Amazon Anomalies

Well, the comment-generating title in the last entry almost worked - I got comments all right, but most of them were letting me know (quite fairly) that they objected to the title, rather than having read through the entry defiantly as was my hope. Therefore I will compensate with something mildly interesting.

A few of the computer science students went to a presentation on Amazon a couple of days ago. Most of it was about how they ran their database spread across a huge number of servers, but there was a brief section on some of the more unlikely things that Amazon sells. A quick search around shows a surprising amount of stuff that you'd never come across while browsing the site normally:

• A Qwert Shmarble (No one really knows what this is)
  
• Similarly, a Qwert Stiker Flaggle
  
• A $5.5 million box of chocolates
  
• A large number of other items from the imaginary company EBSQA, including a Pen on a Rope and some asdfasdfg pipecleaners (or, if you prefer, fjdksfj pipecleaners, which are apparently not as cute or cuddly but more fuzzy).

All those are just imaginary items that were left in from Amazon's testing stage, but we were pointed to a number of genuinely strange things as well...

• A huge amount of loaves of cheese, with the current record holder being a three-stone block of mild cheddar
  
• Ice Cream by Mail (I'm still at a loss to imagine how this would work)
  
• A 30-horsepower NorTrac bulldozer
  
• Quite a large selection of vehicles, actually, including...
  
• A JL421-class Landcruiser, if the traffic in St Andrews gets too much for you.

Thanks to that search, my "Recommended Items" box is now pretty surreal, but at least the family's Christmas is pretty much sorted out.

[Edited because I typed this just after getting up and somehow managed to misspell "qwert" twice.]

Games (Girls can probably skip this post)

Thanks, everyone, for your cards, e-cards, reminders that I'm now an old man, and so on for my birthday - especially to and for being absolutely heroic and getting me Red Dwarf VII and Civilization IV, respectively. Civ IV doesn't exactly run on my computer because it's getting on a bit now, but upgrading is what birthday money's for. At the moment I can only see how impressive it looks - very typical of Microprose in the early days, with a polished look and a top quality manual that's so heavy that you have to get someone else to hold it up while you turn the pages.

For the last three years I haven't really played games at all, with a couple of exceptions, but it's only now that I'm getting back into them. At the start of the year I played UT online a lot on the Truff suite of servers after being starved of it on ResNet, and was quickly kicked off the Beginner and Intermediate servers for being too good. After being dumped into the main servers instead, I'm struggling to keep up with the experts.

I installed Diablo 2 a while ago as well. During my last year of school, a lot of my time was spent at home playing that (largely because I only had nine hours of class a week and my first one was last period on a Tuesday) but when I got to the Arcane Sanctuary it was time to pack up and go to St Andrews, so I never finished it.

While playing Diablo 2 there's a continual argument going on in my head, because even after getting back to where I left off I can't decide if it's any good or not. "Stop playing this," one side of my brain will say. "It basically amounts to repeatedly clicking on people."

"But it's clicking on people, avoiding being clicked on and then clicking on stuff to sell later," the other side will argue.

"Stop it - otherwise you'll do something really stupid like post this conversation on your Livejournal," the first side will finish, and go and sulk. The other side will take over, as it knows that there are only 9,234 experience points to go until the next Level Up, and that means my character will be able to learn a new set of spells, and also let me use that enchanted hammer that I picked up a while ago... and the cycle goes on from there. With the arrival of Civ IV just as I've got to the Arcane Sanctuary again, though, all my time will be sucked black hole-like into its shiny interior and I'm doomed never to be able to complete the game.

I also picked up Carmageddon: TDR 2000 at a car boot sale the other week. I had heard that it wasn't as good as the others in the series, but I felt I didn't have much to lose for 50p. I can see why a lot of people were disappointed in it, actually - the whole dynamic of the game has changed, and the emphasis is far more on actually racing now rather than wandering off on your own to explore. You only get two more seconds for running over a zombie even on Easy, and unlike the original two games where you'd regularly get about three minutes added to your timer for ramming an opponent, now it's incredibly pleasing to see even a nineteen-second bonus appear on the screen.

All this means that you've got to zoom through a level on the predetermined track, while shunting people around when the opportunity presents itself - what happened in the previous games was that you'd end up with about four hours on your timer and be free to do pretty much what you wanted, but the timer is capped at about five minutes now. This makes the game a lot faster (indeed, some of them could go on for hours in the other two games), and it could be argued that it stops the levels from all becoming the same, as you have to race on a track rather than explore the same areas repeatedly. It does take some getting used to, though.

The only real problem I have with the game is that I'd like it if it was easier to run over zombies. In the first game you got points for them if one so much as touched your vehicle, in the second game it got a bit more realistic, but now you can hit them at about eighty miles an hour and the most they'll do is moan a bit and then get up again.

Have I finished? Yes, probably, I've got to drive to Architecture now.

What?!

Wednesday, 16th Nov. 15:52:52
Subject: Christmas Party 2006

Hi,

This year's School Christmas Party will be on Thursday 15th December. The basic idea is the same as for the last two years: you give Scott Walker, Stuart Norcross or me £10, and we source food and drink for the evening. Location is the Jack Cole Building, start time around 6.30 - 7.00. We need the money by close of business on Tuesday 13th at the latest.

This year we'd like to have a kids party as well, starting at about 5.30, ending around 7.00, with jelly & ice cream, a visit from Santa, and a small gift. We think £5 per child should cover it. Again, talk to Scott, Stuart and/or me for further details (not that we've put much thought into this, yet).

We have an exciting entertainment package lined up this year: Ishbel will give a karate display, with background music supplied by Bernie on the bassoon. Andy will give a dog-handling demonstration, accompanied by Norman on drums. I will be juggling five flaming clubs whilst Ian Gent cycles to Kirkcaldy and back. The SH band - David Newton vocals, Rob Howell as DJ, Eleonora on guitar - will be performing songs written by Graham Hamilton. No-one in JH has any interesting talents, as far as I'm aware.

Following a risk assessment exercise, we have, with regret, been forced to suspend both the fish-tank surfing and the "asking Ron for a raise" competitions. You are still allowed to ask the fish-tank for a raise, though.

If you have any questions or suggestions, contact Stuart, Scott or me.

Tom Kelsey
School of Computer Science

Twenty-one

I have somehow managed to become 21 without thinking about it. It's supposed to be a very significant date, but I don't feel any different. At the moment I can't even remember what possibilities have now been opened to me, apart from being able to buy alcohol in America if I ever have any reason to. I suppose that as I've fulfilled the additional requirement of having a licence for over three years, I'm now allowed to teach people to drive.

What I'm not allowed to do is skip the fast approaching PSAC lecture and then write a report on it for Friday. I could actually have done this a lot sooner, but I thought the presentation we were given last month was a dreadful one on which to write anything, so I took the risk of leaving it until this week. The option of catching up is practically non-existent anyway, as when I checked my notes for the first, I found that they started as follows:

"PSAC Thingummy 1 - Something

Write two pages of gibberish (Formative).

This is a report."

I don't actually remember writing any of that, which probably indicates how much attention I paid to the presentation. I'd better go and get some better notes for the second one now.

(Also, I've only just realised how badly written the previous entry was. I think all the essays and reports are taking it out of me, and I'm gradually forgetting how to write, even though Whitney told me last night that I write "very well, for a scientist." Charming.)

Murdering Songs and Policemen

Before last night, I had no idea that had quite such a large following at karaoke. I knew about the Facebook group, but still wasn't prepared for the enthusiastic crowd that gathered in the Union, or the version of "Pretty Fly for a White Guy" personalised in his honour. It seems that he's become the new Benedict, which is possibly the greatest achievement that either of us will achieve at university.

I decided to have a go myself, but wasn't confident enough to attempt a song myself as I was unfamiliar with pretty much everything on the list. Eventually I found The Final Countdown, which was just about the only song to which I vaguely knew the tune, even though Whitney is of the opinion that it's dreadful. I managed to come up with a performance to match this opinion.

I know that being "good at" karaoke relies very little on actually being able to sing, but I like to think that I have at least some ability for it, and every time I perform karaoke I manage to provide a huge amount of evidence to the contrary. There always seems to be very little relation between what I think I'm singing and the horrendous noise blaring out of the speakers. It might have helped if I'd heard the song in under a year, but I sat down afterwards thinking that I'd somewhat dented Jamie's reputation.

The next morning, the three of us drove back up to Inverurie once again. On the way we were subjected to a surprise roadside safety check. Actually, the officer who waved us in to the layby seemed to be taking the "surprise" element all too literally, as his method of getting our attention was to leap out of the road in front of me and wave his arms wildly. I braked as safely as could be expected in the generous second-long reaction time he'd given me, but he still had to leap out of the way as I sailed past. It's just as well, because I imagine that having bits of him sprawled out on my bonnet as the check was carried out might have reduced my chances of passing somewhat.

After driving slowly in a daze and wondering what to do, I reversed into the layby from the other end. He didn't seem all that bothered by his brush with death, and sent another officer to my car to perform an extensive set of checks on functions of my car, some of which I didn't even know existed. At the end he concluded the car was fine apart from the horn and one of the lights at the back. "I should give you a 21-day ticket," he said, "but I'm not going to bother." Stellar police work. I drove out again, the only after-effect being that I was still slightly shaken by the encounter with the suicidal police officer.

A True Livejournal Entry

I like to think of most of the journals on my Friends list as examples of how journals should be - beacons of coherency in the swamp of directionless anger that spews forth from the keyboards of most of the site's users. As part of this effort I try to keep my journal as something relatively amusing and uplifting to read. All this is about to change, however, as this entry is going to be a true LJ entry - full of venom, bile, raisins, and other nasty things.

I blame the dentist. If she hadn't moved my appointment from Friday to today, I would be happily in Cupar doing my project plan at the moment. ("Happy" may be an exaggeration considering the "project plan" bit, but I'd still feel a lot better.) But with an appointment today, I'm having to make two trips up and down the road during Reading Week.

I was going to take the car, as seems logical, but before I left my mother managed to convince me to get over my hatred and use a series of buses to get me up the road. Her reasoning was that not only was it marginally cheaper, but she has a huge paranoia of me driving anywhere, especially places that involve roadworks, double roundabouts or other vehicles. The fact that I've been driving for over three years now and that in a week I'll have fulfilled the requirements for teaching people to drive seems to be a non-issue here.

So despite the Megabuses invariably being late, slow and garish, I booked two journeys on them, making sure that I had chosen suitable times to link up with the appalling service from Cupar in both directions. I'd have to wait an hour in each direction, but I thought I could keep myself busy for that length of time.

On Monday morning, just before leaving for the bus, I picked up the timetable and noticed that the buses didn't run on local holidays. It was a local holiday, as it happened. In retrospect it might have been a good idea to drive to St Andrews, leave the car there and take a different service, but that didn't occur to me at the time, and it was getting late anyway. I frantically turned to one of the Internet's greatest achievements, Google Maps, and found a number of long-stay car parks in Dundee.

After a brief drive, I arrived over the Bridge of Death and trundled round looking for a parking space. "Long stay" in Dundee apparently means "under ten hours". The one car park in the area that I'd looked at that genuinely offered long-stay parking cost £20 per 24-hour period. I decided to give that a miss, and with time until my bus was due to leave rapidly running out, I pointed the car in the direction of the big car park in front of the sports stores.

On arrival, I saw that it had two car parks - one that only allowed up to ten hours, and another that allowed 24 hours for £5. This was the best I could do - if I didn't park, I would miss my bus. As there was a £60 fine for exceeding my alloted time, I quickly formulated a plan... I would have to get Whitney to come in to Dundee tomorrow lunchtime and stick another ticket on the car. I felt awful thinking of asking her to do that, but by this time was the only option left.

So I parked, found I didn't have change, and ran into JJB with fifteen minutes to go. After wandering around for ages I eventually found the cash desk. Its operator was happy to give me change even though he seemed suspicious that I was needing as much as £5 for it, and I dashed out of the building again and bought a ticket.

"£5: Until 23:59, 7th Nov", the ticket that came out declared. Apparently, 24 hours means "until midnight". I sat in the car looking at the ticket, considering any further options, and it was at this point that I gave up.

There was nowhere to park, and even if there was, I was about to miss the bus I'd paid for. I phoned to rearrange things about picking me up, asked Megabus if I could cancel my return ticket, found I couldn't, then departed for the journey up to Aberdeen that I had wanted to take in the first place. £10 worth of petrol, plus £12 Attempting-to-take-the-bus Tax - two unused journeys and a useless parking voucher.

The trip took all of two hours, and the car in front of me for most of the time had the word "WOE" as the end of its number plate. I felt it quite appropriate in the circumstances.

When I arrived at home, my mother suggested that I take my return journey down again, then instead of using the car on Friday, the three of us could all take the bus up. I quickly dismissed this plan as "insane", as not only would it be more expensive than taking the car again, but it would involve buses - something for which my hate augments every time that I have to use them. Like Harlan Ellison wrote, "If the word 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundred of thousands of miles, it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for buses at this micro-instant". (NB. Quote may have been modified slightly.)

And this entire journey was for this purpose - to go into the dentist's practice, have her unscrew all my teeth and put them back in opposite directions, and be charged a further £20. And I've just found out that the curry I was going to have for lunch has sultanas in it. I think it's obvious to conclude by saying that I've had better days.

Welcome to the Machine

Good heavens, LJ's updated its interface a bit since this morning. In fact it's probably the most major overhaul that I've seen since starting this about two and a half years ago. It looks like it'll be useful, but it does have the Facebook-like disadvantage that there's a constant reminder of people's birthdays over on the right, meaning that I have even less of an excuse for forgetting them.

But dolphins are what I really want to talk about. I've mentioned before that I have a lot of unusual phobias, but there is one that I recently found out is shared by many people. I am scared of Ecco the Dolphin.

I'm not quite sure what it is that makes that old Megadrive game quite so unsettling, but I can fairly confidently guess that the haunting music plays a large part in it. It's also the whole weird presentation and storyline of the game. At the beginning you're swimming happily with the other dolphins, you mess about for a bit getting used to the controls, eventually you decide to see if you can jump out of the water - and suddenly the others are sucked away by a huge storm and you're dumped back down, with water water everywhere, alone on a wide wide sea, without even an albatross in sight.

Yesterday I decided to confront my fears and start the game up again. The screen that you're presented with at first gives you the choice of entering a password or starting anew, neglecting to mention which direction is which. I tried left and found that I'd accidentally gone to the password screen, so to get out of it I put in a row of letter Ns, thinking (as would be logical) that when I pressed Start it would reject the password and bring me back to the choice screen.

I'm more scared than ever now.

Multimedia

Of all the classes that I have this year, the Multimedia course is a rare case because it's one that I actually look forward to going to. Yesterday we were having a lecture on colour followed by two presentations on DVRs and virtual reality, but this soon descended into a lengthy discussion about the French and building our own Matrix. In addition to that, the questions that we're handed out are absolutely surreal. Normally you'd expect to be given tutorial sheets involving calculations about Amdahl's Law or some other immemorable formula, or perhaps discussing advantages and disadvantages of something or other in the modern computing blah.

9. If you gave a child a paintbox containing red, green and blue paints only, will they be able to mix an adequate range of colours to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?

10. Superman's uniform is blue, with a yellow S on the chest and a red cape. How would you make an image of superman flying without recourse to his superpowers?

I think I'll just stick to writing about path trees and benchmarking for now.

General Message

"A" and "lot" are two separate words.

Halloween

In preparation for this year's annual festival of knife-wielding children wandering the streets, Whitney did a fantastic job decorating the windows of the house with paper spiders and pumpkins. We had also prepared a genuine pumpkin earlier in the week, but unfortunately by the time this evening came round it had collapsed in on itself in a pile of mulch and didn't look tremendously frightening - on reflection, above the radiator wasn't the best place for it.

The only time I've ever actually seen someone guysing was when I was at a Halloween party at Graeme's, dressed as Eddie from Bottom. An eight year old rang the bell shortly after I arrived - the boy hadn't even got dressed up at all, so it was a disappointing effort all round. The door was answered by Rob, who is about seven feet tall and happened to be adorned with a hockey mask, tarpaulin and chainsaw, so I'm sure he paid for his chocolate with at least mild mental scars.

Whitney and I didn't know how popular the practice of going round to people's houses and demanding sweets from them was here, so to placate the hordes that may have been arriving on our doorstep we bought a huge bowlful of chocolates. It's now twenty-two past midnight, so it doesn't look like we'll be giving them out at all. On the positive side, though, that means that we now have a huge bowlful of chocolates.

Civilization

I feel that I've been rather neglecting Civ recently. I happened to find the original game a few days ago, and I'd forgotten what an inspired game it was. I don't think any other game can claim to span as long a time as 5000 years and still remain consistent throughout (if we ignore the occasional absurdity like villagers armed with hoes and pitchforks being able to defeat a legion of tanks.)

I was first introduced to the game when my dad got it for my tenth birthday, clearly so that he could play it himself. I hardly understood it at all at first, but after watching him playing it on his laptop when meant to be working (in fact, my manual remained at the RGU for about five years until I rediscovered it in a drawer while visiting) I eventually realised its greatness. It was also thanks to it that I was the only pupil in my school class to know what a trireme was and when the Hoover Dam was built - in 1000BC by the Greeks according to most of the games I played, seeing as I never really got off the easiest setting.

Jumping ahead a bit, Civ 3 confused me. They seemed to alter a lot of rules for no reason at all, and introduce absurdities like luxuries not being part of the tax rate but instead placed on the map. They also separated the Settlers unit into Workers and Settlers, meaning that my tactic of Build Outwards As Fast As Possible was severely hindered. Especially when moving them across a jungle, resulting in them all getting diseases and dying.

Civ 4 seems to be heading in the same direction if you ask me, with the whole thing just being overcomplicated with not only research and resources, but religion and special citizens as well. Ironically they claim that this results in a "faster, more streamlined game experience", but I don't think that this is what the game should be about - it's a game that you can turn on while half-asleep, stab an arrow key now and then, and suddenly realise that days have passed and you haven't eaten. I can't deny that it looks amazing, though.

The version of Civ that I have is "Civ 2: Test of Time", which I still believe to be the best of them as it hardly touches the classic rules but adds features such as a multiplayer mode - it's a mystery to me why no other Civ does this. The only trouble with it is that it seems to be the most bugged game ever. (Not including Fallout 2, of course - making halves of your car disappear when you reload the game will always be difficult to beat). The Notes and Cautions section of the readme is a hilarious read, and seriously, many of the comments in it wouldn't seem out of place in a computer science practical that had to be handed in in a rush. Two examples:

In the fantasy and Midgard Civilopedia, you'll notice several terrain types whose names we've prefixed with a "z". These are unused and duplicated terrains, and rather than have them mix in with the others, we've added to "z" to exile them to the end of the list. Please ignore these entries entirely.

Wouldn't preventing them from mixing in with the others be better accomplished by using the Delete key?

In the fantasy games, you might notice the Raganarok advance mysteriously appearing and disappearing from the Goblin or Stygian bodies of knowledge. Don't fret. It's being used by events as a flag and is only following instructions. The Ragnarok advance has no value whatsoever.

I'm rather at a loss to imagine why they decided to use a technology advance as a flag for other events. Even if it was absolutely necessary, it would have surely been easy enough to keep it hidden no matter whether it was there or not. In fact, given some sparesly documented source code, I'm fairly confident that I could go in and fix this myself within about four minutes.

Add this to the fact that a huge number of leftover files from the original version are present in the program folder, and it just looks a bit tatty. They even seem undecided about the name of the game - there are two very distinct logos on the box/manual and the game, and it's called "Civilization Conflicts" in some places and "Fantastic Worlds" in another.

Despite all that, though, dozy empire-building is sounding good at the moment. I may have to give up on writing this project report soon and spend a few days taking over the world again.

The results (and more waffle)

Responses to the challenge in my last entry have come flooding in, and neither of them were correct. Actually I was surprised at the lack of guesses, as when I ask something as mundane as what shape people like their sandwiches, it sparks a huge debate that keeps resurfacing in my inbox for days. Still, from these results I can conclude that not only is my password non-obvious, but people aren't really that bothered about what it is anyway - this makes for a pretty safe livejournal if you ask me.

I'm sure I was going to write about something here, but I've forgotten what it was. I've been doing my gigantic project plan on and off today (mostly off) and I've only got about three thousand words into it. With the amount of reporting and documentation that we're expected to produce, it's rather difficult to imagine when we'll have time to actually open up Emacs or some other less mad editor and get to work on the projects themselves.

Another inhibition to the completion of the project is the continual rediscovery of games that I didn't know I had on my hard drive - this afternoon Whitney was most impressed with Toejam and Earl 2 for its almost Tombi-like lunacy. It's true that there are no pigs with pitchforks in it, but not every game has adversaries like ghost cows or naked men in cardboard boxes singing "Figaro".

Speaking of Tombi, I noticed that it had a torrent at the bottom of this page if anyone doesn't think that they've had enough Japanese madness recently. Unless you're in ResNet, in which case you can't (but if you are in ResNet then I'm surprised that you can get to this page at all, to be frank). Enough of this - I'll try and gather some thoughts together and piece together something that resembles an interesting read for tomorrow.

The keys that I grant thee

Hacking isn't what it used to be. A few years ago it was something that required a degree of ingenuity, and possibly multiple monitors and a workstation in the basement. The type of hacking that we used to amuse ourselves with in school involved getting around the network's security, but that was mediocre at best, and once you'd found a way to the command prompt everything became too easy. Now, all that "hacking" means is asking someone for their IP address and getting them to turn off their firewall, or downloading programs that someone else has made to find out people's Livejournal passwords.

LJ seem to have become more aware of this recently, and have started telling me that my password is too easy to guess with every post that I make. I disagree with its obviousness, and therefore present this challenge to anyone who reads this post - to guess my password. Reply in the comments with as many attempts as you like. If you guess it correctly, I imagine I'd give you root access to my Windows box or something, but if you were that 1337 you probably wouldn't need it anyway.

To give some pointers to start off: it has nothing but letters in it, relates to one of my interests, and is a pronounceable word. (This is why it's so insecure.) People who've talked to me over IRC and seen my passwords when I typed them by accident have a bit of an advantage, but they're welcome to try anyway. Also, isn't allowed to guess because she knows it. So there.

Squared Cake Recipe

I've been inundated with requests for the recipe to the Squared Cake. Actually that's a blatant lie, I haven't received a single one, but I thought that writing it up would be a good way to keep on revelling in my bakery-inspired bigheadedness for a while. Besides, I think that having some sort of easily available recipe library (now two in total) will be useful in case I ever have to bake something in an emergency. It might yet happen.

Credit goes to Carol Vorderman off How 2 for inspiring this cake, for which I saw the theory about ten years ago but never got around to actually putting into practice until last week. That's where the idea came from - the actual procedure I just made up as we went along. It should make a reasonably large cake that should serve eight to ten people... I don't know, look at the entry below to get an idea of the size.

~ Squared Cake ~

Stuff Needed
6 eggs
Castor sugar
Self-raising flour
A conversion table, probably
Chocolate powder
Icing sugar
About two hours for the manufacture (much less if using two cake pans)
A spare night to let it solidify
The oven preheated to 190°C
An appointment at the dentist

Sponges

1. Ideally, you should have two eight or nine-inch cake pans so that you can do both the sponges at the same time, but we used just one. Grease and flour one, grease and chocolate powder the other.
   
2. For the plain layer, beat three of the eggs, 1/2 cup of castor sugar and 3/4 of a cup of self-raising flour in a bowl, then pour into the plain pan.
   
3. Do the same for the chocolate sponge, replacing about half the flour with chocolate powder.
   
4. Bake both of these for about twenty minutes - test them with a cake tester (or, if you're as ill-equipped as us, just use a knife).
   
5. Leave the cakes upside-down to cool and solidify a bit for half an hour. The reason to leave them upside down is to try and let them settle into a reasonably flat shape, as you'll be stacking them - it's up to you to decide whether this actually helps.

Squares

1. Here's the interesting bit. Using a bowl or a plate or something as a template, cut a circle into the centre of each sponge. The aim is to leave an outer circle of about the same width as the height of the sponge. It doesn't matter if it's a bit off, but be careful that you keep the knife reasonably upright and don't tear the rest of the cake too much with it. The best way to cut it cleanly is to use a small knife, stick it in the cake, then induce a muscle spasm in your hand to rapidly twitch it up and down as you cut round. Remove the template and run the knife around the trench to free it of the outer circle.
   
2. Once that circle's done, do the same again with a mug in the centre of the smaller circle that you've just cut. Try and make the layers roughly equal in width - it doesn't really matter about the size of the centre, as you can even cut out another circle if you're feeling confident.
   
3. Swap the two middle circles of the sponges round - the sponge recipe is quite sturdy, so it should hopefully be easy to do this without breaking them. You now have two complete cakes of alternating flavours.

Stacking

1. Mix up a positively obscene amount of chocolate icing. I don't know the measurements for this, so you'll have to use your imagination. Spread this icing between each circle so that they're glued together.
   
2. Cover the top of one doctored sponge in icing, then place the other on top of it. Make sure that they're aligned with each other.
   
3. Slather this entire arrangement in as much icing as possible - the icing for the outside should be fairly thick but still spreadable. Ideally, you don't want the concentric cracks in the top of the cake showing through, or the join in between the layers.
   
4. The decorations are optional, so do whatever you like. We made up a bit more icing (plain this time) and piped it around the edge of the cake using a small plastic bag. The top of the cake was done by piping parallel lines on to it, then dragging a fork lightly through them (but a skewer would be much more suitable). If you're going to do this, make sure the icing is still wet, otherwise the tracks you make will show. If you get this decoration to work, award yourself a biscuit.
   
5. Cover the cake with a bowl, turn the lights out and sing it a lullaby.
   
6. Eat the rest of the icing and stay up all night. (Largely optional.) The icing on the cake will have solidified.

Slicing

1. Because of the large amount of icing, this is a pretty sturdy cake. No matter how well you've glued it, you have to be careful when cutting the cake, or the squares will come apart. Saw into it gently, and make sure that you've separated an entire piece before trying to move it - any tugging and you'll probably only get half a slice out.
   
2. Take photographs of the cake and post about it on the Internet.
   

cake²

Whitney anbd I hoseted bineer she's kissing me i can't type aaaarhg hosted dinner last night for , and . It's testament to how much the popularity of LJ has increased when you can refer to an entire dinner party by their usernames. It's also an indicator of the usefulness of the Internet when most of the recipes used in the meal were found as a result of searching on Google.

The centrepiece was a roast chicken, cooked expertly by Whitney despite being a vegetarian. (Her dad owns the biggest barbecue in the world and he's even more vegetarian, I don't understand it.) Despite watching a video on how to carve a chicken beforehand - "Slice here, here, here and here. Done." - that was the most problematic part, and it took a large amount of sawing and chiselling to get the bird apart at all.

Squared cake! (I've never been quite so excited about a cake before.)

However, the part of dinner that I was responsible for was the cake - Squared Cake, in fact. It was a theory that I'd wanted to try out for ages, but never got around to actually doing because I'm usually defaulted into making sticky toffee pudding when foreigners or other people with hearts that are too healthy are around.

To manufacture squared cake, you use two different coloured round sponge cakes (chocolate and plain being the most obvious choices, but others work as well), cut out concentric circles from each of them and swap alternate layers over - we used a bowl and a mug for this one, so that the width of the circles was roughly equal to the height of the cake. These are then stacked on top of each other and coated in a positively toothbusting amount of sugary icing (enough to glue each layer and track together as well as disguise the fact that it's been doctored in such a way from the outside). You can see evidence of trying to liven up the top by dragging a skewer across different coloured icing, but we didn't have any skewers so I had to use a fork and it looked a bit silly.

The thing about this kind of cake is that you don't know what it actually looks like until you cut in to it. Fortunately the squares had stayed together reasonably well, but I think a little more icing between the circles would have made it a bit more cohesive. Nevertheless it looked impressive, and I've therefore added that to the list of things that I'm allowed to make in the kitchen without the fire brigade on standby.

Additionally you have to admit it's pretty fantastic geometrically. I could go in to the Mathematics department with it, declare "I've squared the circle" and watch their heads explode.

Ice Swipe

Hopefully I've got here before this propagates all around the Internet - I was pointed to this game recently, and I think it's really quite clever. I haven't seen one done quite like that before.

Gamma Ray - "Majestic" Samples

The cynical might say that Gamma Ray's image is a bit nicked from Iron Maiden. I'd be inclined to agree.

After the entirely unexpected release of "Majestic" a few weeks ago - the first studio album of theirs since 2001 - Gamma Ray have put up song samples on their website. The band, who are coloured blue, seem to be in the late stages of another change of direction - they started out as a political band with Queen-like influences, then gradually moved towards a science fiction theme, and now they seem to have dropped most of the Queen similarity and started to write something that borders on aggressive Christian rock. However, Kai Hansen's dislike of America in general is still very apparent, so that's good news all round.

I might as well put down some of my thoughts on the samples, even though I know that there's only one person on my Friends list that will bother to download more than one, and I'm not sure if he's got time out of his busy schedule of singing and door-opening to read this, but that's life.

1. My Temple - Even by Gamma Ray's standards this is pretty violent for an opening track, and is almost reminiscent of Heart of the Unicorn (but not as glass-shatteringly high). This is growing on me even though I didn't like it much at first - it sounds like it gets more tuneful just as the sample ends. It also uses the lyric "You've got another thing coming" in an obvious nod to Judas Priest, which is a nice reference that you can be smug about if you get it.


2. Fight - After the calm intro, this song erupts into Henjo Richter's trademark Send Me A Sign-alike arpeggios. There's an unusual fast section in the chorus, but the rest of it is familiar, and I've always liked Richter's songs the best, so that's all right. Oddly enough, the second track of Stratovarius' new album has the same title. Curious.


3. Strange World - This is awfully weird, as there's about five seconds at the start of this song that sound like Dragonforce, or possibly lift music (decide for yourself). There's a classic Gamma Ray choir background, but it's a bit slow for my liking.


4. Hell Is Thy Home - Despite the lyrics sounding like something out of Thy Dungeonman, this is typical Gamma Ray weirdness. It doesn't seem very melodic to me, and almost as if the song is trying to go in too many directions at the same time.


5. Blood Religion - There's not really enough of this song to comment on, but the introduction is very recognisable - powerful Queenesque choirvocals, a staple of the band from the very beginning.


6. Condemned to Hell - I'm sure that this was in Command and Conquer.


7. Spiritual Dictator - Kai Hansen seems to occasionally try and emulate Richter's style, and this is one of those songs - the broken chords are soon replaced by a dead giveaway Hansen Eastern-style melody, though. The chorus sounds great, but the sample ends just as it gets good. This is one of the most Christian songs on the album.


8. Majesty - This is the title track, but it just seems to go nowhere. Hopefully there's something more "majestic" out of the range of the sample that's been provided.


9. How Long - After an intro that sounds more Finnish than German (it could have been written by Stratovarius or Sonata Arctica), this is a religious/political song like the ones from Gamma Ray's early days, and even goes as far as to include lyrics from a couple of their oldest works. It's either genius or a severe lack of creativity, depending on how you look at it. The bridge is rather awkward, but the chorus is amazing.


10. Revelation - Again, there's not a lot of this song to comment on, but it's very recognisable as another of Henjo Richter's, and the sound is very reminiscent of the introduction to The Winged Horse.

Overall, the album sounds pretty decent if not absolutely amazing (for that, I think I'll have to wait until Gamma Ray's sci-fi obsessed younger brother Iron Savior finish their new work), and it's probably one to investigate once it's around.

Bored in the Lab

Disclaimer: Among all my entries, this one is unique because it doesn't actually have any content.

Driving my way in to University this morning, I had the unique experience of being stuck behind a bungalow. I had reached the end of my street and was about to turn when the house loomed in to view and sailed past, blocking the already frustratingly slow road out of Cupar. It was actually a lorry with a large prefabricated building on the back, but it still took ages to manoeuvre around it. Manoeuvre's such a stupid word, it has too many vowels for its own good.

And we spent about half an hour of the lecture this morning discussing how to do subtraction (with the lecturer being very enthusiastic about binary operations). Now all that's left to survive today is a two-hour special on Reports and Presentation Skills, and other things that we all already know - happily, cakes are provided in the middle. Senior Honours is a great life.

My youngest brother and his amazingly long hair have a girlfriend now. It was a bit of a shock, that.

Why I'm So Great

I recently received a testimonial from the RGU so that I can show prospective employers something impressive that isn't my largely fictional CV. Because I don't really have any ideas of what to write in my LJ these days, I thought I'd post it here. Uncharacteristically for me, I've put it behind a cut so that you can get your sick-bags on standby.

---

David was employed as VLE Administrator in the Department of eLearning at the Robert Gordon University from 4th July to 16th September 2005. He assisted in the development and testing of the RGU Virtual Campus, a complex web application with 25000 users. His responsibilities included co-ordinating system testing, data entry, checking of data accuracy, and user support.

David particularly impressed me with his ability to easily fit into an existing team and he used his excellent communication and people skills to work well with members of the team at all levels. In his time in the Department he had regular contact with users in a testing and support role, and I received unprompted positive feedback about David from several of our clients.

In addition, David is organised and has the attention to detail which is vital for the development of polished IT products and services. He is also analytical, is able to solve problems on his own and works well under his own initiative.

I have no hesitation in recommending David as am employee. I am sure he will do well whatever his chosen career.

Regards,
Big Important Organisational Web-Developy Type Person

Tribute to the Past

While looking through the vast Retro directory on my laptop at the Burn, I realised that once again I hadn't updated the online list of my collection for ages. So this evening, much to Whitney's enthrallment, I've been cataloguing my abandonware. The up to date (and stunningly HTML-decorated) list is online on my Wired account. I may do one for my ROMs as well in the future, but I think that's enough copyright dodging for one entry.

If there are any requests for sending, reply in the comments and I'll email some zips out.