Disordered Thoughts and Curmudgeonly Ramblings
For the next part of my Minecraft project I’m going to need to breed and slaughter 229 cows, craft 545 wooden planks, harvest 687 sugar canes, mine 640 blocks of sand and 81 blocks of cobblestone and burn 10 units of coal.
For the first floor.
Of about one tenth of the entire project.
At least I already have the diamonds and obsidian I need…
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
One of my guilty pleasures at the moment is the new season of Iron Man: Armored Adventures on ABC 3. Sure, it’s a kid’s show, but it’s fun – and hey, I already classified it as a guilty pleasure, which means I don’t have to justify it to anyone, let alone you.
😉
There was one annoying thing about the episodes they played last night though. The presence of an “Ossy” (which is how Americans strangely insist on pronouncing “Aussie”).
Now I have no strange objection to Australians appearing in American TV shows. It’s nice to see us represented. But what would also be nice would be getting actors who can actually do an Australian accent – as opposed to doing a Cockney accent with “moit” added to the end of every second sentence.
Sure, Americans can’t tell the difference, but believe me it makes us cringe. It’s like representing an American accent by getting a Puerto Riccan to randomly say “pard’ner”. Or a Canadian accent by having a South African end every sentence with “eh?”. It’s bizarre.
Of course, it’s not going to change. But it would be nice.
Or perhaps noice moit!
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 🙂
1400 – Establishment of the Royal House of Hutz-Ambar by King Eddercrumb the 1st – an indigent Pure Finder blessed with Royal Blood by a magical wizard.
1412 – King Eddercrumb constructs the Castle of Rinds
1414 – The Castle of Rinds is sacked by the evil Communards of Pikkle, sparking off a three year vendetta between the city of Rinds and the neighboring valley of Blort
1420 – King Eddercrumb is killed in Battle by the Black Knight of Blort. He assumes the throne as King Rupert the 1st and unites the people of Rinds and Blort
1423 – Something important happened but no one can remember exactly what. A pig might have been involved, but no one’s really that sure. It was a long time ago.
1424 – The son of King Rupert – Crown Prince Muntjak – ascends the throne after his father’s death during a toadstool hunt. He reigns wisely for many years, thus removing the necessity to detail them in any fashion.
1452 – King Wilbert II is sent into exile after he is discovered wearing underclothes made of two different types of yarn.
1453 – Thanks to Archbishop Mazimillian tripping over during a critical part of the coronation ceremony, King Footstool the 1st takes the throne. The eight months of his reign (the time it takes to organise a new coronation) are regarded as some of the most peaceful and prosperous in Ambarian history
1454 – Coronation of King Hutzpah Footstool-Slayer.
1458 – King Hutzpah Footstool-Slayer is killed in a crossbow-reloading accident. Speculation about how he managed to shoot himself in the spine is suppressed as treasonous slander again the late King’s shooting skills.
1459 – Crown Prince Humpty ascends the throne. He wins the loyalty of the noble houses of Runetown, Hopton, Greeblyville and Milton-Keynes in a series of high stakes poker matches.
1461 – King Humpty marries Eleanor the Gump of the House of Gump, thus gaining command of Gump, the Lesser Gump Principality and the Isles of Gump
1468 – King Humpty sets out on a fishing trip and never returns. His chamber pot is declared a holy relic.
1469 – The Year of the Twelve Emperors. No one remembers what this was about at all.
1476 – The royal line is restored with the coronation of King Hazeltine II. He ushers in an age of peace and prosperity lasting for about eight and a half minutes before the outbreak of the Metonic Uprising
1481 – The Metonic Uprising is crushed with the sacking of Palukavil. Speculation about the toiletry habits of the royal family is banned.
1484-1505 – Nothing happened.
1506 – Peasants in the imperial capital of Runetown develop a nasty, hacking cough for a few weeks. The event is recorded as the Great Plague of Ambrosius, after the most obnoxiously outspoken of said Peasants.
1509 – Scandal erupts after Queen Whitney is accused of an affair with a mysterious figure called Charles the Python. The rumours are eventually traced to a half-deaf bootblack who overheard the Queen discussing her recent visit to the Royal Menagerie.
1510 – King Ecommerse defeats a coalition of the Whigers, Tronces, Mon Keeps and Viesonbars.
1512 – King Ecommerse defeats a coalition of the Whigers, Tronces, Mon Keeps and Viesonbars, who apparently didn’t learn their lesson the first time.
1513 – The Whigers, Tronces, Mon Keeps and Viesonbars are revealed to be nothing but opium induced figments of King Ecommerse’s imagination.
1514 – Prince Larrae Emdur deposes King Ecommerse, swearing an oath to “end all this Whiger nonsense”.
1516 – King Emdur is killed by an assassin sent by the Whigers, who turn out to be real after all, ending the Ambar Dynasty.
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!
Eduard Khil, the Russian entertainer who enjoyed a resurgence of fame as the “Trololo” singer, died this weekend in St. Petersburg aged 77.
Happy trails Mr Khil!
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!
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…
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
Standards compliant HTML code written in a text editor by someone who knows what they’re doing sounds like this.
HTML code produced by a WYSIWYG editor sounds like this.
HTML code produced by pasting Microsoft Word content into a WYSIWYG editor sounds like this.
Thank you! Come again!
