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May 29, 2006
Sleeping (beauty?)
The last few weeks finally caught up with me this weekend.
I have been working my ass off for weeks on end - up to 20 hours a day sometimes!
Its all paying off - well, after I chase those invoices a little more.... - and all the bills will get paid this month and part of next month, plus the added benefit of having expanded my network of potential business a little bit, which is always a good thing.
It was a little odd to languish in bed for a whole day - felt good though! Still foggy headed today (didnt get out of bed until after midday!) but I can really feel the difference of the sleep from the last few days.
Its amazing that you forget how much sleep deprivation affects you and how much you can get done when sleep-deprived. I find I have to go through these patches from time to time to keep up to date with work - mostly because I am learning new techniques all the time, and that takes time!
It always feels a bit like the last few weeks was a dream whenever I catch up on the sleep though...
Posted by dottie at 12:39 AM | Comments (0)
May 23, 2006
Redux Redux
I've noticed that I use the word 'redux' a lot, so I thought that I should look it up to be sure of its meaning and not garner a Princess Bride type slagging 'I do not think it means what you think it means'.
The first definition I found was - 'Brought back; returned. Used postpositively.'
Postpositively sounds positively delightful! Tea and Tiffin!
The second definition I found was - ' A trademark used for the drug dexfenfluramine hydrochloride'
And after some googling I found that dexfenfluramine hydrochloride is a drug they give to fatties to help them lose weight in order to get healthy. The only snag is that the drug causes heart valves to malfunction in addition to raising your blood pressure.
So not eating that thrid bag of doughnuts is probably a safer option.
Posted by dottie at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)
May 19, 2006
The McCartney divorce
News reports just in
News reports have confirmed that Paul McCartney has separated from his wife Heather Mills- McCartney. Mrs Mills- McCartney is said to be distraught over the split "He has been my crutch for so long!!" She said in an earlier briefing, "I have no idea why this has happened, I'm stumped"
She's reported to be making frantic efforts to keep the split as civil as possible. "She's running around in circles", according to a close friend, "she will need all the support she can get its not like its easy to walk out on a relationship like this"
It is not known whether a pre-nuptial agreement was signed prior to the marriage, Paul McCartney is one of the richest men in the world amassing a colossal wealth due to his participation with The Beatles and subsequent musical collaborations, if an agreement hasn't been signed it is believed that she won't have a leg to stand on.
Rumours abound over the split have suggested that infidelity may have been the cause. "She's terrible" a source stated, "always trying to get her leg over".
Another source has suggested that her battle with alcoholism was the cause. "Macca couldn't handle it anymore" a friend said "he would get home at night and find her legless"
Many have attributed this to a problem which started with the present that Paul had got prior to the wedding; he gave her a new prosthetic leg for Christmas but that was just a stocking-filler. The main gift was a plane but then he gave her a Ladyshave for the other leg.
Posted by dottie at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)
Bastard child of Inform 7 and Unreal Tournament
Reading about Inform 7 earlier and the fact that I have been back-brain thinking about games and AI for a while made me have a thought just as I was drifting off to sleep.
I want to be able to react with the world as well as characters in a game. One way to do this is to shift the way you think about the problem. I started wondering would it be an idea to treat the world in a game as a character?
This then changes your perspective on everything in the game. Everything should be a character. The ammo, the spent casings, the blood sprays.
Things are sortof heading this way with the new physics engines, but I'm not talking about mere physics here! (always wanted to use a line like that....)
I'm talking about the characters and their motivation.
The Inform 7 'engine' allows you to script a characters motivation in sort'a-plain english. This includes the 'motivations' of non-human characters like buckets, doors, birds and what have you. This is based on sematic rules and relies on the writer to supply the logic and to a great degree I would imagine that our own brains and imagination are needed to flesh out the interactions and connect the implied logic of elements in the game.
I'm not going to try to white room the design of the Inform 7 engine so I'll stop there.
The point I'm making is that the game engine should be able to accept descriptions (not in plain english obviously) of objects and their motivations with hints as to what aspect of the world is affected by the mottivations.
For instance a large rock might be motivated to stay sitting in one place but this motivation could be overcome by a large force acting obliquely on its west side that would cause the stone to be motivated by the force of gravity to roll down a hill and crush any players in its path.
That kind of thing - except that is still too high level a description - more like acceleration (a) = 0 until F > 100 Newtons at vector (0,0,1) then a (0,0,1) = F/mass etc...
But then that is too low level. The game engine handles everything else in between but can also handle stuff like - Johnny likes cars and is motivated to watch any unusual cars that pass by expecially 59 Plymouths. If a 59 plymouth drives by he will follow it distracted only by pretty girls in high hells and short-shorts.
Do that for a number of characters and the story writes itself. The player would have to wor very hard to get themselves included in the story at all.
And that's the way it should be - encouraged engagement.
Posted by dottie at 1:58 AM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2006
Interactive Fiction
I really will have to delete my RSS subscription to 'the escapist' and many other blogs if I intend to get real work done...
They have just drawn my attention to the release of Inform 7 a tool for creating interactive fiction.
What's that in the who now? Interactive fiction - modern name for - text adventures.
I love them. I always wanted to write one, had visions of being up there with the likes of Zork. But my dreams lurked in a shadowy corner of my mind for too long and sadly, were eaten by a grue.
Inform 7 kinda changes things though. Its a total reinvention of the whole method of writing interactve fiction (well, so I was told by the escapist...). Natural language descriptions, high level descriptive 'programming'. Its more like describing a game to a developer who then goes and builds it for you.
I have got to get my hands on a copy.
Is it free?
OH MY GOD YES!
Goodbye sleep.
Hand me the bastard son of this and Unreal Tournament and you would make me a very happy man indeed.
Posted by dottie at 11:32 PM | Comments (0)
Cool bags
The lovely Naoimh just sent me a link to a cool online shop for bags.
eh?
NOT man bags. These are MANLY bags.
They are all made from USED truck tarpaulins (washed obviously...) and the straps are made form seatbelt webbing!
Iv'e been looking for a decent bag for ages and I think my search is done.
Freitag
Thanks doll!
Posted by dottie at 11:09 PM | Comments (0)
E3 fallout
I like games.
I like video games.
I like video games a lot.
I have been reading reports from various quarters on the E3 gaming (industry) expo and even watching some vids from it. SOme of the game trailers look pretty great and others show the state of current games - hollywood style big explosions, matrix without the story -err? and weirdness
What seems to be missign more and more, and something that is commented on more and more is gameplay, storyline, character development.
Don't get me wrong I like FPS games but most games now seem to involve either helping or harming NPC's. Some games expand on this a little but ultimately the world is vivified by the characters involvement.
I would love to see a game in a world where the NPC's have a life of their own and even if they never see the character they will do more than loop through a little set of actions. They will get bored, go for a drink, get in a fight, kill someone or get injured, go to hospital or jail and all that follows from that.
Are you trying to tell me that the characters in games like Grand Theft Auto have nothing better to do than interact with the player? These are nasty people - where is the richness of a life lived badly? Where are the late night, drunken tearfests about their abusive fathers?
Where is the humanity?
And yeah, I know you are going to say games are about escapism - so tell me about soap operas then - why are THEY so compelling?
Posted by dottie at 10:54 PM | Comments (0)
May 17, 2006
Other PC
I have two machines - one for work and one for play.
Unfortunately I recently had to rationalise down to one - feckin power supplies....
My other computer was meant to be used as a music machine as well as a gaming machine.
When I bought it I thought it would be a great idea to get a rack case. Its the loudest feckin computer I have ever had even with the expensive CPU coolers, power supply and silenced graphics card cooler it still sounds a bit like a hoover in a box.
This is no good for music where a whining fan in the background makes recording acoustic music impossible.
I have a plan - water cooling.
Right, Mark. Water. Inside your computer. Okely doke.
It'll work and I wil lbe able to build it so I can cool my CPU, POwer supply and Graphics card and all without a single fan.
Silence. So I can more easily hear my enemies creeping up behind me in Half-Life.
Oh yeah.
Posted by dottie at 9:05 PM | Comments (0)
Maudlin Interlude number umpteen
I keep realising that I am the world's plaything.
Someday I'll remember and stop being surprised.
Posted by dottie at 12:57 AM | Comments (0)
May 11, 2006
Bloodspell part 2!
Episode 2 is out - can't wait to see this later on!
Bloodspell episode 2
Posted by dottie at 11:54 AM | Comments (0)
There is no i in terrorism
err..wait a minute.....
Posted by dottie at 8:20 AM | Comments (0)
There is no me in team
... hang on...
Posted by dottie at 8:19 AM | Comments (0)
May 10, 2006
Life spent registering for ghosts. In a bush.
Joy!
Rapture!
I am turgid! (it was the Dictionary.com word of the day - had to use it somewhere...)
Eno and Byrne have released selected songs from the seminal 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts; as complete multitracks.
Fabjulous!
I'd love to get my hands on these puppies, but I have one problem.
I can't register on the site. That fantabulous, craptabulando, borked, junkfest of a an excuse for a website.*
Can you?
Try it now - its a fun game for all the music lovers in your life - keep them frustrated for hours!
Dont get me started on how crap the WHOLE login process is...
Note*: Its made of flash**
Note**: Dave in 2001 (A space oddessy) famously said 'Its made of stars'. If the monolith had been coded using flash he would likely have been saying - 'err.. I'm not sure where to click next or what I just clicked - its made of flash...'***
Note***: cue blinky lights (flash is for the frontal-lobally challenged) Look! Pretty pictures! Bouncy Balls! Wheeeee!!
Posted by dottie at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)
May 8, 2006
Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs, the 'godmother' of urban planning, died last week.
I didnt know of her until I read th obits, but her influence can be seen and felt even in Dublin.
In a nutshell - or at least the nutshell that I have gathered so far in my limited reading on the subject over the last couple of days - Jane Jacobs was to urban planning what Charles Darwin was to evolution, sort of.
She examined the way communities in cities sprang up, how their differences and similarities to the whole (the city, country) initiated and sustained them.
She spoke of areas with diversity and easy travel with an environment that catered to the needs of the inhabitants as being the most successful. She championed incremental change and experimentation.
Unfortunately many urban planners who claim to be influenced by her tailor/design/build urban centers expecting them to appeal to a certain group of people.
How does this affect me? I live in Smithfield. It has long been touted as the next big thing in Dublin. I love living there myself but the reality does not gybe with the hype.
I live in one block of a series of high-rise apartments. Its great. Spacious, with floor to ceiling windows and doors looking out onto Smithfield square with a balcony wide enough to accmmodate chairs and a small table. Fantastic. I wake up every day with a fuzzy feeling inside about it all.
However, the ground level view is a little different. The hype projects an image of hazy, warm summer nights filled with hip urbanites chilling in cafés and poking about in interesting little shops and museums.
The reality is a little different. All the shops, bar an admittedly nice supermarket, are lying empty. The hype machine keeps turning and telling us that this summer will be different. The buildings will all be finished and sit for months or years on the stillborn dreams of property developers cashing in on the desires of urban planners.
The 'locals' (aboriginies?) do scoff at us for being posh. No doubt they notice the concrete dust and squalor of the pre-abandoned units beneath our living space, on display behind hermetically installed double-glazing. The ante-commerical dustbowls are our cabinet of curios - empty, just as our dectractors expect them to be, allowing them to nod and grin as we shuffle past to buy out of date ginger at twice the price in the 'local' supermarket or brave the triad members in the even more 'local' chinese market. They know and show it. We know and ignore.
Just to add insult to injury, the dream has been killed. The spaces, once pregnant with the possibility of bustling cafes with sexy, foreign barristae and languid caffeine addicts (is there such a thing) talking the night away in a pseudo bohemian way, have been gievn over to more dust. They will be offices.
Posted by dottie at 3:03 PM | Comments (0)
May 4, 2006
CSS Reboot Redux Recidivist
I guess I took a little too much on.
I'll aim to get the design finalised for this weekend but I have definitely missed the boat for the May 1st Reboot.
Next time!
Posted by dottie at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)
May 2, 2006
CSS Reboot Redux
Ok.
So I didnt quite make it. I have two designs that I am futzing around with and one of them will be live tonight.
Honest.
But at this stage I would have to admit defeat - two days just wasnt enough time, especially as I hadnt a notion what to do in setting out!
I think for us slackers they should have a May 2nd (or 3rd) CSS Reboot :)
I have now set a reminder in backpack to give me some notice for November!
Posted by dottie at 9:27 AM | Comments (0)