This game looks insane.

Remember the Nethack development team, and how it has "thought of everything"? Well, here is a game that is attempting to do that in a very literal sense.

This is Scribblenauts, a new DS game being developed by 5th Cell (the developer behind Drawn to Life and Lock's Quest). It's not going to be released until fall of 2009, but it sounds like it will be worth the wait (and they're certainly going to need that much time to work on it).
Basically, you control this character, Maxwell, and you have to get shiny things. You use different objects to get to the shiny things. Sounds like a fairly regular puzzle platformer, right? But it's not.
See, you spawn every object you need to use by writing in its name. So if you want a doughnut, you write doughnut, and *poof*, you get a doughnut.
And the thing is, you can make anything. Absolutely anything. Apparently they've already spent several months just scanning through encyclopedias and compiling massive lists of basically every object in the known universe. They've obviously drawn the line at "anything vulgar" and "copyrighted material," but other than that, they claim to have thought of everything, even stuff that is "so obscure" that nobody would ever think of it unless they released a full list of objects in the game at some point (I am curious, though, about whether you could make something that does not actually exist, such as a dragon or a little green man or something).
Because of that, there's billions of ways to solve every puzzle.
In the video I saw (it's the only one there is right now; I hope they show more soon), the star that the player needs to collect was in a tree. It showed the level being solved in three different ways.
A ladder was spawned, so that it could be climbed up and the star could be reached.
Then a football was spawned and thrown so that it knocked down the star.
After that, a beaver was spawned, and it bit through the tree and knocked it down (along with the star).
At the end of the video, it showed someone attempting (and seemingly failing) to use a doughnut to lure a policeman into jumping at the star or something like that.
Apparently items can be combined, too. So you can make glue or something and attach multiple things together to make something more useful.

When I read about this, I was just thinking: "Seriously?!"
But apparently, it is real. It's crazy.
I'll definitely be watching this one; I hope they continue to show more videos and such.

:::Source expected
:::13.12.08
:::STOP

Nostalgia time.

I was looking at some old files on my computer, and... wow. Some of it I'm not sharing because it's so embarrassingly dumb.
...But I will still show you a few things.
Some of them I think are still interesting, but others are just not quite as embarrassingly dumb as the rest of the stuff.

First, this extremely short stop-motion video that I made about two years ago:

Ah, it's so gruesome....
It's a play-dough alien creature incising larger play-dough alien creature with some sort of sophisticated alien weapon (it's actually the stylus to a PDA or something of that nature).
I'm not sure why, but I believe that is the only stop-motion video I have ever created.
I should do one again some time....
Anyway. I think it's funny because of the surprise ending, but in retrospect it would have been better to exaggerate the scale even more and make the monster start farther back.

Next I wanted to share a piece of writing. The one I ended up picking is not terribly old (it is in fact relatively recent; it's only about a year and a half old), but it's a classic:

I found myself in a much more pleasant room with carpet, lights that were on, and a large, comfortable-looking chair in the middle of the room. There was another door at the back wall. I was about to go and look to see if there was anyone in the chair, but suddenly it spun around, and I saw an extremely thin man sitting there wearing the most peculiar thing on his head. It looked to me like a gigantic orange and yellow sock, but I suppose it may have been some sort of mask that was too big for him. It covered his face entirely except for one hole for his right eye.
“What are you doing here?” he asked furiously.
“I sort of just… walked in.” I replied. “I was following this guy who looked suspicious.”
“Oh. You probably mean Frederick. He always looks suspicious.” The man replied calmly.
“So what you mean is that he’s always carrying guns and/or cases of the sort that usually contain bombs or large quantities of money?”
“I did not say that.”
“Yeah, well he had both.”
“Uh-oh… When did you start following him?”
“Probably about five minutes ago.”
“I’m very sorry, but I’m going to have to kill you now.”
“You don’t sound very sorry…” I said.
“I lied.” He replied nastily, pulling a knife from his belt.

That was an excerpt from "Normal, Mostly ...Sometimes", the piece that pretty much made me what I am today.
Not really, but it is an important work nonetheless. It's not unusually funny or interesting, but it defined my style.
Another reason I posted this is because it made me think of my old LJ blog. ("Normal, Mostly ...Sometimes" was the prequel to a strangely written "story" I did for that blog, you see. Incidentally, that was the last post I ever made.)
I'm not going to give you the URL to that (major, major kudos to anyone who still remembers it), and I'm afraid of looking at it too much myself because it will probably make me want to take it down. But I guess I'll drag out something for you to read.
A, here is a post from nearly two years ago (so, yes, around the same time I did the animation up at the top there) called "There was a title, but thens it ranned all away and goed splat-splat-splat" (seriously):

Anyway, I've been wondering about Greyhound buses. See, since they're so big, it seems like if they were driving in the weather we've been getting lately, they might slip pretty easily and stuff, and what if they run into telephone wires? It seems to me that since their built pretty low, the bottom of the vehicle might actually touch the ground, which would obviously be wet and snowy, and then it would also be touching the telephone wires. I think some sort of induction would occur, possibly electrocuting the passengers. It just doesn't seem safe, so my basic point is that we should have better greyhound drivers. All the ones I've known have been pretty good, but still, you've got to wonder if that's a fair representation of ALL of them... Also, I think that the drivers should wear hats. Hats are cool, and professional. But they should be really, really cool hats. Maybe they could glow or light up or something. They could have a radio-attached energy sapping system to the bus's battery... But that hasn't been invented yet, so it's probably better if it's just a rechargeable battery... So it would be like "Ridiculously Awesome Bus Service: We have safe drivers that wear really cool glowing rechargeable hats. Which pretty much makes us way cooler than anybody else. And we don't cost an arm and a leg. Did we mention our buses run on Cold Fusion and are no hazard to the environment whatsoever?" ...They would be having such the business there. I mean seriously.

This is interesting for several reasons. Firstly, it seems I used to take requests as to the content of my blog posts, as the point of that whole section was to incorporate several words / phrases Adam suggested that the post contain. The cool part is how well I managed to fit these words and phrases into the post. I actually didn't catch the point of it all at first.
Secondly, I see that I was a poor writer/communicator, I made dumb mistakes, and I apparently did not proofread my posts.
Thirdly, as I read further, I learned that at one point I doubted the accuracy of Wikipedia and even went so far as to say that it drove me nuts. Those were dark times indeed.
Fourthly, it marks the first recorded use of the phrase "really cool hats." This is a very valuable piece of information, is it not?
And finally, it shows that two years is a lot longer than I had initially thought. It doesn't seem to be a very long time, but this stuff is just weird. Reading it is a very strange and surreal experience.
Now I will put in one more quote from that blog that will probably only be interesting to three particular people (I must remember to tag these people once this gets imported to Facebook):

At some point during the [band] rehearsal, Zach drops his pencil. I have no idea why, but after this Alec steps on said pencil. Small tussle ensues. Alec gets pencil. Alec will not give back pencil. Now, I'm not entirely clear on what what happened after this, but at some point Riley gets the pencil? I don't really know, but I do know that it's now in someone else's possession. Anyhow, after band Zach comes up to me and says:
"Hey, do you want to join my gang? You need connections... friends in high places. I can provide those connections. So what do you say?" (or something along those lines), so I told him, "Sure, why not." (I'm still unsure as to whether this was a good idea). After this he says something like:
"Good. With you, I think I have about nine people! Now we can get my pencil back."

I don't think I ever heard anything else about that. Was the pencil ever returned to its rightful owner? I must know.

Anyway, talking about my older blog makes me think of my very very old MSN blog, which no longer exists. I did save a text file with its contents, however.
Let's see if I can find something from there that isn't ludicrously frightening.
Remember when I was talking about this being a "strange and surreal experience"? Well, it's about to get much, much worse. Of course, this probably just applies to me...
At any rate:

Breaking News!
John and Seth keep incessently repeating, "I'll blast you till tomorrow noooooooooooooooooooooon!"
Details at 11.


Back to our regularly scheduled programming:

Now the following portion makes no sense seeing as tomorrow it will be June, nowhere close to January, but they're already selling series 2006 cars, and you can use some imagination right? It's just so funny so I had to put it in before I forgot.

So I've decided to make a new annual tradition of making New Year's Resolutions I have no plans to keep. So this year's will be that I won't do anything, random, unnecessary, wasteful, or otherwise pointless. But since I did that knowing I wasn't going to try to keep it, it's furtherly pointless, and so I just broke the promise by even coming up with it.
Oh my, that was well worth the too much time I spent concocting it. I'd be rolling on the floor laughing by now, but It's a lot harder to do when no-one else is...
And since nobody probobly thought that was funny, it will never happen. Furthermore, that was altogether pointless in about six hundred ways, since the purpose of it was nothing and the subject was pointlessness, it just goes on, and on like this.

This also tells us some interesting things.
1. Life in my house has not changed much. That is a great HSR quote though.
2. I have never been that funny.
3. I used to try.
4. I also used to be a loser
5. My writing/communications skills were even worse back then
But then again, that is to be expected; are there really that many people who look back at themselves three and a half years ago and are proud of what they see?
Anyway. Here's the really funny part about this post. It ends with this statement:

So thus endeth my longest post ever.

...Following about 420 words of mindless babbling.
420 words!
...If you don't find that humorous, you have not been reading this blog long enough. I think my shortest post is about four thousand words.

Yes, I know. That was an exaggeration.


Anyway, this post went in a direction I had not intended. I wanted to share pictures and stuff, not dumb blog posts!

Let's continue then.

Remember this guy?
Probably not. I'm pretty sure nobody ever saw him but me.

A long time ago, I used to make games. In PowerPoint.
It's not the ideal software. But it can indeed make games. They're just incredibly linear.
Nowadays, however, it has become more difficult due to the newer versions of the program. Back in '97, it used to allow subsecond delay times, but not anymore (well, there's something like .5 seconds, but that's still way too long). It's hard to do smooth animations and transition from one event to the next when there's basically a delay of at least half a second between each frame (not really each frame, but I imagine you understand what I mean by this point).
At any rate, due to the restrictions of the program (most notably the inability to use any sort of variable or flag), there were essentially two types of games I could create:
1. Point and click adventure games
2. Trivia / quiz based games
This character is from the latter.
This one (called "Melonheads" for reasons that should be quite obvious) was a more elaborate game, and there were very basic minigames (such as a glorified game of rock paper scissors) that you had to play after every few questions.
I didn't get very far on it, because if one thing has never changed it is my inability to complete projects (I keep coming up with better [?] ideas!).
The first big game I ever finished (I believe) was one in the first category called "Typhoon Katana." You played as... some sort of martial artist or ninja or something. I think you had to fight ghosts (back then, I was terrible at any graphics on the computer, so it was all I could do) or something like that.
It represented months (or at least weeks) of work, and I think I actually thought it was cool when I first made it.
A few other interesting things about this game:
1. It was pretty ugly. I think I knew that at the time but I didn't really want to admit it to myself.
2. It took about twenty seconds to complete (OK, that's maybe an exaggeration, but it was short).
3. I made many shortcuts and oversights and did not bother to fix them.
...I think I still have the game on a disk somewhere, unless I've already "lost" it. But as you can probably tell by now, it has little actual value as a game anyway.
The funny thing is that I often talk about how I want to include a dumb game as an easter egg in one of my games and say it is "my first game."
I'm not going to explain how this goes because it's funnier if I tell it to you (even then, you won't think it's funny unless your sense of humor is somewhat similar to mine). But basically it's absolutely terrible and is not really a game at all.
Anyway, thinking about it now... heh, that makes me think of Derren Brown (doubtlessly a topic of discussion for another time).
Oh, sorry. What was I talking about? (Oh, the irony.) Right. Thinking about it now, this imaginary game is not all that worse than these actual games made in PowerPoint.
Now, this reminds me of some cartoons I made in PowerPoint with Andy, but, much to my dismay, those have been lost. I wonder if I have them on a disk somewhere? Somehow I think I must (or Andy does, if I don't).
Anyway, that is a very very long story. Not for today.

Moving on.
Here's something that you will probably find interesting. I know I did, at least.
I knew the concept (or at least, the character concept) for Purple Jelly was old, but I never knew it was this old (and possibly even older):



I believe I did these very soon after I discovered Game Maker. I wanted to make a platformer right away, but that was way beyond my abilities at that point.
These sprites were made about two years ago.
The first image's filename? purplejelly.png.
Not "purple blob". Not "purple ooze". "Jelly".
Eerie.

One more thing before I call it quits for today (and yesterday, and the day before that... I've been working on this post off and on since Monday, despite the fact that it is not terribly lengthy):

...This is the logo under which I was going to "publish" my games at one point.
I initially spelled it "squarkle" because it was an amalgamation between a square and a circle (this came up my first year at LABC because we were unable to properly form a circle any time we all gathered for any form of meeting; I'm not sure who coined the term initially), with -- for unexplainable reasons (likely for no reason at all) -- an image of a weedy sea dragon in the center.
That was before I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, naturally. Then I started spelling it differently and attaching the name to various random things (I'm sure we've all heard the story about dodgeball already, so I won't tell it again).

"Dude, we just got owned by squerkles!"

Expect interesting stories in the future; I liked doing this... In a weird sort of way.
If it's been a while and I still haven't told any, remind me.

:::Source expected
:::10.12.08
:::STOP


Quick note-
New poll. Maybe this sort of question will become a recurring feature?

A very boring post. At least I admit it.

This last week did not start well.

On Monday morning I was having a strange dream wherein I was helping Steven Spielberg and George Lucas produce a movie out of a secret base in the closet of a building they did not have permission to film. I don't see why it would've been that difficult to contact the building owners, but when you're working with those guys, you don't ask a lot of questions. And also it was a dream, as I have already stated.
Actually, maybe I was having a dream where I met Daisuke Amaya. No, it can't have been that; that was a good dream (though also strange, admittedly). It must have happened later in the week.
Anyway, I decided I'd had enough of this more underhanded approach to filmmaking, so I got out of bed.
It looked to be a ordinary day (id est, a good one). I took a shower and threw together all the stuff I needed at school. Then I looked out the window.
It was unspeakably terrible.
Snow.
Everywhere.
Now, I'm not sure this could have been handled in any better way, but I do know, based on the events that followed, that it was not the greatest idea to go outside and begin shoveling the driveway immediately.
Our driveway is ludicrously large, and we did not have enough time to shovel even the portion we needed and still be able to leave on time. Of course, "on time" does not normally mean a lot to me, as I've been spending first period practicing my clarinet or reading or something.
But if you are observant you will notice that something has been missing up to this point, and that is breakfast. Some people never eat breakfast, and I don't understand them. Breakfast is the most important meal of my day. It decides everything else; if it goes poorly, it pretty much ruins the rest of the day.
See, I was thinking at this point that I would just eat breakfast at school. I do that half the time anyway, because it's free (for me, anyway) and is not the cold cereal I would be eating at home (I actually like cold cereal but I don't find it to be the ideal breakfast food). The problem, naturally, is that by the time we got there they were done serving breakfast.
So now I was hungry. And the weather was bad. Determined as I was to not let the environment affect my mood, I was not very happy at all.
I then went to the library, or the media center, or whatever it is the cool kids are calling it these days. I sat down and I... Well, I'm not entirely certain what I did that day.
Oh, that's right. I'm pretty sure this was the day I began outlining the biggest weapons manufacturing corporations for Heroics Won't Save You.
Now, you may complain that you have no idea what I'm talking about, and with good reason. If you did, I would be genuinely concerned, seeing as I haven't talked about it here -- or, indeed, much at all.
Basic summary: It's my next (as in: after Purple Jelly... mostly) big project. The title is tentative I guess.
It's a platform shooter. I've always wanted to do one.
It has bullets, and fire, and cool hats. It looks promising.
Now, where am I? Ah, yes. I am sitting at my desk.
But at this point in my story, I am actually in the school library. I'm coming up with some nice-sounding (and mostly quite silly, because this is not a serious game) names for these corporations. I decided I was done with that about ten minutes before the bell rang. This happens a lot, and then I always just put whatever I was doing away and sit there.
So after I got done sitting there, I went to the band room and got out my clarinet. Then I sat there a bit more until the rehearsal actually started.
It went as well as usual, which is... From one perspective, fairly well... I guess we get a lot of stuff done. But on the other hand, there are many things we are doing very very wrong, and we will probably continue to do them wrong even for our concert.
They aren't major issues. It's usually something like this: We are playing something incorrect rhythmically. It does not sound bad because another section is playing this rhythm. But it's not exactly right for our section.
Anyway. That finished up, and I went home. Things got better from there; most notably, I ate breakfast.

I actually got very little done this week. I did finish one laboratory in Purple Jelly. It's very very difficult though (despite being quite simple), and I'll probably end up placing it quite a bit later in the game than it is now (it's currently Lab 02; they start with 00 so it's the third stage).

After that I decided to continue the ongoing saga of trying to find an MMO that I actually like enough to continue playing.
But it's still way too early for there to be any news regarding that; most of the stuff I looked at wouldn't run on my computer anyway, or was very large and wouldn't fit, or was just dumb.

...I'm sure I did many other things this week, but I have gotten to the point where I am now realizing that this post has been immensely dull, and I can tell you exactly why that is.
I am talking about my life in extensive detail, something I thought I had decided to not do a long time ago. I'm not sure how this happened.
Now you can see why I don't do it.
Now, I would make an exception if I fell off a train and got kidnapped by a gang of sock smugglers, but that kind of thing never happens to me.

There is one thing about this post that you cannot deny, however, and that is, simply, that it is here at all.
That's pretty impressive considering my track record recently, is it not?

...Yeah, you're probably right.
You take all the fun out of life. Go home.

Yeah, I know you are. So maybe you should go somewhere else first and come back.


:::Source expected
:::07.12.08
:::STOP

Cool Hats

This is going to be a strange post.
Especially coming from me. Or maybe you've come to expect strange things, and thus, no matter what I do, it will seem ordinary.
Anyway, you have officially been warned.



Yesterday I discovered that I am totally obsessed with cool hats.
The worst part is that I think I've been like this for years and I wasn't even aware of it. It's entirely possible that everyone but me knew about this already.
I'll give you all an opportunity to laugh at me now...


...OK, now you're done.
Seriously, though. Cool hats... they're really cool.
I often talk about how strange it is that nobody wears hats anymore. Why does nobody wear hats anymore? I guess I have no place to talk, since I don't have a hat. But if I had a cool hat, I might wear it. But hats (like most clothes, really) are expensive. And I don't have money.
If I did have money, I probably wouldn't spend it on clothes. Not even a hat.
But if I found a cool hat in a thrift store that was cheap, maybe I would buy it. Because hats are cool. Not all hats though. Only cool hats.

Allow me to talk about some hats, perhaps, in the process, attempting to explain why they are cool:



FEDORA
This is pretty much the ultimate cool hat. It's not necessarily the coolest hat ever (although they're definitely one of my favorites). It's just the best, most generic one.










It is often associated with gangsters, detectives, newspaper reporters, and... well pretty much all kinds of people from that culture/era (specifically, 1930s-ish USoA).
The coolest fedoras are definitely pinstriped ones. They're obtusely snazzy. And trendy, too.
Believe me, I know about trends.
(I say this a lot. I'm being sarcastic. FYI.)










See? Amazing.
Here is the Wikipedia article on fedoras.



BERET
This is a classic.



One of the cool things about hats is that they say so much. They're often symbols of status or rank. Hats are representational. You can say, "Oh, I can tell he's in charge here because of the hat he's wearing." But can you say "This man must be important; look at his socks!" No. No, you can't.
Berets are used by military forces all over the world. A lot of times, the color will indicate the person's rank or what branch of the military they belong to.
I think berets are best a solid color. Maroon is good.



Oh yeah, that's the other cool thing; you can pin all sorts of shiny insignias and stuff to berets, and they're even better, usually.
Here is the Wikipedia article on berets.



CUSTODIAN HELMET
Not technically a hat, but whatever. Isn't a helmet just another kind of hat? I would say so.

You know, the ones that police officers (particularly in the UK) wear. They're spiffy!
They can have all kinds of shiny things on the front and the top.


Why don't more police forces use these hats? It's a shame, really. It seems like a lot of times police officers go running around wearing something boring and flat, or even worse, no hat at all!
Here is the Wikipedia article on custodian helmets.



BOWLER/DERBY HAT
An older hat; reminds me of Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges.

These hats look kind of dignified. But they can also look menacing. It depends on who's wearing it, really. If you're an evil mastermind, you can wear the hat and look even more evil and mastermindly. But if you're a sophisticated banker, you can wear the hat and look even more sophisticated and bankerly.
Bowler hats don't really vary much. They're almost always plain black. But they can be cool in other colors too.

It's like the Riddler in Batman!
Here is the Wikipedia article on bowler/derby hats.



CABBY/GOLF CAP
Simple, but very cool.

I always associate this kind of hat with Oliver Twist. It was pretty popular in the nineteenth century, I think.
There are lots of different variations on this same basic style.

This is more like something people still wear sometimes today. Like Shiki Misaki.
Here is the Wikipedia article on cabby/golf caps.



SALAKOT
A nice, largish sort of hat.

I couldn't really find any pictures with a plain background. Just do a Google image search or something.

These hats come from the Philippines. There are a lot of different interesting styles. Usually they're simple, but they can be pretty fancy sometimes.
Here is the Wikipedia article on salakots; there are a couple pictures of fancier ones there.



ROGATYWKA
This is one I just discovered today. It's not too unusual, but not too plain, either.

These hats are used by the Polish military. Different colors can denote different unit types.


Here is the Wikipedia article on Rogatywkas.




...That's it for today.
Two posts in a row!


:::Source=
:::Paul M-unit 19.91 MKII
:::19.10.08
:::STOP

Every Game (Part I)

I am now going to tell you about games.
Specifically, every. Single. Game. That I have on my computer.

Why?
I don't know.
I must really hate you.

OK, so I'll skip over some, like the ones I've never gotten to work. But I will include the ones I never play because my siblings installed them a really long time ago and I'm too lazy to get rid of them.
In some cases, I may have never played the game even once; I don't know. If that is the case, I will have to play it, just so I can tell you about it. Except I probably won't. Because they're mostly MMOs and the like, and require way more time than I'm willing to invest.

I can't necessarily say that all these games will work for your OS, or that you would even like to play them. But I'm not entirely convinced I'm doing this for your benefit anyway.

These will not be arranged alphabetically or in order of coolness or anything like that. I'm just putting them in in the order I see/find them, or whatever I feel like, really.
This is going to be a pretty long list, because I hardly ever delete games when I'm done with them. I figure I might come back to them every once in a while, and that is often the case.

Let's begin, shall we?




THE BATTLE FOR WESNOTH
It's a great turn-based strategy game with a fantasy setting. You command armies and... destroy evil goblin hordes, and all that cool stuff.
It's free (and open source); you can get it here: http://www.wesnoth.org
It's one of the best strategy games I've ever played. It's certainly the best free TBS there is, at least. If you can find a better one, show it to me. But that's going to be difficult.

MAJESTY: THE FANTASY KINGDOM SIM
This is sort of a real-time strategy game, but you only control construction and things like that. Your subjects, and the various heroes that live in your kingdom, can go and do whatever they feel like doing. You can do things to motivate them, like offering rewards for killing certain monsters or destroying certain buildings. You can also do more subtle things like building statues, which generally increases their loyalty to your kingdom (if they aren't very loyal, they'll often just help whoever offers the most money, even if it means destroying their own homes).
This is a commercial game, but it's pretty old, so if you do happen to find it it will probably be pretty cheap. Otherwise, they're making a sequel, so you could just wait for that (assuming it's actually good).

SAVAGE: THE BATTLE FOR NEWERTH
This is... whoah. It's played online or over a local network. One person on your team is the commander, and controls everything like a real-time strategy game. They choose where to build things and give commands to all the ground troops. Each ground troop, though (not counting workers), is an actual player. So everyone else gets to control an individual character and go around blowing stuff up and whatnot.
It has a cool setting, too; sort of... primitive... yet... steampunkish. It's different.
The game was commercial, but they made it freeware to advertize the sequel. Go here: http://www.s2games.com/savage/downloads.php

DOUKUTSU MONOGATARI / CAVE STORY
This game is great. It's one of the best free games ever created. Get it. Get it now.
http://www.cavestory.org.
I guess you want more information than that. Well, it's an adventure-based platform shooter. Kinda like Metroid.
Now go play it. That's all you needed to know.

NETHACK
YES. Nethack. Every self-respecting computer user has to play this game at least once, even if (s)he hates it. If you DO hate it, what is your problem?! But I'm not here to ponder your insanity.
Nethack is a sort of role-playing, dungeon-crawling game. You make a character, and then you go through various perilous circumstances, and then you die. It's possible to win, yes, but you have to be really, really good at it. And/or obscenely lucky. Usually you die in some ridiculous way, like kicking a wall too hard or choking on your food. And when you die, that's it. There's no coming back, and there's no loading your game back at the last place you saved. Your character is gone.
Nethack is incredibly deep. If you can think of something to do (something feasable, I mean), you can probably do it. The game doesn't really focus on looking pretty, though. You can choose to have everything reperesented by text, or you can also have small, static, "old-school"-looking graphical tiles. There is no sound whatsoever. But this hardly matters. Sure, it would be cool to see a version of the game that has cool, fully animated graphics, sound effects, and background music. But is it needed? Certainly not.
Nethack is free. http://www.nethack.org/.

EGOBOO
Naturally, I am going to tell you this game is great, as I have contributed a small portion of that greatness (primarily, I run the website).
It has a really bizarre style. Kind of cartoonish. So sort of lighthearted. But it contains all sorts of gigantic, frightening beasts. It's weird, in a good way.
It's an action-role-playing / dungeon crawling game. It's basically what Nethack (see above, if you haven't yet for some reason) would be if it was 3D and in real time. Which would basically turn it into a totally different game. And that's what Egoboo is.
Egoboo is free, and open-source, under the GPL. You can find it here: http://egoboo.sourceforge.net/

BOTS
This is an online fighting game. With robots.
It's OK, but it's nothing extraordinary. It's fun for a while, but then it gets boring.
The game is free, but then you can pay money to get... I dunno, extra stuff, or something dumb like that. http://bots.acclaim.com/botslanding.html.

CIVILIZATION III
Ah... CivIII. Where to start? Maybe I shouldn't bother. I suggest you look it up on Wikipedia.
I'll give you a very brief overview, though: It's sort of a strategy game (turn-based) where you build a nation from the ground up. You start in the stone age and keep playing until you land a spaceship on Alpha Centauri (or you wipe out everyone else; whatever works).
You can actually learn a lot from it. Play this and you hardly even need to take any history classes. Sure, It's not always entirely accurate. But for a game that is primarily for your entertainment, it's very educational.
The game also has tons of extra tools, like a map editor and such, so you can make your own stuff. You can edit basically every part of the game if you're willing to invest enough time. There are really cool mods out there that totally change the content of the game, so that, for instance, it is based on the Star Wars universe.
CivIII is a commercial game, and it's somewhat old. There's a newer one, too, CivIV; it's still being built up with various expansions and such, I think. I've played it before, but only briefly. It might be a better overall game, but III is still a classic.

DARK OBERON
This is a real-time strategy game... there's not too much about it that's terribly unique, but the graphics are interesting; they made everything out of clay and then took pictures of it or something. It's pretty cool.
Unfortunately, the project seems to have totally died, and they didn't get all that far before that happened; there isn't even any AI, so you can only play against human players. I think you can play online or over a local network, but the first option is totally useless since next to nobody plays anymore.
Anyway. It's free / open-source, and it's worth looking at, if only to say "Aww, this could have been pretty cool."
The website is here: http://dark-oberon.sourceforge.net/

GLEST
Here is another RTS. I haven't played this one too much, but it's pretty cool.
I don't think it's very unique; RTSs in general seem to all be the same to me (I feel the same way, except to a greater extent, about FPSs). There's so much potential for them to be different, but most of the time they aren't.
Anyway, this one is solid, and it has a fairly interesting setting. You can choose to be the team that relies on technology, or the one that relies on magic. Then you go... command your armies to defeat the other people and such. Pretty regular and straightforward.
Glest is free, and the engine is also available for programmer-types to mess around with and make their own games. http://glest.org/en/index.php.

HOMEWORLD
This is an RTS. I think it would take too long for me to get familiar with it, so I'm not going to bother. If you want details, ask Seth about it, I guess.
I haven't played it myself, but what I've seen looks decent.
It's commercial, and pretty old, I think.

TALES OF PIRATES
I haven't played this. Oh, actually, maybe I have. But hardly at all.
It's an MMO. Seems pretty typical. Not too shabby. Interesting setting, I guess.
It's free. There's probably extra content you can pay for. http://top.igg.com/.

SCORCHED EARTH 3D
Scorched Earth is an old classic wherein you contorl a tank and bombard other tanks with various interesting weapons. The terrain is dynamic; it blows up when you shot it.
It's very similar to Worms, except it's not nearly as goofy, and you only control one tank.
This have been many updates and variants of the game. This one is 3D. It's pretty neat, and it's free. It might be open-source, too? You can get it here: http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/

CUSTOMER SERVICE ROBOT!
I downloaded this game purely because James Paige, one of my great heroes of the Internet, was one of the people who developed it.
Right now there's not a whole lot to it, but they plan to add more features and stuff, and what it is now is pretty fun.
You control a robot, and "provide customer service." For whatever reason, this consists of going to the building the person calling is in and completely leveling it. The customers seem to find this very helpful.
The gameplay is simple, but it's the little quirky things that make it fun. At the top of the screen, it has displays that say "Deaths:" and "Miraculous survivors:". The "Deaths" counter never goes up, but every time you smash things the "Miraculous survivors" increase.
This is a free game. http://motherhamster.org/index.php?title=Customer_Service_ROBOT!.

FLYFF
Ehh, it's an MMO. What can I say? For what it is, though, it's one of the best.
You go around and... kill monsters. Also, if you progress far enough, you can fly. It has sort of an interesting style. By "sort of", I mean that almost everyone wears a cool hat. There are other things that sort of make it different, but I can't think of them. Oh. One character fights with yoyos.
It's free. There's probably extra content you can purchase, but I don't remember. http://flyff.gpotato.com/.

GATE 88
This is a pretty cool game. It's a shooter with RTS elements... You control a space ship and blow stuff up, and then you can build stuff to improve your ship, defend your base, or attack the enemy.
The graphics are simple and different; I like them. The music is pretty cool too.
Gate 88 is freeware, and you can download it here: http://www.queasygames.com/gate88/

SLASH'EM
This is a sort of extended version of Nethack. It has more features (more playable classes and the like), but I don't know if I'd necessarily say it's better.
http://slashem.sourceforge.net/.

MABINOGI
I've talked about this before. I haven't played it in a really long time, but I will probably come back to it at some point. It's one of the only MMOs I've ever really liked.
It has a lot of interesting, unique things, and it doesn't put too large of an emphasis on improving your character like most MMORPGs, where you keep trying to progress, and you never really have any fun in the process.
Mabinogi is mostly free. There are quite a few features and such that you can't get without paying money, but there's still a good amount of stuff you can do for free. You can get it here: http://mabinogi.nexon.net/

MAPLE STORY
This is a 2D MMO. It's actually a really good one, but the problems with every MMORPG are pretty obvious here. That's why I haven't played it in a very long time.
Still, it has an interesting style... I think I liked the music in particular.
The game is free, but there's some special items and stuff you can pay for. http://maplestory.nexon.net/.

ZOOMBINIS
There are three of these games (as far as I know; those are the only ones I have, anyway). They're educational games, mostly, and I guess they're geared towards a much younger audience, but I enjoy them a lot. They involve logic puzzles, not things that focus on specific knowledge. And they're the sort of puzzles that change every time, too, so it's not like it's only fun the first time you play through it.
Anyway, they're fun. Goofy setting. I like the first and third ones better than the second, and overall, I think the puzzles in the first game are the most interesting.
All of the Zoombinis games are commercial.

THE BLACK KNIGHT
Ah, this is a Flash game I downloaded a very long time ago. Let's see if I can find it...
Ah, here we go: http://www.arcadetown.com/blackknight/gameinfo.asp
It's very silly. You play as a knight who is collecting taxes for the king (who wants to build a new sqimming pool) by smashing the living daylights out of all of the peasants.
It has this great visual style; very cartoonish.
The gameplay is very simple, but it's a lot of fun.

SOULFU
This is another ARPG made by Aaron Bishop (the original creator of Egoboo). It's similar in many ways, but it's also quite different. Your average person is going to prefer this game to Aaron's first effort, probably, because it has a more approachable look (cell-shaded, cartoony graphics as opposed to Egoboo's watercolory appearance) and a lot more polish. But it's more or less a finished game. Sure, it could be improved, but it doesn't have nearly as much potential as Egoboo.
So ignore what you might read online where people say "Forget Egoboo, Soulfu is a much better game!" because they're two very different things.
You can get Soulfu at http://www.aaronbishopgames.com/.

RUMBLE FIGHTER
This is another online fighting game. It's similar to Bots in many ways (so my complains that it gets boring after a while go for this one too). But it involves humans rather than robots, and generally seems to have more content. I'd say it's better, but it's still not necessarily a great game.
It's free, but (are you noticing a trend?) you can pay money for extra items and such. http://rf.ogplanet.com/.

N
Here we have an amazing -- and incredibly difficult -- platformer in Flash. It's been remade (/sequelified) for the Nintendo DS, PSP, and Xbox Live Arcade. I should be getting the DS version in the mail pretty soon here (I won a contest)...
It's not for everyone, of course, as it's a pretty hard game. But it's difficult to stop playing. It will frustrate you to no end, but it's so entertaining to watch your character explode when you die that it removes your desire to stop playing.
http://www.thewayoftheninja.org/n.html.

ROM CHECK FAIL
Wow, this game is crazy. You start out as a character from some classic game; say Mario or Pac-Man. You control the character exactly as you you would if you were playing that character's game, and you kill your enemies in the same way. The enemies are also from some classic game, but not necessarily the game your character is from. They behave just like they would in their own game.
Your goal is to clear each level of enemies. Then you go on to the next level. If you beat all the levels (I don't remember how many there are; twentyish?) it starts over, only faster.
The really crazy part is that every few seconds, the background, the music, your character, and the enemies all change into something from a random game. So it's all very bizarre. And awesome.
ROM CHECK FAIL is free: http://www.farbs.org/games.html



...That's it for now.
In the future I will probably do more on this theme; all the Game Maker games I have, all the games I have but haven't installed on my computer yet, all the DS games I have, etc.

If you get any of these games, you should tell me about it.

What happened here?

...So I guess I owe you an explanation.

You can see that at the start of things, I was posting every day... then things dwindled... then I sort of got back into it, and now... I'm hardly ever posting.

The reason for this is that for a while, my blog was my primary project. I was willing to devote the time to putting in a lengthy post every day
Right now, I'm working on a ton of random stuff (I've been working on a game of my own, and some Egoboo stuff here and there).
It's not that I couldn't take time out of my day to post something, it's just that it wouldn't be interesting. I'm keeping my mind occupied, and I constantly have these ideas bouncing around in there for all of the different projects I'm working on. So there's not much room for dwelling on strange inconsistencies or annoyances that will eventually become the basis for a blog rant.

The point, then, is this:

My projects tend to run in "phases." You'll recall that at one point I was in a serious Egoboo "phase", and apparently I was into a pretty good game building phase at one point, as most of the games I have on YYG right now were posted in fairly quick succession. And as I already said, I was in a blog phase once, too. And I've been in ficiton-writing phases a couple of times.
Right now I'm in a "miscellaneous phase." I really don't know if I could say one thing is my "big project" right now... maybe I could, but that may not necessarily be true for very long.

Don't misinterpret this post. I don't mean that I'm putting my blog on hold, because it's not that I'm not trying. I've had an insightful post going for a while, and I've added bits and pieces to it now and then. I'll post it later on if it gets finished.
But right now, I'm just too serious about too many things to put much thought or effort into blogging.
Like I said, there's Egoboo. I want to start working seriously on the manual for that (in case I haven't mentioned it here, I'm rewriting the whole thing from scratch in order to make massive improvements).
Then there's my own game with the purple jelly. I'm determined to finish this one, so I want to keep working on it, even if progress is really slow (right now, it has been).
Then there's some other miscellaneous things that I don't feel like going into in detail right now, mostly because I can't remember what they are. =D
Plus, it's getting to be crunch time for the ACT; I'm taking that on the twenty-fifth.

Then I've been afflicted by an enormous distraction that manages to remove my focus from any task I try to perform. I know there are a lot of things that are contributing to this, but when I examine it, there's one portion that is much larger than any of the others.
I refuse to complain about it. That's childish and it accomplishes nothing (which, naturally, is why I only complain about things that are stupid, things that I know I cannot change, or stupid things I can't change).
I will, however, tell you (though I'm not going to go into the details) what I'm talking about. I remember one time I said "I won't be doing as many blog posts lately because I don't feel up to it and I don't want to tell you why" and that was stupid.
It's difficult to summarize a huge problem like this, but for what it's worth, here it is:
Our youth group is messed up, broken, and falling apart. Yes, you guys (if you're reading this, which is possible, though I think it unlikely), it is.
It really needs to be fixed, but it can't be if people refuse to fix it.
If something doesn't happen, things are going to get extremely miserable.
And they're not very pleasant as it is.



...That, then, is my explanation.
I hope to do more blog posts in the future, when I get more motivated. By "the future" I mean "it will be very strange if it gets to be a month or two from now and I have only posted two or three times after this."
So don't worry about it! I didn't say I wasn't posting at all, I said just not as often. And these "phases" I speak of are usually fairly short.

VPK collection 01.6

Download!
(This is actually in the old post now, too)

Replace the lame, obtusely large folder you have now. This is much better! It has .mp3s instead of .wavs. So it's smaller.
Not only that, but there are also two new chiptunes.



...Real posts will come later, though possibly not until I come back from the trip tomorrow.

You call this a title?!

Yes, I do. Got a problem with that?
No?
That's what I thought.



Yesterday I "overheard" that my sister's blog was more interesting than mine.
That's when I remembered that I place little value in other people's opinions, particularly opinions involving me.

I proceeded to have a hearty laugh at my own expense, after which I went off to do something insufferably geeky, such as reading comic books, Googling the Roswell incident, complaining about the common misconception that schizophrenia is the same thing as dissociative identity disorder, wondering when my package from Metanet will arrive, or designing computer games.

Speaking of which, what part of the script

if facing=0
facing=1
else
facing=0

is dysfunctional?!

Clearly there's something completely different that is the source of all of my problems, such as global warming.
...Just kidding.
The real source of all of my problems is actually the Large Hadron Collider. Or at least it is today. Tomorrow, according to my calendar, it will be Al Gore, and obnoxious FPS fanboys are scheduled for every Monday in the month of November. Frankly, they deserve it.


...Meanwhile, I seem to have fixed the problems I was having with the script mentioned previously, so if you were worried about that, you don't have to be anymore. I actually am not sure what I did. Well, I know what I did, but I'm not sure why it fixed the problem. This has happened before, and I just move on.
I'm just glad to have solved the problem. It drives me nuts when I can't figure out a problem, and this is why I don't plan on ever having to program. There are many things I am able to do. Programing is not one of them, and I don't really want to take the time to change that because it would involve a lot of frustration.


You know, I really feel the need to make puppets. If you have been reading this blog for a while, you would know that I have said this before, and obviously nothing has come of it, otherwise I would not be feeling the need to make them (unless I simply wanted more).
Besides, I would have told you.

At any rate, I want to make puppets so that people everywhere can explore the dark regions of my bizarre sense of humor in a way that does not lend itself well to writing.
I often write down funny things I want characters to do or say, and they really wouldn't work in a written story as well as they would in something like a puppet presentation.
So... I need to make some puppets.

...Of course, I also need to work on my current computer game project, prepare for the ACT, and get a job. And that's not even counting multiple writing projects to which I have various levels of commitment.
Then of course there are all of the things I am doing for fun (not that the things mentioned above are necessarily boring).
One of the things I do for fun is, of course, playing computer games. I have been playing many things on YoYo Games lately, and --as one would suspect-- much of it is mediocre or worse, but there are some games that really stand out (and, yes, most of these were made by Jesse Venbrux). It makes me happy to see good games and I hope these people continue to make them.
The other is reading. I keep picking up new things to read and within days most of my siblings are reading the same thing. It upsets me and I don't know why.
Now, you may think that when I say "I keep picking up new things" that I mean I read indiscriminately, but this is not the case. I am extremely picky. I become ill walking through the fantasy section at the library because I can tell how unimaginative every single book is just by looking at the cover. And I hate reading unimaginative things.
I usually rely on the recommendation of friends, but if they recommend something and it seems like everyone is reading it I often will not read it for that very reason.
I couldn't give you a straight answer for this but I suspect it's related to what I mentioned earlier with my siblings "stealing" "my" books.
To me, things just seem more boring when they are popular, and I almost feel like I am relying on the public opinion to make my decisions for me (a practice I normally detest).
And... it's just... everywhere. So it's dull. Like dirt, really. It's all over the place. Maybe if it wasn't people would find it more interesting.
Please do not tell me what sort of imbalances such a situation would create, because it's likely that I know about many of them and I really don't want to hear about the rest.


So, umm... THIS IS A CONCLUDING SENTENCE!

:::Source=
:::Paul M-unit 19.91 MKII
:::25.09.08
:::STOP

Cartoons (comics in newspapers and "graphic novels")

My headphones are dead. They've been a bit funny for a while now, but today they are officially dead.
I have to turn my head almost sideways to hear out of both ears equally, and even that doesn't always work right.
So I'm going to have to get some new ones. But I don't have any cash.
So I need a job. I finally broke down and have decided food service wouldn't be so bad after all (well, compared to doing nothing at all, anyway). I got an application at Dairy Queen because:
1. It's ice cream, so I think I'd like it better than, say, McDonald's.
2. I was feeling kind of sympathetic because there were only two people working and they had a lot of customers.

In other news, Neil Cicierega is still hilarious...
He's the guy who is responsible for the The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny song, as well as the Potter Puppet Pals Flash cartoons. I've just discovered he has a new series of live-action video things wherein he and two other guys... do stupid stuff. It's pretty funny.


So now I'm going to talk about cartoons!
I'm not going to make any effort to explain these, so I suggest you look them up on Wikipedia. I'm just going to tell why I enjoy them.
Cartoons I like:

Dilbert
"Wait a minute. You're not allowed to like that cartoon. It's sophisticated humor. It's funny because it's true, and you wouldn't know because you've never been in a large office environment."
Well, pfffssht. Don't you be telling me what kind of cartoon I can enjoy. I think it's hilarious.
I've been getting a Dilbert cartoon in my email inbox (it's something you can sign up to get for free) for nearly two years... I still love it. It's just a really weird sense of humor; I don't think I've seen it anywhere else. I think it's only gotten better over the years, too. Occasionally he (Scott Adams, I mean) will kind of get a bit boring/unfunny for a while but it never lasts long.
I think the characters are really interesting, because they're ridiculously over-the-top, yet they seem so real at the same time.

Calvin and Hobbes
This is probably the greatest cartoon ever written. I've read every single one of them, and I wish Bill Watterson would still write them, but... that's his business, I suppose.
It's an interesting cartoon, because while a lot of times people will try to put their own views and opinions into their characters, Mr. Watterson doesn't do that at all. Calvin has a worldview that's twisted and bizarre; I doubt there's anyone on earth who agrees with him at all. So why read it? Because cartoons aren't supposed to be philisophical, they're supposed to be funny! And Calvin and Hobbes certainly does that right.
The funny thing, though, is that it does get philisophical at times; you'll think, "Haaang on, he has a point there!" even though it's a really strange and ridiculous idea.
The whole setting and all the characters are really different, too. It's completely unlike any other cartoon; it really stands out.
Bill Watterson himself is a very interesting person as well. I like reading his comments and notes in the tenth anniversary book. I thought what he had to say about licensing was really cool.

FoxTrot
Out of the cartoons I've mentioned here, this is probably my least favorite, but that isn't to say that I don't like it, of course (it still made the top three). Bill Amend recently discontinued his daily cartoons, which is sad, because I had always thought his dailies were consistently more funny than his Sunday cartoons, mostly because he had interesting ongoing storylines (which only ever run in the daily cartoons since a lot of papers only get either the dailies or the Sundays, not both). But oh well. It's still fairly good, although I do think it used to be better.
It's a bit inconsistent, too. I think it's funniest when Jason and Marcus are the featured characters, as they're so ludicrously nerdy. I find those cartoons much more interesting than the ones involving any of the other characters (which tend to be a slightly different kind of humor and involve less interesting subjects, such as golf, which I think should be forbidden from syndicated cartoons forevermore). They're what make the cartoon really stand out, although I suppose if compared to cartoons on the Internet (which are usually very geeky/nerdy) it's nothing special. Still, it's older than webcomics as far as I know, so....


Now, comic books!
I don't think comic books / "graphic novels" get nearly enough credit these days. They're kidn of viewed as being nerdy and for people who never grew up (or are still kids). I think they're a fine form of media, though, that should be grouped together with everything else. There are comic books for kids, and for adults, and ones that are serious, and ones that are more lighthearted. They're just as diverse as anything else.
Now then. Here are my favorites:

Fullmetal Alchemist
This is one that's clearly meant to be taken seriously (although there are some goofy, humorous things that pop up every now and then, but it's just like most other serious things, really). It brings up some strong points, particularly regarding the value of human life. Even though it takes place in a fictional (and very fantastic) world, and I don't think it's meant to be allegory or satire, there are lots of interesting parallels you could draw to real life. It's never anything specific, though.
For example, there's this big war, and while a lot of times war in books/movies/comic books/whatever is cheapened or even glorified, this one seems real. It's awful, and nobody wants to be fighting in it. It causes a lot of pain, trouble, and hardship. It's... a war. That really stood out to me because it's so different from how things are often portrayed in fiction ("These are clearly the good guys, and they're fighting people who are clearly the bad guys, so it's a good cause.").
I really like the unusual setting, too, as well as the story itself. It's pretty suspenseful.

Ultimate Spider-Man
Spider-Man may have been interesting when it was new, but it's pretty clear some things needed to be redone. Reading the older comics, I can see how they would have been cool at the time, but by today's standards they're really bland (for starters, the art is really simplistic compared to what people pull off nowadays).
Also, there's the whole issue of culture and technology, since it takes place in the real world... things just aren't the same as they were forty years ago. So while Amazing Spider-Man is still ongoing (it's on issue who-knows-how-many-hundred now), there are weird inconsistencies. It seems to have been only a few years since the first comics, and it's just unreasonable to think that so much happened over such a small period of time (you could probably add up any time there is reference to how long something lasted, and it'd not make much sense), and looking at the technology and culture differences (as I mentioned before), it's clear that it's been way more than "a few" years.
That's probably why they came up with Ultimate Spider-Man. It's the same basic story (which was always very solid), but modernized. I don't mean they threw a bunch of trash in there, I mean it's... Spider-Man, if he were real... today. It just works. And any time there was something that was dumb the first time around, they fixed it. So I think it's really nifty.
The one thing I'm disappointed about is how at one point they got a new penciler, and the art style is different. I think I liked it more before, but I guess I'll get used to it.

Case Closed
This is something I recently started reading. A friend recommended it a long time ago, but I couldn't read it because I'm cheap and only get stuff from the library, and the library where we lived at the time didn't have it (well, I think they had a few random volumes later in the series).
These books started in 1994 and are still being written (which, yes, may end up causing the problems I mentioned when talking about Spider-Man if Mr. Aoyama doesn't hurry up and finish it soon).
I like them, because they're mysteries, which you don't usually see in a comic book. I also like it because while it has a somewhat similar tone to stories such as The Hardy Boys, it makes no effort to be believable. There are things in there (particularly the inventions Dr. Agasa makes for Jimmy Kudo, the main character) that are pretty unreasonable, but it's... fiction. It's not like other mysteries that try to take place in a really real world but fail miserably.
Anyway. I haven't read so much of this, but I like what I've read so far!


Another thing I started recently, based on another friend's recommendation, was Bleach. I've only read the first volume but I thought it was pretty nifty. I'll probably read more but the next ones are checked out at the library.

I think that's it for today, then.
I got one the things on my list done!

:::Source=
:::Paul M-unit 19.91 MKII
:::20.09.08
:::STOP.

Personality Test

I woke up this morning with many troubling questions plaguing my mind. Among these were such questions as:


-Why does it feel as if I have an extraordinary number of things to do today, despite the fact that I actually have a very small number of things to do, a number that is, indeed, smaller than yesterday's?

-Why is the song Still Alive stuck in my head, despite the fact that, last time I checked, I had still never even played Portal?

-Why does everyone insist on "spreading the virtues of Democracy" (or whatever the cool kids are saying these days), despite the fact that the United States itself is not a Democracy?

-Why did I wake up with a mind plagued with such troubling questions, despite the fact that I want to add a phrase beginning with the words "despite the fact" so that it will be consistent with the other questions?


Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go Google the Roswell incident.
Why?
Because I can.


...Alright, well, I could have continued reading for several hours, but I have a blog post to finish. So yesterday I took a personality test that used the Myers-Briggs type indicator. I like taking personality tests, IQ tests, typing tests, etc. and I don't really know why.
Anyway, I think the Myers-Briggs is a really nice scale, since it grades in four different categories (so there's a total of sixteen possible personalities); it's not really fair to say "there are optimists and pessimists" or "there are loud, crazy people and quiet, reserved people." Also I like how it ignores lots of age and gender stereotypes (i.e., women focus on emotions and men focus on thoughts, older people are analytical and younger people act impulsively, etc.). Sure, if you were to look at statistics, certain personalities may be found more in women than men, or in older people more than in younger people. But not all the time.
Anyway, the test said I was INTJ (introverted intuitive thinking judging). I read about it and it seems to describe me well.
Apparently, famous INTJs include:

-Hannibal
-C.S. Lewis
-Susan B. Anthony
-Donald Rumsfeld
-Arnold Schwarzenegger
-Rudy Giuliani
-Lance Armstrong
-John F. Kennedy
-Thomas Jefferson
-Gandalf the Grey
-Professor Moriarty
-Ro Laren

(The latter three of which are, of course, fictional).

I read more stuff online, and was amused at some comments on one page under "dealing with INTJs", such as:

-"Try not to be repetitive. It annoys them."
-"Do not be surprised at sarcasm."
-"Do not expect INTJs to actually care how you view them."

It went on to describe people who are INTJ as "arrogant" and having "a morbid sense of humor."
The funny part is how true all of this is.


You should take one of these tests (just Google "Myers-Briggs personality test") too; tell me what it says you are.

Then you should take an IQ test. Some of them are stupid and lame, just to warn you. Try to find one that has some sort of "stamp of approval" from some sort of official-sounding university or organization; those tend to be the best ones (meaning, obviously, that the "official" "stamps of approval" are not lying). My IQ is (not to brag or anything) 134.

After that, find out how fast you type (go to http://www.typingtest.com). I can type (again, not to brag or anything) at 85 WPM with 97% accuracy.

If you find any other interesting tests, let me know so I can take them.


...Sorry if I bored you to death by talking, basically, about myself.
But whatever. Maybe, for whatever reason, that's what you come here for anyway.
If you did find this boring, though, scroll down to the poem I posted earlier, which I think is pretty funny.
Well, regardless you should read the poem. But I'm just saying that if you did think this was a boring post, today might not be a total loss for you.

A Message from Cap'n Mangemizzen, the scourge of whatever that thar' lake is, or the kitchen sink, if it be closer:

It's pla'n to see that yeh've offend'd me.
In all my long yeers I've descend'd, see,
To levels of treach'ry
That spark such tale-strech'ry
No man alive would b'lieve 'em.

And I have been chall'ng'd by many
But there isn't one, isn't any
Who've so far descend'd
My dignity spend'd
As much as yeh have just t'day.

Yer a bilge-spittin' monkey
A gibbon so funky
He can't even tie his own shoe.
Yeh eat naught but coal
Yer skull's got a hole
That's big 'nuff fer two ships to sail thru.
Yer uglier n'ugly
Muglier n'mugly
Even the barnacles hate yeh.
There's no man alive
Who seems to so strive
To be worse n'a bucket of whale spit.

So afore the day's been fully spent
A new kind'a fate I'll invent
Somethin' so deadly
That you will read'ly
Accept any tor'chr but it.

Yeh'd gladly walk the plank
Yeh'd happily watch yerself sank
Yeh'd let 'cherself get shot
Yeh'd be quick to grab any Black Spot.
Yeh'd let them all scuttle ye
The holes in yer nut'll be
Mor n'th' ones in me socks!

But do yeh think that I'd allow that?
I'd be a great horrible sea rat.
Yeh'll just have to wait
'Till my plan's a first rate
Way to make you go "Ouch" and then "Splat!"

(Avast! Have a good Talk Like a Pirate Day... Or else! Yaaahhrr!)

The Cure for Hurricane

Shut up about cancer.
Yes, it's a horrible disease. It kills people.

But what we really need is something to stop hurricanes. That's what I call a spiffy discovery!
There must be something we can do to stop them from forming.

Of course, you will probably respond with one or more of the following arguments:
1. No, there is not.
2. Even if there was, it would upset meteorological balance and [blah blah blah blah blah blah], ultimately destroying the world!
3. You're an idiot.
4. I hate you.


I'm not going to argue with the first two, because I'm not doing a lot of (or any, for that matter) research on this, which is odd, because it's the sort of thing you'd expect me to know about.
So basically I'll take your word for it, provided you actually know what you're talking about.

If you used argument number three, well, that's subjective. If being an idiot means making ridiculously uneducated statements and giving you a hard time about it solely for my own enjoyment, then, well... it'd be pretty silly to deny that I am one.

Now, regarding number four: Words cannot express how little I care.



So now I'm going to talk about things that are happening, in the news and such. I really should do this more often; I want to make it a point to do this more often (if you guessed that this has something to do with all the Dave Barry I've been reading, well, you'd be right), possibly in every post. I have an RSS for BBC... er, sorry. RSS is Really Simple Syndication, it's a constantly updating bookmark sort of thing that's rather handy. BBC is the British Broadcasting Corporation... they... broadcast things.
So let's see here....

First off, there's the election. Astoundingly, it's still going on.
...Oh, wait. That's not astounding at all.
I hate how it eats up the media. Apparently not just in the US, either; see? There's several items on the BBC feed about the election, and this is true at pretty much any given moment.
Anyway, I narrowly missed being able to vote, but even if I could I would write someone in. I don't want McCain to win, and I really, really, really don't want Obama to win.

A handwritten (and apparently unfinished) score by Mozart was discovered in a French library.
Ooh, snazzy. I hope someone comes along and finishes it, although apparently all they have is the melody....

The Large Hadron Collider has still not destroyed the world. It hasn't found any evidence of the Higgs Boson, either.
...Then again, it wasn't supposed to have done either one of those until much later (and in the case of global annihilation, by "much later" I mean "not at all").

Piracy in Somalia is getting pretty bad, and... Oh, tomorrow is Talk Like a Pirate Day, by the way. Yarr!

A sea battle took place between the Sri Lankan navy and Tomali rebels...
41 people died... The navy managed to scuttle their mangy oppresors, as near as I can tell. My, this is all scheduled oddly, isn't it? Obviously, everyone is celebrating. I wonder what would happen if there was a "Talk Like a Terrorist Day" (let's not find out, shall we?).

19 people were killed in a Mexican jail riot. Obviously, the problems could be solved in one of the following ways:
-Get rid of all the jails.
-Get rid of all the riots.
-Get rid of all the prisoners.
-...Move out of Mexico?
That's all I've got.

The economy is still in deep trouble. The banks are trying to sort things out by doing... all that stuff they try to do.
But I'm guessing that either everything will blow over without anyone's help or we're headed for the Great Depression: Part II: The Movie: Unleashed.



...Right, then.
Now, you may be wondering why I rarely post anything about what I've actually been doing. Well, I'll tell you.

Now, I can't speak for anyone else, but personally, I find this kind of thing boring:

Today I went to band. We played music.
Then I came home and studied for the ACT. Then I read some comic books. Then I worked on a computer game. Then I went to bed.

...And that's what most of my posts would look like. If I ever do anything unusual, I'll be sure to let you know.
But since it's something I wouldn't want to read, it's something I'm not going to write, either. I figure you would much rather read about my opinions, and I certainly would if you had a blog (which most of you don't, but if you did I'd probably read it).


At any rate, here are the posts I still owe you, if you'd forgotten (it has been modified a bit, anyway):

-Cartoons
-Everywhere Else
-C.S. Lewis
-J.K. Rowling
-Vigilanteism
-Culture

Right, then.
I'm done for today.

(By the way, I have surpassed 400 hits... w00t! I wish I knew how many different people those came from, though.)

Virtual Plankton Kleptocracy collection #1

I was going to make this an actual post, but I've been at this (putting together the files I mean) for a while and I want to get back to reading Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far), which is an incredibly hilarious book.
(Note: I've actually finished typing the actual content of this post and my file is going to take a while to upload yet, so I've come back up here to leave this note that states that I am in fact going to go read the aforementioned book right now... in case you were wondering.)

I want to make an actual album of some sort, but it will probably consist entirely of chiptunes, unless I can find a good way to convert .midi to an actual sound format (and by "good way" I mean one that does NOT involve recording the output of my speakers, unless I can get the stuff I'd need to feed my speaker directly into my microphone so it records all sound that comes out of the machine directly) so that I can edit the .midis into something that sounds good and is actually not .midi at all.
That said, I don't have nearly enough music to make a good album, so that will have to wait for a while.

[The download link used to be here.]

-----
Update 10/2/08: I now have a much smaller version of the folder (they're actually .mp3s now instead of .wavs), and it contains two new chiptunes. I set it up on a better host, too! Here it is:
Virtual Plankton Kleptocracy Collection 01.6
-----


...Oh, and for those of you who did not know, Virtual Plankton Kleptocracy is my imaginary musical group (formerly known as Zombi Spit... haha, "formerly known as"). I will probably draw some goofy-looking robots or something of that sort for when I do an actual album.

Feedback, people!
And tell your friends.

I challenge you! Yes, you! A challenge!

OK, first off: For some reason I didn't mention how cool the acronym IJatKotCS was when I was talking about it in my last post.
So, umm. It's a really cool acronym!

Moving on.


It's likely that I've told you about this before.
You see, I do not laugh very often at things I read. In print, yes (particularly Dave Barry's stuff, he makes me "LOL" more than anything else I read, I think). But on a computer screen? It almost never happens. The closest I get is a quickly-stifled snicker, like the one this website produced. And here we're talking about something that I thought was just hilarious (if you know what it's talking about, you'll think it's quite witty as well... I bookmarked it, and then Adam RSS'd it, which I thought was a pretty good idea, so I did the same).
It's just... I've learned not to. I don't like explaining why things (particularly things like the above link, which, really, would take a long time to explain) are funny. So I try to avoid being asked.
Also, at our previous house, I would often use the computer in the same room as people who were sleeping and I didn't want them to wake up.
Anyway, now I just don't laugh loudly anymore.

So here's the challenge: Make me!
The one rule is that it has to be something I read. I guess it can be a cartoon or something, but no videos or sounds or anything.

So there you are.
I'm not sure what you win if you do manage to do it, but I'm not too worried that that will happen, so....

I'd prefer it if you emailed your "submissions" or whatever.


QotD #1-

Seth: Should we lock up our bikes?
Me: My bike is purple.

QotD #2-

"Well, what are you doing telling me about it? Surely you don't think you'll be able to keep me quiet?"
Now I'd scared them. The younger man quickly pulled out a fifty and handed it over.
"Oh, that's just great," I groaned. "First people were bribing the criminals to bump off their enemies. Then the criminals started bribing the law enforcement to keep themselves out of prison. Now the police officers are rounding it all off by bribing civilians to keep them from tipping off the media! Oh, the state this government is in, why-"
He handed me another Ulysses and I shut up.

-Something from a short story I'm writing called That Wasn't the Worst of It.

Movies

I'm back!
Not that I was ever gone.

But I am back to posting, you see.
At least for today. Hopefully I'll be able to get back into some kind of... routine... or whatever.


Now.
Last you knew (well, not really; only if you haven't been talking to me, and really, isn't that your fault? I'm only on MSNM/WLM almost all day) I was moving.
That took quite a bit of time and effort. But we're mostly moved in now (though I think my bedroom could use a bit of reorganization... and maybe some paint, as its walls are pink), and we have Internet hooked up as well.
The house is really big. Not quite big enough that I got my own room (how would that ever happen under any reasonable circumstances, anyway?), but I at least have somewhere to go where it's occasionally quiet. It's a "office" in what we have dubbed the boiler room in the basement. That is where I am right now.

Right, then.... Oh, an update on what I've been doing, I guess.
I'm working on a game; if I told you about it before (I may have posted about it here), it's the one with the purple jelly that... explodes. Heh.
Possibly even more than that, though, I've been making music. This time I'm doing something pretty different though.
I'm using this program called BoyScout. It emulates the sound chip used in the Gameboy Advance, which results in some pretty nifty "old-school" sounding video game-ish music. It's different than anything I've used before in that there are a lot of weird values you can adjust to get different sounds (one of the channels -- and there are only four, by the way -- lets you draw in the waveform for the sound manually).
I've done three things with it so far, and I'm pretty happy with them. I think if I do one or two more I'll upload them all in a zipped folder.

Alright, well. On to the actual subject here?


Right, well.
I saw Prince Caspian ages ago, and never got around to posting my thoughts.
I really enjoyed it overall. Everyone seems to be complaining about how it wasn't nearly as good as the first one, and how they threw in too much violence and made it too different from the books or something, but... I think those people need to:
A. Go read the book again. It was violent. It's about a war. Get over it.
and
B. Get a life.
Yes, there was a whole extra part they added where they stormed the castle and whatnot, but I actually thought that was brilliant. Possibly better than the way it was written originally; it really drives the main point home a lot better. Somehow having the battle fought on the enemies' front gives it an extra sense of risk and foolhardiness, I guess.
So, yeah. I think it may have even been better than the book in that respect. *gasp*
C.S. Lewis wasn't perfect. I'm saving this for whenever I do that post on him and J.K. Rowling (or maybe they will be two separate posts), though.
Anyway, there was some stuff that I thought was sort of weird, random, and/or overly silly... but I'm not sure I can come up with any good examples at this point.
So anyway. It probably wasn't better than the first film, but I wouldn't say it was significantly worse, either. That's a good sign, I think. It would be annoying if the movies declined into mediocrity as they went on.


I also saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (that was a little more recent). I really, really, really liked that one. True, it wasn't as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Last Crusade, but it was definitely better than The Temple of Doom, and just because it's worse than two excellent movies doesn't mean it is not excellent itself.
The plot started out promising... Nazca lines, Conquistadors, El Dorado, crystal skulls... things I could understand. But suddenly, it turns out it has to do with advanced extra-terrestrial beings who passed on their knowledge to ancient mesoamerican cultures, and... Yeah. Weird. It just didn't work.
Also, there were some things that were totally over the top (early in the movie, Indiana survives a nuclear blast by climbing into a lead-lined refrigerator).
Anyway, it was really interesting to see how the world of Indiana Jones had aged (it takes place quite a bit later than the previous films). Also, amazing writing saved the not-so-great plot; there were lots of clever lines in the script.
I want to see it again!

That leaves one movie on my list-of-movies-I-want-to-see; The Dark Knight (yes, I still want to see it, and I still haven't).

Ooh, speaking of which, I recently saw Spider-Man 3. I guess it's a pretty old movie at this point, but I never got to see it until now. I think it was pretty good, though still nowhere near as good as the first, and not even as good as the second. So it was a little disappointing; I hope they shape up for the fourth movie.
I'm blaming most of the problems on their poor choice of villain / story. I think they should have just skipped over the whole Venom thing. Basically it's an alien parasite thing that makes Spider-Man stronger but also makes him more aggressive and eventually turns him into a person who's downright nasty. One of the biggest things about Spider-Man has always been how easy he is to relate to, but suddenly he's this nasty anti-hero sort of guy, and... yeah, it just never worked. It can be done right, though; in the Ultimate Spider-Man comic books (yes, I do read comic books... quite a lot, actually... yep, I'm a humungous nerd) they managed to pull it off pretty well. It's funny because the guy who wrote it has always hated Venom as well, but they figured "Hey, well... you're the perfect person to do it, then; do it so it's actually interesting!"


So, uhh... Oh! While we're on the subject of movies.
I wanted to ramble about two people I think are tremendously good actors and play certain roles exceptionally well (to the point where it almost makes me think the entire movies would be ruined if they weren't in them, even if they are by no means major characters):
J.K Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson in the aformentioned Spider-Man series
and
Richard Griffiths as Vernon Dursley in the Harry Potter films

In short, they're both hilarious (Mr. Griffiths is particularly comical in the later movies), and I can't imagine how they could possibly have picked better people to play those parts.


Oh, and also speaking of acting: Some time when you're bored, you should look up the voice actors for some cartoon / video game / animated film you like. It's really interesting, because a lot of the good voice actors have had really varying careers, and you probably don't know their names like you would with "regular" movie actors.
As a random example, the person (I don't even remember her name) Shiki Misaki in The World Ends With You also did the voice of Ducky in the The Land Before Time movies.
Some time I want to look up that stuff more; I might post what I find out.


OK, I think I'm done.
Until next time (tomorrow?),
PM