http://browse.deviantart.com/journals/?order=5&q=by%3ASand-And-Mercury deviantART RSS for in:journals sort:time by:Sand-And-Mercury en-us Copyright 2013, deviantART.com Sat, 25 May 2013 18:10:38 PDT deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://st.deviantart.net/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/FPS-Retrospective-Unreal-1998-362398117 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/FPS-Retrospective-Unreal-1998-362398117 Fri, 29 Mar 2013 23:10:29 PDT FPS Retrospective: Unreal (1998) nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury Preface

Unreal as a franchise is now better known for its engine than its games, and even the games that are popular are themselves offshoots. Most players find the name 'Unreal' to be synonymous with 'Unreal Tournament'. However, before all of these, Unreal was just a single game, and throughout much of the year 1998 it was considered to be a high watermark of its genre.

In retrospect, it's not surprising that the original Unreal itself has been largely forgotten; it wasn't the first on the scene with its true 3D graphics like Quake, it wasn't massively revolutionary in gameplay and pacing like Half-Life has come to be known, and even at ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/A-Rebuttal-to-Bryan-Boyko-351243115 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/A-Rebuttal-to-Bryan-Boyko-351243115 Tue, 29 Jan 2013 01:16:03 PST A Rebuttal to Bryan Boyko nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
I won't be using this post to rag on him, not exclusively anyway, but I will be calling him out where I think it's appropriate. I find his video to be a good springboard for a rebuttal amongst the sea of Windows 8 critique videos because it's a lengthy video with lots of content and points raised, he makes points and then follows them up with rationale and examples, which most amateur reviews on youtube d ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/2012-in-Review-344848783 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/2012-in-Review-344848783 Wed, 26 Dec 2012 03:00:05 PST 2012 in Review nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2012-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
Until this time two years ago I was pretty active here on DA at least as far as art submissions and such went - I was still in the same job as I am now, but my role then was different (a lot less stressful) and I was still coming home with a bit of juice left to spend on being creative. This year however things have changed - back in August I bought my own house and spent much of my time off just trying to get myself set up. Now, thankfully, all that is now done and I'm pretty well settled, and it's really only now that I'm on my Chrissy holidays that I find myself with any j ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Update-on-portfolio-amp-c-299629284 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Update-on-portfolio-amp-c-299629284 Wed, 02 May 2012 06:56:03 PDT Update on portfolio &c nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2012-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Retro-Metro-254555706 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Retro-Metro-254555706 Tue, 23 Aug 2011 05:15:20 PDT Retro Metro nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2011-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
To be honest, up against its main competitors of Android and iOS, WP7's user experience is hands-down the best out of all of the big three [1], and by a pretty safe margin in my opinion. Sure, its application library is a fraction of iOS' massive collection and your customisation options pretty much end with 'change the colour of the big square bits' and it has a na ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Pointless-personal-survey-219387808 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Pointless-personal-survey-219387808 Thu, 14 Apr 2011 02:28:24 PDT Pointless/personal survey nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2011-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
1.This survey gets a little personal; can you handle it?
I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve most of the time, so, no problem

2. If you married the last person you texted, what would your last name be?
I wouldn't marry anyone and I wouldn't change my name if I did, so it'd be McLean no matter what. But for the sake of this survey, I'll say it would be Ryan

3. Were you happy when you woke up today?
Most of the time I'm way too tired to know whether I'm happy or not in the morning; but I certainly have nothing to complain about, so I suppose yes!

4. When were you on the phone last? And with who?
Today and it was ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Why-Dave-Mustaine-is-my-hero-and-a-stupid-wanker-219964359 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Why-Dave-Mustaine-is-my-hero-and-a-stupid-wanker-219964359 Fri, 18 Mar 2011 10:13:14 PDT Why Dave Mustaine is my hero (and a stupid wanker) nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2011-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Rebranding-220770312 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Rebranding-220770312 Sun, 13 Feb 2011 23:17:35 PST Rebranding nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2011-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
Not really asking for suggestions, but... if anyone's got any suggestions... ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/All-Talk-and-no-Walk-221430260 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/All-Talk-and-no-Walk-221430260 Wed, 19 Jan 2011 07:34:17 PST All Talk and no Walk nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2011-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
As far as motivation goes for people, I've discerned that people can be put in two piles (among many): there are those that find joy in the attention of others, and those that find joy in the sense of accomplishment that they have from their own labours. Obviously these may intersect. Perhaps a like for attention and the fruits of hard work is what makes famous actors, entertainers, artists, entrepreneurs, politicians, athletes etc etc. Conversely, some people just don't ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/OS-Head-2-Head-Neurotic-Customizer-Edition-222128622 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/OS-Head-2-Head-Neurotic-Customizer-Edition-222128622 Mon, 20 Dec 2010 05:14:04 PST OS Head 2 Head: Neurotic Customizer Edition nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2010-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Writing-Novels-is-Hard-222729710 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Writing-Novels-is-Hard-222729710 Thu, 18 Nov 2010 03:34:45 PST Writing Novels is Hard nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2010-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Yo-Ubuntu-part-Deux-223883639 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Yo-Ubuntu-part-Deux-223883639 Sat, 11 Sep 2010 19:45:59 PDT Yo Ubuntu, part Deux nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2010-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
http://www.ubuntu.com/

Being back on Ubuntu now has taken some getting used to and I'm still missing a few essential programs (Photoshop and Word being the main ones) but it really feels good to use. The Nvidia drivers work great too.

Also, I was up before midday on a Sunday, and there's no hangover either. Weird! ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/The-Learning-Released-224424914 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/The-Learning-Released-224424914 Sun, 15 Aug 2010 08:14:23 PDT The Learning - Released nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2010-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
Around this time last year, I finished a Sonic SatAM fan fic I'd been writing on and off since 2006, entitled The Learning. Back then I'd uploaded the cover art but never posted the link! The entire book can be downloaded in PDF, from here:

Download

Here's an excerpt:

Sally had never seen Maga at night before. It was an unreal experience, seeing it lit up the way it was. In the daytime, the temple grounds had cut out an impressive figure against the sky.

But now, perched atop its lone mountain, like a spire reaching for the heavens... the place lashed out with a mystical lustre, the likes of which she'd ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/A-Tale-of-Loss-224773578 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/A-Tale-of-Loss-224773578 Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:17:30 PDT A Tale of Loss nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2010-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
Today I'd like to share with everyone a story that traces along nearly 8 years of my life, stemming from my childhood and finally being laid to rest last year. This is the heartbreaking chronicle of something that will never be: and that thing was called Decay.

In the spring of 2000 (I think), my twelve-year-old self been running high on inspiration after playing various action games on the computer, and dec ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/My-First-and-Last-Comments-on-Faith-225076430 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/My-First-and-Last-Comments-on-Faith-225076430 Wed, 14 Jul 2010 03:12:13 PDT My First and Last Comments on Faith nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2010-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
Though I have some well-solidified sentiment on this topic, I've mostly held back on talking to people about it because nothing I say is anything that hasn't been said before, and I will never convince or reason with anybody of genuine faith due to what 'faith' actually is.

The dictionary definition of "faith" goes as such: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/faith
1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Yo-Microsoft-225755569 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Yo-Microsoft-225755569 Tue, 08 Jun 2010 06:57:54 PDT Yo Microsoft nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2010-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
I just got around to trying the latest developer preview of Internet Explorer 9 -- so far its performance is looking very promising! Msft has long been in a position to introduce either soothing harmony or cacophonous discord in the web designer community, and for a very long time they have been happy to opt for the latter.

With IE9 though, things are looking to change. It's going to come with support for many of the new CSS/HTML5 standards coming out which make things 10x easier to get a great design from a website. No longer will we be using little gifs to make rounded corners, or transparent PNGs for ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Microsoft-User-Experience-Guidelines-226315418 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Microsoft-User-Experience-Guidelines-226315418 Fri, 07 May 2010 05:37:23 PDT Microsoft User Experience Guidelines nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2010-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
I stumbled upon this today and found it a great read for anyone with even a passing interest in interface design. Essentially Microsoft has put up some guidelines they went by for designing the user interfaces in Windows Vista and Windows 7, replete with pictures and examples, frequently showing dos and don'ts throughout.

It's available to view at this link and can also be downloaded as a PDF -- as a gargantuan 867 page document, it doesn't skimp on details either. Interestingly, many of the examples of bad interface design they mention are taken from Microsoft's own products; most notab ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Yo-Ubuntu-Stream-of-consciousness-rant-226382365 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Yo-Ubuntu-Stream-of-consciousness-rant-226382365 Mon, 03 May 2010 02:33:32 PDT Yo Ubuntu (Stream-of-consciousness rant) nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2010-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
Microsoft pulled their head out and cranked out a fantastic OS that works very well. Actually, they've pretty much mopped the floor with everybody.
Apple still have a major case of colon vision, but their system is solid and sexy so they can kind of get away with it; living proof of how far you can ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/How-Hard-Can-It-Be-227883232 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/How-Hard-Can-It-Be-227883232 Sun, 14 Feb 2010 02:16:04 PST How Hard Can It Be... nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2010-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
In the case of my portfolio, it took 3 years, over the course of at least ten revisions. Mind you, much of that was a learning experience, and I'm sure that if I were to start again from scratch it wouldn't be nearly as much of a PITA. Just for giggles though, I thought it'd be fun to go down memory lane -- I consider myself to be of an intermediate skill level these days when it comes to web design, but I recall thinking I was of intermediate skill five years ago -- when looking back, I actually SUCKED.

So, let's go!

Images here are linked instead of displayed inline because there's no way I am forking ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/People-Just-Don-t-Get-It-228785210 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/People-Just-Don-t-Get-It-228785210 Sat, 26 Dec 2009 20:08:01 PST People Just Don't Get It nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2009-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
It more than likely didn' ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Lithium-Hits-10K-229095005 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Lithium-Hits-10K-229095005 Wed, 09 Dec 2009 03:29:59 PST Lithium Hits 10K nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2009-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Hay-Guise-230151775 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Hay-Guise-230151775 Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:41:53 PDT Hay Guise nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2009-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
I'm currently shopping around for work; if anyone wants a website built, get in touch with me. Also, I'm at work on a GTK and Metacity theme for GNOME users named Lithium. Working at a very slow and casual pace. I never intended to release it, but now that it's starting to look different from other themes, I'll consider polishing it for release. ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Site-revamp-Goodbyes-for-now-230734075 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Site-revamp-Goodbyes-for-now-230734075 Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:55:03 PDT Site revamp + Goodbyes (for now) nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2009-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
So, today, I started from scratch once again, feeling fresh and inspired, knocked out the mockup and content, and made it live in a single day. Absolutely a record for me! I'm very happy with how it turned out and I don't feel like I'm being pretentious with it like I did before.

On a sadder note, due to some recent relationship issues I've had, at the end of this ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Content-Management-Systems-232845135 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Content-Management-Systems-232845135 Sun, 05 Apr 2009 02:39:53 PDT Content Management Systems nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2009-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
Because of this, I think it's time to have a sit down and assess what this could mean for the future. As of now I'm not satisfied with the look of my portfolio and I'll probably end up redesigning it for version 3.0 this year. My main problems with it are that it's still HTML based, it makes use of large images for backgrounds which are not efficient for slow connections, and it's heavily reliant on t ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Wordpressing-233156293 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Wordpressing-233156293 Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:53:22 PDT Wordpressing nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2009-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
Honestly I figured this would have to come eventually. When it comes to PHP programming I am hopelessly lacking in experience and knowledge. While in the future, I hope to stick my head into some books to make sure I am competent at this, for the moment I've been stuck with a dilemma of not having an easy platform on the web that I can tailor to a client's needs. In the past this hasn't been a real problem, most of the people I've worked with know their way around HTML themselves and thus it's no big deal leaving it to them to upd ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/sandandmercury-net-233659166 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/sandandmercury-net-233659166 Wed, 04 Feb 2009 06:48:29 PST sandandmercury.net nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2009-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
http://sandandmercury.net

EDIT: Once again Internet Explorer's shoddy build is proving to be a thorn in my side. Firefox, Chrome and Opera all are rendering the pages flalessly, but Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 all fuck up when opening the portfolio entries in various ways. While I'd like to be able to say 'who cares, only idiots use Internet Explorer', that does comprise pretty much 60% of the browser market effectively making this little problem a showstopper. I'll be working on it to get the browsers to coopera ]]> http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Working-with-Blender-233928922 http://sand-and-mercury.deviantart.com/journal/Working-with-Blender-233928922 Sat, 17 Jan 2009 05:52:10 PST Working with Blender nonadult journals/personal Sand-And-Mercury http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/s/a/sand-and-mercury.jpg?1 Copyright 2009-2013 ~Sand-And-Mercury
However, one big exception is with 3D artwork; without 3DS Max or Cinema 4D to use, I am left with Blender. Blender is great and I've seen it put out some truly professional-quality material, but its interface is so utterly confusing to me that I don't know where to begin. C4D's interface was so logical and intuitive, and while I've heard Blender is up there too, it only is once you've gotten used to it. With the old option of piracy ruled out for me, a look at C4D's website ]]>