Bilby

Sailing

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 12:33:48 GMT

We haven't been sailing lately - either the weather has been against us, or other issues took priority. I did mention that I was going to add a pic, though, so this one was taken while doing the Competent Crew course through the Marine Academy. We were motoring in the harbour at the time, and the light seemed promising. I don't have a picture of her under sail, yet - we've tried, but the people who took the photos used a camera phone, so they weren't worth worrying about. Luck holding I'll have a nice camera soon (a Pentax K7, in case anyone is interested), so I might make a serious attempt to organise some shots on the water.

(Edit) It occurred to me (after posting this) that I should probably mention some details of the boat, in case anyone is interested.

She's a Columbia 34, which is a design with unusually high sides. This means that she's difficult to get in and out of, especially on the water (the steps solve the problem when in dock) but it provides for a very dry cockpit, clear deck and over 7 feet of headroom in the cabin. Sleeps 7 in varying degrees of comfort, but I'd lean towards 5 as good number. Shower (although currently not working), head, running hot and cold water (theoretically), a galley, and a fridge that operates off shore power and batteries, meaning that the beer is always cold. Only the two sails, although there's a storm jib in case of emergencies.

She handles ok - I'm guessing a maximum hull speed of about 8 knots, but we've managed to hit 7, I think, in 20 knots of wind with one reef in the main and jib. That was also the only day we managed to get spray in the cockpit - given that there was a fair bit of swell, I'm not surprised. She needs two people to sail her properly, although in theory I suspect that she could be handled by one person in light winds. (An autohelm would help there). And there's a wheel for steering - this model originally came with a tiller, but the wheel was a standard modification after purchase. The diesel motor seems to hit about 5 knots when everything is right, and I gather we've got about 40 hours of range from the tank.

As far as I can tell, she was built in the US in the early 70's, (which is good, as it was prior to the oil crisis, which means less chance of problems with the hull), and sailed over to Australia where she was run as a charter vessel in, I think, Queensland.

Generally, she's a good family cruising boat, not that fast, but pleasantly comfortable and easy to handle. Not very exciting to sail, but given the purpose that seems reasonable enough.

Polka

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 22:49:07 GMT

Sad news - the Grammy Award for polkas is no more.

Conjecture & Sailing

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 03:00:08 GMT

I wrote a post about the Natcon and my thoughts about how it went, and then I got all nervous and hid it. Maybe I'll display it again some time, but writing it made things feel better. (Not that I had anything bad to say, I should add - it went as well as we had hoped, with some things going great and some not-so-great, but overall a success).

Anyway, on completely unrelated news - sailing has been going well. We ended up buying the 34 foot boat, and I've been told that I'm part owner. I don't feel like a part owner, (I didn't put any money into the purchase) but I do feel like sailing, so I'll shut up and refrain from complaining. :) I'll try and post a pic or two later, but it is nice sailing again.

Unfortunately, we're still trying to gain a decent level of competency - we're ok, and have been able to handle all of the conditions we've taken her out in, but have felt a tad uncertain. After all, both of us had only previously sailed off-the-beach boats, except for crewing on a family trailer sailer when we were very young. So a couple of weeks ago we went in for a two day "competent crew" course. It was good. Our boat compared well to the one we sailed there, and while we picked up a lot, (especially in regard to the Man Overboard drills) we also gained confidence as we discovered that what we had been doing was generally correct and that we knew a lot more than we realised. The Sydney-to-Hobart may remain a distant dream, but I certainly feel more confident now, and if I ever do get the chance there's now a hope that I'll be more than movable ballast.

One important lesson, though - if you have a "bit of a cold", spending two days on the deck of a boat during winter is not as wise as one might have thought.

Dollhouse

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:02:21 GMT

It took seven episodes, but finally there was an episode of Dollhouse worth watching. I'm most pleased.

The British Buffy

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 08:52:16 GMT

I just finished watching season one of Demons, or the "British Buffy" as I tend to think of it. It's certainly the closest thing to Buffy that I've seen for a while. A high school student discovers that he possesses unique abilities allowing him to fight evil after an older mentor appears on the scene. Teaming up with a misfit band of friends, they fight evil unbeknownst to the rest of humanity, protecting us all while trying to juggle school and a social life. Naturally, the young hero doesn't want to fight evil, but his unique talents were always going to bring him to the attention of the enemy, and thus he had no choice but to accept his new life (in spite of some attempts to retain old habits). They even have a large occult library on hand, where the gang retreat to research the villain of the week. Sound familiar?

It's not all the same. The mentor is American, not British (which makes sense, of course). Buffy is male, Xander female, and Willow is blind. And older. But it works. Mostly, I think, by the constant references to "smiting" evil and feeling one's wrath, along with the use of guns. Neat guns that explode bad guys.

If you have a Buffy-shaped hole in your heart, this is the closest thing I've seen to filling it. It may be a clone, but it's a good clone, with some unique aspects, good characters, and monster-of-the-week. Not to mention slightly less angst. It's only six episodes long, which was a bit of a disappointment, but I'd certainly recommend it.

25 Days of Accordions

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:35:15 GMT

Just 'cause it is cool, the Let's Polka accordion blog^[1] is having a "25 Days of Accordions" series of posts, with a new MP3 to download each day. There's some good music in there (if you can cope with the accordion) and a rather eclectic mix of styles (with only a couple of polkas), at: http://www.letspolka.com/

^[1] Ruth seems to have a hard time coping with the existance of the blog - well, either that or the fact that I'm a regular reader. But one does enjoy a good polka now and then, and they reveal some neat stuff - like the Wild Women of the Accordion calendar (naturally, I've ordered my copy).

LHC

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:48:40 GMT

It seemed that the world hasn't ended. Yet. But as mentioned on the radio, maybe they should have waited until just past 7 today to turn it on, making the time:

10/09/08 07:06:54 ...

It would have been a nice touch.

Roleplaying

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 06:43:53 GMT

The "Cool Things" course is going rather well, I think - I just did the AI lecture (mostly involving watching my WowWee collection explore the room while I tired valiantly to explain the Frame Problem), and I think it may have been my best lecture ever. Even better than the one where we explained polymorphism using pirate and ninja penguins. So I'm happy.

Anyway, my somewhat insane assistant had an idea - next week we're covering the development of MMORPGs. I'm planning to start with Adventure, cover MUDs, King's Quest, Nethack and a few other odds and ends. But she suggested that we should run a 5 minute D&D session during the lecture, with volunteers from the students. I was thinking of a single room puzzle of some sort, with no combat. But the last time I played D&D was 20 years ago. So is there anything I should keep in mind?

Pirates vs Ninjas

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:28:18 GMT

The Adelaide battle:

http://122.100.2.246:1684/

Saturday, August 9th.

Arrr!

Cool Things

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:06:01 GMT

I'm got a bit of a problem at uni - I'm supposed to be creating a new course that covers "cool things" that would be of interest to non-computing students. Students are required to take one course that is outside of their area of study here, so the various departments tend to offer special, "light", courses to attract them. Things like "The History of Paper". Our school doesn't have one of these courses, but apparently we want to offer one, and, naturally, it seems to be my problem. (I have lots of bitchy complaints to insert here, but I'll save you from them).

Anyway, the idea is to just cover cool stuff that are more-or-less related to computing. After some missteps, I've decided to just write a list of everything that I think is cool and find some way of designing a course around it (and no, it isn't exactly the best teaching model, but I'm reasonably convinced that I can bring in some academic value if the school doesn't stop me). The problem is that I'm unsure of the validity of my list. So (after the jump), I'd greatly appreciate people having a look and telling me what things should be there, what things perhaps shouldn't, and any suggestions that might make it appealing to non-computing students. (Apparently I'm enough of a geek to write it, but too much of a geek to have a normal perspective - and I'm afraid they might have a point).

Cool stuff

Peer-to-peer
Mobile networks
Airnet
Blogs
YouTube
Podcasts
Flickr
Citizen journalism
Facebook
Myspace
Linked-In
Orkut
Wikipedia
Turk
Google Docs
Web 2.0
Threadless (Yay! T-Shirts!)
Digg
GMail
Lulu
Naztag (I thought this might be an excuse to get the school to buy one for me)
Chumby (see above)
Robots (apparently, Robots don't interest most people - but I don't see it)
Telepresence
Eee PC
OLPC
eInk (maybe even Kindle, although I prefer the iLiad)
MMOs (especially WoW)
Virtual reality
Augmented reality
Second life
Stellarc (he seems cool to me)
Digital art
FAB Labs
Social activism online

Non-cool stuff that matters

Tagging
Client-Server
Managing load
Ethics
Security
Digital Divide
Privacy
Encryption
DRM

Generally I'm in desperate need of brains to storm. :)

WikiHistory

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 03:53:32 GMT

Boing Boing recommended the short story WikiHistory by Desmond Warzel. It was a good recommendation. :)

Buffy Quiz

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 01:37:13 GMT

I'm not sure what to think of this. Out of all the characters I could have been, I end up as ...

Which Buffy the Vampire Slayer Character Are You?

Created by BuddyTV

The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 07:16:33 GMT

	I received 93 credits on The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you?
Take the Sci-Fi Movie Quiz

PayPal

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:19:13 GMT

I just got stuck spending a few days setting up an eCommerce system for online sales for a client. It was annoying. The first problem was that the client wanted to calculate shipping by weight. This seemed sensible to me. But all the software packages I could find either a) didn't calculate shipping by weight, or b) did, but were horribly complex. The closest I could find to a decent compromise was YAK, but YAK assumes a steady shipping rate per 500gm. Australia Post uses a tiered system based on 250gm increments.

The client insisted that PayPal would calculate shipping by weight, and that this would make it easy. Indeed, PayPal does. For businesses not in Australia.

The solution was to make major modifications to YAK in order to provide a shipping system suitable for Australia. Which I did last night. And it worked perfectly.

Thus today I connected it up to PayPal, thinking that I'd only have to run a few tests and then I could launch. I'm not very bright, you see.

This is where problem number two comes in - PayPal was modified in mid-October so that it doesn't always accept shipping costs. Thus my software calculated shipping, told PayPal what the shipping was, and PayPal happily ignored it. PayPal have said that this is a known bug, but they're not modifying code until after Christmas, so it should be fixed in January some time. I can see their point, but this isn't exactly the best time of year to break people's online businesses.

Eventually, after reading dozens of forums, I found a fix (set shipping_1 to the shipping cost, and don't include the no_shipping attribute, in case someone needs to know). The site now appears to be working. And I can sleep.

As an aside, I now have software to turn a WordPress blog into an online store that calculates shipping at Australian rates, if anyone wants such a beast. :)

Website Accessibility

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 08:30:44 GMT

I was having a look at http://worsethanfailure.com/ today, and came across a link to this website:

http://www.wmfs.net/deafsite.xtml

It's the West Midlands Fire Service. As far as I can tell, they decided that they needed to make their website accessible to people with hearing impairments. A worthy aim. So they provided animations of people signing the text on the page. After all, many people are deaf - so they can't possibly read the site.

Nicely done, though. Just a tad confusing.

War of the Worlds

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 13:14:13 GMT

After months on waiting, I finally saw Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of War of the Worlds: Live on Stage in Melbourne on Friday night. The short review: it wasn't anywhere near as good as it could of been, but overall I was very happy. A (much, much) longer review after the jump.

I've been a fan of the album for as long as I can remember. When my father purchased our first stereo, he picked up two albums: Tubular Bells and War of the Worlds. I don't know how many times I listened to War of the Worlds, but it is caught up in almost every memory I have of listening to music when I was young. Later, when studying the Science Fiction course at Adelaide uni, I was proud to say that I passed the course^[1] because the essay in the exam was on War of the Words: and while I hadn't read the book at the time (my mistake - it was superb) I had memorized Jeff Wayne's version. I still own two copies of the album (in case one ever gets damaged) along with the CDs. And when I heard that the SACD version was coming out, I seriously considered buying an SACD player to listen^[2].

I heard about the live stage version when it was still playing in the UK. At the time I considered flying over to the UK to catch it, but I had about three days to go before the season finished, and I couldn't quite justify the expense. We found out that it was playing in Australia during an episode of It Takes Two. I'm ashamed to admit that the show was even on our TV, but Rachel Beck mentioned that she was appearing in the live show, and I immediately rang my brother in Melbourne to discuss tickets. We didn't go for the best seats, but we got as close as we could - on the floor directly in front of the stage, about 12 rows back.

So much for my history. I mentioned this to say that War of the Worlds is a particular weakness of mine, so what I expected (and received) from the live show might not be the same as someone with a more typical appreciation of the music.^[3]

The live show featured Jeff Wayne conducting, on the left of the stage, a rock band, and, on the right, a small orchestra. The first thing I need to emphasize was that this was a rock concert - not a stage musical. Thus the bands were central (taking up the entire stage), and every so often someone wandered out to handle some of the singing. The singers were Justin Hayward (from the Moody Blues and the original album), Chris Thompson (from Manfred Mann and the original album), Rachael Beck (noted performed in Australian stage musicals), Michael Falzon (whom I haven't seen before, but has also appeared in a number of stage musicals), and Shannon Noll (Australian Idol runner-up). The somewhat deceased Richard Burton's voice was used as The Journalist, and Jeff Wayne's daughter (Anne-Marie Wayne) received a credit for a prerecorded walk-on cameo as Carrie.

Along with the orchestra/band, the stage had a screen on the left onto which was projected the computer-generated virtual head of Richard Burton, and a huge screen behind the band showing CGI animations to go with the music. If this sounds cheesy then you've got the right image in mind. The Richard Burton CGI was disappointing: wooden, poorly animated, and not what I had expected. Both Ruth and I found it best just to ignore his head and focus on everything else. The animations on the screen were better. The opening sequences (in which the Martians reveal their plans for Earth) was unnecessary and poorly animated, but other sections - such as the red weed and, to a lesser extent, those accompanying the song Autumn Leaves - were excellent and added a lot to the production. Everything felt very 70's, which was probably the plan, so I guess your response would depend on how completely you were willing to buy into the conceit. On the whole I was able to accept it, but I was close enough to the stage so that I didn't need to rely on the screens to see what was happening on stage - maybe if I was further back I wouldn't have been so comfortable with them.

Other than the screens, the staging featured two big props: a Martian tripod, which descended to the stage during both The Artilleryman and The Fighting Machine and Dead London; and a bridge for the Artilleryman to march along and under during Brave New World. I'll mention the tripod again in a bit, but these were perfect.

So, onto the music. I've heard the saying that if it is too loud, then you're too old. Apparently I'm too old. My first impression, when the music started, was that it needed to be turned down a notch. I like loud, but I also like to hear those note things, and at times the volume made it difficult to pick out some of the singing.^[4] Thus the first two pieces - the Prequel and The Eve of the War - were fun, but that's mostly because of what they were and that I was seeing them performed live. Justin Hayward wandered out to do the "The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one ..." thing, and while his voice has aged along with the rest of him, he did ok. On the plus side, it was clear that Jeff Wayne was enjoying himself, and the the band was fantastic. I was admiring the bass guitar (being 70's the bass dominated) when I realized that Herbie Flowers was playing (whom I know best from Sky), and that was the first wonderful surprise. He was every bit as good as I would have wished. The second surprise was Julia Thornton on percussion and harp. She was memorable for her appearance, playing and enthusiasm.

And then it changed. As the death ray started tearing up Horsell Common and the fighting machine was lowered to the stage, the lighting, music and volume all came together. I could feel the vibrations through the floor as the Martian tripod just missed the Journalist as he lay in the river, and the light, sound and rumbling that came with each explosion was staggering. At this point I loved the show, and I'm grinning now - two days later - as I remember the scene. My brother and I kept grinning at each other as our favorite lines were repeated ("Bows and arrows against the lightning"), and the whole thing was as exciting as I could have dreamed. This was the high point of the show.

The next song - Forever Autumn - was performed by Justin Haywood. He did ok. I never liked the song - all romance and memories when I wanted more fighting - but performed live it came across better than it did on the album. The visual effects also helped, being appropriate to the music (faint praise, but they helped turn a mediocre song into something worthwhile). Then it was onto my favorite song from the album: Thunderchild. This was performed by Chris Thompson, who also recorded the original, and the real disappointment here was that it was simply ok. His voice didn't seemed to have aged as well as Justin Haywood's, and he lacked the power to climb over the music (part of which I blame on the sound engineer - but then, I blame a lot on the sound engineer). I was also disappointed by the visuals: my memories of this song are all wound up with the painting by Michael Trim which features on the cover, and the visuals didn't even get close to matching it. This was the first real disappointment of the show.

The second came after the break. My favorite song is clearly Thunderchild, but coming in a close second is The Spirit of Man. When I heard that Shannon Noll was in the production, I started desperately hoping that he'd play the Artilleryman, as I didn't want Shannon playing Nathaniel and destroying this song for me. He played Nathaniel, but he didn't destroy it. The sound engineer did. Shannon did his best, and seemed to be trying hard to replicate Phil Lynott from the original. He might have been ok, but problems with his microphone made it hard to be sure. Rachel Beck, on the other hand, did her own interpretation of Beth, and did a wonderful job - although she too suffered microphone problems. Between them I think I would have been impressed, if it wasn't for the technical issues.

After that we moved onto The Red Weed - a musical number accompanied by the best visuals of the night. It worked well, and came across even better live, with visuals, than the version on the album. This was followed by Brave New World, performed by Michael Falzon. He took a song which I'd always (at best) sort-of liked, and made it great. The awkward lyrics seemed to work with him, and the staging was the most complex of the night and the most successful. Admittedly, he was only competing with David Essex, but he did it well.

As we neared the end Dead London began, with the tripod making a second appearance. The music was fine, and the tripod - as it slowly died - was perfect. I was surprised and very happy. While the best the show had to offer had come and gone, this sequence was nevertheless excellent. The epilogue, on the other hand, felt as uncomfortable and tacked on as it does on the album.

So overall, I agree with medge42: someone should shoot the sound engineer. But what I found interesting, from my perspective, is that I went to the concert wanting to hear Thunderchild and Spirit of Man, neither of which worked. Instead, I was surprised by The Artilleryman and The Fighting Machine and by Brave New World, which made up for my other disappointments. So while the show could certainly have been better, it was still memorable - just not always for the reasons I had expected. A true stage production, rather than a concert, may have provided for a better experience, and better visuals would have helped a lot, but taken as it was, the experience was a good one - my memories of the album remain safe and happy, I have an entirely new picture of a dancing Jeff Wayne, Herbie Flowers is still a great bassist, and the scene of a Martian tripod towering over an orchestra as the ground vibrated to the sounds of the music is one that I shall certainly be recalling for a while to come. I am glad, though, that I knew what to expect before I went in: a bit of research on YouTube and following the UK production helped prepare me for some of the flaws.

[1] The exam proved to be essential: the major essay for the course was on time travel, and I'd managed to seriously offend the lecturers by insisting that Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure was a far better exploration of time travel than Terminator 2. They disagreed strenuously, being strangely convinced that T2 was the better movie. I am still certain that I was right.

[2] This always reminds me of Steve purchasing the special edition Laserdisc version of Aliens when he didn't have a Laserdisc player. I suspect he still doesn't have one.

[3] One of the people who joined us - my sister-in-law - hadn't even heard a single song from the album before I sent her a couple of MP3s the night we purchased tickets. She still hasn't listened to the album as a whole. On the way to the arena, she commented on how she knew the story, as she'd seen the Tom Cruise movie. Her impressions of the show - while favorable - don't tend to mirror my own. :)

[4] I'd be curious to know what those in the orchestra thought of both Jeff Wayne as a conductor and the quality of the sound. Ruth, on the other hand, wondered how they felt about the rock band getting almost all of the applause.

Pirates

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 04:44:23 GMT

Avast! That lubber should 'av known better than t' have me proof read the beauty's PhD proposal on Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Accordions

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 14:49:46 GMT

I had my weekly accordion lesson tonight. I wasn't exactly feeling positive - I've gone temporarily deaf in my good ear, and uni has been so hectic that I didn't even manage to find 15 minutes for practice during the last week. So for the first time since I started, I went a full week without picking up the accordion (unless you count three bars of "Over the Waves" for maelorin just before leaving). The problem isn't that I can't find the time, so much as I can't find time for practice before the children go to sleep. And I'm banned from playing afterwards. :)

Anyway, I survived, as near as I could tell given that I could barely hear the notes (if you're in a small room with two accordions playing in unison, and you can't really hear them, then you have a significant problem). And at the end I was rewarded with a delightful document which I was told to read and "start thinking about" for future lessons. Entitled "Playing the Accordion for Fun and Profit" it consists of instructions and recommendations for one's performances. Such as "have a repertoire of 15 songs" and "be sure to dress properly, be on time, be courteous and set up as quickly as possible". In particular, I should follow the instructions on organising my first gigs, with the top recommendation being to "call the local retirement homes and ask if they could use entertainment for their residents (most can)". I figure that after a few months of retirement homes, one or two of the recommended Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, a couple of local restaurants and some busking at Glenelg (although they seem to already have a resident accordion player, who is always admirably surprised when I give him money) I should be ready to fulfill my dream of performing in the Eurovision Song Contest.

I can't honestly believe that he thinks I could perform in public one day, but I've been told that in future lessons we'll be focusing on building up my repertoire of 15 memorized songs, and learning some of the ethnic songs I'll need in the future. :) Maybe it is time to consider giving up academia for a minstrel's career.

In unrelated music news, Ruth and I are off to Melbourne this weekend for Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of War of the Worlds: Live on Stage. I'd seriously considered going to England to catch the original performances, so I'm ecstatic about seeing this in Australia. And Ruth has nether been to Melbourne nor been on a plane, so she's looking forward to the trip - perhaps in spite of the show. :)

Nerd Test

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 09:45:39 GMT

I just want to make it clear that I am not a nerd. Geek, I'll consider - but I'm not convinced of that, either.

Evil, evil Hollywood

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 13:13:03 GMT

medge42 provided some horrible news the other day - in the remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still", the role of Klaatu is to be performed by Keanu Reeves. I was concerned about breaking the news to Ruth, but did so on the grounds that I would rather she heard from me in a safe environment than she discovered it while out in public, away from her support network. :)

She took the news better than I had expected. Unfortunately why became horribly clear: she'd watched the trailer for "The Seeker" - the movie adaption of Susan Cooper's "The Dark is Rising". I suspect that the horror (and resulting numbness) was enough to protect her from even Keanu Reeves. Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge, states that the movie "introduces significant plot and character changes from the book". Indeed. Judging by the trailer, it has about as much to do with the book as "The Lawnmower Man" movie had to do with Steven King's short story.

The books are wonderful. I suspect that the film will be less so.

The Gopher Incident

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 03:42:19 GMT

I never realized that those electric gopher/scooter things could be dangerous. On the weekend we were at Norwood, and, as far as I can gather, we were waiting at the lights to cross the road, when an elderly chap decided to run over my daughter with his gopher (no serious injury, but definitely not a pleasant experience). I'm not sure how it happened - I was watching the street - but apparently she had her eyes closed and was listening for the tone to start crossing, while he had just crossed the road from the other direction. He was wearing those really dark sunglasses some elderly people wear, and had just gone from the sunny street to the shadow next to the buildings, so perhaps he couldn't see anything. But, whatever the cause, he ran her over.

And I should emphasis that I don't mean "hit" or "bumped into", nor even "knocked over". Literally "knocked her to the ground and kept going" - drove right up over her leg.

Caitlin suffered a bit from shock, and ended up with a sore wrist and a badly grazed leg and ankle, but was otherwise ok. He was distressed, but I didn't see the event, so didn't know what to say, and Ruth was too busy comforting Caitlin to say much to him. Still, while no real damage was done, I was surprised that it could have been.

Thus a warning: those things are evil.

eBay

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 10:57:00 GMT

I won an auction on eBay again. I had recently decided that my children were old enough to start watching the great movies of my youth. They're still a bit young for Tremors, but I figured I could start them on the great musicals and work up from there. So I picked up Fame a couple of months ago, then Dirty Dancing. They've previously experienced the Sound of Music. More recently I tracked down The Pirate Movie (which they still refuse to watch), and now, at long last, I have "Can't Stop the Music" - one of the all-time great musicals.

The bit I loved was when I checked the feedback I had received from the seller. For some reason they'd set the item to "private", so people couldn't see what I'd purchased. It felt a bit like how I imagine that buying porn would feel, only it didn't arrive in an unmarked brown paper envelope. :) Either they think that I should never admit to my purchase, or they don't want to admit to selling it.

Balfours

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 13:57:44 GMT

Caught a bit of the news on the way home tonight, where it mentioned that jobs were to be lost at Balfours. Although this is very sad news, I immediately started worrying about related issues - does this mean that Balfours are being closed down? And, if so, how much longer do I have?

Fortunately, I just found out the good news: Balfours will be staying in Adelaide, and they will continue to produce frog cakes. I don't need to race out and purchase a supply after all. Frog cakes may not be the greatest food ever (clearly deep-fired Mars Bars take the crown) but they're certainly in the top 10.

Game Programming: Days 4-6

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 14:33:39 GMT

Sticking to the one or two hours per day model is frustrating, but necessary if I don't want to be bogged down. On the plus side, it means fewer posts, as I'll only post when I achieve something.

Which I did: basic user interface now works, blocks can be picked up and put down, shadows remain true, and it handles basic pattern matching (i.e. can recognise when the blocks match a desired pattern).

The last three days were frustrating. Mostly because I kept introducing stupid bugs and not realising I'd done so. I should probably share this experience with my students to show them how easy it is to make dumb mistakes. For me, anyway.

I had two major bugs: I couldn't pick up a block sitting behind another block, and I couldn't get the shadows to work when I moved a block. The second problem was simple stupidity: I had stored the shadows in an array, but decided to move them to a vector. The problem was that I treated the vector as if it was an array: I'd find the first item and remove it. Then look for the second item and remove that. Then the third ... and so on. I won't bother explaining why this is dumb, but it was (imagine a pile of two items: you remove the first item, then go back to the pile and look at the second item in the pile. But there is no second item: the pile only has one thing in it now). The first problem, picking up the blocks, was less stupid and more a matter of poor algorithm design, but I got there eventually (and it was a complex algorithm). I spent a lot of time looking at the code to detect when a block was clicked on and going "but it should work - the algorithm is prefect", until I finally realised that, in fact, it did work: the problem was elsewhere. I can now pick up any block, even if it is (partially) obscured by another, and drop it on top of any other block.

Pattern matching took about 10 minutes, once I got around to it: I scan the surface of the world looking for desired patterns, and report when I find one. Very cool, and a key part of the game mechanics.

That aside, I spent some time thinking about game mechanics, and introduced some new ideas and some concepts from reverancepavane (happy birthday, by the way). If you drop a block into water, the water is displaced by the block. And you can't pick up water. If you remove a block, and it is below the waterline, the empty space is replaced with water (I may add a rule that this only occurs if water is in an adjacent block). Finally, although I haven't implemented a trigger, the water level can rise. In terms of the other blocks:

Grey blocks are unmovable. At the moment they form the "bedrock", but later (as the game progresses) they'll get in the way and make it harder to build patterns.

"Plain brown" blocks can move, but they will never be used in a pattern, so you'll need to think of how to get them out of your way.

The numbers of all blocks are now controlled individually: I've set it to have 60 stone, 60 dirt and 20 grass blocks, but any combination is viable. As the game progresses I intend to make some blocks "rarer" then others.

I'm debating making "wood" blocks float, and "grass" blocks die if you put anything other than more grass on top of them. But I don't want to make the environment too complex: balance is everything.

Next up I'm going to spend a couple of days refactoring code. As I've progressed I've come to have a better understanding of what I want the class/object model to be. Again, this is something I try to encourage students to do, so I'm pleased to find that I do it too. :)

Game Programming: Day 3

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 14:12:12 GMT

Started to really understand the object model, and made blocks disappear upon request.

I lost a day due to work commitments, which are still heavy, and thus couldn't even spare a couple of hours at night. When I did get back to it, I decided to focus on refactoring and getting the blocks to respond to user input.

This was tricky, mostly because I had trouble understanding TorqueScript's concept of scope. My hassle was that I have blocks, such as a wood block or a stone block, and each block is an object. But that block also needs to have up to 10 shadows, each one of which is also an object. Thus when you select a block, I need to:

a) Make the block disappear.
b) Remove the shadows from the block.
c) Update the shadows on the surrounding blocks.

There is probably some clever TorqueScript way of doing this, but my thought was that each block object would contain 10 shadow objects. Thus when the block object was destroyed it would take the shadow objects with it. In Java this is easy: all I do is declare that I have a block Class, and within that block declare 10 instance variables (or, of course, an array of instance variables). And when the block dies it will take them with it.

This is possible in TorqueScript. But it took me a while to work it out. In Java you explicitly declare your Class, and as part of that declaration you explicitly declare your instance and class variables. In TorqueScript, Classes are implicitly declared: a class exists because you used it, or because you created a function that refered to it. So how do you define scope? What it uses are three different signifiers:

%variable = 10; // local scope.
$variable = 10; // global scope (all objects - this is *really* global)
%object_id.variable = 10; // instance (object) scope.

Interestingly, arrays are specified with the "$" as well:

$array[0] = 10;

I'm not yet sure as to how this will hit things. It does seem, though, that arrays can be global or instance ($object_id.array[0]), but I haven't looked into how to make them local.

Anyway, I got there in the end, and I now have a better idea as to what is going on.

On the responding issue: I made it so that the blocks notice when there is a mouse click. This is good. However, mouseclicks affect every block in the pile. Thus if I have a pile of 4 blocks, clicking on the top block will cause all four to react. I can fix this by only making the block on the top of the pile respond. However, blocks in piles overlap blocks in the next row back (that damn perspective thing), and this causes problems. I had hoped that the layers would fix this, but they don't seem to. But it shouldn't be hard to work around.

Which means that next time I can spare an hour I should be able to implement the "picking up" mechanism: pick up the blocks, move them around, and drop them. As this is the only way of interacting with the game world, it will be exciting to have it finished.

I doubt anyone will really want to follow my coding here, as it is somewhat dull. :) However, I'm really happy to be learning a new language and working on a project again: while I can only spare an hour or two a night, it is an hour that I look forward to all day. Which is cool. I suspect that only other hackers would fully understand just how much fun coding is, although I'm sure other disciplines have their equivalents, for much the same reasons.