Hawthorn
[Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info]
Below are the 50 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Hawthorn" journal:[<< Previous 50 entries]
|
11:05 pm
[Link] |
End of an era
Ten years ago, I met ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2) timwi in Cambridge for the first time. It was, in fact, the first time I had ever met anyone who I had known online, and I was quite nervous. I was just coming out of my social shell at the time, and that weekend was a strange and learning experience for me. Conversation in the real world turned out to be more difficult than on screen.
But I had a wonderful time that first weekend. I loved the beautiful city of Cambridge. I loved Trinity College, where Timwi was staying. And I loved all the amazing things he showed me. Games I had never seen, puzzles I had never heard, languages I had never known, discussions that challenged the very limits of my knowledge and reason. And he introduced me to what became my favourite card game, Mao.
I visited Timwi many times in the following years. Cambridge is an easy two hour journey by train, so it wasn't a problem to go up for a weekend. We played many games, and showed each other interesting and exciting things. I also met n_true on one of those weekends, and there's nothing quite like punting along the River Cam while Timwi and N_True are singing the 'Whole World in a Rhyme' song from memory.
This weekend, I visited Cambridge for my last time. Timwi is moving back to Germany, and with him goes a part of my life I didn't realise I would miss so much. So I'm feeling a little sad.
But! I won't let it upset me. In fact, I'm considering this a new opportunity. People have always urged me to travel to other countries. I have never understood why, since the specific country never seems to matter, as long as I go somewhere that isn't where I currently am. And it just happens that, aside from the US, Germany is the only country I have seriously considered visiting. I don't know why. It's not just because Timwi is German. I feel somehow attracted to what I believe is German culture. And I love the language. It's the only language I know where I'm capable of making all the sounds required to speak it.
It also so happens where I'm at the point in my life where I have the means to visit other countries. I have the drive and the means. I could do it. And I think I will. So I look forward to more happy years of visiting Timwi in Germany in the future. I just wanted to mark this occasion, because an era has ended for me. Goodbye, Cambridge.
Current Mood:  sad
Tags: cambridge, games, german, germany, n_true, puzzles, timwi, trinity college
|
|
08:49 pm
[Link] | They're doing roadworks where I work at the moment. Luckily, there is currently exactly one business open.
|
|
11:16 pm
[Link] | I got an automated copyright claim on one of my Amiga music uploads on YouTube. The claim is from 'Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society', which basically means 'we think this might be breaching the copyright of someone who might complain about it, but we don't know why, or whose copyright it is'.
So they allow you to challenge the claim with these actions:
o I own the CD/DVD or bought the song online.
o I'm not selling the video or making any money from it.
o I gave credit in the video.
o The video is my original content and I own all of the rights to it.
o I have a licence or written permission from the content owner to use this material.
o My use of the content meets the legal requirements for fair use or fair dealing under applicable copyright laws.
o The content is in the public domain or is not eligible for copyright protection.
Notice something missing? How about this:
o This doesn't actually belong to the people making the copyright claim, so the claim is not valid.
Why don't I get that option? The content isn't mine, but it's not theirs either.
Interestingly, if you select, for example, 'I'm not selling the video or making any money from it', YouTube tells you off.
"Whether or not you benefit financially from using the content doesn't matter. Unless you have permission from the owner, it's not yours to use."
What are you YouTube, my mother? I'm not really sure what to do in this case - the music is almost certainly old enough that nobody cares what happens to it, it certainly can't be making anyone any money any more. The company that made the game went defunct in 2005.
So I'm curious as to what would happen if I said it was in the public domain. Since nobody can possibly have made a valid copyright claim on this music, can anyone actually dispute that it's in the public domain?
Current Mood:  thoughtful
Tags: amiga game music, copyright, quik the thunder rabbit, youtube
|
|
09:32 pm
[Link] |
extended
Why do extended remixes start with a tedious drumbeat that goes on for two minutes before the music actually starts? What's the point of extending if all you're going to do is waste time with thup thup thup thup thup thup thup thup thup thup thup thup for the first couple of minutes anyway?
Current Music: A remix of one of the tracks from TRON
Tags: music, pet hates, remixes
|
|
12:27 am
[Link] |
Dirk Gently
The BBC have kept it pretty quiet, but there's currently a series based on Douglas Adams Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and it's pretty good.
Originally I wasn't sure about it, but after watching a few episodes I've come to enjoy it. The main problem with the premise of Dirk Gently is that the plots are, by definition, convenient - everything is connected to everything else and therefore everything that happens brings Dirk closer to solving the case. (In one episode, Dirk actually realises that something is wrong when he does manage to solve the case in a straightforward and logical manner XD). Because of this, the whodunnit side of the show is a little weak.
However, it gives us something to compensate - Dirk Gently. The vast majority of the fun in the books is this character and the totally insane things he does in complete seriousness, and they've managed to capture some of that in the show. Stephen Mangan does okay as Dirk Gently, although he's not the character I envisioned - he seems just a little too goofy and is portrayed as someone who simply uses other people without any care for their feelings - in the book, you always got the impression that Dirk justified this behaviour to himself and was therefore not actually a bad person, whereas in the show, he just seems to be an arse to people on purpose.
The character of Richard MacDuff, who was in the first book as the straight man to Dirk's insanity, becomes Dirk's partner in the show, which is a great idea. Also, this is almost certainly a coincidence, but their partnership feels almost exactly like Del Boy and Rodney from Only Fools and Horses. Dirk and Richard. Del Boy and Rodney. Watch it and tell me you can't imagine Nicholas Lyndhurst in Richard's role. :)
It's a fun show and occasionally surprisingly moving, and worth a watch, especially if you read the books - although it doesn't directly follow any of the book's stories, it takes lots of the ideas from them - Dirk's rude secretary who he won't pay, Zen Navigation, Dirk's unfortunate clairvoyance, all those fun details that made the books so great. It's currently on BBC iPlayer.
Tags: bbc iplayer, dirk gently, dirk gently's holistic detective agency, television
|
|
11:45 pm
[Link] |
coat of arms
I think this is a theme not explored enough in heraldry.
(from Wikipedia)
Tags: coat of arms, heraldry
|
|
10:30 pm
[Link] |
Recursion
This is awesome. Some guy had the following idea:
- take an image.
- use Google's Search by image to find similar images.
- take the first one.
- REPEAT.
He started with a blank transparent image, and repeated this process thousands of times, ignoring any images that came up more than once to prevent getting stuck in a loop, and ended up with an video trip through Google-image-space.
(WARNING: I think I saw some adult images when I watched it the first time, so possibly NSFW.)
Current Mood:  hot
Tags: google, google image search, recursion, youtube
|
|
12:33 am
[Link] |
The Hobbit
I finished The Hobbit. Much easier than Lord of the Rings, and in my opinion much better. Not that I thought it was great - like LotR, The Hobbit just didn't wow me. Tolkien's style seems to be 'here's a load of stuff. Now here's a song. Now here's a load more stuff.' Nothing ever seems to build to anything. Even in LotR, which you would think is a book filled with a rise to an enormous climax, it's just a series of events, and the climatic end of the Ring happens so fast you might actually miss it if you're not reading carefully.
But The Hobbit is a good book and worth reading. It has a fast moving and interesting plot, and at no point was I ever bored - in many cases, I was looking forward to see what happened next. It also has an interesting character, Bilbo, who's probably the ultimate Chaotic Good character - not evil, but not above stealing or causing trouble. Tolkien's realism also helps to bring the fantasy down to reality at times in an interesting way - for example, if you come into possession of a fabulous amount of treasure at the end of your quest, how do you get it home? How do you guard it from thieves on the way home? How much will it cost? These all become problems for Bilbo. (Oh, and don't worry about the spoilers. Tolkien doesn't.)
So, what about the film? There's a film of The Hobbit coming out this year and next (in two parts, as is popular these days). Peter Jackson is behind it, so you know it's going to be awesome. I am wondering what he's going to take out or change. I think that the battle at the end of the book (again, not a spoiler, Tolkien mentions this battle halfway through the book when it's not even relevant) is going to be the climax of the film. I think the events of the Lonely Mountain could probably make up a movie by themselves, so I suspect the first film will be getting there, and the second film will be the Lonely Mountain. If that's the case, I think I'll enjoy the second film more. I've never been fond of films or stories which are just a long series of adventures - I like it when events unfold naturally around a place that we come to know and understand, which is why I love the film of The Two Towers and the battle of Helms Deep.
One thing I would love if they left in is what happens just after Bilbo steals some of Smaug the dragon's treasure while he's asleep. Smaug wakes up, goes into a rage, and begins attacking the mountain, but eventually he calms down and goes back to his lair... this time keeping an eye out for the thief. Bilbo tries again... and this time Smaug notices him.
Then Smaug spoke.
Those three words are probably the greatest line in the book. Until now there's been no hint that Smaug could speak, and in fact he's been shown more or less as a dumb animal with a great temper. But in those chilling words, and the fact that Smaug has waited patiently until this moment, you realise instantly that Smaug is intelligent, and his speech after that only gets colder from there. I'd love it if they kept this reveal, but I suspect it probably won't work as well in film.
Current Mood:  nerdy
Tags: bilbo baggins, dragons, helms deep, lord of the rings, peter jackson, smaug, the hobbit, the two towers, tolkien
|
|
08:42 pm
[Link] |
The Hobbit
Almost finished The Hobbit now. It's still way more fun to read than LotR. But I noticed that it begins with THE MOST UNHELPFUL MAP EVER:
Now I do like the style of this map, and it does nicely establish the Lonely Mountain as being - well, a lonely mountain - but as something to guide the characters or the reader, how useless is that? Most of it is empty space, and three of the locations in the book visited by the characters are OFF THE EDGES OF THE MAP. The Long Lake, where the characters spend a few weeks, isn't even on it, and I don't know why, because it must surely be just to the right of where the map cuts off.
And that hand at the side? It's actually pointing to the rune underneath the Lonely Mountain, not that you'd be able to tell. I think Tolkien has kind of misunderstood what a map IS.
Tags: maps, the hobbit, tolkien
|
|
08:26 pm
[Link] | He guessed as well as he could, and crawled along for a good way, till suddenly his hand met what felt like a tiny ring of cold metal lying on the floor of the tunnel. It was a turning point in his career, but he did not know it.
I had wondered if I was going in the wrong order to read LotR before The Hobbit, but Bilbo's finding of the One Ring and his meeting with Gollum is an even more potent scene when you know what that ring means to Gollum, to Middle Earth, and what it can do. Peter Jackson must have had a blast with that scene in the upcoming film.
Tags: bilbo baggins, gollum, lord of the rings, peter jackson, the hobbit, the one ring
|
|
09:35 pm
[Link] |
The Hobbit
My The Hobbit arrived yesterday, and I've read the first couple of chapters.
I'm not sure what changed between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, but I suspect it might have been World War Two. The Hobbit was written in 1937, and LotR was written in the decade after it, some of it even during the war, and I wouldn't be surprised if LotR was the result of the dismal times Tolkien experienced.
The Hobbit has no such misery. (At least, not yet.) In fact, the very first chapter has everything that LotR didn't - interesting characters, natural sounding dialogue, and humour.
It's most definitely a children's book - you can tell by the ever so slightly patronising tone Tolkien uses, although I remember the same tone from Enid Blyton so it was probably how childrens books were written in the 30s. One thing I haven't yet worked out is whether the narrator is supposed to be Tolkien himself, or some other character - all I know is that the narrator claims to be a Man, like the reader.
The first chapter is hilarious because Gandalf is being a complete arse to Bilbo, who at this point in his life is a timid and unadventurous hobbit. Gandalf's arsing is of course well known by the time of LotR, but it's fun to see that even a hundred years ago he was still messing people up just for fun. He invites thirteen dwarves to Bilbo's house without asking, and - the dwarves are hilarious. They really seem like a different race, unlike Gimli who might as well just have been a surly man with an axe who liked caves.
Not that the dwarves are funny. They're not. They're completely serious, and that's what's funny, because Bilbo can't say anything to stop himself getting swept up in their business.
By the end of the first chapter, we know what they're doing, where they're going, what they hope to achieve, the enemy they're going to face, and yet there's still mystery about what's going to happen. Bilbo as a character is someone who I want to see face the unknown, because he's so obviously in over his head, as I would be in his place.
I was preparing myself for another dry, tedious read, but I'm actually looking forward to reading more.
Current Mood:  surprised
Tags: bilbo baggins, books, dwarves, gandalf, lord of the rings, the hobbit, tolkien, world war two
|
|
12:18 am
[Link] |
Spheres of Chaos
The year was 1995 or thenabouts. I was in secondary school and in those days, my favourite place to be was the Computer Room.
In 1995, the idea of 'information technology' as something you would actually teach to pupils was only just catching on, and as a result, computers were strewn around classrooms like people didn't know what to do with them. Massive cathode ray monitors stood on enormous white boxes at the edges of the room, still managing to look old even then. And the consequence of this was that we didn't actually have a single Computer Room. Up in the department that was then becoming ICT (Information and Communication Technology, because IT wasn't yet in widespread use), computers were running the laughable kiddy version of Windows called 3.1, while down in the Technology department, there was a room full of networked Acorn Archimedeses. Machines with power, machines with vector graphics and desktop publishing and 3D rendering software. The Windows PC? It could do Paint and Notepad. Hurrah!
That room was the Computer Room of the day, and I loved being there. I kept finding ways to get in there at break and lunchtimes, and eventually the teachers just accepted it and let me stay. Sad? Probably. But outside I was surrounded by kids far sadder, but in a far meaner way, than I, and I relished the chance to be away from them. Sorry, this is all sounding a little dramatic. I actually meant to talk about a game.
The Acorn wasn't known for being a gaming machine. Like the BBC before it, nobody owned an Acorn. It was a school computer. But its power (for the time) meant that it was pretty good at running quite impressive games, if people would write them, which they mostly didn't.
Spheres of Chaos is by no means an impressive nor technologically demanding game by today's standards, but at the time it was like nothing I had ever seen. Certainly my Amiga had nothing on this. Written by Iain McLeod, it's basically Asteroids crossed with LSD.
Well, okay, Asteroids is too basic. It's not Asteroids. It's much closer to Geometry Wars. You fly a ship, and you shoot waves of enemies, of which there are many different kinds who all behave in different ways. It's that classic 80s style of gameplay, where simple elements combine in different ways to keep you constantly challenged. At the lowest level you have the Spheres, which are just asteroids - you shoot them, they split in two, then they split in two again, then they die. Then you have enemies that lay mines, enemies that home in on you, enemies that move randomly, etc etc etc etc.
I can show you a screenshot, but the problem is that screenshots cannot capture the look of this game. You have to see it in motion. This is a game that's designed to hurt your eyes and make everyone behind you wonder what on Earth you're doing.
 Hint: you're the grey ship.
This is a game born straight from the 80s, where the only reason to play was to play. This is a game where the main strategy is to earn extra lives quicker than you lose them, which you will all the time. This is not a clever game. It is a pure blast. It's one of those games that is more experience than anything else. It's not a badly designed game at all - it has power ups, your ship can hyperspace, Asteroids-style, out of danger (with the risk of hyperspacing on top of an enemy), you can outmanoeuvre enemies if you know how they move, you can sort of control which powerups you get - but this all eventually becomes muscle memory, and you're simply playing the game because you're hypnotised by it. It's a level of psychedelia that I think even Jeff Minter would be jealous of.
(I should probably say at this point - don't even bother with this game if you're epileptic. While you can turn the graphics down to something less crazy, the lowest level is still quite insane.)
When I saw this on the Acorn I was simply astounded. I had never seen so many pixels flying around, and so smoothly. I had no idea how it was done, and I even remember at the time figuring that it had to be a trick - that the machine wasn't really drawing individual pixels, but an easily calculable mathematical function that looked like an explosion. I don't even know if I was correct. And even better was that it was a great game to play. It was also a great game to play with - it had so many options to set that you could create stupid challenges, such as setting the gravity to 9 and turning on only pentagons, or something like that. As a child with no patience, this was perfection.
I can't say this game is for everyone. It's not. I can't even say it's a great game. It's very fun to play and possibly a great way to blow off steam, but it is at its core just a mindless blast. Nonetheless, it thoroughly entertained a 13-year-old me, and is one of my fondest memories of the Acorn.
The game was ported to many systems, including the PC, and was eventually made freeware, because Iain Mcleod began work on a new version which, sadly, I don't think will be finished - I've not heard anything about it since 2007. So if you're curious, give it a try!
Spheres of Chaos home page
Current Mood:  exhausted
Tags: acorn, acorn archimedes, asteroids, geometry wars, iain mcleod, school, spheres of chaos
|
|
07:17 pm
[Link] |
Boris bike
Today I awoke feeling in a wandering mood, so I used my expensive weekly rail ticket (I only need it for the five working days of the week, but of course you can only buy a seven day ticket) to go to London and take a walk. I also decided to try a Boris bike for the first time.
For non UK peoples, the Boris bike is a scheme to provide public-use bicycles for cycling around London. You go to any of the hundreds of docking stations around London, pay an access fee, and get given a code to unlock one of the bikes. You then cycle to wherever you're going, find another docking station, and park the bike.
This is a really good idea. I've never tried it until now, however, because I've never needed to - my commute each day is a train journey and a short walk. But I figured that for someone who just wants to casually explore London, a bicycle that you can hire and return instantly is great.
But is it? British transport systems have a long history of being great in principle but completely failing in practice.
One immediate failure, which isn't really important, is branding. For example, can anyone give the actual name of this bicycle service? I couldn't.
It's 'Barclays Cycle Hire'. Wow, that's really worked its way into the public consciousness, hasn't it? I pass these bicycles every day, and I couldn't even remember that they were being sponsored by Barclays, which I would have thought was kind of the point of sponsoring them. People know them by the name 'Boris bikes' because, well, Boris Johnson.
But there's a greater problem than that. Here is the logo for Barclays Cycle Hire:
and here is the Oyster card, Britain's main contactless payment system for public transport:
The question is: can you use an Oyster card to hire a bicycle at a Barclays Cycle Hire docking station?
The answer, of course, is no. Barclays Cycle Hire has nothing to do with Oyster.
Who pays their designers, again? Now I think about it, it's probably me.
But anyway. I decided to give it a try, so I went to a docking station in St Pauls. A docking station looks like this:
The monolith at the front is where you do the hiring. It has a helpful list of Dos and Don't for cycling in London.
I had to pay an access fee of £1 to use the service, but that £1 lasts all day. The monolith has a bank card reader so it's no different than how you normally pay for stuff these days with chip and pin. Amusingly, the machine displayed a list of terms and conditions, of which I only saw Page 1 of 35 before pressing Next. Do they really expect people to stand there and read all that, especially when there might be people waiting behind them?
After paying, the machine printed me out a little ticket with an access code on it, which I then used to unlock a bike. Despite the overall helpfulness of the process, it didn't actually tell me how you remove the bike from the docking station (although it wasn't hard to figure out, you lift the back wheel and pull it out).
So now, I had a bike. And here, the best part of the Boris bike scheme comes into effect. If your journey takes less than 30 minutes, it's free. The only charge is the £1 per day access fee.
The prices do curve rather startlingly if you go beyond that time, however. To cycle for up to 1 hour, it's £1, which is fine... up to 2 hours is £4, and up to 3 hours is £15. Fortunately, if you dock your bike within the 30 minutes and take out another one, it's still free.
Since I'm a total geek, the idea of using a bike in this fashion immediately made think of it as hyperspace travel.
- It allows you to travel faster than your normal speed.
- It requires a special vehicle.
- You can only enter and exit the travel network at certain points.
- Travelling in this manner can be unpredictable and dangerous.
- It's easy to get lost, especially if you stray from well established routes.
- Because of the thirty minute time limit, there's a limit to how far you can travel in one go.
- However, you can make multiple hops, provided you wait for a short period between each one.
I got on the bike and began heading for nearby Liverpool Street. I found the seat to be quite high, and although I think you can adjust it, I didn't bother. The bike also has three gears, but I couldn't figure those out either.
Cycling in London is rather haphazard, but I used to cycle to volunteering so I'm used to going on roads. Nonetheless I think this would be quite daunting for someone who doesn't normally cycle. I had to weave between cars and buses (there are a lot of buses in London) and at one point I did nearly swerve straight into the path of a car.
The bike itself is not that bad, but it is noticeably heavier and more sturdy than an ordinary bike, and you can tell it's been built to last. I would most definitely NOT want to be hit by one of these travelling at full speed. After five minutes, my legs were beginning to ache, but I was certainly moving quickly. It took about ten minutes to get to Liverpool Street, by which time I was quite exhausted. I think this is more a combination of me being out of shape and not adjusting the bike properly, however.
I still think the Boris bike is a great idea - it certainly got me to where I was going, at almost no cost and at great speed - but it's probably not for everyone. Perhaps I'd feel differently about it on a less cold and windy day.
Current Mood:  geeky
Tags: barclays cycle hire, boris bikes, boris johnson, hyperspace, london
|
|
09:05 pm
[Link] |
Hares
So after reading Lord of the Rings, I finally got around to reading a book I picked up on eBay a while ago - Frost Dancers. I read this book years ago and remembered enjoying it greatly, and now that I've read it again, I remember why. Frost Dancers is, quite simply, one of the best books I've ever read.
There's a trio of animal books by Garry Kilworth: Hunters Moon: A Story of Foxes, Midnight's Sun: A Story of Wolves, and Frost Dancers, which sometimes gets the subtitle A Story of Hares. (There's also a possible fourth called House of Tribes which is about a mouse, but I don't know much about that.) And Frost Dancers is indeed about hares - in fact, they are the 'frost dancers' referred to in the title.
Garry Kilworth is most famous for writing the Welkin Weasels series, although I cannot for the life of me understand why, because when I read those books they were awful. Dull, pointless characters that I couldn't care about getting into increasingly depressing situations - hey, remind you of anything?
Frost Dancers is nothing like that. It's a natural animal story which always immediately gets compared to Watership Down, but the style of the stories is very different, and I think Kilworth made sure that this was the case (even giving a clever nod to WD by having it form part of rabbit folklore :3). Watership Down often feels quite claustrophobic, which is to be expected - it's a book about a species which lives in tunnels and is oppressed all the time, from all directions. Frost Dancers, however, is about hares, who thrive in open space and are masters of it, able to outrun any foe that isn't airborne.
More specifically, it's about a single hare named Skelter, and most of the story is seen from his perspective as he's taken from his home in the Scottish highlands and forced to live among the hares who live in the flatlands, marshes and farmlands of what I guess is southern England. It's not so much a character piece as WD, but it does have plenty of characters.
One of the great things about the book is the way you get to experience the human world through the eyes of animals. Kilworth gets this absolutely spot on. The hares and animals all speak to each other in language we understand, but they are most definitely not human, and they don't understand humans. The best thing is that when you're seeing the hare's view of events, you can read between the lines and understand what's really going on, which is often funny and occasionally quite tragic, because the hares have no understanding or interest in the human drama that unfolds before them.
Humour and tragedy is another thing that the book has a lot of. It's an incredibly amusing book to read because of the frequent culture clashes and personal conflicts. Skelter, being a mountain hare and not even a very intelligent one, has no idea how to behave among the brown hares he ends up with - and even funnier is that the brown hares are intolerant, superstitious, arrogant jerks, the complete opposite of his personality.
Arrogance seems to run among all species, however, for the book clearly establishes that every animal considers its species to be superior to all others, which is incredibly funny when, say, hares and rabbits are forced together and are suddenly faced with each other's propaganda.
But it's also very tragic at times, and made more so by the way these childlike animals accept the death that they face every day. But, no spoilers.
It's also a mystery, for the main plot of the book revolves around the hares' attempts to defend themselves against a huge, mysterious flying creature, capable of taking large animals from the ground without being seen in the dim light of twilight and dusk, and Kilworth never reveals during the story what this creature is, but provides enough clues for you to guess.
If you ever read Watership Down and wished for other stories like that, Frost Dancers should definitely be your first stop. I haven't read the other two Kilworth books, but I have no doubts that they're just as good.
Current Mood:  cheerful
Tags: books, frost dancers, garry kilworth, hares, lord of the rings, rabbits, watership down
|
|
11:12 pm
[Link] |
Just an average furmeet weekend at Akil's
 Write that down in your copybooks now. Tags: akil, furmeets, vyl
|
|
08:04 pm
[Link] |
Terraria
Hey, people who like games! Why aren't you playing Terraria?
Well, there's one reason - it's on Steam, and not everyone likes that. But, if you don't mind Steam, then Terraria is WELL worth the £6 price tag. In fact, even if you only create one world and one character, and never defeat any bosses (which is required to progress in the game), and never play online multiplayer, I would say it's STILL worth it, just for the fun of exploration.
I'm sure you all know that Terraria is sort of a 2D Minecraft, but it's very much more a game than Minecraft's giant sandbox. (I know that Minecraft recently got a proper structure with its release, but the release is also now unplayably slow on my computer, so I'm not feeling kindly disposed toward it.) The scope of Terraria greatly increased with a massive update in December, and it's HUGE now.
Obviously the big thing about Terraria is a massive, fully deformable, and randomly generated world, which is yours for the taking from the first moment. You appear in the middle of nowhere, and first thing you'd better do is build a house out of whatever you can find. Unlike Minecraft, you always begin with the very basic tools for survival: a pathetic short sword, a pickaxe and an axe. This is enough to get you started building a base and mining for ores to make better tools. Underground there are caves, and occasionally you will come across chests filled with exciting items. As you go deeper, you eventually get to pools of magma and the underworld, and unsuprisingly the enemies are nasty down there.
Even on the smallest world size, exploring the whole world would take days, and that's not to mention that there's underground jungles, corrupt areas, floating islands in the sky - basically, there's a lot in this game, and that's what I mean when I say it's worth the price.
Oh, and villagers! It's not just about you, you see - as you progress, villagers will arrive, for whom housing must be provided - and you'll want to, because each villager provides a valuable service, from the Merchant who buys and sells goods, to the Dryad who sells items with which to purify the world. You see what I mean about there being a lot in this game?
I only have one bad thing to say about Terraria - it's grindy. At least at first, when your equipment isn't very good. A lot of it is mining, one block at a time, and that can be tedious at first, although it does give you an incentive to get a decent pickaxe.
There's a lot I haven't mentioned, like the fact you can brew potions and craft loads of different things, but I don't like spoiling games where there's so much to discover. In short: it's £6, and it's incredibly playable and replayable. I highly recommend it.
Current Mood: geeky
Tags: steam, terraria
|
|
09:15 pm
[Link] |
The Lord of the Rings
FRODO: It's gone! It's done!
SAM: Yes, Mr. Frodo... It's over now.
Frodo, summing up how I feel about Lord of the Rings.
I finally finished it. JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
I first tried to get through Lord of the Rings about five years ago, and I think I must have gotten to The Two Towers, given up, and near completely forgot about it, because when I came to read it again, there were bits I remembered and bits that I could swear I had never seen before in my life.
I really wanted to enjoy LotR, seriously. Peter Jackson's adaptation is my favourite film of all time. I play roguelikes constantly. I like archaic weapons. I think elves are awesome.
But dammit, I forced myself through that book like someone trying to eat a box of crackers without a drink of water, and I did not enjoy it. I didn't dislike the book - I just could not connect to it on any level, and it baffles me how this is one of the best selling and most popular books ever.
I think it must be the writing style that I simply couldn't get to grips with. Every time Tolkien described something, I simply could not visualise it. I was trying in vain to get Tolkien's picture of what Middle Earth looks like, not what I saw in the films, but he certainly wasn't making it easy. And this is not a problem I've had with other books.
And there's nothing to fall back on. The characters are characterless. They all talk the same - in several places I misread Gandalf for Gimli, and it made no difference. You know the character I sympathised with most in the whole book? Shelob. I cared more about a giant spider than I did the fate of Middle Earth. Gimli and Legolas, in particular, can be distinguished entirely by whether they like caves or trees.
So I guess it's not a character story either. What IS it? A historical record? It sure reads like one - especially since Tolkien seems to have no idea what spoilers are, and frequently gives away events in advance. "That guy who's taken over the Shire? Oh, that's Saruman. Yeah, don't worry about trying to work out the mystery. It's just Saruman. It's not the hobbit who's your enemy, Frodo, even though you all thought that at first and it kind of makes sense. It's Saruman. Got that?"
But nobody's ever described it to me that way. People always talk of it as an epic tale, and I really didn't see anything like that. It did not feel epic. It felt small - possibly because I couldn't visualise anything, and so was blind for most of the book. The siege of Minas Tirith did convey something of the sense of claustrophobia at being trapped, but then, the whole book has been like that, so it wasn't really a change of pace.
In fact, the only time the book felt like it was going anywhere was right at the end, with the Scouring of the Shire. Finally, this was a battle where I understood the stakes, where I could see the damage that had been done, and feel the anger of the hobbits. Suddenly it was personal. And in the middle, the four hobbits, people changed by their experiences, now stronger, ready to fight. That's epic!
There's also no humour in the book, which doesn't help. Every time I laughed, it was quite unintentional - mostly I was laughing at how absolutely everything has a name, and how any character will launch into a detailed history of whatever object they happen to be carrying or standing next to, if you give them a moment. Also, drink any time anyone compliments Shadowfax.
Since this is one of the best selling books ever, I suspect it's more likely that my reading of it is flawed, rather than the book being no good. But anyway, it's done now. I'm very much looking forward to the film adaptation of The Hobbit, and I aim to try to read that first, to see if my opinion is different when I read the book before the film.
Current Mood:  accomplished
Tags: lord of the rings, the hobbit, tolkien
|
|
07:23 pm
[Link] |
New year
Hello once again audience!
Well, this Christmas rather sucked. Imagine this - it's the week before Christmas, and because you work all day and don't have much time in the evenings, you're looking forward to a nice long break to do the things you enjoy, which in my case, is having fun on the internets.
Then, your entire streets phone service goes dead five days before Christmas, and doesn't get restored until four days after. Thanks, BT! Thanks for basically wasting a week of the short holiday I was looking forward to!
Still, I'm back now, and Christmas itself wasn't bad. In terms of loot, I got a shirt, Super Scribblenauts for the Nintendo DS, the extended box set of Lord of the Rings (because I thought it was about time I actually owned my favourite film :3) and a new futuristic Android smartphone, yay! I've been quite slow to get into the whole smartphone thing - for years I've been using phones shaped like fish fingers - so it's been a learning experience for me. I chose Android over Apple because I prefer freedom and the risk of downloading utter crap, to Apple's quality service and eerie mind control.
I quite like the Gingerbread OS - it's nice and simple, and also looks easy to develop for, which I intend to do later on. I do have a few annoyances, however:
- The phone forgets some of my settings, like whether I want the wireless turned on or not, when I switch it off.
- It's a pay-as-you-go phone, which suits me - I'm not a heavy phone user, and if I want the internet, I'll just plug into a wi-fi. However, I have noticed that it will access the internet without warning using my phone credit, which is kinda like slitting a hole in a bag full of pound coins. Luckily I'm out of credit now, so it can't use it, but that's quite a problem. Not all of us are on contract!
- I know that smartphones are aimed at teenagers, but even so, the number of tacky apps in the Android market's top rated list is kind of depressing. Yes, I'm sure an app that simulates someone peeing in a toilet is funny to 12 year olds, but can't you create a section just for morons and let us download useful apps?
- Another annoyance I have is the number of apps that, for no reason, have to be given permission to access my phone's internet connection and phone details. The fact that they have to explicitly request this permission before you download is very nice - you can see exactly what the app will be able to do on your phone, and therefore avoid downloading something that might, say, record all your phone calls or send your details to thieves. But on the other hand - why does a frigging DICE ROLLING APP need access to my phone details? There are so many apps that do not give good reasons for what they want - sure, I can understand that a free app might want to access my internet so it can fetch advertisements. That's fine - although they never say that. The whole reason these permissions exist is so we can be secure. If they don't tell me what they want to do, I don't feel safe installing their app - and isn't that bad for them?
- Smartphones have a pitiful battery life. For the record, I've charged my smartphone four times since I got it. My old phone, which cost me £5, IS STILL CHARGED from when I stopped using it a week ago. I'm not too bothered about this, because it's supposed to be the norm with smartphones - they are little computers after all. But, still an annoyance.
Overall I think it's a nice little phone however, and wasn't super expensive, so it was a nice present.
That's all for now. Happy new year!
Current Mood:  sick
Tags: android, apple, bt, christmas, lord of the rings, nintendo ds, phones, presents, smartphones, super scribblenauts
|
|
04:25 pm
[Link] |
Writer's Block: Background players
Click to enlarge
It's Scorpio, a mouse with teleportation powers from the furry superhero webcomic Zodiac. :3
Tags: writer's block
|
|
01:07 am
[Link] |
I'm still alive
I'm also making a note here, huge success. I got a job! Sorry I haven't been here for a few months, I've been busy with my new job and fretting about not passing probation. But now I have, so hurrah!
My new job is back-end web development in PHP/MySQL, at a wonderful web design company in Shoreditch. I'm working with a great team, the work is fun (it's 90% coding, which is what I love), and the pay is great.
Not really much more to say about it than that. :3 Now I'm onto the next step - moving out of my parent's house as quickly as I can. I have sort-of plans for that, but it depends on the person I'm planning to move in with, so I expect it will take a while - which is fine, I need to earn enough to cover a deposit.
That's all for now, I need to sleep.
Current Mood: happy
Tags: job, mysql, php
|
|
01:15 am
[Link] | 
|
|
05:20 pm
[Link] |
Amiga Game Music 16 - Movem
This weeks Amiga music is another rare one, but it is so good that I had to put it on YouTube. It's from the game Movem, which is one of those push-blocks-onto-the-correct-squares kind of games, although you would never guess that from this totally epic music. Aside from the music, the other thing that made this game memorable was INSANELY garish graphics (if you think the title screen is bad, you should see the game itself) and it being the first game I remember that had a level editor.
I got Movem on a coverdisk of Amiga Mania, which I remember as being an appallingly bad magazine. They did, however, put very rare and interesting games on their coverdisks, and for that they at least get some credit.
This tune is called "movem up for ya" and it's by Libi in Paradize, not Mr Dux as the title screen says. Nobody is quite sure how that error occurred.
Tags: amiga game music, amiga mania, coverdisks, libi in paradize, movem, mr dux
|
12:18 am
[Link] | I've recently acquired a device for converting images on paper into digital information, so I hope to get back into drawing again. Here's a picture I did a while ago - well, actually it's a drawing based on a photo taken by Akil, so I don't consider this a proper work of art, but I'm quite pleased by how it turned out. It's Bunnyboo. :3
|
|
05:11 pm
[Link] |
Writer's Block: A novel idea
Enders Game! Battle School basically IS a videogame. I suppose you could call it a zero gravity first person shooter/capture the flag game, which I don't think has been done in quite the same way as in Enders Game. I suspect Ender always made it sound more exciting than it really is however. Also, you'd need like 7 friends.
Tags: writer's block
|
|
01:47 am
[Link] |
Desktop Dungeons
I've been playing a neat game lately. It's called Desktop Dungeons, and it is such a nice little game that I feel it merits attention.
Desktop Dungeons is similar to a roguelike, but taken to a minimalist extreme. The entire dungeon (randomly generated every time) is a single screen, full of walls, monsters, the boss, magic items, and so forth. And the first major difference is this - the enemies don't move.
Does that sound stupid? Yes. But it is absolutely ingenious when combined with another mechanic. You see, you can move around wherever you like and kill enemies at will. They won't fight you unless you fight them. But, you only regenerate health and mana by moving into unexplored places.
It doesn't sound very exciting, but that single mechanic is what makes this game such a fun challenge. The fog of war is a resource! This means that you have to consider your options with every battle. If you explore too much of the level without fighting anyone, you're wasting healing resources. But if you don't explore, you're missing out on items that will help you, and you have less of an idea of what you might face later.
A halfling thief in a mostly unexplored dungeon.
So what do you actually do in this game? Well, you select your race and class, which will determine what special abilities you have. My favourite combination is halfling (or gnome) thief, for strategic reasons which I wont bore you with. Then, you begin the game at experience level 1. All the enemies have an experience level from 1 to 9 which tells you how strong they are. To fight them, you just click on them. If you can do enough damage to kill them before they kill you, you get rewarded with experience points (otherwise, you die, obviously).
Higher level monsters are harder to kill, but there is a huge experience reward in doing so which makes it very worthwhile.
The aim of every level is to kill the boss, which is always a level 10 monster. If you manage it, you'll probably unlock a new feature, which is the other great thing about this game. As you get more and more successes, new features in the game unlock - new races, new classes, new levels, etc. etc. etc, so there's always something new to try for.
The best thing about this game, however, is the simplicity. No hundreds of keys here - just mouse clicks. Click to move. Click to attack. It's turn-based, so you can take as much time as you want. I play it in the background while chatting online. That simplicity doesn't make it easy to win!
The free version is available here. They call it an alpha version (they're working on a full price version) but this game is complete and very playable.
Tags: desktop dungeons
|
|
01:05 am
[Link] |
Cryptogram
Here is a step by step solution to the cryptogram.
NTMMSJPWBL PUL TMUPVBUWBL GHWR SUJPHUEK ATZZBZ, PUL P JMBBUHZR HUNMSZWPWHTU AETWNRBL
---------- --- ---------- ---- -------- ------, --- - -------- ------------ --------
The first thing you should spot is that word PUL, which comes up twice. That's likely a common word. It cannot be 'the', because that would turn 'PUL P' into 'the t', which doesn't make sense. How about 'and'? That looks much more likely, since then PUL P turns into 'and a', which is certainly plausible.
NTMMSJPWBL PUL TMUPVBUWBL GHWR SUJPHUEK ATZZBZ, PUL P JMBBUHZR HUNMSZWPWHTU AETWNRBL
------a--d and --na--n--d ---- -n-a-n-- ------, and a ----n--- -n-----a---n -------d
This looks very plausible, because many English words end in d or n. We can now make another guess, because we know that 'ed' is also a common word ending, and it would fit several of the words we have, if B is e.
NTMMSJPWBL PUL TMUPVBUWBL GHWR SUJPHUEK ATZZBZ, PUL P JMBBUHZR HUNMSZWPWHTU AETWNRBL
------a-ed and --na-en-ed ---- -n-a-n-- ----e-, and a --een--- -n-----a---n ------ed
This still looks plausible - 'een' is certainly plausible English. Another pattern we can see is that the second word ends in 'en-ed' and the first word ends in 'a-ed', and the missing letter is the same for both of them. Not many possibilities there, and t is the most likely.
NTMMSJPWBL PUL TMUPVBUWBL GHWR SUJPHUEK ATZZBZ, PUL P JMBBUHZR HUNMSZWPWHTU AETWNRBL
------ated and --na-ented --t- -n-a-n-- ----e-, and a --een--- -n----tat--n ---t--ed
There are several ways you could go from here, but the way I went was to guess that HT was 'io', to make the second from last word 'in----tation', which is plausible. I figured H and T were vowels because they appear in most words, and next to consonants. This gives us
NTMMSJPWBL PUL TMUPVBUWBL GHWR SUJPHUEK ATZZBZ, PUL P JMBBUHZR HUNMSZWPWHTU AETWNRBL
-o----ated and o-na-ented -it- -n-ain-- -o--e-, and a --eeni-- in----tation --ot--ed
Now you can be pretty sure the third word is 'ornamented', and you could easily guess the fourth word is 'with'.
NTMMSJPWBL PUL TMUPVBUWBL GHWR SUJPHUEK ATZZBZ, PUL P JMBBUHZR HUNMSZWPWHTU AETWNRBL
-orr--ated and ornamented with -n-ain-- -o--e-, and a -reeni-h in-r--tation --ot-hed
From here there should be no more problems. '-reeni-h' is probably 'greenish', since the s is still missing and it would likely fit there. You could also have found the s much earlier by noticing that 'ZZBZ' was '--e-', and s is the only letter that will fit.
We can find the u quite easily: '-n-ain--' must begin with a vowel, and we have all the other vowels, so that must be 'un-ain--'. The last word, '--ot-hed', also gives us the c, because it's the only letter that will go between t and h.
NTMMSJPWBL PUL TMUPVBUWBL GHWR SUJPHUEK ATZZBZ, PUL P JMBBUHZR HUNMSZWPWHTU AETWNRBL
corrugated and ornamented with ungain-- -osses, and a greenish incrustation --otched
The rest is easy! ungain-- is obviously ungainly, so you can guess that the last word is 'blotched', which makes the remaining word 'bosses' - a strange word, but it has to be that. And that's it!
corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses, and a greenish incrustation blotched
The full context is from a description of the weird crabs from the distant future:
"Can you imagine a crab as large as yonder table,
with its many legs moving slowly and uncertainly, its big claws
swaying, its long antennae, like carters' whips, waving and feeling,
and its stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallic
front? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses,
and a greenish incrustation blotched it here and there. I could see
the many palps of its complicated mouth flickering and feeling as it
moved."
Well done to fionacat for solving it. :)
Tags: cryptograms
|
|
02:07 am
[Link] |
Cryptograms
Hey all! Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes/condolances for my cat. I'm past the grief now, so I'll make this a less depressing post.
Recently I've had an interest in cryptograms. Cryptograms are those puzzles where a phrase has all its letters replaced by other letters - ie. a monoalphabetic substitution cipher. I discovered I was actually quite good at solving the Evening Standard's codeword puzzle (same idea, but with a crossword instead - each square has a number and you have to work out what letter that number represents). On two occasions I managed to guess an entire word with NO letters uncovered.
So I figured that I could try cryptograms instead, and they turned out to be very easy. Every language has patterns that you just can't hide without difficulty. For example, I just used the word that. That word is a dead giveaway in a cryptogram, because it's a four letter word that begins and ends with the same letter, has two of the most common English letters (t and a), and has one of the most common digraphs (th). Once you have that word, you have three common letters which will help with just about every other word.
Of course, this is no good if you don't have anything to solve, so I wrote a simple Python script which reads in text files (such as, for example, the complete works of Shakespeare, or the Bible, both of which and many more are free at Project Gutenberg), takes a random passage from them, encrypts it, then gives you a simple interface to solve the puzzle. If anyone is interested in it, let me know and I'll make it available.
Of course, I couldn't leave this without offering up a cryptogram, so here's one from The Time Machine. It is solvable!
NTMMSJPWBL PUL TMUPVBUWBL GHWR SUJPHUEK ATZZBZ, PUL P JMBBUHZR HUNMSZWPWHTU AETWNRBL
( fionacat solved it :) )
Tags: cryptograms, the time machine
|
|
02:17 am
[Link] | Well, I was fine when I wrote that tribute, but I figured it would hit me sooner or later, and it did, and I found myself sobbing into my pillow. I've always been a realist about death - I know life dies, and I knew she wasn't going to live much longer. I even swore that I wouldn't mourn my cat, but celebrate her life, and yet I guess grief must be a physiological reaction, because I couldn't stop the tears.
I didn't expect I would miss her so much. She wasn't even an animal that I loved - she was just there, doing her own thing, every day. I liked her, but I didn't lavish attention on her like a pampered pet. She didn't want that. She was never unhappy, and she died the same way, probably the best way a cat can go, and yet I can't think about her without tearing up. It even sounds silly to me, talking about my dead cat to people who I know have experienced far worse tragedies in their lives.
She's buried out in the garden now, wrapped in a blanket that I used to sleep under when I was little, and that tears me up even more. I know it's cliche, but it really is like a part of me died with her.
I know I'll get over it. I'm simply not used to feeling this way. Thanks to you all for your support.
Current Mood:  crushed
Tags: blossom, cats, death
|
|
07:53 pm
[Link] |
Blossom
The Immortal Cat has finally tired of her earthly existence.
Blossom
1993(ish) - 2011
She died some time today, presumably this morning, under my bed while asleep. We only realised after we hadn't seen her all day and her food hadn't been eaten.
The last time I spoke about my cat, I mentioned how boring and unfriendly she was, but she did kind of mellow in the last six months of her life. She became comfortable with sitting on people's laps, although she never quite got the hang of it. She also started pooing and weeing in the house, to my parents' annoyance. :)
I'm trying not to cry, although my mum is in tears and I'm pretty close myself. Because while it is sad that she's gone, I'm not sad for her. She had a great and long life - 17-18 years, over double the average lifespan! And she died in the comfort of her home, despite our efforts to keep her outside because she kept pooing and weeing in the house. Stubborn to the very end. :)
Goodbye, Blossom.
Current Mood: sad
Tags: blossom, cats, death
|
|
09:43 pm
[Link] |
Amiga Game Music 15 - Pinball Dreams
This is number 15 in my series on Amiga Game Music.
Pinball Dreams! One of the most popular pinball games on the Amiga, which wasn't difficult considering there were about five of them.
Pinball is a sad victim of its own success. You see, pinball is a great game. People love to play it. It's addictive, it feels great to score more points and unlock more things (as the creators of Achievement Unlocked know), and you can get really good at it. Or you can also get lucky and pretend that you meant to hit the ball exactly into that ramp. The flashing lights and crazy sounds make it all the more exciting.
It's also expensive. You can't own a pinball machine unless you're rich. If you don't have a pinball machine, you have to pay to play one.
Then computers came along, and first of all, they displaced pinball machines from the arcades, and then people realised they could recreate everything that makes pinball fun on a computer screen. And they did, pretty much killing real pinball in the process. It's made a few comebacks, but has never regained its popularity.
Pinball Dreams is probably the first video game to do pinball well. I say probably because I'm not totally familiar with the long history of pinball video games - however the Amiga would have been one of the first machines capable of high enough resolution, enough colours, and smooth movement and scrolling to do a pinball game that felt like a real pinball machine.
It was released in 1992, with 4 tables, all of which have their own great music (the Nightmare table might even make an appearance in this series), and this is the famous title music, which, for full effect, needs to be played LOUD, because it is an unapologetically clamorous tune. It was made by Olof Gustafsson, and one of the things I love about it is that it seems like it was made for fun. It feels like a tune that says 'you know, we could stop here, but this is sounding pretty good, let's carry on!'. It also makes great use of the MOD format's portamento and vibrato to create a distinctive, slightly out of tune sound.
Current Mood:  full
Tags: achievement unlocked, amiga, amiga game music, mod format, olof gustafsson, pinball, pinball dreams
|
|
04:52 pm
[Link] |
Writer's Block: Coming soon: Hansel & Gretel the tactical role-playing game
Jack and the Beanstalk.
It would be a C64-style, 2D platform game with three different stages.
Stage 1: Growing the beanstalk.
It's assumed that you planted the five magic beans and somehow didn't get beaten by your parents for trading away their only cow. In the story I remember, the beanstalk grows overnight, so this stage would be a platform game where you're outside at night, collecting things to make the beanstalk grow, while avoiding the enemies. There will definitely be bats. Once you have collected enough, morning arrives and the stage ends.
Stage 2: Climbing the beanstalk.
This will be an incredibly annoying vertical scrolling platform stage. You have to climb the beanstalk by jumping on its leaves, which will be flat platforms. As you go up, birds and various monsters will attack you and try to knock you back down to lower platforms. At the top is the cloud with the giant's castle. This will be the bit that everyone says they gave up on because it was too hard or annoying.
Stage 3: steal the goose that lays golden eggs.
This is a boss fight. The giant is as tall as the screen and is standing on the right hand side. Jack is about ten times smaller than him. The giant throws an infinite supply of boulders at you, possibly with some randomness to make it more difficult. Jack has a limited supply of rocks which he can throw at the giant, and to make it worse, he has to hit the giant in the eye to cause damage. If he runs out of rocks or gets hit by a boulder, then it's game over.
If he hits the giant in the eye enough, the giant dies, and behind the giant is the golden goose. The game then starts again but with harder difficulty, faster enemies, etc. Someone posts a youtube video titled 'JACK AND THE BEANSTALK LOOP 256 INSANE!!!'.
EDIT: Turns out it's already been done. Not quite the same as mine, but good enough. :3
Current Mood:  silly
Tags: commodore 64, jack and the beanstalk, writer's block
|
|
09:53 pm
[Link] |
Amiga Game Music 14 - Risky Woods
This is number 14 in my series on Amiga Game Music which as far as I can tell only expandranon is reading. Hi Expy! Today's music is from Risky Woods, a game which I always thought had a hilarious title. Beware the slightly perilous forest!
Risky Woods was a horizontally scrolling platform game with a very nice visual and sound style, which actually felt quite sinister at times. The music of the game somehow manages to be oppressive and upbeat at the same time, and this music - my favourite piece from the game - is an example of that, beginning quite sinister, but then going into fast paced 80s electronic style, while still feeling kinda worrying.
This is the theme for the first boss (at least, I think it is - I never had the full game)
Tags: amiga, amiga game music, expandranon, risky woods
|
|
02:21 pm
[Link] |
Terraria
Note to self: check out Terraria. According to the video I just watched, it's a Minecraft inspired 2D platformer with a randomly-generated world, deformable landscape, and RPG elements.
Tags: minecraft, terraria
|
01:19 pm
[Link] |
Amiga Game Music 13 - Snakes
This week's Amiga game music is the title theme from the game Snakes. It's not a spectacular tune like some that I've covered here, but it is nice and notable for attempting a 'real' style of music - there's not much of an electronic sound here, it's all trumpets and brush drums.
Snakes was a fun and fairly hard competitive snake game and had nice ingame themes as well, which I may upload if I get requests on Youtube. Not a lot else to say about it... enjoy the theme!
Current Mood: calm
Tags: amiga game music, hein holt, snakes
|
01:16 pm
[Link] |
Update!
A little status update here. I'm looking for work again, since the work at my company has become very slow (they haven't called me in for weeks). While I'm no fan of jobhunting, it should be less depressing than before, since this time I actually have experience and things to dangle in front of employers. I might even be able to survive the next three months with my sister staying over.
Next week I'm going to Cambridge to visit timwi. I think I shall go by coach - trains are just absurdly expensive (it was about £35 for a return ticket last time I went. It's not THAT far away, the journey only takes two hours!). I've always avoided coaches because they take longer, and I just prefer the feeling of being on a train, but I have a laptop and a Nintendo DS, and a nice fresh copy of Frost Dancers if that fails, so I'm going to give it a try.
Current Mood:  tired
Tags: cambridge, coaches, frost dancers, job, jobhunting, laptop, nintendo ds, sister, timwi, trains
|
|
04:08 pm
[Link] |
Amiga Game Music 12 - Blaster
This is number 12 in my series on Amiga game music. This time it is a game that none of you have played or even heard of (prove me wrong, I'll be impressed!). Blaster is a great shooter with awful graphics, as you can see. The terrible visuals are I think slightly intentional - it gives the game a very childlike and slightly humourous look, which is obviously misdirection as this game was frigging hard!
The first time I heard this tune, I was sure it was a version of some classical music that I'd heard. Decades later, I still feel that may be true, but I have never heard any music like it. Still, it is a lovely little melody and deserves to be recognised.
If you want to see this game in action, here is a playthrough of some of the levels.
Red World
Green World
Yellow World
Cyan World
Here's the tune!
Tags: amiga, amiga game music, blaster, j r evans, shoot 'em ups
|
|
03:57 pm
[Link] |
British Monarchs Quiz
I've been playing with Javascript. :3
This is a fairly useless proof of concept, since the problem with implementing a quiz in Javascript is that anyone can look at the source to find the answers. But it was a fun little project. It uses XMLHttpRequest to pull a JSON file from the server, then constructs random questions and several random wrong answers using Javascript DOM. The subject in this case is British monarchs and their reigns. I thought it might be a useful educational tool for some subjects (not really this one, since nobody cares about those dates anyway).
If you fancy having a computer telling you how you keep getting things wrong, here it is!
British Monarchs Quiz
Current Mood: geeky
Tags: dom, javascript, json, monarchs, programming, quizzes, xmlhttprequest
|
|
03:24 pm
[Link] |
Job
Time for a real post. My parents have been on holiday for the past month, but they'll be back soon. I haven't really made use of my alone time very well. It's like, I was totally looking forward to being on my own and having privacy for a change, but then I just couldn't think of anything exciting to do. It has been nice to just sit with my laptop in the front room and watch the tv, although I'm reminded why I stopped watching in the first place - there's so much rubbish on tv now. It's not getting better. Still, Doctor Who this month!
Anyway, my main reason for updating is to let people know what I'm doing now. I got a job last year doing web development part-time, and it's been a really useful experience. It hasn't paid well, but the things I can put on my CV are well worth it. Boring web development stuff follows, feel free to skip. :)
Before I got this job, the last time I had done any serious web development was back at university. In 2002. When people were still using Netscape. It took me a while to get to grips with how the web is now, and some of my work has been very amateur, but I'm getting better all the time.
Things I don't like about web development? The main one is Internet Explorer. I know, you've heard that a million times, but IE earns everything that is said about it. It is ridiculous that the web browser used by 90% of the world cannot comply with the W3C standards. It practically doubles my workload. And why is this even happening? Firefox is open source. It's not like Microsoft can't get the staff or don't have the money to keep up to date! How does it even benefit them? IE9, for example, is only just getting around to supporting the HTML5 canvas, something that every other browser has had for a couple of years. I swear they do it just to annoy web developers.
Things I like... aside from IE, the web has gotten better and is getting better for developers. There now exist standards which proper browsers will respect - if you write a page to be standards compliant, then all browsers which respect the standards (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc) should display in the same way. All we have to do now is wait about 5 years for IE to catch up. The open source libraries that have been made for Javascript are also useful, especially jQuery. There are even web frameworks like Joomla and Django that supposedly take some of the work out of developing a website, although I've yet to try those. Sadly, although I like the look of Django, I'll probably never use it because I can never be sure that a client's hosting company will provide it.
Anyway, here's looking forward to a better web in the future! For those who haven't seen the HTML5 canvas in action, it's worth checking out - there are now many games which have been written for it to show off what it can do, and they're pretty fun. Also, I wrote this! http://www.avians.net/~hawthorn/html5.html
Current Mood: accomplished
Tags: django, html, html5, internet explorer, javascript, job, joomla, jquery, microsoft, web development
|
|
02:02 am
[Link] |
Amiga Game Music 11 - Anthrox Cracktro
This is the eleventh in my series on Amiga game music.
But this one isn't from a game, as such. The Amiga had a thriving underground of pirate groups, many of whom had been pirates for the C64 before it, and one of the things they would do, upon cracking a game's copy protection (assuming it had any) would be to add their own intro to the game, giving personal messages, shoutouts to other pirates, and contact details. (I kinda wonder why ELSPA could never track these guys down if they left their phone numbers, but I guess they had their ways.)
Now, remembering that Amiga floppy disks had around 880 KB of space on them to begin with, these intros obviously had to be pretty small. And pirates loved this challenge of producing great intros in this tiny amount of space. They continuously pushed the boundaries of what they could do with their limited resources in an attempt to outdo each other. And this evolved into the Amiga demoscene, with demoscene groups showing off what they could do with the Amiga's hardware.
The demoscene still exists today, although its focus has changed a little - since there are very few memory limits nowadays, the challenge of working with limited resources is gone (although competitions are often run with a filesize limit to recreate these challenges). It's more about the artisticness these days. If you're interested, you can find many demoscene videos on Youtube.
Anyway, back to the series. This is an intro to a pirated copy of the game Chuck Rock II, by the pirate group Anthrox. I don't know the name of the musician, which is a shame, because he should be credited for this fantastic chiptune. Give this one a chance - it takes about 30 seconds to get started, but it's a beautiful piece, and an example of just what you can do with very little.
Current Mood: nostalgic
Tags: amiga game music, anthrox, chuck rock 2, cracktros, demoscene
|
|
02:25 am
[Link] |
Amiga Game Music 10 - Clockwiser
Welcome to the tenth in my series on Amiga Game Music. This time, it's Clockwiser, a puzzle game which, suprisingly, I haven't seen done again even in this age of three-in-a-row Flash games. Clockwiser has a slightly different gimmick: you select a rectangle of blocks, and you can make the blocks shift clockwise or anticlockwise around the rectangle, until the left side of the screen matches the right side. So it's kinda like a sliding block game, but with bombs and all kinds of other fun.
This MOD tune never made it into the finished game. It seems to happen more often than expected with Amiga games, and I always find it weird - this music is great, why would you not have it in the final game?!
Anyway, this is a very nifty tune, full of detail and it has a strange uplifting, nostalgic feel to it. Not just because it is nostalgia, because even in the 90s when I first heard it, it had the same effect. Someone didn't just slap this together - they cared, and you can tell.
It's also, and if anyone knows music, perhaps they can tell me what this is called - a tune that seems to start in the middle. Amiga tunes were nearly always intended to repeat, and this does (it's difficult to tell because Youtube cuts the last half second off, but the end does join seamlessly to the beginning), but you can distinctly hear an 'end' of the tune in the middle, and it 'starts' again shortly after. It's not a mistake - this was intended to be played as it is - and it's not the only Amiga tune that does this. I always wondered why.
Anyway, here it is, so enjoy!
Current Mood: nostalgic
Tags: amiga game music, clockwiser
|
|
12:10 am
[Link] |
hey, Starglider
someone tell starglider there's an article about Making of Starglider in this month's Retro Gamer. :3
Tags: retro gamer, starglider
|
|
12:18 am
[Link] |
Amiga Game Music 9 - Woody's World
Another piece from my second favorite Amiga composer, Blair Zuppicich, and another tune that I would wait on the title screen for just to listen all the way through. This is the title theme.
I said last time that I didn't know if Blair Zuppicich was still around, but I got an excellent surprise yesterday, as he got in touch with me! He's still a musician and I think he's moving into film soundtracks now.
Woody's World was a platform game, one that didn't sell very well, but that I liked - it was one of those games with big levels which were full of secrets, like The Addams Family. I suspect it was inspired by Mario as well. I also liked the power-up mechanism; at points in the game you can find crowns, which turn you into a prince, and then a king, each promotion accompanied by a costume change and a fanfare.
This quite beautiful tune is in MED format, which was an enhanced form of MOD, produced by a music program called OctaMED, which I used to have. It's called OctaMED because it could combine the Amiga's four sound channels in software to give the effect of eight channels. I don't know if Zuppicich ever used eight channels - it doesn't sound like he is here, and to be honest, most Amiga composers could produce excellent sounds with just four.
Current Mood:  weird
Tags: amiga game music, blair zuppicich, woody's world
|
|
10:20 pm
[Link] |
Street Racer music!
I've been searching for this for years! On the Playstation 1 in the mid nineties there was a racing game called Street Racer. Yeah, pretty boring name, I know, which is one reason this has been so difficult to find. It was a Wacky Races style game where you could use your character's special abilities to battle with the other players. I remember playing it with my brothers and it was kinda fun.
And there's one piece of music which I've never forgotten - a fun, synthy remix of Ride of the Valkyries. And I just rediscovered it! This is the Sega Saturn version, but as far as I remember it is the same tune.
Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: This!
Tags: playstation, ride of the valkyries, street racer
|
|
06:30 pm
[Link] |
My Top Ten Disturbing Childhood Entertainment Memories
It suddenly occurred to me to compile a list of the top ten most disturbing things from what I saw and read in my childhood. This list is probably inaccurate as I haven't remembered the full horrors of those years, but here goes. This is a personal list, so what I found creepy may not apply to you. :3
10. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (BBC TV) - the guide.
You might find this one odd, but I found the pseudo-computer-animated guide sequences both excellent AND creepy. They have amazing otherworldly synth music and the contrast of colour on black combined with that actually made me kinda scared of the dark when I was little, as if letters might start flashing out at me. I can't explain this one - it's like the fear some people have of TV idents. The themes the guide covered also were a little scary as well, especially the one where it's mathematically proved that the universe doesn't exist and your life is a delusion.
9. The Outer Limits (1995 series) - the boogeyman.
There was an episode about the boogeyman. I don't remember it. All I remember is that the boogeyman is scary, the episode was scary, but at the end it's all over. The child's being put to bed by her mum, and all is well.
And then the camera pans down to under her bed, and two glowing red dots - the boogeyman's eyes - appear.
It was just before bedtime. Jesus.
I was old enough by then to know that such things weren't real. My little brothers weren't. In a moment of macho-ness, I checked under their beds (we slept in the same room), assuring them it wasn't scary. I WAS LYING. I was fricking terrified.
8. Apidya - the dead rat
Regular readers know that Apidya is my favourite computer game. It's a shoot em up where you fly a bee and that's all I'll say, but this was the freakiest thing I'd ever seen in an Amiga game. There's a boss battle with three maggots that grow out of a dead rat in the sewer. That's bad enough! And then, I thought... 'hey. When I killed the mole, I could fly into his molehill and there was a bonus level. I could also fly into that pike's mouth and there was a bonus level there as well. What if... OH MY GOD NO THAT CAN'T BE REAL OH GOD IT IS'
Yes, you're seeing the inside of the dead rat. This picture spares you the heaving guts and bodily noises as you fly through.
7. The Curse of the Lost Idol - you've found the idol.
I mentioned this incredibly creepy Usborne Puzzle Adventure book before. It's not actually disturbing, but something about this book chilled me to the bone. The specific bit I'm remembering is where the idol is hidden in a room, the picture of which is shown to the reader. The room is full of junk, but we're told that the main character can see the idol, so it's definitely in there. What's weird is that this is halfway through the book. What's going on? This is wrong, if we have the idol now it's all over! It turns out that the idol is a fake.
6. 999 - the frigging ending theme
999 was a show in which dangerous and weird real-life accidents would be reconstructed, showing you what happened, what the emergency services did, all presented quite dramatically. The ones I remember most were where a boy is impaled through the neck by a javelin, and when a girl gets her hair sucked into the vent on a jacuzzi and nearly drowns. The show was quite scary, but at the end, you get this theme. This. Music. TERRIFIED. Me. The change to major chords at the end somehow made it worse!
5. Short Circuit 2 - Johnny Five's beating
Did you know, my mum found this scene too disturbing to watch? I didn't - which is to say it was disturbing, but not too disturbing to watch. But as a child I couldn't stop thinking about how much pain he was in, or if he could even feel pain. And I darn near cried when he had to steal a car battery even when he was close to death. All the fun went away and we were faced with Johnny Five's mortality, which hadn't even been suggested up until now.
4. The Animals of Farthing Wood - the butcher bird
As a huge Animals of Farthing Wood fan (its probably what got me on the path to being a furry), I knew that it was hard in the animal world. Death could come at any time and you just have to accept that. And I had.
And then, TAoFW managed to shock me.
Yes, this is a KID'S SHOW where ANY character can die and some have ALREADY, and it GOT WORSE! The mice have just had babies. Sweet little defenseless mouse babies. I know, you're thinking 'those poor babies, they're going to die!' No. It's worse than that. They don't just die.
For those who don't know their birds, shrikes are odd little predatory birds who have a habit of keeping their food in larders. A larder is a big thorny bush. They IMPALE ANIMALS ON THORNS. Possibly alive.
Yes, you get to see these three, innocent mouse babies dead, impaled through the chest and hanging there for the butcher bird to eat when he feels like it. He gets away with it as well. He isn't even sorry.
3. Through the Dragon's Eye - a dragon melts the Pelamots.
So, you're six or seven years old and in infant school. The teachers show this wonderful show about a magical land called Pelamar where some human kids have to learn to read in order to build the Veetacore which will defeat the bad dragon. It's the most inspiring and epic show you've ever seen in your six-year-long life.
You've just read Charlotte's Web, so you know what death is and you know that people don't come back from being dead.
Then the bad dragon comes along and MELTS THREE OF THE CHARACTERS FROM YOUR SHOW INTO PUDDLES OF FLESH-COLOURED SLUDGE. You didn't know that people could melt that way. You deduce that these people have just died in the most agonisingly horrible way. Sweet dreams, kids! Don't forget what you learned!
2. Who Framed Roger Rabbit - JUDGE. FRICKING. DOOM.
"Remember me, Eddie? When I killed your brother, I talked - JUST - LIKE - THIIIIIIIIIIIIIS!!!"
1. The Secret of NIHM - the rat being injected with a needle
Most people remember the creepy owl from this film. I don't. I remember exactly two things. Mrs Whatshername walking through endless thorns, and a very quick scene of a needle plunging into the back of a rat's neck. I saw this film so early in my life that I didn't even know I'd seen it. I just had nightmares about endless thorns, and the needle was the crowning moment of horror for me. Of course, that might be personal, since I do have a fear of needles. But come on! I must have been like three years old! Why was I watching that film?!
So, that's my top ten. I'd be interested to see if anyone shares any of these!
Current Music: Tales of the Unexpected theme, which would have been number 11
Tags: 999, apidya, short circuit 2, the animals of farthing wood, the curse of the lost idol, the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, the outer limits, the secret of nimh, through the dragon's eye, top ten, who framed roger rabbit?
|
|
10:36 pm
[Link] |
Owl Movie!
I've only seen three Zack Snyder movies: 300, Watchmen, and now this one, Owl Movie (also known as Legend of the Guardians for some reason). And I liked all of them. Snyder is one of those directors who just manages to make films interesting to watch, a quality he shares with James Cameron. It's not just the slow motion. It's some other quality I've never been able to put my finger on, where even if you know what happens next, you still want to watch it for some reason. This is why I think that people who said 'Avatar is awful! It's all flashy graphics and no story!' are talking nonsense. Yes, those things are true, but it was good. Avatar had some quality beyond that which I'm guessing is good direction.
Back to Owl Movie. As I hinted above, I liked it. But was it good?
( Find out below! Warning, spoilers... )
Current Mood: pleased
Tags: 3d, cinema, films, kludd, owl movie, owls, soren, zack snyder
|
|
03:05 pm
[Link] | I'm only posting this because I did one for kibbe, and the last question suggests to. I know most people on my LJ don't know me well enough to answer some of the questions, so you can ignore this post if you like. :3
I want to know 28 things about you. I don't care if we've never talked, never really clicked, or if we already know everything about each other. I really don't. You are obviously on my flist, so let me know with whom I'm friends!
01. Your middle name, or explain your chosen name:
02. Mental age:
03. Single or taken:
04. Favorite book:
05. Favorite song or album:
06. What do you believe is your calling in life? Your greatest passion?
07. What's your worst recurring nightmare/biggest fear?
08. Faith, has you any? And if so, what, and if not, why not?:
09. Do we know each other outside of LJ? Do we want to?
10. What's your philosophy on life?
11. Is the bottle half-full or half-empty?
12. Would you tell me something painful if it was in my best interest?
13. What is your favorite memory of us?
14. What is your favorite guilty pleasure?
15. Tell me one odd/interesting fact about you:
16. You can have three wishes what are they?
17. What is your favorite food?
18. Which country is your spiritual home?
19. What is your big weakness?
20. Do you think I'm a good person?
21. What was your best/favorite subject at school?
22. Describe your accent:
23. If you could change anything about me, would you?
24. What do you wear to sleep?
25. Gender identity?
26. Affectionate/sexual orientation?
27. If I only had one day to live, what would we do together? (If you have no idea, just say something crazy, it'll entertain me!)
28. Will you repost this so I can fill it out for you?
Tags: memes
|
|
09:35 pm
[Link] |
Peggy Mitchell leaves EastEnders
Do you watch EastEnders? No, me neither. Even so, try watching this without tearing up.
Current Mood: sad
Tags: eastenders
|
|
10:11 pm
[Link] | 
|
|
12:45 am
[Link] |
Amiga game music 8 - Q-Bic
YouTube finally has this tune, which is lucky since I don't have to record it. This is a weird tune from the beginning of the game Q-Bic, which is a Q-bert clone. It had very nice graphics for a non commercial game - I know it looks fairly simple on youtube, but on the Amiga it looked very smooth and reflective and stuff.
The tune has been credited to Ronald Weeserik in the past, although that name seems to be a group name rather than the name of a person, so it's difficult to tell.
Current Mood: cheerful
Tags: amiga game music, q-bic, ronald weeserik
|
|
12:26 am
[Link] |
Amiga Game Music 7 - Quik the Thunder Rabbit
- Galactic
- Statix
- Cybernetix
- Cannon Fodder
- Chuck Rock 2
- Bill's Tomato Game
- Quik the Thunder Rabbit
I haven't done one of these for a while, but I decided I might as well again. A regular feature is good. So here's a bonus - two pieces instead of one! The real reason I'm doing two is that these two tunes are related, as you'll be able to tell when you listen.
The tunes are from level 2 of Quik the Thunder Rabbit, which was an Amiga game inspired by Sonic the Hedgehog, although nowhere near as impressive. Still, it wasn't a bad game. And it had rather good and occasionally scary music by Philippe Verriere. Listen below!
Current Mood: tired
Tags: amiga game music, quik the thunder rabbit
|
[<< Previous 50 entries] |
