Forever Bubble
Finished all the levels in the default Frozen Bubble levelset? Run out of custom levels from the interwebs? Random levels too boring? Making levels too hard? Sounds like you need Forever Bubble — what I made on Tuesday night instead of working.
Randomly generate pretty levels — for ever! Run it with --help to see all the options. You need the argparse and networkx python modules, and obviously python. It should work on any *NIX. The Frozen Bubble levels directory needs to exist if you want to save there. Patches, ports and comments welcome. If you generate a particularly awesome level, paste it into a comment; maybe I’ll compile a “greatest hits” levelset.
Unserious post is unserious
There’s too much Serious Business on my front page! Something must be done.
You should buy Machinarium; it is an awesome indie point-and-click adventure game about robots. It has really pretty art, and versions for Windows, Mac and Linux. (It’s written in flash, and the standalone flash player for Linux is really grotty, but everything worked for me after I followed some helpful instructions on the forum. Run the executable with G_SLICE=always-malloc … to prevent random segfaults, and turn off full screen mode straight away or mouse control will go wonky.) You can play a demo at the site to see if you like it. The full version is a 350MB download. It’s only $20 for at least a day’s worth of playing (if you’re the kind of person who will stay up until 4AM obsessively trying to finish it), and comes with absolutely no DRM — which I think is worth supporting.
Better late than never
I’m about to upload my photos of our Dragonfire LARP, which happened only two months ago. This is still less laggy than Hodgestar’s birthday party. In order to upload the photos I am upgrading digikam, so that I can use a non-faily flickr upload plugin. In order to upgrade digikam I need to upgrade the rest of KDE from the kubuntu-backports PPA — this is currently chugging away in the background.
I have embarked on an epic sewing project — making myself and Hodgestar medieval Japanese outfits for Here Be Dragons, the annual SCA away weekend event which is about a month away. I’m making this (except with a maroon hakama because the shop had no red linen) and this kind of thing (except black, because that’s the colour of the hakama Hodgestar already has).
The nice thing about Japanese clothing is that it’s mostly a whole lot of rectangles. The only tricky part of the kimono-type garment is the collar. I think I’ve been having problems because my seams are tiny and all the instructions on the interwebs assume that you’re going to leave enormous seam allowances — so my collars are too wide and too high up on the body and need to be re-sewn. I need to test this theory out on the two very nearly finished kosode I’ve just made. The reason I’m writing a rambly blog post and not sewing right now is that V:TES players have taken over the lounge table.
After a very long wait, my kalahari.net book order arrived, and here is my loot:
- The Never Ending Sacrifice by Una McCormack — it’s a DS9 tie-in novel; don’t judge me. I first read Una McCormack’s fanfiction during one of my previous love affairs with Deep Space Nine, and her pro fiction is just as good. This is a stand-alone story about a minor canon character.
- Worlds of Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Cardassia and Andor (purchased for the Cardassia half, also by Una McCormack; I’m leaving the other half for later) — also good, but (obviously) shorter.
- Kimono: Fashioning Culture by Lisa Dalby — a well-regarded reference book about the history of kimono.
- Seed to Harvest by Octavia E. Butler — a collected edition of the entire Patternist series, except for one instalment Butler really didn’t like. Haven’t read it yet.
- Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany — currently reading. It’s slow going, because of the unusual language, but I’m enjoying it.
- Zombies Calling by Faith Erin Hicks — a fun, short zombie comic. Not much to the plot, but I really like Hicks’ art. (If she sounds familiar, it’s because she did Demonology 101.)
Recently discovered webcomics:
The upgrade has become unexpectedly exciting — I’ve hit some kind of packaging bug. I guess the photos will have to wait a bit longer. :/
Locustforge!
I’m gradually sorting out my web presence. Something I’ve been meaning to do for a really long time is put all the little bits of code I write in an easily accessible public place, so that other people can use them. Hodgestar and I have set up Locustforge to be a site for our shared projects. So far it has a wiki (which still needs cleanup) and an svn repository for our code.
I intend to move all my code — which is presentable enough to be shown in public — in there. So far, I’ve added the PmWiki skin we use on our wiki, and some RSS feed filters which can be used with Liferea (and probably other readers too).
Get off my side; you’re making it look stupid.
Update (April 2009): Holy crap! The IEC really did get their site updated for the elections. I almost fell off my chair. The election results are inexplicably only available as PDFs that you have to download, but hey — baby steps.
So, if you live in South Africa and have The Internet, you probably already know that the IEC website is crap. It has been crap for years. It used to be bizarrely malformed in anything that isn’t IE, and lots of people complained.
Recently the IEC dramatically improved the situation by adding a browser check to their main page, and redirecting any browsers that don’t identify themselves as IE to an apologetic note which explains that the site doesn’t work in anything except IE. Please note that they had time to add Google Chrome to the list of other browsers — but not to actually fix the damn site; something which you might think is not rocket science, or very expensive to do, especially in this age of out-of-the-box CMSes and web development frameworks.
Of course the site still works in Firefox, exactly as badly as it used to — and the browser check is trivially circumventable. All you have to do to see it in its full malformed glory is navigate to any internal page. If you’re feeling energetic, you can make your browser lie in its user agent string. Be prepared to reload frequently — not only is the site atrociously designed and basically unmaintained (how long is that <\table> going to be there?); the server is a bit dodgy.
Now, people have been complaining about this crap for years, to little effect. Nobody seems to be particularly interested in fixing the problem.
Earlier today several people I know posted links to DigitalApartheid.com, a new site created by someone who is fed up with the state of the IEC website. As much as I agree with the purported goals of the site, I am not impressed with the way it has gone about achieving them, for several reasons.
One: the site instructs visitors to email or fax a form letter complaining about the site to various employees of the IEC. Form letters are crap. Form letters say “I’m not capable of articulating an intelligent opinion about this; I’m with that guy, so I copied what he said.” I wouldn’t be surprised if they were forwarded straight to /dev/dustbin at the IEC; I know that’s what I’d do.
Two: the form letter is full of bad punctuation and grammar. Badly written complaints make you look stupid.
Three: the form letter compares the site’s exclusion of non-IE users to apartheid, and states that the writer is contemplating not voting unless the site is fixed. Here’s where we go off the deep end.
Seriously? You really think that the inconvenience that you experience at this site because of your (admirable and sensible) choice to use a browser other than IE is comparable to decades of racist government oppression?
Dude. Maybe you should get some perspective.
Most people in South Africa don’t have access to computers. The IEC website is not the only — or indeed the primary — source of information about the elections. This information is not being denied to you — if you can’t access it in your browser (and you can, really), you have the ability to get it in some other way, just like all those computerless people.
I do want the IEC to fix their site — but bombarding them with ridiculous hyperbole isn’t going to make them do it. There are plenty of intelligent things to say about standards compliance and FOSS, and why they are important. If you’re going to send a complaint, please do it in a way which doesn’t make you — and by association everyone else who uses an alternative browser — look like a raving nutjob.
Schrödinger’s minister
So Trevor Manuel has simultaneously resigned and not resigned. We’ll finally know his state when someone peeks into his office and collapses the wave function. I made this joke purely for the sake of generating an interesting title for my post, and I apologise.
Hellboy 2 was awesome; it’s really nice to be able to say that about a cinema movie for a change. Abe’s makeup was better than in the first movie. I liked the story. I’ve heard of some people saying it’s not very “Hellboy” — but the tragic decline of the pre-human magical races (and their continual attempts to get Hellboy on their side) is a major theme in the comics (”lovecraftian horrors from space try to eat the world” is the other one).
Abe has his own comic spin-off! I have ordered the first trade, but publication appears to have been delayed. I’m also getting the Lobster Johnson trade — I may as well collect the lot.
I am reading the InuYasha manga. Scanlations are funny. It’s very rare for fan translators to have a flawless grasp of English grammar — and they have a tendency to be obsessively faithful to the original text, so if they encounter something difficult to translate they prefer to provide a half-page explanatory footnote than to pick an equivalent but not identical English phrase. Also, since this is generally a youth-friendly manga, I’m pretty sure that InuYasha doesn’t keep saying “fuck” and “bitch” in the official English translation.
I have installed Privoxy at home, and cleaned up some of my previous hacky ad- and cookie-blocking measures (huge blacklist in my browser, mostly pointless since I was not accepting cookies by default and thus only using the whitelist; huge wodge of domains in my hosts file, etc.). The first advantage that Privoxy has over all this crap is that it understands wildcards. Thanks to this, I will not have to allow cookies from every single LJ/Blogger domain individually. And for my next trick, I hope to be able to tell Privoxy to extend the life of LiveJournal’s cookies beyond the session — I’m not a prolific poster, but unless I am logged in (with openid), I keep running into the infuriating new adult content filters[1].
[1] This is what self-policing enforced by vague threats and imprecise rules looks like. Anyone who thinks they might occasionally mention sex in a post (i.e. is a normal person) sticks these on their entire journal, just in case. And of course the anonymous reader is assumed by LiveJournal to be a minor, and subjected to the most extreme filtering by default. I’m an adult. Why do I have to wrestle with childproof caps on my interwebs?
MozPong, how I have missed you!
Now that I have a computer which still has all of its teeth and is good for something other than yelling “You damn kids! Get off my lawn!”*, I have set up Basilisk II, the 68k Mac emulator (when I upgrade to Hardy I will also try SheepShaver, the PowerPC emulator). It’s running MacOS 8.0, the highest version of the operating system that Basilisk will support, and is using a Quadra ROM.
MacOS 8 is prehistoric, and the emulator keeps hanging — I’m hoping that with a bit more research I’ll be able to optimise the settings and make it stop doing that . Why did I bother doing this at all? Mostly so that I could once again play the finest Breakout clone in the history of human civilisation: Akira Nagamatsu and Shizue Mouri’s MozPong.
Instead of a paddle, you have a small boy with a big head. Instead of a ball, you have “Butasan”, which seems to be a tiny flying pig (I only solved this mystery ten minutes ago, with the awesome power of Google. I always thought it was some kind of clay bottle!). Instead of bricks, you have eggs — when you break them, chickens fall out and you have to catch them for points. Some eggs contain extra Butasan, and there are also bombs (which explode). Every now and then, a dinosaur called Josephine walks onto the screen and tries to hug you, thereby preventing you from getting to your Butasan (or chickens). You get rid of her by hitting her with the Butasan and running over her while she’s down. Catching lots of chickens gives you random bonuses — most of them just give you more points, but some have interesting special effects.
This game is made of win. It makes the whole emulator setup worth it. There is apparently also a Windows port, which you may find more convenient if you’re already running the OS of Evil.
Other favourites I am looking forward to playing are Maniac (a cross between Pacman and hangman), Blobbo Lite (a puzzle game) and Bill the Demon (a gruesome little platform game) — which I will review properly at a later stage.
* Its RAM is an order of magnitude larger than that of my old computer. This means that I can now actually run things that normal people run — even all at the same time.
Beware of the Leopard
Last weekend I went hiking with Hodgestar, Hodgestar’s Mom and Neil in the Vogelgat nature reserve near Hermanus. It’s lovely — isolated, almost entirely empty of people (it’s a private reserve with a limited membership), and full of fynbos and frogs. I have photos, which I should upload. There are several little huts where you can stay overnight; we stayed at Leopard Camp.
I have new hiking boots, which made my hiking experience a lot more pleasant than the previous one. Getting them was a bit of an adventure; they were a hurried, last-minute purchase, and the first pair I got did not fit as well at home as it seemed to in the shop and had to be exchanged. The second pair is really as waterproof as advertised, and very comfortable. I have ended up with a men’s size 8; I see that shoe sizes are exactly as reliable as clothing sizes.
I have read Grass, which is really good. I am currently reading the third Digger book (after work while waiting for Hodgestar) and His Dark Materials (at home, because it is borrowed (thanks, Katherine!)).
HDM is a lot better than the movie. All the bizarre and inexplicable things that happen in the movie happen for logical reasons in the first book. It also has an actual ending, which is a great improvement. Part of the movie’s incomprehensibility can be blamed directly on the scriptwriters’ removal of all overt religious references — since a key element of the plot (why everyone is so upset about Dust) hinges on a purely religious concept. Seriously, how did they think that they could just take that bit out, and have the whole thing still make sense? Yeah, they do sort of allude to it, but no satisfactory explanation is given.
Is this an “atheist” series? Uh, not so much, except possibly in the eyes of people who conflate atheism with criticism of religious institutions and their teachings, or with “hatred of god”, that notorious strawman belief system I’m not entirely sure can actually be found in the wild (except in isolated individuals who aren’t very sane). The books are certainly scathingly critical of the Catholic Church, which is presented as a Bad Guy throughout, and it looks like god very much exists in the setting and is turning out to be some kind of supernatural villain.
I will reserve final judgement on the series until I’ve finished the last book, but so far it’s OK, and a fun, quick read. Most people seem to find the second book a bit dull; I think I agree. The switch in protagonists is a bit jarring. I don’t find Will Parry very likeable, especially in comparison to Lyra.
At work I have installed Ubuntu Gutsy on my MacBook Pro. Almost everything worked out of the box (although there’s a lot of functionality I’ve never tried out), but I had to upgrade to the Hardy kernel to get sleep to work. Now I’m installing Debian Etch in a VM (using KVM/Qemu). So far, so good.
Hodgestar and I got ourselves a data projector for Christmas. It’s very nice. And now I’m off to watch Farscape.
ETA: I forgot — I have bought Creatures of Rokugan and Emerald Empire (recent L5R 3rd Edition sourcebooks). I haven’t had much time to read them yet, but they look pretty good. CoR is a bit dry and lacking in pictures and explanations, and both books unfortunately suffer from AEG’s usual proofreading issues, but EE looks like a really awesome setting resource. The bit I did manage to read finally clarifies the issue of meat-eating in Rokugani society, and I’m hoping for a resolution of the leather stupidity as well. Vassal families have finally been updated! (Of course, I reserve the right to ignore some of this information utterly if it josses my campaign.) The book has lots of wonderful in-character commentary in the form of extracts from the diary of Doji Barahime, a snarky Crane Clan courtier.
More manga, and miscellany
I’ve read all the Elfen Lied that has been scanlated so far. I gave up on Bleach during a particularly dull and pointless fight scene (of which, unfortunately, there are many). Now I am reading Death Note (sociopathic high school student finds magic notebook which can be used to kill people) and 20th Century Boys (some kind of near-future sci-fi mystery with a plot woven through several time periods in the lives of a group of friends).
I went up and down Table Mountain on Wednesday in bad shoes. Now parts of my legs don’t work, and I have four different unpleasant skin conditions (if you include mild sunburn). Hopefully I will soon feel better. Going up the mountain through India Venster was quite a lot of fun (actual rock climbing, minus vertigo — yay!); going down Platteklip Gorge — not so much.
My computer is having cooling problems. I had to replace the power supply fan. The only 80mm fan left in all of Canal Walk was one that is neon green and red and lights up with little UV LEDs. It does not, however, have colour-coded cables. Since the fan replacement involved splicing I had to do some swapping around, so now the bling-bling fan is the main case fan and I can see it through my tower case’s side window. The actual replacement was a bit exciting: what kind of idiot manufacturer makes a power supply you can open up, and then glues an important component to the fan — the component most likely to fail and also the only one a home user is likely to try to replace? Honestly. I had to pry it off with a screwdriver; nothing exploded, so I guess I didn’t damage it.
Today the machine hung again; I reversed the side fan to make air flow through the case better, and we shall see. I have room for at least two more fans.
I hope you are having a good miscellaneous holiday; mine has been pretty good so far. Representative selection of presents: nice shirt, blender, book vouchers and a pretty elf man on a horse.
Post-*Camp
*Camp was pretty cool. I didn’t get enough sleep. I learned the actual names of lots of people, thanks to the helpful nametags. My Scribus demo went reasonably well, given that we discovered a weird bug while I was doing it.
Things I forgot to say about Scribus:
- You can import HTML and it preserves the text formatting — it generates styles for the paragraphs / headers / etc. that it finds. There are other formats it imports from, too — I haven’t played with this very much.
- It preserves the transparency of PNGs with alpha channels.
My photographs, let me show you them.
Buy someone a cow
Recent Tweets
- @firstfallen I like option 4 too. Option two is also nice, but kind of busy.
- Twitter, you are making me sad in my pants. Fix your damn RSS feeds or stop linking to them. http://tinyurl.com/2apmyjv
- @AnnaMalczyk It wasn't hard -- wasn't actually using it for anything. Stupid LJ crossposting feature was final straw. Do not want! D:
- Or not so much. Now exploring these possibilities: http://tinyurl.com/382w9kg
- http://topsy.com FTW; actually seems to have access to full Twitter history.
- @TheRiver I'm following these instructions; don't know how "complete" this is: http://www.wikihow.com/Permanently-Delete-a-Facebook-Account
- I just nuked my Facebook account. When the boat anchor starts biting your ankles, it's time to let go.
- @firstfallen I don't think you're being oversensitive. Waiting would have cost little and been worth a lot. They chose to be dicks about it.
- @firstfallen They all deserve to be summoned to a compulsory team-building workshop on Christmas Eve. :P
- I think encasing the whole block in this tree would make the street look much better. Cut window and door holes. http://tinyurl.com/2vjhg3m
