King Critter’s World

Just watched a bunch of movies recently. Here’s what I thought of them.

Dawn of the Dead (remake, unrated version)

• Fucking awesome. Watch it.

Cloverfield

• Slightly less then fucking awesome, but still really good. The ending was a bit sudden and left me wanting more.

Shaolin soccer

• Funny, with completly over the top action. Balls being kicked so hard the burst into flame, that sort of thing. I’d give it something like a 7.5 out of 10. Watch it. (Note that it is in Chinese with English subtitles. There’s also a dub available, but I didn’t use it so I can’t comment on its quality.)

Spaceballs

• Tried too hard, suffered for it. 5 or 6 out of 10.

Aliens

• So many people are like “this movie is the shit, yo!” They’re all wrong. With the exception of a few scenes, this movie is boring and th action is pretty terrible.

Fanboys

• In case you haven’t heard, this movie is about four Star Wars fanboys who go on a road trip to Lucasfilm with the intention of stealing the working print of Episode One. Hilarity ensues. It has some rough spots, yeah, but as long as you like Star Wars you’ll love this movie.

Blade

• Starts out pretty crappy, gets a lot better. 7/10.

And I saw this in the theater a while back but never got around to reviewing it. No time like the present, eh?

Monsters Vs. Aliens

• This is not a kids movie. Kids can watch it, yeah, but I think most of the jokes will soar right over their heads. Awesome animation. Some scenes are nearly photo realistic. I’ll definitely buy the DVD if I see it at the pawn shop (I have a “thing” against buying stuff new.)

Just bought almost eighty dollars worth of fireworks. I… have no self control.

WordPress is being weird. I upgraded it and now the javascript throughout most of the admin area is not working. Makes navigating a tad bit difficult. I re-uploaded everything, cleared my cache, etc. — but still no luck. I installing it locally on my computer, and it works fine, so it’s not a problem with wordpress itself. So yeah. No idea.

Well, about that list of survivalist-related stuff I was going to do… as of yet, my biggest accomplishment is replacing my shoelaces with class 3 paracord that can hold of to 550 pounds. I also have begun carrying a knife and LED headlamp in my backpack. I’ve been meaning to pick up some razor blades so I can try out the credit-card knife, but I haven’t yet. I tried making a padlock jimmying shim out of a popcan, an endeavor that failed miserably.

I applied for a job at Wal-Mart. My application was accepted, but who knows whether they’ll ever get back to me. I expect that in this economy there’s a lot of people looking for work.

I’ve started work on a game — an isometric action RPG with zombies and guns. It’s written in Python/PyGame. Oh, speaking of games, I still haven’t uploaded my breakout game yet. I did finish it (mostly) but I’ve just been so lazy… well, the shirt I’m wearing says it all: Genius By Birth, Slacker By Choice.

I wrote the following as an exercise, to see just how interesting I could make an ordinary day sound. Tell me what you think.

I woke up at nine in the morning. This was a surprise. For the last two days, I hadn’t woken up until two in the afternoon. I rolled over and went back to sleep. Why interrupt what was fast becoming a tradition?

My alarm rang an hour later. Well, beeped, anyway. Precious few alarms actually rang these days. A good thing, too – the last clock I owned could wake the dead with it’s little harmer vibrating wildly between the two bells. The whole thing fell to pieces soon after I bought it. Made in China crap. It didn’t even put a mark on the wall I threw it against.

This new one was digital, AC powered, ugly – and thankfully, had a really big snooze button. I hit it, and fell back asleep.

Interesting fact about alarm clock makers: to them, a snooze only lasts ten minutes. What the hell is up with that? What kind of terrible childhood did they have? I can just imagine it: “Nappy time, cuddly- kins!” Ten minutes later: “Back in the fields for you, devil-child!”

Terrible, just terrible. Even worse, this clock didn’t have an easy to reach off button. Rather, there was switch so sticky I had to use two hands – and far more brainpower then should be necessary – to budge it. So why bother? I might as well just get up. Yeah, yeah. Gonna get up. Gonna get up riiiiight nooooww…

Half an hour later I staggered into my (parents) kitchen, blinking in the harsh sunlight, bowls undecided as whether to take a piss or not, stomach likewise confused on the mutter of hunger. Morning sucks.

I stared at the phone in my hand, cursing Mr. Booth from the bottom of my heart. Phonophobia; Fear of Phones, that’s what I had. I’d never been good at talking to people, and not being able to see a person’s face just made it harder, not easier. I’m not really sure why. Ask a psychologist. Speaking of psychos, I once self-diagnosed myself as a partial sociopath. Now, though, I think its just apathy.

But back to phones: did I mention I don’t like them? But in this case I had to do it, because I wanted the paintball gun this guy was selling on craigslist. I dialed the number slowly, heart pounding, blood rushing to my head. My vision narrowed as I pressed the large button labeled “TALK” and raised the phone to my hear. As I began to slip into unconsciousness, I heard the voice of an angel… A computerized angel, telling me to go to hell because I dialed an invalid number.

Reality snapped back into place. Computers? I can handle computers, even sassy ones. I hung up, redialed the number – this time remembering the long-distance extension. My reservoirs of apprehension used up. I settled for pacing.

Ring… ring… ring… ring… Hi, y’got *name* please leave a message–

Click. I hung up up. Answering machines are, in a way, worse then humans.

Fast-forward a few hours later, and you’ll find me lounging in the backseat of our jeep, reading mangas, on the way to Coeur d’alene. In Coeur d’alene is a writing conference that my mom is going to. I decided to tag along to see if I could pick up anything,.

As expected, I didn’t. Writing cannot be taught – at least, not in the same way as, say, electrical engineering. But if we go with the number of consistently sucky fanfics on the internet, then we’d be forced to conclude that writers don’t get better over time, either.

So how do writers get better? I have an idea, that if true, will shake the very foundations of authorship. Writers advance in skill by devouring the souls and absorbing the talents of lesser writers! Remember that next time you look at the New York Times bestsellers list, and imagine the terror wrought to bring you these printed papers of prose.

My to-do list:

• Buy a gun
• Stockpile ammo and other supplies
• Bury survival caches in strategic locations
• Learn basic survival skills, both urban and woodland, e.g.:
• picking locks
• hot-wiring cars
• escaping from handcuffs
• starting a fire from scratch
• killing, gutting, skinning and cooking an animal
• Buy a knife or two
• Buy paracord to replace my shoelaces, because this stuff can come in handy in an amazing number of situations
• Get a girlfriend. If my supplies of canned food run out, she’ll make an excellent source of protein.
• more stuff then I can list here

So, I’ve been reading. As you might have guessed from the above list, it’s not my usual sci-fi/fantasy fare. This book is called EMERGENCY, by Neil Strauss, and I suggest you read it right now. Aside from being highly informative, it’s also hilarious. The author writes for the New York Times as well as other publications, and has also written a couple other best-sellers. Oh, and: The author is crazy in a way I can only dream of being. When he decides to do something, he does it, no matter how crazy or stupid. For example, sinking a few hundred thousand dollars into a citizenship on the island of St. Kitts, pretty much just on a whim. Or calling up the neo-nazi founder of the survivalist movement. (”You should move to Arkansas. It’s great. There’s no black people here.”) Or taking all sorts of first-aid, rescue team, emergency response and FEMA-sponsored courses. Or caching gasoline all along the way from Los Angeles to Spokane.

Like I said, crazy — but in an awesome way.

Tomorrow — or I guess I should say today, because it’s 4 AM — I’m going to make a credit card knife, lockpick, and padlock opener out of a can of pop.

I’ll tell you how it goes.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand-Alone Complex, or GitS: SAC as it’s abbreviated, is the best anime series ever created. Before I continue, please take note: this is not a Saturday morning cartoon. This is not Pokemon. This not Dragon Ball Z. There are no flashing backgrounds. There are no comical exaggerated facial expressions. There are no people standing around shouting: “It’s over 9000!”

Rather, there is blood, violence, swearing, drama, poignancy, humor, excellent writing, excellent voice acting (rather amazing, really — English dubs are notorious for their suckage) very detailed animation, gorgeous pre-rendered backgrounds… In short, it’s an amazing show.

If there’s one thing I don’t like it’s the length — not counting the (admittedly awesome) intro and end credits, each episode is only 20 minutes long. This shows, occasionally, giving some episodes a rather rushed feel. This is most obvious in the pilot, when they do a rather bad job of cramming a bunch of info into under half an hour. As such, the pilot is actually the worst of them all. The second episode isn’t too great either, but after that it seems as if the creators of the show hit their stride and the quality rises noticeably.

The plot in a nutshell: it’s the year twenty-thirty-something. Can’t remember the exact date. Almost everyone on the planet is, to some degree, a cyborg. Eye implants and data-jacks in the back of the neck (think Matrix) are almost universal. AIs are also common. Policing this new world is Section 9. They’re basically like a cyborg Mission: Impossible team. To continue the TV-show analogies, they’re caught up in an X-Files-like government conspiracy involving, among other things, a “super class-A hacker” (their words, not mine) called the Laughing Man who become an Internet celebrity after kidnapping the CEO of a large company on live TV and getting away with it.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is: watch the damn show.

Pics will come soon. Currently I have no media player installed on this system after attempting to compile the latest version of VLC and, in the process, breaking my current install.

Pics have arrived! You find them in a nice orderly list here. Below is my description of each one, in order.

1. This here is Batou. Note: when he looks like this, don’t mess with him.
2. Bottom left is Borma. At right is Togusa. Note that Togusa has a mullet. Togusa is cool. Ergo, mullets are cool. Everyone laughing at my hair: shut up. Also, note the graffiti at far right.
3. “Aw, damn. That was our own truck I just shot up.”
4. I want an arm like that.
5. Saito and Batou in a firefight. The blue thing at left is the back-end of a Tachikoma, sometimes called “think tanks” because of their rather… unusual AI.
6. The guys Saito and Batou are shooting at, using their buddy’s corpses at cover.
7. Same firefight, different location. Togasu and the Major this time, along with a Tachikoma.
8. Togusa and a Tachikoma playing Othello. (”Checkmate!” “What? That’s not even the same game!”)

Imagine: a black, kickass looking eypatch. On the inside, a tiny (but high resolution) OLED screen. On the front of the eyepatch would be a camera — if that isn’t possible with current technology, then it would be attached to the side of your head somehow — maybe on the same strap that’s holding your eyepatch. Or it could be like those police cameras I recall reading about a while back that loop over your ear.

Either way, you’ll have two things: a computer screen accessible at all times, and a video camera. Link them both to a wearable computer, and you have the basis for an augmented reality system.

And the best part is, I think this design is actually feasible!

I’ve put some thought into AR systems before, but they always involved projecting images onto lenses or something. The problem with this method is we don’t yet have good enough projector tech for that.

But swap out the projector for a monitor and camera, and you’ve got yourself the item that will make me a millionaire.

Some possible (realistic with today technology) uses:

• Facial recognition. The computer would pick out faces and display their name, age, whatever you wanted. Handy if you’re bad at remembering people. You could also have an application that would automatically download a list of wanted felons and check for their faces.
• Birds eye view of your current location, courtesy of Google Maps. Never be lost again.
• Whatever information you wanted. You could even watch TV.

Possible (future) uses:

• Virtual signs. Want to find the nearest ATM? Launch your ATM finding app, and suddenly a giant arrow springs up from the ground and hovers in the sky a few block away. A glowing green appears at ground level, guiding you there. The main problem with this kind of tech today is depth perception. Your AR goggles/eyepatch need some way of telling if there’s a building or other object between you and the virtual sign. Without this, it’ll just draw everything on top of the real world. Not good.

Hardware:

Once this thing goes to market, it would of course be custom built. But until then, I think a Pico ITX motherboard would be the best thing. Small (the size of a playing card!) low power requirements… build a small case, put it on your belt, forget about it.

For the camera, just any small digicam, like the afore-mentioned one the police were testing out. They’re out there. Once the technology progresses to the required level, the external camera could be replaced with one mounted directly on the eyepatch. If the user so desired, they could get two cameras — one normal, and one something like infrared. Night vision FTW!

The screen would of course be an OLED, like a cellphone display. I’m still researching it, but I’m confident that displays of the size I’m talking about can get at least something like 250×300 pixel resolution. Not great, but it would work for the purposes I outlined above. And since the tech gets better at an exponential rate, it shouldn’t be too long before the screen will be high-def.

Gloves. There’s got to be some way of controlling your software, right? So why not gloves? I’m thinking of a fingerless, ultra sci-fi design. There’d be sensors in the gloves so that your computer could interpret gestures as commands. Also, your camera would be able to pick out your gloves (due to some shiny reflective surface on them, or a particular pattern that image recognition could grab onto) so you could interact with the virtual world just by pointing at stuff.

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Anyway, those are some if my ideas. Thoughts, anyone?

Reader of my blag, meet Critter Chan. Critter Chan, meet reader of my blag.

Play nice.

I went to ITT Tech yesterday for a guided tour.

For those of you who are not in the know, ITT Tech is a private college devoted to very technical subjects — game design, 3D modeling, architecture, web design, system administration, and programming, among other things.

It’s kind of funny how I ended up on that tour. I’d been sitting at my computer, writing my High School And Beyond essay (short essay about what I planned on doing after high school) when I thought of checking out the ITT website. So I did. Then I noticed the “send me a brochure” link, so I clicked that. Half an hour later the phone rings, and it’s someone from ITT Tech asking me when she should schedule my guided tour! Mentally I was screaming “I just want a damn brochure!” but I made an appointment anyway. And I’m glad I did — it was rather… enlightening.

Long story short: if I were rich, and $11,000 a year was no big deal, I’d sign up in a heartbeat. There’s a lot of cool classes (plus a gaming group! ) and ITT offers some neat advantages. For example, after completing a course, you can come back at any time — even twenty years later — and retake the course for free. If you move to a different city in the middle of a course, your tuition carries over to any other ITT school in the nation. Another thing is that textbooks and equipment/software are included in the tuition, and they’re yours to keep forever.

Of course, there is one slight problem: I’m not rich, and 11 grand makes my brain bleed thinking about trying to pay off a loan like that. I know I can get financial aid, and I know I can get scholarships, but I’d be looking at 22 grand minimum for an associates degree. I’m going to have to pay some of that.

Then we get to the real bummer: they don’t actually offer the course I want. I want a comprehensive course in C++, geared toward game development — from beginner, moving quickly into intermediate, then advanced. By the end of two years I’d be able to program the Matrix.

But with ITT — well, you know that game design course mentioned above? It’s just that — game design. The reason my tour guide gave does actually make sense — companies don’t want really advanced programmers, they want well rounded individuals. This meshes with what I remember reading in some magazine; that there are way more designers and artists in a video game company then programmers.

My problem? I don’t want to work for a company, I want to start my own indie company and make my own games! There’s a lot of people who would undoubtedly tell me to start small, work your way up, etc. To all those people: fuck you!

I haven’t yet been beaten down by the man. I still have dreams, and the ability to realize them. I’m not a sheeple, content to work for a faceless conglomerate programming the next Barbie’s Adventures game, while around me society crumbles, North Korea starts World War III, and Britain turns into Oceania.

Even if we dodge WW3 and a host of other problems, there’s the fact that college degrees — along with a lot of other stuff — is going to become pretty much useless after the Humanity 2.0 revolution in ~2030, whenever they invent multi-purpose molecular assemblers (nanobots). Don’t even get me started on the singularity.

Well, this post got a bit off topic. Long story short: dunno if I’ll go to ITT. Still gotta think about it some more, and see if I can’t teach myself C++ well enough to start on my indie game dev idea.

Into Mudkip!

Wait, no…

Here’s the deal: I was working on a game. It was written in C, utilizing the PAlib library — it was going to be homebrew for the Nintendo DS. That was then. A few weeks ago, I said something along the lines of: “WHAT THE FUCK ARE POINTERS? WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? WHY THE FUCK IS FAT LOADING SO FUCKING HARD? WHO THE FUCK DESIGNED THIS SHIT? WHY DOES MY PSEUDO-CODE LOOK LIKE PYTHON?”

It was that last bit that pushed me over the edge and got me back into Python. I’d been writing pseudo-code to work through difficult parts of my game, and then there was one day when I looked at what I had on paper compared to the C on my screen, and I realized… this ain’t pseudo-code, this is Python! So I brushed up on my Python skills (what there was of them) and jumped into Pygame.

I’ll have an alpha version posted within a few weeks. Hopefully.

Oh, and regarding the art direction — since I’m such a crappy artist, I decided that the entire game will be drawn in vector art. Think Geometry Wars and you’ll know what I’m going for.

Oh, and one more thing… I wrote a very short screenplay that I hope to film sometime soon. Link here (PDF, 63 KB).

Last night on my way home from my church’s youth group, I swung by a hotspot to finish downloading the entire collection of Ultimate Spider-Man comics. A torrent, of course. The reason I was using a hotspot is because I’m stuck with crappy dial-up at home.

Anyway, so I go there, launch Transmission, and watch as all my downloads go absolutely nowhere. The only thing moving at all was the latest version of Ubuntu — it was seeding just fine. And HTTP connections were fine, because I watched a couple streaming videos. I know they didn’t block torrents, because I’d used that hotspot just that morning.

After about 15 minutes of fiddling I gave up and went home. Just to check, I tried downloading the torrent there… and it still didn’t work! So I went to thepiratebay.org and discovered: it was down! o_0

This freaked me out a bit, because the owners of TPB just lost a court case and were sentenced to something like 5 years in prison and a 3 million dollar fine. I thought the law had finally caught up with them and shut the site down for good.

But, luckily, it turned out to be nothing more then a broken cable. Whew!

In music news, I suggest you check out the Legend of Zelda soundtrack, heavy-metal style. I would link to it, but I can’t find the damn thing. It was given to me by a friend, so… Jake or Kevin, if you’re reading this, post the link in the comments section. ^_^

EDIT: thank you, Jake. Click here for a zip of it (via MediaFire).