Finger info for chunky@icculus.org...



[2002-06-02]

Fight Club - the gift that keeps on giving.

OK. It's just weird. I've watched this film more times than I can shake
a really big stick at. And it keeps getting /better/.

Every time I see it [now in the mid-to-late teens], I see stuff that I
haven't seen before. I totally missed the whole "and for some reason,
this reminded me of my first fight w Tyler" thing until tonight [while
he's in his boss' office, trying to get severance-pay-we-all-dream-about].

If you haven't yet seen this film, go out and buy it. Watch it.

Watch it again a couple nights later.

Rinse

Repeat.

I've never known a film I can watch so many times, and yet still be
gleaning stuff from it.

For anyone else, I'll be doing an update on CH as soon as all the facts
are in.


[2002-05-29]

"Hiya,
Could you possibly bend over so we can show you a little trick BT
taught us?
 - <obfuscated>"


Also, I've just been rebuilding a friend's machine with a stack of new
hardware he bought. Here's a hint:
If you're going to put the word "Professional" in your operating system's
title, you're implying that a professional might feel the urge to use it.

That means you should say to the user things like "do you want to install
all these games? Do you want to install this ton-and-a-half of shit?"

Someone's who's professional may feel the urge to miss out the garbage
they don't want.

For god's sake. It's bad enough that your "server" can't run
headless. What the hell is your flagship server OS doing running tons
of games and having colored cursors [CPU intensive activity] and having
f***ing swooshy rounded buttons on the task bar? There is no earthly
reason to swoosh the f**ing buttons about.

Grr. I hate XP.

Also, note several User-interface-design principles:
1) Do Not, Ever, Move Shit About.
  If I look for somethign and find it, the correct response is not
  to move it;
 Chunky: "Where's Freecell? Oh, here it is"
 * Windows helpfully moves the freecell icon chunky eventually found
 Windows: "Psych!"

2) Progress bars imply progress. It's considered cheating to move the
f***ing bar back to the start when it hits the end, because you can't
work out how long it's going to take you to {install, boot, whatever}.

My god, people.


[2002-05-26]

Shit, I still hate hospitals.

We were playing pool last night, the girlfriend tripped and fell over
backwards, so we took a little trip there. She's fine now [except for
a fair-to-middling headache], by the way.

Damn, I /loathe/ those places. Even when I'm not the one with the
problems...

Although I have to say; the doctor was clearly good at what he was doing,
as opposed the the muppet-like student who attacked the back of my throat
with sharp metal spikes when I last went there.


[2002-05-24]

More mental notes for drivers [another excerpt from a posting to one of
the local newsgroups in York Uni]

1) When you're overtaking someone who's doing 60, you pull out
slightly to check of there's someone coming, right? Well, "someone" in
fact includes cyclists.

According to my speedo, I do on average about 20mph. To overtake
someone doing 60, you probably want to do 80 or so.
A simple bit of maths says that our relative approaching velocities is
~100mph.

For reference, that's f**ing scary when you only manage to pull back
in when you're 20 yards away, and I'm staring down the grill of your
radiator.

2) When there's a speedlimit sign that says 20, and it's by a school,
and there are kids swarming about, it's /not/ considered correct to do
40.

I come to the figure 40 because I do [as I said] about 20 on average.
You go past me at roughly double my speed. That comes to about 40.

Which is wrong. And dangerous.


[2002-05-20]

Plenty of UnrealI stuff for anyone who's into that sort of things:
http://icculus.org/~chunky/ut/

Note that I still don't like this game. I play with it because it's
tinkerable-with, but as a game it sucks.


[2002-05-19]

E-mail from someone I've never met. I'm sure it's nothing on what Hendersa
gets half the time, but things like this still scare me:

-------
From: "Han" <obfuscated@student.cs.york.ac.uk>
To: "Chunky Kibbles" <gjb105@cs.york.ac.uk>
Subject: I really want to know you
Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 21:29:57 +0100
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000

Read thoght lots of posters in News Group.

I'd like to know you, man... are you left handed, btw.

Cheers
-------

Hmmmm.


[2002-05-17]

Several boring things for today:
Yes, it was the line DOS=SINGLE in config.sys. Yet another useless piece
of "how to protect windows from itself" trivia to commit to memory. At
least the ladyfriend didn't cut my knackers off.


My girlfriend bought me a new toy:
http://mefferts.com/images/puzzles/puzzleballs/impossib-l.jpg

The bottom layer is pretty hard.


UnrealI/UT Stuff: http://icculus.org/~chunky/unreali-install.run
If you have an UnrealI CD and UT installed under Linux, try it.


I gave up on 7th Guest, since it wouldn't install and it really annoyed
me. So I installed the 11th Hour instead.

It's really really good. I'd forgotten. Especially since last time I
played the game, I paid no attention to the video clips because they
weren't "part of the game", and various other things. This time, though,
I took time to appreciate the full more-than-an-hour-of-FMV and the
actual puzzles.

A few of the puzzles are /really/ hard. There's one that's essentially
a Connect4 you play against the computer, and it's coded perfectly
[afaict]. Unless you go first, I don't think you have a chance in hell.

There're some problems relevant to using SB16 Emulation on the Live,
that mean that after {random period of time}, it starts to sound all
scratchy and buggered, but the midi still works fine and you can just
save quit & restart without too much effort.

The thing where you have to choose which ending you want has always
annoyed me; if you pick the wrong one, then you have to jump through
some seriously hard loops to beat it again and get the right one. In
this case, I actually beat the game 3 times from a save near the end,
but note that the second two times, the last puzzle is infinitely harder
because the computer gets to go first.

In this particular game, it was actually fairly clear which was the one
not to go for, but between the other two it was a pretty hard choice
[The woman you came to save, or the woman who's been helping you save
her. The third choice is the woman who's the "bad guy" throughout the
whole story, but has nice jubblies]. I ended up beating it 3 times just
to see all the endings, anyways.

I have to say; if you've never played this, go down to your local Frys
or wherever, and pick up a copy. You can usually find both the 7th Guest
and the 11th Hour in the same box for five bucks or so. If you can make
the 7th Guest work, it's worth it, but if not, the 11th Hour is good in
and of itself.

Perhaps there are some lessons to be learnt from it, though, for more
modern game producers;

1) Having bonus stuff on the CD is cool. Doom{1,2} and Hexen WAD files
 of the mansion are seriously cool. You have 4 CDs of space, you may as
 well shove in a couple hundred k of bonus stuff. In this day and age,
 you have [given the whole DVD thing going on] several /gig/ of free
 space kicking about. It's not much effort, and it keeps the punters
 more than happy. I don't mean Easter Eggs, here, I mean stuff like WAD
 files and "the making of..." video clips.

2) Documentation. A dead-tree manual. Containing useful stuff.
 Useful README.txt files; ones that tell you useful stuff.
 The distinction here is subtle; I think dead trees are good for "how
 to play the game" type things. If it's another FPS, what the hey; we
 all know what the warehouse level is going to look like and how the
 controls work. So put in some weapon & bad guy specs instead. But if
 it's something else, perhaps some ideas about gameplay and the like?
 README.txts are the sort of thing that will be of interest to the people
 who find them. Think about it. If you just leave a README.txt in the
 game directory, most punters will never find it. The ones that read it
 are the sort who want to know "this setting does this if you edit the
 config file". And other technical details that may actually be relevant
 to the tinkerers among us.

3) It working first time. I beat this game, from scratch, without ever
 needing a patch. I understand the need for patches and the like [eg,
 changing gameplay, stopping cheats, etc], but sometimes it just shouldn't
 be necessary [eg, Black&White as it came out of the box. While it
 wasn't so crap in terms of gameplay, it was certainly more buggy than a
 very buggy thing, and until the patch came out, I never managed to make
 it work on my housemate's computer]

4) Windows-specific whine:
 Your game goes into one directory. With DOS, this always happened. To
 remove 11th Hour after I'd finished it, I went to the directory in
 windows explorer, and I wiped it. And it was all gone. All of it. Not
 just a little bit. All of it. All of Loki's games, if I rm-rf the
 directory, the game is gone. My user prefs are still there, but that's
 in a good way. Leaving user prefs hanging about in the registry is
 the reason that windows boxes slow down and die. It's not hard. All
 you have to do is not use the registry; that's what config files are
 /for/, people. It's why they were invented, for god's sake.

OK. Ranting over. I'm off to watch Ocean's 11 again.


[2002-05-13]

So. Imagine the situation. You're sitting in front of a windows98 machine
[I said /image/ the situation], and want to install The 7th Guest on it
because it's been so long, you just found your CD again, and you happen
[accidentally] to be near a windows box again.

Windows: "Windows thinks it'd be helpful for you to run this in DOS
  mode. Yes? No?"
Chunky: "Uh... OK."
 * Windows reboots into DOS Mode
 * Windows refuses to install the damn game anyways.
W: "You are currently running in MS-DOS Mode. Do you want to return to
  Normal mode to run Windows Applications again [Enter=Y,Esc=N]?"
C: "y"
 * Computer reboots.
W: "Psych!"
W: "You are currently running in MS-DOS Mode. Do you want to return to
  Normal mode to run Windows Applications again [Enter=Y,Esc=N]?"

Bugger.

So, at this point, my lovely girlfriend [the one from the shower scene
below] threatens to cut my knackers off if I don't fix it. What with the
fact that it's her machine.

Bugger.

A brief search on everyone's favorite search engine returns
http://www3.sympatico.ca/rhwatson/dos7/x-dos.html

Which mentions config.sys and the line DOS=SINGLE. I think I'll go home
and try it.

But I mean, /come on/. You can start in safe mode, but anyone who's
not had a previous life using windows extensively wouldn't ever think
to push F8, and certainly wouldn't think to use "edit". Why do people
use this stupid piece of software? It breaks itself with no recourse to
fixing it, and it generally doesn't actually Work. It offers to fix
itself, but it doesn't.

Don't kid yourself. We've all seen windows go blue. The fact that I
can say "go blue" and you instantly know what I mean should really
explain a whole lot.

Yes, this has put me in a bad mood.

In other news, I went home today to sort out some stuff for MikeyP, and
do some washing, and the stupid washing machine is very very broken. It
neglected, among other things, to unlock the door or to run the Spin
cycle. No, it's not that I was impatient; it had already run past that
bit on the dial, and had simply not done what it said it was going to.

Grrr.

I also finally have a couple of pics back from my last fire exercise.
http://icculus.org/~chunky/juggling/images/breathe/firebreathing1.jpg
is one of them, others are on the way.
Unfortunately, most of them didn't work out too well, and came out looking
like http://icculus.org/~chunky/juggling/images/breathe/firebreathing2.jpg
But as I said, more on the way.


[2002-05-07]

http://www.mefferts.com/images/puzzles/new/megaminx-l.jpg

Notes on this cube:
1) It's not a "cube", I just think of it as one.
2) It's not as complicated as it looks. It's actually exactly the same
as a normal Rubik's Cube, except for one [just one!] difference:
Instead of having 4 sides on each face, this has 5. As a natural
progression to end with a platonic solid, you complete the exercise with
a dodecahedron.
As a result, almost all of the normal cube-like moves actually work
here, also. You just have to imagine that the 3 faces you mess with
are perpendicular instead of vaguely perpendicular, and everything just
slots into place.


Hmmm. Anyone who can solve a vanilla Rubik's Cube [3x3x3], you can
[probably] solve this already, depending on how you solve a normal one. If
you do it a slice at a time, this is almost completely the same. You can
solve the whole cube except the bottom slice using just your intuition
and the move that takes a piece from the bottom to the side, without
munging the rest of the center slice, or the stuff above it.

Except one thing that was bugging the living f**k out of me.

What that picture doesn't show you is that the colors on opposite sides
are exactly the same. Hence, the edge-middle pieces have /two/ of each
color pair, and the corner pieces have two of each color group [eg, RGB]
but are handed, hence, unique. For example, going clockwise around the
piece, there's one Corner that goes Green, Red, Blue, and there's another
that goes Green, Blue, Red.

Since the centers never move:
1) The centers are effectively different colors WRT each other
2) The corners are all unique
3) There are two of each side piece.

Which means that
4) Sometimes, you'll get to what looks like an insoluble cube. It is. You
need to start again.

Which was my mental block. But it's also a pretty daft design, vaguely;
you /can't/ garauntee that you're solving the thing correctly; as opposed
to other normal cubes, where you're garaunteed to have the correct piece
if you just look at the colors. Or it doesn't matter if you have the
wrong pieces, so long as they're the right color [like the 5x5x5 cube,
which has groups of 4 indistinguishable pieces, but they can be in any
order when you place them].

Anyways. I'm now off to try to make pretty patterns on it; solving
Rubik's cubes is generally "simple", wheras making pretty patterns all
over them is
1) harder
2) more interesting
3) more time-consuming


[2002-05-04]

Something I posted to one of our campus newsgroups yesterday:

<snip>
Notes for drivers:

1) Overtaking on Blind corners is stupid
2) Even if it's a cyclist
3) Even if you're doing it because there's a big f-off puddle and it's
  your only forseeable opporunity to soak the stupid person on his
  bike.


4) I was a white van driver for a year and a half. I /know/ you can
f***ing see me, I also know that it's easy to pretend you can't. I
know where the f***ing blind spots are, and I'd have to be
mind-bogglingly f***ing stupid to cycle along in them.

Cutting me up as I'm coming up beside you, even though you're waiting
in traffic and can't f***ing go anywhere, is just f***ing annoying. If
you're one of the ones who complains at people going up on the kerb on
their bike, then you should be f***ing courteous and stop trying to be
deliberately f***ing annoying. If you're not in my way, deliberately
moving over is stupid.

If you're one of the ones who beeps their horn at me for cycling along
no hands, perhaps you should put the f***ing mobile down and use at
least one hand on the steering wheel [honking the horn doesn't count
as "on the steering wheel"]. Perhaps you should also avoid driving
past me so closly at such speed that it's only through sheer fluke,
and my ability to grab the handlebars, that I don't fall off.

5) F**K YOU is not a suitable response to a cyclist who looks behind
him, sees you're about 60 or 70 yards away, signals his intention to
turn right, then does so.
</snip>


[2002-05-03]

Added some KDE3 screenshots at
http://icculus.org/~chunky/kde/scrshots.html
Yes, that's edie running Wide&Short. W00t. Not sure why I though that
was worth a screenshot...

Some UT ones are also up.
http://icculus.org/~chunky/ut/scrshots.html
Is the HTML page, but understand; this page is going to put a whole
world of hurt on your bandwidth if you're on 56k. I haven't split the
page up, so there's 1.7M of thumbnails on that page. Hmmm.

Note that the shots are faily dark. Blame nvidia. I won't alter the
screenshots, as that's considered really bad.

The really slow ones are on DM-Gothic are with full anti-aliasing on. The
crappy antialiasing is FUGLY, so I've not bothered putting up any shots
with it on. Note that this game is pretty good-looking without FSAA.

I'm seeing some problems with the big screenshots, but I'm not sure
why. If you're having problems, I'll do reconversions of some of them
as I hope I still have the .bmps someplace.


[2002-04-29]

Ignore the KDE thing I've done previously
http://icculus.org/~chunky/kde
Is an extended, updated, and generally improved version.


[2002-04-28]

Things that Chunky does with his time that could be considered technically
"stupid", number 546: Fire Breathing

I just got to do this the other day, and it's fun.

Since safety is, actually, of concern here, I was slightly loathe to do
it until I had someone who knew what he was doing standing near me. More
by luck than judgement, I end up chatting with someone who knows how
to do it. Interestingly enough, he's the same punter who stars in the
update below this one.

Notes about breathing fire:

1) Try it with water first. You don't want to spread paraffin [kerosene,
to you yanks] all over yourself the first time you try to spit it out.

2) Paraffin is one of the most disgusting things you can possibly imagine
putting in your mouth, because
 a) It tastes f***ing awful
 b) It's got this horribly slimy oily textures to it

3) Paraffin /will/ drip down your chin and onto your shirt

4) Listerine is also one of the most disgusting things you can possibly
imagine, but it's one hell of a big improvement on paraffin. Surprisingly,
it can actually cut through the nasty oily thing you have going on in
your mouth. Which is nice.

And, possibly the most important to those of you with a sense of
self-preservation:

5) Paraffin is apparently carcinogenic. At each fire-breating sitting,
I apparently do myself a similar amount of damage as I would do to myself
by smoking several hundred cigs.

In the meantime, I'll be doing it again tonight and am hoping someone
brings a digital camera so's I can put pics up.

It's good fun when more that one of you aim fireballs in the same general
direction, but slightly crossing, so you end up with a /huge/ fireball
thing going on. Very much good fun.


[2002-04-24]

Let me tell you something that really really pissed me off last night.

One of my friends had come into a bet; if he can get a lass in the shower
before the end of the night, he makes 50 quid. Fair enough. Seems like
a really good deal.

I'm sitting there chatting to some random people [who I've never met
before]. Quite out of the blue, I ask one of the girls there [who is
seriously fucking drop-dead gorgeous, IMHO. Looks a lot like one of my
Exs, but with longer hair] if she'll get in the shower with this guy,
not expecting anything to happen. What with the fact that her boyfriend
was sitting there next to her.

Now, technically, she was also offered part of the profits on this,
but we feel that's hardly the salient point of the story.

I comment that I'd better get at least a fiver out of the deal, given
my part in it. "OK", he agrees.

She then she goes and [both of them have their clothes on] gets into the
shower cubicle/room with this guy. They're each just gonna wet their hair,
and make some cash for doing it. It's like a small room with a shower
in the corner; you can turn on the water without actually getting wet,
but that's about all the space there is.

They're both in there with what I can only assume is all their clothes
on. And someone comments "no, you've gotta pass at least /her/ clothes
out through the door". And she only fucking did.

Now. That's fine. But look at it from my point of view:
1) I've convinced a fucking gorgeous lass to get into the shower with
someone.
2) She gets her clothes off once she's in this shower.
3) I make just five pounds on the deal, rather than getting to take part.

So... I've convinced a girl to get into the shower with someone, and
she turns out to be willing to get her kit off. And I did all that for
a fiver? Shit. Perhaps next time I'll convince someone who's really
good-looking to get into the damn shower with /me/.


[2002-04-23]

Apparently:

1. The woman at the front desk probably was indeed amazed by your
British accent. I'm telling you, that's one of your primary reasons
for moving to the states: easily impressed women.

[ed's note: Apparently, toting english banknotes is also a viable tactic
in getting women's attention, when you're in the states]

2. "Claim Jumper" was the restaurant we went to where they serve the "Ore
Cart". Anyone who comes to the US must eat there. It's generally one of
the conditions of your travel visa (if you happen to have one).

3. The front bumper of my car isn't shredded. It does have a few spots
where the paint has been scraped off down to the metal, but in general
it's not too bad. I could feasibly get away with some touch-up paint, but
I opted for the racing bra on the front instead. Damn truck drivers
with their big trucks that like to back into innocent sports cars...

I guess that clears that one up, then.


[2002-04-22]

Fine, I'll update my .plan.

For anyone who's not paying attention, I was in the states for a job
interview. It was with a random company who do cool stuff with cool
toys. A purely Linux house.

So, anyways. I arrive in the US and a couple days later the boss of
this company [there're only 10 people in it] picks me up in his Jag,
that would be very nice if it had
1) A gear stick
2) 3 pedals
3) E-type written on it instead of XK8
But it was pretty nice, all the same. Guess you can't have everything.

In this oh-so-lovely car, we then go for a little potter from Rolling
Hills [near Palos Verdes] up to Beverly Hills, where this company
currently is, for me to have an interview. Except I end up camping there
the whole day, and they're only actually expecting to interview me for
an hour or so.

Which gave me ample opportunity to sit there, pointing and laughing at
all the people who were actually doing work. Mwahahaha.

At one point, I heard the comment "you'd better get a picture, it's the
last time you're ever gonna see him wearing a tie". Hmmm. Bonus points
for observation, there...


Going back slightly, the first thing that happened as I arrived in this
office was the usual round of introductions. First greeting I get:

"Oh, I love your accent".

And she sounded like she really meant it. You people scare me. Women
in this country can't even take American accents seriously, let alone
point out they love them.

After several more greetings, I get a comment "oh, so /you're/ the
embedded guy". Hmmm. Well, at least I knew what to be expecting when they
come to interview me...

Now, obviously it's hardly a "normal" day as such, but one of the first
things I get to watch in this place is the only lass there present
the only french guy there with a blow-up Monica, who comes with bonus
cigar. Mmmmmmm.

Which is topped only by the Clinton dildo that's under one of the other
guy's desks.


When it came for them to actually interview me, I guess it didn't go as
great as I might ideally have imagined...

"Can you do this: {mumble} ?"
"Uh... In theory, yes. In practice, I've never been able to afford one
of those toys, so I've never been able to try & install Linux on it."

[rinse. repeat. This being the focus of this particular intervew,
after all...]

"What old code and stuff can you show us that you've got?"
"Well, most of the stuff I did at Lehman is not exactly for public
consumption, and there's very little in the way of major coding projects
I've done outside of that. I'm helping on MSPhil's Secret Project X,
but I'm hardly going to be banding the source for that about..."

[although it should be noted that I've not exactly done much on project
X so far, and when they interviewed me I'd only just signed the NDA &
contract...]


Right. Anyways. I hope I get the job. If they offer it to me, I'm going
there. Simple.


Later on, myself, the french guy, and another punter all wander [ok,
drive] up the street a bit to the Troubadour. It's this really nice
club, where the Flower Kings were on stage that night. I had a seriously
cool time.

The Flower Kings rock. They're sort of Pink Floyd wannabes, but with
more bass, and a slightly different following. That place was absolutely
decked out with the proverbial ageing rockers. Bunch of guys older than
me all toting black leather jackets and going about on Harleys. You know
the sort. Very seriously cool.

First off, getting in was a bit of an exercise. I hand the man on the door
my drivers license, so I can have a wristband and can then have a
drink. [That's a bloody good idea, if you ask me. You get id'd once,
and then the lady behind the bar just has to ask if she can see your
wristbands. Seems crap at first thought, but then's actually a really
good idea when you think about it.]

"You're shitting me"
"Uh... no, that really is my driving license"
"When were you 21?"
"Last year"
"When were you 22?"
"Uh... this year?"
"When this year?"
"Dagnammit. It's written on the damn card."

Eventually, I get in and have a drink. Mmmm. Bottles this time. Saves
all that pint hassle you people seem to have so much trouble with.

Following that, I end up crashing on {weird french guy's} sofa. I
didn't wake up with chloroform on my breath and a sore ass, so I guess
that's good.

Next day, hendersa comes to pick me up. Everybody listen up. His car's
bra on the front... It's not because he races it or anything decent
like that. It's because the bumper's shredded underneath it, and a bra
is cheaper than a bumper.

In the evening, we went out to this steak-kinda place. Met Mike Phillips &
his missus, "Lady Firedancer". They didn't scare me at all.

Can't remember what it's called, but they have on the menu, among other
things, the "Ore Cart". Which is just a trolley covered in dead stuff. Big
trolley. Lots of dead stuff. Yummy. I didn't have one, actually, as I
think it's just a little out of my league...

Anyways. That's all fun. Other notes about driving around in the US:
1) Just because someone's address says "Rolling Hills Estates", doesn't
mean you don't go in the gate that says "The Terraces". Bugger.
We only ended up driving round the hill 2 or 3 times because of that...
2) Instructions on the web are, at times, not perfect. We got within a
couple miles of home, before taking the "scenic route", which finished
at approximately the totally wrong place.

Hmmmm.

Anyways. I think I've probably bored the living f**k out of all of you by
now, so I'm gonna quit. Am going fire juggling in an hour or so anyways...





[note: old plan entries are all avilable at
http://icculus.org/~chunky/oldplan]

When this .plan was written: 2002-06-01 21:14:28
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