06/11/2002 @20:09:23 ^00:32:06

Hmm...? Is this... Is this thing on? Can anyone hear me? Hello?

Okay it's apology for retarded programming time. The clocks going back a couple of weekends ago broke my update scripts. Whoops. Complete lack of foresight on my part. UMMGH

Must admit that I knew this was going to happen a long time ago, but I thought I'd have had that makefile-based system mentioned a couple of months ago operational by now. As that's really, really, not going to happen, on account of it being an unworkable pile of crap, other measures had to be sought. Hence I dithered for a long time, then yesterday, used a small modification to the code I'd written to work out the epoch times and translate the site to the format for the makefile system. Today I proceeded to rewrite the original update script to use epoch times, like it should have done in the first place.

So yeah. Hello. Welcome back. Nothing much else has changed. You're not getting to see the new script.

Are you still here?

So what's happened recently? Nothing really out of the ordinary, I've just sat around getting more and more unqualified. I had an interesting idea about the nature of hell, but given that I came up with it at like 4:30am one morning when I couldn't sleep, it's pretty depressing, so I probably won't post it. Plus putting it into words might enrage me again and hey that wouldn't be good now would it!

I finally posted on Doomworld's forums after having an account for some five and a half months. Given how avoidant I am of people I don't know, this is something of a personal triumph. Five posts down the line, and cutting responses from a community that seems to have far more than its fair share of sarcastic misanthropists have yet to materialise so I think I'm doing pretty well. More on this, or at least the IRC version of this, later.

Halloween came and went in its usual washed out, wasted opportunity way. Every year I think "It's Samhain, the most eldritch and unreal night of the year, there must be something satanic I can do" but it always ends up the same way, in front of the computers. The nearest I managed was in 1998 when I convinced these girls to accompany me on a journey to a nearby crossroads on the night in order to hear their futures divined on the wind. Unfortunately they ended up going to a stoner's party in Coventry instead.

Also it was bonfire night yesterday, but unlike last year it didn't go quite so ballistic, and I wasn't tempted every five minutes to say "My gods if the terrorists came and attacked now, nobody would notice".

Work on my "Tribute to Slugfest 9" Doom map has largely stagnated, as you might well expect. Honestly, I've got a head full of ideas for stuff to do, programs to write, other programs to modify, yadda yadda... but no motivation to get on with them. It torments me, like everything else... On the other hand, Sandbox, a program in BBC Basic which built a huge circular map and filled it with random monsters for the purpose of investigating the dynamics of large monster fights, was converted to Perl in order that it might be able to be used by a wider audience. I'd like to one day distribute it... but, typically, it's not yet ready...

Pete posted an astonishing article (4/11/2002) on his site about how he feels sorry for people who don't have his confidence, who avoid situations, who let others do the talking, "who battered their self-esteem so heavily that it put them in that state". As you might expect, I managed to take this very personally. However, looking on the bright side, I managed to once again resist the temptation to abuse my root privileges on the site's server by scribbling obscenities all over the page... Also, I realised that while he might not think he can talk to anyone without making a fool of himself, but those of us he talks to might argue otherwise ;)

Webnewsstats has a new page, this one combines posts to a number of internal Warwick newsgroups and puts the lot in one table. It's nice to know that writing the code so that newsgroups could be combined actually works, heh. Yes I know that at the moment the page is probably too wide for your browser window, but you can blame Mr Joey Jo Jo Ridiculously Long Name for that.

And of course, IRC...

Hilarious IRC quotage!

Seeing as bash.org doesn't seem to like the submissions that have been sent there from #warwick, I thought I might copy out a few humourous moments from my logs and post them here!

You'll buy anything I say!

I'm not a very good outrageous liar, I tend to giggle too much when trying to bullshit people in real life. But on IRC it's different! If you're giggling profusely as you type, nobody will know!

On #warwick there is a modified InfoBot running, called bisc ("I am a modified 0.45.3 infobot named after my predecessor `misc' and my owner's keen liking of biscuits.") The following gem of a quote came about as I was the only one present at the time who pokes bisc's source code to see how the thing works. It had temporarily died, and Pete, playing silly buggers under the above-mentioned sure impression that he wasn't looking like a fool to anyone, had stolen its nickname, forcing it to rename itself when it came back. Afterwards, this happened.

Oct 26 23:46:07 - Oct 26 23:47:58
  <RjY> it might try to change its name again
  <RjY> there you go
 <Pete> And sanity was restored
  <RjY> i can stop searching the code now
  <RjY> good because i don't know where to start:/
  <Ool> Why did it change to bisc2?
  <RjY> bisc: nickometer bisc1
 <bisc> 'bisc1' is 22% lame, RjY
  <RjY> bisc: nickometer bisc2
 <bisc> 'bisc2' is 14% lame, RjY
  <RjY> that's why
  <RjY> it was trying to de-lame its nick
  <Ool> Weird.
  <Ool> It does that?
  <RjY> rofl
  <RjY> you'll buy anything i say about bisc
  <Ool> Oh, shut up.

But I couldn't shut up! I had the taste... for blood! Damn, it'd be so much easier if I had a script to change my xchat logs into something I could dump into here...Hey! Guess what I just wrote, heh...

Oct 27 01:31:54 - Oct 27 01:34:50
         --> Amyvector (myla@modem-1371.antelope.dialup.pol.co.uk)
             has joined #warwick
 <Amyvector> hmmm, didn't crash
 <Amyvector> bisc, time?
      <bisc> time is, like, Sun Oct 27 01:32:34 2002
       <RjY> teh vectar is bakc
 <Amyvector> heh
 <Amyvector> vectors are quite dangerous you know?
       <RjY> i stabbed myself with one once
       <RjY> oh wait
       <RjY> no that was a breadknife
  <BabyDave> Errr
  <BabyDave> ...
 <Amyvector> you spabbed yourself with a breadknife?
       <RjY> rofl
 <Amyvector> roflt
       <RjY> you'll buy anything i say
 <Amyvector> i don't beleive htat
 <Amyvector> you'd have to be afucking moron
  <BabyDave> You're doing it deliberately now, admit it

And it didn't stop there... A couple of days later...

Oct 29 01:34:44 - Oct 29 01:36:59
  <Amy> when is your birthday?
  <RjY> today
  <Ool> "not much is, like, comming up. Spelling"
  <RjY> i thought that was your sacred quote
  <RjY> there was one that i cancelled and you were like "noooo!"
  <Ool> No.
  <Ool> That is "he"
  <Ool> he?
 <bisc> somebody said he was the only one for me
  <Ool> Is it really your birthday?
  <RjY> yes
  <RjY> i'm 24
  <Amy> today?
  <RjY> yes
  <Ool> 28th or 29th?
  <Amy> good point
  <Ool> Happy birthday, anyway.
  <RjY> lol
  <Amy> happy birthday rob
  <RjY> you'll buy anything i say
  <RjY> amy you were right, irc is so easy to lie on
      * Ool snores

Happy birthday indeed. My word... It's not like I didn't post all over this site, aaw, etc at the time about how I was going to a rave, and then there was the whole technical difficulties thing... My gods. But anyway.

Mistaken identity!

I've also been hanging around in the various Doom channels on Freenode (to which I wish they'd move #warwick, because it's bigger, faster, has more servers, especially in Europe, has more secure and robust services, it's full of Doom channels, programming channels, Debian's channels, whereas Astrolink is fucking empty...) Now the Doom IRC community, intimately linked with Doomworld and its predecessors, has been around for ever so it's quite a hard society to break into, but I'm trying, at least trying not to get banned for being a clueless noob, especially since I've not really made a well-known contribution like made a load of maps or a source port or whatever. So basically, this means lurking and lots of it. Hence the months and years of silence on Doomworld's forums.

I'm usually in #zdoom which is currently the busiest channel, I occasionally say something but mostly I'm idling. On this occasion I've been doing that, saying "heh" every so often, etc. Anyway so I switch back from web browsing and I see some highlighted lines! Someone's mentioned my name, okay, what's going on...

04/11 00:29 - 04/11 00:30
   <macvilewhore> just cuz we havent heard of or seen the caco in
                  doom3 doesnt mean there won't be one
       <Linguica> i've heard that there is
   <macvilewhore> where?
        <shaviro> Linguica: really? where?
      <aca|doom3> nooooooo
       <Linguica> sources
 <HyzdutheDragon> We haven't seen a cyberdemon yet either,
                  and there should be one.
     <SargeBaldy> carmack
   <macvilewhore> INMYPANTS
     <SargeBaldy> he's spying in here at all times
              <-- lament has quit (Remote closed the connection)
        <shaviro> Linguica: good sources?
   <macvilewhore> hyzdu: there is one, im 100% sure heh
       <Linguica> yes
     <SargeBaldy> he's using the name "RjY"

...at which point my jaw hits the keyboard. What? This guy thinks I'm John Carmack..? Okay I can knock up stupid scripts to process IRC logs in a few minutes, but ultra-advanced 3d game engines... dear lord... I made the predictable response.

04/11 00:31 - 04/11 00:31
 <RjY> rofl

Another comedy extract.

04/11 01:46 - 04/11 01:50
            <RjY> heh
            <Zal> heh nice
     <SargeBaldy> stfu carmack
      <anarkavre> heh
     <SargeBaldy> go back to work on your game
              --> Ralphis (sys@208-59-252-51.c3-0.rdl-ubr1.trpr-rdl.pa.cable.rcn
                  .com) has joined #zdoom
  <BigBadGangsta> Zal = Carmack
 <HyzdutheDragon> yayay
     <SargeBaldy> leave #zdoom alone
 <HyzdutheDragon> ROOFIS
  <BigBadGangsta> HyzdutheDragon : say "thank you bbg"
     <SargeBaldy> no RjY
            <RjY> rofl
 <HyzdutheDragon> thank you bbg
      <anarkavre> carmack is here?
     <SargeBaldy> he's a spy
  <BigBadGangsta> No problem HyzdutheDragon!
       <Danarchy> Carmakc likes to say 'rofl'
     <SargeBaldy> RjY is carmack in disguise
            <RjY> yeah because carmack would really be logged in here from a UK
                  dialup account :P
      <anarkavre> heh
     <SargeBaldy> of course
     <SargeBaldy> so you wouldn't be suspected
       <Danarchy> he's secretly Brittish
      <anarkavre> carmack belongs to the u.n.
     <SargeBaldy> anyway
     <SargeBaldy> i know your secret RjY
     <SargeBaldy> and we all do now
        <Ralphis> i am roofis
        <Ralphis> hear me roar
     <SargeBaldy> so give up the cover
                * HyzdutheDragon listens to roofis roar
      <anarkavre> doom 3 is really a solution to stopping terrorism
     <SargeBaldy> heh
        <Ralphis> RAWWWWWRRRRR
     <SargeBaldy> how does that work?
     <sanmingzhi> why would you want to stop terrorism
     <SargeBaldy> RjY, enlighten us

It wasn't all good... Here's the bit where a few of the more seasoned denizens let slip with a bit of information, and I find out again what they think of noobs... However, I love this because this is what I do best. Idle. Eavedrop. Pick stuff up that I'm not supposed to know. Fantastic. (Then post it, but censor it, because if they ever found this page, I'd get banned for sure...)

04/11 01:12 - 04/11 01:15
      <Danarchy> because #doom went elsewhere
        <lament> i'm not sure if not being banned in #doom is a good thing
 <BigBadGangsta> Heh
      <Danarchy> hell
      <Danarchy> I was banned on #doom pretty much every time I visited
    <sanmingzhi> no one is banned in #doom right now
 <BigBadGangsta> Heh
      <Danarchy> ...
    <sanmingzhi> its a utopia of shared unmongliness
        <lament> heh
        <lament> sanmingzhi: #doom on **CENSORED**?
    <sanmingzhi> of course
        <lament> heh
      <notmewse> wtf are you doing you retard
      <Danarchy> NEIN!
      <notmewse> don't advertise it
           <RjY> heh
      <Danarchy> heh
        <lament> heh
           <RjY> somewhere else to lurk :)
      <notmewse> fuck off!
 <BigBadGangsta> IMO though, when I really thought about it, #doom was better if
                 you realy think about it hard.
             --- notmewse has changed the topic to: type "/clear" for hot sex 
                 kthx lol

But this, and this is the last bit of this stupidly long update, I promise, was sort of the best bit, because here's where I find out I'm not as invisible as I thought I was.

04/11 01:56 - 04/11 01:57
        <Ralphis> Zal = Zaldron?
      <anarkavre> zal = carmack?
       <Danarchy> I have two computers
       <Danarchy> neiter will even run UT right
            <Zal> yes and no
      <anarkavre> [20:45] <BigBadGangsta> Zal = Carmack
   <macvilewhore> heh
        <Ralphis> nah
 <HyzdutheDragon> There's two Carmacks in here
        <Ralphis> Zal isnt Carmack
       <Danarchy> so hes both Carmack and hes not
 <HyzdutheDragon> Zal and RjY are both Carmack
        <Ralphis> rofl
        <Ralphis> RjY isnt carmack
 <HyzdutheDragon> Yeah he is.
           <Liam> who is rjy
       <Danarchy> He's in both UK and Argentina at the same time
  <BigBadGangsta> Yes he is
      <anarkavre> carmack has split personalities
  <BigBadGangsta> Heh
        <Ralphis> RjY has been around for a while

Woohoo! And if you've read this far, then you must be very bored! :P Bye!