right now, as I didn’t really need it to, but it does the job. And lemme tell ya, it took a real long time to make it look so perfect, as all the pieces of the border were all out of place. After a lot of time spent on changing the sizes and placements, I finally got it all figured out, and now it looks great. Certainly better than the old bar of links that used to be up at the top. And all my links are on the bar, but the Links page is still intact, in case you’d like to read the descriptions before you click.

So that’s really about all I have to say about my “new site”. All of the old stuff is still hanging around, and while I probably won’t bother changing the pages to match the new look, the important ones like the Articles page and the Links page will still be updated, if just a little less frequently than before. Don’t think that this is the end of my website. It’s just a new beginning.

The final stage

Yay! I’m not dead! Sorry if you missed me. For a week there my internet connection was down again, and I believe the cause was much more evil than just not paying the bill this time. And then last week I was out at the cottage, so that pretty much clears me of any claims of laziness. And now that that’s out of the way, lots of big, big news.

First, and possibly least related to the site, we now have two dogs. The new one is named Harley. He looks exactly like Gizmo, except his paws aren’t white. They’ve both gotten pretty good at the housebrokenness, so they no longer really need to be watched over all the time. That means I’m not so damn busy watching them any more.

Nextly, I’ve been fooling around with FrontPage all night (morning?), trying to create (steal) my new layout. For the most part, it’s coming along really well, but my limited amount of experience with web design is keeping the final product just out of reach. It’ll probably be done by the end of the week, if I keep working hard.

Finally, this will more than likely be the last news post of this kind, assuming that I don’t just totally abandon my hopes of burning this site and resurrecting a new and better one from the ashes. That means no more song-titled news posts, no more me trying to convince you I was too busy to finish the latest article, and most importantly, making the full-length articles a lower priority.

Now that I’ve made clear everything I set out to say, it’s time to head on back to site design. I just hope that with the “new” site, the message boards will also get something of a revival.

~Ryan out. For the last time.

The atomizer

Ughh… So damn busy… I’ve been watching the dog all week, and it’s taken quite a toll on my sleep. And it won’t get any better on the weekend, cause I have to go out to the cottage (hence there will be no update) and babysit my cousins while all the adults go to some stupid wedding. I mean why can’t us kids come? Particularly me. It’s not like I care about the ceremony or anything, but it’s a free buffet and cake afterward! Those wedding cakes are great! Ah well. And then to top it off, Monday is Graduation day, and with the partying all night, Tuesday is going to be a pain. The aftermath of all this leaves me with a heavy desire to be alone and sleeping, so I’m hibernating from Wendesday to Friday. And all this to say that there probably won’t be another update until the 3rd, at the earliest.

Other than that, I’m having some reconsiderations about the site, and finding that it’s not really what I wanted it to be. So, I’m thinking that once I learn a bit more HTML and possibly add a little Javascript into the mess, I’m going to have to do a complete rehaul of the site. And not just aesthetically, either. If I do make this huge change, the site is going to work very differently, and no longer be an article-based affair. It might even verge on becoming one of those half-blogs. Wow. Becoming what I detest the most. Oh well. I guess it’s just in the cards. So, uh, that’s what I have to say for today. I’ll see you in July.

~Ryan out.

Iron demon

Well, it’s late, but it’s (mostly) not my fault this time. Turns out Sunday was Father’s Day, and that’s probably the second biggest part of why I wasn’t done on time. The biggest reason, is this guy here…


Yeah, we got a new puppy… again. After that last little incident, I was kinda hoping that we’d be a non-pet family, or at least until I move out. But no. Puppy it is, and puppysitter I am. Again. Sigh. This one’s name is Gizmo, and you’d be surprised at how much he looks like a mogwai when his ears are up. But in any case, that’s what caused the late (though renting Custom Robo might have had something to do with it too…). But it’s done now, and the previous forecast of getting things done during the week has gone to the dogs. Err, dog. I’m not sure what’s going to happen now that my delicate balance of napping and slacking off has been disrupted…

~Ryan out.

The final summoning

As of 2:50 yesterday, I am officially a free man. School is over and done with, and now I have all the time in the world to devote to the site. Unfortunately, much of that time will have to go to finding a job and working, or pursuing a post-secondary education. But whatever, I’m going to enjoy the freedom while it lasts. That’ll be about two weeks or so, then it’s back to the job hunting for ol’ Ryan. So yeah, the weekend will be busy, so I’ll try to get the article done by tonight. Probablility is high, so I’m hoping to be done by Sunday at the very latest. Since the week is empty, I’ll be able to get some other stuff done too. If I’m really feeling into it, I might even get the entire rest of the Disney World crap done during the week. Might. Only four to go, so it’s not an entirely impossible task. We’ll see.

~Ryan out.

Red time

I can explain, really. I was sick all Sunday (and still am), and I have do do the big chemistry exam on Friday, so I have to cram like Hell for that one. It’s not that I’m not confident in my chemistry knowledge, it’s that if I do manage to blow it, I won’t pass school, and then everyone I know will hate me (particularly my mom), so there’s a lot riding on this. So, probably next weekend will be the next update. And there’s even a possibility of that final Chat Radio coming soon too. Speaking of coming soon, check this out, and be revolted. I was.

~Ryan out.

L’oiseau de bonheur

It’s not really related to my site in any way, but Planet MegaMan is now offering downloads of the entire RockMan Zero 2 remastered soundtrack. You may not be interested at all, but as a fan of both the MegaMan Zero series and video game music in general, I was pretty happy. It’s good stuff, and even if you don’t intend to burn it to CDs (like I did) you should listen to a couple tracks. Particularly 1-03, 1-12, 1-20 and 2-17. Well, all is said and done for now, so I’ll seeya later.

~Ryan out.

Superstar

Yay! I did it! I said it would be up by Monday and I came through. What a surprise. And it’s not like I said Monday morning or afternoon, so we’re cool. Evening is alright. There was a lot trying to get in my way, but I prevailed. So not much else on the agenda, but after that one (close to 4000 words), I don’t have to urge to do any more typing for the next little while. I’ll try to get the next one up by the weekend, but you know that my promises aren’t worth much, so I won’t promise anything.

As a fun little featurette, here’s a list of works in progress: Disney World Adventure parts 4-7, Florida trip purchases, 3-Foot 6-Pak part 2, Prince of Persia GC mini-review, ever more art, and Chat Radio 12. Just because I say they’re “in progress” doesn’t mean that I’m actively working on them, it just means they’re on my to do list. Though some are already started…

~Ryan out.

Duck and cover

Sorry I haven’t been updating at all lately. In all honesty, I haven’t touched the computer since Sunday other than to see if my joystick would work on it. I’ve been totally absorbed in Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life and I’ve also started replaying Final Fantasy 8. So I’ll probably have the third Disney World thing done by Sunday. Of course, it often takes an extra day, so you should be expecting Monday. I’ll even start it now to soften the blow come the day I decide to finish and post it. Other than that, I really don’t have much else to say. And so ends another news post.

~Ryan out.