Out with a Haiku

2009-09-25 18:04:11

This was once a blog.
It might have been amusing
but now it is dead.

I got rather bored
of writing crap about me.
Hence no more updates.

Amidst a Storm

2009-02-07 23:03:12



It was a dreary, miserable night. Rain pattered down all around like an ambient muffle, a constant drone of drizzle. Jack's eyes hadn't moved in over an hour. He just sat there, gazing out aimlessly into the clouds as the raindrops pitter-pattered on his head.

His thoughtful stare was broken when thunder cracked above. He hadn't seen the lightning. He shivered, realizing he was freezing, and decided to head home. Standing up was a chore – his muscles were aching from being stationary so long. The dry patch from where he'd been sitting on the rock disappeared in seconds. The rain was so thick he could barely see the way out amongst the boulders, let alone the view you were supposed to have this high up the mountain. There was no sign of the sea, just the murky night sky, wet rocks all around and damp tufts of grass in-between them.

Before he took a step he noticed someone. He blinked, but they were still there, standing motionless in the downpour – the unmistakeable outline of a small child. A girl, maybe five or six years old, her eyes fixated on him. Dark hair was the only way Jack could think to describe her, so drab in every other way. How long had she been there? How had he not noticed her?

"You should go home, or you'll catch a cold" he gurgled.

Nothing. Well, he tried. The way she stared so lifelessly at him was beginning to creep him out, and reminding himself that curiosity killed the cat, he tried to walk away.

He didn't make a complete rotation before turning back to face her. What was a little girl doing out here in the rain? How did she even get up here? This was his spot, and it was quite a climb to get to, too. He shook his head. Thunder cracked again. He opened his mouth to ask another question, when he realised the girl had moved.

It took a long moment to realize that she hadn't moved. She'd changed. He was now staring at a fully grown woman.

Her whole body looked limp as the water hurled down on her marvellously dark long hair, her tanned skin and her ruined, ripped, soggy dress. Her arms were thin and fragile. Her feet were bare. Her eyes were still the same though, those glassy, gloomy eyes that never looked away. Jack knew who this person was. Heart pounding, he doggedly took a step towards her, struggling to hold his balance. He took another, and another until he came face to face with her. This isn't happening, he told himself.

Clearly now, there was an open wound across her chest. As more detail materialized he saw the torn flesh, the blood constantly dripping to the floor. He could make out now that most of her body was missing. His heart thumped louder than the thunder.

"I am hallucinating."

She swayed a little, and twisted her head as if to say No. No, he thought. This isn't happening.

The tears he'd been holding back for the last hour welled up again. His breathing was erratic. He couldn't keep himself still, from the cold, from the shock, from the terror and the misery that pulsed through his corpse from head to toe. He gingerly raised a shaking hand to try and touch that beautiful face.

"Jenny…" he muttered, "you're dead. I saw it. I was there. You were dead. You –"

And his hand met cold and wet. She was dead, all right. She was dead and standing in front of him.

Her mouth opened to speak, and whether she made a sound was irrelevant, Jack could hear her. He could understand her.

It wasn't an accident.

And a pulse of white fear went through him. Guilt then shrouded his vision, followed by confusion. He tried to focus but was already losing touch with reality. He didn't understand, if it wasn't an accident…

It was murder.

The cloud of emotions that raced through Jack made him stumble backwards. His vision blurred, his mind blocked out anything and everything, all he knew now was anger. He struggled to make himself as coherent as possible, striving to mouth, "who?"

Her response was raising an arm, an accusing finger, a pointer to the killer, aimed right at Jack. He shook his head and blinked. No, she wasn't pointing at him. She was pointing behind him.

As he turned to look, lightning finally decided to erupt across the heavens. The clouds and the storm were spectacularly illuminated, and Jack saw the monster on the rock where he had sat. Before him was the hideous silhouette of David.

Just like that, Jenny was gone, forever.

David – the hunched, barbaric creature that was David – perched on the rock glaring lividly at Jack, his last fragments of civility eaten by greed and guilt. David – the vile, gruesome beast that was David – waited for the moment to pounce. Jenny had come to warn him that David had come to kill him. But in the calmest, plainest English, David spoke.

"I'm sorry, Jack. I didn't want it to end this way."

Jack was breathing faster than his pulse. He stepped forwards and David looked a lot more human. His dirty face under the hood looked almost sympathetic. Jack looked at him eye to eye.

"You…" he tried to reply.

"I'm so sorry. If there's anything I can do to help out, let me know. It's so tragic."

"You… you killed her, didn't you?" said Jack.

It took a second to sink in that David's horridly powerful hands were around Jack's neck. He tried to scream but nothing came out. He tried to breathe but David tightened his grip. He tried to move but it was hopeless, he was lifted off the ground, his limbs were flailing, his actions were useless. He kicked as hard as he could but David was an immovable object.

The eyes had no sympathy any more. They held only the greed and the guilt Jack had known was there. Greed and such irrelevant traces of guilt.

His arms uselessly pummelled and tore at the man's long coat. He reached and tugged and scrambled as he suffocated.

"I'm sorry, Jack. I didn't want it to end this way" said David in the calmest tone.

With one last attempt, Jack outstretched and grabbed hold of the pendant around David's neck. He held the chain tight, and twisted it. It constricted instantly, and snapped David's cold killing tone. With a cry, he loosened his grip.

The air tasted warmer than ever. The sweet, sweet air rushed to his lungs. He yanked the chain to the side, and David had to let go to try and stop him. This was his moment. The surge of adrenaline doubled his strength, and he planted his fist in his enemy's face.

The rebound was instant, and neither man maintained balance. Rolling and spitting and choking on the flooded floor, Jack frantically searched for a weapon, and planted his hands on a boulder the size of his head.


Here at the freezing tip of a treacherous peak, under the storm and the thunder and the rain, two men battled for their life, fighting for a woman who was already dead. The rock hit David square in the face, crushing his skull to pulp. He fell right down to the base of the mountain, engulfed – Jack assumed – by the waves.

Obsession

2008-12-01 22:15:33

A blanket of misty fields framed the fantastic yellow sunrise this morning. Rays of light tore through the speckled dawn clouds, awakening the world with beauty.

The weather was perfect today: cold, clear, windless. White amongst cyan lapped itself around skeletal autumn trees. The short hours stretched every shadow to extremes.

Wandering home, the sunset was magnificent. Gradients and streaks of flame roared across the heavens. Dribbles of violet and blue were painted on a crimson canvas.

Silence filled the world, as night closed in. Streetlamps flooded warmth beneath the mauve fabric sky, as the midnight air froze, lifeless, save for the vague calls of animals, distant and mute.

An awesome, breathtaking day of audacious ambience. Such a shame I sulked my way through it.

It gets me thinking, that the challenges I face are analogous to climbing a mountain. I'm tempted, all the time, to just give up, slide down the mountain to a warm home. I sacrifice everything to be where I am, and yet until I reach the peak, it's all worth nothing. When I get there – if I get there – it's certain I'll be glad. Achievement will be the brilliance that will save me, but until I reach that far away goal, my work is utterly worthless.

It's crushingly depressing, but it's also its own motivation. I realise I'm no longer dedicated, I'm obsessed. I ignore everything and everyone for the sake of focusing power to a single task. I detest this vortex, but understand the hopelessness of escape.

I am now officially a poet.

2008-11-20 23:22:58

Yes, now I have an excuse to wear a funny hat. Here's a little story I wrote a while back.



I stand up straight, wrench in hand. I look down upon the work I’ve done: bolts and washers and rubber and steel. It’s done. My bike is fixed.

Cautiously but quick, I raise it to its feet. The bicycle stands in triumph. The pedals gleam and the spokes almost glow, softly in the dying evening light. The framework, light but sturdy, small but strong, is the chassis – the anchor – the skeleton of the machine. The oily links of the chain shimmer. The brakes and the gears lie ready, the mechanism awaits my command.

And my foot comes closer to the pedal, and my hands grab hold of their grips. I feel it – the surge of power returns, the effortless dominance of the land around me, the authority and control and command retakes me as my fists clench over these metal bars.

It’s dreary skies and shadowed trees that’ll watch my dance tonight. Only leaning boughs and dark green leaves will pursue my awakened flight.

Because I’m flying all right – the wind is rushing, my heart is beating, the gears are turning and the wheels are spinning. The spokes are humming and the tyres are burning and the ground is shaking and the forks are jumping, and the wind is racing – faster, meaner, further – through the bushes and gravel and roads and houses and the entire world is only a blur.

Maybe a reason to halt and wait zoomed past many years ago. But there’s nothing that can stop me now.

Immersed in the aura of open speed, pure speed, without shielding or guard, I awaken to the gust of my path – the rippling fabric of the air as I tear through the world. My body pulses in tune with the click of the tyres. Cold white air shreds my throat apart and I love it.

Forget all tides of emotion, this is real joy.

I’m back, world, I’m back.

I'm bored, let's poke holes in our perception of space again

2008-10-15 22:13:25

Every real world coordinate is an irrational number.

If you position anything with relation to something else then surely you can measure the distance between them – or can you? You can approximate it, say with a ruler, but is the object lined up perfectly with the marking? Looking closer you could add a decimal point, maybe, and go on and on looking closer and closer until you reach the atomic scale, and even then they couldn’t be perfectly in line with each other – that is, perpendicular to the object you’re measuring from.

The reason why, I believe, is this. Let’s assume the world at the atomic scale follows a grid, where every coordinate can be given as an exact value. We want to measure the distance between two points. If we draw a square of side length x, where both points are on diagonally opposing corners, what is the distance between the points?

It is 2x. Because the world is on a grid, travelling along two sides of the square must be the same distance, as the diagonal line has to be able to split into a set of vertical and horizontal lines, which in turn add up to the length of the sides.

Going back to our real world model, the length is Pythagoras’ theorem, which is the root of x^2 + x^2, or root of 2x^2, or root 2 times x – which is an irrational number.

A healthy dosage of action and drama... again.

2008-10-08 21:31:05

I wrote this story while doing my welsh homework back in year 10. Good times...


"It's over."

He stood there in fear. His clothes draped down, skewed by his posture. His dark and dampened look showed how little he had left. His back was slightly bent, his arms were pointing at the ground and his hands were out of sight. His hair was smeared with his own blood.

But his face was what might draw the most attention. Young, as he was, yet in his eyes had thrice what most people see in a lifetime been carved. His mouth was open, although he might not have noticed it. His face showed everything that he had: everything except hope.

His feet pounded silently through the soles of ragged shoes. The unnaturally gleaming floor smiled at him, its range spanning from edge to edge of the platform. Behind him was an escape unreachable; a door. To his sides were the magnetically throbbing tracks now mute from their previous glory. And in front of him was the slide that was his opponent; superior in every way.

This new entrant to the scene had the first character engraved into the atmosphere. She was dominant of everything, the area was hers. Her feet were perfectly positioned onto the tiles. Her image was straight and aligned. Her body was turned so that her shoulders could see clearly at the target – one arm away, one arm towards. One arm down, one arm level. Level, and possessing the item which bewitched her with such power.

Her very soul carried a darkness with it, manually imprinted on the room. Her face was in complete shadow, but the man knew who she was. They both knew what was to come. She rested her thumb upon the lever.

In her hand was a gun. The barrel was but an extension to her arm, the rest was part of it.

Time began to play games with them.

He forced a blink; his eyes were screaming but he had previously had no strength to move them. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. Everything was focused on the gun, nothing else mattered anymore, nothing else existed anymore. He could only watch as the figure pulled upon the lever.

It emanated an elemental click. The world lost focus upon everything, but this. It was the only sound that existed, rivalled only by the increasing heartbeat of the man. He wanted to scream, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t beg for anything, the only thing he had was the gift he had just received from Time. Time had stopped.

He couldn’t move, breathe or sense anything. He could only think.

“I need you”

She felt it. She felt it as if she had just been shot by a thousand arrows. Her presence fell, her dominating stance lost all of its grace. She almost died herself.

But she didn’t move. She just stood there, trying to hold back a tear that grew so painfully slowly it ripped apart her mind. They both felt it.

The gap was lost. Screaming, she pulled the trigger five times. A dreadful silence followed.

One by one, she opened her eyes and saw it. The man still stood there, his eyes closed also. Her eyes wandered cautiously over the wall behind him; to each side of the door there were two bullet-holes, one above and below each of the man’s arms. And there, in the middle, was a bullet hole within the door. The man, jolting, moved his head down, and saw the precisely carved tunnel of blood straight through his heart. He hadn’t registered the pain, there was none to be felt. His effort drained rapidly as he tried to lift his arms, worsened by the speed Time had given the moment. He eventually fell to his knees, hovered for a moment, and dropped to his hands; unable to support him. He slid quietly to the ground.

Galileo - respect, man.

2008-09-15 18:28:44

Two objects, of different weights, fall at the same speed. We know that because Galileo chucked two things off a building to prove it.

Well, actually, he didn't. I found a flaw with this problem, and upon researching it, discovered it never happened.

The first experiment is dropping two different objects from the same height - which is fine, and them not hitting the ground at the same time is subject to air resistance. Except that it's not just air resistance that'll hamper it. Consider the following: two balloons, inflated equally, one with water and one with air. The one filled with water would land first, despite them having the exact same air resistance.

The reason for this air buoyancy. And when we factor in that all objects, even when stationary, are affected by the buoyancy of the air - even negligibly - everything seems to fit into place. In a vacuum, they hit the ground at the same time.

When I began to look into this, though, I realised that not only was it void, but also irrelevant. To begin, the objects used were of the same density. This discounts air buoyancy, and if the objects were scale copies of each other, this neglects air resistance. But even this is irrelevant.

Galileo never performed the experiment. It was a thought experiment.

The practical outcome of a thought experiment is irrelevant. Galileo's first thought experiment, as intended, disproves Aristotle's theory of gravity, which states that objects fall at a speed relative to their mass, by reasoning. His experiment is as follows.

Genius.

The newborn slayer

2008-09-09 21:57:26

Dabbling, dripping, glossy fluid patters on the rock. The bouncing blobs form flowers in the air as they tear apart the silence.

Darkness engulfs the survivor. Darkness engulfs the dead. Darkness feasts on the victim's skin, his lifeless eyes see nothing. His open wound will never heal. His blood has joined the dribbling stream, his life force dissolves in the water.

He never screamed. He never gave a sound as he fell to the end, he knew his voice was lost down here. He'd seen his attacker, he'd felt his breath, felt the musty gurgling of his lungs. He'd felt the killer's weapon blow, he'd felt his sweaty palms, his dripping cold arms, his penetrating eyes, his billowing clothes, his dirty slimy spit and his heart – his pumping heart, beating faster and faster, boasting his life to the slain.

He'd fallen to the ground in an instant, to stare forever more at the eternal night. His questioning was futile, his monologue was void – he knew the motive. He knew there was no motive. He understood the reasoning right away.

A million years he lay there until he fell from the mortal world. A million years he waited, waited to understand that he was dead. There would be no funeral, no remembrance. This emptiness was his tomb.



It was all over in a second. The man had fallen dead. The slayer's heart was thumping wildly, jumping out of his chest. He let go of the makeshift club. It clinked and clanged on the cold wet stone. He started breathing again.

Feet sliding, legs churning, he realised he was walking. He made for the cave's entrance, and told himself once more, I have killed a man.

The morning sun hit his face like glory. What they'd said was right. It was the only way to feel alive.

The Apple iGame

2008-07-20 23:28:07

Hey, look what I found. Back in the days when we had chatlogs enabled... good times.


With all that Apple could take over the world. And make it apple shape.

Something I've been meaning to say for a while

2008-07-02 22:40:07

It's not about incredible graphics with awesome effects, and similarly, it's not about shitty graphics but good gameplay. It's not even about the compromise between them.

The problem is that technology increases, and everyone tries to make faster, more powerful machines, or machines that do things in new ways, or whatever. The outcome is that the companies create platforms which mean less effort for the developers. That's what it comes down to. The developers think, "oh, cool, we can create incredible graphics by just adding more polygons and higher res textures" and "they've given us such innovative technology, let's make sure to use it."

It's effortless, it's quick and no actual feeling goes into the game. Or movie. I hate just about every action film that came out after The Matrix. CGI got cheaper, so everything else in the film got cheaper too.

So they're given innovative technology, and instant amazing graphics. Right, so they should work on the gameplay to balance it out? That's not the way to go about making a game! You've missed out everything in between.

N64 Zeldas had ground breaking graphics not because they had lots of polygons, or good textures. What mattered was that the amount of effort put into creating, what was at the time, new technology - writing the 3D engine was a terrific feat, so accompanying it were huge amounts of effort into EVERYTHING else of the game.

Assassin's Creed has incredible graphics, sure, but into the actual animations, I think they could have tried harder. It still looks blocky, and digital. The textures don't cover that up. If you were to blur the screen a lot, it wouldn't be mistaken for real life - so if you were trying to make it realistic, you've failed. Don't tell me it's not meant to look real, course it is, that's the entire point of improving the graphics. And levels of detail, what's up with that? Crysis, yeah, great graphics, interaction with the world, zero out of ten. You can shoot the trees, impressive. Except you can only shoot certain trees. Great. You can pick up all kinds of objects, but if you actually want to do stuff with them, nothing. Most items and objects don't even have one destruction animation. If they put the same effort into interaction with the world as they did with the graphics, then, and only then, would the gameplay be satisfactory.

Every game on the PS2 I've ever played has looked blurred. I don't get what the deal is with that, I like the pixelated look of Ocarina of Time. It's not as pretty straight away, but the boldness of the colours and the symbolic detail it embodied was brilliant. Blurring everything into creams and greys is not.

If a game is too powerful or resource heavy for a console, its inefficiency is a disgrace. Make the resource-hog 'new technology' do what it can handle, and spend more time on the detail between the main areas.

I hate where Nintendo has taken itself recently. It's worked because they've appealed to a new audience, and just ignored the old one. Most of the old audience followed because they were too stupid to notice. Twilight princess is different to the others in a BAD way! "Retaining the Zelda feel" is what I hear all the time. What a fucking lie, it's lost every bit of it! You complain that there are long journeys between the missions, indeed. There used to be a reason for them. In Ocarina of Time, it was FUN to get lost in a field because there was so much to DO in that field. Now they give us more, more field, but much less to actually do in it. What the hell is up with corners with nothing in them? Zelda was about secrets and side missions everywhere you turn. TP was about a linear mission, all the way through. On my way through TP I encountered so many things like objects which are obviously useful in the future, but do nothing for now. That's a good tactic to use if you can make the player want to go to where it leads. TP didn't. It just threw too many at you at once without showing at all what would lie beyond once you got the item/object/whatever to get past the obstacle. Zelda was about tempting you to play on. About giving you a taster of an area ahead and making you think, "I really want to get to that bit, but can't, it looks so fun, I wonder how you do such-and-such, etc." I'm sorry, but looking at a FIELD almost identical to what you've just ridden in isn't enticing. The obstacles are so generic you forget them - originally, there would be just a few of these obstacles you couldn't get past and they annoyed you so much that when you finally got the item, you ran straight to whereever and used it. Not anymore. Think back to the old zeldas, say Link's Awakening, the very first thing you do is struggle through those spikey things on the beach with your shield, slowly pushing them out of the way. You get annoyed and think, surely there's a faster way to get through all this. Then you get the sword and, combined with the perfect music, you get a rush of power as you cut through them all, making them explode! Perfect release of the anger at them, perfect power, perfect lead into the very next thing. What is the next thing? Finding the feather, that lets you get over all the holes you've been annoyed at for the last ten minutes.

THAT was the Zelda feel.


Starfox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet was a good game. It wasn't trying to be epic, it wasn't trying to break new ground, it was just a pure and simple, good game. Most of the puzzles were copied. So what. It was the perfect length for you to not to get bored but not to be disappointed, it had a hugely diverse range of puzzles and methods of gameplay, it had brilliant music, and it wasn't trying to be something incredible - just a plain, simple, enjoyable game. I don't know why they don't make more games like that. All we get is new games, trying to break new ground, trying to be epic, trying to "wow" you from the first moment, or generic, completely copied games that are shit. Apparently gamers today don't have patience, and if something annoys them they give up. And developers will listen to that because it's the general public that sells. The majority of gamers can't tell the difference between good, and epic. Most of the Sony market was it before, now Nintendo's changed its perspective and most of the proles are following them. Brilliant games aren't rewarded, and flawed games are over appreciated, all thanks to throwing in words like "innovation" and so on. Brainwashing.

The only people who care are being ignored, since what they want isn't what sells. Depressing thought, huh.


And that was a good waste of half an hour.

PC World

2008-06-20 23:10:41

It's a UK chain of stores. And yesterday I actually realised just how expensive they are.

I mean - they've always had a reputation a bit of being over priced, but sheesh. Let's start with an example.

I just bought a new graphics card - an nVidia 8600 with 1GB of memory. I paid $110 for it - although I had to pay an extra $30 or so for shipping to the UK. That's about £70 I've paid.

PC World sell a card with the same, nVidia 8600 chip, with just 256mb of memory, and they're charging, with a special 'online discount', £170 excluding shipping!

An even better example is that they charge £25 for a 7-meter ethernet cable. Just across the road from them, B&Q sell ethernet cable at £17 for 100 meters!

I just don't understand how they're still running such a monopoly. What makes it worse is that they have posters all over the place claiming "we won't be beaten on price!" and "Great value!" and all that - everywhere. It's sick. If I present the two examples above to them, they'll say that it isn't the exact same product. No, of course it isn't, it's a vastly better product and at a substantially cheaper price - but do they care?

They're surviving on adverts, that's what it is. Powerful, mind-numbing adverts constantly giving the ignorant public the idea that they're the best. If anyone thinks, "where can I get a such-and-such computer part?" the first thing to come up would be PC World - thanks to the name, the propaganda marketing and public ignorance. Most people probably don't even realise B&Q sell ethernet cable. Most people just naturally assume PC World - the PC specialist - will be the best place to buy a graphics card, and yet their top of the range model is outdated, and vastly overpriced.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.