I’ve moved!

Gavin’s Corner is now located at http://gavinscorner.com! See you there!

Google Chrome

For those of you who aren’t really into tech news, Google just released their own web browser. It’s called Chrome, and it’s all based on a relatively simple concept: All web browsers today evolved from browsers from the early days of the Internet, where online videos, chat rooms, and web applications were not common place. These old, slow browsers began to evolve to accommodate these new features, but they were still slow and inefficient. Google decided to redesign the web browser to accomodate the complicated, exciting features of today’s Internet.

I’m not going to go into detail about what Google did to their web browser, but all I know is that it’s noticably faster than Mozilla Firefox, which is faster than Microsoft Internet Explorer.

It just came out today, so not a lot of people know about it. Outside of the tech new loop, that is. I recommend you guys check it out.

Migraine

There are two reasons why yesterday was a terrible day for me.

First of all, I had a migraine.

When I got out of the shower, I noticed that the joints in the toes of my right foot hurt whenever I walked. By the time I had walked back to my room, I had dismissed it as growing pains.

After getting dressed for the day, I went downstairs and began to whine to Mom to make me somthing for breakfast. I looked at the newspaper, and noticed a rainbow artifact in my vision. Perhaps I’d looked at something bright, I thought.

Still whining, I sat down on the couch, and looked at Mom. The artifact was still in my vision, and this time, it was more pronounced. I noticed that the artifact wasn’t dark, like your retina’s memory of something bright, which indicated to me that I was going to have a migraine. I told Mom, and she gave me two pills of Tylenol.

I went upstairs, and started watching the episode of The Office called “Money”. I decided that I wanted a grilled cheese sandwich and a glass of milk for breakfast, so Mom made it for me. And it was pretty damn good, too.

Exactly eight minutes into the episode, I turned off my computer monitor, shut my bedroom door, and threw myself onto my bed. I shoved my head under my pillows, and prepared for the worst.

It was terrible. The same verses of the same songs played over and over again in my head. Particularly, this verse from Michael Jackson’s song “Heaven Can Wait”, from his album Invincible:

Unthinkable,
Me sitting up in the clouds and you are all alone,
The time might come around,
when you’d be moving on,
I’d turn it all around and try to get,
back down to my baby girl,
Can’t stand to see nobody kissing, touching her,
Couldn’t take nobody loving you the way we were,
What good would Heaven be,
If the angels come for me I’d tell them no,

The entire time, I felt like I was going to vomit. The muscles in my right eyebrow hurt like hell, too. It was as if someone was jabbing their knuckle into my eyebrow. Sometimes, I felt so sick, I actually cried out in pain. I almost dropped the F bomb a few times, too. “FUUUUUuuuuuhhhhh!”

I vomited three times.

My Mom left after the second time I vomited to get me some medicine from the pharmacy. As I was waiting for her to return, I was laying in my bed, trying to relax. I eventually realized that my mind was drifting, and that I was beginning to fall asleep. The last thing I remember was my Mom entering the room with my medicine…

I awoke at 4:05 PM, and felt all better. Well, not completely, I could still feel some remnants of the headache, but they were extremely insignificant. So basically, I lost a day of my life to a migraine.

And to top it all of, it was Michael Jackson’s birthday! I was going to celebrate! (Not really, but I was going to watch for him on TV, in a celebrative sort of manner…)

Michael said that he has “…no plans on retiring any time soon.” Hooray! I can’t wait until his next album, I’m sure it’ll be awesome.

Anyway, that was my August 29th.

Oh yeah, the funny thing is, I got so much extra sleep from the migraine, that I literally could not fall asleep that night. I was up ’till 5:30 AM, and even then I was only in a light nap.

Whatever. Migraines suck.

Atari

For whatever reason a little while ago, I became interested in classic gaming. Games such as Pong, Duck Hunt, and Super Mario Bros. were all games that I wanted to play again. But why? What’s so good about these games that makes people want to give up things such as good graphics, and sound?

The problem is modern video games are complete BULLSHIT. Well, there’s probably some good ones out there, but for the most part, there is no more originality in the video game industry anymore. It’s all built around having the best graphics, the most weapons, and stupid stuff like that.

The thing I like the most about classic gaming was the absolutely abundant creativity that was pouring from each and every game. A project to start producing a video game would start from an idea spawned from an everyday object, such as a pizza, or a bridge. Other people simply drew on napkins, and in a matter of ten minutes, there was an idea for a video game.

Programmers had to make something good from the little technology that they were given. A joystick, one button, and 128 colors. It meant that the focus of the gaming experience was on the actual game itself, not stupid things like graphics or sound.

I personally think that the modern gaming scene can be summed up by shoot-’em-ups. That’s pretty much the only thing people play, shoot-’em-ups and Guitar Hero. I suck at and dislike both equally.

I decided to buy an Atari Flashback 2 on eBay for about $75 total two weeks ago. That was how long ago I bought it. I’m STILL waiting for it to come in the mail, which really ticks me off. I HATE waiting for packages to arrive!

It’s a pretty sweet console. It looks like the actual Atari 2600 from 1977, except it’s 1/3 smaller, and it has big, childish orange buttons on the front. It comes with two REPRODUCTION original Atari controllers, that are almost EXACTLY like the originals, except the inner circuitry has been improved, and the joystick handle is made of solid plastic, rather than a tube of PVC in a rubber sock.

You simply hook this system up to your TV, and you’re ready to rock, old school. It comes with 40 games built in to the hardware, there is no cartridge slot. Interestingly enough, though, the developers of this console have included utilities inside the machine that hackers can use to add a cartridge slot, making the Atari Flashback 2 work just like an original Atari 2600. Pretty neat, right?

I can’t wait to play it!

Feed Me!

I think this entry is going to make me look like a complete infant, but here goes: I don’t really like to cook my own food, or get my own food, or make my own food, etc. No matter how you slice it, when it comes to getting something to eat, I’m about as lazy as the things on my plate.

I don’t know how to cook a lot of things, but the things I do know how to cook, like Kraft Dinner, spaghetti, and rice, I do a particularly good job at. The issue for me is that these foods are time consuming to make. I have to put in about 20 minutes of work to get a good size portion of pasta. If I don’t have the resources to make those three main dishes, I’m pretty much out of luck.

At this point, I start a search for something to eat in my kitchen. I look in the exact same places everytime, but there is NEVER anything that catches my attention. There are always aging cookie-like items in the cupboard, cans of tomato soup in the lower cupboard, bottles of childish sodas in the fridge, crumbs of potato chips in the OTHER other cupboard, and burger in the freezer downstairs. This is ALWAYS how it it, yet I STILL search the kitchen for something to eat.

The thing that sucks about me is that whenever I say “I’m hungry”, someone always asks me “Well, what do you want?” I reply, “I don’t know.”

I’m a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. I like french fries, steak, chicken, etc. The basic kinds of things. I like to eat full-blown meals when I’m hungry.

The reason that I’m writing all of this is that, well, there’s nothing to eat right now. I tried to make Kraft Dinner, but, due to renovations to our kitchen, I was forced to use a hotplate to cook it. The hotplate, for whatever reason, wasn’t strong enough to get the water boiling.

I’m probably going to end up eating in town again, like I’ve been doing for the past few weeks. It’s probably unhealthy, all the fast food I’ve been eating.

What a fascinating read this has been, huh?

Web Hosting

Man, this is a difficult search that I’m conducting.

I’m trying to find free web hosting that actually doesn’t suck. And believe me, it’s hard to get quality service that you don’t pay for. Why? Because if you’re not paying people your money, they don’t care about you; at all. It’s sad, but it’s the truth. Well, not really, I’m kinda joking, but still.

I’ve been using 50Webs for a while now. In fact, I think I’ve been using 50Webs ever since around grade seven or eight. Which is like three, four, five years (I’m not going to waste writing time counting). Now, 50Webs is pretty sweet. It’s 100% free (well, the Free Plan is free…) and this is what the free plan includes: 60 MB of server space, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited sub domains (yournamehere.50webs.com). But the thing that sucks is that there’s no PHP or MySQL with the free plan. I wanted to set up my own hosted WordPress and Pastebin websites, so I decided to try and find a web hosting company that offers those two features.

I found x10Hosting, and basically, it’s a too-good-to-be-true type of thing. Don’t even bother trying it out. All they do is give you an account, then, if you do something like upload 40 KB of data to your server, your account becomes suspended. To get your account unsuspended, you have to wait fifteen minutes, or go make posts in the forums. You can pay forum points to have your account unsuspended right away. That’s the catch. They want people to post in those forums for some reason, so that’s how they get you.

I was going to start using Freehostia, but they only offer one MySQL database. So that’s bullshit.

Umm, I’m going to stop talking about web hosting, because I’m getting bored of it now. I’m just gonna keep using 50Webs.

Man, there is this awesome website called Media-Convert.com. You just go there, and convert almost ANY type of media to ANY type of media! It’s amazing. There is also a neat website that is affiliated with Media-Convert, called Media-Mobi.com. You can upload videos and audio files there. They are private files, there is no search or index of the videos. Only the people who have the link can see it. The file size limit is 600 MB! God damn! Trust me, those two websites are cool.

Summer’s Almost Over

Well, summer’s almost over.

Man, I HATE saying that phrase! It’s comes so many times each year, over and over, and always around, well, when summer’s about to end. Because NO ONE wants it to end. They’re all talking about the inevitable doom that is the end of summer. The end of gold, the end of warm, the end of t-shirts, and swimming. All the things in life that make life GOOD.

I should also point out that winter is probably worse in Canada than in America, which is probably stereotypical or something, but whatever.

There’s one thing in particular about winter that I despise. I think I might be the only one I know who hates it, but here goes. The thing I hate most about winter, well not the most, but one of the things I hate the most is the fact that in the winter time, the tilt of the Earth causes the sun to stay low in the sky, all the time. This means that the sun is always in one’s field of vision, making the outdoors significantly brighter and more painful on the eyes than in summer time. I kinda have sensitive eyes, by the way. So that’s the reason that thing bugs me.

I go back to school in EIGHT DAYS. I haven’t even started school shopping yet. I don’t think it’ll be that hard really, considering I care less about this school year that any other school year I’ve ever been through. Why is that, you may ask. It’s because this is going to be one of the easiest ones yet.

I took Grade 10 Pre-IB, which means I learned a lot of Grade 11 stuff in Grade 10. So, that means I know a lot of the material that I’m going to be taught this upcoming year.

Anyway, I used to make a big deal out of school shopping. I wanted to make sure I got all the right things, the top of the line gear, etc. But this year, it’s going to be easy. I just get the stuff I need, end of story. No double checking, no bullshit. Just get in, get out.

It’s not all bad, at least I get to hang out with all of my friends again. The best part is lunch time at school. We’re allowed to go into town to eat, and me and “The Lunch Crew” usually go to a few different places each week, which is really fun (and tasty… and slightly expensive {for me anyways}).

And hey, there’s another summer next year, too. And because of global warming, it’s probably going to be hotter and longer than any summer ever before. Hooray!

Gavin’s Empire

I’ve decided to connect all of my websites together under one link: gavinsempire.50webs.com. All of the websites will be contained in folders inside this domain, except of course ones that require PHP and MySQL, like this blog, and Gavin’s Pastebin. But whatever, right? I’m one step closer to combining all of my projects under one big umbrella, that is the Empire.

Be sure to check it out!

Michael Jackson

I’m just going to write down how I’m feeling right now.

I’m a pretty big Michael Jackson fan. I love his music, his videos, and his dancing. He truly is the kind of pop! But the thing that sucks is that he is known as the child molester. That’s the main thing. He’s alleged to have molested some kid, so his reputation is forever tarnished.

That sucks, because I just really like his music and dancing. If people know I’m a big fan, they’re going to think I’m a pedophile too! That just really sucks. It just does.

UPDATE: Yeah, I know I’m being kinda paranoid (I hope), but I did write this a few weeks ago. I’m over it now.

The Scripture of Gavin

Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of philosophical thinking. I personally think I live pretty morally. I’m not saying I’m perfect, because I’m far from it, but I think that I am a good person at heart. It’s mainly because of my ideologies that I’ve formulated over the years of growing up. I want other people to be able to benefit from my ideologies, so I decided to start writing The Scripture of Gavin.

What a terrific name, right? It’s just a short paper with some guidelines about how to be a good and morally clean person. It’s a lot more difficult to write than I thought. This is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever written!

The thing that sucks for me is that I’m only 16 years old. According to my Dad, and probably millions of other parents all over the globe, I think I know more than I do, and that worries me. Is my scripture going to be ready; or do I still have many valuable lessons to learn?

The Scripture can be used by any living human being. Black or white, man or woman, Christian or Muslim. It’s sort of like a container for your life, and in it your place your religious and political beliefs. I’m designing it to be compatible with everyone. I think I might be able to do it!

When The Scripture is finished, I’m going to make a website for it to be posted up on. I’ll just spread the link around, and see if people like it. Hopefully, I can make some people live morally correct lives.