So I haven't written a journal entry for a while (9 years) so I thought I'd update it.

I'm currently looking forward to the 7DRL event in March. I wanted to enter the 2012 one but my programming skills had become rusty. I therefore spent the last year getting back up to full strength in preparation for this year's event. A year of fun, spent on #rgrd on quakenet, programming roguelikes and other experiments in ruby, scheme, c++, SDL, irrlicht, libtcod, gosu...

I haven't managed to actually write anything that you could call "finished" or even really "playable" in the last year, but my skills are as good as they used to be I think. I hope. Sometimes I worry about the ageing brain. I'm often lying on my bed with a pen and paper, getting confused about how to implement something. I know I used to do this in my "prime" too but maybe the problems were harder. I'm 43 now. How long before I can't program any more, or before what I'm capable of programming is too boring to be worthwhile? There are programmers of myth and legend who are still programming in their sixties and seventies, but they were amazing programmers before. Maybe they too have lost their edge and are programming at a reduced skill level.

Pangolins for ever! Through Space and Time!

So, after a long time away from it I have been spending some time in the shady world of IRC again.

It all started because I was downloading the latest episodes of Hikaru No Go over IRC. The only group fansubbing it had stalled for ages, then announced that because the series was now licensed they weren't going to release the last 2 eps. Well, eventually they did, but they only had them available on an fserve on their IRC channel and only for a very limited time, so there I had to be.

Anyways up down and sideways, I started "using" IRC again, starting with visiting the channels of fansubbing groups to download the latest episodes, but ended up of course talking to people. Mistake!

The problem with IRC is that 95% of the time sitting in a channel everyone is idling while they download something from an fserve, so the fascinating conversation goes something like:

[dinadan] !list
[flipsideR] !list
[Illuvatar] !list
[-- adorable_yuki has quit (Read error: Operation timed out)
--- Kumagorou is now known as adorable_yuki
[adorable_yuki] !list
[-- dinadan (Derek@derek.iglou.com) has left #honobono
[-- Habbit[Server] has quit (Write error: connection closed)
[flipsideR] !An encounter with the girls repeated in the sunlight.
[adorable_yuki] !An encounter with the girls repeated in the sunlight.
--] fdf (~fdf@62.58.98.129) has joined #honobono
[-- Illuvatar has quit (Quit: -=SysReset 2.53=-)
[-- fdf has quit (Read error: Connection reset by peer)

Ooooooooooh, fascinating. I DO NOT THINK!

But of course sometimes you get into interesting conversations with people, sometimes they even seem to be adorable chix from exotic regions of the world (even though they're really hairy truck drivers from Texas), so you keep watching the text scroll by, waiting for the next interesting thing to happen, sometimes even desperately thinking up ways to start conversations that don't sound aol lame.

So, just like with muds and MMORPGs you sit there and waste your whole life in front of a glowing Xchat display. (Or, if you are more 1337 you waste your time in front of a glowing bitchx display, but whatever).

Before you know it you have a pile of dishes on the floor as high as the computer, your family and any friends you have in real life have reported you missing to the police, you don't know whether it's am or pm or where in the world you are....

I bet these people you hear about who meet their one true love on IRC and get married spend all their time on a sofa, facing each other, each waiting in case they other says something interesting. Maybe then their love grows stale and they have to use computers in different rooms and talk on IRC to breath life back into their romance.

Have to go now, an interesting conversation started on IRC. (Yes, really).

graspee

Well my brother is coming home for Xmas, which is great news because I got to give him a list of stuff to bring me back from Japan, like expensive go stones, Kirby Advance and any Chobits manga that have come out since I was last in Japan. (It doesn't look like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance will be out before he comes back).

Now that I have been to the dentists and had the first stage of the root canal done on my tooth, the pain from it has been much less, which allows me to concentrate on watching obscure (ish) foreign films.

One film I particularly recommend is a Swedish one called "Fucking Amal". No, really, and it's not *that* type of Swedish film.

Basically it's about a couple of 16 year old lesbians. No, really, it really really isn't a porno- it's got acting and a plot and everything.

The two anti-heroines are realistically drawn (i.e. thoroughly dislikeable), and the script seems realistic (from my past life as a teenage Swedish lesbian).

Anyway, I recommend it.

I don't know whether I like foreign films:

a) because it gives me an insight into another culture

b) because non-familiarity with the language covers up bad acting and cheesiness of dialogue to a certain extent

c) because the films exported from a country are the best ones

d) because they feature teenaged lesbians

Oh well, until next time, my huge hoard of admirers-

Seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed!

graspee

My brother has gone to work in Tokyo. Just like that- up and off. He'll be working at "Teaching English as a Foreign Language" of course, as most people do.

Anyway, I'll probably never see him ever again as he gets sucked into a shady world of J-Chix, J-Mex (Mechs), maybe even J-Sex! (J-Sex is like when you go to "do it" with some lucky J-Chik and find that you can't see the action area as it is pixellated out. (But seriously, do you think young Japanese men get laid for the first time and go like "Jesus! Look at the resolution on that pussy!" ?)).

Well, my brother was travelling light so he decided to sell or give away most of his stuff, which will probably backfire on him when he comes limping home, out of money in a few months, but anyway... I became the lucky recipient of his gamecube with Resident Evil and Mario Sunshine.

I have been trying to play RE on "hard" and it's too damn hard. I ran out of bullets constantly- obviously the hard setting is harder than previous RE versions where you didn't have to run round zombies to conserve ammo. Usually it was the case that the easy setting gave you an awesome weapon right from the start and loads of ammo.

Also, yes, the character graphics are good, but they contrast way sharply with the backgrounds, which are pre-rendered, so often it looks as if you are walking around some dodgy painted backdrop.

Mario Sunshine is hard too, in a different sort of way, but then the Mario games have always had these childish cute graphics and rock-hard gameplay.

As soon as I met my evil counterpart, "The Anti-Mario" I thought I was going to walk slowly up to him with my gun drawn and deliver a really bad voice-over speech before blowing his head off. Heh, too much R. Evil.

I also have a really bad cold at the moment, and toothache. The toothache was caused by going to the dentist and having some fillings done (it didn't hurt before going....moan moan). The cold is probably really the T-Virus and I will turn into a zombie process, or sumthing.

Anyway- until the next journal entry-

Seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed!

graspee