I'm in your manual, correcting your grammar.

I've got a new task at work now, as we're all testing the system for its release next month. It's basically the same as what I was doing at the RGU a couple of summers ago (when I was actually doing any work, that is) - it basically amounts to creating work for other people. It involves finding any bugs or inaccuracies in the system possible, working out the steps used to break it and adding a summary to JIRA, the bug tracking system (which I'm still absolutely in love with, by the way - it certainly beats using a shared Excel spreadsheet). But eventually I'll actually be let into the system so I can fix things myself, so it all comes around again.

At the moment I'm going through the documentation and reporting on any typos or grammatical mistakes that I find, which as you can imagine is pretty much the perfect occupation for me. I was finding a lot of them when I did the first half of the user guide yesterday (the current record holder being page 14 with no fewer than eight errors on it, including a creative version of the word "privileges" and getting its own title wrong), but it's been quite a lot quieter today so far, the original writer possibly having given up typing with his feet.

The only trouble is that I'm often not sure if something is an Americanism or just plain wrong, but so far I have resisted the temptation to translate the entire manual into British. I have also somehow become the office postman, as my desk is the one nearest the door and whenever packages arrive from the courier service the delivery man just goes for the first person he sees rather than the one matching the name on the box.

Independent Gaming

The Independent Gaming Blog has published its top ten freeware platformers of last year. The entry at #10 is somewhat interesting.

Stroke

Well, my dad's had a stroke. Just a small one, and it almost wasn't noticed at all - apparently he just woke up in the morning and wondered why one side of his face felt different, and didn't even think of mentioning it to the health centre until the next day.

He's been in the hospital over the last couple of days, and has been getting annoyed with people who ask him if he needs help up stairs. The worst bit was when he was taken to have a CT scan and they arrived with a wheelchair to deliver him to it, so he jumped out of bed himself and dashed down the corridor just to show he could.

He has been let out of hospital for the weekend, but still has his armband on, so he's just worried about people thinking that he's an escaped mental patient. He's been prescribed aspirin to keep his blood thin and has had a couple of tests that have been inconclusive, so he's going back to hospital tomorrow.

It's all a bit worrying, but when I phoned home this morning he was still managing to play Civilization on his laptop, and if he can do that on the superhuman difficulty level he usually plays on I don't think he'll have many problems.

Clickteam Chatroom

I think it's fair to say that this is the scariest thing to have ever happened in the Clickteam chatroom.

theyre about 30 arnt they?
$60 here, I think.
i dunno why you yanks complain about prices lol
* DavidN is not a yank
* DavidN has never been a yank
* DavidN never will be a yank

I actually forgot to mention that I'd put up yet another quotelog for it a while ago. It's a great laugh in there, let me tell you. (It says there are six waiting to be added, but in reality there are six languishing in the submit queue because they're too rubbish to add and I haven't written a mechanism for those yet short of hitting the Delete button.)

Log

I've just encountered this. I've never seen an Internet advert that was actually done well before.

Another medicinal post

My brother told me I should have "more album reviews and less blood testing" on my journal. This isn't one of them.

Don's over with us in Boston now, visiting America for a couple of weeks to escape university. Not an earth-shattering thing to put on a livejournal in itself, but he deserves to be commended for the consignment of British food that he brought with him. You've no idea how fantastic it is to now have in the cupboard two boxes of Crunchy Nut, several packets of biscuits and a jar of strawberry jam, Fisher and Donaldson's type (the best bakery in the world, as long as "the world" is "Fife").

Whitney's had trouble with her ear recently - it started on Boxing Day in the middle of the night, and after visiting the most disturbingly happy doctor ever she was just prescribed an unhealthy amount of painkillers and some numbing fluid. It got worse, though, and we visited the university health centre this weekend - the doctor was kind enough to let me see the magnified view of Whitney's inner ear, which at the moment resembles what you'd expect the tunnel to Hell to look like.

So now it's my job to periodically take a syringe and blow a numbing agent into Whitney's left ear so the pain isn't too bad until she can get it looked at by a specialist. The doctor says it's nothing deadly or serious, but the sooner we get that white mountain range out of her head, the better.

Dr.

Dear Mr. Newton,

Your blood test results have come back. Thyroid function is normal.

Pls continue your current thyroid medication.

I have just about come to terms with the fact that my thyroid gland decided it was fed up with life about halfway through fourth year of university, and the way that I now have to pay $10 a month for double-arrow-shaped enthusiasm pills that prevent me from turning into a dormouse, but it's a completely different feature of this letter that stood out to me. You'll know what it is. I would not for a moment have expected my new doctor (who is about 40, the most Russian woman in the world and wouldn't look out of place in one of the early Bond films) to have used "Pls".

Frankly, it's frightening how the Internet-speak that started almost legitimately with Morse telegraphers, then was eventually brought into the mainstream by AOL opening the Internet to a tidal wave of idiots worldwide, is now invading everything. My exposure to it has thankfully been limited since leaving the Academy and the majority of the GameFAQs forums, but students are now allowed to use textspeak in exams in New Zealand, and (this is actually hilarious, I came across it when looking for the last link) it's obviously a threat to society as we know it. I know there are many forms of abbreviated language and I'm lumping them all in together here, but I don't think any of them have any place on that letter.

"Pls continue the medication you have ATM. AFAIK your thyroid is underactive, but TBH it's better than having SARS. ROFLMAO!"

Your head a splode

If you want to file electronically for state, federal, neither or both tax returns, check these boxes and click "Continue". If you paid state and local income taxes in 2006 for a prior year (such as taxes paid in 2006 as a balance due on your 2005 state income tax return), include this amount as other state and local income taxes paid. If this total is over $1,500, you cannot use Form 1040EZ. Do not include the state or local taxes withheld on your W-2(s), W-2G(s), and 1099(s). There are no qualifying dependents on the return and the ages of the taxpayer and spouse (if applicable) do not qualify for the EIC. If line 11 is larger than line 10, subtract line 10 from line 11. If it isn't, add lines 7, 8 and 9 and multiply them by your undeclared federal tax deductions from last year. If you are the head of household and have other dependents (not including those that are filing separately or previously mentioned on this form), multiply the number by $1,000 and include it on Form 1-NR/PY. Do not complete this step if you have two or more incomes and more than one checking account, or you live next to a river and your bank manager is called Steve. Print and sign this form, but do not send it to the IRS or you may be subject to a penalty of up to $0. If you want to reduce this penalty, click here to review the information regarding the withholdings from your income for the current year. If you would like to pay tax at the increased rate of 5.83%, check this box. Print a copy of your federal tax return. Print a copy of your state tax return. Review these documents and click here. Print a copy of the e-file instructions. Got any ink left? Print a copy of the final e-file instructions. Enter your PIN here and the amount for your previous year tax return over there, and we'll check one or the other and decide if they match. You will receive one or both status updates within 24 or 72 hours. That'll be $12.75, please.

I'm more than happy to pay $12.75 to an online tax helper, because I cannot think how any human in the world could work out the meaning of those forms without aid from Stephen Hawking. Electronically, you're just asked a lot of incomprehensible questions one at a time and happily click past them until it tells you that there's a huge problem. It's even worse than trying to do a Logic and Arithmetic course written backwards in Japanese.

The Trauma of Farthing Wood

Two cute 'n' fluffy cartoon creatures, about three minutes before being horribly killed.

Whitney and I have recently been talking about children's TV we used to watch, and one of them that stuck in my memory was the animated version of "The Animals of Farthing Wood", which was shown by the BBC in the early nineties. I have mentioned it before as one of the most traumatic programmes to have ever existed. Despite looking innocent, it dealt with some unusual issues for a children's programme, including at least one unplanned pregnancy and a situation dangerously like miniature gang wars in the later series. But there was one recurring theme that sticks out about all the others. There are children's programmes that occasionally kill off their people, but nothing can possibly come close to this for the sheer number of central characters that Colin Dann had no trouble with shooting, mauling to death or flattening under lorries.

The mention of the programme a couple of nights ago was enough to inspire me to look it up on the Internet, and I found that like most programmes with a reasonably large fanbase, it is blessed with a fan-written set of Wikipedia pages considerably more extensive than the information on less important things such as the telephone, Mozart or Western culture. It's a sign of the tone of the series that most of the entries on the character list have a note detailing how they died, and that each individual page has a separate section entitled "Demise" where you can relive the moments where the author repeatedly scarred thousands of children for life.

The example that I remembered the most personally was the death of the pheasants. They are killed off in two consecutive episodes, the second one just after returning to the farm where the first died and (using a direct quote from the Wikipedia page to point out that I'm not oversensationalizing this) "seeing his wife's now cooked body cooling down at the farmer's window".

But the most infamous of the scenes is the hedgehogs' failed attempt to cross a three-lane motorway. Strangely enough I don't remember most of the programme having much of an effect on me, but that section gave me nightmares for days. Apparently, the scene was intended to explain the realities of the effect that human life has on the natural world. That's right - it not only killed off two of the characters that you had got to know and love over the series, but then blamed you for it as well. And no one explained to Colin Dann that horribly upsetting things like this don't happen on CBBC. They'd never get away with it now. Even looking at this last night, I found it vastly distressing to find out from the extensive death list that many of the characters that I had been relieved as a ten-year-old to see survive the initial series were mercilessly eliminated in the later episodes after I'd stopped watching it.

As a side note, I've noticed as a result of writing this that Wikipedia provides a handy list of fictional hedgehogs should you ever need one to hand. The Internet contains all the information you could ever want and some you don't. Interestingly, there is no list of characters who survived the Farthing Wood series. I have a feeling that it would be rather short.

Mouse mat

Why do I almost invariably get adverts for IMVU on the side of Livejournal? It means that whenever I'm at work I have to look over my shoulder before having a glance at anyone with a Plus account. It advertises itself as just a "3D instant messaging service", certainly, but just from looking at the front page it clearly has a more... specialist purpose. (Edited to add: Actually, just ignore that - on looking at it further it appears that the homepage changes itself according to your LJ interests. That's quite clever and intrusive at the same time.)

There's something else I've been meaning to mention - my computer desk has now been completed with the addition of a Clickteam mousemat. I'm impossibly proud of it because to the best of my knowledge (and Google's) you can't actually buy them anywhere - I've been doing a bit of work writing tutorials for Clickteam recently and the mousemat was sent as a surprise along with my payment.

I'm beginning to realize the madness of my life at the moment - I go into work and write code, then come home and write more code in my spare time. I'm a little worried that if it becomes my whole life then I'll immediately lose interest in it. But still, when I was younger my parents used to say that I was just wasting my time by spending so much of it on the computer, so who's laughing now?

Memes are rubbish

After leaving a comment that stated "memes are rubbish" on my sister's LJ, I suppose I should have anticipated that I'd feel compelled to put one up on my own journal the very next day. I feel obliged to do this because of having an "awesome taste in power metal" mentioned by , who was on the ZZT forums a couple of years after my own era. It seems that after that, we have led something of a parallel existence without ever actually meeting each other, having had accounts at many of the same sites - it really is quite frightening sometimes.

I'm mostly into the two albums that I got recently, so these are more long-time favourites.

List seven songs you are into right now, no matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your livejournal along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they're listening to.

1. Heavenly - The Dark Memories

This is the opener on "Virus", the album that I mentioned a few entries ago by the only Japanese band from France: Heavenly. Until I saw the songs mentioned in the reply that tagged me, I didn't think anyone else would have actually heard of them. But after their mediocre start a few years ago, they suddenly came back out of nowhere and released two of the best albums ever, with just about enough energy to blast you backwards across the room with the speakers at any reasonable volume.

2. Angra - Spread Your Fire

I was sent the MP3s for "Temple of Shadows" by my brother recently, and hadn't got around to listening to any of them until this weekend. It's true that it's semi-pretentious Christian-type metal, but the best feature of this song is that it uses a full choir (or at least a very convincing illusion of one) behind the chorus instead of the usual harmony parts, creating a much bigger sound than usual.

3. Helloween - The Invisible Man

I know they're called Helloween, and I know they're now largely viewed as a parody of themselves, but this song is fantastic. I even went to the trouble of uploading the chorus a while ago to demonstrate the fact. "My memories are there to save your world - For you I'm just the Invisible Man." I think it's meant to be on the same lines as Henjo Richter's "Guardians of Mankind" idea rather than about H.G. Wells' Invisible Man himself. Sadly this and "The King for a 1000 Years" [sic] are far better than any other song on their latest album, but you can't have everything.

4. Blind Guardian - Another Stranger Me

I was never too into Blind Guardian, disliking Hansi Kürsch's scratchy voice just enough to put me off them, but I'm beginning to get into them now. This is the cryptically-titled opening song from their newest album. I'm positive that Hansi looks dangerously like Jack Black in the video for it, but no one else sees it.

5. Sonata Arctica - The Boy Who Wanted to be a Real Puppet

I think that this is one of the best songs on Reckoning Night, despite the deceptively mockable title. Even Whitney likes it, and that's saying something. It's an inoffensive mix of piano and guitars that I don't think anyone could fail to appreciate.

6. Iron Savior - Watcher in the Sky

Iron Savior is a band you either think is genius or impossibly silly, what with their continuing sci-fi storyline about the real fate of Atlantis and the self-aware orbital battle station that they originally created to defend themselves (making the whole thing literally a space opera, I suppose). This is one of their earliest songs, and even though they're improving vastly as a stand-alone band, with this song being a joint work between Piet Sielck and Kai Hansen, I don't think they've ever really equalled it.

7. Helloween - Dr Stein

Whitney always complains to me about this song being stupid. I know it's stupid. You just have to watch the video for it to demonstrate that (complete with Spinal Tap-style playing the guitar with a coathanger). It is also one of the most unashamedly fun songs that I have ever heard, and was assured a permanent place even on my squashed MP3 player. P.S. : SY-ringe.

I did find it rather difficult to stop at 7, as there are several worthy bands that I haven't mentioned yet. Kamelot Dream Theater Stratovarius Gamma Ray Silent Force. There you go.

Where is Boxing Day?

I'm boiling. Somebody has stolen winter. Today, the temperature reached 70 degrees Fahrenheit (by now I've forgotten how to measure temperature in Celsius), and we went out for ice cream, walking down the main road among everyone else wearing shorts and sunglasses.

This comes after I was told that the Boston winter was going to be harsher than anything I'd ever seen even in Scotland. I'm actually quite glad of the lack of snow for getting to work, because on the one morning we did have a light snowfall last month, the trains seemed to have great difficulty coping despite most of them being underground. But after experiencing years of the vague grey slush that piled up at the sides of the road in Scotland, seeing some real snow again would be nice.

Award for Outstanding Achievement

Here is proof that I have finally completed Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion. It only took me thirteen years. It was actually one of the first games I found genuinely frightening (although Whitney thinks I'm scared of just about everything) - it has just the right feel of being constantly underpowered against the next thing that's going to leap out at you from around the corner or materialize out of the wall, wondering if you can afford to keep moving or stop to reload the shotgun that never seems to have enough in it. The detailed (for the time) death animations don't exactly help either. In some ways it predated Resident Evil as the first survival horror game.

But a realization came to me as I was killed by a werewolf for the eight hundredth time on Level 7 - as gamesplayers go, we're all too soft these days. Look at the evolution of the Final Fantasy series in particular - from it being challenging in the early days, to softening up considerably (although largely by accident) in FF8, to the level of restoring all your health points whenever you touch a save point in the latest two games. We've also been spoiled by the increasing ability to snapshot-save, encouraging repeating sections over and over again to get them perfect by luck or coincidence rather than spend the time to actually become good at the game. Of course, disallowing instant saving and loading means that you have to get the balance exactly right, and have the game absolutely free of places where the player can die through something that wasn't their own fault, or it's just frustrating. Look at Prince of Persia - in my view, a game should just frustrate you up to the level of writing out a hit list of the developers' names and addresses (but - and this is important - frustrate you in the right way), then reward you for the effort. That's what made them addictive in the age of the shareware war - the sense of achievement at beating them. I'll stop all this now because I'm starting to sound old.

Strangely, the next two games in the series are dramatically different compared to this one. (This is uncomfortably placed as the second of the series although it's the first of the "new" series of games - the very first one was a simple puzzle platformer written years before.) The third game is a lot more bright, cheerful and arcadey somehow, even though it's bloodier - it's just so over the top that it becomes silly again. It did improve a bit on the weapon system, though - rather than having a limited capacity of eight bullets at a time that you could reload by standing still, your capacity was reduced to six and you had a total ammo stock to keep track of as well. The fourth one is just dreadful, having entirely got rid of the weapon system that made the game tense in the first place, and it's also held back by frustrating scrolling problems.

What's even worse is that in the first two games, your weapon had an instant hitscan - when you fired, your bullet reached its target at the same moment. The third game kept this but removed the handy compensation that you were allowed for diagonal shots, allowing you to aim at more than just three angles. But in the fourth, the whole system is replaced with a projectile one - a badly-drawn bullet (that doesn't even rotate according to which direction you fire it!) zooms out from you when you fire, and collides shakily with the background or whatever you're pointing at. Frankly it looks like something a beginner made in a few minutes with an MMF tutorial.

I did wonder why this had all happened, and looked at the credits for Softdisk Publishing for the third and fourth games. Greg Malone, Nolan Martin, Carol Ludden... they're not exactly the most recognizable of names in the software world, but there aren't any Uwe Bolls of the game industry in there either. Then I found the credits for Haunted Mansion.

John Carmack	Programming
John Romero	Programming
Tom Hall	Creative Director
Adrian Carmack	Art Director

Suddenly, everything becomes clear.

It's also worth mentioning that thanks to the above team (who would later go on to found id Software after they realized they were much better than the rest of Softdisk Publishing), the very first side-scrolling platformer on the PC was named "Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement". To test the theory of getting the screen to scroll, which in those days involved pointers to the start of the EGA buffer and other frightening things like that, one of the developers had taken the old Dangerous Dave sprite and stuck him into a mock-up of the first level of Mario Brothers 3. Apparently they nearly got Nintendo interested in the idea, but they didn't want to enter the PC market at that time. It's all true, you know.

Advice to the rest of the world

Taking an overnight flight across the USA under the influence of a sleeping pill, then going by bus straight into work after landing, is not a good idea. I'm quite glad I didn't write much code today, because I have a feeling that what I did put down (in the rare moments when I could find the keyboard and stab at it shakily) was pretty demented.

iTunes and I have got off to a pretty rocky start, in that I dedicated a great deal of time trying to find applications that replicated its behaviour so that I didn't have to install it, but the general opinion seems to be that no one could keep up with the changing video iPod firmware, so I've had to put it on my home computer. If Microsoft had written anything like this then people would have lynched them - it "organizes" your music to its own convenience and it's very unclear what it's doing underneath. It also had the bright idea of trying to update via USB, convert all my WMAs to M4As and analyze gapless track information all at the same time, taking over my computer for a considerable length of time when I started it up.

Still, look on the bright side - at least it's not Realplayer.