Month: June 2012

On Skrillex

I actually don’t mind a bit of dubstep 🙂

I do not feel required to believe that Skrillex is a human being. My top three theories to explain the existence of such a thing are as follows…

1: Skrillex is the name of a program designed by a post-grad computer engineering student to simulate industrial workplace noise. After a night of heavy drinking said student inadvertently messed up some of the audio filters and induced a series of overlapping sound loops, then realised that the resulting cacophony might go down well at next weekend’s beer and ecstasy mixer.

2: Skrillex is an ancient fax-modem, forgotten about in a storage cupboard but still connected to the net, which has achieved sentience and a recording contract.

3: Skrillex is a member of an unknown, sapient, deep-sea dwelling species that is attempting to communicate with us by modulating its vocalisations for propagation through air rather than water. It’s not very good at it.

I’ll take my Turner Prize now please…

Waddya mean you have to be British!?

Idea for a conceptual art project…

1: Invite members of the public to write letters about important personal issues to their friends and families, and send them to you along with the address details of the people they’re meant to be delivered to.

2: Put all the letters into stamped, addressed envelopes, ready for posting.

3: Place the envelopes into an elaborate machine in an art gallery which displays them one by one and has two buttons – “Deliver” and “Destroy”. If the “Deliver” button is pressed, the envelope is dropped into a hopper, collected at the end of the day and posted. If the “Destroy” button is pressed, the envelope is put through a shredder. Allow visitors to the gallery to press the buttons at will.

4: Give the whole arrangement an incredibly wanky name like “Thoughts and Memories of Olympus Mons”

5: ???

6: Profit!

Minecraft Update II

I guess everyone who gets sucked into the trap of Minecraft ends up imagining ways to improve the game. I am of course no exception and in the hours I’ve whiled away working on my Big Project™ (or getting pushed into lava streams by skeletons) I’ve come up with a number of them – all but one of which are actually slated for the next update (great minds obviously think alike…).

My one, original idea? Lodestones!

The recipe for a lodestone is…
C = Compass
R = Redstone Dust
? = Either a Diamond, an Iron Ingot, a Gold Ingot, a piece of Coal, a unit of Lapis Lazuli Dye, an Emerald (once launched) or another pile of Redstone Dust

?
R C R
R

So what the heck does a lodestone do? Simple. If you’re within 20 blocks (or maybe 15 blocks, or 10 blocks, or whatever) of ore for the particular mineral it was made with, it starts glowing and chiming.

It doesn’t tell you what direction the ore is in – you have to figure that out by moving back and forwards until it stops reacting – it just tells you the ore is nearby. It’s up to you to find it and dig it out.

So that’s my idea. You listening Notch? 😉

Pathetic Cave Adventure

Yeah, that’s the opening of Zork. Deal with it.

One of these days I’m going to program a text adventure game titled Pathetic Cave Adventure. It starts…

West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.

If you open the mailbox, you get arrested for mail fraud and the game ends. If you try and open the boarded front door, you get arrested for breaking and entering and the game ends. If you try to walk anywhere you get arrested for trespassing and the game ends. If you do nothing for more than a few rounds you get arrested for loitering and the game ends

Moit!

One of my guilty pleasures at the moment is the new season of Iron Man: Armored Adventures on ABC 3. Sure, it’s a kid’s show, but it’s fun – and hey, I already classified it as a guilty pleasure, which means I don’t have to justify it to anyone, let alone you.

😉

There was one annoying thing about the episodes they played last night though. The presence of an “Ossy” (which is how Americans strangely insist on pronouncing “Aussie”).

Now I have no strange objection to Australians appearing in American TV shows. It’s nice to see us represented. But what would also be nice would be getting actors who can actually do an Australian accent – as opposed to doing a Cockney accent with “moit” added to the end of every second sentence.

Sure, Americans can’t tell the difference, but believe me it makes us cringe. It’s like representing an American accent by getting a Puerto Riccan to randomly say “pard’ner”. Or a Canadian accent by having a South African end every sentence with “eh?”. It’s bizarre.

Of course, it’s not going to change. But it would be nice.

Or perhaps noice moit!

Denys, Why U No Post?

Damn you Notch!

On Sunday Ryan did a very evil thing. He showed me Minecraft.

I have strenuously been avoiding even seeing Minecraft ever since it came out, on the assumption that I would become instantly hooked. As it turns out, I was completely right.

Expect a more regular posting schedule once I’ve mined and crafted myself into exhaustion 🙂

The History of the Ambar Dynasty

1400 – Establishment of the Royal House of Hutz-Ambar by King Eddercrumb the 1st – an indigent Pure Finder blessed with Royal Blood by a magical wizard.

1412 – King Eddercrumb constructs the Castle of Rinds

1414 – The Castle of Rinds is sacked by the evil Communards of Pikkle, sparking off a three year vendetta between the city of Rinds and the neighboring valley of Blort

1420 – King Eddercrumb is killed in Battle by the Black Knight of Blort. He assumes the throne as King Rupert the 1st and unites the people of Rinds and Blort

1423 – Something important happened but no one can remember exactly what. A pig might have been involved, but no one’s really that sure. It was a long time ago.

1424 – The son of King Rupert – Crown Prince Muntjak – ascends the throne after his father’s death during a toadstool hunt. He reigns wisely for many years, thus removing the necessity to detail them in any fashion.

1452 – King Wilbert II is sent into exile after he is discovered wearing underclothes made of two different types of yarn.

1453 – Thanks to Archbishop Mazimillian tripping over during a critical part of the coronation ceremony, King Footstool the 1st takes the throne. The eight months of his reign (the time it takes to organise a new coronation) are regarded as some of the most peaceful and prosperous in Ambarian history

1454 – Coronation of King Hutzpah Footstool-Slayer.

1458 – King Hutzpah Footstool-Slayer is killed in a crossbow-reloading accident. Speculation about how he managed to shoot himself in the spine is suppressed as treasonous slander again the late King’s shooting skills.

1459 – Crown Prince Humpty ascends the throne. He wins the loyalty of the noble houses of Runetown, Hopton, Greeblyville and Milton-Keynes in a series of high stakes poker matches.

1461 – King Humpty marries Eleanor the Gump of the House of Gump, thus gaining command of Gump, the Lesser Gump Principality and the Isles of Gump

1468 – King Humpty sets out on a fishing trip and never returns. His chamber pot is declared a holy relic.

1469 – The Year of the Twelve Emperors. No one remembers what this was about at all.

1476 – The royal line is restored with the coronation of King Hazeltine II. He ushers in an age of peace and prosperity lasting for about eight and a half minutes before the outbreak of the Metonic Uprising

1481 – The Metonic Uprising is crushed with the sacking of Palukavil. Speculation about the toiletry habits of the royal family is banned.

1484-1505 – Nothing happened.

1506 – Peasants in the imperial capital of Runetown develop a nasty, hacking cough for a few weeks. The event is recorded as the Great Plague of Ambrosius, after the most obnoxiously outspoken of said Peasants.

1509 – Scandal erupts after Queen Whitney is accused of an affair with a mysterious figure called Charles the Python. The rumours are eventually traced to a half-deaf bootblack who overheard the Queen discussing her recent visit to the Royal Menagerie.

1510 – King Ecommerse defeats a coalition of the Whigers, Tronces, Mon Keeps and Viesonbars.

1512 – King Ecommerse defeats a coalition of the Whigers, Tronces, Mon Keeps and Viesonbars, who apparently didn’t learn their lesson the first time.

1513 – The Whigers, Tronces, Mon Keeps and Viesonbars are revealed to be nothing but opium induced figments of King Ecommerse’s imagination.

1514 – Prince Larrae Emdur deposes King Ecommerse, swearing an oath to “end all this Whiger nonsense”.

1516 – King Emdur is killed by an assassin sent by the Whigers, who turn out to be real after all, ending the Ambar Dynasty.

Close Bitnami banner
Bitnami