New Year Resolution

As I have utterly failed to keep even the simplest of my New Year Resolutions for the previous two years, I'm going to keep this one much more obvious and immediate. I resolve to start doing some work for the terrifying and incomprehensible exams that start in a fortnight. I also resolve to resist the temptation to think up any more awful puns.



There's something that I've always found difficult about going back to learning after the Christmas break, and that's remembering to date everything with the new year rather than the old one. New year always happens just when I've got used to using the old number. It's not quite as bad as after the summer when I used to go back to school and realise that I'd just about forgotten how to write, but it's something I'll have to bear in mind.

My version of a Christmas post: Four paragraphs about cables

It's probably just as well that Whitney is temporarily away, because the level of geekiness in my room is now approaching catastrophic. I received a half-decent graphics card for Christmas - a Radeon 9550, to be precise. Putting the fact that I can now actually run most games aside for a moment, the next most important feature is the fact that it has an S-Video out port. As it happened, the card came with an S-Video to composite cable, and I had a composite to SCART converter lying around.

Essentially, this means I've now connected the computer up to the TV in my room and have been spending my time playing emulated games (and some of my own creations) console-style with the PS2 controller. The whole thing is quite amazingly heroic.

It's also possible to connect a second monitor to the card, although a DVI to VGA converter isn't one of the many cables that I have in my room, so I can't do this yet. I had been trying to get the TV to perform as a second screen rather than a clone of the first one, but I don't think it's possible to do that. Nevertheless, I'll search for some drivers.

Whitney and I gave the family a Freeview box for Christmas as they'll need to have one within the next couple of years anyway. It was a bit of a job to set it up and not interfere with any of the other equipment around the TV, but the configuration that eventually worked was connecting the aerial to the RF in of the set-top box, SCARTing that down to the video recorder, then having that connected to the TV via another RF cable. The PS2 was left alone in the SCART socket of the TV. I have had to draw a large diagram for the rest of the family detailing how to work it.

Ego-me-do

To anyone who reads this after midnight tonight, Merry Christmas to the lot of you. If it's not Christmas yet, come back tomorrow. As 'tis the season, I will enter into the Livejournal spirit of things and ask you to incite responses to this overwhelmingly nice meme. Here it is.

Reply to this post, and I'll tell you the reason(s) why I like/love/adore you. Then put this in your own journal, and spread the love. (Just keep the love within the lines, and we're all good.)

Back home

The first day at home was surprisingly active, with my parents and I doing what my dad called the "Geriatric Circuit", delivering Christmas presents to elderly people from the church. We only made four visits, but their collective age must have been about 350.

My room is in a depressingly appalling state, my collection of CDs and books has been dispersed throughout the house, there is a Christmas tree taking over the dining room and no one can get into the basement because there's a washing machine blocking the door. Overall, the house is pretty normal.

Icons

I have tried to find more and more inventive ways of wasting time, but I think it's genuinely now time to dissemble the computer and go to bed. The likelihood of being online very much for the next two weeks is a bit slim because of still only having 56k Internet at my parent's house, but it's better than nothing. I just called it "my parent's house" instead of "my house". That's really weird.

I wanted to quickly make some icons to fill up the three extra spaces that freeloading users like me have been given, but it turned into an hour-long task because I quickly realised that I had no idea what to put in them. After looking through my Pictures directory I was inspired to create three that were at least vaguely relevant to my life. I'm sure that like the other three before them they'll be deleted and replaced regularly until I come up with a winning lineup - I don't think my other three icons have changed for at least a year now.

The only one I'm not positive about is the last one. I'm not entirely sure what was going through my head when I made it. Then again, I'm not entirely sure what was going through my head when I decided to chain my milk to the fridge in the first place.

Airports and Towers

Against all odds I am still alive. Driving to and from Edinburgh Airport at four in the morning isn't something I would recommend to anyone - in retrospect I probably should have tried to sleep before going, but I doubt that it would have made much difference. There is something nice about being able to drive so freely at that time in the morning, with nothing else on the road except the occasional lorry.

Today has been spent sleeping, and in my spare time I've also done some more work on the game that I mentioned some months ago, which is now called "Treasure Tower". All programming projects fall behind schedule, and the prediction that I would be able to "churn out rooms at warp speed" seems particularly laughable looking back at it, but there are now one hundred rooms in the game - so I think it's about half finished. Progress has been good enough to warrant a preview, which I've put up on the Daily Click. If anyone's interested, I'm willing to give out the source CCA to anyone relatively trustworthy - perhaps even to get some rooms from guest room builders.

I'm going to turn you into a big fluffy hat.

Of the many things of which I am terrified, the Narnia film reminded me most of the way that I used to be petrified of the white witch turning things to stone in the old TV series. You spotted the subtle pun? Well done, gold star for you.

I'm driving Whitney to Edinburgh airport tomorrow, which is rapidly becoming today, and have opted not to bother trying to sleep in the generous four hour gap that we've left ourselves. I have already tried to stockpile some sleep by being bone idle most of the day, and will probably just drink a lot of hot chocolate at hourly intervals so that I'm in a fit state to drive in time for the 6:30am flight. Therefore I have to come up with some ingenious ways of wasting time, and Livejournal fits that description perfectly.

As I mentioned, we went out to St Andrews for a last night of the year in town, and saw the new Narnia film. It had me on edge for virtually all of its 140-minute length - not really because of anything in the film, but because I was terrified that they would somehow murder the book flagrantly. I was particuarly worried about the stone table scene, but fortunately everything seemed fine. It was strange to see the scenes that had been done so long ago in the BBC version reworked - both in their similarity and the way that they were different. That sentence made virtually no sense, but what do you expect, it's quarter to midnight.

It might seem a bit of a minor point, but something I noticed about the film was that some scenes seemed a bit stuck together. It's true that I do go looking for mistakes in films, but even I was surprised with the regularity that small things like hand positions and other details changed between shots. That'll probably make you watch for them when you see it, though, so ignore that.

To its credit, even the CGI was fairly convincing. I hope that this is sufficiently successful for them to film The Silver Chair and The Magician's Nephew.

Working on the project

((Pile)state.piles.get(Integer.parseInt(carddata.getNamedItem("pile")
.getNodeValue()))).addCard(new Card(Integer.parseInt(carddata.getNamedItem("suit")
.getNodeValue()), Integer.parseInt(carddata.getNamedItem("value").getNodeValue())));

...is the most horrendous line of code that I've ever written. I hope it works, because I had forgotten what it meant by the time I reached the end of the line.

I'd also like to mention to whoever understands it that I've never liked the syntax for casting in Java. It looks untidy.

Space Cadets

I have a confession to make, and it doesn't involve liking Microsoft software or listening to J-pop. In fact, it's that for the last couple of weeks I've been enjoying "Space Cadets", and I'd like to make the excuse that I liked it because it wasn't reality TV, but instead a fake sort of reality TV. So that's all right.

I found it a fascinating programme - for anyone not in Britain or who just watches the adverts, the idea was to select three people from an initial group of ten to be the first British space tourists by taking them to a base in Russia and fly them around above the Earth for a few days. In fact, the Russian base was a disguised hangar in Ipswich and the spacecraft was an elaborate simulator. Actually, the company that Whitney works for was initially approached to build the simulator, but declined because they weren't offered enough money. It's true, you know.

There were doubts from the group all through the programme's two weeks, inducing much nail-biting from me as I thought that they would surely discover that it was fake before the revelation last Friday. It was revealed to them in a clever way, as well - I thought that Johnny Vaughn would just hop on board laughing hysterically, but instead they were shown a video of all the moments where they'd said something about it not seeming real, then finished with a shot of the simulator from the outside.

Johnny Vaughn, who does not have enough vowels in his name, was not killed as expected (although I'm sure Whitney would have preferred it that way) - instead, it was rather heartwarming to see it treated not as a cruel scam, but as a good joke. Admittedly the £25,000 each probably helped.

I'm rather surprised that it wasn't a bigger event - after all, the whole thing had been made pretty elaborate. When something as banal as a series of Big Brother runs, there's 24-hour coverage of people sitting around not doing much, but this seemed to be rushed out in two weeks. Nevertheless, it was one of the few TV series that I've enjoyed for a while, and the only thing to moan about is the evident distressing stupidity of many of the watchers.

J-Christmas

With December comes the usual barrage of Christmas music. Complaining about this will just reinforce some people's belief that I'm some sort of musical elitist, but when the stuff is practically inescapable it's enough to drive anyone mad. During the one Christmas I worked in Tesco they had the same five generic Christmas pop CDs on during the entire day, causing me to disappear into the warehouse for long periods under the pretence of finding a missing bottle of Tesco Iron Brew (which no one in the world buys, ever).

As there's no escaping it, I might as well fight fire with fire and put as many people off the idea as possible. I will start by presenting to you this J-pop version of "Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow". Enjoy. It's dreadful but it's quite short.

The Saga Continues

I've been conversing a bit more with the scammer. His greatest achievement to date is that has finally managed to get my name right, and has now given me this letter to forward to the bank. I wouldn't normally allow such appalling abuse of the language on my journal, but I think this is a special case.

Dear Sir,

APPLICATION FOR THE RELEASE OF DEPOSIT

I, Leonard Bucket on behalf of the entire members of the David Bucket J.family wish to use this medium to inform you that we wish that the USD6, million deposit (state this deposit account information, that’s the info in the documents which I have (WACAFH/TRUX/185/92) in your possession belonging to our deceased relative, Mr. David Bucket J. be transferred immediately into my possession. (State any valid account information). We have contacted his personal attorney Eric Hall (Esq.) and he is hereby given the power of attorney to act on our behalf on all matters relating to this issue. Should my assistance be needed or any information is required, you can reach me at the above email address (assuming you use your current mail address) or you can reach me at this phone number (insert your phone number). Your co-operation is highly anticipated. Yours Faithfully (Insert your full name as appears on your means of identification) On behalf of the Bucket J.’s family.

And I've been requested to forward the above gibberish to "Standard_trust_bank01@yahoo.com". Somehow I don't think his heart is really in this.

Guardians of Time

I don't think I've talked about music for... must be at least five posts now. A number of people had mentioned the Music Genome Project, and I eventually decided to give it a try. I have to say that my initial doubt that it would extend to my taste was proved unfounded. After a less than successful search for bands like Iron Savior and Gamma Ray yielded only slightly off-key American punk stuff (one of which had the hilarious name "Doomtree"), I tried searching for bands like Sonata Arctica and am now trying to find out more about a Brazil-based band by the name of Angra. And this comes right after I thought I'd hit a wall as far as the diversity of music collection was concerned.

To put the band that I'm going to mention next in context, I think that Iron Savior needs a brief explanation. I think that the band is rather like Knightmare - they both have ridiculously involved storylines for what they are, and therefore fall into the category where you either think that the idea is absolutely amazing or just appallingly silly. In the band's case, their storyline revolves around a living battleship that was intended to guard Atlantis, but was broken into and turned against its creators, necessitating the change of plan to send it a 350-millennium-long round trip through deep space, after which time it returns to Earth.

Got that? Well, the Guardians of Time might as well be titled "If You Thought They Were Silly, Wait Until You See Us." I'm not entirely sure what their plot is, but it involves five immortal beings which chronicle the history of the Universe (the Past, Present, Future, Dream and the Parallel time periods - at least, that's what it says here), and each album of theirs is a chapter from one of them. The lyrics to their songs sound like they're from an 80s sci-fi cartoon.

The tone of the whole thing is exemplified in the old Flash intro to the site. It comes complete with their logo, quite possibly the most confusing symbol ever conceived.

Passport Wars

In between submitting the side-splittingly disastrous fake passport scan to as many forums as possible since the last entry, I've had time to piece together one of my own in response. Like the one that I received, it features a slightly familiar face.

He's actually replied again, but made no mention of the image - in fact, in his latest email he not only read my fake name wrongly from it, but requested a scan of my passport. This confirms my initial assessment of him as "not very bright", and I'll avoid his request for a phone call by saying that I currently have my vocal chords out to be polished or something.

Back in real life, I now have only one practical left until the end of the year, so I'm pretty much free to go down to Ayr tomorrow and celebrate yet another friend turning 21. The car defiantly unburdened itself by losing its cover last night, and with the winds that we have here it could be anywhere from St Andrews to China by now. So if by chance a silvery green/grey expanse of cheap cloth is entwined around your aerial at the moment, I'd appreciate it if you could disentangle and return it.

Worst Scam Ever

"URGENT ASSISTANCE NEEDED!" Once again, I had been sent a hugely important email - this time it was apparently from a lawyer who had been the personal attorney to David Jet, who worked with the Shell Petroleum Development Company in the UK. He and his entire family died in some way that I didn't read, leaving the $6 million he had in his account to no one in particular, so naturally the attorney chose the professional route of giving most of it to Random Person On The Internet.

Now, I didn't really want to mention this until I had a decently large set of emails to present, but he's already excelled himself. I haven't included the actual text of the emails because there's nothing really spectacular in there apart from the bizarre grammar mistakes.

After two seconds of research, it emerged that Shell only call themselves the "Shell Petroleum Development Company" in Nigeria. This didn't exactly come as a shock to me, but I was still surprised at just how transparent the scam was. Nevertheless I emailed him back under the name of Leonard Bucket (no far-flung cult stories this time) and waited to see if he'd respond again.

And respond he did. In fact, he was even so good as to provide a scan of his passport as proof of his identity.


I can just about let past his thinking that MS Painted text looked remotely convincing if the JPG was compressed enough. You might even be able to forgive him for pasting it so badly on to the machine-readable part at the bottom. But to go on a random image search and come up with a photo of an inanely grinning Des O'Connor, then proudly affix it to your false passport... it takes true genius.

End of the Presentations

All things considered, the presentation didn't really go that badly. For something that was still being cobbled together when we were at the front of the class, anyway. The group member who had attended exactly none of our meetings and hadn't replied to any emails did us a great disservice by actually turning up, meaning that we had to tack some extra slides on to the end of the file. Webmailing them didn't work, so a couple of the group members rushed through to the other lab to redo the presentation while I juggled swivelly chair wheels badly at the front to provide a distraction. Eventually it was decided to just switch awkwardly between the two files when the time came, and talk was then presented to the audience of the course organiser, half of Senior Honours and a box of Bran Flakes. Some of them may have even found it mildly entertaining. And "Fury of the Furries" was mentioned, a game of which I thought only I had heard.

So finally, that's all the presentations for this semester done. The other class where presentations are given, Architecture, is beginning to become a bit of a joke - "Afternoon. Who's ready to talk? No one? Oh well, see you tomorrow."

Whitney has another temporary job! Whitney has a job! Hat, underscore, hat.

Groupwork

"Welcome to the Multimedia Lab! Good luck... you'll need it"
Someone has written that on the board in the new Multimedia Lab next door. I feel rather bad for the Computer Science department, because every time they buy something new it seems to be rubbish. There's certainly a lot of stuff in there, but most of the problem lies in Adobe Premiere, of which one of the fatal flaws is that it seems to export videos that are very different from what you see when you're working in the program. We spent four hours in there yesterday trying to capture scenes from the Muppet Christmas Carol to turn it into a horror-type stream of conciousness garble, and it starts off well but you can see where our interest wanes in the middle.

In another example of why I dislike groupwork so much, more immediately terrifying is the presentation for PSAC. We're due to give it in 58 minutes and most of the slides are still being written - so no time to rehearse, we'll just go next door and present it all on the fly, trying to make it vaguely coherent while we make it up as we go along.

Then a design for a new Instruction Set Architecture is due in on the 12th, and a rewrite of Microsoft Powerpoint for the 16th. A bit of good luck might come in useful.

Solitaire and Songs

After a period of very little progress whatsoever, I'm relieved that today's work on the unstupidification of the "Solitaire Specification, Simulation and Solution System" (as I have decided to call it) resulted in making it significantly less dense. At the beginning of today it could just about solve 40-card games of Freecell, but now it can do them with very little difficulty at all - the usual number of moves it takes is from 70 to just over a hundred, compared to eight hundred earlier on. On adding a small line specifically for Freecell, which I'd rather not have to do but will work for now, I also finally witnessed it solving a full-size 52-card game. I think that deserves at least a pat on the head and a biscuit or two.

Now, one of the many disadvantages of the Modplug Central site currently being in thousands of pieces somewhere in the Pacific Ocean is that I've recently found it difficult to find the motivation to write anything new. However, yesterday I finally finished my latest set of songs (or "album", if you like, although I've always found that term vastly pretentious for the level of writing that I'm at). I'm yet to write up any commentary on them for the site, but take a look if you're remotely interested.