Agilo's Weblog

Well, I've not been so active in writing weblog entries the past few months and because of that I missed out on some stuff that happened because I wanted to really take my time in writing about them.
However, it's getting seemingly more apparent that I never will get around to doing that so therefore, I'll just write about it in this entry.

Last February I went snowboarding in France (Val Thorens) together with Mick and Ed.

Leading up to that, we decided to rent snowboards as we've been doing in the past, however by the time we got around to actually rent the snowboards all the snowboards had already been rented out.. so we had the choice: either rent snowboards in France, or buy our own snowboards.
I didn't plan on doing that but I had been thinking about it in the past and I did have some money saved up, so I decided it was time to actually go through with it and buy my own snowboard.

Because I'm in my element the best off the slopes I sought after a good mountain style snowboard and I eventually landed on Nitro's Pantera.
It's a beautiful board and it handles really well!

Nitro's awesome snowboard called: Pantera.

As for the rest of our stay in France: we hated the place (Val Thorens), it really sucked.  Snow conditions were bad but in all the terrain was really boring and really not that interesting.
It was fun being on our own, though, not having to worry about classmates or people in our group.
Not only that, we also experienced what it was like having to provide for ourselves staying in our little appartement and such, which I thought was really cool.

Since then I've also seen Symphony X perform at De Lantaarn (a.k.a.: the middle of fucking nowhere) and De Boerderij.
The shows were really fucking amazing and Michael Romeo was absolutely fucking awesome!

Two plectrums I recieved from Michael Romeo during the show.

I managed to score two plectrums from him (one of which I got through shaking his hand during songs)!
Also, equally awesome, I managed to get exclusive footage with my camera in which he performs a piece of the song Sea of Lies for my camera!
The footage can be seen on YouTube: Symphony X - Sea of Lies (live in Zoetermeer, Netherlands).

Did I mention the performance (in Zoetermeer) was mindblowing?  No?  Well, consider it mentioned because it really was absolutely mindblowing!!

I also spent some time (however little) on the Pokemon Mini (though not as much as I'd like to).
I fixed the Text Engine bug and I also wrote a little random number generator using an algorithm based on an article published by DonTronics (which I modified to work on a byte instead of a word).
The random number generator also taught me to work with the PM's timer, however basic it still is.

Also, really exciting news is that a long standing member of Team Pokeme, Asterick, is working on a new Pokemon Mini emulator (Minimon version 2) with recently reverse enginered information!
Not only that but he's also set up a new Wiki which will replace the old (and somewhat inaccurate) Pokemon Mini Hardware Reference!

I'm also thinking of moving onward with programming for the Gameboy Advanced (so as to teach myself to work with the ARM CPU) but that'll come when the time comes.

Lastly, I've booked a flight to Sicily for the upcoming vacation to go and see my Father together with my little brother Emanuele; can't wait to be back there again.