Stuck in Azeroth for awhile

WoW! Just WoW! Thats all I can say. Except that I will say more.
Hmm I got a great present this christmas. Blizzard's new game World of Warcraft. As the guy who ravenously snapped up every Blizzard title and played them to death, WoW was a bit of a dillemma for me... because of the $20AU it costs every month.

Fortunately (or unfortunately if you're that little angel version of me who likes sleep) I chose to get it and I've been trapped in a place called "Azeroth" ever since. Oohhh boy what an incredible amazing humongous world. There is so much to do nobody could possibly ever do it all. To top that off, we are paying per month so that they add MORE for us to do than we could possibly imagine. (Sounds like those mobile phone deals where you pay for more than you can use!) But you know, a world has gotta stay fresh if people are to keep playing.

Anyway I've been playing up late at night with my good buddy Andrew, and we've done so much. This game is just so big. Luckily my subscription is going to run out some time so I will have a chance to stop!

What more can I say. WoW!

"We played Dungeons & Dragons for three hours! Then I got slain by an elf."
- Homer Simpson

"Merry Christmas" or "Simpsons Christmas Overload"

A while back, (when his blog was still operational), Tim made a post about Channel Ten's Wednesday Simpsons overload - of 5 episodes in 2.5 hours.
Well they topped it off tonight (or are in the process of topping it off) with 7 episodes in 3.5 hours. Starting with the usual 6PM episode, they started a 3-hour Christmas extravaganza at 7:30. Aye Carumba!

Well as much as I can't stand to be glued to a couch for three hours, heres a list of quotes I've been writing down all season. (Funny how most of the best Christmas quotes belong to Bart).

"Heh heh, I knew he wouldn't have time to check that list twice!"
- Bart Simpson

"Christmas is a time when people of all religions come together to worship Jesus Christ"
- Bart Simpson

"Yes, whether you're Christian, or just non-Jewish, everybody loves Santa Claus!"
- Kent Brockman

Mother: Gavin, don't you already have BoneStorm?
Gavin: No Mom, you idiot! I have BloodStorm, Bone Squad and BloodStorm 2, stupid.
Mother: Oh, I'm sorry, honey. We'll take a BoneStorm.
Gavin: Get two. I'm not sharing with Caitlin!

Not really to do with Xmas, but one of my favourite pieces of classic Simpsons humour. (Bart is playing his new video game, the one he didn't want.)

"Welcome to Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge. I am Carvallo. Now, choose a club. (beep) You have chosen three wood. May I suggest a putter? (beep) Three wood. Now enter the force of your swing. I suggest feather touch. (beep beep beep) You have entered POWER DRIVE! Now, push 7-8-7 to swing. (beep beep beep) (The Carvallo character hits the ball)
Ball is in . . . parking lot. Would you like to play again? (beep) You have selected "no"."
- Lee Carvallo (as a character in his video game)

So I wish all my readers a Merry Christmas and a Simpsony new year. Oh and if you play Snorlack's Treasure or Rul'Shath between now and the end of the year you'll get several surprises.
Now for the one I've been saving for my Xmas blogpost anyway:

"Hey, since when was Christmas just about the presents? Aren't we forgetting the true meaning of this day? The birth of Santa?"
- Bart Simpson

Well hot dog. We have a weener!

In a followup to my recent blogpost about the GameSpot awards (here) I'd like to say... "WE WON!!! Wooohoo!"
Yes, Myst IV Revelation was crowned the Best Adventure Game of 2004 by GameSpot. A great achievement, and finally some recognition for such an amazing game!

Also, I think all the best-in-class awards I was interested in returned favourable results:
Best Shooter: Half-Life 2
Best MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online): World of Warcraft
Best Strategy: Rome: Total War
All three of which were expected, and deserved.
I'll say this though, its been a strange year for RPGs when the winner of Best RPG is a game called "Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door"... which doesn't look like what you'd think and RPG would be about at all! I suppose though, all the mainstream RPGs this year were in the MMO category: World of Warcraft, Everquest II and Final Fantasy XI.

Anyway, very happy about Myst IV! It really is such a fantastic game, and the Gamespot guys will tell you why if you check out the video on this page.

Guybrush Threepwood: "I like mist! Mist is pretty!"
The Flying Welshman: "Sure mist is pretty, but EGAD is it dull!"
- Subtle but hilarious baggage from competition, The Curse of Monkey Island

Musical Influences

I think everyone loves music of some kind. Everyone has that piece or style they put on when they want to be enlightened. When people ask me what kind of music I listen to, I have to say, "well I don't know exactly what you call it... orchestral maybe?" Because its certainly not a normal thing to have in one's CD collection. I've never been a big "music person" in the modern sense - I don't really *have* a CD collection to speak of, and I usually don't have music on around the house. But I have always loved music and am a very musical person - a composer and appreciator of a great deal of music.

The stuff I do listen to is usually movie and game soundtracks - luckily all my favourite movies and games do have awesome soundtracks - Lord of the Rings (Howard Shore), Star Wars (John Williams), The Matrix (Don Davis), and the games: Myst of course (Robyn Miller, Tim Larkin and Jack Wall), Warcraft (Glen Stafford, Jason Hayes and many others) and right now I'm listening to the Diablo II soundtrack which I downloaded for free (legally and officially) from The Arreat Summit.

Composed by Matt Uelmen, this music is particularly interesting to me at the moment because it is RPG game music. The defining piece here is the Tristram theme from the original Diablo game. A classic, which anyone can instantly associate with everything that is Diablo and really a defining moment for RPG music. It is such a haunting, eerie and beautiful theme about a small town that was slowly corrupted and eventually destroyed by the demonic forces. I recommend you download and have a listen to it here. It was extended by three minutes for Diablo II.

The style of the piece, with the 12-string guitar, flutes and occarina is very beautiful, and something I tried a little bit with the Tiradon and Spiritmoor pieces in Rul'Shath (some very early pieces of mine, Spiritmoor which I like, and Tiradon which I and most people with ears hate). But I am re-experimenting with this style on my keyboard, and it'll be interesting to see what I can make of it in my next game.

"You've changed man! It used to be about the music!"
- Milhouse Van Houten

Just wipe the dust off this blogger...

Oops I've been spending far too much time programming to actually have anything eventful to blog about. Whats more anything I have been programming is too secret to talk about anyway :P
But theres some stuff banking up now, so here it is:

I just finished a little 4-day project now. Ack, C++!! Its not very friendly is it? I might go back to C# soon, which is much friendlier (but I'm gonna have to face C++ again when I do my 3D Graphics program - gotta be FAST!). Anyway I need a few early nights!

Blogging news:
Firstly, my good Canadian friend Toria has had some very sad news - just a few days after she found out she was pregnant she had a miscarriage, one of many. She was very depressed for a few days and is now feeling much better. But she's been making some very nice and often helpful (to anyone else in her situation) posts at her blog so if you know her I think you should read her Blog and leave a nice comment there.
toriauru.blogspot.com

Also my friend from drama, Alexia, took my advice and got herself a blog (good on you!). Here it is: scaredsister.blogspot.com/. Looks like a good start, by the way, her Tarot cards stuff is freaky. If it continues to be updated I'll add it to my sidebar.

GameSpot: The GameSpot awards are in full swing. These are the game-of-the-year and other various awards for new games in 2004. Of course the 3 big games here for me are Myst IV: Revelation, Half-Life 2 and World of Warcraft (the latter of which I havent got yet!) All three of them have been nominated all over the place, which is good. HL2 and WOW already won first and second respectively, game of the year on Gamespot.
Myst IV is my favourite of course, though. It was nominated for the following special achievement awards:
Best Original Music (Go Jack Wall!)
Best Story (Go Mary DeMarle! M4 had such a brilliant story)
Best Sound Effects (Myst IV was teeming with amazing sound, but it wasnt a key feature or anything)
Best Graphics, Artistic (OMG Myst IV is years ahead of any other game in terms of pure artistic graphics. Period. No discussion can be entered into.)

And the bad news is it didnt win any :(
Sound, OK. Music and Story, that makes me angry because M4 had the best music and story I've ever seen in a game. However, I havent seen the two games that won those fields.
Graphics, Artistic. (Won by Half-Life 2). Now this is the most annoying. We have another category called "Graphics, Technical" for games like Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 to duke it out in (Doom 3 won that one) with thier fancy real-time engines. Of course HL2 looks amazing. Myst IV is prerendered so obviously its no contender for Graphics, Technical. But on the Artistic, Myst IV is without any doubt the most beatiful game out there. Why shouldn't it be? The design team sacrificed freedom-of-movement specifically so the graphics could be at the high level we expect from a Myst game. Check the screenshots if you don't believe me. HL2 looks amazing. M4 simply looks much better.

The good news for Myst is its still nominated in the Genre award category of "Best Adventure Game for 2004" and we're all hoping it will win that. Adventure games usually get kicked in the teeth by reviewers so its not surprising it didnt win awards when up against other games. Hopefully, when compared to others in its own genre, M4 will finally take an award.

Also I have no doubt that HL2 and WOW will win the award for their respective genres, Shooter and Massively Multiplayer. Also HL2 will probably take out game of the year as well.
Check out all the awards here: Best and Worst of 2004 (Gamespot)

Finally I've been itching to get back into Warcraft III. My AT buddy Jeremy has been on holidays for 2 weeks. So, I think hes getting back in the next day or two. Then we can get back to some serious AT pwnage! :D

Oh nearly forgot. The quote!

"Why is it when I heard the word "school" and the word "exploded," I immediately thought of the word "SKINNER!""
- Superintendent Chalmers

Snorlack's Treasure Gold At Last

Yes that's right. The legend really IS here at last! It is COMPLETELY COMPLETE! And I am finally at rest.

I spent a lot of my birthday finishing the last tweaks and doing some of the manual, but it was no good. I gave up at 5 AM. It seems that was a wise idea. After spending the whole day today doing the manual and strategy guide, and upgrading my SummitSetup program to install Snorlack's Treasure, I finally packaged it up and uploaded it at around 11PM tonight (The 13th). Then I spent the next hour and a half updating my Summit website with the news and extensively revising the information on there about the game. And I also just posted it to VBGamer - so hopefully there will be a link there tomorrow. And thats about it! Snorlack is finally here.

As I did all this I sat listening to the Return of the King soundtrack, especally the track "The Black Gate" which is a lovely piece. It plays in the part, you may remember, when Sam tells Frodo (about the dreaded Ring) "Then let's be rid of it! Once and for all!" which is how I've been feeling about this blasted game! The accomplishment may be looked at as a sort of "Sysiphus did finish after all!"
(Sysiphus being the Greek legend of the man who was damned to push the rock up a hill for all eternity, philosophically exploring the absurdity of doing a pointless task relentlessly!)

So I feel a great sense of relief now, since once I finish the Rul'Shath expansion, I can finally get around to the next generation of my games, and of course the 3D graphics engine I've been working on for so long. Hopefully, though, Rul'Shath exp will be a lot of fun, because rather than tweaking hundreds of little numbers as I was doing in Snorlack, I will be building a world full of people, and quests and life, as I did in the original Rul'Shath. Which is a lot of fun.

So thanks to everyone who's supported my and my game creation over these four and a half years. Feel free to download and play Snorlack HERE!

"Ahh... A new warrior has chanced upon our troubled town. The village needs your help."
- Opening line of Snorlack's Treasure

You're the birthday boy or girl...

Yaay its mah birthday. Unfortunately I diverted a lot of attention from Snorlack's Treasure today cuz I got Half-Life 2. Wow, such an amazing game, and you won't believe all the extras that come with it (Steam).

But before I got to play it I got some nice phone calls from two of my good friends, then some more emails, and a visit from my dear friend Jane :D. So we *did* get to play Snorlack's Treasure for a bit there. Summary: Fairly-well balanced, could use a few more tweaks as I am about to do now, mages arent as fun to play as but who cares at this late stage, and lets release the damn thing already!

But first, HL2. Incredible. But we already knew that. Unfortunately the catch-22 of having seen all the videos and even seeing the real game in action draws away some of the "WOW" factor, but I am still heartily impressed, especially with the story. If I had to comment on the improvement of the game overall, I would say it is about the same level as from Starcraft to Warcraft III - a lot! Also I'd like to add that the game has a newfound sense of comedy which I found to be absolutely hilarious!
"Gee Mr. Freeman, great switch-throwing. I can see your M.I.T. education really came in handy there!" - Barney

Now, HL2 comes with the ultimate bundled double-edged mixed sworded blessing. Steam. Steam is a program which is part Battle.net, part MSN, part Fileplanet and part game menu. Its Valve's ultimate game manager, it handles your game registration and CD-Keys, and then it handles game patches and downloads, then it very quickly gets you into multiplayer games. Another cool thing is: it works for Half-life 1 as well now, as a replacement for the old WON.net and its heaps better.

Although it took HOURS to download all the patches and updates and necessary things, at least it was virtually question-free so easy-sailing. The bad part: Steam asked me to create an account. A very very important account with a password, you know, the usual. Then it took my HL2 CD-Key. And it told me that my CD-Key was now bound permanently into this account, and could never be unlocked. If I ever wanted to reinstall, I could, but I would have to do it through this account, with this password. This is very scary because if someone were to hack my account, guess my password or secret question, or (god forbid) somehow I was banned for cheating, well, I would never be able to play my game again. Single-player, multiplayer, all of it. This somehow doesnt seem legal to me. It also sounds a lot like Microsoft. (Although they DO let you reinstall)

But the upside to this same system is that as long as I have my account, I am totally covered for all my HL1 and 2 needs. Since I have also given it my HL1 CD-Key, for example, I can totally re-download HL1 from their server (in fact, to get the latest patch, you dont apply it to your HL1 CD install. You download a new version from them, 500MB!) This means I no longer need CDs. I think Valve may be planning to stop production of CDs in the future and just have downloads.

Anyway enough about Steam and HL2. Great game it is though. Also I discovered what a noob I really am at Counter-strike. Gimme Warcraft III any day!

Anyway I am off to package Snorlack's Treasure as promised. Thanks everyone for all your emails and phone calls, and a lovely day.

"You're the birthday
You're the birthday
You're the birthday
Boy or girl!"
- Wall E. Weasel's - Animatronic robots sing their birthday song

The Legend Is Here At Last

Almost...

Well it's my birthday. Happy Birthday Matt. For some reason I feel a need to punish myself by forcing myself to finish this damn game! (The one I spoke of earlier) I am Soooo close now. I just spent eight hours sitting here playing through the last third of the game and tweaking every number I came across. I'm pretty happy with it now, except the spells aren't quite there yet. Which means I will have to do more work tomorrow, on my birthday day (after I wake up again). But hopefully that won't be for awhile because I need sleep.

I did promise my website viewers the game on Dec 12, 2004 and that is what I will deliver. (Summit Interactive Online)

Exhausted but happy!

"I've got it all figured out! I'll work from midnight to eight, come home, sleep for five minutes, eat breakfast, sleep six more minutes, then I have ten minutes to bask in Lisa's love, then I'm off to the power plant fresh as a daisy."
- Homer Simpson

Neighbours explosive finale

A couple of weeks ago, Tim came on MSN after watching the season finale to The OC. "Weren't you going to bed?" I asked him.
"Oohh Matt that episode was so dramatic I just had to come on MSN and talk about it!" - He was totally overwhelmed (or so was the vibe I got from the cold chat interface).
Not having ever watched a soapie before, I didn't know what all the fuss is about. Until tonight.

Which was the much-hyped Neighbours season 2004 finale. This is my first ever season of Neighbours but it looks like I just witnessed one of the most dramatic moments ever - and it *is* overwhelming!
(Natalie Bassingthwaighte - Izzy - was on Nova Radio this morning hyping it up. She said it was the most expensive episode ever produced, and its not hard to see why!)

After the explosive events of the episode entitled "The End of an Era", and with at least 3 characters lives "at risk" over the summer break, we got a glimpse in the final shot of the face of the perpetrator, which must have sent a shiver down the spine of anyone who watched the show prior to 1993. After doing a bit of research, I discovered the man was Paul Robinson, apparantly the "bad guy" of Ramsay Street from the time the show opened in 1985 to his departure in 1993.

The episode all happened a little fast, but it really did keep you guessing (for the first time, Neighbours really wasn't predictable)... as each of the three "bad guys," ex-crim Darcy, psycho Gus and pyromaniac (the most "likely" suspect) Luka were each mentioned. While Darcy was ruled out, Gus and Luka were briefly brought under suspicion (apparently Luka had "gone missing") - but the truth was far darker.

Say what you will about Neighbours, this was A+ storylining, and a gripping cliffhanger. I for one will be tuning in eagerly in 2005.

(Marge and Lisa Simpson are watching a steamy soap opera scene)
Lisa: "Gee, is it always this good?"
Marge: "Mmm. I don't know. I just dip in and out. I'm only watching today because Randi is coming out of a coma, and she knows the phony prince's body is hidden in the boat house."
(On the TV)
Woman: "Father McGrath... I thought you were dead!"
McGrath: "I was!"

Uni Results Arrive

The day we've been waiting for - to end our nervous waiting - has arrived. (Well, for Melbourne Uni students anyway). We spend a few hours on MSN last night at 12:00 hitting the refresh key until someone realised that the results don't come out till 7:00 AM. :P

Well here are my results:

Electrical Circuits	72%	H2B
Algorithmic Problem Solving (Advanced)	93%	H1
Applied Mathematics	71%	H2B
Physics B	76%	H2A

Quite amazed that my Physics is so high - considering that was by far the hardest subject. Amazing what a bit of study (and fooling yourself into thinking you know what you're on about) can do!

We already had an emergency meeting on MSN this morning - my other friends have mixed results. Its a day with many emotions, and even more "meh"s.

As soon as that was over, we all went back to our programming (except Mel who went back to her fun park on the Gold Coast in Queensland ;) (and Tim who went to have breakfast at 11:30 AM) (so I guess only 2 of us went back to our programmnig).

"Meh"

Bart: "Check out this hand. All aces!"
Lisa: "A+!?? Oh Bart, at least you could have forged plausible grades!"
Homer (Later): "A 'B' turns into a 'D' so easily. You just got greedy."
Bart: "So I can't go to Camp Krusty?"
Homer: "Now Bart, we made this agreement because I thought it would help you good grades. And you didn't! But why should you pay for my mistake?"

# as a tack

Microsoft went one semitone beyond C to provide 277Hz of programming goodness, and they certainly struck a chord ... (OK enough jokes about the name)...
Yes I'm referring to one of the world's newest languages, C# (pronounced of course, C-Sharp), which came into being around 2002 as the poster-child of Microsoft's .NET Framework.

I've been using it today (and I love it) so I thought I'd do a bit of a mini-review.
First of all, the story behind it is... The year is 2001, Microsoft has just made an historic settlement with Sun Microsystems that forces them to cease using Java forever. Microsoft is currently selling one of the leading software development tools, Visual Studio, which includes Visual Basic 6.0, Visual C++ 6.0 and Visual J++, the Java compiler. Goodbye J++.

So what do they do? Why, they're Microsoft. Build something better and attempt to take out Java! Enter .NET, Microsoft's new plan for world domination. .NET has a Virtual Machine just like Java. Although currently its only for Windows, this makes it highly versatile and potentially cross-platform (if you look at how the .NET framework is written, all the Windows-only stuff is separate from the core stuff). However, the brilliant move on Microsoft's part is not to make ONE language (such as Java) support .NET, but instead port all the languages to .NET.

Visual Basic (Microsoft's own very popular language) is completely redesigned for .NET. C++ (Extremely powerful, fast, popular language) is given some "additions", to make it compatible with .NET and yet still compatible with other C++ code and apps at the same time (brilliant!). And they introduce a new language, C# which is designed from the ground up to take the best elements from Visual Basic, C++ and Java and write it directly into the .NET Framework. Its not as fast or powerful as C++, and not as friendly english-style as Visual Basic, but its a good medium.

The first thing is, C# is at such a good medium that if you know any one of VB, C++ or Java, you should easily be able to pick up C#. Its syntax is extremely close to C++ or Java, but the ease at which you can do things (like concatenate strings, etc) makes it feel a lot more like Visual Basic. So VB users just have to learn to use lots of curly brackets and put semicolons everywhere, and C++/Java users just have to learn to relax a bit ;)

A great example of the "best-of-both-worlds" is that strings are both stringy-strings like in VB, and also char arrays like in C++. (And the only other language I know which does that is Haskell).
Also C# has no pointers to speak of at the top level, so its a lot like VB in that respect (and much easier to use and C++) but you can also write specific functions as "unsafe" and you are allowed to use pointers within those functions.

With all the similarities to VB, here is the reason why I think I will choose it over VB in the end: it has superior array-management. Nearly as easy as VB, but it lets you pass arrays around as pointers which means you can do better optimisation.

Also, the editor is lovely. Like the VB.NET editor, it picks up errors as you type (underlining them unobtrusively) and it has a whole lot of autocomplete, etc, features. C# is also the only .NET language which allows you to write comments in an XML-style which can then be read by the editor and used to automatically in popups and in the object browser. So its a good environment to work in.

As evil as Microsoft are, I think in the end, its whats best for you and your software. C# and .NET are a good thing for the many. Now we play the waiting game, and see which wins the big battle... .NET or Java?

Visual C# Developer Center
Visual Studio Home
You can try C# for free with the .NET Framework SDK

"Now we play the waiting game.....
.....
Ahh the waiting game sucks. Lets play Hungry Hungry Hippos."
- Homer Simpson

Watch your language!

Had a good convo on MSN last night with my Uni friends from Computer Science/Software Engineering. When talk turned to Andrew's blog post, Programming Uncertainty, we started to talk about Java, the next language we're learning next year (this year we learned C and Haskell).

I confirmed that indeed, Java doesn't compile .exe files (as far as I know... unless there's some wierd way to do it which doesn't involve writing a shell in C or another language). I know its for cross-platform (compile a .jar file, open it with the Java VM on any platform), but come on! You open .doc files in Word and open .jar files in Java VM? They aren't technically even applications, they're documents! I prefer .NET which has a similar requirement of a VM, but at least compiles to proper .exe files.

As Andrew said on his blog, French is sounding like a good option! (Ahh - jokes about the spoken languages vs programming languages, will you ever cease to amuse us?)

On a different topic, though, I found something I had been looking for for a while - using Haskell to compile Win32 DLLs, using GHC! <woot!> Haskell is a great language for writing complex algorithms without having to worry about memory management or array redimensioning, etc. As such its a bit slow, but theoretically, if used responsibly as only part of a program, it could make your program development more efficient. Hence compiling a DLL means you can call Haskell functions from C/C++, Visual Basic, or a .NET language. (Of course, only for Microsoft Windows.)
GHC User's Guide - Building and using Win32 DLLs

Well I'm going back to Managed C++ .NET anyway ;) Andrew - good luck with your chess program!

Toria found a funny article about Software Engineers - one of many I'm sure.
Real Software Engineers

This one isn't a Simpsons quote, but from another favourite animated series, Daria: (I had to steal this one off this site)

Detective: "Miss Morgendorffer, Mr. Stuart has no uncle at the hotel. He's been billing your parents' account for all these items, only to delete the charges later by breaking into the hotel's computer system."
Quinn: (gasps) "You mean... I... almost... went out with..."
Detective: "That's right."
Quinn: "A computer geek?!"

Neighbours features Warcraft

First, the confession: I watch Neighbours. :P Gotta watch something between episodes of The Simpsons.

Today one of my favourite games was featured on the show: Toady gave Stingray a Christmas prezzie: Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition. Just... err... thought it was cool!

And saw one of my favourite quotes on The Simpsons today:

"Err... I'm on a road. Uhh, looks to be asphalt... Aw, geez. Trees, shrubs... Err... I'm directly under the Earth's sun... now!"
- Police Chief Clancy Wiggum

The Trapezoid Scheme

I'm sure we're all aware of the episode of The Simpsons ("I Married Marge") when Homer attends a seminar entitled "Million$ for nothing."

Seminar speaker: "First, let me assure you that this is not one of those shady pyramid schemes you've been hearing about. No sir. Our model is the trapezoid scheme, guaranteed to give you an eight-hundred percent return...."
(sirens are heard, and he jumps out the window)

Well I was just browsing Google Groups and found this shady-looking post:
Make THOUSANDS before the holidays with ONLY $6!! It REALLY WORKS!!!
(Plz don't ask what I was doing in Womens Studies... I was clicking around randomly OK???)

Anyway, yeah you know the types of scams/schemes they have going. Here is the proposed method:

Send through PayPal $1 to each email address on the below list. In the Subject field type in "Email List" and in the Comments field, write "PLEASE PUT ME ON YOUR EMAIL LIST". What you are doing is creating a service by this and you are not giving your email address to anyone you do not know.*
THIS IS ABSOLUTELY LEGAL. YOU ARE CREATING A SERVICE.
The email list:

#1)luke_per...@hotmail.com (luke_perkin),
#2)mtao...@cogeco.ca (mtaouil),
#3)ericm...@hotmail.com (ericm130),
#4)dannysa...@hotmail.com (dannysaide),
#5)BrandenMcl...@hotmail.com (BrandenMclean),
#6)mlgoodl...@sympatico.ca (mlgoodliff),

*Firstly, dude, I don't know about you, but I don't know any of these people. But you're certainly giving them your email address later on.

He (assumed male) then goes on to explain how you would then remove the #1, bump all the others up the list (2 -> 1, 3 -> 2, etc) and add yourself as #6. Then you go to "at least 200" newsgroups, etc, and post these instructions and your modified list of emails.

Now let's think about how this works. Yes, mathematically, (assuming people were suckered into doing it), you would gain quite a bit of money. This is because everyone who replied would be sending you (and the 5 people above you) $1. Then all of them would be pasting your email on their own lists, and assuming each of them did it 200 times, your name would be in position #5 in each of their lists. This continues and you could expect to see exponential growth.

I started thinking... no dude, it cannot be legal. It is a pyramid scheme. (The idea of a pyramid scheme being that it keeps growing out and out larger and larger so it could be represented as a pyramid.) But then I realised that once your name gets to #1 it gets bumped off, so it has a limit.

And therefore I conclude that this isn't one of those shady pyramid schemes you've been hearing about. No sir. This model is the trapezoid scheme!
Another example of Simpsons humour coming into real life. :D

DISCLAIMER: I strongly recommend you do NOT take this guy's advice. It is most likely highly illegal, despite what he says. You have been warned.

"Hello, this is Homer Simpson, A.K.A. Happy Dude. The court has ordered me to call every person in town and apologize for my telemarketing scam. I'm sorry :( If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, send one dollar to:
Sorry Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield. You have the power!"
- Homer Simpson

Get out already, Snorlack!

Many of you may know in 2000 I started my first game Snorlack's Treasure which is a text-based RPG game. And it was *basically* finished by December 2000, but then the final touches dragged on and on and on and here we are, 4 years later, with a whole nother game out, and its still going! I would give up, but I'm so close now... just have to balance about half the monsters in the game. Over the past few months, I did all the spells, weapons, classes, gems, and various other gameplay things.

Its a pity its a text game because it is so rich in content. Nobody appreciates it though :P Still, it must be finished. In 2000 I released version 2.00b on December 12, my birthday. And in 2001 I set the release date for version 3.01b as December 12, 2001. Thats the version I'm still working on now! So this time I must not fail. December 12, 2004 will be the final beta release of Snorlack's Treasure!

But I'm sitting here with my blog on my desktop PC and Snorlack on my laptop, and its really not fun to have to test and configure all those little stats! Hrmph, back to work!

Snorlack's Treasure Website: snorlack.summitinteractive.cjb.net

In other news, did anyone notice Google groups? Theres a link to it on the main Google page now. I didn't see it yesterday. So either its brand new or I'm blind. Well it looks like a brilliant community, also ties in with gmail very well. I checked it out. Went to the games programming section and helped out some guy asking about pointers. Did I overload him? heheheh...
Well it will be interesting to see how g-groups pans out.

Now time to get back to work... But first:

"Marge, it takes two to lie. One to lie, and one to listen."
- Homer Simpson

All systems go!

OK I just spent the whole night getting the various bits of my blog site up and running. Thanks to Tim and Andrew who helped with that --> see their blogs on the side. (Except Tim's which is still down).

I think its come to a general consensus that Blogger is very cool, no matter how pointless it seems to be writing a personal journal to everyone and noone. For we who love CSS and HTML it is paradise.
(Also very excited by the <blockquote> I used last time. Think I'll keep that up! Oh and the use of &lt; and &gt; to simulate <blockquote> - brilliant! And the use of &amp; to simulate '&'... Heheh this is kinda recursive.)

I just added some links also to the sidebar which link to the two websites I run. The first, EMS' Relto is my Myst fansite. I'm a huge Myst/Riven/Exile/D'ni/Uru/Revelation (MREDUR) fan. You can read about my obsession with the games and various other information about them there.

The second, Summit Interactive, is my "company" (and I use the term loosely) through which I make games - my passion for gaming and programming combined. I've written 2 free games in Visual Basic which you can download. Currently I'm writing more games and graphics engines with the wonders of Visual Studio .NET.

So thats a little explanation. Time for another Homer quote:

"Ahh they have the Internet on computers now!"
- Homer Simpson

Lol - just realised theres a <blockquote> button on this toolbar here.

Whats this "blog" stuff all about?

It looks like *everybody* has a blog nowadays. At least 3 of my friends do! Apparently I can't call myself a nerd without one. So I figured I'd get a free blog thingymadoo at blogger.com. Heck, maybe I'll even update it from time to time.

Actually this is my second go at it. I made one at bloglines earlier today but they didnt offer profiles or HTML, so I changed here.

Here are the 3 friends I refer to (if I find any of my other friends have blogs I'll post them too)
Toria from Uru - http://toriauru.blogspot.com/
Andrew from Uni - http://coldwarm.blogspot.com/
They both just started theirs too.
And Tim from Uni has had his for a long while. Its down at the moment but if it comes up again it will be here:
http://www.gfxmonk.com

Now lets see, I figure since my name is Eat_My_Shortz I'd better fulfil your expectations and end with a Simpsons quote. (Opens up archive of Simpsons' quotes). So heres one of my favourites:

"Weaseling out of things is important to learn. Its what separates us from the animals! Except the weasel."
- Homer Simpson