Category: Geekery

Holy Calamity, Scream Insanity

Herp Derp Particle

The HerpDerpParticle Twitter feed is one of those things that first makes you laugh, and then makes you weep for the future of humanity. It does nothing but retweet insane twitter posts about the probable discovery of the Higgs Boson, which can mostly be categorised into three types…

1: Liberal atheist European scientists have found the God Particle, thus proving that God exists and hoisting the evil, science-worshiping, communist, agnostic, atheist, anti-American, Darwinist, liberal, gay, Muslim, perverts by their own petard.

2: Liberal atheist European scientists found the God Particle on July 4th, thus proving for all time that God loves America more than any other nation on Earth and condemning all evil, science-worshiping, communist, agnostic, atheist, Darwinist, liberal, gay, Muslim perverts to Hell for electing Barrack Obama.

3: All science is an evil, communist, agnostic, atheist, Darwinist, liberal, Anti-American, gay, Muslim, pervert plot and all the truth you ever need is in the Bible.

It’s this kind of thing that makes me reconsider living on this planet.

Later: But this cheers me right up 🙂

Minecraft Update II

I guess everyone who gets sucked into the trap of Minecraft ends up imagining ways to improve the game. I am of course no exception and in the hours I’ve whiled away working on my Big Project™ (or getting pushed into lava streams by skeletons) I’ve come up with a number of them – all but one of which are actually slated for the next update (great minds obviously think alike…).

My one, original idea? Lodestones!

The recipe for a lodestone is…
C = Compass
R = Redstone Dust
? = Either a Diamond, an Iron Ingot, a Gold Ingot, a piece of Coal, a unit of Lapis Lazuli Dye, an Emerald (once launched) or another pile of Redstone Dust

?
R C R
R

So what the heck does a lodestone do? Simple. If you’re within 20 blocks (or maybe 15 blocks, or 10 blocks, or whatever) of ore for the particular mineral it was made with, it starts glowing and chiming.

It doesn’t tell you what direction the ore is in – you have to figure that out by moving back and forwards until it stops reacting – it just tells you the ore is nearby. It’s up to you to find it and dig it out.

So that’s my idea. You listening Notch? 😉

Pathetic Cave Adventure

Yeah, that’s the opening of Zork. Deal with it.

One of these days I’m going to program a text adventure game titled Pathetic Cave Adventure. It starts…

West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.

If you open the mailbox, you get arrested for mail fraud and the game ends. If you try and open the boarded front door, you get arrested for breaking and entering and the game ends. If you try to walk anywhere you get arrested for trespassing and the game ends. If you do nothing for more than a few rounds you get arrested for loitering and the game ends

Denys, Why U No Post?

Damn you Notch!

On Sunday Ryan did a very evil thing. He showed me Minecraft.

I have strenuously been avoiding even seeing Minecraft ever since it came out, on the assumption that I would become instantly hooked. As it turns out, I was completely right.

Expect a more regular posting schedule once I’ve mined and crafted myself into exhaustion 🙂

A Black Spot on the Sun

Bloody clouds!!

So, my plans to observe the transit of Venus were stymied by a massive slab of overcast that rolled in over the city just before sunrise. Justin and I had been intending to take my telescope up to Kings Park to watch, but there wasn’t much point – we headed over to Maylands anyway and had breakfast at Milkd.

I ended up alternating between the Mount Wilson and Mauna Kea video feeds, so at least I saw it, if not exactly with my own eyes.

As Justin said, roll on the 2016 transit of Mercury!

Behold the Majesty of The Emperor’s Jaws!

Rather than spend my weekend doing anything constructive, I’ve wasted several hours on another bit of stupid 40k related javascripting – this time a random Space Marine Chapter name generator. This was inspired by a mention on 40k Radio of one that used to exist on the Games Workshop site, but was apparently taken down after it spat out the suggestion “Flesh Swords”.

My one can theoretically come up with “Flesh Swords”, but I haven’t seen it yet. It has come up with some quite entertaining ones though, such as the Noise Punishers (the Chapter you call when the Tau next door are having a party at 2:00am), the Reclaimers of Hammers (for when the Necrons down the street won’t give back your tools), the Mantis Exsanguinators (for problems in the garden), the Supplicators of Angron (I don’t think they got very far), the oddly emphatic Tiger Tigers, and my absolute favorite (so far) the Hand Gauntlets. It can also however produce perfectly sane suggestions such as the Lunar Wardens or the Black Purgators, so it may have some value.

I’ve also rigged up a sun projector for my telescope out of a coat hanger, a plastic plate, the cap from a deodorant can, some wire and some duct tape, in anticipation of the Transit of Venus on Wednesday. I’m taking the day off work and the plan is to head up to Kings Park to observe. They’re predicting clouds, but I live in hope.

Oh, and I also made soup. Hooray!

Reading the Runes

Lego is releasing models for the Lord of the Rings. This is a combination of two of my favourite things, and is hence awesome! 🙂

There’s one thing that’s bothering me though. One of the panels in the Mines of Moria set is decorated with text written in the cirth…The Mines of Moria

Cool, no? Except that I can’t for the life of me figure out what it’s meant to say.

If my interpretation is correct, it appears to read ndigwbndio pdy eobo.

I have no idea what this means.

So, am I using the wrong mode? Is it written in Khuzdul, or Sindarin? Or maybe Maori or Danish? Or is it just decorative gibberish? I have absolutely no idea, and it’s going to drive me nuts until I figure it out.

Later: Bah! It’s not the Cirth, it’s standard Futhark and says “Diordie was here”. Bastards! ;D