So it’s been a couple of months since I last posted anything. This is because I have been busy being poor and lazy. It’s ok though because no-one reads this blog because everyone else is as apathetic about it as I am.

Partly as a remedy for the being poor situation and partly because I want to, I am making a game. A kind of F-Zero/Wipeout clone, tentatively called Velocity, which I am aiming to sell (probably on Steam) for about £4-5. I’ll be looking into some sort of online scoreboard a la AudioSurf, but that probably depends on me finding some hosting which is much quicker than this. Also it will be cel-shaded. And have reflective stuff. And a hopefully neat glass-effect. It will use OpenGL because it is perfectly sufficient for what i want to do, and I have never used DX so using that would probably result in it looking worse and being slower.

I might update this blog with stuff about the game when more is done. It will end up with its own website when it’s closer to being done, so updates might end up there instead. Provided I can sort out using Steam, there will probably be a beta weekend or two because I am too poor to buy different configurations of machine to test it on. Also it’s good for publicity purposes.

A while ago I stumbled across the Discordianism article at wikipedia, but never actually read the whole thing. I seem to remember that at the time (a few years ago now), it was not quite so well written and apparently in the middle of an edit war. In any case, I was intrigued by it then, and earlier I found myself looking at the article again, and with nothing better to do (other than attempting to bring my faltering motivation to heel and do some work) I ended up reading it.

Just recently I actually remembered my previous brief introduction to Discordianism when I found myself thinking about the fact that order is generally given preference over chaos in society. I forget why I was thinking about that but that’s moot really, and I spend large amounts of my time thinking about things that aren’t really as important as things like “Do I have any food?” so it’s not very surprising either. In any case, I have never really been a particularly ordered person, although I don’t deliberately tend to disorder either, just do whatever comes naturally. If I wake up at 4PM and don’t sleep the following night, then so be it. And it’s probably because of that that I find Discordianism quite brilliant, in places.

(more…)

This is an interesting article, and it’s good to know that there are actually some sensible scientists out there who’re considering that alien life might be a bit more alien than having green skin. But mostly I’m linking to it for this:

“Is it alive? Well, I can tell you that it is not self-sustaining.

“You have to have a graduate student stand there and feed it from time to time, but it is evolving.”

Yes, that’s what we’re for. Feeding things which can’t sustain themselves otherwise. Am I referring to the artificial life, or the universities? Who knows.

Also it wouldn’t surprise me if the wording - “stand there and feed it from time to time” - is actually literal and accurate, and there’s some poor sod standing in one spot all day.

This past week I’ve been struck down by that terrible affliction known as a cold. Usually colds don’t bother me too much, I used to get them a lot and they don’t tend to affect me too much. But for the past five days I’ve felt totally awful. My body has been completely unable to determine what state it’s in; I’ve been alternating between shivering and sweating every 30 minutes or so, can never decide if I’m hungry or have eaten too much, am not really certain whether I’m tired or have loads of energy. Yesterday I felt like my veins were colder than my skin. Having a nervous system is great and all, but when your brain can’t figure out what it’s saying it becomes quite annoying. I haven’t been able to do anything all week. It’s been taking about an hour to work up the energy to go to the shop, which is about a two minute walk from my house.

Today is (or was, since the day is pretty much over now) Valentine’s day. I think I loath it more every year. I would list reasons why but the above-linked post contains a suitable rant.

Also, on Tuesday my grant application got rejected. Which sucks. Pretty crappy week all around, then.

Oh yeah, I yet again decided that I should actually update this website more. Hence this inane post.

The human brain is often a rather useless thing. Or at least, mine is. Up until Friday, I had been without internet access at home for three weeks, which is probably the longest period of time I’ve been without internet for six years. But it’s still only three weeks, and I still had access from my university library - a 30 minute walk, but since I have nothing else to do at the moment, one I made every couple of days - and I’ve been using the internet a huge amount for probably almost half of my life.

So I really don’t get why after only three weeks, having the internet suddenly feels weird. It’s as though I’ve been without access for far longer and I need to re-acquaint myself with everything. For instance, several times over the past few days, I have found myself wishing I had some helpful way to look certain information up, whereas previously curiosity automatically led to opening a browser and checking wikipedia. I’m not sure what should bother me more though; the fact that my brain is so quick to forget things that it’s been doing for years, or the fact that I consider not automatically knowing what to do on the internet to be a problem. It should probably be the latter.

In the least, I suppose it is a demonstration of how quickly it is possible to adapt to such changes of circumstance. Which I suppose could be helpful if anything drastic were to change in the world, like electricity suddenly ceased to exist. Though that seems unlikely.