adam-a

Sightseeing and Museum Legs

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500

Two days ago I did some proper sightseeing, I went to the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State building. Yesterday I went to the last and biggest Museum on my list, the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Statue of Liberty would have been a 7 but gets a 5 because I had to wait for around 2 hours for all the various ferries. Empire State gets 9 because the views really were great and the security staff were actually polite! The Metropolitan Museum of Art is massive, I was fed up with the security and most of the art was not that interesting. 4/10. I mean they search your bag when you come in, then you have to check it in as well, but you have to take half the stuff out of your bag (anything electronic or valuable) and carry it around in a little plastic bag. It wouldn't be so bad but the staff treat you like it's your fault they have to go through this ridiculous process, they give you no patience let alone apology, I've begun to find it pretty infuriating.

But anyway, off to Orlando today! See you soon Lewis me ol' mucker.

Best Pizza in The World?

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500

Today I had some of the best pizza in the world and went to the Guggenheim.

Following Lewis's reccomendation I went to Grand Central station and got some pizza. The pizza was actually pretty bloody good, definitely a contender for the best pizza I've ever eaten at least. I also got some pretty good cheescake which I ate in the park.

There was also a really good jazz trio that started up in the park, and it was nice and sunny so I watched them whilst I let my cheesecake go down. Speaking of jazz I went to the show with Victor last night, it was technically amazing but the level of jazz was a couple of notches higher than I could appreciate most of the night. At times it did sound a bit like a pig had fallen in the piano and a giant rabbit was sitting on the drum kit. The bass player was very good though.

After the afternoon jazz I went to the Guggenheim, which is like a big white flowerpot, or an upside down Mr Whippy. It's also (yet another) modern art gallery. It was nice though, smaller and much more manageable than MoMA, and nicer too, more concise I suppose. Even though the main exhibit was photography, which I'm not sure is really art, espcially when you're taking photo's of other photo's and it's all blurry and shit, but it was pretty enjoyable.

History & Victor the Swede

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500

Yesterday I went to the Museum of Natural History and today I did some wandering with a young Swedish guy named Victor.

The museum was pretty big, I was there for about 6 hours and I still didn't see everything. There was a planet-arium with a film about stars and the universe narrated by Whoopi Goldberg; I fell asleep. The rest was about 70% stuffed animals and 30% ethnic peoples, like Indians and people who live on islands and that. It was pretty cool but really big. I took a lot of photos of dead Asian mammals' faces.

This morning at breakfast I met this guy Victor and we decided to take the free ferry to Staten Island, which goes past the Statue of Liberty. The weather recently has been pretty good but today was really windy and quite cold. There wasn't much to do on Staten Island either, and we left pretty quickly. We went to Macy's, which was a bit disappointing, and through Times Square where we saw the Toys R Us, which has a ferris wheel inside, and the M'n'Ms shop, which was impressive just because there is such a thing - three floors too! Victor has plans to go to a Jazz show tonight, and I might tag along. Jazz in New York feels pretty appropriate, especially after reading Catcher in The Rye.

Day 2 in New York

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500

My second proper day in New York was fun, I've been super busy.

I saw the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, the Brooklyn Bridge, City Hall, lots of hipsters, China Town, Little Italy, another modern art gallery, Times Sqaure again and a Broadway Show. Today I'm off to the natural history museum I think because it's raining. Phew!

Arrived in NYC

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500

I'm on holiday right now, I got in to New York late last night, after spending about 3 years in transit.

I finally managed to find my hostel, I went to 36 110th Street, but it was actually on 106th street. All these street numbers need some consideration on my part. So today was my full day in the Big Apple and it has been an experience for sure, I'm going to cover it with bullet points:

Simpsons school buses!

The pretzel I had wasn't very nice :(

Times Square has loads of big TVs!

Museum of Modern Art had some really cool art, especially the pop art!

I saw a scientologist shecking the thetan levels of a small boy :(

But so far it is very cool, I started reading Catcher in the Rye in Central Park and Holden Caulfield starts talking about a pond which I am literally right next to!

Stranded

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500

Round One Nur Ein entry. Hurrah!

Wrote it on Nitrotracker on my DS.

Download

Time To Panic

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500

So Nur Ein is on again, that means new songs.

Here is the first one, my entry for round 0, the title is "Time to Panic" and the challenge was 'audible counting'. It's a rap about the French revolution.

Mad props go to James, George, Susan, Sarah, Amy and Tom for counting their hearts out in the chorus. You should all be very proud.

Download

Couple of Nitrotracker Songs

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500

Two songs made on my Nintendo DS.

So just recently Nitrotracker The excellent tracker for the DS became open source. This is cool news which will hopefully mean Nitrotracker gets more features and become even more awesome.

The news prompted me to post a couple of tracks which I have lying around on my DS. They're not super-star material or anything, but hey, I have a website, so I have to put some shit on it!

Clown shoes

Xmas

Shiny Cube

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500

I did some normal mapping! Hurrah!

Download the [horrible, messy] source here.

Turtles All The Way Down

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500

Hey now, I wrote some self-replicating code!

After reading this I thought I'd give it a go. It's in Python and is sexy like a mo-fo!

code = ['code = ',"print code[0] + str(code) + '\\n' + code[1]"]

print code[0] + str(code) + '\n' + code[1]

Conway's Game Of Life in APL

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500

You heard about APL right? But you had no idea! Here's a video that shows it in mad action.

Cost of Living

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500

A song about women who cost too much (even though they might be worth it).

Enjoy:

Download

Career Villain

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500

New song, it's potentially nonsensical but I think there is something to it.

I hope you like it.

Download

Fishes

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500

A tiny little program for drawing fishes, written in Haskell and OpenGL.

Just a little program I wrote to test out the Haskell OpenGL bindings, it doesn't do much. I'll hopefully expand it in the future, maybe some simple game with fish in it, like Shark! Shark! or something.

Linux binary
Source (hint: use ghc --make Fishes.hs to compile)

There isn't a whole lot on the web about OpenGl and Haskell but I found these websites useful:

A nice Haskell / OpenGL tutorial: part one and part two
Some nice examples of the monad stuff in use
Some of the Red Book samples converted to haskell

Lady Gaga Is Ripping Me Off!

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500

I was listening to Lady Gaga on Spotify and heard one of her songs that I had not heard before, 'Paper Gangsta', and I thought it sounded familiar. To cut it short I think Lady Gaga is ripping me off!

My song (warning, this is a rubbish song!):

Download

Her song:

Ok so the similarities are pretty paltry but it's the sour piano and distorted old school derums that got me all hetted up.

Untitled (Everybody Is Dancing)

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500

Time for a new song. This one's been on the back burner for a little while but it's almost done I think.

Download

Mr Explode!

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500

So a little while ago I found something that I thought was lost forever. Mr Explode! It's a stunning next-gen prototype game, guaranteed to make your eyes melt.

Ok so it's not that but it's the first game I ever made, or attempted to make. It's a little top down shooter and it is a bit rough round the edges. Well a lot rough, it's a game only its mother could love, but I love it.

You can download it here. I fixed it up a tiny bit so you can play two levels and it doesn't crash, though I don't know whether it's possible to win. The controls are space to shoot and the arrow keys for moving, you'll get the hang of it.

The last modified date on the files was 2002, but I think even that is a bit recent, the game brings back memories. I never finished Mr Explode, probably mostly because it was written in Dark Basic which doesn't exactly encourage abstraction. In the folder I found there was also a file named "useful numbers.doc" which contained references for all the arrays in the game. Invaluable stuff like:

============

Bloofer Array Values

============

0 does it exist?

1 x coordinate

2 y coordinate

3 direction(1-4, up;clockwise)

4 speed(1slow-2fast)

5 is it on a wall?

6 age (0=spawning,

6=spawned,

10=fritzing,

27=exploding,

32=dead)

7 number of movement choices

8 death group(0 if not dead)

Hurrah for objects, eh?

Holiday!

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500

Me and Sarah had a lovely holiday last week. We went to Turkey to visit my auntie and then to Greece. It was great and I even got a bit of a tan. Here are some of the better photos I took. A few more are over at Flickr

Sarah outside the Parliament building in Athens

The Parthenon under construction

Picturesque Santorini

Cheap Games

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500

So I was in town with Sarah yesterday and we popped into Game. They have a 3 for �5 deal running on second hand PS2 games at the moment and I couldn't help but have a look. I ended up with 7 games and I thought I'd give them each a mini-review.

Airblade

I owned and loved Trickstyle on the Dreamcast so I was excited by this as it's supposed to be a 'spiritual successor'. There seems to be no races anymore, Tony Hawk's has better skateboarding and Jet Set Radio has better style. I didn't play long enough to learn any tricks but the handling of the boards is awful, it was ok for racing in Trickstyle but it's madly frustrating for precise line ups and tight turns that this game requires.

Verdict: It's redundant basically.

BCV: Battle Construction Vehicles

I just love the look of the box and the idea of the game, it has fascinated me many time in the past when browsing in games shops. The game itself is a beat-em-up where you fight as JCBs and diggers and things. It features some hilarious voice acting, a bored sounding English guy plays the main character who has to defend his dad's construction company against... I don't remember, but it's a pretty ridiculous story line. The fighting is confusing and slow and seems to be pretty sparse, each vehicle gets three attacks: left, right and front, and a defense move which makes girders appear around your vehicle. There is also a special move which variously shoots electricity onto your opponent, transforms your crane's arm into a sword, and other crazy stuff.

Verdict: Concept - 10/10 Execution - 2/10

More later...

Silver Tongue

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500

Ok another Nur Ein entry in the making. The vocal track is directly lifted from Radio Friendly by Abdominal.

Give it a listen:

Download