09/09/2003-10/09/2003 @03:15:43 ^05:00:20

RUDE NAME, SAME BASSLINE, FUCK OFF!

What on Earth are you going on about, you muppet?

badger badger badger badger MUSHROOM MUSHROOM HELP ME PLEASE!!

I'd like to talk about that badger mushroom snake thing. It may already be too late to post this, as the damn thing was linked on SA's front page today. No I'm not posting a link to it, that's the point, this shit is rapidly becoming ubiquitous. And I'm in on the ground floor! Well, I would have been if I had posted about it a few days ago but them's the breaks! First time I saw it was Sunday afternoon when I saw the thread. I thought it was very funny. However when I saw someone post "right on cue, it's all over livejournal" I knew it was going to be the next peanut butter jelly time. You know, that dancing banana that was funny the first time you saw it but got old really fast?

Anyway yes like I said it's good; you have the crazy animation, zany off-the-wall humour and catchy music. The bassline's good. But the thread linked to another flash that was a lot better, it was an even crazier animation with better music. I swear I left this one running for about half an hour and bear in mind it's a twenty two second loop so you know it caught me.

Apparently the music is by Mouse on Mars or something which didn't surprise me at all, I remember listening to their stuff way back when I used to listen to Peel. In fact I might have to rip the melody to use in a "comedy tune megamix" also featuring some or all of Yakkety Sax, Spanish Flea, Campbell-Kelly Loves You, and Treat Me Mean I Need The Reputation. But that won't be finished until Christmas if I do it at all.

Light goes on, light goes off! Light goes on, light goes off!

The anARCHy strobelight is BACK and it's gone GLOBAL. Requires a Javascript-capable browser (shit I feel so dirty for saying that)

First appearing as a BBC BASIC program way back in 1994, the code was revised several times then rewritten totally in ARM Assembler and features such as programmable "light on" and "light off" periods were added. Rather like the GNU version of Hello World in its completely overproduced pointlessness, the anARCHy strobelight program was the definitive program for making your monitor screen turn completely white, then completely black, at short intervals.

It was interesting to note that the effects could be replicated by the operating system by redefining the background colour to 15 (flashing black/white) then doing a couple of *FX calls (9 and 10 I think) to set the period. What else boasts this kind of built-in functionality?

Anyway go forwards a few years and here we are using Loooonix which runs on SUCH A HUGE RANGE OF HARDWARE that IT'S REALLY HARD TO PROGRAM GRAPHICS. But fear not because one day I thought I could remake the strobe program using ncurses! I played it at my party and unwisely mentioned that I might make another version using SDL, a suggestion I was badgered about (HAHAHA AND MUSHROOMED AND SNAKED ABOUT HAHAHA OH GOD HAHA) for a long time afterwards.

But no! Doing it in PHP and Javascript is better, because (a) it was easy enough for me to do in the 47 seconds before my brain loses interest in stuff and (b) it's GLOBAL! You could run it in an internet cafe or something and that's hilarious! Oh snap, look, Mr Internet Cafe Owner, we're having a rave in your cafe, bustin' up the place layin' down the phat bass yo!

Oh yeah, you can adjust the black time and white time by adding stuff onto the end of the URL. It's pretty obvious how to do this if you click it I hope. Have fun and don't wear out your trainers!

The Hulk figures you get in boxes of Shreddies are funny.

I think that's about it for this update, the title of which comes from probably the funniest drum and bass record ever. It's a parody of a flame! Oh my. I was going to write a whole long thing about Memento Mori, Memento Mori II and Fava Beans, but that will have to wait.

Also, if the Idiot Brigade think they can tempt me back into Gobshite Hell with offers of computer hardware with no implied cost they're going to have come up with stuff that's better than "comically underpowered" and "fucking broken". Gods help me but I was tempted before I saw through this nefarious plot. Goodnight, and keep watching the skies!