wow just wow
Shock and awe. You'd think I'd be laughing but no. Good grief.
The Base of Evil more like the The Base of Ripped Off E2/3/4
Earlier on this month I mentioned an episode named Phobos Outpost. In the same week a sequel was released named The Base of Evil. It's pretty much the same idea as the original only instead of taking heavy inspiration from mostly E1 and a bit of E2 it takes from E2 E3 and even E4.
It's an improvement on the first. The architecture is less messy, in particular the texturing is a lot better. The maps are mostly of a similar size and the package feels a lot more balanced. There are complicated chains of secrets, which as always is a pleasant change from the usual "tiny room hiding a couple of bonuses" variety. Finally you get the fun of working out which IWAD map the author was thinking of when he made the section ahead of you.
In short, recommended. But then I think you should play the first one as well, so hey.
Every so often somebody comes along with an enormous map full of high ceilings, moody lighting, and dripping with atmosphere. In newstuff 183 this week there is Deus Vult, a map inspired by the huge maps at the end of Alien Vendetta. It has the same kind of "Woah, holy shit!" effect as Equinox or Phobos: Anomaly Reborn. I mean even ignoring the fact that it's a OpenGL-port-enhanced 1600x1200 screenshot look at this big cathedral thing or whatever it's supposed to be. Or this hellish canyon or even The Throneroom of The Damned, fuck it it's melodramatic language but look at it.
"Having a degree just means you can get rejected by a higher class of employer"
What not to say to a colleague whose daughter has just finished her finals
this time last week I was making myself ill
Yeah last week I went to a barbecue. I took drinks with me. Nobody told me there was going to be pubs as well. I ended up having far too much to drink and reverting to "Oh look here's a girl let's hug her" mode. Oh well I managed to win one of the weird games of darts and half a game of pool. I like darts and pool and don't get to play them often enough.
I just wish I could find some medium between "sober and totally unable to talk to anyone" and "roaring and embarrassingly ratted". Sorry guys
Athlon XP 2500+ 1.83GHz
triv.org.uk was down for ages. Now it's back up with some wild new hardware. I thought it was way overspecified for just shells and dns and a web server but hey. Maybe I'm just jealous that it's faster than my own machine.
The speed of most machines these days is limited more by the speed of their network connection than anything else anyway. I doubled the speed of the processor in my desktop computer and the only time I notice it is during long computationally intensive tasks like compiling kernels or playing extremely large Doom maps.
work sucks balls
Oh god I haven't written about work for ages. It's so dull. I mean, really, really dull. I hate it. A couple of hours feels like a day. I want to finish what I'm doing so I can leave, but it's so dull I do it really slowly. Having PuTTY open helps but only when IRC is busy, which as the term wears on, is becoming less and less often.
I developed a colour scheme for PuTTY which makes it less obvious you're running it. It's black text on a white background and the colours are more pastel. It's not perfect. There are a couple of colour combinations where the foreground is nearly invisible on the background. But it's good enough.
You may recall I was saying about checking scans off a bunch of CDs and lots of disc swapping was involved. Now I was told the other week that although the CDs hadn't been indexed into the database their contents had been transferred to the network. This puzzled me as the reason I'd been faffing around with disc swapping was entirely because the discs weren't on the network. But since I've had the discs all this time, it means that they were put on the network since before they were given to me. This really sucks. I'd been getting really annoyed with constant disc swapping for nothing. It's my stupid fault I should have looked harder. But I take everything my superiors tell me as absolutely correct because they're my superiors and I'll get in trouble if I show them up as wrong. Which never happens because they're always right. Oh god I have no will of my own.
The Simpsons and Channel 4
It's finally happened. The Simpsons has gone from BBC2. It will reappear on prime-time Channel 4 in November or something. That's it. It's over. I can't watch shit on Channel 4. Even if I could ignore those godsawful T4 presenters who will undoubtedly swamp the broadcasts with shit, I can't ignore Channel 4's "quantum randomness" scheduling department. I've already missed more South Park, Futurama, Family Guy etcetc than I care to think about because of those guys and now they're going to do the same to what is probably my favourite TV show ever. Oh well I guess at least it happened after it got mainstream and really shit.
To be quite honest I haven't watched any TV this year, apart from Stargate SG1. That was on Channel 4 as well but in a rare display of consistency it was shown on Sunday afternoons within some two or three hour window.
"I am coming to visit soon. Are you going to hide from me?"
She has returned from the empty void of foreign lands into which I had hoped she had disappeared forever. She mentioned this would be the other day. She led the question. She just wanted to hear my inevitable scream of anguish to be outraged. And after last week when we'd managed to talk for considerable time without my becoming agitated, I thought I was making progress.
I guess even without the led question I'd have liked to see her again. But it'd be like Idiot Brigade Central. She is one thing, the light at the top of the tower that shines so brightly it burns to touch. But they are something else. The stuff of twisted, screaming anger and torment.
laffo what the hell did I just say hahahahaha
he gets your heart a-pumpin, he gets the party jumpin', he's the macho man
hear everybody say it, he's really quite amazing, he's the macho man
Monsters through the Mail
The parcel came of Dave from Link of the Day, for those of you who care. He apparently has a penchant for sending random things through the post. It contained a CD of ancient maps and the first two Doom novels.
The CD was compiled to cash in on the game's early popularity by some company who downloaded a bunch of freely available maps and sold them in a package that totally copied the game's artwork while never mentioning its name. Produced in 1995, it contains maps which are all ancient. The problem with ancient maps is that back then the map format was not so well understood, the game engine's pitfalls were not so well known, and the software that made maps still contained bugs. This means that most ancient maps are utter shite.
However there are some well-known classics on there. Even a cursory glance alerted me to:
- subway.wad: Deimos Subway was a very famous map recreating three stations, part of a underground rail system. It's still one of the finest maps ever made. Read the text files, they set the scene.
- uac_dead.wad: You're being transported to a base overrun by monsters but they've taken out your truck. This map features a finely constructed burning vehicle, lots of space to run around in, and one of the first deliberate uses of invisible floors. Please note it exploits a feature of early Doom engines that doesn't work any more, so you need to use no-clipping to get the red key at the appropriate time.
PS Apologies for lateness of this update. I'll go on about how hilariously bad the books are when I've finished reading them.
?!?
Who the hell sent me a box of doom stuff through the post?
There's no note, and I don't recognise the writing. What the fuck is going on?
UPDATE (12:30pm) haha okay mystery solved, I've checked my email and will finish this up later
I've added 19:42 to snafu's crontab entry because it needs more scans in the evening
Apparently mIRC has a /dccserver command in order to reverse the usual client/server direction of DCC requests. irssi has a dcc_mirc_ctcp variable but gods know what it does
Fuck you and the horse you rode in on
don't stop baby not tonight
I can never get enough of your love
snafu
To snafu I've added a livejournal owned by some guy I don't actually know but who is a constant source of hilarity on the rogue #warwick and so I decided it'd be worth knowing when it gets updated.
I have also reduced its checking frequency. Scans are at 42 minutes past the hours 2, 7, 12, 16, 21, and 23 (presumably that's triv.org.uk local time, I just realised I'm not sure exactly how cron handles timezones) Anyway nobody updates often enough for such frequent checking to be a necessity. Apologies to people who aren't on UK time any more, but if you will go live in strange foreign parts that's your fucking problem I guess. Having said that if you would like any changes please feel free to ask.
client/server
Simplistically the majority of the internet works like this: you have two computers, hosts, whatever, call them C and S. Then S opens a port P to which C connects. Effectively S is saying "I have this sort of information available" (where "this sort of information" is a function of P) and C comes along, says "hello, can I have some of this" and off it goes.
In particular IRC works in exactly the same way, you connect to a server, join a channel, and send messages that the server transmits to all other clients inthe same channel. Encapsulated inside IRC there is another protocol called DCC which is used primarily for file transfer between clients. The client which has the file acts like a server, opening a port the number of which is sent to the other client, which connects to that port and gets the file.
I believe this is the wrong way round to do it. Many clients acting as DCC servers are on machines running behind large firewalls over which the owner of the DCC server has no control. The client who wants the file however is more likely to be a home user with either very little firewalling or at least the ability to open ports in it if required. I think DCC would work a lot better if the client opens the port and sends the port number to the server.
I mean, I know I can give files to other people because I set up iptables with the connection tracking modules, but the number of times I've tried connecting to some DCC server and it's just hung there waiting for data is extremely irritating. I guess it's fortunate that I was just messing with this stuff to see if it worked, and there aren't any files that I really want.
GREMLINS WITH WINGS!
Pick up the cow and throw it through the window
Phobos Outpost
Here we recommend two WADs both called Phobos Outpost. Things these have in common
- In the style of Doom/Ultimate Doom Episode 1 (E1-style) (obvious bracketry)
- Pretty easy, lots of ammunition (of course this is pretty much implied by E1-style)
- Both in last week's newstuff
The first is a single map, running on E1M6. It is architecturally superb, especially the lighting. Darkness sprinkled with pools of light is amazingly atmospheric.
The second is a whole episode of 9 maps of which I've done the first 6. What I've seen so far is heavily inspired by and reminiscent of the original E1 and a number of ancient PWADs, like Serenity. It's pretty simple, that is, there's little in the way of detail correctly aligned textures. But the right idea is there and there's plenty of E1-authentic construction. The middle levels have decently high monster and secret counts and it's all very playable.
Special bonus review! It's not quite E1-style, but it was in last week's newstuff: Lunar Apocalypse is a map set on a space station, quite a lot harder than the previous two due mostly to lack of health and ammunition. It is architecturally well done with decent views of space and the outside of the rectangularly toroid station, in particular of the opposite side (that is through the windows and across the central gap)
If a werewolf jumps on top of your carriage, it will mysteriously burst into flames!
Speaking of flames the most interesting thing that happened last week at work was that the builders downstairs did something and set off the fire alarm. We all dutifully trooped to the nearest fire exit only to find it locked. Hilarious.
If you haven't already guessed from the headings, I went to see Van Helsing yesterday with a few people from the rogue #warwick. Apparently, the wolf actually knocks over an oil lamp, which starts the fire. No explanations have yet been found how they got that far with only four horses (no, wait, transylvanian horses) Plenty of dodgy graphics and unbelievable stunts, which they might have got away with if most of the cast weren't taking it so seriously. Verdict, pretty bad, but that made it very funny.
welcome to the internet
You need to know that the channel topic is i'm talking to myself on irc, how sad is that
05/07 21:04 - 05/07 21:22
<goldrun> Not as sad as not even knowing if you are talking.
<RjY> hello and welcome to the internet how may i help you
<goldrun> I haven't figured this out yet; sorry for the confusion.
<Rob> this your first time using irc and you found my shitty channel
<RjY> hahaha
<RjY> welcome to the internet indeed
<Rob> another satisfied customer
<goldrun> Okay, how do I leave gracefully?
<RjY> type /part
<Rob> type /quit
<RjY> close the window
<Rob> pull the network cable out the back of the machine
<goldrun> Thanks.
-!- goldrun [~goldrun@dpc671420070.direcpc.com] has quit [Quit]
<RjY> that was weird
<Rob> yeah
<Rob> oh well, like i said
<RjY> another satisfied customer
I suspect he was lying but still
oh ok
Another crappy week gone past. I started off still having no work to do. I think I must have spent nearly two days doing nothing. My sort of new boss goes to me, "just what is it that you do here", and also wonders what that black box that I seem to have open all the time is. It was quite embarrassing to say the least. It turned into one of those horrible conversations about jobs and futures and CVs and ugh.
Eventually I sent off some emails and shit and managed to arrange access to the database of scanned records that I keep going on about. But the latest lot of scans haven't been put into it yet, so I was given the actual CDs from which I could make a start. Of course this means when you have a file it could be on any one of seven discs. I indexed the filenames on the discs to make it easier but the disc swapping is still really annoying. Furthermore, because I've got the discs, they won't get put into the database, so I'm pretty much stuck doing it this way.
Then finally on Friday afternoon there was a drinks reception welcoming everyone to the new building. I was pretty much dragged there. Thanks for forcing me to face my social awkwardness, work. I should get paid extra for this kind of crap. Furthermore, I got a dirty look off the vice chancellor. I reckon he thought I was some random student trying to blag it because I was blatantly the scruffiest person there.
It's a bank holiday this weekend so I get an extra day off. The plan is, finish doing this checking, then see if I can't at least get my hours reduced or something because they quite blatantly don't have enough work for me and I hate all this sitting around waiting for something horrible to happen.
