:: Fill in Subject	[Insert Date and Time]
OK, I haven't updated this site in a long time. That's because I started to see how tough things would get once my site got some real size to it. Can you imagine I was making old-fashioned HTML pages one by one in notepad and uploading them? My new site is at: http://gamerplusplus.com

 

::Crimson & QB::

[Saturday, November 20, 2004 11:33:05]

I've got Crimson compiling MS QuickBASIC .BAS files into .EXE files. I don't know if I'm going to do anything with this information, but IT CAN BE DONE! If I have the time I'll make a page describing how. I downloaded compiled and installed Allegro ( http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/allegro/ ) but when I try to compile an allegro program I get a boatload of errors. Maybe I'll come back to this some day. Something happened to my second forum so I had to make a third using the same provider. They no longer allow uploads and downloads :(

 

::Navigation Changes::	[Friday, November 12, 2004 11:15:20]
You will notice there are changes to the navigation again. I am experimenting with color, font, and other cues to make navigation easier. I am also toying with the idea of bringing back some of the java navigation I had previously. If I do use java, I'll keep it simple this time I promise! I just like being able to get TO anywhere on the site FROM anywhere on the site.

 

::Oopsie::

[Monday, October 25, 2004 16:01:35]

You might notice that the last few entries now have no date and time. I used the "insert" function in FrontPage to insert the date and time. Every time I changed the page the dates and times would update.  I have been unable to use the laptop for the last couple of weeks. I am messing around with text editors again. Today we have Vim and jEdit. Like the other text editors I've used, they have strengths and weaknesses.  I just Googled "jasbales". I'm in there! Google even returns Yahoo! Groups posts from years ago!  Somehow the banner is appearing correctly now. I don't know when that happened, but I'm glad it did. I still can't be found in DMOZ.com

 

::Game Content::	[]
I uploaded some game content. Mostly just cheats for Clive Barker's Undying. I also have some recommended reading in the books section.

 

::X Prize Won!::

[]

That's right, space flight isn't just for governments anymore! The Ansari X Prize has been won. And now that everyone knows it can be done, just watch what private industry will do with space flight. Can't wait to see this.  I've been having problems downloading the Visual Studio Express betas from Microsoft. NetZero doesn't stay connected long enough to download the whole thing.  Work is continuing on the website. Slowly but surely as I promised. I will try to put a lot of the old content back up soon in this new form. It takes time to put it all in these tables the way you see it here. By comparison the old framesets were much easier to maintain. So keep checking and be patient. I am improving, updating, and rewriting content as I go along. There will be game content soon. By the way, Microsoft FrontPage is one buggy piece of software (but it still beats doing all of this in notepad). I have seen that someone other than myself has loaded the google ads into their browser so I know I have at least one visitor. Thanks for stopping by. Um, I have noticed that my banner at the top of the page is pointing to a file on my C: drive for most of my webpages. I'm working to correct this. On the pages where the picture points to the right file online there's another problem... It's an older version of the file. There seems to be nothing I can do to update this file. I have deleted it several times from the server but each time I upload the file again from my hard drive the file on the server reverts back to the older file. It' very annoying. Any suggestions?

 

::X2 October 4::

[]

I still have not had much time to spend on games or the website. I am spending a lot of time with my baby girl and praying for Juliette in Minnesota as her mother just passed on. Some of you may be wondering what this X2 is? Go to http://www.xprize.org/ to find out.  More Microsoft goodies are coming out! Of special interest: Visual Studio Express (FREE!) Beta DirectX 9.0c I am downloading Visual Web Developer 2005 Express right now, but with my connection it may be quite some time until it's fully installed. Now more than ever I wish I had a broadband connection. Also note that Visual Basic 2005 Express is a .NET product but Microsoft has left .NET out of its name. The new VB can also make console programs without any hassles.

 

::Back to Basics::

[]

After all of the changes lately I have gone back to the original look. I am now using tables instead of frames. It's a big pain in the butt but I like the look and Google doesn't like the frames. This is probably not the last site revision, but I think the site will keep this general look. I would like you to know that this has been a lot of hard work and I'm not doing it for nothing. Once I'm settled on the structure and the tables are in place you should see a lot more content than before. I can produce content like mad but I an having problems keeping it stable. At the moment there's no Java but maybe I'll bring that back too. It's too early to tell. Stay tuned.

 

::More Loss::

[Saturday, September 18, 2004 19:01:12]

I've been hard at work trying to fix my navigation woes. I found many cool Java applets with flash and bang and even custom 3D animation, but decided those wouldn't fit in here. While I was working on the site I started to reformat many pages. I also might make a PDF version of my C Programming Notes.Looks like I lost a few files (including the old news) but oh well, I'll just keep working. Post on the Forum!

 

::Filled with Holy Water::

[Thursday, September 16, 2004 14:51:49]

I have been busy with the rest of my life. People dying. Kids growing older. The desperate pleas of my wife. After all of these years working for Starbucks someone is finally entertaining the notion of moving me up into the ranks of shift supervisor. The desktop seems to have offed itself (just when I had FreeDOS, WinME, and Mandrake Linux 9.1 working so beautifully together!) so I placed it in the playroom closet where it will probably be forgotten about until I can pawn it on eBay as an antique when I'm an old man. That means the family is watching DVDs on this little laptop... as if my time with it were not limited enough.  In the world of Undying I've started making a new item called the Tibetan Water Cannon. It won't do any damage, but just like a super-soaker it will soak pawns from quite a distance. I'm also toying with the idea of making a Dunwich Horror map pack for Undying. I just need to quit my job to make the needed time. Juliette is on her way to Minnesota right now to visit her mom who is dying of cancer. She is talking about moving there. I really don't want to go, but we'll see.  In site related news, I'm updating some things and will try to upload them in the next couple of days. I have created a new forum. No one has posted at the old one in a couple of years and I deleted all of the old posts anyway. The new forum allows me more control and allows for uploads and downloads. I'm also working on new navigation and layout for the site so if you see some weird stuff going on and the site seems screwed-up... I'M WORKING ON IT! Navigation will be in the form of both frames and Java because that's the way I want it. If anyone has a problem with that, tough!

 

::A Trip to Bat Country::

[Monday, July 19, 2004 23:25:01]

My learning has been spread out over many topics lately. I'm learning about XP's command interpreter and how to use it. I need to learn these things if I am to use command line tools. That means BAT files. I've written an introduction to life on the command line. I'm in the middle of writing an introduction to BAT files. I'm getting to know Vim but doubt I'll write anything on that subject for a while. I have been making ascii art and learning about midi creation. Maybe some of that will make it here and maybe it won't.

 

::Ultima IV Revisited::

[Tuesday, June 08, 2004 10:26:09]

OK, so it's been a while since I did anything with the site, but I'm doing other things. I have been working on learning programming concepts. I have Crimson editor doing all sorts of stuff. I've got it compiling C/C++ with the free Borland and Microsoft compilers. It is also compiling Java and doing all sorts of tricks with batch/com files and HTML. Shoot, if I had more time to tinker I'd just start doing all of my HTML with Crimson. I haven't been working on my Java the way I had hoped to and haven't been able to play any games. More time... I need more time. A couple days ago I found a website that has Ultima 4 reproduced using DarkBasic. It is very cool. He has it made with two different tilesets. The sourcecode is included with the download. The trial version of DarkBasic has some constraints on it and I've been busy with other things, but it is very cool to look at how the game was put together. There are even world and town editors included in the download. It's worth checking out HERE. Yesterday I opened up RPG Toolkit and It's pretty fun. If I find the time along with everything else I may make something.

 

::Lost Some Stuff::

[Thursday, April 29, 2004 12:18:30]

I have spent the last week in Rochester. Right before I left, the laptop came down with something. I lost a lot of cool stuff including web page updates. I lost aAmbrose and the super Gelziabahr for Undying and some other scripting and programming stuff (I won't be developing or using BasicBlack anymore). I'm mostly starting over with Undying, Unreal Tournament 2003, and programming. I downloaded the most recent Java SDK and Dev-C++. I will focus on Java for a while because it looks more like Unreal Script. By the time I finish with the first couple Java books I should be ready to really tear into the Uscripting.

 

::UT2K3::	[Thursday, March 18, 2004 09:09:05]
Monday I got Unreal Tournament 2003 in the mail. I have not had a chance to play it yet, but I just watched the first four videos in the first level design class at http://sv1.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/unr_main.php. I'm sitting in the cafe at Starbucks so I don't know if I'll get any decent play time.

 

::Movin' On Up::

[Monday, March 08, 2004 13:39:21]

This last week has been an exhausting one. I packed up the family and moved from Prescott Valley to Prescott. The boxes and boxes of books, real wood dresser, desk, and bookshelves... the king-sized mattresses and good lord the nine-foot hide-away-bed sofa! I could write all the details but I do not have the time since I am about to start on more Undying material for the site and for the Undying community. I also ordered Unreal Tournament 2003 late last night.

 

:: And So It Begins ::

Welcome Welcome to my humble homemade web page. OK, so I've got a laptop, a cheap NetZero connection and a free webpage. What can I do? I'm not going to be able to create a flashy website with awesome animations and interactive media, but that won't stop me from working on the site. I am making this site page-by-page in FrontPage and uploading when I can. I wish I could use the FrontPage publish feature but I'd actually have to pay the host. I hope you find something of interest here.   About Me My name is Jason Bales. I was born in Big Timber Montana in 1973. Back in the early '80s I touched my first computer. It was all DOS and command lines back then. I learned how to program pretty well in BASIC. When I say BASIC I don't mean VB. I took a class where we made spreadsheets and learned how to make the computer beep. But I found a little bin where I was sitting in the back of the class. The bin had BASIC programming books. I converted choose-your-own-adventure books (now making a comeback in DVD format?) into computer-based adventures. Then I started working with graphics and making shapes. I made what would be recognized now as screen savers (but at the time I thought they were just cool random graphics programs). The day I made my first sphere was a great day. All of this early programming culminated in the writing of a primitive game in which you used keyboard keys to navigate a capital 'A' spaceship through fields of asterisk stars. The stars became denser, faster, and increasingly more difficult to avoid. The game had midi sound effects and even a couple songs (one of them took me about three months to get right). I failed the class but I think I learned more than anyone else (this seems to be a pattern I keep repeating). After that class I did not touch another computer again until I entered college in the summer of 1999. What a shock! There were no prompts or command lines and all of my instructors assumed I knew what they meant when their handouts used words like "drag the file" or "LMB".   When it comes to games I got in right at the beginning with Pong. All hail Pong! I use to chant it; "PONG, PONG, PONG, PONG!" and my brother use to dread playing me. He took the games so seriously. Then there was Odyssey and Colecovision.  "K-C, K-C, K-C, K-C!" man I loved that KC-munchkin. We had all the Atari's. I don't think anything else ever caused as many fights between me and my brother than Atari. He would get so mad he would throw the controller. Sometimes at the TV and sometimes at me. I remember watching the first video broadcast for MTV and yelling how stupid the person was who turned off Asteroids to "watch this crap".  I didn't think it could get any better than Atari... then my mother brings home an odd little thing. Something called NES, the Nintendo Entertainment System. It turned out that was the stuff that really got me going. It was a pain to try and get any real playtime in. My mother actually monopolized much of the gametime playing hour after hour of Zelda. And when the Zelda music would stop there was this mad dash as I would try to make it to the NES before my older brother. By this time he had evolved into an "ugly gamer". I often expected him to pistol whip me with the light gun but he never did. He played mostly RPGs like Final Fantasy and Bard's Tale. The years rolled by and I found myself on my own. Just me and my boxes. Many of my best memories are associated with games. My first paycheck ever was spent on Ultima Quest of the Avatar and I had enough money left over for lunch at DQ. The day I met my wife I was grubbing for info on Bleemcast at Funcoland. I never realized before writing just now that I met my wife within twenty feet of where I had eaten at DQ (in the food court at Metrocenter Mall in Phoenix) years before when I bought Ultima.  But recently I rediscovered PC games. They're a lot more sophisticated than Oregon Trail. It's a whole parallel universe of games I never got to play. Now my favorite box is my laptop. I've got years worth of games I haven't played and they're mostly affordable. So this highly abbreviated biography leaves us with the present. I am thirtysomething, married with children (and loving it) and am still playing games.