HalcyonSpirit

But... but... you just evolved into a Shtyjdgfgt. You're no longer capable of love! Why thank you, it's... wait, I'm Georgian now?! I just got used to being Elizabethan! That was something I knew would be the case from the start. I wasn't quite sure what the others would be, but JUDGE was Dark from the get-go. ... Now I'm feeling the urge to start doing other animations again like I used to...

Many congrats to the both of you! I'd say something else to the effect of congrats, but I'm too darned tired. Spent the whole night working on the following animation because I was bored and I have no life! Hope you two enjoy it, cuz I made it for the special occasion. FEEL SPECIAL! Picture links to the somewhat better-quality Flash file. (Yeah, I know it only mentions AnSo in it, and that the guy isn't even a picture of AnSo, but I couldn't find a picture of either of you, so... I decided to just make one with a generic picture and then make an individual one for each of you if photos were provided...)

"Never trust a bartender with bad grammar." -- Kyle Katarn, Jedi Outcast "I sense a disturbance in the Force." "You always sense a disturbance in the Force." -- Luke Skywalker and Kyle Katarn, Jedi Academy "They always lock the door. You’d think they’d have learned by now. Doesn’t look like there’s a key – that would be too easy. The console to unlock the door is probably hidden in some room twelve floors up or something... how does that make sense?" -- Kyle Katarn, Jedi Academy

"I apologize. I have damaged the floor with your head!" - Zangief

"Shields up, weapons online. ... Not equipped with shields? Well then, buckle up!" -- Battlecruiser, StarCraft "I'm locked in here tighter than a frog's butt in a watermelon seed fight." -- SCV, StarCraft

Of course he's on something, it's called Powerthirst. Frickin' energy legs... But seriously, 9.72 seconds? I used to run the 100m in high school, and let me tell you, most of my team just wanted to get good enough to break 11 or 12 seconds. 9.72 is crazy. CRAZY!

Huh. Must be the time of year to have wisdom teeth extractions... a friend of mine also got hers out on Friday, and I got mine out last May, so I know how painful it is. I hope you get better soon, Imagery! Anyway... Voted-ed-ed-ed-ed-ed ... ed. This was one of the best sets of poem submissions I've seen here. Great job everyone! I wish I could've participated, but with my focus almost entirely on my novel, I just didn't have any inspiration for poetry this time around.

Best straight ten minutes of my life in the past two weeks. Definitely.

I've been thinking about what to write for this competition, but I've never been good at poetry... we'll see if I can come up with something, won't we? I'm not exactly counting on it, though, simply because I've got two higher priorities at the moment: summer classes (I have two papers to write this weekend) and my for-fun novel, Eternal Legends. It's been, what, nearly two friggin' years since I last released a chapter for that, and I've been itching to get some work done on it for just as long. But if I come up with a poem idea between working on those, I'll definitely enter it.

When you say it's stuck on the main display, do you mean that, when the computer is turned on, the desktop wallpaper is displayed, but nothing else comes up (like the icons and Start menu)? If so, it might be that explorer.exe is not loading up. Try opening up the Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Delete), and under File, click on "New Task (Run...)", and then type "explorer" and hit OK. If explorer.exe wasn't loading before, it will load now, bringing up the Start menu, icons, and so forth. Then you can deal with any other issues.

You'll get it, Broken. You'll definitely get it. Quality music, as usual, G-T. Makes for good listening for pretty much everything. I'm quite fond of putting this stuff on while I'm studying, and this set will be no exception. You keep making it, and I'll keep listening.

From what I'm hearing on the website itself, this is pretty good, but I haven't had a chance to go through the whole album yet because it took me the longest time to figure out that I needed to turn off my pop-up blocker in order to download it. I do like the little easter-egg-type thing in the title section, it's a really nice touch to the site.

Try running this on the drive. It might come up with some errors, which typically means there are bad sectors on it. I've never used it extensively, so I don't know everything it can and can't do, but it's a start.

Ubuntu seems to be the general consensus here. I looked at it last night, and I decided that it would be a good choice. I played around with the Live CD before trying to install it, and while I don't know how my parents will handle it, I was certainly satisfied with the relative ease of use. I like the Add/Remove Programs interface to help install most of the essentials, but I'm not quite sure how to install programs that aren't on that list. I'll keep at it, though. I installed it and have gotten it more-or-less up and running. Thankfully, yes, it's a desktop with an Ethernet connection, so I don't need to mess with getting wireless to work on it.

To Reuben. *raises glass with the others*

I need a bit of help finding a Linux distribution that can be operated by people who know next to nothing about computers and how they operate: my parents. Crazy, I know, but hear me out. I ask because that very ineptness is making it very hard to keep their computer operational when using Windows XP. Long story short, despite my best efforts (antivirus, software firewalls, router firewalls, putting the security settings as high as possible, and trying to teach them how to avoid viruses and the like), their computer routinely becomes infested with viruses, spyware, and other crap. This was less of a problem before I went to college, since I could stop a problem before it became too bad. These days, though, I'm only home every few months, and by then the infestation makes a drive reformat absolutely necessary. I'm going to be gone for even longer periods in the coming months and years, so I need to stop this issue before then. Thankfully, most of their activities aren't OS-specific, so I'm hoping I can get my parents to use an "easy" version of Linux on a regular basis so that they won't have to deal with these issues again. I'll of course be installing Windows as well so that my dad can do his work (he has to use things like AutoCAD, which I don't believe has a Linux equivalent). Honestly, I don't expect this to work out. I expect them to be incapable of learning any new OS, no matter how similar it is to Windows. Still, I need to at least try. I've been looking at PCLinuxOS and Mandriva as possible candidates, as well as PuppyLinux (my sister, who is only slightly more computer-capable, was able to work with that quite well). I need suggestions and advice, though. Any help would be appreciated.

Here you go. And yes... this is beyond awesome. I don't say that often.

Let's go people! Let's see if we can have a last-minute deluge of funds! Haha. Actually, it's because I'm only 5'3''. That's right around the height where clothes manufacturers transition from Medium to Large shirt sizes, so depending on the company and how long they make each size (which is my issue with them), I could go either way. But hopefully, if I purchased the wrong size, I can tell without opening the packaging and just exchange it for the other size. Not likely, though. Oh well. When I get some money from my summer job, I'll donate more directly to OCR. Count on it.

I just donated by buying a shirt. That counts, right? I meant to do it earlier, but I was kinda hung up on whether to get a Medium or Large... I've had issues in the past where Mediums from some brands are too small so I have to get Large, but then other brands have Mediums that actually fit and Larges that are too large for me. So I'm hoping that the Medium I just ordered falls under the second category. Otherwise I'll be kicking myself for not just donating directly to the site. So yeah, donation made.

Same here. Still, it's good practice. Especially when it comes to selecting proper descriptors and using them not only with good context, but also without overloading the writing with them. Apparently, I suck at that.

The competition has been getting more participation lately, so it'd be kinda hard to make a judgment call on it based solely on past participation. Now, if we go Poetry this time, Freeform would follow; that would place FF squarely in the middle of summer. Likewise, if we keep the current rotation, Poetry would end up starting in July. Honestly, I think we should do Poetry next and keep the rotation on the set schedule afterwards. Here's why: FF: Jan-Feb, July-August SS: March-April, Sept-Oct Poetry: May-June, Nov-Dec Following this pattern, Poetry always falls on the months that are most likely to be busy for participants (many of whom are still going to school), and SS/FF do not. The significance is that writing short stories typically requires more time than poetry does, and the Freeform competition tends to receive both short story submissions (or works similar to short stories) and Poetry. Having Poetry at the above times might thin the participation slightly for that specific category, but considering that having either SS or FF at those times would likely result in even less participation, it's probably a fair trade-off. I could be wrong, though.

Regarding the tagging, I've been wondering why you set the Album name as "http://www.ocremix.org". I know that it's good to put the website's URL in the tags, but I've been wondering why you don't put that in the Comments section and have the Album name as something like "OverClocked ReMix", or even the game name. It just strikes me as odd that you'd use the website URL as the album name. Any specific reasoning for it?

Very nice. Congrats to everyone, and even more congrats to Ubernym on a job well-done. As soon as I saw he had submitted something, I knew he'd take the majority of votes. But I wasn't expecting a 3-way-tie for Runner-Up, especially not with me as one of them. So good job everyone! Hope to see you all for the next competition! By the way, if anyone would be willing to give me a critique for my story, I would very much appreciate it. Thanks.

Heh, well whaddya know... this is something similar to what I've been doing lately. I've been going through all my music (not just OCR's stuff) and retagging them to a specific standard. This is something I could help out with this summer, especially since I'm already partway through it.

Also, I don't know if you intended it to be this way, but if you start charging a shot and then release Control before you actually shoot, and then hold Control again, the charge continues from where it left off. So if you charge until right before you shoot and then cancel it, you have an instant-charge-shot when you hit Control again.