Fac Ut Gaudeam

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:26:02 GMT

A few days ago I uploaded by sole contribution to TLKFAA's "Canon Days", and took the opportunity to reiterate what it says in my Arist's Comments, which is, "Please read my Artist's Profile page for information about requests and art trades, etc." At the end of the comment, I also mentioned something that I'd been putting off for far too long, which was the fact that generic one-word comments make me sad.

And the very first comment on this picture was a generic one-word comment. I am sad.

Then today, I noticed a marquee advertizing my town's Friday night movie, where a popular movie (usually a well-known family-friendly one) is shown in the local park every week during the summer. This week's movie, according to the marquee, was "Rat Chef".

"Hey, Bob, what's the title of this week's movie?"
"It's Ratatouille."
(Oh crap, I don't know how to spell that! What should I do??) "Er...what's that about?"
"It's the animated one about the rat chef."
(*IDEA!*)

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:46:35 GMT

The 10 Most Bizarre Species Names, from Oddee.com. Funny stuff, though the Goldenpalace.com monkey's name was a bit depressing. And I thought that urban legend about the couple that met online and named their baby "Yahoo" was a bit much.

The Crystal Skull

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:28:08 GMT

Ever since the new Indiana Jones movie (which I have yet to see) came out, I amusedly reflected on how in a certain scene from Dreams of Rio, Jack Flanders is inside a temple in a lost city in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, waiting for the morning sun to strike a crystal skull that he has placed on an altar, and he jokingly remarks, "I feel like Indiana Jones waiting for the light to hit."

Other than that little coincidence, I assumed that there wouldn't be any similarities whatsoever between Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Dreams of Rio and Dreams of the Amazon aside from the obvious crystal skull and Amazon themes.

Wrong. Very wrong.
(This is a commentary from Meatball Fulton, the creator of DoR and DotA, in which he discusses the similarities between the film and his audio dramas, and goes into the detail of the making of the audio dramas as well. There are also some beautiful audio samples from the series [including the memorable "Ooh, a snake-man!" conversation].)

Whyyyyyeeeeee...

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:25:41 GMT

Writing rant.

I was recently asked to write an article for a website, whose name shall remain anonymous. I had fun writing the article, and the person who accepted it told me that he was greatly impressed by it, and even offered me a job as a regular contributor, which I declined.

A few weeks later, I got another message from him with a link to a revised draft of my article attached. He said that only "minor edits" had been made to it, which he said was mostly due to my great skill as a writer. He wanted me to look at it to see if I wanted to make any last minute changes to it, and since I was feeling all happy and mushy after receiving such undeserved praise, I willingly took a look at it.

Good feelings gone.

To adequately sum up what reading the revised draft was like, let me compare a line from the first draft to one from the second. One of the original sentences in the article was worded thusly:

When the Internet became widely available, however, this all changed. With the advent of the World Wide Web came not only webpages dedicated to video games, but freeware capable of reading the games' resource files, exposing the backgrounds, animations, audio, text and code for all to see.

Sounds okay, doesn't it? No glaring grammatical errors, no unconventional uses of punctuation, no leet-speak. A fairly decent (if somewhat lengthy) sentence, if I do say so myself.

Here is the revised version of the same paragraph:

With the growing popularity of fan websites dedicated to video games, free software have been written and made available by dedicated fans that are capable of reading these games’ resource files, thus exposing background arts, animation loops, audio clips, text scribbles, and programming codes for all to see.

Read that again. "Free software have been written and made available by dedicated fans that are capable of reading these games' resource files." Software have been written!? Background arts?! Fans that are capable of reading games' resource files!?

And this was not the only instance of such a thing; the entire article was filled with edits like this. I'm praised profusely for my incredible writing ability and then shown a decorrected revision of my efforts? What did I do to deserve having my work mangled like this?! Whyyyyyyeeeeee!?

And as if that wasn't grating on my nerves enough, my bio had been edited to say that I "live in Unites States". I gently pointed out that it should be "lives in the United States", and was informed that several people have complained about the use of the "the", saying that the USA seems to be an exception among countries…because apparently places like THE Bahamas, THE Marshall Islands and THE Philippines don't exist. Dang it, world, WE'RE supposed to be the ones ignorant of other countries' names, not YOU!

_{Whyyyyyeeeeee...}

Oh, and new pictures today. This is the one that I'm the least ashamed of.

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 01:58:52 GMT

I was sitting at my computer, minding my own business, when a young California towhee hopped up onto my windowsill and peered in.

Surely an event to bring excitement to even the dullest day...because as everyone knows, you can't spell "towhee" without spelling "whee!"

The word is out...

Wed, 28 May 2008 04:09:22 GMT

In case a couple of my previous posts haven't given my actions away yet...

I am working on another adventure game.

Not only that, but it's very nearly finished, save for a bug in the save/restore interface and a temporary dearth of music for the end credits. Unlike Area 50.5, it's going to be downloadable, but like Area 50.5, it's going to be pretty big.

So stay tuned!

Fri, 23 May 2008 09:16:29 GMT

The address bar in Windows Explorer wasn't showing up on my dad's computer, and for reasons I couldn't entirely fathom, he needed to access a webpage by typing it into that address bar rather the one in IE.

I got it to show up through sheer dumb luck in about five minutes (after an unsuccessful search of both Windows Help and the Net). Nothing spectacular there.

However, before I did that, my dad spent considerable time on the phone with a tech support guy, who tried just about everything he could think of, but was still unable to solve my dad's problem.

I am pleased with things.

Thu, 22 May 2008 02:28:18 GMT

My parents and I were going out to dinner and we parked right behind an SUV with the rear window open a few inches. There was something in the back of the SUV, but window had tinted glass, so all I could see of whatever was back there was a bit of orange-brown fur and a pair of ears sticking up just over the top of the window. At first I thought it was a large dog, but then we got close enough to see through the glass, I could see the animal's face...

...and it had a bridle on.

It was a miniature horse -- in fact, it turned out to be two miniature horses. In the back of an SUV. With their owners having dinner nearby.

Who says living in a small town is boring?

Sun, 11 May 2008 02:41:26 GMT

After a nearby church's marquee displayed a quote from the movie Gladiator (a film about an empire which wasn't exactly crazy about Christianity during most of its existence), I figured something like that was the full extent of its oddness.

Today I saw a sign underneath the same marquee that read "Drive Thru Prayer".

I can't remember the last time I've been so wrong about something.

"Come up here...queeck!"

Wed, 07 May 2008 06:13:35 GMT

I've been out of town for a few days, and our return trip took us through the Denver Airport...and for nearly all the time we were there, the PA system kept asking for someone by the name of Tom Cruise to answer the white courtesy phone.

And now for some videos of Woof Woof the tui. My mother and sister were raving about how alarmingly friendly these birds were (often hopping up to you and singing right in your face), but I didn't know that they were also very intelligent...and fluent in English.

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:07:02 GMT

I recently finished reading Joseph Campbell's Myths to Live By, and since I was apparently in a masochistic state of mind afterwards, I decided to look at some of the more unfavorable (and unintelligable) Amazon.com reader reviews of his various works, surmising that there would be several at the very least.

And lo and behold, there were. There were a few people complaining about The Hero With a Thousand Faces (the book which greatly influenced George Lucas as he was creating the original Star Wars Trilogy) was boring, and that anyone thinking of reading it should watch the Trilogy instead. Lame.

There was another negative review of the same book with the witty satiric title, "Hero with a Thousand Feces". Lamer.

Then there was an exceptionally long one-star review ranting about how Campbell is disrespectful of Christianity and was an "Athiest-Darwinist", and included this statement:

"All Darwinists (I like to call them what they believe they are: Slime-Snake-Monkey People) must deny the possibility of an Eden, and deny every bit of evidence that suggests or points to a Creator; likewise, they must deny all the evidence which points to the inextricably related idea that the Book of Genesis is a true account of human origins."

Holy shaving cream, what profound wisdom! Reading such a scathing truth would surely make any Slime-Snake-Monkey-Person abandon his oozing, slithering, brachiating ways and realize that everything in the Bible is true and must be taken literally!

_{Honestly, some people's children...}

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 09:07:24 GMT

Today on Ruby 2, a double feature: Attack of the Digital Dentist and The Return of Ruby Too

The second part with Ruby Too and And/Or is so hilariously adorable, especially at the very end. And/Or's infatuation with her is just too cute ("She touched me, did you see that?") It's too bad that this is the only series that Ruby Too appears in. I would have liked to have heard her and Ruby One meet.

"The leetle red ants were not happyyy..."

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 00:54:38 GMT

Ant Begone - one of Ruby 2's many bizarre, irrelevant interludes.

"Yes, something is...WHAAAAAAAAGH!"

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 06:59:04 GMT

"Do you smell something?"
"No, I got moss in my nose."
"Do you hear something!?"
"No, I got bats in my ears."

Setting the stage (featuring the phrase "giant suck-balls" in a remarkably innocuous context).

And now, the moment I've been waiting for for a long time...SPOOLAGA!
Of course, Pastor Pizarro's sermons were created decades before Landover Baptist's 60-Second Sermons...and the native robot guide's story of his people is deeply profound.

"How did you say that...'EAT IT, SLIMIES'?"

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 07:27:50 GMT

Humor, suspense, witty repartee, familial conflict, mystery, action, violence, tentacles, exploding things, religion, impressionism and unexplained phenomena, all within three minutes.

I always crack up at the "Point it that way" exchange. The image of a little old rat lady dispatching several genetically engineered assassins is priceless.

"I don't make enemies, I eliminate them!"

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:51:29 GMT

This is probably one of my favorite R2 episodes, mostly because of the conversation between And/Or and Ruby 1 towards the end. Ruby is so cruel to And/Or at times, and though it's easy to sympathize with And/Or, Ruby is such a well-written, likeable character that you often find yourself laughing at And/Or's misfortune at the same time.

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 00:34:05 GMT

Today, an action-filled duo of Ruby 2 eps, both featuring...Ruby 1?:

This is probably the only series I've encountered where the second numerical installment has a name shared by its protagonist and features a visit from the star of the first installment.

"Heh-heh...one thing you Slimies didn't count on is that I've been carrying...a portable...telescoping...fully-operable...laser-sighting...WHOOPIE BAZOOKA!"

And R. F. Kapoor's play-by-play of the performance of The Great Ozymandias gets interrupted.

Just to be sure I'm not talking to myself here, can anyone figure out what Mother Kapoor says after Kapoor screams, "I'm removing my jacket"? It sounds like "And you're stripping it off?" but I'm not entirely sure. I've been wondering about this for years, so...

"If these things are still on the wall when the program ends, YOU'RE cleaning it up!"

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 01:32:39 GMT

Gyaaah, I can't believe I didn't post this episode the day it came out! Stupid, stupid, stupid...

Oh no, the Boogerman! - This Ruby 2 episode definitely ties with "House of Whoopie" for the most outragously juvenile one in the entire show. Talk about redefining the term B-movie...

And did I mention that there is evidence that Sega ripped off ZBS?

"And one last thing, there's a wonderfully disgusting character in RUBY 2 called The Boogerman. He goes around saying, pick pick, flick flick. [...] Anyway, about a year or so ago, SEGA came out with a very successful game called "The Boogerman, A Pick and Flick Adventure." The coincidence was a bit suspicious. We checked the game credits and sure enough, a couple of their people were on our mailing list." --The Ruby 2 disclaimer

It could just be coincidence, but listen to the episode and judge for yourself.

Even more R2 - Count Velcro

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 01:21:51 GMT

Ruby Too: Where is the Count?
Sam the bardroid: The Count is in his portable inflatable palace.
Ruby Too: Portable inflatable palace?
Sam: The one with tractor treads and inflatable tower.
Ruby Too: Inflatable tower?
[brief pause]
Sam: There's an echo.
Ruby Too: An echo?
Sam: Yes. You can't miss it.

"Zippers!? Yuck -- you could have had velcro..."

(And, once again, 30-Second Telephone Terror Theatre. "Stellaaaaa!")

More Ruby 2 - "It stinks."

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 01:38:48 GMT

Sal: What would you like to do tonight?
Sam: What would you like to do tonight?
Sal: Let's do something mindless!
Sam: Let's do something dumb!
Both: Time for TV! Hah-hah!

Click.

"Eet's so seemple to control ze 'uman mind...eezen't eet?"

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 08:00:27 GMT

And now for one of the most outrageously juvenile moments in all of ZBS history - House of Whoopie

I believe this would qualify as one of the "really offensive" episodes that the author paid for out of "his ill-begotten means".

Email Fun, Part (x)...

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 01:38:01 GMT

An excerpt from a message entitled "Information about your products and activities" that was delivered to me a couple of days ago:

Sir / Madam,

As we have been attracted to your site "WSSQID: Who Says Space Quest is Dead?" and according to its description "An online comic featuring the continuing misadventures of Roger Wilco.", we believe, that the cooperation with us could bring you many new trade leads and opportunities.

Promote your company and your products in very efficient form using the ecomVia Global System (eGS). Don't miss out the chance to register and use all of the services at no cost and create free profile for your company and set up presentations for your products.

So making an infrequently updated fan comic based on a defunct game series qualifies as a "business" these days?

Ha!x10³

Also: Recently, there has been an oddly large volume of spam in my inbox with both the subject line and the body in Cyrillic. Are statistics showing that Russians are more likely to fall for these email scams or something??

More Ruby 2

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 01:04:45 GMT

Ruby 2, Episode 18

An aside: I'm a big fan of ZBS's classic work, and there's little that I dislike about it, but I've got to admit that this episode is a bit weak. I mean, a couple of robots watching TV and commenting on the mediocre programming fare? That's way too cheesy, even for the mid-80s.

In fact, I'd say it's right up there with their story from the 70s about that teenager in the 1950s trying to get home with the help of a time machine built out of a car. I mean, concepts like this never get anywhere.

_{These statements are what is referred to as "ironic".}

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:23:26 GMT

Just when I think I've mastered the basics of AGS, something like this happens:

My character's idle views (views that play if you don't move the character for a certain amount of time) weren't playing. I tried everything I could think of to get them to work, closing and restarting the program, searching the help forums and the manual, but to no avail. I was up until 4:30 AM trying to fix this problem, unable to understand why such a simple thing was causing me this much trouble. Finally, I gave up, typed up a message to post on the help forums, shut down the computer and went to bed, prepared to humbly plead for help the next day.

Today, I started up the computer and AGS...

...and the idle views worked.

Much pain.

Buzz words! Buzz words!

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 01:40:54 GMT

Ruby 2. Where else could you hear a famous "Apocalypse Now"/"Heart of Darkness" quote within minutes after a catchphrase from a commercial from the 80s?