Stormcaller.net

Friday, February 28, 2003 - "Farscape Protest Rally?"

""Anti-War Protest just happened to be Scheduled on same day as Save Farscape Rally" claims fan. A local Farscape fan club claims that 2 million people took to the streets in a last minute attempt to save the show last week."
Saw this on the ever-excellent Tachyon TV today. Gave me a nice idea!
[ protest.jpg ]
I made this picture on Photoshop, using a photo of the anti-war rally I found on Yahoo News. Two of the posters are taken from photos of the 5th of Farscape rally in London in October, and one of Ratscape's images is also used.

Posted by Stormcaller at 1:54 AM GMT [Link]

Saturday, February 22, 2003 - "If you are a drunken monkey, then you deserve a banana."

> Science/Tech

Power generating jeans - think of the possibilities! [Details]
A steam-powered, up to 300 horsepower underwater jet engine - not bad. [Details]
Following up from last weekend's broadband over power lines item, Englishpunk has pointed out that a Scottish company has been trying this out for a while now. [Details]
Ickle PCs. [Details]
Nice rack (sorry)! [Display]
That's... fairly chilly. [Details]
This is really fantastic, though I'm surprised nobody thought of this earlier. [Details]
While this is very cool, only idiots try to make home-made submarines. [Details]
Now why would anyone want a TV in a doll's house? If anyone says "so the dolls can watch TV!", I'm going to hurt them. [Details]
One day, I will own one of these. I want one! [Details]
Ok, a little more realistic. [Details]
> Geek

Four wubly animations from the good folks at Ubergeek.tv.
Like, uh... switch to Linux... dude. [Destroy]
I empathise. [Destroy]
Yeah, I think I'm one of these too. [Destroy]
Be as cool as these guys. Be a geek. [Destroy]
There's hope for even the geekiest of guys to get a date. Not with a girl, though. [Display]
Unless... I've definitely seen this site before, many months ago. Looks just as amusing/clever/utterly pointless/waste of money as it did last time. [Details]
Micro$oft evilage. [Details]
Hah, brilliant! The stupidity of the technocretin never fails to astound and amuse. Especially this and this. [Display]
Microsoft finally does something about Hotmail spam? Surely not. I hesitate to put this in the 'Geek' category, since nobody even vaguely intelligent or competent should have any excuse for using Hotmail. [Details]
> Stuff

An important reminder, to keep things in perspective. [Destroy]
Weapons of mass denial of service. [Details]
This is just so... Gilliam? Lovely music. [Destroy]
And for god's sake, DON'T PANIC! [Details]
That's what you get when you give your bank details to a Nigerian you've only ever communicated with through email. [Details]
Not as cheesy as his grin. [Details]
Gollum should blatantly have been nominated for an Oscar. So should Peter Jackson. So should "The Two Towers" itself, actually. Disgusting. [Details]
Ooh, close. [Details]
Buy shares in Microsoft and Google, for a start. [Details]
A Comic Of The Day (well, week)? Can this be? [Display]

Posted by Stormcaller at 6:48 PM GMT [Link]

Monday, February 17, 2003 - "A Tale In The Desert"

Well, A Tale In The Desert has been released. Time for me to start salivating all over the net.
Over 2000 accounts created in the first day, and 500 paid accounts by the second. Not a bad start, considering the total lack of conventional marketing or publicity. A slashdotting certainly helped, and the servers coped admirably well with even that. The big news as far as /. is concerned is that ATITD has debuted with a working Linux client, something never previously accomplished by a MMORPG team, and also that the game was completed with so few developers - two full-time programmers and a handful of part-time interns working on the art.
You've all heard me ranting and raving about the game and how good it is before, so I'm not going to get into too much detail - have a read of the official site for more. Through three successful Betas, two of which I took an active part in, ATITD has gone from strength to strength. Through updates of the graphics engine, rewrites of lots of the content, continuously added features, tests and mini-games, redone models and animations and recently a new website, the game has just gotten better. After the first weekend of Beta 2, a 56-hour long session back in January 2002 I wrote this article on my experiences. I continued devoting lots of time to playing this fantastic game, leading a guild, participating in the fantastic growing community as well as the social and political part of the game, accomplishing, helping and having fun. This is definitely a game I'd recommend to anyone - as long as you have some time to spend to get to know it. There is no direct combat or killing, but this isn't really important when there is so much to see, to do, to experience and to enjoy.
Unfortunately, Stormcaller won't be returning to the fertile River Plains, the rich Valley of Kings or the deep Sinai desert. Not for the moment, anyway. I would love to be playing, and would be prepared to pay the modest price of $13.95 a month (no box price, either, and a free 30 day/24 hr trial), but I have neither the free time nor the money to spend on Egypt. I would happily buy a full year's account just to pay for the great time I had during Beta, but again, I don't have the money to do this. Maybe in a few months I will rejoin the quest for the glory of Egyptian society and to help thwart the evil stranger, but for now my guild (and civilisation!) will have to manage without me.
Linkage:
- Official site
- Official forums
- Game manual [PDF]
- Main fan site
- A report on the launch

Posted by Stormcaller at 5:02 PM GMT [Link]

Saturday, February 15, 2003 - "Illegitimus Non Carborundum"

> Science/Tech

GeForceFX: The power of a wind farm and the noise of an express train. [Details]
Semi-interesting post-Columbia article on the future of space travel and the International Space Station, with a nice diagram of the ISS. [Details]
NASA reckons they've found evidence to prove to existance of "dark energy", an unknown force that counteracts gravity and ensures the continued expansion and acceleration of the universe. Not sure I'm too happy about the last paragraph of this article, though. NASA will announce this later in the week, apparently. [Details]
Broadband over the national grid would be great - but will it work, and will it ever happen if it does? [Details]
Israeli security firm Meganet claims to have created truly uncrackable encryption - but others have made the same claims before. [Details]
> Geek

Those bastards at NTL have done it again. This time they've limited their users to 1GB a day usage, which is basically the equivalent for heavier users of having their connection speed reduced to 128kbps. For someone paying £35 for a 1MB connection, that's more than a pound per gigabyte! [Details]
An excellent article on spam, measures that can be taken to reduce the amount reaching your inbox and what can be done on a larger scale through legislation and international agreements. If you're really lazy, skip to the conclusion. [Details]
I'm moving to Missouri. [Details]
No wonder the UK government is so useless - they're there, but nobody can actually prove that they exist. [Details]
Remember Doctor Sbaitso? Well, you probably don't. Anyway, 'he' was a software psychologist that came with the original 8-bit Soundblaster sound cards. You could have a rudimentary conversation with him, typing in questions which he would not only answer but also reply to verbally, using a then-revolutionary text-to-speech synthesizer. Well, something reminded me of him today. You can download him at this link - you'd be surprised how difficult the program is to find, given that practically everybody who's owned a PC in the last ten years has had a Soundblaster at one point or another. [Details]
A useful and very pretty visual thesaurus. [Details]
An idle search for the author of the quote in MC's email .sig, Alan J. Perlis, turned up this great page of quotes. [Details]
Googledance! Googie Boogie? [Details]
A new idea, in which viewers pay a few dollars to a company per episode of a TV show they'd like to see and the show is financed and delivered to viewers on DVD. Ambitious, but they actually have some solid ideas. [Details]
"Computer games are good for you, say researchers who studied the complex social interactions in the popular shoot-em-up Counter-Strike." If they think that's good for you, wait until they try a decent game. But yes - I suppose Counterstrike is a good example in terms of clans, leagues, communities, self-regulating social etiquette etc. [Details]
I agree - gamers have consistently proved that enough of them working together can accomplish pretty much anything in a game setting, so why not in other situations? [Details]
> Stuff

Hope everyone had a good Valentine's Day! [Destroy]
Conquer the world and oppress your people, all from the safety of your home. [Details]
It's a real shame that the obvious photoshops on the next page give this away as fake. [Details]
Crazy Japanese guys imitating Beat 'Em Up games, with real fire. [Details]
More stupid people playing with fire. Picture links at the bottom. [Details]
And yet more - this time it's the Lord of the Rings fans with their flaming marshmallow Balrogs! [Details]
Yes, this offering from Rathergood is a few weeks old, but I forgot to link it at the time, and we really like it. [Destroy]
A nice day out for the whole family. [Details]
I don't know - or care, really - who Steve is (something to do with Hula Hoops), but he's apparently innocent. Update: just saw the latest Hula Hoops advert. Well, now I know who Steve is, but I still don't care. [Destroy]
Click, my pretties, click! [Destroy]
Read this. Or just skim it. Then look at the title and URL of the page. Yes, folks, this "invention" is officially registered at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Now as much as I normally enjoy making fun of Americans, their government or anything done by the fine citizens of the United States, this is just too easy. [Details]
Kamakazi sent me this link to an incredible little game - it's even better than Monkey Lander! Horribly addictive. [Destroy]
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (fear of long words) gives this away as probably mostly faked, but it's funny anyway [Details]
Rub nads all over your hair... it's only natural. [Details]
A simple but delightful - and different - little game. Control it by speaking/shouting/blowing/beeping/"jump!"ing into your microphone. [Destroy]

Posted by Stormcaller at 7:10 PM GMT [Link]

Saturday, February 15, 2003 - "Contented Pursuits"

Right, let's list all those stupid games that stupid people are playing at the moment at school when they have nothing better to do. I was going to link (and ridicule, naturally) a couple of these in this weekend's links update but there were enough to warrant their own post. Honestly - I go to all this trouble every week finding all these great links, and people play crap like this. Go play Spacecab already.
A pointless game where a little guy jumps over buildings. Its only saving grace are the little animations when he dies (very often). [Destroy]
Lots of people have been playing this lately - and I'll admit it's actually quite good. But I'm certain it went around MORAT I linked it on Catnews at least three months ago. [Destroy]
This particularly awful game has only popped up in the last week or two. I've yet to try it myself, and I hope never to have to. [Destroy]
The "worm game" is retro but ultimately boring. [Destroy]
Ugh - Super Slime Soccer. I think I ridiculed this a few weeks ago. Fun the first time, and even the second, but given that games last only a couple of minutes each, it gets very old very quickly. Dying out gradually, thankfully, though the younger kids are still at it. [Destroy]
Now here's a game worth playing: the original 1991 Sonic the Hedgehog game, run on an online emulator through Java. Only problem is I get people emailing me asking why this won't run at home then failing to download/install Jabba correctly when I reply. [Destroy]
Of course, they didn't find this version I've linked here from the original Hoss 69 site, flamjam.com - no, of course not. They found it on addictinggames.com, which I'm not going to dignify with a hyperlink. At least it gave me the opportunity to amaze everyone by showing them that right clicking trick that lets you go up to a couple of thousand miles per hour! [Destroy]
Curveball: the inferior ripoff of Liquid.se's fantastic 3D Pong game, affectionately termed Pong³ by... uh, me. [Destroy]
Have a search through this week's "Stuff" links, and last week's, and in most weeks' posts for some good games to play online. Here are a few to start off with:
Acno's Energizer - The ever classic Acno, complete with kickass music. Scroll down far enough in 'S' in the custom levels section and you'll find three or four made by me)
Triscuit 4x4 - three dimensions and four wheel drive.
Alien Hominid - Yeah, it's on Newgrounds, but it was partly made by Synj, creator of Koy and other cool 3D animations.
Interface Escape - it has jetpacks. What more do you need to know?
Spacecab - as previously mentioned. Twice, I think.
RC Rally - takes forever to load, but the music alone is worth the wait.
Spear Toss - By the ever excellent Makai Media. The game in which almost everyone has so nearly beaten the all-time record.
Monkey Lander - Self-explanatory.
Bouterdart - so this is festive, foreign and frankly stupid, but it's still worth a link and a look.
Bookworm - No idea why this is so good. It just is.

Posted by Stormcaller at 12:37 AM GMT [Link]

Thursday, February 13, 2003 - "Idioteque"

"A man is being questioned by anti-terrorism police after smuggling a live hand grenade into the UK through Gatwick Airport. The arrest followed a security clamp-down at London's other major airport, Heathrow, which involved tanks and a military cordon. The BBC's Margaret Gilmore said she had learned that the military operation was sparked by MI5 intelligence that a group was plotting to shoot down an aircraft.
A spokesman for the home secretary said people should not "jump to conclusions" about the Gatwick arrest. "It is not uncommon for people in airports to be discovered with some form of weaponry. It doesn't mean they are all al-Qaeda terrorists," he said."
- BBC News
World on high terror alert. Large army presence at airports. Nimrod surveillance aircraft patrolling above London. Man brings live grenade into Gatwick Airport. "Don't jump to conclusions - perfectly normal", says home office. Go figure.

Posted by Stormcaller at 10:32 PM GMT [Link]

Sunday, February 9, 2003 - "The Internet: Where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents"

> Science/Tech

I always figured that was how they did the customised radio stations for cinemas and stuff - like you always get Dr. Fox on at Warner Village cinemas, and blockbusters, virgin etc. all seem to have their own radio channels playing in-store. Well, this is the same kinda thing. Evil New York Times website, you'll have to register for free to read this article, blah blah. [Details]
Microsoft's vision of the future has microchips in every appliance, technology controlling the home and automatic... well, everything, uh, everywhere. But the really amazing thing is that in their imaginary, perfect world of the future there is no graffiti, crime, bluescreens etc. Touchscreens on the exterior wall? In North London? You must be kidding, someone'll come along and smash it. And have they ever heard of rain? Ice? Lightning? Oh, and there's no toilet or bathroom either, by the way. [Details]
Scientists create the darkest material on Earth, reflecting 10 to 20 times less light than the stealthy black paint used on bombers and the like. So quite dark, then. [Details]
The latest "death of the floppy" article. Well, it should really have gone five years ago, and VHS has no excuse, but I definitely linked a similar article about three months ago and they're still here. [Details]
Porn straight to your WAP phone - how handy. [Details]
Ah, Roboto-Chan! [Details][Details]
Dubya gets ready to deprive Iraqis of their porn fix. [Details]
Monster trucks. If you're into that kind of thing. [Details]
> Geek

This is genuinely shocking and upsetting - and incredible stupid. Have a read of the IRC logs and you will see what I mean. Last month, a 21 year old guy from Arizona died of a massive drug overdose while live on webcam and being cheered on by a channel full of people on IRC. There's also a discussion on MetaFilter here if you feel up to reading more after the logs. [Details]
Blimey. DALnet IRC plan to stop all file transfers across the network from the 1st of March. Never saw that one coming. Well, there goes 90% of the activity (and users) on the network - say byebye to DALnet, and be thankful we still have Criten and Undernet for all our warez needs. [Details]
The biggest virus in the history of computers - and it's been right under our noses for a few years now. [Details]
The latest guide on upgrading a gaming machine. [Details]
Why did Star Trek: Nemesis divebomb? Well, because it was a Star Trek movie. Deal with it. Nobody cares. [Details]
Some information on the new game on the way from the Frontline Force team, "FLF II: Defiance". [Details]
A good breakdown on why Manga and Anime costs so much in the West when it's a lot cheaper in Japan. [Details]
> Stuff

An excellent and touching poem written by MC - "Seven Heros". [Details]
Breed a colony of single-celled, few-byte organisms. Or kill it. Quick. Either way, just get it away from me. [Destroy]
Well, this has got me stumped. Well done to Adam for finding this game, and damn him for showing it to me. Can anyone solve this? Solutions to my email, and you get a prize. [Destroy]
I can't believe they left out the Stonecutters episode, but I think Entertainment Weekly have made a good list of the top 25 Simpsons episodes. [Details]
...and a top 50 of quotes, for completeness' sake. [Details]
Totally worth the 5min walk. [Destroy]
The Dark Lord resides in the fortress at Barad-D.C. in Ameridor. [Display]
Talking of Dark Lords, Michael Jackson is a freak, looks like a chimp, has no nose and should be seriously investigated by social services. [Details]
Feed this grotesque abomination of a... thing. [Destroy]
How many pieces of string would it take to get to the moon? [Details]
Socks! And lots of them. They even match. [Details]
Perhaps an appropriate belly ring for certain girls. A great animated gif, too. [Details]
Talking of animated gifs, I've made some of a few of my friends using pictures taken with my webcam. Four so far. [Display]
It's the new Hyakugojyuuichi!! - just as wierd, but better, cleverer and even more full of Western pop culture references. Actually has kickass music too. The long-awaited (by a sad few) new "Fanimutation" (from "Animutation" (from "Animé mutation" (from "animation mutation"))). [Destroy]
Get a CD recording of the gig you're at as soon as it finishes. What a good idea! [Details]

Posted by Stormcaller at 12:21 AM GMT [Link]

Monday, February 3, 2003 - "The Achievement of the Feat"

> Science/Tech

I'm not going to mention the Columbia shuttle disaster after this. I made my thoughts clear in my last post. No links either - if you want to read about it, you can't avoid all the stories and articles flying around the web. The subject of this post, a phrase I picked out of Dickens' "Hard Times" (I'm studying it at the moment) earlier in the week, seems appropriate in a sad kind of way.
Ever wanted to know what punch the Apache helicopter is packing and see close-up pictures of the chopper in action? No? You're either female or lying. [Details]
I'll probably be dead soon, then. [Details]
Slashdot gives a lot of interesting links on the concept of "smart dust" - thousands of tiny wireless sensors organised into a distributed network that gather information and report it back to a central command. Here's a good article on the subject by the ever interesting Ars Technica. [Details]
I want one! [Details]
lzip - a lossy compression utility. Watch your files compress down to as little as 0% of their original filesize. [Details]
> Geek

Harry Knowles' Ain't It Cool News network is moving on to video games. Oh good. [Details]
Healthcare for hackers - sounds fair to me. [Details]
So God is clearly a gangsta-rapping, jive-talking, critter-squishing, weed-smoking, badass mutha. Behold the new, slightly altered version of the bible. [Details]
Blegh. [Details]
Some more tech support user idiocy. Lots of stories on this page, Englishpunk liked this one. [Details]
> Stuff

Lots of random flash stuff this week, mostly snurched from the b3ta newsletters of the past three weeks.
A lovely little.. uh, pie thing, from Weebl. [Destroy]
...and finally a new episode of Mr. Stabby. [Destroy]
Little goth girl vs big chunky robot dude. Guess who wins. [Destroy]
Funky little space jetpack platform game. [Destroy]
Rock. Paper. Scissors. Bears. Breasts. Nuclear weapons. [Destroy]
Definitely not a safe thing to watch at work/school/anywhere. It's not even any good. In fact, let's invent a new link tag: [Dodgy]
Neither is this, but it's actually very funny. [Dodgy]
While I'm at it, let's have a quick recap on the link tag policy for those who never used to read Catnews. "Details" is the usual "here's the link", thing. "Download" involves downloading something - a large movie, music track, game, demo or other file or around a megabyte or more. "Destroy" applies to anything presented in an at least semi-evil format - flash, Java (Jabba), gratuitous use of Javascript (Jabbascript) etc. "Display" is for images or image galleries. And now we have "Dodgy", which means that the link probably contains nudity or other questionable material, and I take no responsibility if you get fired/expelled/slapped for following this link. I tend not to link that kind of stuff unless there's actually a purpose behind it or it's just damn funny (see above), but it happens. Deal with it.
Icon Wars! Of course, none of them could stand up to minesweeper. [Destroy]
Interesting article. Have a read. [Destroy]
A fun way of spending a few grand, especially if you don't have to actually pay for it. Sample your dream drumkit online. [Destroy]
Did you know that Walkers Crisps were owned by Pepsico? Sorry, no relevance to anything, except that they've now brought back those retro "Salt And Shake" crisps, which are completely pointless.
Less toys, more noise! [Destroy]
The second coolest spud cannons I've ever heard of. The first being here. [Details]

Posted by Stormcaller at 5:51 PM GMT [Link]

Sunday, February 2, 2003 - "Columbia"

You know, this has actually hit me more than most of the other crap that goes on in the world.
I'm eating lunch, watching the news, and BBC News 24 say that there'll be coverage of the shuttle landing in 7 minutes. Great, let's watch that for 15 mins. A few minutes go past. BBC say "Oh, it's past the scheduled time but the shuttle hasn't landed yet. Let's ignore this and cover some other pointless human interest story". Switch over to CNN, where we see a routine control room... then some worried-sounding but vague messages... then a contingency declared by NASA... then an emergency declared...
Then we see video of the shuttle straking through the sky over Dallas, breaking into pieces.
I ended up camping in front of the TV for over an hour, then talking about it online for another hour while tuned into NASA TV, then back at the TV. Watching a story like this actually unfold, where you expect everything to go as planned, is a lot more disturbing than just hearing about it afterwards.

Posted by Stormcaller at 5:41 PM GMT [Link]