Wall·E

I just went and watched Pixar’s “Wall·E”.

It’s great. It’s simply great. Simplistic characters, but yet integrity to both. Funny, charming, and alarming in some places (looking at the immoblised, fat human race makes me worry; because we’re nearing that anyway).

Seeing how desecrated the world is at the beginning of the film, and seeing it slowly repopulate at the end, you realise the fragility of what is at stake; are we doing enough?
It seems that all the efforts are futile, but yet we can make a difference at least. The worst damage is done, time will heal, if left to do its job.

There’s hope for the future; but every day this hope grows slimmer until we achieve 0% waste. You know, if the world keeps going at its current rate, chances of survival will decrease exponentially.

We’re not even doing the job we were originally intended to do; how do I explain this?
Well, if you’re like me, and you’re a Christian, no doubt you’ve probably read Genesis. You know, Adam had a task; look after the Earth. Look after the animals. Look after the plants.

And now look at us; we fill huge areas of land with rubbish. We could at least compact it, or convert it into fuel somehow.

Hey, an idea.

Turn landfills into biofuel. It should be possible, considering the amount of burnable waste. Some landfill waste could be converted to fertilizers, help growing things, I don’t know.

I’m no activist. But it’s food for thought, all the same.

Feel free to comment!

If you read this blog regularly, don’t hesitate to comment! I’m interested in anything any reader has to say; whether it’s a question or a correction, then feel free and go ahead.

I wonder why so many people react adversely if you try to correct them. I don’t like being corrected, but if I know the person who is doing the correcting is doing it with good reason, then I will take on board what they have said. I find it easier to listen to people who can explain themselves clearly on the internet; I appreciate that some people do not have English as their first language, and they are excluded from my Grammar-Nazism. However, people who do use English as their primary language can’t just think that they can get away with “lol dood ur spelign isnt good u shud practise more” without me noticing. I can be harsh, I know, but it’s all in good intention; why should people have to have difficulty in reading something because it was quicker to type? If these people put their spelling and grammar into practice they’d become a much faster typist anyway. I feel sorry for people without English as their primary language when they’re trying to find help on the internet. Languages are hard enough to understand as it is, without people shortening and throwing acronyms in all over the place. They’ve learned English in its proper form; they’re looking for key words that explain it (at least, that’s what I do if I’m trying to read French).

If people have trouble with spelling, they should use a spellchecker. Mozilla and Opera both support this feature, and since Opera is the best (although my Opera Email is playing up) they should get that browser.

Virtual Linux

Hehe, I’m having fun running Ubuntu in a virtual box; in fact, I’m writing this post from it. Cool, huh?

Check it out;

Linux In a Box

Quantum Physics Through Mario

What this video shows is every single attempt made to complete a really hard Mario hack by this guy who rewrote some of the source code for the Mac version of Snes9x 1.43. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a windows pc to practice on, and he doesn’t know how to do AVI export etc.

So, guess who’s going to have a go (and probably fail, but who cares, right?)? That’s right.

Dwarf Fortress 39d released

Hooray! It also comes complete with a “region locator” enabling you to start in an area with the features that you want quickly and easily.

Cool Photos

Heh, I thought I’d share some of my cool stuff.

Zhiiing!

Super Computer User 2000

The Mystery Man Himself...?

The Weaponsmith v1.0

This is my little utility for Dwarf Fortress; it’s basically a way of quickly adding new weapons to the modfiles.
Downloadable here.

Just run the “setup.exe”!

The Weaponsmith 1.0

Emulation

I love old games. That’s why I downloaded ZSNES so I could play all the old Nintendo classics on my computer. Nothing beats the gameplay;

Go, awesome italian plumber! Kill them dragons!

Which brings me to a point;
New games just don’t have play value anymore. It’s no longer fun to play games. They’re all ARGH HELP oh yuck I just bit a peppercorn and it burst and went down my throat OUCH.

Anyway, what? Oh yeah. They’re all the same; shiny graphics, clunky controls and bad storylines.

The only games that are exempt from this are Team Fortress 2, Portal, The Half-Life Series, and Katamari Damacy.
I think that game producers need more ideas, and less big-bucks people with no imagination. Games need to be made by a group of 1-6 programmers, not these crazed 40-70 size teams with designers and mappers etc. When Super Mario Bros. was made for the NES, it was a project by ONE person. And it’s still one of the most popular games.

RUN MARIO RUN GHOSTS AAAARGHHH

Dwarf Fortress Tweaks

So I replaced the original in-game music with the Moria tune from LotR. It works very well.

And the Durins Door tune for the menus. Nice, eh?

Text Only Browsing II

It’s very strange. Very odd indeed. Fully functional of course, just strange.

It’s like, this is what happens when you go back to basics. This is raw html, and how a computer actually sees it. Pure text, you know?

Which brings me to a point; why do we keep inventing more and more confusing layouts and extra shiny shiny stuff just for websites? Sure, fonts look nice. But still: why not have a basic layout, and have text only browsing?