3/31/2006

essays never end

stuck up at varsity downloading essay research again...
will these essays never end? it doesn't seem like it.
i've still got another 2 projects to code too.
*sigh*
we have some new lecturer for the compilers section of the course.
she has the most irritating voice i have ever heard.
her voice makes my ears hurt.
and she has a habit of saying "a grammar."
"lets look at an example of a grammar."
now while dictionary.com seems to say that that's acceptable use, i think its like saying "a water."
it just sounds so damn wrong! a grammar system sounds so much better.
she does have a horrid, high pitched, afrikaans, plaasmeisie kinda accent. maybe thats what the problem is.
my ears bleed after 45mins in her lecture.
and this means another R350 textbook to purchase.
its an expensive month and it hasn't even started yet.
blegh!
and this weekend looks busy.

3/30/2006

enjoying the system

cool, in denial
We're the cruel regulators smoking
CIGARO CIGARO CIGARO

yeah.
i'm enjoying system of a down at the moment.
moonflake recently bought the 2 albums that i hadn't (steal this album and mezmerize) and i mp3'ed them to listen on my mp3 player while wandering up to and down from varsity.
i'd only ever heard 1 song from these albums before. man they're cool.
i do suggest purchasing them and never romoving them from your preferred music playing device (i currently have all 5 albums on my mp3 player).

so moonflake and i went out last night and had sushi (mmm) for supper before going to see final destination 3.
before i say anything else that may lead you to believe the contrary let me state now: on face value i thought the movie was ok, not fantastic, but enjoyable enough.
now for the catch...
as the 3rd part of a trilogy (and i hope to god they stop here before ruining it anymore) it sucked the biggest donkey dick i have ever seen!
the first movie brought the whole concept of "death's plan" to the audience and was a fresh film that kept you interested.
the second film had a character return who knew what was happening and they had the whole "how to escape the plan" thing going.
both those films had something and added to the universe which they created.
the third film dilutes the final destination formula to its simplest form (ie: some kids escape certain death and begin to die off as death catches up to them) and adds nothing new.
there was a little tension and some gore, but overall you were left feeling that you'd seen it all before (deja vu if you will... ironic since that's kinda how they escape death in the first place... maybe its a warning to wait till it airs on tv before going to see it).
they had no returning characters, instead using the internet to discover about the events of the previous movies. they had to discover death's plan themselves, which had already been done in the first movie (which you presumably have already seen) and there wasn't any real attempt to squirm out of death's plans through loopholes or anything (like in the 2nd movie).
this movie was basically just a remake of the first movie with a different "we escaped death" bit and different actors. the tech is obviously better and there is more gore than i remember the other movies having, but overall it was just a little bland.
its unfortunate as i really enjoyed the first 2 movies and thought that this one was just "ok."

*shrugs*
oh well, it was still a fun night.
stuck up varsity today while i wait for a stupid tut/workshop thingie.
game tonight should be fun.
chittychittybangbang (see link on sidebar) had a funny (to all but him i'm sure) encounter on an escalator which he blogs about.
he obviously hasn't seen mallrats otherwise he would have been a lot more careful.
in closing i'd like to say:
There's nothing wrong with me
There's something wrong with you
There's something wrong with me
I hope your stepson doesn't eat the fish
There's nothing wrong with me
There's something wrong with you
Don't eat the fish

3/29/2006

playmates, popes, guerillas, they stole my shirt...

it started with the "dead bull" shirt and now the che shirt.
*sigh*
ok at least this time it wasn't directly stolen from me.
hmmm... you may be getting a little lost here. time for a history lesson:

many years ago i got my hands on a couple of red bull posters.
scissors, glue, and a little time later i was hanging up a "dead bull - energy kink" poster in a society room up on varsity (i belonged to the society at the time).
i go away for a year and a half, come back and get told that my dead bull poster was made into a shirt by laugh it off.
"odd co-inkydink," i think to myself until the details come out.
fact 1: turns out the shirt was almost identical to my poster.
fact 2 : the founder of laugh it off went to the same university as me.
fact 3 : someone from the aforementioned society knew the aforementioned founder of the aformentioned t-shirt company.
fact 4: the fucker stole my idea and i never saw a cent.
apparently the founder came to the society room to meet up with his buddy. he saw the poster and even commented on it. he went off and created a t-shirt company and ripped off my idea.
(all this story i gathered through multiple friends who were members of the society / went to that university at that time)
now i don't have a problem with the shirt being made. but the fucker could have at least thanked me (cash wouldn't have been amiss). i did put my usual signature on the poster and everyone in the society room knew who made it.
here endith the history lesson.

now: the current.
i've been talking about making a shirt with che on it.
you all know che. he was the marxist revolutionary and cuban guerrilla.
che was second in command to good old fidel castro after he became the dictator of cuba. in short che is a well know terrorist.
people wear t-shirts of him all the time because his image has become synonamous with anti-establishment, anarchy, "fight-the-power" kinda vibes (man).
this is why so many teenagers love the shirts.
the picture of him is a black and white, kinda high contrast photo of a bearded man with a berret that has a star on it.
now my plan was this:
create a tshirt of che, but subtly alter it by changing the star on his berret (representing marxism/communism) with the golden arches (representing macdonalds and cash) thereby creating a twofold joke.
joke 1: the entire image now stands for capitalism, the very thing che stood against.
joke 2: che looks a little like a macdonalds employee. the man would have been a burger flipper if he'd discovered the schpatula before the AK47.
i'd have loved to create the shirt and sell it on (especially to dumb kids who didn't notice the changes and didn't comprehend the joke) except someone got to it first (well... not exactly as i would have done it). look at the following picture from some political shirt company.

(they actually have some cool shirts. i don't agree with all their political bull, but a shirt that says "hippies stink" is cool).

so i guess i just have to give up on the whole t-shirt creation thing and am now putting some of my ideas out here to be stolen and used (cash thank-yous would be nice).
shirt 1: in nice bold text on the front: "YES! I'M STALKING YOU!"
shirt 2: in nice bold text on the back: "I KNOW YOU'RE WATCHING ME"

well... that's about it at the moment (it's not my fault that my ideas get stolen faster than i can think of them).
if i remember any more / come up with any more i may (or may not) post them.

in other news:
anna nicole smith is in court trying to get some cash from her ex hubby's estate (dead ex not divorced ex). she was a twenty something, topless dancer when she married 89-year-old oil tycoon billionaire.
a year later he died.
his son claims to be the only heir and has allegedly done some bad stuff (forgery or something... he denies it) to keep her away from the cash.
she just wants her fair share.
come on... give the one time playboy plamate a little cash, she may give you a little something in return *wink*
find here a link of her getting almost topless at an mtv australia awards thingie.
(actually she's got flesh coloured tape covering any naught bits with mtv decals over that).


random link: is the new pope darth sidious? check for yourself.

funnily enough, talking about the pope and anna nicole smith: i found the following picture on some guy's blog that had a (prehaps tasteless?) satirical report on anna attending the pope's funeral and claiming she owns the vatican as they were secretly married. (not the best photoshop... but funny).

super quick games news today from magic box:
god of war 2 is on its way to the playstation2 (there are some pics at magic box).
and (unconfirmed) konami are working on a new castlevania title for the nintendo ds. apparently a sequel to circle of the moon.

and that's about it for today... over and out.
ps: please replace all "arguement"s yesterday with "argument"s (my spelling is teh suxxor).

3/28/2006

a rant day today

just added a link to ChittyChittyBangBang! (see sidebar).
he's got a good writing style and churns out an interesting blog.
i don't read it as often as i should, but then i don't do a lot of things as often as i should.

anyway.
i was reading a copy of nag (new age gaming) last night and came across a review of shadow of the colossus.
now the game is fairly bold in its implementation and quite original. its all about defeating 16 giant creatures in some spectacular ways (climbing all over them and stabbing them in the weak spots etc). from all the info that i've read it is a unique experience. there are no minions to defeat, the story is simple yet engaging, its just plain good.
but what ticked me off had nothing to do with the game. what got my proverbial goat (i don't have a real goat to call my own) was the fact that the review opened up with a tired, overused, and lame arguement about gamers that has been bandied back and forth since the invention of games (and pertains to all media really).
the arguement is simply this: people claim they want originality but when something truly new arrives they don't like it.
well what the hell do you expect?
firstly its a generalization. a lot of people will try it and like it. a lot will shun it because it doesn't appeal to them. a lot will shun it because they don't realise what it really is.
but just because its original doesn't make it good.
just because its original doesn't mean we have to try it.
its not a difficult concept yet whenever this arguement rears it overcliched head, the person spewing out the disjointed garbage that makes the basis of their whining claims automatically latches on to the unreasonable fact that because he/she found it original it must be amazing and everyone should try it.
i could make something original that people really should try. i could make some shitty art film about slowly eating cereal while focussing on children being mauled by hungry seals.
"fruitloops and fish" i'd call it, and there would be stupid cunts out there who would watch it an tell other people that its better than crack (which is what i assume they're all on).
yes it'd be original but it'd also be crap.
people like things they know. the best form of originality is taking something people are comfortable with and providing a new and refreshing twist that evolves it into something new.
a sudden disjointed jump of new ideas often leaves people uncomfortable with the new environment, and people don't like to be uncomfortable.
some people thrive on experienceing something brand new that hasn't been done before (especially if they experience it before someone else and can lord it over them), but a lot of people like a certain thing and, while appreciating new additions to their preferred genre, like that thing to be left recognisable as the thing that they like.
people who like action movies will watch action movies. you can create a new, fresh action movie (that may be good or bad) but its still an action movie. fruitloops and fish is something brand new and "never-done-before" (i hope) but an action movie buff is not going to like it (unless they really have problems).
basically the point is this: originality is not the be-all end-all of everything and the stupid old "its original so it must be good" arguement is stupid. anyone who really believes that should be subjected to repeated screenings of fruitloops and fish until they cry blood.
if you're going to review a game (or movie or anything) don't start by threatening your audience by saying that they'd better like it or they're stupid morons.
tell us its original and sell the damn thing on its own credits!
if it is actually good then it doesn't need guerrilla reviewing tactics to get people to play/watch/try it.
the rest of the review actually made me want to try the game. not because its original but because it sounds like fun.

ha!
that's my rant for the day, well... the second really. i ranted a bit on chitty's blog about feminism. i'm not gonna repeat all that here but the basic gist of it is this: feminism can take things too far. as with the rest of life: common sense and not being a dick work far better than some stupid ideal that gets taken up like a brainwashing revolution of idiocy.
i'm sure the original feminist movement was fantastic, but too many female che wannabies have lost the real world applications (quixotic. look it up motherfuckers).
i may have actually gotten my point across a little better here than there... but that's rants for you: a burst of vehement opinion that normally is badly verbalised turning into a bitter stew that you try to force down someone's throat because you think they're too stupid to each such sweet nectars themselves. (man its fun mashing metaphores into some sort of goopy goopy).
*shrugs* whatever. i make no excuses. if you know me you understand and if you don't then it doesn't really matter if you do (understand that is).

3/27/2006

we got floaters

woo...
spent most of the weekend playing computer games with moonflake.
read some news today and decided not to comment on it as its all about idiot, racism, and just plain crap!
talking about crap:
there's a backed up drain near the comsci building today.
it was spewing water and shreds of toilet paper onto the pavement.
they finally stopped it flowing and took the lid off to gain access to the blockage (i assume?).
i had the unfortunate luck of walking past at this point...
the drain if full to the brim with liquid and we gots floaters there.
nasty!
on the plus side (and the reason why i'm still up at varsity today) i got an extra mark for my last comsci test which bumps me up to a first (75%).
yeah... that's what i'm talking about.

btw: ever wanted to make an origami elephant out of a dollar bill?
go here -> http://www.serve.com/hecht/origami/diags.htm
its a site with a bunch of patterns (pdf instructions).

and finally a little pic from al lowe's site (that is quite appropriate concidering he invented larry laffer)

3/24/2006

poker, breasts, and games... what more could you want? (a concrete slab?)

browsed through some normal and gaming news today and came up with some interesting stuff...

this guy must hate concrete!
the actual story is about some ambulance having lunch around the corner in stead of responding to an emergencey, but the subtle "under-story" hidden in there is about a man's struggle against concrete.
according to the story he was at high court in a case about a concrete slab falling on his head some time ago. while leaving the court he had an epeleptic fit and took a spill down some stairs, cracking his head open on... (you guessed it) the concrete.
he's obviously being hunted by the powers that build!in another story: this guy has tits, and has been charged with exposing them!
apparently this ohio man has a full set of breasts and was wondering around topless.
he's skipped his court appearences but his defence claims that a man cannot be charged with exposing his breasts.
in fact he continues with the statement: "It's also not even technically illegal for a woman to expose her breasts (in public)."
ohio sounds like a nice place.and in the last "real" news story: this guy won a million while on holiday.
he went on a holiday cruise to the carribean, but spent the entire time onboard playing in a poker tournament with his 15 buddies cheering him on.
He's a university student and borrowed some cash to enter the tourney and won, becoming the youngest person to win the PartyPoker.com Million V tournament.
he claimed it was very stressfull and he didn't get a holiday, but he can afford to go on another holiday now. he's going to give a share of his winnings to his backers and stash the rest until he decides where to invest it.



now for some gaming news:
the magic box reports the following:
- SNK Playmore announced Metal Slug Collection for PSP, a compilation of the 6 classic aciton shooters, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Metal Slug. The titles included in compilation are Metal Slug, Metal Slug 2, Metal Slug X, Metal Slug 3, Metal Slug 4 and Metal Slug 5. The PSP version will offer WiFi 2 players support, and it is scheduled to release in fall 2006.
kinda makes you wish you had a psp...
and for those of us who own a ds, the magic box also reports that a new zelda game is on the way.
named the legend of zelda: the phantom hourglass it'll have graphics similar to wind waker, ie: a mix of 3d graphics (environment) and 2d graphics (possibly cell shaded, for characters and stuff).
hit the above link for a couple more pictures.
no decent screenshots are out yet, but what there is looks like it could be good.


as for the usual going-ons in my life:
the game last night was fun. we bested more ninja and somehow got caught up in some politics between the king, the queen, and the princess. my character's not really too interested in political intrigue, but is starting to pick up a taste for intimidation. bull's strength and polymorph help.
bull's strength also may have gotten us into a little trouble. in self defence (while bull's strengthed) i slapped someone upside the head with the flat of my greatsword (going for non-leathal)... and critted! 30hp damage later and there's a crumpled, non-living heap in the corner somewhere. oops. and i only wanted to talk.
oh well, it was self defence, unlike the knifing of poor defenceless, unconcious manfred who ended up at the bottom of the docks before he woke up from his kidnapping. some players will do anything for the promise of cash (we're looking at the rogues *cough*thives*cough* here).

and that's it for today.
ciao!

3/23/2006

office humour


spent most of yesterday playing larry 3.
go visit al lowe's page (he created lesiure suit larry and did most of the work: programming, writing, sound, etc)
did you know you can skip the questions (for proving your age) at the begining of LL and LL3? and that al lowe used his birthday as the universal password for LL2.
go read his page.

gmail has been pissing me off all day today.
for some reason it just won't log in anymore. it was fine this morning and now its fuxxored. pah!
spent most of this morning researching http servers in java (and SOCKS4 proxies) again... but i think i got a good load of stuff including some pdf books on java.
took ages to download everything (including an abandoned game or two).

ah... al lowe's site is funny. go look at the virtual mouse cleaner.
there's also some rather dodgy fruit.
man, lesiure suit larry 3 is difficult. i remember playing it years ago and not getting far. retrying now and damn! all i can say is thank you gamefaqs.
larry 2 was a walk in the park by comparison.

well well well... gmail finally decided to log in.
ooh... mail.
and look... its all the crap activation mails so that i could log onto the tutorial pages that i've been browsing (spam here i come).

well...all my downloads have finished and i've got cleaning to do before the game tonight so it's time for me to foxtrot oscar!

3/22/2006

an elephant the size of the moon!

i forgot yesterday was a public holiday.
what a nice surprise to discover that when my mom mentioned it on monday night.
i spent the day watching tv and playing computer games (i finished lesiure suit larry 2).
relaxing.
i probably should have done some work for varsity (or at least some reading) but i didn't.
i was lazy and damn proud of it.

i discovered today that out webserver thingie has to be written in java :( but someone gave me a tutorial dealing with sockets in java :)
i'll have a look at that when i get home today (as well as download a couple more notes while i'm here at varsity now).

had to cancel the game yesterday as synk and moonflake both had dinner arrangements (one with parents and one with work) that they could not escape. man, this game is never going to get finished at this rate.
from now on i think i'm just going to run the game anyway... whoever pitches plays and whoever isn't there is just real quite for the session.
once i finish the campaign (not long now) i'll hand over gm'ing reigns to someone else.

anyway.
here's a pic proving how dumb people really can be.

3/20/2006

friday's post died

well there was a post on friday but the net suicide up at varsity and i didn't feel like waiting around for it to come back online.
(btw: happy name day schpat)
i finished and handed in my code on friday.
i finished my essay and handed it in today.
i have a little free time now, but i need to write an http server / socks4 server for april 18th...
and another project will be posted for me to do soon (for about the same time).
*sigh*
damn the net is slow up on varsity today.
stupid 2nd years eating all the bandwidth!
can't wait till people stop coming to lectures and leave my bandwidth alone.

any way.
sony are working on a PSOne emulator for the psp. psone games will be distributed over the net and playable on the psp.
that's pretty cool.

moonflake and i spent a lot of time over the weekend playing wow together (in between me researching and writing my essay).
our pair of undead are leveling up nicely.

other than that i can't find much of intrest to report on.

3/17/2006

Happy name day schpat.

seen google today?
its got greenery around its name (what tipped me off about st patricks day).
ha!

i just finished coding up my prac for monday and it works all good n stuff.
i'd done it before with a guy from my class so all i really had to do was type the code out and compile.
I rewrote the whole thing (well, we were given a skeleton to fill in) and made it much neater. for example: the original we did had a single function that used global variables to catch and handle signals. i wrote three much smaller functions and switched them in and out as needed, meaning slightly less statement checks but slightly more code.
any way. it's done now and handed in (sticking to my schedule) so now i need to go off and do my essay.

well.
i found a site with the original lesiure suit larry on it.
314Kb.
man, those were the days.
one disk games that rocked.
schpat forced me to go to the casino so we could play blackjack (in larry, not irl)

the d&d game last night was pretty funky, although we're going to be missing a waynne for a while (i would say congrats and enjoy the honeymoon except he doesn't read my blog so there!)
we killed ninjas and pissed off the king and queen (as usual) and are looking for more ninjas to cause trouble with (they started it!).

not much else to report on at the moment and i have an essay to write (for monday) and an http server to code (thankfully not for monday) so that's it for today.
zen!

3/16/2006

i been working on the railroad...

well, not the railroad...
but i have done a buncha work recently.
i got my test mark back today 21.5/30 ~= 70%
woot!!1!(one)!!11!

and i spent a large chunk of yesterday sorting out the prac for monday with someone. we finally figured out all the code and got it 90% working.
now i just need to code it up for myself, but at least i know how to do it all now.
and i spent a large chunk this morning researching denial of service attacks for the essay due on monday.

so the next few days look like this:
friday afternoon: code up the prac and hand in.
fri / sat / sunday: do the essay and hand in.
monday onwards: rest a bit before they hit us with more work.

spent a large amount of time last night playing a new undead warlock with moonflake (who was playing an undead warrior).
man that game is fun.

damn the labs are slow today. seems everyone is working up on campus and downloading as much as possible to try cut off my connection.

i feel like i really should be blogging about more today (i'm stuck here waiting for a pcu workshop at 14:00) but i really don't have much else to say.
i haven't really been keeping up with the news, but schpat and moonflake handle that side of things. i haven't done anything really interesting recently (unless you want to know about coding signal handlers and timers in C). i haven't even found anything particularly interesting on the net recently...
so i guess that's it for today then.
tata!

3/15/2006

little time = little post

had a comsci test this morning.
went ok.
i should have passed ok (luckily i knew the main section but the other 2 were a little dicey).
this afternoon will be spent with a classmate going over the prac we need to do for monday. something about kernel timing. since it's all in java he's gonna help me out a bit (i'm not so good with java... more at home in c++ but the crossover should be easy enough, they're almost the same after all).
tomorrow i need to do pcu (professional comms unit) in which we (classmate and i) outline the report that we will be writing.
finally the next few afternoons will be spent writing a 3k word essay on denial of service attacks for another comsci course.
then things should be free for a little bit and i'll do a real blog post.

quick catchup on stuff i've been doing: playing on my ds (advance wars ds, mario kart ds, castlevania ds [thanks moonflake]) replaced my PS2 (thanks schpat for the hookup) and got some games for it (working holiday is tiring but affords you games), housesat/dogsat for my parents while they were in cypress, watched serenity (twice now... it's awesome) and spirited away (dstv at parents' place. also very cool).

i still need to see doom, king kong, aeon flux (i don't care how bad you think it is yancke), and a handfull of other films when i get the time. i also need to get the rest of fullmetal alchemist (i got the first dvd with 4 eps on it... very good).

anyway.
thats all i got time for today.
cya.

3/14/2006

long time no C (++)

well i'm back at varsity now.
don't have much time for the next little while as the workload just got dumped on us.
essays, pracs, and tests all combined into the smallest time allocation possible.
at least i'm finally able to get online and quickly download all the info i need.
just put down a R100 deposit on a text book that i need that's only arriving in 2 weeks time and only 10 copies are coming.
of course i'll need to pay an aditional R220 when it arrives.
and that's only one of about seven prescribed books that i need for this year.
*sigh*
well that's about it for this post as i have to d/l some stuff and go home to study it all.
when i have time i'll blog a little more.
out.

bonus link: money origami