The blog

Zelda Takeover Day

2011-11-18T11:42:00.003Z

Just in time for the release of Skyward Sword I've managed to put together a video about the Zelda-focused day from Gamecity 6.

Enjoy.

Oh, by the way - it's mp4 format. For some reason it won't let me attach the flv version as well, so I'm going to upload that separately, unfortunately.

FLV version:

(Awful) Anime Adaptations 2: Blood The Last Vampire: Part 4

2011-09-08T22:17:00.002+01:00

Well, here it is:

The 4th and final of the second episode of (Awful) Anime Adaptations.

Now I can finally get to writing the others. Right after I finish Deus Ex, of course...

Gaiking

2011-07-29T13:12:00.000+01:00

Admittedly I have not watched the original, but this has piqued my interest enough to get added onto my list.

EvE Mining Profit Calculator v1.0 - Release

2011-06-26T19:35:00.002+01:00

I have written a mining calculator for EvE Online that the community could find useful - by entering the necessary values it will tell you in order of priority which ores to mine, what to do with said ore, and the amount of money the player can expect to make, assuming they have a full cargo-hold of the stuff.

Here is the public dropbox link for it: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33554381/EveMiningForProfit.zip

If I update it to be more complicated, then I think I can just update the zip file, so it will have the latest version in it.

(Awful) Anime Adaptations 2: Blood The Last Vampire: Part 3

2011-06-09T20:21:00.002+01:00

Here is part 3 - a little short, but I decided to split the final section into 2, rather than try to trim it down. Blip's answer said that the videos just need to be under 15 minutes, so I don't need to retroactively edit part 2.

Video update

2011-06-04T21:38:00.001+01:00

Well, this is confusing.

I am still working with the idea of distributing to youtube, either through blip or a separate youtube account (though I would of course prefer to manage it from one central account)

Youtube states that videos can be up to 15 minutes long, but blip.tv claims that they need to be less than 10. I am currently trying to find out if blip is, well, having a blip, or if their rules are valid.

If they are, it means that part 2 of the blood review is too long, and needs to be split into 2 parts.

The thing is, currently part 3 is about 16 minutes long, which would be too long anyway. But whether I just trim it, or if I also split that into 2, is dependent on the rules.

So, basically, I'm getting most of the work done, but I am unlikely to publish until I figure this out.

I also attempted to re-encode the Dragonball review using the desk bell sound rather than the bowl sound, which would make me feel better about enabling advertising on the episode (I'm thinking of splitting it into at least 2 parts, see the rules above)

However, I had to re-encode the resources I used, which was fine. Except that the film itself for some reason lost it's positioning markers, so each clip is just the Fox logo.

I also don't have any of the audio files anymore. As a result, that's not probably not going to work. At all.

XAML is silly

2011-05-26T12:47:00.002+01:00

Someone came into work today with a t-shirt saying:
<canvas>
ideas go here
</canvas>

I said it was HTML5, he said it was XAML, especially since it is a Microsoft shirt.
Now, he is technically correct, but I hate the term anyway. This may not be entirely correct, but this is how I see the situation:

Here's the thing, XAML means "Extensible Application Markup Language" - it's XML with an A inserted. What is it, though? How does it differ from XML?

From what I can tell, it doesn't.
XAML is just XML interpreted by a program in a particular way, it is a subset of XML. As a language, it doesn't differ or add anything to XML. The difference is in how the XML is interpreted by an external program.

As such, XAML doesn't deserve to be called a different language.

It's not like HTML - since HTML4, HTML has incorporated XML, becoming XHTML. But XHTML is visibly different to XML (as a major difference, HTML has attributes within the tag definition itself, but XML's "attributes" are sub-tags)

Just to re-iterate, I'm going to double check all of this, but as of right now, this is how it seems to me. XAML is not a language, it is an extension of Extensible Markup Language (XML), with no differences that can justify calling it a separate language.

Updates

2011-05-16T20:04:00.003+01:00

Right, first off, the third part of the video is almost done. Almost. I hope to finish it soon.

Secondly, I have had another article published, which I've backed up here.

Thirdly, I think I'm going to re-design the sidebar. Currently it's Javascript injecting into the DOM. I did that so that I could have one place to control it all from, and for the "expandy-collapsey" behaviour you need to use some kind of scripting language. However, people can disable javascript and some browsers may object to the way it is done, which means that some people are getting an inferior user experience.

So, I would prefer to use some kind of server-side scripting instead, though with javascript for the expanding - perhaps, due to what I described before, I can start everything off expanded, then collapse it appropriately on page load, so if anyone has JS disabled they will still see all of the links.

However, there is the possibility this will mess up the counter, as it might then count the server's IP rather than the visitor's.

Even if all of that works, I'm not sure how to embed a server-side return into the side bar which is, some of the time, controlled by blogger.

So, lots to look into.

I'll at least categorize the links better, too.

Inception Baby

2011-03-17T20:35:00.002Z

It's Comic Relief tomorrow, and so far the advertising has generated 7 cents for charity.

Maybe this will turn the tide:

(Awful) Anime Adaptations 2: Blood The Last Vampire: Part 2

2011-02-27T11:44:00.000Z

Here's part 2 of the review, where I discuss the first act and a large chunk of the second act of the actual film.

Once again, advertising proceeds are going to Comic Relief.

(Awful) Anime Adaptations 2: Blood The Last Vampire: Part 1

2011-02-20T16:22:00.005Z

Having been released from my internment from thinking Dragonball Evolution might be any good, I decide to celebrate my new found freedom.

Part 1.

I apologize for the widely varying sound quality throughout the video, this took a long time to make and I was plagued with technical issues.

[edit] I have enabled advertising, which took a while (blip.tv uses proprietary IE only code, naughty naughty) - since it is Comic Relief on March 18th, I promise to give any and all proceeds to them.

I will either multiply it, or add a lump sum, or both. I haven't decided yet.

RAGE

2011-01-15T10:30:00.003Z

After work yesterday, I came across this.

It made me only think one thing: This completely messes up my plans, as now I'll need to incorporate this into the Death Note review, which was the next video I was planning to do (after the one I'm currently working on)

Then, this morning I find this - so someone else has done it first, which apparently breaks some kind of unwritten law, though I'm not amongst these guys and I doubt they pay any attention to what I do.

Yes, the Dragonball review came after a group of them had already done it, but I had also been writing it for months before their video came out.

So, here I am, officially stating my intentions right here and now. This is my list of things I am intending to review:

Dragonball Evolution (done)
Blood: The Last Vampire
Death Note, Death Note 2: The Last Name, Death Note: L: Change The WorLd
Mushishi
Guyver, Guyver: Dark Hero
20th Century Boys 1-3

The Last Airbender (though I'll need to wait in case any more are made)
Cowboy Bebop (when it's finally released)
Ghost In The Shell (when it's released)
Akira (when it's released)
Battle Angel Alita (when it's released)
Gantz

[edited to add Gantz to the list]

Progress

2011-01-13T19:54:00.002Z

Ok, I'm making some progress on the video. I intend to finish it by the end of the month.

Other than that, I done went bought a domain! aradiel.co.uk

I've fiddled with a few of the urls dotted around the place and everything seems to be working as intended.

Happy New Year

2011-01-02T09:56:00.004Z

And so forth.

Video is coming along, though I am suffering through setback after setback after setback.

The main issue at the moment is that I'm re-recording selected audio chunks which I didn't think were that good the first time around.

However, these chunks sound different in terms of ambient noise, which is confusing because I'm recording under the same conditions and with the same equipment as before.

So, I'm presented with two choices:

1) Suck it up

2) Re-record all of the audio

I refuse to do number 2.

In the interests of getting something out at some point, I may split the video into a couple of parts and post the first while working on the second. The structure of the video allows for this somewhat, as there are a good few minutes of reviewing other things before I get to the actual film. This is a rather ambitious video this time around, you see.

[edit] Also, when viewing this post I notice that I am being prompted for a user-name and password, presumably for my sidebar, despite it not being in a password protected folder (it's just in the normal public_html folder)

I'll get that sorted asap.

[edit2] Jon got that sorted asap.

Nero is incredibly annoying

2010-10-17T08:58:00.002+01:00

I've been using Nero Vision in order to do my next video. A few weeks ago, after getting quite far, the program crashed and corrupted my project so I had to start from scratch.

Last night I also got reasonably far, but this morning the saved project keeps claiming that it's empty, so I have to start from scratch. When I do, and I drag something in the timeline, it is not placing it where I let go of the mouse button but somewhere in the future instead.

Though the Cyberlink Powerdirector I used for the first video had it's share of problems and limitations, it still wasn't quite as annoying and buggy as this is turning out to be.

Quick update

2010-09-26T15:45:00.002+01:00

I'm currently working on my next video - I've got a lot of the first 15 minutes done, but I need to re-record my video parts, as well as the audio. Though I had roughly 600 sound files and then cut them down, upon re-listening, I flubbed a good deal of the "good" takes.

Also, I've managed to get some good sound effects, so will likely re-encode the Dragonball video using those, so that I can then enable ads and maybe get a little bit of recompense towards what I've already spent on these.

Finally, I don't want to only review bad films, but I also don't want to manage multiple blip accounts, so though the show is registered on blip as "Aradiel", the episodes themselves will be labelled appropriately (so, the Dragonball one is now no longer "Dragonball Evolution: A Review" but is "Awful Adaptations episode 1: Dragonball Evolution")

So, coming soonish is "Awful Adaptations episode 2: Blood the last Vampire", to then be followed by "Awesome Adaptations episode 1" then another awful, then an awesome and so on.

CSS Pseudo clases

2010-08-20T12:02:00.003+01:00

Just a quick heads up for anyone who reads this and has suffered a problem with this, but CSS pseudo classes need to be expressed in a particular way to guarantee that they work:

Normally in css, you will define things with a particular id using #(id) and a class is .(classname)

The pseudo class allows you to define particular behaviour, for example, if you want something to change appearence when you hover over it you would use :hover

So, to combine them, if you want everything with a particular class to look a particular way when you hover on it, you might want to try .(classname):hover

However, this does not always work (in Firefox), as I found out five minutes ago.

I was dealing with divs, and the solution was to say div.(classname):hover

So, when using pseudo classes, in order to make sure things work, try to be as precise as possible - (tagname).(classname):(pseudoclass)

[edit]

However, I subsequently discovered that the hover pseudo class is only valid for links ("a" tags) in IE.

In order ot make them behave like divs, make the use display:block, and if you really want to, remove the href.

Hell is the Epoché

2010-08-04T21:19:00.002+01:00

An interesting thought hit me a little while ago. When studying different Philosophers, even ones which are contained within the same label, it is interesting how different they seem to be. Seem being a key word.

Take for example Edmund Husserl and Jean-Paul Sartre. Both are Existentialists but both say quite different things.

Husserl came first and tried to tackle the concept of how we understand ourselves. When we describe things in the world we tend to describe them as distinct from us, entirely separate. We describe objects as objects and ourselves as subjects. But we can also perceive ourselves as objects. So which are we? Subjects, objects, or some blend of both? And what about other things, what are they, really?

In order for us to find out he proposed a mental exercise, a sort of meditation. Don't deny that the world exists, that you exist, that everything else accepts as you perceive, but don't accept it either. Be agnostic. Detach your mind, somehow, reflect and you will perceive or experience (he was very bad at explaining his concepts) the "Transcendental Ego", the method by which we perceive and understand the world.

Now, as for Sartre, he wrote a lot of plays. One of which was called "No Exit", wherein a group of people found themselves in hell, in a room and with no eyelids. The crux of it was the saying "Hell is other people" - we judge ourselves by how others react to us, how others perceive us. This was a more ethics focussed take on matters, but it seems to me that these ideas are not too dissimilar. In fact, I would perhaps go so far as to say that the transcendental ego is encompassed within how other people react to us.

To further develop this idea, perhaps we can expand the concept of us understanding ourselves by how other things react to us so that it also includes physical reactions. We perceive ourselves as objects because we can push the glass off the table.

It is at this point that I realise somewhat that Heidegger acts as the required bridge between these concepts - Heidegger said that the way we normally describe the world is as "Zuhanden" ("To hand") but the way we tend to perceive the world is as the "Vorhanden" ("For hand")

Though we describe the world as subjects and objects, we perceive it as tools. Rather than seeing the glass as an object completely separate from ourselves, we see it as a container we can pick up and interact with.

I've now lost most if not all capability of describing this any further, but what I've described is hopefully enough to get my random point across.

Metro Newspaper Complicit in Commercial Copyright Infringement

2010-07-03T14:47:00.002+01:00

The Metro Newspaper, which is freely distributed on the transport networks of Britain, has promoted commercial copy-right infringement twice in the past 7 months.
Scan 1: Tuesday 22nd December 2009
Scan 2: Tuesday 29th June 2010

I am referring in particular to the anime sites they mention in the above two clippings - sites which stream anime shows an films online. Both sites use advertising and or VIP programs in order to generate revenue.

In both clippings they promote the sites using Bleach and Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

The former, last time I checked, is not streamed or licensed to be streamed by the rights holders.
The latter is distributed in the UK by Manga Entertainment, which streams 5 episodes at a time from it's own website, and does not license any other sites to stream episodes.

So, in the latter case, a national newspaper is promoting a site which partakes in commercial copy-right infringement while there is a free official alternative available for use.

I have already sent them an email expressing my thoughts on the matter, but I thought I should make this as public as possible.

Internet Explorer

2010-06-08T22:52:00.004+01:00

This is why Internet Explorer sucks and Microsoft is guilty of false advertising.

http://www.w3schools.com/css/pr_dim_max-height.asp

The above is a link to the w3c's website explaining a particular CSS2 element - "max-height"

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/compare/default.aspx

This is Microsoft's page comparing the major browsers. Notice how their own product, of course, has more ticks against it than the other browsers.

I could go through each one of those explaining why the missing ticks should not be missing, or why the tick should actually be a cross, but instead I will just focus on the claim that it supports CSS2.1 - admittedly it does not say it supports all of CSS2.1, but the w3c site says that IE supports the property. As do other sites I have visited.

These sites are wrong. IE does not support max-height.

I did a little experiment to prove this. The following pictures are cropped screenshots comparing Google Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer 8. They compare how they render a div with the following style settings:

width: 50px;

max-height: 50px;

overflow: auto;

border: 2px solid blue;

Now, what results would you expect from this?

A box with a 2 pixel thick blue border. It will be 50 pixels wide. It's height will be dynamic up to a maximum of 50 pixels. When the content of the box extends beyond those 50x50 limits, scrollbars will appear.

Now, lets look at the results:

Google Chrome

Firefox

Internet Explorer

That's right, Internet Explorer fails to do what it should, completely ignoring the max-height property.

So, Microsoft, you claim that your browser supports more CSS2.1 than other browsers, but that other browsers support more HTML5 and CSS3 (the things that make CSS2.1 redundant)

All I can say is [citation needed] - perhaps you should focus on supporting the features your developers will need rather than, at most, obscure features no one who's competent in web design cares about.

Disdain for world... growing

2010-06-08T13:44:00.002+01:00

This morning on the news it was revealed that hospitals that take in the same patient twice in a month, where the second time they come in is a direct concequence of being discharged too early, the hopsital will be "fined"

Now, why does this annoy me? Think about what a fine is - it is a cost. You park in the wrong place, you get charged money etc

Now, in this case, the word fine is wholey inappropriate. Here is how it was explained to me:
When someone enters a hospital for treatment, the NHS pays the hospital a lump sum. The same pateint gets discharged early, comes back in because they haven't fully recovered, and the hospital gets another lump sum.
What is being suggested is that in such cases the hospital would not get the second lump sum. Essentially, because the patient hadn't finished being treated adequately, then their return to the hospital is still part of the first treatment.
This is not a fine, just an extension of the rules as they stand to prevent abuse. For it to be a fine, they would have to have the second sum (which they don't) or be entitled to the second sum. Which they are not.

Now, I want to extrapolate this to the idea of piracy. Large companies claim that when their product is pirated, that it is a loss. Now, ignoring that the assumption that 1 pirated copy is a lost sale* it is like claiming they had money which has now been taken away, or that they are entitled to the money. The latter is, at least on the face of it, fair enough, but the first is utter rubbish.
The Hurt Locker cost $15 million to make, and has grossed $150 million. Ten times their investment. 1000%.
Yet they are chalking up every download as a loss. I cannot see how a company that has managed to make a profit can claim a loss. It doesn't make sense.

*As a direct counter example, I downloaded 20th Century Boys part 1. I watched it. I have now bought the DVD twice. That is only one example, I have several.

Companies just don't get it

2010-05-17T12:51:00.002+01:00

Last week I got an email from moneysavingexpert, within which one of the offers it mentioned was a £10 voucher for a film and tv streaming site: blinkbox.com

So I used it to give it a go, buying Iron Man (£2.99)
I could stream it only, but you can also download it - 1.3 gigs. On the downloaded version, when you try to watch it, you need to verify your details over the internet.

Now that might seem fair enough on the face of it, but there is something very wrong with this.

Think about exactly why you want to download a film. Convenience, right? The ability to watch it whenever you wanted, without the need for hardware. Instead it is data on your hard drive.

Except, this way, if you want to stream it, you need a net connection. If you have downloaded it and want to watch it, you neet a net connection.
That doesn't seem that convenient to me.
In fact, it would be more convenient (in the long term) to buy the DVD and rip it to your hard drive, or to pirate it.

Ok, so it's not quite as convenient as actually having the DVD is, but does the price reflect that?
Hell no.

As a better example, they have Avatar for £8.99
The DVD is available for £8 in Asda.
Or even, they have the entire original series of V for £1.79 an episode, or £17.99 for the series. In HMV it is £15

Not only that, but the prices on blinkbox are for the video only. No other languages, no subtitles, no directors commentary. No extras whatsoever.

So, you are paying more for an inferior product that is far less convenient to use.

Is it any wonder why some digital distribution methods fail and piracy is rife?!

Still, at least they have some decent free stuff, but only to stream. What if I want to download Night of the Living Dead (which is public domain)? Guess I have to fileshare.

Dragonball Evolution In 5 Seconds

2010-05-05T21:00:00.001+01:00

Awful Adaptations: Dragonball Evolution

2010-03-08T19:14:00.005Z

Finally, it's done!

Sometimes the release of a film breaks your heart.
Other times it tears your heart out, grinds it with the heel of it's boot, spits on it and then sets it on fire.
Dragonball Evolution, for me, was the latter.
"Fun" games to play while watching the video:

See how many simple words I mispronounce!
See how many times I say "That" and "However"!
See how many times I run out of breath midway through a sentence but refuse to stop talking!
Pinpoint the exact moment my heart broke in two!
Pinpoint the exact moment I lost my sanity (hint: It's after 4)

Other versions available here

Google

2010-03-03T19:31:00.002Z

Google has migrated my site, which now means that though the links on the side aren't broken, you download the files rather than viewing them.

I have three choices:

1) Give up

2) Adapt so that those pages can still be hosted on google

3) Be hosted somewhere else

I believe I've already expressed how terrible their WYSIWIG editor was. It's now even worse. It's unbearable.

I'm therefore going for option 3 asap.

An open letter to all MPs

2009-10-15T19:40:00.002+01:00

Dear Members of Parliament,

I am not the kind of person to describe tax as theft: I understand that the money gained from the public is meant to then be used to benefit the public as a whole through providing services such as the NHS.

I understand that when your constituency is not near London, you need to have somewhere to live in London so you can attend Parliament, and that we should therefore pay for the costs accrued in your having that residence.

In recent times the costs have been a popular topic of discussion, and rightly so. Some of your claims have been unreasonable, and you have been caught. Others are still under investigation.

You claim that your claims were within the rules: That might be so, but you wrote those roles, and in such an ambiguous manner that you could abuse them.

It used to be the law that black people could not sit next to white people on the bus. Just because something is a rule or a law does not mean that it is moral.

The committee that is investigating your claims is imposing limits retroactively on the claims that you could make.

You believe that it is unfair, that the rules as they were - weak, vague and easy to abuse - should be all that is taken into account.

When I hear you saying this, I only see you as petulant children, who having been caught doing something wrong, stamp their feet and cry "It's not fair!"

If you claimed more than £2000 a year for cleaning your second home, then you have either been embezzling some of the money, or have been grossly overcharged for the service.

You are by us elected to represent us. We give you money (and are given no choice in the matter) in order for you to do the job you chose to do and that we allow you to do, yet you take more than is reasonable. Money is a limited resource, yet when the account from which you take looks like it is going to run out, rather than reflecting upon your own spending habits and budgeting like the rest of us have to do, you demand that we give you more from now on.

Hard working, nice, honest people have to live on much less than you get as a default, and yet you keep on demanding more and more.

What you have done is corrupt. What you have done is immoral. What you have done is illegal in all but name. Tax is not theft, yet you have been stealing from those who put you in the position where you could steal from them.

When you disagree with the findings of investigations, you lose the trust of the people who you should represent. When you state that you are entitled to what you have gained illicitly, you generate no sympathy, only abhorrence.

Those who do what is right, apologise, and pay back what they are asked to might be forgiven by the populace, and re-elected.

Those who fight to the bitter end will be recognised for what they are: greedy, obnoxious, self-righteous and corrupt, and you will fall. Though you will still get your pensions, still be paid an extortionate amount of money for doing nothing, at the cost of the tax payer, for the rest of your lives.

The Final Destination 3D

2009-09-20T14:43:00.002+01:00

On Wednesday I saw the fourth film in the dramatised safety manual franchise "The Final Destination" - and because the option was there I saw it in 3D. I've got to say, it was much better than I expected.

Let me first of all say that there was a trailer for James Cameron's "Avatar" before the film, showing off what can be done using this new(ish) fangled 3D technology. The trailer was very impressive. However, it made the flaws with how the technology is implemented in the feature more apparent. In the trailer, you could look at the objects in the foreground comfortably, but in the Final Destination focusing on the foreground objects made me feel queasy, so instead I had to focus on the middle-ground at most. The effect was, however, impressive overall.

Now, on to the film itself. It follows the same plot as the other three films, where a young person has a vision of a disaster about to occur in which they and many others die. They save some people, but then those people die in the order in which they would have died according to the vision.

In the first film the disaster was a plane exploding in mid-air, and the deaths that followed were entertaining. Some were quite funny, and some were incredibly surprising. For the most part the deaths were caused by human stupidity, setting off a reasonably convincing Rube-Goldberg device resulting in the character's death. Occasionally there would be some sort of black haze just before events would occur, which I interpreted as some sort of physical manifestation of death watching the characters.

The second film was some sort of accident on a motorway, but I can't remember enough of the rest of the film to discuss it.

The third film was a disaster at a theme park, and the film itself was a disaster. The deaths were hilarious purely because they were not convincing in the least - one major flaw was that the writers seemed to do away with the concept of the deaths being matters of human error or stupidity, instead making death an invisible force that, for example, pushes things over to make a forklift truck drift forward. As a hyperbole example, it was as if death would resort to making a gust of wind appear in an airtight box. What ever happened to death being patient?

That and saving the people at the beginning of the film would have averted the disaster altogether anyway...

This film involved a disaster at the racetrack as the start of events. It seemed that it took some of the criticism that was levelled at the third film, and took it under consideration. There were some stupid deaths akin to what occurred in the third film, but many of them seemed to be close to the standard of the first film - one of the most hilarious moments was when a death from the first film was repeated while one of the characters was talking about deja vu. As such the film came off as incredibly tongue in cheek and self-aware, and I believe it was all the better for it.

There is one gripe I have with it, though - after going through the events, averting one of the final deaths, getting to the end of the list, another disaster occurred (with another accompanying vision) - until it became a vision it seemed like death had just gone "You know what? I'm sick of these kids defying their fate. Screw subtlety, I'm just gonna blow stuff up!"

Once it was revealed to be a vision, it left a lingering plot-hole: If I recall correctly, the ending of the first film made it seem that when they get to the end of the list, it just goes back to the beginning, so the characters would have to be on the look out forever. Yet here it seemed that by getting to the end of the list they did avoid their fate forever, so death created a new disaster.

The ending then became even more confusing, when death just skipped all of the people they saved to kill them first in the "shocking" ending. What ever happened to consistent writing?

Overall, though, I found it entertaining - a worthy addition to the franchise inheriting some bad traits, but many of the very good traits.

There are only two points left that I want to discuss:

1) Why do these people get these visions? This is something that is never explained, and I want an explanation dagnabbit. When the third film was going to be released, I remember it being hyped as the end to the series, the film that would explain everything. Instead it explained nothing, and was just plain terrible.

2) The name. Why not Final Destination 4? It obviously took place after the other 3 - they have print-outs from teh internet and everything! Maybe they wanted to give it an ambiguous name in case they wanted to set a film between 3 & 4, but what would the point be? It's not like the films link together in some coherent large-scale story. At most it's thematic links and fan-service references.

Alternate endings

2009-09-13T01:24:00.003+01:00

Here's a quick one:

"Alternate Endings" are really annoying. Sure some can be good (look at the deleted ending to Terminator) and some can be bad, but that's not what annoys me. What annoys me is the use of the word "alternate"

You see, I just started playing Braid, and I know about the secret stars. When all of these stars are collected, an "alternate ending" is revealed, apparently. But is it really, truly alternate? Sure, it will be different from the normal ending, but is it completely instead of or is it as well as?
Does it replace the normal ending, or is it an epilogue of sorts?

Why do I want to know this? Well, if it is instead of, then I will need to play the game twice. If it is as well as, I should play the game once, ensuring I collect everything (which, considering where I am, I would need to actually restart the game - should I keep going, or should I start again?)

Sure the game might be good, I'm not as far through it as others, but I fear it may suffer from being over-hyped, and I may not want to play through it again (at least not for a while.)

Oh my

2009-08-25T16:53:00.003+01:00

Since my last post, the one about game design that included a discussion about using XML, I took another run with Microsoft's XNA studio. In particular the RPG toolkit.

Can you guess how it stores all of it's quest, item and character data?

Yup. XML. I'm building it at the moment, using the "release" configuration. For science!

While waiting I may as well say something useful... ho-hum. ICO is great, though I think I preferred Shadow of the Colossus.

When I saw that my counter had reached over 2000 hits I had a look at my stats again. Some interesting ones. I get regular searches through google, and some hits from Wikipedia. My main traffic comes from the Nosgothic Realm, which is fair enough. However, I've also been linked to through a quick-search on Facebook and Google's Orkut beta, which is basically Google's answer to Facebook. It looks a bit interesting.
Also, I've gotten hits to the main page without a referring link from someone in Japan using the "@home Network Japan" ISP. Sam, is that you?

There we go, build done... The XML files are transformed into Microsoft's own standard, XNB files... which are non-unicode files, so difficult to mess with.
On the one hand it is good - if you were to design an RPG and then give it to people, you wouldn't want it to be essentially you giving them the engine, leaving them able to mess with the data. That would be a bit pointless.
However it also makes it a bit more difficult - for example, if you wanted to create an RPG which was extendible, so people could make mods for it. Even if you didn't want to let them mess with your stuff, you might still want them to be able to add things. You would then need to make the program in such a way that it could also read the external files added by users, which may or may not be difficult.

Game design

2009-08-10T10:41:00.003+01:00

I like to try and program games in my spare time - I've got a few projects in mind, but they'll all take a long time to make.

One of the first tasks would be to try and design an engine for the game, which in turn requires figuring out what classes to use/design and how they should interact.

So I'm going to muse upon this here and we'll see what I come up with.

The first thing to consider would probably be whether the game is 2D, 3D, or a mix of both. This would greatly influence how characters get displayed - you could have a fully 2D game using sprites like the old Zelda games; You could have a fully 3D game like Half Life, in which everything is a 3D model with a texture on top; Or you could have a game that blends the two - 2D sprites in a 3D environment, 3D models on a 2D plane... those are probably the only two options to be honest.
You could even have fully 3D game but viewed from such a perspective that it looks like a 2D game - the most recent Pokemon games seem to be like this (though the characters could be 2D sprites, it is difficult to tell.)

Since I know next to nothing about 3D programming, I'll focus on 2D for the sake of familiarity and simplicity.

For 3D games you'd probably want a camera class, but this also goes for 2D games.
Though the camera will likely be following the main character, perhaps all of the time, it can be more complex depending upon how the game world works.
Think of Link's Awakening on the GameBoy, or the Minish Cap - the world is split in square areas. Large square areas, bigger than a single screen, but they have borders. When Link approaches a border, if the camera is centred on him constantly, then the game would have to display what is outside the area. If not properly controlled, it could show the contents of some other bits of memory.
The game could be set to only display black outside of each map (so, make it place the maps in the centre of a large piece of black that is generated by the game itself) - this would take up processing power, which may or may not be cheap.
You could design each map and have a big black border around the side of it (assuming that the maps are saved images, rather than generated on the fly using a tileset) - this would cost storage space, which may or may not be cheap.
Another solution would be to make the camera centre on the character, but to never cross the border of a map - this would require that the map somehow conveys what its borders are and would be much easier if the maps were uniformly rectangular.
A final solution would be to make the maps wrap, but this would only really be sensible if the game world was open and not a set of isolated maps.

Also, perhaps worth some brief contemplation - will the camera make the engine render only what the camera sees, or does it simply display what is rendered within a small space. I'd think the latter, though the former is probably possible (just not obviously sensible.)

Next I might as well consider maps. In 3D games they tend to be meshes with textures stretched over them, so you could have one mesh landscape with a single texture over it per map, but this is a silly option.
A better option would probably be to have maps made up of different 3D models placed together, intersecting.

But enough of that, let's focus on 2D.
The way I see it you have two main options:
A single image per map. Though this is a misnomer of sorts - how would you account for solid objects? One solution is to use what is referred to as a "hardness map" - another image using particular colours so that the game came determine what you can and cannot walk through. This of course means that you have at least two images per map.
You could perhaps still do this, but have all solid objects (or objects that would result in particular interactions, for example water) as sprites.
If storage is an issue and you plan to have many maps, this may not be the best solution.

The second idea is to use what is referred to as a "tile set" - simply a set of tiles which can be used to create maps. In many cases I think I've just seen this as a tool for creating the single images as mentioned above, but you could use it another way.
You could use something like xml for each map (which, since it would be unformatted text, would be small in file size) which maybe would say the name of the set it will use, the dimensions of the map, and the tiles.
As an example, if you have a set consisting of 8 tiles and a map which is 2x2 (and each tile is, say, 32 pixels square) this could be described as:
[tileset]"set1"[/tileset]
[size]
[tile]32[/tile]
[height]2[/height]
[width]2[/width]
[/size]
[map]1,2,2,1[/map]

Or something like that. There would probably be a more sensible way to describe which tile goes where, but I think I made my point. A file like this would be 117 bytes (in windows), where the equivalent image (I just quickly tested in GIMP) was about 34.2 kilobytes - roughly 299 times larger (though some of that will be offset by including the tile set, so this is probably only a good idea when you have many many maps.)
Not only is this obviously better in terms of storage, but this method is highly adaptable - the information can be arranged in any way and new functionality that is part of the maps can be easily added without needed to carefully alter an image.
However, if the maps are too big this might impact processing power too much, so the designer should take care.

Another consideration is the sprites in a game.
Now, I cannot think of any way around this problem - no matter what you will need a lot of images. From some tools I've used this is normally done in the form of a sprite set - so, rather than needing many many smallish images, you can have one large image per character (or per character type if they are going to be used multiple times.) This will cut down on storage marginally, but also increase processing somewhat.
These would be used much like the tile set, except you would only display one at a time. By having a series of sequential images you could do a character animation (though maybe storing them as animations could be a better solution.)
The only major problem with this is if the sprite will ever change in size - they might be 32x32 for most of the time, but then for some actions get larger, which would mean all of the other images would need to be larger, increasing file size greatly - so, basically, if the character images (for one character) are going to be similar in size, a sprite set is the way to go; if the character is ever going to change in size, then separate images is the way to go.

Collision detection could also prove to be a problem - if the character images are stored in blocks with some blank space around them, then the game would need to understand not to report a collision if the blank space is hit - using a uniform background "ignore" colour is probably the best way to go, but the game would also need to make sure that colour is not displayed, so would need to either not draw it or convert it to transparency. Either way, processing is probably going to increase.

On that note - characters. Each character will obviously have a sprite, but what other aspects should they have?
In many RPGs you will have characters you can talk to but cannot kill, or even attack. If any fights are going to be separate to the talking mechanisms (i.e. in the Final Fantasy games where you would normally be talking when viewing the game from one perspective, but in battle be on a special map from a different viewpoint) then you could either have two separate characters (one for outside battle, one for inside) or have one character with two different sprites (in and out of battle.)
If it is more of an action oriented game (e.g. Zelda) you could stop the player from being able to attack in certain areas and you would populate the areas with such NPCs. Other games in the same series don't stop you from being able to attack, but have no collision detection from your weapons activated on such characters.
Or you could go the route of Elder Scrolls and give everyone every single statistic and just make everyone killable.

Though this may seem to be only applicable to RPGs or Action RPGs, but it could also extend to other genres - platformers, or even top-down-shooters (perhaps first person shooters, but that is a bit harder to imagine) - heck, even GTA kind of goes the Elder Scrolls route, it just has fewer stats.

Assuming you go any route but the latter, a class hierarchy could be like this:
Character (has a sprite)
/ \
NPC | Enemy (also has a battle sprite and stats)
But then what of the player character? It seems like it could be a subclass of enemy. Also, what of Enemies that you won't encounter in the field? Perhaps their "character" sprite could be null - as long as it is never called then everything should be fine.

Maybe then a better structure would be:
Character
/ \
NPC | Statted (or a better name)
/ \
Enemy | PlayerCharacter

That's all I can come up with for now.

PS: I note that the class diagrams are bad at the moment, but having worked on this post for about 90 minutes now, I have run out of steam.

Nintendo hates Europe

2009-07-30T23:11:00.002+01:00

The title for this post is both appropriate and a plug - GameCentral is going to be turned off in the new year, so there is a petition to try and save it: here.

Now for the appropriate: I've been a bit miffed recently. I make it no secret that I enjoy the Pokemon games, which are just plain awesome.
Every so often Nintendo puts on events, some of which are difficult to get to, where you can download special exclusive Pokemon.

They've been in various places: the Metrocentre, Woolworths in the Metrocentre, a Toy'R'Us in Stockton... and the Sunderland Air Show on Seaburn Beach.

That is not difficult to get to, but the problem is the timing. Nintendo announces these things by having a website which first of all teases us then reveals the details. The Sunderland Air Show was the weekend of the 25th and 26th of July. This was revealed as a location on the 20th of July.

Think about that. I work on Saturdays and I tend to be at John's on Sundays. If I were to change either of those facts I would need more than 5 days notice. I need at least 7.

Now imagine I was a child and I did not work... but to go there I might require my parents, who might be in the same position as the adult me.

When I left the event (I did it on Sunday morning) I stopped by a cafe, where I was informed that it actually costs people £2,500 a day to set up a tent.

So Nintendo spent £5,000 on this, but shot themselves in the foot by not actually announcing it quickly enough (and it won't have been a last minute decision.)

Finally to add insult to all of that injury, today (30th) I got this email. Oh goody. They only actually advertise the event after it happened (though, obviously not with the Sunderland one on that list.)
Also take a further look - only in England and not in any major cities, either.

Sodding Nintendo. How I love to hate you, or hate to love you. I'm not sure any more.

NIN and Game Design

2009-07-15T20:45:00.002+01:00

Though those topics are not linked together. Or at least not in this post.

So, in reverse order: In December I had an article published on Gamecentral on Teletext. I have no created a page which has my original version of the article, and links to their mirrored bits. You can use the link on the sidebar, or this one.

Secondly, I saw Nine Inch Nails in Manchester last night, and they were amazing (as they are 3/4 of the time - sorry, but that Edinburgh gig was not that good.) There were many good points, but two particular highlights for me: They played their version of "I'm Afraid of Americans", and 30,000 (or however many people there were) singing along to "Hurt".

RIP Michael Jackson

2009-06-28T12:48:00.001+01:00

Wow. This was quite a shock. I did not see that coming, especially since I was getting quite excited due to having bought tickets to see him in February.

Happy Earth Day

2009-04-23T12:30:00.002+01:00

Minor update: I'm still working on the pages I mentioned earlier, but for enhanced functionality I should also look into cookies.

Also:

Big Ideas (don't get any) from James Houston on Vimeo.

Interesting

2009-04-17T12:29:00.003+01:00

Well, I'm still working on some tech demo things - they of course won't be linked to until they are done.

That's not what this post is about, though.
For some reason, today, I wanted to see if whatsinthebox had updated at all, and it has. I then went searching to find out what other people had discovered, and found this site.

It's all quite interesting. Initially I though "What's in the box" was a Valve produced HL2:E3 promotional viral. It could have been a fan-tribute, but I wasn't entirely convinced.
After looking today, I was further convinced that it in fact must be for Episode 3. After all, so much work has blatantly been put into it, and surely no-one would spend so much time and effort doing something like this if money wasn't involved, right?

It made references to Black Mesa, and on some pages even has the Aperture Science logo as well as the Black Mesa logo, so it must be linked... But right next to them, is the Hanso Foundation logo. From Lost.

I'm not sure what to think. Is this a cross-property ARG, or a really sophisticated one that is completely unrelated to the properties it repeatedly cites?

Also, this is just plain awesome, if a little creepy. It doesn't seem to be a joke - it's there on CNN.com

Images

2009-04-15T23:46:00.002+01:00

So, a bit earlier today I decided to alter some pages (hosted elsewhere) so that they aren't just all using this same template - sure it's nice, but it doesn't really demonstrate what I can do design-wise.

So I looked at the Google pages WYSIWIYG ("what you see is what you get") editor in order to get some inspiration. I found a very nice one called "Branches" - it was a nice green colour for the background, with all of the contents in a blue colour, and the header had a picture of a tree-branch with some blossom on it.

It was so nice that I wanted to do something similar myself, but I didn't want to use the exact same image (what with it being copyrighted and all) so I was presented with two options:
1) Draw my own
2) Use a public domain alternative

Unfortunately I am not very good at drawing using the GIMP - it looked sharp and pointy. "Stylised" didn't seem like a good enough excuse for the quality.

So, I searched around - I found a fair few good results... but none of the good ones were free. Oh well.

I generally don't like Google's WYSIWIG editor, I felt it didn't give me as many options as I wanted, so I needed to alter the html itself... but it only let me alter the html of particular blocks, particular DIVs. Sometimes you need to be able to edit all of the html, or sections that aren't contained within the DIV (for example, the body tag.)

Relativity

2009-03-11T10:46:00.003Z

Wow, MSPaintAdventures' Problem Sleuth adventure is finally over. It's been quite a ride.

What is the point in this post? Purely to mention something brilliant in the FAQs.

Einstein came up with the equations of relativity, which have been demonstrated to work again and again. The equations show that the faster you move (up until the speed of light*) weird shit starts to happen. Relative to an observer moving at a slower speed, time for you passes slower (i.e. you actually age less) you weigh more (increase in mass) and you shorten in length.

The last one was always very counter-intuitive to me, but in the MSPA FAQs there is a fantastic explanation that I wish my Physics teachers had used:

"This is because the speed of light is always constant, no matter where you are, or how fast you or anyone else is going. So if it takes a beam of light 1 second to travel from the back of a box to the front of a box, then if that box is moving, then that box has to be a little narrower for that same beam of light to reach the front of the box in one second!"

GENIUS! It makes so much more sense now!

*nothing can move faster than light apart from the purely theoretical species of particles called "Tachyons" which cannot go slower than the speed of light. However, the existence of such particles relies on the existence of numbers such as the square root of -2.
When I followed EvE, I mentioned this in a forum, and was responded to with what root-2 was: 1.41421356 i
The person who told me this neglected to realise that the "i" means "imaginary" - we have a hard enough time trying to convince ourselves Real numbers exist, so trying to claim that imaginary numbers exist just takes the cake. Away from a starving baby. With diabetes.

[edit] Also, the Schwarzschild radius is fascinating to know. Mine is (using Newtonian physics) 1.48×10-27 m/kg * 75ish... 1.11*(10^-25)m... 0.111 yocto metres.

The only thing we have to FEAR...

2009-03-07T01:46:00.004Z

... is not FEAR itself.

Welcome to my rant.

First of all, brush up on Yahtzee's FEAR 2 review, and this Steam thread.

Now you know some annoyances to do with FEAR 2. Remove the references to controlling giant mechs, and the cover system. What remains is an accurate review of FEAR.

FEAR is not scary. At all.
Yes, there are moments that make you jump, but jumping does not equate to being scared. If you walk around a corner, not expecting to see someone, but you do, you jump. You jump out of surprise, you jump to get more distance between you and this sudden obstacle. You jump to get around said obstacle without any collision. Are you scared, though? No.

FEAR is, like most western horror, guilty of confusing actually being scared with being surprised. It relies on schlock horror - blood and gore, rather than things that are actually scary. When faced with a pile of dead bodies in the game, I am not scared. Rather, I think of a (not very) witty comment about it.
When I suddenly have an illusion of the main enemy appear next to me, I am not scared. I jump, and fire off a few rounds (on the grounds that so far everything I can shoot might kill me) and am then annoyed for wasting bullets. But not scared.
Some of the scares rely on you looking in a particular direction. Maybe I'm a good soldier, or a very bad one, but I tend to check every nook and cranny for things I can use or things that might try to kill me. Thus, when a scare occurs, I am investigating a potted plant, rather than looking in the room I cannot get a good view of yet, and thus the entire set piece is lost on me.

Basically, for a game called FEAR, the very name of which implies pant-wetting terror, it was very disappointing in the scare department.

Now, past the "scary" section, onto other criticisms. As you may have noticed, FEAR 1 has dynamic shadows (whereas FEAR 2 does not.)
It does this by using the Doom 3 engine, which I have to generally criticise on the grounds of being incredibly inefficient. When a lot happens on screen, my (quite high spec) computer lags. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't HL2 have dynamic shadows, too? Yet, HL2 runs as smooth as butter. Why? Because it's programmed better.
Yeah, okay, maybe the Source engine was too expensive/unavailable, but still... it is annoying when my computer has trouble running a 5 year old game, and yet no trouble running a more recent one.

Pretty much everything Yahtzee said is correct - potentially scary parts are interspersed with wild (and non-scary) gun fights, there are too many medkits, body armour sets, and guns to maintain any level of tension. Plus, the gunfights are reduced to using SlowMo, shooting what you can see, hiding, recharging, repeating. I became such a perfectionist that I would re-load if I got hit at all in rooms, and at most it would take me 5 attempts to get passed any given room. I wasn't playing on easy mode.

Finally, the story. It's clichéd, it's predictable, and it makes no sense. Throughout the game you have been attacked mainly by cloned soldiers led by a man called Paxton Fettel, sometimes by robots, and sometimes by ghosts.
Paxton is commanded by Alma, who has also tried to kill you multiple times, but has also managed to consistently wipe out any help you have by turning people into mush instantaneously.
Why not you?
Alma is often depicted as a small girl in a red dress, but was put in an induced coma while used for "Project Origin" and had no chance of a normal life anyway.
Okay, that's fine.
You and Paxton are her sons... Wait, why does she tell Paxton to kill everyone, and try to kill you?
Further to that, (this may be just in the expansions) she seems to protect you sometimes.
What?! She's trying to kill me, but also protecting me?!
The lead scientist says there's a scientific explanation for everything, but he thinks she's just annoyed. Oh, and she died 20 years ago...
What?! A person who died 20 years ago is communicating with people now, and easily murdering people... and you claim there's a viable scientific explanation?! That's beyond ridiculous. My suspension of disbelief can only go so far.

Seriously, guys. As the Eurogamer review said: You made "No One Lives Forever", you're better than this.

Games as art

2009-02-24T00:17:00.003Z

So, I occasionally like to write what are, for lack of a better word, essays on subjects that I am passionate about. Games as something other than just a childish way to waste time is just such a subject.

On the escapist forums there is currently a thread on this very subject, referencing a link that lists 10 such games. The list primarily mentions audio and visual aspects, and thus many posters are arguing that the list is therefore invalid. Admittedly, the list may be flawed, but that does not mean it is invalid. Some claim that art is subjective, and in a way they are correct, but isn't that less that something isn't art and more than you do not like that particular example of it?
I hate most modern art, but that does not mean it is not art.

I think, to describe art in the most objective way possible, it must use the medium in a way that is unique to the medium.
That does not mean art has to be "original" or that it has to be the first to use the medium in this way (obviously, more than the first painting can be a work of art)

All mediums are limited, some more so than others. Pictures on canvas can never encompass sound, and music itself cannot encompass pictures (though, album art or music videos can combine the two.)
So, what do games have that is unique? Interactivity is the most obvious, but something would have to have a truly revolutionary way of having you interact with the game in order to qualify, surely? Can the Katamari games count purely because of how you interact with the game world? Possibly.

But now we have hit upon a key term - "game world" though a visually appealing world by itself is probably not enough. The Lord of the Rings films are not art purely because the castles are so impressive (plus, what is impressive varies with time, and "visually appealing" is far too subjective a term.)

So what else can there be in terms of game worlds? The most obvious thing that springs to mind is level design, but how can that constitute art?

Games have many aspects to them: Gameplay, Interaction, Controls, Game worlds, Level design, Story, Music...
Most of these can be linked together, but the toughest to link fully into the set is story. Story can be partially told through music, but how can you tell the story through the other methods?

Psychonauts provided perhaps the best example of such an attempt. Many other games will have the story told using objects within the game world, like a phone, or a poster, or a diary.
Psychonauts could tell it through the design of the level. Not to say that it could describe the plot, per se, but that it greatly contributed to the characterisation (which is an integral part of the story but not the story itself.)

Throughout the game you had levels taking place in the real world, and levels taking place within the minds of others. These levels were representations of the personality of the characters, and also within these levels you could find safes containing hidden memories. These memories were sets of pictures, never more than 6 of them, which added a lot of characterisation.

The levels described how the characters are at that point in time, but the hidden memories described why they are that way.
The Milkman Conspiracy is a particular level which is often used to try and demonstrate this, but to choose only a single level to demonstrate the point doesn't quite demonstrate it enough, in my opinion. All of the levels, without exception, have this wonderful feature.

So, why does this feature constitute art? Because it is using the medium of computer games in a way that is unique to it - a series of pictures of the level and the memories could not have this effect, nor could mere words do it quite as effectively. Video games are a combination of music, complex visuals, story, dialogue, and interaction. None of these by themselves is effective, but it is the combination of all of them. Why did I include interactivity in that list? Because the location of the memories is important - they are hidden, after all.

Sam and Max Statue

2009-01-14T20:11:00.002Z

So, my Sam and Max statue that I ordered from Symbiote Studios arrived today.

It took me under 10 mintues to set it up, and it's quite nice.

For one thing, it's huge - 17.5 inches.

The pieces are heavy, and nicely painted, so it doesn't feel delicate.

The pieces slot together a little too easilly for my liking, so I will resort to gluing it at some point (maybe after I've got my carpet put in, so I can transport it easily)

Another slight niggle - Max's head and Sam's tie don't seem to quite get along. The tie and Max's head are touching, which can set the tie in the wrong position. Perhaps placing Max slightly further away from Sam would've been the best solution, but then I'm not a model maker so I don't know how to design or manufacture these things properly.

Anyway, here's a 7 minute video of me putting it together. Sorry for the low res - I was using my webcam as I have nothing better. 3 fps.

Finally

2009-01-05T00:10:00.002Z

Well, I finally did it.

I killed the Grox.

It took months to do, but I wiped out every single one of their planets.

I bought the last one. I even tried to make a video, but there were a couple of problems:

1) The video doesn't show the GUI or menus when communicating with a planet

2) It cuts out when a cutscene starts.

Thus, no video.

Maybe a screenshot of my badges, when I can be arsed.

But for now, Dungeon Siege 2 (and Phoenix Wright 3)

Spore tips

2008-11-16T20:12:00.004Z

Okay, been playing Spore since release, and wound down a bit, primarally because I'm trying to wipe out the Grox. I thought I'd give a few tips for anyone who tries such an endeavour, and to clear up some of the lies surrounding them.

1) The Grox are easy to defeat.

This is what is technically known as "not true" - they are not easy. It will take a long time. By which I mean "weeks if not months of playing for hours a day"

2) The Grox only have around 600/700/1000 systems.

LIES! Well, okay, maybe... per arm and not including the middle. I'd estimate them to have closer to 7000 systems.

3) Each system will only have 1 Grox planet

I've encountered more systems with 4 or 5 planets than those with 1 or 2. I've even encountered one with 6 inhabited planets!

4) The cities can be destroyed with a single mega-bomb.

Once again, no. This is only true of the planets which are on the outskirts of their territory - I've fought cities in the centre of areas they own that took 7-8 or maybe even 10 bombs to destroy. That's because they're fully defended - filled with turrets and buildings.

5) There is only 1 city per planet.

Filthy filthy lies. Why do people who have never seen anything close to the extent of the Grox try to give advice on it? 1 city on some planets, 2 cities on most. 3 cities on one, and when that is destroyed then another planet gets 3 cities.

6) You can reach every Grox system.

Also lies - no amount of slingshotting yourself will get you to some systems, so you need to use either a mod or a trainer to get rid of your movement restriction when near the centre of the galaxy.

7) The Grox do not conquer other systems.

Oh yes they do, and that is why this has taken me so long. I was playing by the original rules at first - I worked my way out from the centre and completely eradicated one of the arms. I then moved off a bit, and came back. They once again inhabit every system at the centre, and most of the arm I had removed them from. They expand, and they do it at a rate so as to make them really annoying.

As such, here is my advice:

Get a mod to remove the range restriction at the centre of the galaxy.

Also, get the 42 mod to remove the recharge time and use limit on the Staff of Life.

The Mayflower mod is also useful.

Be a trader.

Get a good trainer - one which can alter the relations with species, and the use of weapons.

Now, work your way through one arm, to the Grox. Force them to be loyal, and ally with them.

Now they are your friends they won't attack you - won't conquer your systems (they can do that, and they can also reduce a T3 planet to be T0, hence why these mods and devices focus on increasing speed)

Buy systems, and use the Staffs to wipe them out in order to place colonies. Essentially fence them in, and then create more of a fence to cut their property apart. Cut it into small mangable chunks so you can easily set yourself targets of how much to destroy, and see if they try to expand at all.

This is how I'm doing it. It will take a long time, but it's better than taking forever, which it will have done otherwise.

Zen Koans

2008-09-11T17:43:00.003+01:00

I've been thinking. You know that Zen Koan, "If a tree falls in a forest and no-one is around, does it make a sound?"

Previously I've always said yes, since the sound is caused by the energy being transferred through the particles in the air, which is caused by the tree falling.
But really, what is the sound? Is the sound the energy, the transferal of said energy, or is it the interpretation of the vibrations of the air particles?

If the latter is the case then the question should not just be whether it makes a sound when no-one is around, but whether it ever makes a sound.

EA sucks

2008-09-04T09:19:00.002+01:00

This is hillarious.

Spore has already been cracked, making EA's security measures only hurt their legitimate customers. I'm still buying the game, because I've wanted it for the past 5 years, but it is still nice to see EA get punished.

CT:DS

2008-07-08T13:47:00.001+01:00

It's a shame it's a port with some extra dungeons rather than a full-on remake (a la FF3 and 4) but still, it's awesome. If you own a DS, buy this game. You owe it to yourself. Seriously

The continuing adventures of a webmaster

2008-06-16T18:34:00.003+01:00

I master teh webz, lol.

Been messing around with the css, html and js again. "What have you done?" I hear you wail.
Get out of my head right now.

Anywho, I have now added an external links section to the sidebar, and made each section of the sidebar have a header (h2, to be precise.) Why? So now the "Blog archive" h2 looks like the others. Hurray for conformity within my code!

I was also getting a lot of "font" css errors from firefox: though the pages would always validate, the web developer toolbar didnae like it (what, a firefox extension being stricter than the W3C?! Preposterous!)
So, that's all fixed. I am now xhtml strict and css 2.1 uber-valid and have an external linky thing.

THIS page, however, still doesn't validate, but none of the errors are mine - they're all blogger's annoying widgets (though, they may not realistically be any way to have a centralised blogging service without them.) The errors are quite interesting. Do you want to see them?
Well, tough. I was going to post them, but it now appears that I have fixed the only problem which really was that interesting.

PS. Okami was beautiful on the PS2. It is beyond beautiful on the Wii. If there was a god of looking awesome, then it'd be that game.

Papercraft

2008-06-10T17:19:00.003+01:00

So, yesterday I got into papercraft a bit, I can't remember how, precisely. I think I was looking for homemade Half-Life plushies, and found headcrabs made of paper.
Whatever happened, it developed from there, and I spend about 4 hours downloading almost 800 megs of patterns. Most of which are awesome.
For example, I found one of Okami Ameratasu (which looks mighty difficult)
I also, however, found the second best thing ever: MACROSS papercraft!

The best thing ever is, of course, Macross papercraft of all the VFs (particularly the 19 and 21) in P, D and B modes, rather than just P.

[edit] It's interesting to note how many referrals I'm getting from torrent sites and gothic forums (though, only to the timeline, but it's not like there's much else here)
I no longer need (did I ever need...) to plug my site. Hurray?

ZOMGTIA!

2008-05-29T18:47:00.002+01:00

The most exciting news this year? Maybe.

Help out

2008-05-17T16:36:00.001+01:00

http://www.doritosinstantparty.com/

Halleluliah!

2008-05-16T19:31:00.004+01:00

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6190987.html?sid=6190987&part=rss&subj=6190987
http://softrockhallelujah.blogspot.com/2007/11/november-first-things.html

Wait a minute: Second link: Also working on a Frederick Reynal game? Awesome.

I hope it's LBA3, or if not, still freaking awesome.

Moe CSS

2008-04-02T23:29:00.005+01:00

Done a bit more now, however - now everything (except this blog, as it uses blogger-specific code which won't validate [and the applet page, but that's not meant to be permament anyway]) is both CSS and xhtml valid!

Woohoo!

CSS

2008-03-14T19:55:00.003Z

If you've been watching these pages for the past few days (I can barely stop laughing at that concept) you may have noticed some changes.
I've been messing about with the CSS, and making things as XHTML and CSS valid as I possibly can.

The font sizes still need some dealing with.
Also, for the opacity to work properly I've had to mess with the compatability a bit - most browsers today are bloat-ware, made compatible with older code.
To make my pages compatible with older browsers I had to use particular tags (-moz-opacity: .65 and alpha:opacity(=65)) so my pages are neither CSS2 nor 3 valid.

Oh wells.

Merry day-after-boxing-day

2007-12-27T01:18:00.001Z

Just finished the 3rd Resident Evil film. At least it was better than 2.
I hope that they don't make another one.
At least in this one it appears that they've played some of the games (basically, they've played a bit of Code Veronica, and seen some of 1. Also add in a teeny bit of 2 - finally a tyrant like in the games... though he talks... The entire curey thingy... Wesker being the CEO is kindof right. Almost.)
Still, I hate the stupid stuff they come up with (i.e. giving AdaAshley ("Alice") psychic powers - WTF?! Yeah, zombies don't make sense if you think about it, but still...)

Guitar Hero 3 completed on easy. Normal seems so ridiculously hard.
Twilight Princess is awesome, but the twilight is a bit too harsh on the eyes in my opinion.

Ooooh

2007-11-05T14:00:00.001Z

Best. Week. Ever.

That was last month, though.

Basically, I won a Wii, and a TV to play it on. Awesome.

I've been mainly playing Gamecube games on it, because:
1) There are many awesome GC games I missed
2) Pre-owned Wii games are still ridiculously expensive, so I should wait until the prices go down.

Anyway, just finished Wind Waker, which was quite good. The sailing was irritating, and where it fits in the storyline was also confusing (though, I'm now reading up on things, and apparently there are two parallel timelines in which the games take place, thus making things a lot more confusing... Though, actually, it does make sense. At the end of OoT I wondered "Why go back to the start if it's all going to happen again")
People have been claiming that you kill Ganon at the end of it, but I must disagree.
We've seen previously that he can survive having a magical sword buried in his head, and he turned to stone.
I think he was just sealed away again.

ROFL!

2007-09-26T17:54:00.001+01:00

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp

I honestly can't stop laughing at this.

Leeeerooooyyy Mmmmmmjennnkiiinnns

2007-08-27T22:43:00.001+01:00

Well, what's new? Not much.
Finally got my parchment, and thus was able to secure my place at Newcastle.
I shall pass this course "like a Slor Beast passes her young: Jiggly! And full of juice…" (Zim)

Been playing more Pokemon Diamond (it rocks so hard) even set up some trades with people... I haven't had any correspondance back since I've got what's needed on my end, and tried to arrange a time for the trade. Are they lazy or is there some error in sending the messages?

Work's been a bit busy, especially since we're now cut down on staff (for various reasons) It's amazing how little time you have left even after just 4 hours in the middle of the day are removed.

Been watching some Leroy Jenkins things (a la the title) and The Angry Videogame Nerd
It's bizzare. He's not really funny, but he is so entertaining.

Also, Bioshock demo. Played in on Jon's comp, because it doesn't work well on mine. I need Pixel shader 3, but I only have 2, despite my graphics card being very good. I can run anything else, literally, on the highest settings, with very little slowdown, but I can't play this demo (it's not even really needed - there is a patch which utilises a workaround. It's slow, but it allows you to see most things without the need for this unnecessary technology.)
I'll upgrade next year, when both cards and game are cheaper. My card is awesome enough for now. Maybe even DX10 would almost be worth it by then, too.

[edit] On the plus side, though, I finally got my computer to remember that my radeon has a tv in. On the minus side, it still recieves nothing. Either I'm using the wrong cable, or this truly is never going to work.

Etamnanki

2007-07-22T23:35:00.001+01:00

Well, Harry Potter 7 arrived on Saturday... and I'm yet to actually open it. I've kind of got mixed feelings of excitment, dissappointment that the story will end, lack of excitment because I've been predicting the ending for over a year now, and general apathy because I still haven't finished .hack//Another Birth 3 yet.

I know the books are easy, but I actually haven't opened that one for about a month. Other things have been occupying my time: Work, cleaning my room, catching up on TV, and Pokemon. Dear god I love those games.

Also got Unbuntu running recently. Was a bit of a kerfuffle - I got a 30 Gb HDD from my brother, but when installing it I accidentally partially disconnected my DVD drive from the motherboard, resulting in slow start up, wasted hours, and lots of frustration.
Nothing particularly exciting on that front.

On another note, I recommend the next two sites:
Tom Morton's beloved Website!
Chore Wars :: Earning Experience Points for Housework

The first is open source GL Frontier. For those not in the know, Frontier is the best space game ever, bar none.
The second is an RPG to encourage people to do the housework. Neat.

I notice there are a few people comming here from Facebook. Awesome. Nice to know my hard work on the LoK Timeline is appreciated.
If anyone thinks that I've got anything wrong, please tell me, and give a good explanation as to why it's wrong. I put a fair amount of "logical" thinking into that, so if you can't give a good explanation as to why I'm wrong I'll have no good reason to believe you.
I may put it up on Wikipedia eventually.

As to the person who commented on my previous post: Thank you mysterious spammer. The only reason I haven't deleted the comment is because the site it links to is pretty intresting, though probably overpriced.

Finally, someone may be wondering about the title of this post. Well, when tidying my room I came across a sheet of paper with that word on it. Putting it into google results in a few hundred (552) results.

The top result is to this deviantart page: http://etamnanki.deviantart.com/
He draws stuff I like (Oh! My Goddess!, Aliens, Predator, Doom)

Another is a link to the profile of someone who asked about running Freespace 2 on XP and Vista. I would think this could be me, but he types in a different manner.

Another one is a page of statistics for a corp in EVE, mentioning another corp called Etamnanki.

All of these are potential explanations as to why I have this word written down, but none are too familiar. I don't recall that DeviantArt guy. I love Freespace but why would I make such a roundabout note when I could bookmark it or send myself an email? Why would I be that intrested in EVE anymore? I don't like paying every month for a game with no clear objectives within which I have to grind. Grinding is boring.

Huzzrah!

2007-07-05T13:41:00.001+01:00

Well, it's been a while, and quite a lot has happened.

First of all, I graduated with a 2:2 (57.75% - so close to a 2:1)

So know I get to put BA HONS Dunelm on the end of my name when doing academic things, or just wanting to be a bit of a ponce.

Secondly, I have been accepted to do a Msc at Newcastle, conditional upon my showing them my transcript and parchment, both of which are in the post. As will the photos of the graduation (which will surely go on Facebook)

I'm also currently in the process of cleaning my room, which involves organising it. This now means that my various projects are well organised, and it will be easier for me to work on them.
My art style has changed a bit for a certain project, which therefore speeds up the process, whilst keeping everything "stylised" (it's not badly drawn, I swear!)

A creative waste of time

2007-05-09T16:36:00.000+01:00

Here's what I've been doing for the past hour or so.

I know the memes are basically dead, but hell, I wanted to do it, and test out the GIMP.

[edit] Had to change the link. google seems to automatically convert all images into jpgs, thus removing the possibility of animations.

After the exams I'll absolutely kill off the meme once and for all.

Blargh

2007-04-15T23:49:00.001+01:00

Well, my dissertation's comming along, albeit slowly. Since I don't work this week (except for friday) then I should be able to get it done very soon.

I can't help but feel I have no material for the second half, though. GARGH!

Had an intresting "argument" at the EG forums, which was fun, but a waste of time in the end.

Curious

2007-04-07T21:39:00.002+01:00

The statcounter, though useful and intresting, is giving some strange results:

25 Mar

13:55:13

http://joedowland.blogspot.com/

The blog: I'm in ur throat blocking ur healthorz

So, someone came from this page, and went to a specific post, racking up a count. Fine, could be a dynamic IP or something - but that was the only count for that day, the only count within a 6 hour period (and I've set the counter so each hit within 6 hours counts. Less would miss the point, more apparently might break it.) How does that work?
Apparently the guy's Swedish. Do they have some strange power to bypass time? Did he leave his/her computer on for a couple of days, then just clicked a link?

Another came from is:

1www2.blogger.com/navbar.g?targetBlogID=7778316673866838520&blogName=Kensington %28Brooklyn%29&publishMode=PUBLISH_MODE_BLOGSPOT&navbarType=BLUE

I hope I haven't messed up any security by publishing that address. If I have, please inform me, and I will try to rectify. Now, I looked this link up, and it's the blog of some town in America.
Once again, what?! It seems that this town, publishing a post, for some reason logged my counter. Eh?! Actually, nevermind. I think I was misunderstanding the stats. Still... Maybe my post was too long, thus they needed to click to expand it?

Most of my hits are from the guys on Nosgoth.net, clicking from threads, then perhaps checking the blogs. Glad to see you're intrested in the Timeline, guys, but why don't you bookmark it instead of repeatedly clicking through threads?

Also, apparently I got a visitor from China. Perhaps I should prevent any such future visits by being all political-like. Perhaps not. It's not like I care too much anyway. Doing an IP whois brings up something from Australia anyway. Eh?

I'm trying to apply for a MSc at Newcastle, but it seems to dislike the concept of me registering. I should talk to Jon about it. It's his department after all.

Feh

2007-03-22T19:02:00.000Z

Insert yet more strange sounds.

So, my counter stopped working. Fine, then. I've replaced it with one that I have made start at the same point (it was 63) and allows me to track all manner of intresting things, like how people reach this page. Thus, I will be able to insert tautology here.

Huzzah!

2007-03-10T19:00:00.001Z

Well, I still can't get the border thing on the other pages fixed, but at least I now have a consistant sidebar linky thing. Hurray! Now I only need to edit one file when I add a new page.

If the sidebar is breaking, that means my other pages probably won't work... or your browser doesn't support javascript.

Hmm

2007-03-10T17:40:00.000Z

Wow, I seem to be getting a lot of hits, but no comments.
Intresting. Or not.
Presumably the latter, as otherwise there would be comments, wouldn't there?
Oh well.
Just taking a break from my metaphysics essay at the moment. It's about absolutism vs relationalism in terms of the exitence of space-time. Man, Newton was twisted.
Afterwards I'll head to Patsy's party. Hopefully Guy'll be there, so I can sit and revel in his unique and witty manner of insulting me.

NIN

2007-03-01T00:03:00.001Z

Well, this week's been fun. NIN on monday was ridiculously awesome. Trent played "We're in this together now" which is the second time it has ever been played live.
I also got some cool stuff from FOPP - I cannot wait until more local branches open.

More html

2007-02-20T01:43:00.001Z

Well, I've managed to get a template like this done that I can use on googlepages, almost. It just doesn't include the border on the title page, but I guess it's close enough. Also, because the footer formatting was messed up I've decided not to use one. I'll upload it and alter my links appropriatly in the morning.

2007-02-19T00:10:00.000Z

Not much to say. Trying a different counter, now, as the other one was registering hits rather than unique hits.

Phew

2007-02-15T23:52:00.001Z

Well, another day, another binge, and another html fiasco.

As you can see, now, I've put a background image in (as long as googlepages doesn't go down) - it's the Carina Nebula, if you were wondering. I eventually managed to figure out how to make these boxes translucent, giving the page a pleasent effect. If it doesn't work, then your browser doesn't support aplha filtering, and you should switch to Firefox.
I've also got my main googlepage to redirect to here, so that I don't need to do anything like upload an index.html and force all links to go there. Then using the sidebar for navigation. I'll replace the pages so that they look like this (including the links they need, perhaps resorting to a shtml method again) - which reminds me to add the counter, which I just did.

Now I'm going to watch the original theatrical release of Return of the Jedi. It's not as good as Empire, but it's still good.