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Very good episode, and certainly adding well to the Doctor Who Mythos in my opinion. The spoilers I'd warned folk about a few months ago with the post about not viewing the BBC websites back then are after the credits of this episode. So if you don't want to be spoilt - make sure to stop viewing it before the credits end. The lead actor (other than the Doctor of course) I've seen before, in something horror related I'm sure - I'll have to look them up just to be sure. Feel free to ask me for spoilers in my comments.
Interesting, when I posted on the blog here about the Devana game I'd set up on my website, I got 2 users signing up for it. When I posted on the forums for Devana with instructions on how to make modifications to the game to improve it and mentioned that you can see the changes I've made over at http://www.curufea.com/devana - I got a further 13 users signing up :) My current problem with it is that it doesn't appear to be simultaneous. It fakes it and gives the appearance. I don't think production queues (or any of the others) actually progress to being completed for a player - unless that player is logged on. I may have to jury rig in a CRON job. Otherwise it may be possible to make sure that no matter what player is logged on to the game - all players have their queues progress. This last option I'm hoping is already implemented in the game, but I haven't had my question on it answered on the forums yet. In other news - Is anyone in need of terrain for wargaming? I'm think about cleaning out the garage as I've started to give up hope on ever using my miniatures again.
Thought I'd install a webgame on my homepage - it's an opensource one that has a big following and there are many mods for. Some redistributions even charge money. However, this is the base game with virtually no modifications (the only change I made was for the forum link to go to the original forums, rather than set up my own forum for the game). So if you want to play, it's free - and it looks kinda cute. It uses timing for building things, and you click on various buildings in your town to upgrade/build. The crossroads is where you gather your army, the well is where you rename your town. The default help files need a lot of work - typical really, programmers hate documentation fairly often. http://www.curufea.com/devanaNot sure how I want to modify it yet, so ideas welcome.
Interesting. Very Terry Gilliam in my opinion. A Faustian plot, some good CGI and a possibly too imaginitive imagination. Unfortunately there are many areas left open, and many things left unexplained. Moreso than the average Gaiman even :) There are a fair few similarities to Mirror Mask IMHO. I do recommend it as a piece of art, not so sure it will be as big a hit to the average movie goer though as there's almost no exposition. It's a story about stories and wagers with the devil. Who is played really well by the mad scientist dude (Heller) of Mystery Men.
This week I developed the skill of parsing XML with PHP. Not only that, I've been able to recursively find nodes and retrieve their values. I can probably do attributes as well. Unfortunately I've not yet mastered the ability to do XSLT with PHP - nor can I immediately spot mistakes that stop XSLT from being well formed. My current theory is that it's something to do with the namespace declarations or something. Anyhow, just thought I'd write and let folks know while I waited for the harvester to finish :) One of the problems I've been finding at work is that, because we're "frontier science" as it were - and using standards that are new, I can't find other people's solutions and reverse engineer them, which is one of my favourite ways to learn things. [edit] On a side note, I've slowly converting to the idea of XML being the best format for every kind of data, especially databases. Just because it's so easy to manipulate, customise or convert to other forms.
I've recently ranted about names in fantasy that have apostrophes in them. For no reason other than to make them look fantasy. So I thought I'd try to find out if anyone had done a survey comparing amount of apostrophes with how crap the novel is. No luck yet, unfortunately. But I did come across this fine exam that every beginning fantasy novelist should be mandated to take. Answering "yes" to any one question results in failure and means that the prospective novel should be abandoned at once. From http://www.rinkworks.com/fnovel/( Read more... )
World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale
Mon, Nov. 2nd, 2009, 12:07 pm
Garden Project
With the corn now doing well, I thought I'd go back and look at the project I was working on for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kaffles. It's a garden organiser and it isn't finished yet. You can see the progress so far here - http://www.curufea.com/garden/draw.phpWhen it is finished I'm hoping that you will be able to do the following- - Draw or erase any polygon defined area with some mouse clicks(currently these are manually entered as a list of co-ordinates in a text file)
- Highlight an area and bring up plant information about it - linked to a database. Things like types of plants, when planted, where abouts they can be found in the area and when they were last watered etc.
It's very basic at the moment as I've not spent much time on it so far. I'm using a blown-up image from actmapi of our backyard, but any image could be used really - so it may be useful to other gardeners. I'd be interested in any ideas anyone has on this.
Is now my favourite Gilbert & Sullivan. Mainly because of the ending - the whole reprise of the duet between Elsie and Jack Point the Jester (that was earlier very well brought to a building climax/foreshadowing) The Queenbeyan players were good - although again the violins were off key, the flutes were out of sync with each other and the orchestra occasionally drowned out the singers. But still better than their last G&S.
Surprisingly the BBC have not blocked all us non-UK folk from seeing one of their videos on YouTube. This is of Nina talking about filming the first 3 eps of the new season. No spoilers- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYqhKXHOWksSomething to look forward to.
Tue, Oct. 27th, 2009, 02:36 pm
Dwarf Fortress
Just rediscovered an interesting simulation game. It's free and it's ASCII. Called Dwarf Fortress. I'd tried it before but gave up as it was too complicated. I'm thinking of trying it again as I've recently started reading Markus Heitz' The Dwarves. It's based on various roguelike engines. You basically construct a dwarven stronghold in a mountain, build farms and forges, mine, find water and defend it from any invaders. It's fairly complicated and even simulates having your fortress flooded if you accidentally dig into a lake or river. You can build pumps to move water up levels. Anyhow, It seems this game is constantly being developed and has a huge following. There is a wiki full of documentation on how to play the game and best strategies/tutorials here- http://dwarffortresswiki.net/(you can also download the game here) Players have uploaded 3D maps (ie multiple text levels) of their fortresses to this website where you can view them- http://www.mkv25.net/dfma/index.phpI don't know what each letter or colour means at this stage though, but they look impressive. People have even created movies of the game in action to show particular things. Anyhow, I found it interesting and may give it a go soon.
Thought I'd share before someone else from AAF posts it from the list :)
I've been waiting hours for someone to post the Montage on YouTube. Now someone has - so view it before it gets taken down. The Physicists MontageFrom: The Big Bang Theory.
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amused
creative