4/2/2009
Hey Officer Robert Powell: you're a douche bag.

1/18/2009
Don't worry Philadelphia. One out of five ain't bad. Cardinals

You don't mess with that kind of stuff!

They had Bela steal the Colt?! I like of liked Bela (or more specifically, Lauren Cohan), but having Bela steal the Colt is like crossing the line. If you ask me, she signed her death sentence by stealing that gun.
I can already see where the Supernatural folks are going with this. The next time we see Bela, the boys will have found her and demand that she return the Colt. But Bela will have already sold the Colt to someone halfway across the planet. So she'll brag for a bit about the money she made, and maybe make a tasteless joke at the boys' expense, then the boys will curse at her and maybe threaten to kill her (yet again.) Then the real villian of the season will be revealed (perhaps this villain will be linked to saving Dean's life), and--lo and behold--it turns out the boys will need a certain demon killing revolver to defeat him (or her.) So our heroes spend a few episodes searching for the gun that "can kill anything", and in the season finale, they recover it with Ruby's help. And of course, after a gory showdown with our big bad villain, the boys use the Colt once again to literally light up a demon and the day is won. Just like how season 2 ended. The same, only different. I don't like how the show's producers have handled our favorite gun lately. The Colt is Supernatural's deus ex machina. The gun is practially holy. It can kill anything. ANYTHING . Except for some random witchcrafting demon? Even the Yellow Eyed Demon was powerless against the Colt, but some demon we've never even heard of before can stop bullets from the Colt in midair? I don't like it. I understand that the Colt can't be used to resolve every conflict, but they should not undermine the power it represents. The Colt represents hope, it represents the one chance that our mortal heroes have against much more powerful demons. By giving the Colt weaknesses, you take away some of the hope it stands for. And now they had a thief steal the Colt. What now, the boys just start splashing holy water on anything with black eyes? Yeah, that's entertaining television. Don't screw with the Colt. You just don't mess with that kind of stuff.

The Colt

Axe Knights were so ahead of their time. Even today, they look cool.
Axe Knight

As I progress through my DirectX book, I'll be posting some screenshots of my work here.

Phong (per-pixel) shading
phong shading

"Toon" shading
toon shading

Wireframe fill mode
wire frame

Colored waves
colored waves

Basic multi-texturing
multi-texturing

Multi-texturing and texture animation
flare × flarealpha = multi-flare

Texturing arbitrary meshes
textured teapot textured cone

Alpha blending (semi-transparency)
alpha blending

Stenciling (Mirrors and shadows)
stenciling with mirrors and shadows

More shadows
more shadows

Arbitrary meshes
ship skull

Mesh hierarchies
mesh hierarchies

Terrain rendering and height maps
terrain rendering

interesting websites:
GMU Department of Computer Science
d3dcoder.net
MSDN
AnandTech
GameSpot
amazon.com

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