Terminally Incoherent

Every once in a while you stumble on something really exceptional. For example, consider the two links below:

• Superman ASCII Art
• Powergirl ASCII Art

In case those links go down, here are screengrabs of the links above. They are not as impressive as the real thing, but they will give you a good idea of the detail and complexity of these pages:

Ok, so this is not pure ASCII art. These images use color, but hell - I’m still impressed.

Here is a brilliant image painted on the ceiling of a smoking room. Click on the image to see the full version at the original location:

It’s quite striking.

Did you know that you can escalate you can become the SYSTEM user on a WinXP box simply by using the at command? Try this at home:

at 11:45pm /interactive cmd.exe

You just scheduled a job that will pop up a new cmd window exactly at 11:45pm. Who is the parent of this window? Why SYSTEM of course. But we are not done yet.

Have the new cmd window up? Good. Now kill explorer.exe using the Task Manager. Yes, just kill it! Keep the new cmd window open though. Use it to run explorer again by typing in explorer.exe. Done!

You are now logged in as SYSTEM. You can now go ahead and do all the nifty admin things that you always wanted to do but your IT department wouldn’t let you. You might get in trouble when they find out though. So, don’t go crazy with your newfound power.

If you still don’t believe me, here is a video that shows you how it’s done.

A while ago I read an interesting article that claimed that our current URI addressing scheme is counter intuitive. I do not necessarily support this point of view but I thought it was an interesting point. If you think about it, most URL’s look like this:

subdomain.domain.tld/folder/folder/file.ext

What is so counter intuitive about this? Well, the information is scattered all over the place without any logical arragnement. For example, why do we specify sub-domain before domain, even though in most of our other conceptual models, the child node comes after the parent? Why is the topmost container (TLD) smack dab in the middle of the address? Wouldn’t it be more logical to structure url’s this way:

tld.domain.subdomain/folder/folder/file.ext

Here we have a logical progression - first you type in the most general element of the address (tld) and then you drill down to more specific domain, sub-domain and the actual file. Just like the telephone number, when first you specify the area code.

Obviously, com-dot does not roll of the tongue like dot-com. It seems rather awkward, but the proposed structure is sound from a logical point of view. I’m not advocating changing the current scheme. That would be really stupid. But it’s food for thought.

Now if I could just remember who originally came up with this URL reversal idea… Any clue?

Holly Fucking Shit! I absolutely love the new Mark of Chaos Trailer [youtube mirror]. It is so incredibly bad ass cool that it leaves me speechless. If you are not a fan of Warhammer you will probably not understand. This vid made me feel the same way the first LOTR trailers did. Or like that time when I was watching the earliest trailers for Phantom Menace (back then we still hoped that the movie will live up to the originals).

This is the kind of giddy excitement that you experience when seeing your favorite fictional universe being brought to life on the movie screen. These guys should make a full CGI Warhammer movie!

I’m serious about this. It would be a good time for someone to license the universe from Games Workshop and make a feature film. Enough time has passed to avoid looking like a cheep LOTR ripoff, and the audiences are getting hungry for another good fantasy production. Someone could really cash in on this…

As for the actual game - meh… Doesn’t do much for me. It looks like an upgraded Dark Omen, which by the way did not rock my boat at all But the trailer… Holly shit, it is awesome!

Someone sent me this interesting mega-scale space colony image:

click to enlarge

Now, can anyone tell me what kind of megastructure would this be? I’m thinking that this is either O’Neil Cylinder, a Stanford Taurus or a Topopolis.

Actually, both O’Neil Cylinder and Topopolis rotate around their own axis, so all wall space could be used for habitation. Only the Stanford Taurus rotates around fixed point forcing the kind of living space arrangement that is visible in the picture.

Renaissance really looks awesome! I think this movie might be a long awaited proof that Japanise are not the only people who can make really good, animation. If it lives up to all the expectations. I really hope the plot is at least half as good as the visuals! Just watch the trailer and prepare to be blown away.

I wonder if we will be seeing any more good creative work coming out of France now that they killed fair use, creative commons and open source. It will be interesting to see how ultra-draconian copyright law affects the entertainment industry in that country…

Dreamhost went down again today due to a power outage. Supposedly it was heat related, but who the hell knows. It was pouring all evening over here in NJ.

Anyways, I’m back up and running.

Myspace is the one place on the web where poor web design meets with a collective lack of aesthetic sensibility and poor taste in music.

Putting a colorful image as your background, and making all the layout tables transparent is an awesome idea. It’s not like anyone ever reads the comments or your silly “About Me” section anyway. I always said that nothing makes a girl look more sexy than 37 animated glitter gifs scattered through her profile.

Don’t forget to tYpE iN MiXeD CaPs! All the cool kids are doing it.

Also, please pick the most obnoxious song to play in the background. Everyone knows that the best possible way to express yourself is to blast the same song as 10000 other myspace users. It really underlines your individuality, and shows that you are a nonconformist free spirit.

comic © xkcd

Myspace is the new Geocities.

It would be so easy to turn this around though.

1. Strip all HTML tags other than a and maybe img (they already strip script and iframe tags)
2. force click-to-play on all the embedded songs
3. auto size posted images (so the layout is not broken when someone posts a wide image)
4. run a script that will strip style tags from all existing profiles

This would be 5-10 lines of code, and usability of the site would go up some odd 60% or more. Sure, users would cry that you b0rked their awesome profile theme. It’s not like they are gonna quit. Not if all their friends still use the site.

One semi-cluefull web developer could fix myspace in 2-3 hours. How come this has not been done yet? Why does myspace allow users to screw around with the css? Don’t they realize that allot of people remove their banner ads this way?

My brother always says that we got our video game preferences completely backwards. I happen to be the geeky brother who has a degree in computer science and works in IT. My brother is an art major with limited patience for technology, and no great love for mathematics or science. Basing on this description, try guessing what is the favorite video game genre for each of us?

You may think that being a programmer I have analytical mind that would be naturally drawn to strategy games. You would be dead wrong about this. The only way I can play a strategy game is when it has a good storyline in the campaign mode. One notable example was Homeworld 2 which captivated me for a while with the cool universe, and interesting storyline. But as I was playing I wished that there would be less annoying RTS combat between the cut scenes. I ended up doctoring my save files to add hordes of powerful ships to my fleet, so that I could just mindlessly blast the enemy and get on with the story.

When my brother saw that he told me that I’m insane. You see, he loves RTS games and for him I was spoiling all the fun. Hell, I didn’t care - I just wanted to find out what’s next. I’m drawn to interesting story lines, mood and fluff. I also love mindless action that allows me to unwind. I like to kill things, and blow stuff up to take a break from coding.

I guess it makes sense in a way. Since I’m in analytical mode most of the time at school or at work, I like to loose myself in mindless carnage or be captivated by gripping story. The artsy-fartsy dude on the other hand probably likes to exercise his analytical muscle when he is not in the creative mode.

Since we have completely different tastes in games, we do not share or exchange that much - not unless we discover a really awesome game, or a RPG/MMO we both like. But every time we buy new games we have the same exact exchange.

He always looks at the cover of my brand new FPS and rolls his eyes. “All these games are the same” he says. “Graphics have improved, but the gameplay has hardly changed at all since Quake.” I could argue with him about this, but he is right in a way. We get better physics, better AI, more destructible environments, vehicles, scripted battle scenes, etc… But we are still essentially playing a similar type of game. There has been no earth shattering paradigm shift in the FPS world yet. The same could be said about RTS games. The basic formula has changed very little since the time of Command & Conquer.

It seems that we game developers have boxed themselves in very rigid categories: FPS/GTA Clone, RTS/Turn Based, RPG/MMO and Other. The other category includes all the franchise sports and driving games. Conservative game design is safe and it pays the bills. Innovation is risky.

But there is hope. I impatiently wait for Spore which is one of the most innovative games in year. It breaks down the genre borders, offers from different gameplay styles at different stages in the game. And it gives the players complete freedom in shaping and customizing the game to their preferences.

I recently saw a video of Valve’s Portal - a FPS puzzle game that employs a funky gun that creates trans-dimensional portals on walls. The idea is very simple - you shoot once to open a hole (for example above enemy’s head). Shoot second time to open a portal connected to that hole (under a heavy crate, which then will fall on your enemy). Combine this with good level design, and you will have hours of gameplay that’s radically different than traditional FPS action.

Why am I excited about both Portal and Spore? Why did I pick these two out of a whole mass of potentially innovative games? Because I think their design allows for emergent gameplay, which may soon become the new driving force in game design. You start with an interactive sandbox in which the player can make decisions about how he wants to play the game. Spore is unique because the whole game is based around this idea. But you do not need to go this far.

Portal is a good example of this. All you really need to do is to provide the players with a simple game mechanic (portal gun) which is bound by some rules (game physics) and let them figure out interesting ways to exploit it. Since you can place your portals anywhere let’s you experiment, and try different things. There might be an obvious solution to the puzzle (drop the crate on the robot) but then again, nothing stops you from doing things your way. Maybe you want to trap the robot in an endless loop? Maybe you wan to drop him into that fiery pit in the other room.

Games which offer emergent experience have that elusive quality that developers often fail to capture - replayability.