a blorg by michaelb
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War Room
War Room is a unique competitive, strategy-RPG for large groups that is currently under development. It attempts to as accurately as possible simulate a medieval war room, containing both the obvious strategic elements and the more subtle political struggle between nobles in a medieval court. I've play-tested it a fair number of times, and it seems to be a very fun, unique, and versatile game.
Just a few days ago, I registered a domain name, and have been since then hard at work making the first draft of the War Room game book. It will probably be released under a Non-Commercial Creative Commons license. I am currently hoping to have it both sold at a profit with a print-on-demand service, and downloadable for free in PDF or Open Document format.
You can see the webspace here:
http://warroomrpg.com/
As mentioned in the official website, I am currently assembling a team to develop War Room. I am most in need of play-testers and artists. If you think you can help, please send me an email, or drop in and mention something in the IRC channel also mentioned in the website above. Thanks!
Or, if you are curious about how the game is played, you can check out a post I made at The Forge forum, here:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=23907.0
The information contained in that post should actually be enough for the creative game master to get a game going.
Set It to Awesome
If there was a list of best one-liners ever, then this would be very near the top:
http://www.chrisyates.net/reprographics/index.php?page=36
"If they say yes... set it to awesome!" and "I think you're missing the point of the awesome button."
The rest of the webcomic is only mildly humorous in comparison to those two lines. Indeed, all of the other episodes are quite superfluous.
Speaking of good web-comics, I'll should mention the quite humorous Harry Potter-ish Bardsworth comic:
http://bardsworth.com/
They're quite well done, fairly well drawn, and usually worth a few chuckles. Mike, the main character, has a "set it to awesome" T-Shirt, which is how, one Google search later, I discovered the first comic strip.
Badabing
As I'm right now in the process of creating my own homemade arcade cabinet to play old MAME games (I'll post a full write-up on the project when I'm done), this website interests me:
http://www.bingham.co.za/
It's a blog containing an assortment of handy tips for random little hacks, including several regarding arcade cabinet related issues. It's quite well-written and organized--very much recommended.
CAPSLOCK EQUALS BAD
Fed up with the annoying caps lock key? Maybe you should join the "anticAPSLOCK" league! Although I agree that there's no real purpose any more for the caps lock key, I do find the website quite humorous.
http://anticapslock.com/
Heheh. That website makes me giggle.
Foley Artistry
Some useful links on foley technique:
http://filmsound.org/foley/
I would very much like to see someday a giant, searchable database of all foley techniques for every individual sound. I mean, I've found many small lists, but nothing on a grand scale. If I don't find such a database soon, I might just make something like that, as it would be very handy.
Married to the Sea
Married to the Sea is a really strange and humorous web-comic. The author takes various old Victorian-style prints, and then adds random, anachronistic captions in matching antique type-faces.
You can read one of my favorite here:
http://www.marriedtothesea.com/041706/vegan.gif
Top Hat Man is Rereleased
I'm sure that you will be very excited to learn that I've rereleased all of the Top Hat Man episodes on a brand new Top Hat Man website.
If you haven't yet read the World's Second Greatest Comic Strip, there's no better time than now! If you are not so disinclined, you mayn't avoid it by not unclicking here:
http://michaelb.org/tophatman/
I've rewritten the "Story" section, and made a new, spiffy ascii-art web design. Also, I have gone through every single panel of the Top Hat Man comic strip, generally improving and cleaning them up. I removed non-ascii characters (the underbar was the hardest to replace), and rewrote a few sections too. But don't worry, I didn't ruin anything. Sombrero Man doesn't shoot first.
Also, all this ascii-art has gotten my precious bodily fluids going again, and so I'm already working on a great new spin-off episode featuring Fedora Man, which I hope to finish in a week or so.
Amon Tobin's Foley Room
Now as you may know, Amon Tobin's highly anticipated CD "Foley Room" was leaked a month or two ago. I gave in to the urge (shame!) and took a listen. March is too far away, and life is too unpredictable. My ears might fall off by then.
My impression:
!!!
In other words (or more accurately: in words), it is stupendous. Breathtaking. Unbelievable, and very difficult to classify--just like Amon Tobin's earlier stuff. I think Amon Tobin is probably my favorite artist right now--and I've been listening to a LOT of music lately too (I've been getting into punk, postpunk, Yiddish swing, medieval rock, American trip hop, postrock--and have been simultaneously listening to more breakcore, IDM, blues, and boogie-woogie).
For those who are already familiar with his music, this is more of the same, but with a totally new texture. You'll hear the same ultra-suave atmosphere and mind-blowingly-complex layered rhythms, but the tracks have a considerably different feel from his earlier works. Everything feels a great deal crisper and more focused. You're still drowning in talent and perfect mixing, but you're not drowning as much in reverb. Amon Tobin still has some of the most startlingly fresh beats.
If you don't know who Amon Tobin is, there's always the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amon_Tobin
His music is very, very good, and I very much recommend picking up some of his albums (including Foley Room).
A Penny for Your Noughts
About six months ago I was jokingly considering when the copper used to make the penny would become more valuable than the value of the penny itself. In fact, I even put it in that silly short-story I wrote, the Adventures of Sir Henry the Seefairer Episode 2. Well, looks like that actually is the case with US coinage!
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/14/1736206&tid=98
____
I personally can't remember the last time I used cash to buy something. Currency is becoming mostly obsolete. With inflation increasing and the cost of raw metal staying the same, I could see getting to the point where we can't make usable coins that are worth one cent. In my opinion, this is a good thing. I've always thought that the whole concept of a smallest unit of currency is outdated. There should just be dollars, and dollar-quantities should be able to be any real number. The concept of "cents" as being parts of a dollar is not necessary and confusing: it's much simpler just to have decimal quantities of the dollar. Since most money is expressed electronically, this change would not only be easier, but also remove rounding error. Of course, currency could still be used, it just would be impossible to express some quantities of dollars with standard coinage.
Planet Mongo Alpha 3 is Released
Planet Mongo 0.03a is released!
Changes:
• Fixed issue with outblurt getting choked up on Planet Mongo commands found in PHP code
• Improved internal construction of content and theme modules
• Improved documentation
• Added folding feature to news module
• Added page title function to content module
• Added "random" module
You can get it here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/planetmongo/
Say Hello to Smockpuppet
I'm now producing all my breakcore and experimental under the alias Smockpuppet. Also, unlike my other aliases, I'm made a site specially for Smockpuppet.
You can check out the spiffy, stylish, swell, and swanky Smockpuppet site here: http://smockpuppet.michaelb.org/
You can download some new music there, and coverart for my first (in a while) album (I may eventually put together my DnB stuff into an album--when I get around to it). All the tracks are available in both MP3 and OGG formats under a Creative Commons license.
On a side note, I've finally finished Planet Mongo 0.003a (Smockpuppet's site is in fact running it). I hope to post it on sourceforge soon.
Updates
I've posted even more music! I've added:
• Shadow and Truth - an introspective piano, string, and flute piece
• Friendbot is Singing - more jazzcrazy spacecore, with an R2 unit singing
• Shush - a short sample-heavy track, with a childish charm
You can listen to them at http://michaelb.org/music/
I've also greatly improved my palindrome site, adding much more to the waveform palindrome music tutorial. You can check out that site at http://michaelb.org/palindrome/
Planet Mongo 0.003a is almost done, and is going to sport a few new nice features (a "random" module for random quotes, images etc.; the news module now supports folding, like other content managers; the content module now finally can display the content-page title (I seemed to have overlooked that basic feature in the last release)). However, most importantly, it will have several bug fixes, and actually contain some documentation. That means that it wont just be a useless, unexplained heap of code, like the last version was (well, it did have a little documentation, but not much). Still, a lot of features are undocumented, but now at least the config files are well explained. The code itself still unfortunately is shabbily documented.
That's all for now, folks.
New Music, New Site
I just now finished completely redesigning my music site!
You can check it out here: http://michaelb.org/music/
Also, I added several new songs, such as Xenthar, Spacer, Battle Sequence (I hate naming these things), and the Warzone 2100 soundtrack.
You might also have noticed (actually, you probably haven't, but sometimes I like to pretend that I'm actually popular), that I've added a few more links on my main page. Those will be for some of the board games that I'm working on, and the free gaming company "Free Play Games". Of course, these are still under development.
Finally, I also moved my waveform palindrome music site to Planet Mongo. To celebrate (or really just because I thought it would be cool), I wrote a few lines of code (it took a lot less than I expected), and made that Planet Mongo installation only output palindrome HTML code! Now, my site on palindrome music is coded entirely in palindromic HTML! I still hope to finish its content soon (the tutorial on waveform palindrome technique).
Strange Beasts Leer at Me
I just was browsing through the Cube 2 forum (the game engine for the stupendous open source game Sauerbraten), and I ran across a very bizzare rambling post. Yeah, it's pretty silly, but for some reason I thought it was blorg-worthy. I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps I just didn't want this gem of weirdness lost.
Quote:
I dont want to play cube 1 or 2....
by Boggel on 12/15/2006 23:35 through 172.209.186.68, 12 messages, last message: 12/17/2006 19:26, 312 views, last view: 12/17/2006 19:26
I dont want to play cube 1 or 2 i want to play cube 3 where ogros are blue and they dance around in white overalls. I want it to have full ragdoll physics and a T key, but use the cube 1 engine with bits of cube 2 and the rpg. the rpg is cool so i want in cube 3 to be those wolfs on the cealing that you can shoot with your CD-ROM powerd AAA-battery. I want it to all run on a Commodore 64 running green baked beans. This would be cool because people like to have a game where they can turn the other players inside out with a screwdriver, and where a crystal is an entire planet. Mario cart is a W so it must be included in cube 3. I want aard to code it in flowol 3 because i really like making the pelican crossing kill people on the street. Ann Robinson could be the boss you must defeat on the singleplayer levels which must start with the last one, end with the 5th one and be jumbled up in a sheepish way. If all the textures are brown then everyone will have infinite ammo and health so lets just steal the textures from Half-Life 1. If the commodore 64 gets broken the cats can come onto newsnight and have a discussion about fixing it.
Thanks!
Quote:
by Boggel on 12/15/2006 23:41 through 172.209.186.68
Oh and i forgot to add it must all fit in an airing cuboard. This is important as there is hot water in there and this is commonly poured on a Xbox 360 to heat it up so it catches fire and can be used to power a steam train so it can be used to capture aliens that want the letter C and a martini on the rocks. I have an illegal document i must sign so sell my soul to a brazilian monk who claims he needs it to fly, get high, or something.
Heheh. The "Thanks!" is probably the best part.
Yeah, it's probably deliberate, no doubt poking fun at the stream of absurd feature requests that dominate game development (especially open source games), but for some reason that I think I forgot now I posted it. It's my blorg. I can post dumb things if I want to, even if they break the interweb.
You can find the original thread here:
cubeengine.com/forum.php4?action=display_thread&thread_id=1152
[1166380314] (12:31:54 on Sunday, December 17, 2006)
Wheel of Time Conquest
Wheel of Time: Conquest is an unofficial, fan-made strategy board game set in the Wheel of Time fantasy universe imagined by Robert Jordan and described in his best-selling novel series. In it, you'll take the role of either the Dragon Reborn or the Nae'blis struggling for control of the continent.
All you need to play Wheel of Time: Conquest is a Risk set, some tokens, and a printer, as all the necessary playing pieces can be scavenged from a Risk-like board game, and all the rest (manual, reference-sheets, city cards, item cards, and even the game map) can be easily printed up from PDF's. The game map spans 9 pages, and forms a subtly stretched version of Randland (it's stretched in order to achieve a more even distribution of cities), with towns and the Seanchan starting locations pre-marked, and the mountain and water borders crisply defined.
Currently, only the Dragonsworn and Shadow factions are available, but I'm working now on the Seanchan, Tar Valon, and the Children of the Light.
You can download all the PDF's at the following temporary website:
http://michaelb.org/wotc/
Or you can download everything, including the Open Document sources (use the free and powerful http://OpenOffice.Org to edit these) all zipped up nicely in the following zip file:
http://michaelb.org/wotc/files/wotconquest_v0.1a.zip
Keep in mind that this is something of a first draft, and that it's far from completed--or even balanced. Nonetheless, it is still very playable, and fun too. Also, I've noticed a few minor typos here and there (e.g. the "Ayrth Ocean" instead of the "Aryth Ocean" on the map). These will be fixed in the next version.
I've finally finished writing an alpha version of the manual (think of it as a first draft). It's 32 pages long, sporting plenty of nice illustrations. For the cover I took artwork from the stupendous artist oRen, whose work can be found at http://solitarium.deviantart.com/gallery/ . I'm planning on making a website for it (at http://michaelb.org/wotc -- a temporary website can be found there now), but that's not finished yet.
Wheel of Time: Conquest is still only in its play-testing phase--so that means that you can help make it better by reporting how your game went! You can find my email address at http://michaelb.org/pm/contact.php
The Open Gaming Cd
The first Open Gaming CD is finished!
The Open Gaming CD is a project that I'm starting which will be a collection of fun and graphically-impressive Open Source video game binaries for Windows wrapped up in a CD, accessable via a pretty autorun menu. It will be akin to The Open CD project ( http://theopencd.org/ ).
Currently, I am using the following guidelines for inclusion:
• The game engine must be under an open source license, preferably the GPL.
• The game content must be under a reasonable license that permits free distribution (this requirement is subject to change--that is, I am considering making it more strict).
• It must be graphically pleasing. I'm looking for games that are fairly competitive with proprietary games.
• It cannot be a dead project (it must be actively developed).
• It must also be available for Linux and other non-Windows platforms.
The Open Gaming CD's website will be available at http://michaelb.org/ogcd/ (it might not work at the time of writing this article).
The first Open Gaming CD (right now, it's simply called version alpha), the following games, in the following categories:
Shoot
• Nexuiz ( http://nexuiz.org/ )
• Tremulous ( http://tremulous.net/ )
Quest
• Vega Strike ( http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/ )
Command
• Glest ( http://glest.org/ )
• Warzone 2100 ( http://wz2100.net/ )
• Battle for Wesnoth ( http://www.wesnoth.org/ )
Jam
• Frets on Fire ( http://louhi.kempele.fi/~skyostil/uv/fretsonfire/
• StepMania (http://www.stepmania.com/ )
Chill
• Secret Maryo Chronicles ( http://www.secretmaryo.org/ )
• Neverball ( http://icculus.org/neverball/ )
• Frozen Bubble ( http://frozen-bubble.org/ )
Although the ISO of the CD isn't available online at the moment (I'm looking for mirrors--if you have some space for a 700 meg file, please help!), you can still download the games individually. These games represent some of the most entertaining open source games available--although I wasn't able to include some games do to size restrictions (Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Sauerbraten, WarSow, UFO: Alien Invasion, DreamChess, and many others).
I created installers for those games which did not come with installers (Nexuiz, Frets on Fire, and Neverball) using the handy-dandy Spoon Install Creator ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/spoon-installer/ ).
Feel free to offer suggestions!
Arg Its Talk Like a Pirate Day
Shiver me timbers, an' blasted barnicles! Happy talk-like-a-pirate-day!
The Literary World is Abuzz
I finally posted
The Adventures of Sir Henry the Seefairer, Episode 2
A Great Deal of Talk Concerning Cardinal Numbers and Their Relation to Definite Articles, and the Various Unfortunate Events that Result From the Previously Mentioned Talk.
It's a very, very silly short-story, partly inspired by Douglas Adams, but mostly to poke fun at faerie stories.
I'll post the first one when I get time. It wasn't as good, in my ever so humble opinion--which is saying quite a bit, unfortunately.
Without any furthur adon't, you can head on over to http://michaelb.org/pm/sirhenry.php and choose the file format that's best for you (PDF, TXT, or ODT).
Planet Mongo Finally Made It to Sourceforge
The first Planet Mongo alpha finally made its way from my hard drive to sourceforge.
Yeah, it's 90% undocumented, and is slopped together in more than few places, but it's an alpha, so that's to be expected.
Really, there's no reason that I can think of why you'd want to download it now, given its current state, but it's available nonetheless.
If you enjoy wasting time, you can download it at https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=159862
Some Things Are Better Left Undead
You've probably not been wondering what I've been up to over the summer. For that reason, I wont tell you.
Instead, I will just say that I've listened to quite a bit of very old Russian folk music I found in my local library system, from Folkways Records ( http://www.folkways.si.edu/index.html -- but from what I can tell, the music that I have was from before they were associated with the Smithsonian), and have been getting a foothold into opera, and also the band Corvus Corax ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvus_Corax_%28band%29 ). I have also wasted some time with a few free and open source games ( http://glest.org/ , http://www.tremulous.net/ , http://www.planeshift.it/ , http://www.nexuiz.com/ , http://sauerbraten.org/ just to name a few. All very high quality games.).
But despite all the diversion, I did manage to get a good deal of personal productivity accomplished (as opposed to productivity in my job, which I wont bore you with). I've finished the second alpha release of Planet Mongo--now with a nifty comment system for news articles (disabled on michaelborg--I don't like hearing that I'm wrong), and have completed several more tracks--a few orchestral tracks, some experimental and wonderfully abrasive anti-music, and two more JazzStep Spacecore pieces. The last bit is my wondrously colorful and outrageously descriptive attempt to describe my exceedingly sublime and infinitely perfect tracks, which, put more clearly, are clear-cut breakcore, but with a definite jazz style under a lucid classic sci-fi flavor. Pompous articulations aside, I like it, and I hope you will too.
The Second Planet Mongo Alpha Released
Planet Mongo 0.02a is released!
Changes:
• Wrote FileWrapper class to replace the array-based file descriptors
• Rewrote outblurt() function to fix bugginess
• XML Database module added, as part of the database-independent functions planned, still without PEAR
• Comments/guestbook module added
• BBCode support enhanced
Enjoy!
Potential Ban on Recording Digital Radio
Please take a look at these two proposed bills, and consider using the form provided to provide your opinion:
http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=216
http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=221
These may effectively remove the possibility of recording radio, and also outlaw NullSoft's Shoutcast MP3 streams. I listen to Shoutcast streams constantly--it's my primary way of discovering new artists that I like. In fact, the last five or six CD's I've bought were bought because I heard the artist on an internet radio station. This will severely cripple the ability of unsigned artists, like myself, to obtain publicity.
While you still can, you should try out StreamRipper:
http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/
It streamlines recording internet radio stations in a very marvelous way, automatically breaking off streams into individual mp3's, all correctly tagged. It's available for all normal platforms.
I have now accumulated about 3 gig worth of quality music, and have discovered all sorts of new artists (like The Flashbulb -- http://www.last.fm/music/The+Flashbulb ).
Wikipedia Featured Pictures
As you may already know, Wikipedia occasionally sports featured images. According to Wikipedia, these are "highlights images that we find beautiful, shocking, impressive and informing".
Now until now, I've never really bothered clicking on the page that shows the list of all of the featured images. When I did, however, I was very pleased with their quality. It's likely you have already noticed this before, but I figured it was worth a post. A lot of the images, especially the panaramas and the photos of nature and archetecture, are both startlingly beautiful and very high resolution.
So check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_pictures
That's all.
Hardcore Will Never Die
The inquisitive one: Hardcore? That's a type of punk rock, right?
The wise one: Alas.
Now, before you reach any incorrect conclusions, that had nothing to do with the rest of the post. Nothing.
Instead, this post concerns Rongorongo, the Easter Island hieroglyphic-like writing.
As taken from the website that I will link to in a moment, Rongorongo is the name for the hieroglyphic script of Easter Island, engraved on oblong wooden tablets, of which only a few have survived.
Apparently, as they have no context, archeologists have made very little progress deciphering what they mean (if they mean anything at all, that is--I think they do, but I'm not an archeologist). I find this very fascinating, even though I am not particularly interested in archeology and history in general.
Check out more about Rongorongo here: http://www.rongorongo.org/
Life is a Sorted Soredeal
I'm still working on getting Planet Mongo up and running with my new blog. I've pretty much finished the design by now, I just have to now find the time to fill out the site with all of the content I plan to have. Design first, find content later--very bad method.
Mostly, I've been distracted by trying to get SuperWaba http://superwaba.org/ to work. Unfortunately, the wiki seems to contain somewhat outdated material. The wiki describes that the SDK comes in zip, and I can't find anywhere where that is the case (it comes in a self-extracting exe instead which I unpacked with WINE). Additionally, there seems to be some notable discrepancies between the directory structures of the outdated zip distribution and the current exe version, which means I don't know where Warp and Exegen are located so that I can include them in the classpath variable, such that I can convert my Palm programs into .pdb's and .prc's. I have finished a game called Nimble, which I have tested using SuperWaba's Java Applet Palm Emulator-ish thing. I think I may include Nimble in my MultiTool program idea.
Of course, Wikipedia always eats some of my time--and I've been doing a good deal of reading on Alchemy for a story that I've been writing.
--michaelb
A Lot of New Music
On the right, you'll find a handy-dandy link to several pages with a lot of new music that I haven't posted anywhere yet. This includes some breakcore, some downtempo/idm, and a good deal of orchestral sounds -- this time with some nice physical modelling synthesis (I borrowed Garritan Personal Orchestra). I haven't really made any more drum n bass in quite some time, but the breakcore and idm have more than enough drum n bass elements (e.g. a crazy sub-bass, a 1930s sci-fi lead).
Later, I hope to post my exceedingly silly (and exceedingly bizarre) "Mouth" music produced under alias "Land of Lips". I'm up to a total of eight tracks now, including a Mouth "cover" of a certain slogan of a certain American fast-food chain.
I hope you enjoy!
The First Planet Mongo Alpha Released
Planet Mongo 0.1a is released!
In this feature, we have the basics of a content manager:
• An extensible module system
• A simple theme system
• A news/blog module
• A content module
You wont be able to download it just yet -- I still have to test it a bit more and work out a few very major bugs. However, once it gets to Planet Mongo 0.2a, then it will be fully documented (everything down to writing your own modules and/or themes, which is outrageously easy), fully tested, and available for download. I also hope to offer a version that is only one file big.
Also, we have some other handy features:
• 'Magic' files, which allows modules to superimpose files over the directory structure, which are really just generated by a string returned by special function calls.
• Just about everything is customizable--even the sorts of things that will make Planet Mongo completely unusable and have really little purpose other than that. Of course, those are very clearly marked and are difficult to accidently affect (they are found in the same files as the modules to which they correspond).
(In case you were wondering, this is what I've been doing all this time: I haven't posted in several months.)