Well, time to get tidying as we’re moving house very soon, but more about that in a later post.

This post, however, concerns a play written by a fellow Computer Scientist that goes by the name of Luke. Carbon dating has yet to return origin of this play, but I think it was a year or 2 ago. I stole the play and said I’d upload it onto the net… this was a very long time ago, and the play was lost in the sands of time only to be uncovered while on an excavation in my desk.

So I shall now present said play for all the masses to read. Apologies for any parts that seem incomprehensible, the language of the play is from a most peculiar time and in some places the symbols have been worn away, deciphering wasn’t easy.

———————-

Dinstant GaZe (a play by Luke)

“Two men, one shoe, a bed of nails leading to a prize.”

Samuel: Give me Shoe!
Ricky G: OW
(Chevy Chase enters)
Ricky G: OW
Samuel: Shoe is mine!
Ricky G: You tear asunder my hope, demons of the abyss curse me
Samuel: Got Shoe! LOLOLOL
(Chevy Chase Drives Car)
Ricky G: Get into the car douche
(driving)
Samuel: Got gear, will gear
(driving)
Ricky G: Burger
(Chevy CHASE exits)
Ricky G: Ass Burger
Samuel: You attempt to curtail my imminent Superiority has fallen flat on it’s child-like, weeping face. Let your pathetic frame tremble before the glory of perfection.
Ricky G: GOT SHOE!
Samuel: ON NO’S!
Chevy Chase: :S

————————–

Well there you go, interpret as you want. A masterpiece recovered from the harsh winds of time.

Jargon

Well it’s the end of the summer ball (just got back at 4:05am).

I loved every bit of it and I’m so happy that Charlie and Steph did not manage to sell their tickets and also come. I really appreciate their company. For the summer ball I was escorting Kirstin whose boyfriend could not make it because he’s studying in London (I think, or portsmouth). Anyway, it is the first formal (in the sense of dress-code) social event that I have ever gone to and I felt so out of place but Kirstin was really kind and made me feel right at home.

After I had necked a few cans I was feeling much better and allowed Kirstin to persuade me into some swing dancing which I had no idea how to do, but she didn’t care and instead taught me the basics . At the beginning of the night before Charlie and Steph turned up we went to the noodle bar, even though overpriced, was really nice and considering I did not have any food before I left was muchas welcome. Worst part of the night was the shear pain my shoes were giving me, but this was slowly resolved (read on).

After a good night of drinking, chatting and dancing (and even a joint, wahoo!), we all split and went our seperate ways (Charlie and Steph had gone earlier because Charlie had work early the next day). I tried to act like a complete gentleman and help Kirstin with her god-awful cheese-wire shoes. Didn’t take long till we gave him and grabbed a taxi back to her house.

This is where things turned from awesome to SWEET. It had been Kirstin’s birthday the weekend previous and she had rented out a hot-tub for 10 days. Fucking sweet!!! Kirstin offered and I jumped in (in my boxers of course ). I loved hot-tubs and I love them even more because I know what they are like (parents have one at home). We hung-out in the tub for about an hour chatting about our entire university life (what we liked and disliked about it, and who we missed, etc.) and by the time we got out… the sky was getting a tiny bit brighter. I dried myself up and climbed back into my summer ball stuff (-the boxers :S), had some toast and bid her goodnight.

On the way home I thought about university life in general and realised that this night is probably the best night in my life… the jacuzzi topped it off How fucking cool is that? I bet you guys are jealous! Hah!

All in all, the summer ball was worth every £ I spent on it… and I’d do it again!

James

Argh! What have I done!?

I’ve been trying extract the game type code from my prototype renderer I’ve been writing. I coded them together to begin with just for testing but now the renderer is big enough to be on its own. Now there is a prototype game engine that initialises the renderer and makes calls to it and tells it what to do. The renderer now completely passive. Unfortunately now I just get complete garbage on my screen I b0rked it *sobs* I’ve been trying to fix it for days now and I just can’t seem to work out what is screwing it over.

I compared it with another renderer I wrote for another program (that works) and they look very similar. I’ve checked all the differences, but the solution has not presented itself yet.

I wondering whether I should start from scratch, quite a few people are telling me to since I started writing game code into the renderer and there was no initial design for it to begin with. The code is a bit spaghettified, but I was going to go through it all and clean it up. I can’t be arsed to start writing a new one from scratch because I’ll have to recode my scene tree implementation, which’ll take a while. Thing is, I have been thinking up a load of optimisations to the renderer (once I get it working again) that will need big changes and really should have been implemented to begin with…

Anyway I smell something burning :S I will go investigate now.

Later

Wooo, 2 posts in 1 day after like… god knows how long

Found something else in my mystery drawer, tis a piece of paper with 2 riddles on. These riddles I’ve never heard before and don’t know the answers to and really cannot be arsed to work out so here’s the challenge:

*No usage of internet is allowed to aid in the discovery of the answer!
*As many suggestions as you want (I could care less if I get the right answer or not, just thought it might be fun/interesting).

If you actually know the answer (heard it before), please say so

____Riddle 1_____
The one who made it,
didn’t want it.
The one who bought it,
didn’t need it.
The one who used it,
never saw it.
_______________

____Riddle 2_____
Twins on either side of,
a ridge that smells.
They shall never see,
each other directly.

(Yes the commas are on the hardcopy).
_______________

I reckon riddle 2 is siamese-twins attached at the ass.

Anyways have fun

So I am tidying out one of my drawers that I haven’t really looked in for 2 years. It’s one of those drawers that you keep importants letters and stuff that you aren’t sure you can throw away. I kept stuffing it full of crap until the front broke off it so it didnt open properly, then continued to “post” stuff through the gap at the top…

Anyways, I finally get round to sorting it all out because I posted a £150 cheque in there a while back and should get around to banking it (can’t find as of yet). The wonders! I’m finding all kinds of cool stuff in there, but the best find is the original quote board (paper) from 2 years ago when we first moved in. So I shall now present ye with some of the classics from times past:

“I’m comfortable with the whole naked thing” – Richard Croxford, 04/7/04

“Ow! Thy hair hit my eyeball!” – Charlie Halford, 05/07/04

“…again.” – Charlie Halford, 05/07/04 (+2 minutes)

“If I was going to become a woman, I’d give myself enormous knockers to give myself something to look at while I tie my shoe laces” – Richard Croxford, 09/07/04

And my favourite that actually made me chuckle when I read it:

“I don’t like the smell of it and I’m a very smelly person.” – Richard Griffiths, 11/07/04

There are others on the sheet, but they aren’t funny when taken out of context. Maybe we could recover these quotes and recreate a quote system on planet comscare? Anyways, I’ll leave that up to someone else

Enjoy!

If you thought you racked up big phone bills back in the day when you used 56k and there was no flat-rate ISPs around, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Found this amusing news article while randomly browsing the interweb: [link=http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20060410/D8GT3T6G2.html]Man Gets $218 Trillion Phone Bill[/link]

Been reading [link=htttp://www.inktank.com]InkTank.com[/link] lately (the Angst Technology strip that I posted up previously), catching up with the new issues (I thought they had finished but looks like they started again) and in a particular panel they raise the point about there not being any decent co-operative multiplayer FPSes around lately and I totally agree.

On severaly occasions, myself and my real life mates have although brought up the subject, and to be honest, its quite dissappointing. The last decent multiplayer coop game on the PC (that instantly comes to mind) is the original Quake game. Quake 2 did reproduce a fairly good attempt at coop play but it was nowhere near as good as the original. Since then all FPS games have been about graphics and physics, no concentration on the gameplay whatsoever.

The only recent game to come close would have be Unreal Tournament 2004 with its “Invasion” game mode, and that can never fully quench my thirst for coop play and I’ve played Quake a tad-too many times. There are mods that are coming out for games like Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 that add cooperative play, but they are either still in development, buggy or have got the gameplay sorted but there are no campaigns with any decent stories.

The cooperative FPS market on the PC is so dry and there are so many gamers wanting another good cooperative hit title to be released I’m surprised the developers could be so blind as not to bother with it anymore. Surely if they included the idea of cooperative play fromt he beginning of a game’s design it would hardly make a difference to the overall game… its just accounting for the fact there may be extra players in the single player.

*Sigh*

Looks like I’m going to have to continue to wait for my holy grail

End of rant…

From one of the old webcomics I used to read ([link=http://www.inktank.com/]InkTank.com[/link]). Doesn’t look like they are updating the strip I most enjoyed. But I remembered this specific strip and definately illustrates how I feel about my final year project at the moment Enjoy
[img]webcomics/inktank/debugging.gif[/img]

Well as most of you know I hit 21 on last Saturday and even though I haven’t done anything for it yet (planning on going go-karting in easter holidays, contact me if you wanna go), it has still been pretty awesome so far.

I got lots of cool presents and money (could call me materialistic, but… hmmm… guess I am ). My main present was a Creative Zen, which is cool, I’ve wanted a decent MP3 for years and now I have, it has 20gig storage (extra for moving films, games and TV episodes around). Was also taken out clothes shopping (was a bit boring but it needed to be done), for smart clothes that I could attend an interview in and work, etc. Also got DVD Rewriter, which I have been also meaning to get. Awesome new Sennheiser headset. And lastly a Belkin UPS… which my dad got me (I think there was a couple spare from his work).

So today I have been cleaning the innards of my computer from dust and installed the DVD Rewriter and pulled out the DVD Reader and CD Writer (which wasn’t actually attached due to short ribbon cables). After hoovering the area around my computer (and in my computer), I decided to hook up my new UPS, which meant climbing under my desk and sorting out all the cables (eep!). It’s very cool, it has USB connection for my PC so I can change its settings and it can tell my computer to shutdown when power goes out. This is extremely useful for protecting HDD corruption and damage due to powersurges, but I have hooked up both my CRT and my TFT in addition to my base unit so that I can play when power goes out heh, probably only for 10-15 minutes. Allows me to finish what I’m doing and shut down myself, instead of losing work.

So a good birthday in general, looking forward to drinking the bar dry on friday, will also be dedicated to my turning 21 (how long can I stretch it out for?). Lastly, about the go-karting, it will probably happen mid-easter holidays. The more the merrier, so please contact me if you want to come. I gotta get the numbers sorted on how many are coming so I can get it booked.

So inbetween coursework pieces I have been coding our (Comscare house’s game) MMORPG we’re making, dubbed ‘Project Furscape’. Eventually its going to be a full 3D futuristic space MMORPG, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and apparently, the same with Charlie. I’ve volunteered to write the 3D engine for it and oh boy its a biggie! It’s boggling my mind already, but I’m slowly plodding on with it. I should be writing my final year project for university but the renderer, despite causing me physical pain, is fun (masochist?).

I’ve got a basic scene tree implementation working with textures and can load in models from Milkshape 3D (but haven’t got round to implementing the animation side of things, and every time I think about doing it, I feel like I’m going to cry). The test scene I’ve tried it out with actually makes me feel pretty good, just from looking at it. Couple of spinning asteroids on a starry background… makes me think “Wow, I’ve actually got to the point where I’m coding in the same language at the pros!”, but OpenGL is a biiiiiig place lots of areas, particle effects, bump mapping, and I don’t even want to think about pixel shaders :S

We have been designing it on a MediaWiki hosted on our LAN and have been recording all ideas we come up with, various systems and how things are going to interact with each other. We weren’t planning on starting it until AFTER unviersity (since the end is pretty close). But I couldn’t resist… this is something I’ve always wanted to do and it’s GOING to happen

Anyway, I guess I should get some sleep. Tomorrow has been assigned to AI coursework completion. Might do a spot of light reading in bed of “The Redbook” (OpenGL documentation).