The cover of the new edition of Solaris makes me extremely sad. Same dratted old translation, as well. There are going to be a lot of befuddled romance readers. This book is not a love story! Its about God and Science, the inability to communicate, the perversity of desire and really cool special effects. The movie, however, shows every sign of being a ghost love story, with nary a straw hat, towering negress, giant creepy baby. I hope this movie dies a horrible death. And now no one will ever make the Solaris I want to see, one about Solaris itself. The helicopter ride should be the center of the film. bah.
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03:28:08 PM,
Wednesday 27 November 2002
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Mystery! this week briefly featured Atari 2600 pong. I want those noises! My web-searching has failed to uncover them, though. I don't know whether my parents still have the Sears Tele-Games or not. I'll have to find out. I did find a nifty flash version of Adventure, though.
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(6)
12:49:27 PM,
Wednesday 27 November 2002
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Pong with inertia.
Controls: Number pad. 5 is a brake. You'll need it. Space to begin.
Installation: Save it and unzip it somewhere, and run install.bat, which will stick the .dll's in the appropriate folder. Pre-XP may also need the .NET framework. Not for use with some sets (mac, linux)
Features: occasional wierd bounces and escaped pucks. Inanimate opponent, who is nonetheless surprisingly cunning. Resizeable within reason.
High Score: 9 to 3
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(16)
04:57:08 PM,
Tuesday 26 November 2002
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WWJDrive? They miss the main point, though. The main argument in defense of SUV's, that they're safer, is fundementally immoral; You make yourself safer by making life more dangerous for everyone else. Reminds me strongly of Jesus was a Capricorn
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(2)
10:19:30 AM,
Tuesday 26 November 2002
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Tracking down a bug isn't as satisfying if its a bug you introduced when adding code to help you find said bug.
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01:08:14 PM,
Monday 25 November 2002
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Things seem to have stopped overlapping on a regular basis, so I declare the mechanics finished, at least, finished until I go back and add torque and convex paddles. Since there's no friction, and you control acceleration, not velocity, it plays like a combination of Pong and Lunar Lander. Not a pure reflex game, by any means.
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(1)
02:00:12 AM,
Monday 25 November 2002
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Argh. I think I found the problem. If the paddle is moving fast enough, it can hit the puck and then keep going and overtake it, because I was lazy and haven't done the whole v1 = (m1-m2)/(m1+m2) x v1 bit yet. God makes stopping things occupying the same space at the same time look easy, but its not.
I was thinking about that thing about trying to get the law of non-contradiction on the books. I was reading lately about conspiracy law; at the moment you can be tried for conspiring to break a law, even if there wasn't any way you could actually commit the crime; say, planning to hold up a bank when it isn't open. Does this mean that if a bunch of people got together with the express aim of breaking the law of non-contradiction, they could be prosecuted?
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10:58:11 PM,
Saturday 23 November 2002
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Hmm. That wasn't terribly useful. The paddles are still eating the puck, but the code which allows them to do so is now much better organized and has been rewritten. I also added keyboard controls for one of the paddles, and discovered that if you pin the puck against the wall you can travel backwards in time.
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(1)
09:38:59 PM,
Saturday 23 November 2002
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08:01:06 PM,
Friday 22 November 2002
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Bah. I'm probably neglecting to do something distribution-wise. I'll wait before I ask people to try again until I have something at least moderately entertaining, that has been shown capable of running on at least 2 computers.
In related news, The paddles are now moving and bouncing, and the goals light up when the puck goes in them. Unfortunately, if the paddle and the puck are moving towards each other, the paddle will occasionally eat the puck. Also, I haven't decided whether to have a physical barrier that stops paddles from crossing midfield or entering the goal crease, or whether to stop the game and give them a penalty if they do. The first is easier, and might be less annoying; though it would stop me from one day having irritable paddles that charge their opponents, or over-enthusiastic ones that just forget the rules. For the near term, I'll be a normal pong programmer and just limit the paddles to 1 dimensional movement, and ignore the physics of collisions.
To do list:
1) Stop it eating the puck
2) add keyboard controls for paddles
3) add a clock thread so it animates smoothly
4) put it in a frame, so I can display text
5) keep track of score, game time
6) add stupid computer player
7) find out why no one else can run it
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07:41:01 PM,
Friday 22 November 2002
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Round things bounce more predictably than rectilinear things. Thats why they don't give small children rubber bouncy cubes.
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03:31:00 PM,
Friday 22 November 2002
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A partial list of incidental music used on WRNI, the local NPR:
The Clash: Rock the Casbah
REM: How the west was won and where it got us
Belle and Sebastian: Boy with the Arab Strap
The La's: There She Goes
Gary Numan: Cars
Joy Division: Digital
Talking Heads: Take Me To The River
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(1)
12:31:47 PM,
Friday 22 November 2002
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"Family values are often mentioned... what are they?" Claire Bolderson, BBC Newshour
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10:07:57 AM,
Friday 22 November 2002
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I now have a symbolic representation of a puck that bounces by means of trigonometry and quadratic equations. Right now I'm torn between making the paddles move and making them funny shapes.
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(14)
05:25:14 PM,
Thursday 21 November 2002
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Outliers are people too.
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09:01:57 AM,
Wednesday 20 November 2002
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Argh. This report gets all mucked up towards the bottom in IE, but looks fine in Mozilla. The thing is, its generated by Excel. This offends me. I suppose it means they're not being evil monopolists who leave compatability traps for the opposition, or at least, they're being less-than-successful ones. Anyway, if anyone can report back on how other browsers fare, especially if they have a version of IE that works, I'd be thrilled to know.
(The report wasn't originally about cats)
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(10)
06:50:44 PM,
Friday 15 November 2002
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700 year old drawing of Mickey.
Hopefully they can find a way to use it as grounds for some kook to accuse Disney of copyright infringement. This is just glorious. And what kind of skepticism is "bah, thats just a weasel that gives birth through its ears!"?
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04:41:30 PM,
Friday 15 November 2002
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Gadget idea: A smoke-detector that throws itself across the room a few seconds after going off so you don't have to.
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(1)
06:09:56 PM,
Tuesday 12 November 2002
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Whoever chooses photos at the BBC really doesn't like Bush. I mean, this is the sort of picture you expect of Martha Stewart in tabloids.
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(1)
03:05:17 PM,
Tuesday 12 November 2002
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Johnny Cash's Hurt is a revelation. Johnny Cash's Personal Jesus is just daft. Hurt's confessional tone works wonders with his elderly croon, and what always sounded like overblown imperious whinging self-pity in the original becomes really effecting. Personal Jesus is something of a joke in the first place, and without the comic-book menace of Depeche Modes lyrics and sythesizers, it loses all tension. There's just no song there. There is a really strong song in Hurt, but I never would have noticed in the original with all the whining, thumping and shrieking. Speeding it up helps, too.
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(4)
12:58:57 PM,
Tuesday 12 November 2002
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In case anyone has a craving for a popular german novelty song sung by a Chancellor puppet, you can see one here. Its called Der Steuersong. translation courtesy of the BBC. Its based on the Ketchup song by spanish pop tarts Las Ketchup, which is worth looking into in its own right.
The hair dying is explained by his libel suit against tabloids that accuse him of dyeing his hair. As far as I know, no one has yet accused him of being a vampire.
A TV show featuring political puppets should be established, if necessary by constitutional amendment.
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(8)
12:10:14 PM,
Tuesday 12 November 2002
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I'm not sure why Veterans day seems so ham-fisted to me. Armistice day is a beautiful, elegant thing, guns going quiet, and so on. Though I've always wondered when peace was actually decided,and how long the shooting kept up so it could end on the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Because in later wars people didn't see fit to declare peace, there was no corresponding moment, and they co-opted this one. It may be lingering english snobbery picked up from my parents. Veterans Day feels like uniforms and parades, like General Schwartzkopf, and Armistice day seems like the opposite.
That said, adding a new holiday every time a war ends is a very round-about sort of labor reform.
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(3)
02:16:49 PM,
Monday 11 November 2002
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The one thing that gives me great trouble when working with databases is remembering that the difference between 3,000,000 and 1,000,000 is much more significant than the difference between 1,000,000 and 100,000.
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02:05:39 PM,
Monday 11 November 2002
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Bah. I just applied for a job I know nothing about, apart from that it would involve Access databases, things which I really don't like in any way.
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(1)
09:10:25 PM,
Sunday 10 November 2002
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Bah. I just applied for a job I know nothing about, apart from that it would involve Access databases, things which I really don't like in any way.
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09:10:23 PM,
Sunday 10 November 2002
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An opening question type spiel for Dickens "Barnaby Rudge"
I've never really understood why executing mentally deficient people was any different from other death penalty cases. If someone is dangerous enough to warrent execution, and the state feels this is necessary and has faith enough in its judgement to do so, I don't see how their level of understanding of what happened effects it. This assumes that the judicial system exists to enforce the social contract, not to dole out moral judgements. This is wishful thinking on my part; law needs to be seperate and distinct from morality, but it isn't. If it were, there would be no call to hate lawyers. That said, Dickens gives a very good example of why different rules should apply; if people are simple enough to be used, then it is the people who are manipulating them who are dangerous, not them. The difficulty is that there is no hard and fast line, where someone is so much a fool that they cannot be expected to defend themselves. If people are really this gullible, then society still has a responsibility to stop them being used to commit crimes for others.
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03:58:38 PM,
Sunday 10 November 2002
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Culinary discovery: putting a generous amount of curry powder in the oil when making stove-top popcorn. Minced garlic didn't work, it burnt before the popcorn popped.
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(1)
02:15:09 PM,
Saturday 9 November 2002
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Clerical names that are too good to be true:
1: Bishop Luis Morales
2: Cardinal Sin
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(2)
02:22:16 PM,
Friday 8 November 2002
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If you take "War on Terrorism" at face value, it sounds a lot like the early 19th century, when Metternich was fighting to stave off revolution and prop up the aristocracy, regardless of how awful the monarchs might be, and suppress the rise of new nations. Arabia is still imperial, more or less, with the Islamists as the Marxists and Jacobins. I find this metaphor terribly depressing; it feels like we've got the wrong end of the history stick.
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09:27:13 PM,
Thursday 7 November 2002
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A new Hitchens article supporting a preemptive invasion, written with his lovely bullying swagger. I find it convincing for two reasons; It makes war look like the better alternative, rather than just a jaunty day out. War is bad, but anarchy is worse. Second, it draws the right conclusion from the fact that we've completely messed the region around in the past; we have a responsibility for what happens, in the same way we had a responsibility that we ignored for the endless civil war and anarchy in Afghanistan. I worry though, how much I'm simply letting myself be pushed around by his wit and confidence. If only our leaders inspired the same fear.
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(6)
04:34:12 PM,
Thursday 7 November 2002
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Nor should you count your eggs after they hatch.
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(6)
02:52:24 PM,
Wednesday 6 November 2002
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Sometimes I think I complain to much in this space. Criticizing is easier, it doesn't commit me as much; doesn't expose me to the web to the same degree. As part of my self-improvement regimen, here's something I really like; my teapot. It has a inner chamber for the tea that can be cut off from the rest of the pot with a plunger when the tea is done. Its beautiful when full of milkless black tea, and it makes looseleaf tea just as convenient and reusable as bagged tea. My only objections, that it doesn't pour very well and the sugar will sometimes lurk at the bottom, are both addressed with the exceedingly elegant new model.
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(2)
09:42:44 PM,
Saturday 2 November 2002
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Today I realized that the Macromedia that relentlessly sponsers NPR is the same as the Flash Macromedia. Now I have two reasons to hate them. You might think I'd be glad they paid for my radio news and that they made improved webthings possible. I don't, because I'm a hateful vindictive person and blame them for the corruption of NPR and every stupid thing anyone has ever done with Flash.
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09:31:45 PM,
Saturday 2 November 2002
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Just saw Bloody Sunday, which is the best film I've ever nearly walked out on. It's a very thoughtful, carefully constructed film, which manages to portray all the thorniness of the issue without watering down its moral indignation. Its really rare that a film can be both indignant, and not come across as distorted. Unfortunately, its shot entirely with a hand-held camera, including the captions. Hand-held camera is a useful trick for expressing certain things, but it needs to be used sparingly. It tries to make movies more realistic, but it fails utterly. Its main impact is to make you aware of the camera, which makes everything feel more documentary-ish and Cops-like. But usually, films should make you feel like you were there, not like there was a low-budget documentary crew there. It also is wonderful for expressing panic, when the viewpoint starts running. It destroys conversations utterly; the eye and brain compensate for ordinary motions; things don't jiggle. The eye moves from point to point, it doesn't pan unless there's something for it to follow. When you're sitting in the cinema, you can't adjust for the motions of an unseen camera. It should be said that it didn't make me nauseous, the way Rosetta did.
I'll say something about the content after I have some more time to digest, unless I forget.
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09:24:58 PM,
Saturday 2 November 2002
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That's so cute! If you type in the wrong password in OS X, it shakes its head; or rather, the login box shakes horizontally.
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05:30:32 PM,
Saturday 26 October 2002
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I was staring at the ketchup bottle, being irritated by the trademark "57 Varieties". Its even worse than I expected. Not only does Heinz not currently have 57 specific varieties, it never did.
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02:43:00 PM,
Friday 25 October 2002
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site & script courtesy of Moss