Josie Parker is Hardcore

December 13th, 2008 § 0 comments § permalink

“].”]by anonymous [not me].

“He tripped in front of her and she shoved him to keep from falling into him, and twisted her knee trying to recover,” said Prue Rosenthal, a library board member.

This reminded me of the first time I ever met Josie, as an AADL employee [years ago -- please note that I do not speak for the AADL in any official capacity].

It was August 2004, and the Great Blackout of the Eastern Seaboard had just started about an hour or two prior.  We had finally come to the realization that the power was not about to be restored and cleared the Northeast Branch of patrons [yeah, the branch in the Plymouth Road Mall - this was 2004].

The librarians were up front closing up for the day and I was in the back of the library tidying the computer area.  Josie entered through the rear [from the parking lot], saw me, and exclaimed — politely, but authoritatively — “WHO ARE YOU, AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY LIBRARY?”

Once we were properly introduced by other staff, she was nothing but sweet, but I’ve always known she had the eye of the tiger.

Feel better soon, Josie!  Now, who wants to hear a Fred Maxwell story?  [Again, I do not speak for the AADL.]

Turning leftovers into “left-OH!-overs.”

December 4th, 2008 § 0 comments § permalink

1.) Heat pan on stove until water droplets tossed on sizzle and evaporate instantly
2.) Add oil [I used "wok oil" because it's already got the ginger and garlic in it]
3.) Add some of your previously-cooked pasta
4.) Reach up and silence overly-eager smoke alarm
5.) Start trying to stir-fry it with a heat-resistant plastic spoon
6.) Add more pasta and oil as oil disappears and/or pasta is fried
7.) Serve — with whatever seasoning you like.  Me, I just nuked the leftover pasta sauce that was also in the fridge and poured it over.

PREP TIME: Two listenings to “Lolli Lolli” by Three 6 Mafia [about nine minutes].

Three 6 Mafia, \”Lolli Lolli\”

Action Doom 2 on the Mac.

October 12th, 2008 § 7 comments § permalink

So it’s been almost a month and I still can’t find any mention of how Mac people can get their Action Doom 2: Urban Brawl on. I spent a few minutes last night downloading everything and putting it in the right places. Here’s how you can join in. All the items are free. You will need an Intel Mac [for now, at least] to run ZDoom.

Get the latest ZDoom build from this forum thread, the epicenter of Mac ZDoom development. [EDIT 20090923: The download link on the forum post is currently unavailable; check there for the most current version, but here's a mirror of the one I used to get this working.] Ignore the bleatings of “Get a real computer” from entrenched Winbags.
- Unzip the archive and put ZDoom in Applications or wherever. Start it once and note the plaintive wailing that you’re missing an IWAD:
ZDoom OS X error box.

Get an IWAD so ZDoom will run. I used the Freedoom Complete IWAD. Take the doom2.wad file from that archive and put it in [your home directory] > Library > Application Support > zdoom. You just need that file and it needs to be in that folder, not a folder inside that folder.

Get Urban Brawl from Mancubus. It comes in an archive with a bunch of other files that make it ready to run on a PC. The only file you need is action2.wad, you can scrap the rest. [But while you're there, you should grab Action Doom 1 too.]

Okay, now start ZDoom. Did it complain that it couldn’t find a Doom WAD? No? Great! You put it in the right spot. Now click on “Show WAD Options,” click “Add” in the tray that slides out, and navigate to whereever you put “action2.wad.” Your WAD options should look like this.

ZDoom OS X Launcher

Click “Launch” to start busting heads. If you get a terminal window, you probably chose more than one WAD file. You gotta pick one at a time.

I don’t know how well this will work with other Doom source-ports like PrBoom, because the author clearly wrote it with ZDoom in mind, or else I’d try it with the Wii too. Also, there are some dark spots I’m not sure are supposed to be so dark, but I played up to where !SPOILER! Haggar joins you last night and it was very very playable. Nonetheless I would love refinements from the audience, if there is one. I might have just packaged it all up myself, but these components all come from completely different sources and asking permission is tough.

Feel free to ask questions here in comments, I will try to reply [in comments] as time and intelligence permits.

EDIT 20090924: Updated link to Freedoom IWAD — thanks Gary!

U.S.Eid

August 6th, 2008 § 0 comments § permalink

Well, Goldbug, here’s why I think the outrage over Labor Day at the single Tyson plant in Tennessee is stupid:

  • The union asked the company for this. Yes, it is fairly astounding to me that the holiday honoring organized labor is not going to be honored by organized labor, but an organization representing labor is obligated to represent its labor. which by some reports is a majority of the plant’s workers.  “By some reports” is weasel words, yes, but even the most conservative number is around 250.
  • These are not the terrorist Muslims. They’re not even from the Middle East.  They are from Somalia, it’s in Africa.
  • It’s a single Tyson plant. Tyson is more powerful than you can possibly imagine and they have plants everywhere.  It’s not like the company has converted to Islam wholeheartedly.

If 1% of the message board idiots decrying the corrosion of Christian values actually put their money where their mouth was and got in touch with a local farmer, they could all eat terrific quality meat and make things better in their community.  [We do this -- it requires a chest freezer and some meal planning, but it's so worth it.]  They can rant and rave until the cows come home, but as long as they take the money they saved at Walmart and treat themselves to Hooters, they won’t be putting Tyson out of anything.

Mobile Time-wasters.

July 15th, 2008 § 0 comments § permalink

Over the past year with my new-ish non-Apple phone, I’ve taken some time here and there to check out a few new, or new-to-me, mobile games — by which I mean Java-applet games one plays on their mobile phone. Hereforth I will weigh in with brief remarks.

Lego Star Wars: It would’ve been impossible to make a bricks-out action game like the console versions, so we get an overhead-perspective action-puzzler. If it actually seemed to save my progress I probably would still be playing it but playing the same first few levels over and over is even more tedious when you know how to solve it. It’s about holding the 4 key and waiting for duder to waddle over to the green switch.

Time Crisis: Somehow Namco didn’t figure out a way to include a bundled peripheral in the download — hardy har har — so the point-of-view playfield has been split into a nine-square field corresponding to the keypad. See a guy, press a button to shoot him. Like whack-a-mole, only you have to duck when the moles shoot back. The 3D looks pretty good but my phone’s a little too slow for it to play well. I get the impression this was intended for those Nokia superphones.

Doom RPG: Awesome throwback game, adapting the Doom universe to a turn-based role-player. The “dungeons” are different areas of the UAC Mars base and scroll smoothly in a style reminiscent of Wolfenstein [I mean Wolfenstein -- the "camera" doesn't bounce the way Doom does].  The writing is top-notch, filled with geeky references.  My favorite moment was when the Marine tries to access a SQL database with typed insults.

Orcs & Elves: Newer game in the same vein from the same developers [Fountainhead Entertainment, now "id mobile"].  Medieval theme and beautiful graphics but too slow.  Probably my phone.

Midtown Madness 3D: Too slow for my phone.  Even if it wasn’t, I can’t imagine a 3D “free roaming” driver playing well on a phone.   Just because you can do something like that doesn’t mean you should.  I bet a drive-straight and steer game like outrun would play great on modern phones, though — I’ll have to look for one.

Drakengard: Too, too tough.  Always wanted to try the PS2 version, may still check it out someday.

Zelda Legend: Humorously poor Zelda-themed sprite swap and string edit hack of “Drakengard.”

Handbrake Bleeding Edge

July 14th, 2008 § 0 comments § permalink

When I wasn’t looking, the Handbrake dev community released a
Development Snapshot that allegedly fixes the XVID encoding issue that 0.9.2 had [in short, that it just wouldn't encode XVID in AVI as instructed in my post on my Panasonic DVD player].

Handbrake continues to be the Carla Bruni of DVD tools.  Beautiful, sort of French, and… this metaphor is awful.

BEST BUY: The Text Adventure

July 14th, 2008 § 0 comments § permalink

I feel this Best Buy pricing phenomenon is best described in the terms of an Infocom text game:

> LOOK
You are at a Best Buy. There is a Blueshirt and 3 Memory Cards here.

> LOOK BLUESHIRT
A thin trail of spittle glistens on his chin.

> KILL BLUESHIRT
You heartless bastard.  Just look at the memory cards.

> LOOK MEMORY CARDS
They are all Sandisk SD memory cards. One is 2GB, one is 4GB, and one is 2GB Ultra High Speed. Which one is the most expensive?

> TAKE 4GB
Wrong. It’s on sale for $24.99 this week.

> TAKE 2GB ULTRA
Also wrong — it’s on sale for $19.99 this week.

> TAKE 2GB REGULAR SPEED
Hey-ooo, big spender! $26.99!

> INVENTORY
You haven’t bought it yet.

> CHECK OUT
The clerk rings you up and offers you a 3-year Protection Plan for… $26.99.

> SOUTH
You are at the exit.  There is a yellow shirt here and a gate.  The yellowshirt asks to see your receipt.

> SAY “I KNOW MY RIGHTS”
You are forcibly removed from the store.  Local police are called, refuse to arrest, but bemusedly ask you why you didn’t just show them the damned receipt.

Abort, Retry, Fail?
>IGNORE

Okay, this kind of wandered a bit, but you get the idea.

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McDonald’s: Recycled Advertising

June 21st, 2008 § 0 comments § permalink


An ad campaign for McDonald’s in Europe.  At least it’s different.

I have often wondered why McDonald’s still advertises in the traditional manner.  We get it.  You have hamburgers and chicken shapes and salads and fancy coffee and So Much More.  You have a store about every five blocks.  I’m not going to wake up tomorrow and forget you’re in business, and even if I did, I would start jonesing for your french fries within a few days and remember you again.  If you did something like “we’re not going to buy our usual dozens of ads for a week and donate that money we would’ve spent to some kind of hunger campaign or research on cancer” or something, that would mean a great deal more to me than another ad with a remixed version of your latest jingle.

Incidentally, the above goes for any fast food chain, soft drink, or really anyone who advertises anything anywhere.

Man, it’s like they read my mind

June 17th, 2008 § 0 comments § permalink

“You want a dark, Goth version of Tweety Bird? Have at it.”

Lisa Gregorian of Warner Bros. TV
Fictional Stars Get a 21st Century Facelift – NYTimes.com

Not FORTRAN. Not RATFOR. Not, even, assembly language.

May 15th, 2008 § 0 comments § permalink

I feel duty-bound to describe,
as best I can through the generation gap,
how a Real Programmer wrote code.
I’ll call him Mel..

Ed Nather, The Story of Mel

Made better if you imagine it being told by Sam Shepard as the cowboy narrator in “The Big Lebowski.”

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