adam-a

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

Moneygeddon Update

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

With Newswipe just over now I thought it might be pertinent to give a quick update on the fine range of Moneygeddon themed t-shirts and mugs I've been selling on cafepress.

I've somehow managed to sell a massive 26 items! Shock! I never thought I'd sell any, but there you go. This boils down to 15 plain Gordon Brown 'Epic Fail' t-shirts and 1 ladies one. The mugs were the next most popular, with 7 gone, then the Shouty McHeadwound Man t-shirts (at a lower price) sold 2, and lastly one bumper sticker.

I didn't put any commission on the t-shirts or mugs (by mistake actually, but I'm not sure if I'd have felt ok about making money so ruthlessly of someone else's hard work and good ideas). I did have commission on the bumper stickers and the Shouty McHeadwound Man t-shirts; in all I've made $2.20, which is pretty paltry at today's exchange rate.

I'd call it a success, though it certainly made me think that Cafepress takes far too much money. If I wanted to sell my own designs I'd have to put such a markup to make it worth it that I doubt anyone would buy them. Who knows maybe I'll venture into the t-shirt business again, I think some swine-flu themed shirts would sell well right now. Though of course without a TV show promoting them it'd be harder to shift any. Hmmmm... we'll see once the exams are over.

Just time to finish then with a salute to Charlie Brooker: reasonable and funny and pretty good looking!

New Camera!

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

Sarah recently got a new camera, so I inherited her old one, it's just like younger sibling hand me downs. Except awesome. It's a Kodak Easy Share DX7630 and it has 6.1 mega pixels, which I think is enough to capture the wrinkles on God's forehead.

So I've already decided I'm going to be a professional photographer and took photos all the way home. I filled up the 32mb memory card before I was even half way.

Here is a selection of the best ones:

Schadenfreude

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

New Nur Ein song (yay! I got through) the title is Schadenfreude and the challenge is 'Song must express 2 sides of an argument'. Full of samples because I am ill and I can't sing. :(

Download

Take 2

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

So, this one is like rapping.

Download

Demo

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

This is a kind of rough demo / work in progress. Please tell me what you think.

Download

Computer Music

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

So I recently got pointed to this video via Twitter. An interesting cover of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody on old computer peripherals and hardware.

It's quite a nice idea, and reminded me of this similar video by James Houston I saw a few months ago. It's a remix/cover of Radiohead's Nude.

So it turns out (via here and here) that indeed the first is directly inspired by the second. Here's hoping it doesn't get picked up by the ad companies.

Hug

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

Hug.

I feel like there should be more pictures here.

Update:
This is a lot better. There were too many gay hugs in the other one anyway.

Nur Ein and More

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

Two new songs! The first is another one for Song Fight!, called 'Sold Out'. It's quite good and has a nice funky drum sample that makes it a bit more varied than my usual drum fare.

The second is my entry to Round Zero of Nur Ein this year, called 'Sleep Tight'. Nur Ein is a knock out tournament in its fourth year. It's run by some of the folks over at Song Fight! and I really enjoyed it last year. I found it gets more out of me than SF because I'm aiming at not being the worst, which is more achievable than being the best. Anyway, it's quite ok, it has a dream sequence and some whistling (which was a non-optional challenge for the song). Mad props to Steve for whistling.

Download:

Sold Out
Sleep Tight

RSS Feed!

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

Hey check out the RSS Feed! Go on it's just up in the corner there ↗

Shouty McHeadwound Man

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

I just added a new t-shirt to the Moneygeddon store. Not much to say really.

Buy it now!