Listen, my friend, I do not wish to give you directions, neither do I wish to help you. We may seemingly both be standing in this super-market, seemingly both buying our supplies for nourishment. But do not be fooled, I am not from here.
How can you see me if I'm not from here? Why do I grace you with my presence? I suppose that it is a valid question. And I will respond with a simple question: deep down in your heart, do you really want to live in this world?
I was like you, some time ago. Brought up in a world of magic, just for the magic to disappear and be replaced by this land filled with scheming corruption. Anything for an extra buck. I saw medical doctors go on strike ignoring their patients, public service people unhappy with their pay block roads, having rulers who were probably as trust-worthy as a shadowy figure luring a child with candy. Is this the world you want to live in?
I bid you good day, my friend. Our worlds maybe crossed this one day; but they shall not again. I desire a different world, and that is where I'll be, no matter in what situation my physical representation manifests itself.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Projects, projects, projects...
Are you like me? You want to do so much that nothing really gets done until completion? I want to finish the old, but the latest and greatest is just tempting me.
My first project to actually graduate away from this is "GameLib" (yes, I'll probably end up uploading it a year later, but I'm proud, it's a code base that works). But it's supporting applications could use a bit of work, sadly enough. On the bright side, it's a project, it's over a year old :).
Last month I had to bury "AfterLife", a little story that I was working on. Sort of sad, really. I really wanted to evolve it, to develop it. However, the social structure that I had to enforce for the scenario to work, sort of worked against the scenario. Also, the characters needed quite a bit more development. And the story had no point.
Next, is "Metaphysics". The characters are much better defined. I still have to introduce myself to them; but I know who they are, how they are related to each other. This project, opposed to the previous, has much greater focus on relations among characters rather than a complex underlying world, a world that I wanted to live in, but my mind never went. "Metaphysics", being much simpler, is much easier to grasp, for me to enter the world, it's a story at my level. Various sketches were done; and for a personal project, it's advancing quite smoothly. I will post the first chapter once it's ready; and the sketches will wait until the relevant portions of the storyline is determined -- which is what I fear.
"AfterLife" also suffered from a very bland story-line. Nothing happened after a dozen pages of text. Characters were introduced, things happened, but all in all, no one ended up needing to save the world, there was no suspense. It's as though I documented Mr. Joe Average perfectly normal life (well, as normal as possible given the circumstances in the story). Also, after a certain while, the story just "ended" -- what was I trying to say; where was this going?
"Metaphysics" might be much better defined, but it really lacks in the story department. I'm working from the top-down, and am planning playing with the relations between groups of characters to cause chaos. However, who knows how that will pan out. Will it even work? Will the reader be interested? Will this sound like some stories where the author seems to be inventing things in order to make the story progress within practically every chapter? I hope this is a success.
The other project is my city in SimCity -- this is an easy project. Yet, I always tend to destroy my cities. Again, a bit of perseverence is key. There is a large demand for residential, however the residential zones haven't completely built up, or are complaining about transportation woes. From experience, I can expand the city 10-fold it's size, but still have transportation problems; hence time to attack the heart of the problem, and get those sims from point A to point B.
My first project to actually graduate away from this is "GameLib" (yes, I'll probably end up uploading it a year later, but I'm proud, it's a code base that works). But it's supporting applications could use a bit of work, sadly enough. On the bright side, it's a project, it's over a year old :).
Last month I had to bury "AfterLife", a little story that I was working on. Sort of sad, really. I really wanted to evolve it, to develop it. However, the social structure that I had to enforce for the scenario to work, sort of worked against the scenario. Also, the characters needed quite a bit more development. And the story had no point.
Next, is "Metaphysics". The characters are much better defined. I still have to introduce myself to them; but I know who they are, how they are related to each other. This project, opposed to the previous, has much greater focus on relations among characters rather than a complex underlying world, a world that I wanted to live in, but my mind never went. "Metaphysics", being much simpler, is much easier to grasp, for me to enter the world, it's a story at my level. Various sketches were done; and for a personal project, it's advancing quite smoothly. I will post the first chapter once it's ready; and the sketches will wait until the relevant portions of the storyline is determined -- which is what I fear.
"AfterLife" also suffered from a very bland story-line. Nothing happened after a dozen pages of text. Characters were introduced, things happened, but all in all, no one ended up needing to save the world, there was no suspense. It's as though I documented Mr. Joe Average perfectly normal life (well, as normal as possible given the circumstances in the story). Also, after a certain while, the story just "ended" -- what was I trying to say; where was this going?
"Metaphysics" might be much better defined, but it really lacks in the story department. I'm working from the top-down, and am planning playing with the relations between groups of characters to cause chaos. However, who knows how that will pan out. Will it even work? Will the reader be interested? Will this sound like some stories where the author seems to be inventing things in order to make the story progress within practically every chapter? I hope this is a success.
The other project is my city in SimCity -- this is an easy project. Yet, I always tend to destroy my cities. Again, a bit of perseverence is key. There is a large demand for residential, however the residential zones haven't completely built up, or are complaining about transportation woes. From experience, I can expand the city 10-fold it's size, but still have transportation problems; hence time to attack the heart of the problem, and get those sims from point A to point B.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Illegal Copying
This just came to mind. At what point is something considered copying? While watching a DVD on the computer, I wondered how I'd implement the DVD player software -- assuming it weren't encrypted -- which would be quite fun one day. Well, I'd open the files on the DVD, copy data to memory, decompress the data, and stream the results to the audio device and video-card.
Now; here's the fun part. Copy. Yes, to watch a movie, all of the content is copied onto the machine. And written on the disc is "Do not copy"... Hmm, and to say I'm sure that all DVD players do something similar (especially if they are buffering parts ahead in case of future seek problems).
If you can see it, it was copied into a memory buffer somewhere. With HDMI, the decompressed video data will probably be on the monitor itself; but it's still a perfect copy.
Like unprintable and unsavable PDFs, a copy of the PDF resides in memory on the local machine (it'd be stupid not to). Hence, anything viewed on the web is already copied to the local machine. Anything viewed on the web is downloaded (even streamed data; no matter what hoops someone has to jump, it still gets decompressed somewhere in memory to be sent to the video-card's memory).
The moral of this story, to play or watch a movie implies that it is copied. "No Illegal Copying" would be a better phrase (and that is what should be assumed they meant) - however that would reveal to everyone that there is such a thing as legal copying. They could say "no copying for more than 3 seconds at a time" (for those of us with extremely huge buffers), but could just seem as confusing.
Or they could do like they did with my "Rise of Nations" and "SimCity" discs. Include a nice blurb like "If you think these discs are illegal, contact Microsoft", or just don't mention it. (It's all detailed in the EULA anyhow...). I only wish I could read the EULA before buying the product (aka, in store, and before popping in the disc; some games like HL2 I would have liked to have a different EULA - it was one where some clauses I wanted to refuse; but what store accepts returns on opened software?).
Now; here's the fun part. Copy. Yes, to watch a movie, all of the content is copied onto the machine. And written on the disc is "Do not copy"... Hmm, and to say I'm sure that all DVD players do something similar (especially if they are buffering parts ahead in case of future seek problems).
If you can see it, it was copied into a memory buffer somewhere. With HDMI, the decompressed video data will probably be on the monitor itself; but it's still a perfect copy.
Like unprintable and unsavable PDFs, a copy of the PDF resides in memory on the local machine (it'd be stupid not to). Hence, anything viewed on the web is already copied to the local machine. Anything viewed on the web is downloaded (even streamed data; no matter what hoops someone has to jump, it still gets decompressed somewhere in memory to be sent to the video-card's memory).
The moral of this story, to play or watch a movie implies that it is copied. "No Illegal Copying" would be a better phrase (and that is what should be assumed they meant) - however that would reveal to everyone that there is such a thing as legal copying. They could say "no copying for more than 3 seconds at a time" (for those of us with extremely huge buffers), but could just seem as confusing.
Or they could do like they did with my "Rise of Nations" and "SimCity" discs. Include a nice blurb like "If you think these discs are illegal, contact Microsoft", or just don't mention it. (It's all detailed in the EULA anyhow...). I only wish I could read the EULA before buying the product (aka, in store, and before popping in the disc; some games like HL2 I would have liked to have a different EULA - it was one where some clauses I wanted to refuse; but what store accepts returns on opened software?).
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