Allegedly Interesting

Shamus Young is an inspiration.
He is able to juggle a large amount of hobbies and responsibilities and makes it look easy. I have a lot of respect for the fact that he finds time to be a father, a husband, get his paid work done and to disport in the same number of hours that I achieve half of those things.

His latest project, Procedural City is best described by outlining its three primary goals (as quoted from his introduction to the project):

1. The goal is to make a nighttime cityscape that is mostly made of lights and suggestions rather than real detail.

2. The city will be entirely procedurally generated. That is, the program will contain no art assets. No textures. No models. Everything must be built from scratch at startup.

3. I’m budgeting a week of nights and weekends for the project. So, probably about 30 hours of time total.

The results are fairly astounding. I love procedural generation. I’m not sure how I feel about the potential reduction in reliance on human artists, musicians or even level designers, but I guess thats the way things are going these days. Having said that, nothing procedurally created can really outshine the loving care that is put into a hand-crafted level, texture or piece of music.

Check out Shamus’ latest video showing off the project.

Shamus has also created some other things which have really grabbed my attention.
He has been featured multiple times on one of my favourite podcasts, Fear the Boot for his ability to run and document his D&D campaigns. These are a really good read if you’re into D&D – they should provide you with some inspiration for your own.

He has also authored one of the funniest web-comic series of all time, DM of the Rings (DMotR).
If you have ever seen or read Lord of the Rings and have either played, or are simply interested in learning about D&D, do yourself a favour and read this webcomic. It has a lifespan, Shamus knew to stop it before it got old which means that it is at quite a readable length.

Keep up the good work Shamus.

If you:

• Are a geek,

• Know a geek,

• Are related to a geek,

• Married a geek,

• Work with a geek,

• Are good friends with a geek,

• Walked past a geek once and wondered what that smell was,

• Don’t know what a ‘geek’ is,

• Aren’t sure whether you are a geek,

• Would like more of an insight into the life of a geek,

• or, simply don’t get geeks,

…you should watch the following video.
If you don’t have the requisite hour to spare, the file can be downloaded and watched in parts. The default format is mp4, so great for your iPod.
Wil Wheaton hits quite a few nails on the head.

This is totally awesome.
Somebody needs to market a product that does exactly this, without the horrendous whirring noise that is to be expected from a hard disk with no cover on.
Thanks Israfel.

Bice and I went for coffees this morning.
We walk past five cafes to get to Villino Espresso to order our usual Double Restretto Flat White, Chai Latte and other assorted coffees for colleagues.

We wouldn’t do this if we were not specifically ‘into’ the Villino experience. If we were simply going to purchase a hot drink, why would we walk past five cafes to do so? Villino offers a whole that is far greater than the sum of its parts – parts which are available across disparate cafes, but only together in one place.

Believe it or not, this post isn’t all about pimping my favourite cafe. This morning, we discovered something strange.

Bice had a hankering for doughnuts, so we made our way – Villino drinks in hand – to Donut King. Donut King are known for there lovely hot cinnamon doughnuts. The fact that they have a sign on the counter that says “Great Coffee!” does not necessarily inspire much confidence in the prowess of their ‘barista’. A gentleman greeted us and immediately (but reasonably politely) enquired as to the origin of our beverages.
Having received his answer, he informed us that they too make “pretty good coffee” themselves and suggested that next time, we give them a try. He asked us what we had and I promptly replied with “a doppio ristretto flat white” in an attempt to flummox him with my coffee wankery knowledge.
After making Bice’s “donuts” for him, he returned with a small flat white (on the house) and told me to give it a try when I got back to work.

I did so and was pleasantly surprised. Not because the coffee knocked my socks off, but because I had assumed that the gentleman from Donut King wouldn’t know a good coffee from a cup of cigarette ash and water.
To be honest, the coffee was far better than the slop that is produced in a large proportion of cafes around Hobart – Better than it should have been, considering the source.

The moral of the story? Don’t judge a coffee by the logo printed on the cup.

PS: You can rest assured that I’ll still be going to Villino tomorrow morning. It wasn’t that good.

In the midst of a trip down nostalgia lane, I re-discovered this wonderful advertisement from the Antena Anti-Boredom Campaign.

This is one of the funniest videos I have ever seen. Care to attempt to top it? (keep it clean please – Also, warn about language etc.)

A friend recently asked me “What is Geek Chic?”, by which I assume he means ‘What do geeks think is awesome?”.

I answered with the following:
(In no particular order)

• Fast internets
• Gaming
• Mainstream games that they are good at
• Obscure references to geeky movies, books, games, music or science
• Ninjas
• Penny Arcade
• Star Wars/Trek
• Gaming-literate musicians like MC Frontalot
• Nerf Weapons
• Thinkgeek
• Wil Wheaton
• Zombies
• XKCD
• Keyboard Shortcuts
• Hating Jack Thompson
• Pirates
• Memes
• Lists of things
• Recursion

Can you add any more?

An interesting elucidation.
Easter via TF2.

Dylan Moran is surly, yet eloquent.
I went to see him with Bice tonight at Wrest Point. The halls, both Tasman and Plenary, were packed with people who have some sort of appreciation for churlish Irish humour.

I get the impression from his comedy that Dylan Moran shares some key similarities with his television persona, Bernard Black. His penchant for alcohol, smoking and picking holes in the human condition leave me concerned for his family. I hope, for their sake that he is somewhat more laid-back in the home.

All in all, it was a hilarious and fun night.
Hopefully this will inspire me to break my blogging drought.

This year, we will not be getting an Anzac Day long weekend.

Due to the fact that Anzac Day for 2009 falls on a Saturday, the Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL) believes that it would be inappropriate to move the public holiday to the following Monday because it might encourage people to leave town for a break, instead of participating in the Anzac tribute ceremonies.

Is it un-Australian not to go to the ceremonies? Anzac Day is important for remembrance, though I have never been to a ceremony. At least, not since I moved out of home. Does that make me un-Australian? I still care about the sacrifice that the Anzacs made for our freedom and safety. I still think about it and thank God for it, but apparently I can’t do that were I to travel across and appreciate the country that they fought to protect (lets face it, you’re probably not going to go overseas for a three-day long weekend).

The RSL has also lobbied to move the Salamanca Market from the Saturday to the Sunday for similar reasons. Not only does this potentially financially damage the stall holders, but tourists (who probably don’t read local newspapers) will be wondering where our market went when they arrive on the Saturday morning. Not to mention the tour organisers, cafes and other businesses that rely on the custom generated by the foot traffic that the market brings to Salamanca.

Moving the market: Unfair.
Taking away our public holiday: Un-Australian.

As the more observant of you would have noticed, I’ve recently started using Twitter. On Japh‘s recommendation I signed up for an account and followed a few people I knew were using it.

Then I waited for the awesome.
The awesome didn’t come.

Initially, I was quite confused – “What is the point of this? I only know of a few people who use this service and subsequently the stream of information is very very slow. Less of a twitter, more of a dribble. Isn’t this just Facebook with less functionality?”
I stuck with it though. I looked through the list of people followed by friends of mine and slowly my own list grew. I was adding more and more people I knew, thought were interesting or who were famous.

I wasn’t sold on the service until this morning. I checked Twitter and found a ‘Tweet’ from Mike Krahulik (aka Gabe of Penny Arcade fame) letting his followers know that he was broadcasting live on UStream. I followed his link and was able to watch him drawing the upcoming comic live while he responded to our sidebar chat questions by handwriting answers in the whitespace, then erasing them. He followed all of this up with a Q&A session which entailed us asking questions, while he typed his answers into a blank Word document.

The thing that Twitter affords is a connectedness to people who you previously considered unapproachable. I assume this won’t last – you used to be able to do the same thing with email. Perhaps it will? I don’t know.

If you care (unlikely), you can follow my updates by signing up for a Twitter account yourself, or by checking my sidepanel right here on my blog. If you’re a feed reader and haven’t seen the sidepanel, you can even sign up to Twitter RSS feeds on a per-account basis by viewing the desired person‘s profile.

I’m not 100% sold on it, but I’ll give it more time. Impress me, Twitter.